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If you've got ever joined with a male friend during a weight loss programme you'll have noticed that men are ready to reduce more easily than women. Life seems cruel sometimes. Men hold a metabolic edge over women because they need more muscle, and muscles are the "workhorses" of the body.
Many women who felt slim at 35 years, still weighing an equivalent at 45 hnow consider themselves "fat". No it probably isn't social conditioning. it's more likely to be the reality and that they are literally more "fat" than they wont to be. The scales aren't the sole answer to understanding what is going on on in your body.
Consider the case of Annette who weighed 63 kilos at age 35. At that point , 23 percent of her body consisted of fat. (Experts consider 23 to 33 percent body fat healthy for ladies ages 40 to 59). Back then, 15 of Annette's 63 kilos were fat. The rest--48 kilos--consisted of bone, muscle, water, and internal organs.
By the time Annette reached age 48, her body fat had increased from 23 percent to 30 percent, yet her weight had remained an equivalent . Her body now contains 20 kilos of fat, 5 more kilos of fat than at age 35. At an equivalent time, Annette had lost approximately 5 pounds of muscle.
When women gain fat and lose muscle, two things happen:
Fat isn't as dense as muscle, so any fat gained takes up more room than muscle. albeit you haven't gained weight on the size , your body can appear larger, and your clothing size may even increase.
Because muscle burns more calories than fat, your metabolism slows and you burn fewer calories, which may contribute to weight gain if you do not make adjustments in your calorie consumption. Muscle burns up to 7 times more energy than fat, therefore the effect on your metabolism are often quite significant.
Annette has been extraordinarily careful about what she eats and hasn't been ready to reduce - with good reason. the quantity of lean body mass you've got is a crucial think about determining the speed at which you burn calories. If lean body mass drops, metabolism drops.
Every pound of muscle a lady loses slashes the amount of calories she burns by as many as 30 calories each day . If she loses 10 pounds of muscle over 3 decades, she could burn 300 fewer calories every day , or a whopping 2,100 fewer calories hebdomadally .
By the time she celebrates her 55th birthday, she could have lost as many as 15 pounds of muscle, and now burn 450 fewer calories each and each day.
What this suggests for Annette--and other women in their forties and fifties--is that maintaining muscle mass is critical because the birthdays add up. Lean muscle matters because there's such a lot of it.
Calorie-burning muscle accounts for about 40 percent of the body mass of a normal-weight woman--that's 56 pounds for a 140-pound woman like Janet--so it is a major think about energy.
Here's some good news: Because muscle mass is linked on to rate , women can give their metabolic engines a lift with weight training and other sorts of exercise that builds muscle. Second, with eating the proper sources of very lean protein you'll encourage muscle development as you exercise.