By Dr Heather Honey
My patients often ask me what the single most important thing that they can do to stay healthy. When considering the answer, I focus on strategies that will promote both long-term durability, longevity and the highest possible quality of life. Time and again, my answer is strength training, which offers remarkable benefits for overall health.
How Strength Training Can Help with Aging
The benefits of strength training for aging and longevity are numerous. As we age, it is imperative that we preserve muscle mass. Muscle loss (sarcopenia) accelerates with age and hormonal changes during menopause. Strength training builds and maintains muscle, improving mobility and reducing injury risk.
By strengthening the muscles around joints, resistance training helps improve stability and reduces chronic joint pain.
Lifting weights will enhance bone density as well. Resistance exercises strengthen bones, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and fractures, which are common in older adults. Strength training also enhances coordination, stability, and core strength, which lowers the risk of falls and related injuries in older adults.
Strength training can alleviate menopause symptoms like weight gain, fatigue, and mood swings by improving metabolic health and reducing fat accumulation. It also improves hormonal balance. Testosterone levels, in both men and women, naturally decline with age. Testosterone plays a significant role is muscle growth, maintenance and recovery. Strength training has been shown, over time, to help support healthy hormone levels.
Emerging research suggests that strength training benefits brain health by improving cognitive function and reducing the risk of dementia.
Strength Training and Metabolism
Strength training also boosts metabolism. Muscle tissue burns more calories at rest than fat, helping offset the natural metabolic slowdown with age. Building muscle raises your resting metabolic rate, helping burn more calories even when you’re not exercising.
It also helps to regulate blood sugar, improves insulin sensitivity, and reduces the risk of metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes.
While cardiovascular health is often associated with aerobic exercise, strength training also reduces blood pressure, improves cholesterol levels, and supports heart health. Increased muscle mass boosts metabolism, making it easier to manage body weight and reduce excess fat, which is linked to chronic diseases.
Resistance training can improve fat loss and improve body composition. While cardio burns calories, strength training shapes body composition by preserving lean muscle, creating a toned physique, and improving long-term weight management. Strength training helps your muscles utilize glucose more efficiently, enhancing blood sugar regulation and complementing weight-loss efforts.
Why You Should Add Strength Training into Your Routine
When used alongside GLP-1 medications like semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) the benefits are numerous. GLP-1 drugs can lead to muscle loss, especially with rapid weight loss. Strength training mitigates this by stimulating muscle repair and growth.
Strength training enhances overall strength, enabling easier daily activities and reducing frailty risks, particularly important for those losing weight rapidly on medications. Combining GLP-1 medications with strength training improves metabolic health, helping sustain weight loss and prevent weight regain.
At Peak Hydration, our weight loss packages include three times weekly strength training video sessions with a personal trainer, designed to teach our clients how to safely build strength and develop a love for becoming strong. No matter your age, weight or fitness level, we will help you improve your fitness and gradually increase resistance as you build strength.
Incorporating strength training into your lifestyle supports metabolic health, counters the effects of aging, and enhances weight loss—especially when combined with medications like GLP-1 agonists. This approach ensures that weight loss focuses on fat while preserving essential muscle mass, promoting long-term wellness and vitality.
By addressing these factors, strength training not only extends lifespan but also improves “health span,” allowing people to remain active, independent, and enjoy a higher quality of life as they age.
Strength Train For Life!
So, whether your goals are to hike a mountain, train for your first 5K, improve your metabolism or knee pain or be able to get up off the floor after playing with your grandchild, strength training is for you!
Start your holistic health and wellness journey with Peak Hydration! This January, we’re launching our new Fitness and Nutrition Program that will augment our current weight loss program and get you started down a road of long-term heath! For more information and to get started, click here!
