Skip to main content

I Strength Trained for a Year--Here's What Happened

No dinky weights! Photo from Unsplash.

After years of being frustrated by a lack of energy and carrying around more fat than I wanted to, last year I finally regained enough of my health to start...lifting weights. That might not be conventional wisdom, but it makes more sense than eating less or simply moving more to lose weight and be more energetic. I started in March of last year with a few sessions with a personal trainer who showed me how to work out without hurting my neck. Since then, I've been lifting weights twice a week at home, missing workouts only when I'm sick or doing a lot of landscaping. I use 10- to 25-pound weights and a stability ball. After eight months, I lost enough fat that I had to buy new pants, but more importantly, I've improved my metabolic health and reduced my risk of various diseases of aging. The lab tests I took five months in showed a big drop in fasting insulin--from 4.4 in 2021 to 3.7. Other metabolic markers stayed about the same. 

If you're thinking this was because of a big weight loss, it wasn't. The machine at the personal trainer's gym showed I started with only 6% visceral fat, well within the normal range for women. I lost less than 10 pounds and the before and after photos I posted hardly got a comment, they were so similar. I didn't change they way I ate. I did strength training.

Strength is so important that grip strength has been proposed as a biomarker. "Supporting this proposition, evidence is provided herein that shows grip strength is largely consistent as an explanator of concurrent overall strength, upper limb function, bone mineral density, fractures, falls, malnutrition, cognitive impairment, depression, sleep problems, diabetes, multimorbidity, and quality of life. Evidence is also provided for a predictive link between grip strength and all-cause and disease-specific mortality, future function, bone mineral density, fractures, cognition and depression, and problems associated with hospitalization."(1) People with diabetes tend to have lower grip strength compared to non-diabetics(2). Sarcopenia (age-related loss of muscle mass, strength and function) is associated with falls and fractures, poor quality of life, increased mortality, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and depression and anxiety(3).

Some of these things are self-evident, but does strength training really improve cognition, depression and diabetes or are these just associations? "Muscles serve as storage facilities for consumed sugar and carbohydrates," says an article in Everyday Health(4). Strength training also improves insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance and boosts metabolism(5). And it's widely accepted that some cases of depression are exercise deficiency syndrome and Alzheimer's disease is type 3 diabetes. 

I suspected a link between weakness, diabetes and dementia eleven years ago when my father, who seemed to be made of iron even in his 60s, rapidly went downhill a few years before he died. Here's what he and my mother were eating:

Four trash bags of chips, crackers, cookies, pretzels, potato mix, gravy mix, cake mix, cornbread mix, macaroni and cheese mix, oatmeal, sugar and grapes. No wonder my parents ended up frail and diabetic.

You need protein to build muscle, and probably most of us need to limit carbs to avoid putting on fat. L. reuteri yogurt helps build muscle, and Bacillus coagulans helps with muscle recovery. I use L. reuteri from BioGaia and B. coagulans Unique IS-2 from Culterelle. After I was rehabbing my garage in 2020 and left feeling like I'd been run over after a few hours' work, I was blown away later that year at my speedy recovery from an injury. The only thing I was doing differently was eating yogurt made with B. coagulans. 

It's hard to exercise if you're in pain. Stretches have helped me so much in eliminating TMJ pain, headaches and kinks that I've added a new YouTube channel to my video feed. SpineCare Decompression is run by a chiropractor who shows you how to relieve joint and muscle pain in minutes with stretching exercises and find long-term relief with strength training exercises. (If you don't see the video feed, click on the three horizontal lines at the top right of my blog and scroll down.) 

You can't exercise your way out of a bad diet--but you also can't diet and supplement your way to fitness (although they can help). When you lose weight, you also lose muscle and therefore strength, and research shows that makes you more prone to debilitating illnesses and injuries. Strength training is a way to lose or maintain weight and stay fit.

How I train

3 sets, 8-12 reps each of upper body, core, back and lower body exercises with 10- to 25-pound dumbbells or a stability ball, repeated a second time with different exercises, twice a week. Each workout takes about an hour.

Sources

  1. Bohannon RW. Grip Strength: An Indispensable Biomarker For Older Adults. Clin Interv Aging. 2019 Oct 1;14:1681-1691. doi: 10.2147/CIA.S194543. PMID: 31631989; PMCID: PMC6778477.
  2. AI-generated content from Brave.com. Sources: Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, Science Daily, BMC Geriatrics, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, EverydayHealth.com, and WebMD.com. https://search.brave.com/search?q=strength+training+and+blood+sugar&source=web&summary=1&summary_og=62124d6f85b214af7271e7
  3. AI-generated content from Brave.com. Sources: Nature.com, Current Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Reports, Frontiers in Neurology, Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, and Progress in Rehabilitation Medicine. https://search.brave.com/search?q=sarcopenia+risks&source=web&summary=1&summary_og=5cbd85b0edd191f0607ae1
  4. "Why You Should Be Lifting Weights if You Have Type 2 Diabetes by K. Aleisha Fetters." EverydayHealth.com Updated on December 12, 2023. https://www.everydayhealth.com/type-2-diabetes/living-with/weight-lifting-get-strong/
  5. Strasser B, Pesta D. Resistance training for diabetes prevention and therapy: experimental findings and molecular mechanisms. Biomed Res Int. 2013;2013:805217. doi: 10.1155/2013/805217. Epub 2013 Dec 22. PMID: 24455726; PMCID: PMC3881442. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881442/

Other references

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did I get Floxxed by Antibiotics? Achilles Tendonitis Pain!

The past few months have found me shuffling out of bed in the morning with stiff, painful achilles tendons. I've never experience anything like it, even when I was lindy hopping a couple of nights a week for twelve years.  I also started getting muscle strain last spring after doing normal chores around the house and yard--so much so that I added a chiropractor's YouTube channel to my feed on this site. I have muscle pain in my lower back and sternum that have improved but haven't gone away despite going to a chiropractor IRL.  Be careful of medicines, even if they're topical. Photo from Pexels . All of this happened after taking Cipro antibiotic drops for an eye infection . Cipro is a fluoroquinolone (a type of antibiotic) with a black box warning about tendonitis and tendon rupture, and another warning about "mental health side effects and serious blood sugar disturbances," according to the FDA. The side effects involving tendons, muscles, joints, nerves an
1 comment
Read more

Fibromyalgia Relief Diet: How to DIY

Readers interested in the raw paleo+supplement diet that I've proposed for fibromyalgia might be wondering how to put this into practice. There's a lot to read--you can skip parts if you want to--but the better you understand how this works, and the more lousy conventional wisdom you dispense with, the more likely you are to stick with it and fine-tune it to your needs. The basic ideas: Fix any leaks in the gut. A strict paleo diet eliminates foods like grains, potatoes and legumes that can cause this problem, allowing the gut to heal. (UPDATE 6/27/2012: Avoid an additive called carrageenan . It's a neolithic food and an inflammatory.) This may also help with autoimmune diseases. Stop ingesting antinutrients that interfere with magnesium absorption. Grains and legumes have antinutrients (search for "phytate" at Google Scholar if you're interested). Antacids keep you from absorbing magnesium (and calcium, zinc and iron) and interfere with protein digest
4 comments
Read more

Totalfat: Encouragement!

Japan, of all places, has given the world a band called Totalfat. I don't know the story behind their name, but one of their songs ("Place to Try") should be encouraging to someone fighting the well-meaning meddling of people trying to get them to eat lessfat. Even if you don't speak Japanese, the song should encourage you to eat morefat. English translation from naruto.wikia.com: I'm almost at the end My legs are ready to give, but I can't give up yet Now is the time to go Together we will pave, the path towards our dreams They call me, beckon me closer It's not crazy Fight and fight, try and try for you Forever I will always be there Don't give up, not yet The future is waiting for us There's nothing to fear so let's get moving This is a place to try Today is ending and we're heading for tomorrow Take my hand and never let go Let's sing loudly We are the ones for the future
11 comments
Read more

Paleo Vegetarianism?

Much more endnoting is needed! -Cindy Hoffman, one of my high school English teachers It's a shame that vegan activist Dr. Neal Barnard didn't learn English composition from Mrs. Hoffman: maybe we could see where he got the numerous pro-vegetarian quotes from paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey--enough to fill half a chapter in The Power of Your Plate . Leakey, according to Barnard, says that hunting in modern times isn't very important except as a macho male thing (page 175), that meat accounted for a small part of the diet on the African savannah (page 174), that the "excess of meat" from domesticated livestock is unusual (page 174), and that we wouldn't have had the teeth to deal with tearing flesh and hide (page 171). These statements are attributed to the same Richard Leakey who said, just two years before The Power of Your Plate came out in 1995, The expansion [of diet] involved making meat an important food source, not just an occasional items
8 comments
Read more

Other People's Money

They say it isn't easy getting old. Neither is being the child of someone who is. Back in November, someone walked into a branch of US Bank, where my parents have an account, and opened a credit card in my father's name. After dealing with some confused and unhelpful employees, we got the credit card canceled. Last week, a better US Bank employee cancelled and reversed several charges made by a well-known scam company, and the other day, Mom got another call from Lifelock saying that someone was taking money from her US Bank account. Enough. As much trouble as it was, on Saturday I took Mom to my credit union, where they're buggo on security, to open a new checking account. I knew it would be a hassle to change all the bill pay info and direct deposits, but just getting there and opening an account was a lot of trouble. Good thing I decided to start at 9 AM. I put Mom's wheelchair in the trunk of her car. It wouldn't start. I moved the wheelchair to my car, d
11 comments
Read more