Our bodies reach their natural maximum physical potential somewhere around age 21. At age 21 it has taken 21 years to build up your muscle mass. After age 21 your muscle mass begins to deteriorate. If you don't use it you lose it and over the years the muscle mass slowly trickles away. It slips away slowly and you probably don't even notice it until that game of baseball on the weekend leaves you sore the next day, or that back ache from too much activity leaves you thinking "I am not as young as I used to be".
Teenagers are able to perform feats of athleticism with relative ease. Those in their 40s and 50s struggle because they lack the muscle endurance that they once had.
The amount of muscle directly impacts your metabolic rate (how quickly you naturally burn calories). Your body needs more calories throughout the day to care for muscles. If you do not have much muscle then you don't need many calories. Know someone who brags they eat a lot and it doesn't effect them? They probably have a high metabolism rate. And that is probably a result of strong dense muscles.
As muscle mass slips away through the years so does our daily calorie requirements. Most people do not account for this. They continue to eat what they always have or more. This results in a buildup of fat. And without muscle mass fueling metabolism or helping with workouts, losing the fat becomes increasingly difficult to get rid of.
When people want to lose weight they usually gravitate toward diet and exercise. For exercise they want to do cardio because that burns calories and has an immediate rewarding short-term effect. However cardio will burn muscle just as much as it will burn fat. After about 10 weeks of a cardio program, progress starts to crash. The body usually adapts to cardio programs and the loss of muscle reduces in the effects of the exercise.
Instead of solely focusing on cardio for workouts, you would be far better to include weight training and resistance training. Resistance training will help you to maintain your muscle mass and could slow the effects of aging on your muscles. Building up muscles will help with metabolism. In addition when you do cardio you are only burning calories while you are doing cardio. With weight training you burn calories during the exercise and you burn calories for hours afterwards as your body repairs the muscles from your workout.
Many people complain that they do not want to build up bulky muscles. Don't worry about that. Your first goal should be to get back some of the muscles that you have lost. And then second there is nothing wrong with looking lean. Some bulky muscles will look a lot better then some bulky fat.
If you can return your muscles to the condition they were in your early twenties then I believe you will have the metabolism and the stamina that you had in your 20s. You will be able to deal with weight gain and weight loss much easier.
Note: Author is not an expert. Always seek the advice of your doctor and experts before starting any physical fitness program
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