What are you made of?

Do you know your body composition? How much adipose tissue, lean muscle, and bone mass do you have? There are many ways to find out your body composition. Some of them are better than others, but here is a quick way.

*Make sure you click on the second link, Calculate Body Fa %ge

Body Fat & Everything Else

Once you have calculated your Body Fat percentage now you need to calculate many pounds or kilograms of adipose (fat) tissue you have now.

Body weight x percentage of body fat = fat mass.

For example, you weigh 165 pounds and have a body fat percentage of 28%.

165 x .28 = 46.2 pounds of body fat.

165 lbs – 46.2 lbs = 118.8 pounds of everything else.

Without high tech equipment, there is no good way to figure out what everything else consists of exactly, but it is your muscle, bone, and organs.

The key to health is everything else.

Last week, I wrote about the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health and Fitness Summit and all the latest research about diet, fitness, and ageing well. The critical component of stay healthy and fit at any age is everything else.

Meaning muscle.

How do we build, maintain and retain our muscle tissue? This is the key to health. Muscle should be viewed as a vital sign.

Carla Prado, Ph.D., R.D., associate professor at the University of Alberta says,

“If health care professionals identify and treat low muscle mass, they can significantly improve their patients’ health outcomes.”

A review of studies that was published in 2018 the Annals of Medicine verifies the important role muscle mass plays in health.

“People with less muscle have more surgical and post-operative complications, longer hospital stays, lower physical function, poorer quality of life and overall lower survival”.

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study showing that women with breast cancer and had more muscle mass had almost 60% higher chance of long term survival.

Patients in intensive care that had more muscle mass spend less time on ventilators, as well as less time in intensive care and a higher chance of survival.

People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who have more muscle have improved respiratory outcomes and lower rates of osteopenia or osteoporosis.

People who are in long-term care and have lower muscle mass have more severe Alzheimer’s.

But I am healthy.

Having low levels of lean muscle mass is not related to your body weight. You may be a normal weight and appear healthy even with low muscle mass.

Building lean muscle is not instant.

It takes a little time, a proper diet and consistent practice. We are constantly working against our best interests when it comes to muscle building.

Only 3% of North American adults do any type of strength building exercise. BUT, more of us do all the things that reduce our muscle mass. We go on diets, we don’t sleep, we spend too much of our time being sedentary. All ways that disrupt and reduce our ability to build or retain our lean muscle tissue.

The first step is to know your body composition so that you can maintain your muscle over time. The next step is to build more. It is possible at any age to increase your muscle mass and it can take as little as 1-2 hours per week.

Change your mind, change your health,

Shayla