Build Muscle (Healthily!)

Plus: sugar- and flour-free chocolate cake in 5 minutes!

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The 10almonds Team
April 27, 2024

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

A lot of people will say “you don’t need supplements if you have a well-balanced nutrient-rich diet”, and then not have a well-balanced nutrient-rich diet.

Don’t fall into that trap!

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

  • It is common to lose muscle mass as we get older, but it doesn’t have to be so

    • Today’s main feature looks at the science of diet, exercise, and more, when it comes to gaining and maintaining muscle

    • The importance of rest is also not to be underestimated!

  • Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

    • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

Spinal Cord Stimulators: Got Your Back?

Nope! Or at least: not in a good way. The evidence doesn’t support them for chronic back pain—and they could cause harm

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Sugar- and flour-free chocolate cake in 5 minutes (2:23)

Prefer text? There’s a text version of the recipe, under the video 😎

Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

❓ MYSTERY ITEM

Sensible!

Hint: today’s mystery item is designed to take care of more of your senses than it doesn’t

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

💪 MAIN FEATURE

What Do You Have To Gain?

We have previously promised a three-part series about changing one’s weight:

  1. Losing weight (specifically, losing fat)

  2. Gaining weight (specifically, gaining muscle)

  3. Gaining weight (specifically, gaining fat)

And yes, that last one is also something that some people want/need to do (healthily!), and want/need help with that.

There will be, however, no need for a “losing muscle” article, because (even though sometimes a person might have some reason to want to do this), it’s really just a case of “those things we said for gaining muscle? Don’t do those and the muscle will atrophy naturally”.

Here’s the first part: How To Lose Weight (Healthily!)

While some people will want to lose fat, please do be aware that the association between weight loss and good health is not nearly so strong as the weight loss industry would have you believe:

And, while BMI is not a useful measure of health in general, it’s worth noting that over the age of 65, a BMI of 27 (which is in the high end of “overweight”, without being obese) is associated with the lowest all-cause mortality:

Body weight, muscle mass, and protein:

That BMI of 27, or whatever weight you might wish to be, ignores body composition. You’re probably aware that volume-for-volume, muscle weighs more than fat.

You’re also probably aware that if we’re not careful, we tend to lose muscle as we get older. This is known as age-related sarcopenia:

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, our featured expert in the above article, recommends getting at least 1.6g of protein per kg of body weight per day (Americans, divide your weight in pounds by 2.2 to get your weight in kg).

So for example, if you weigh 165lb, that’s 75kg, that’s 1.6×75=120g of protein per day.

There is an upper limit to how much protein per day is healthy, and that limit is probably around 2g of protein per kg of body weight per day:

You may be wondering: should we go for animal or plant protein? In which case, the short version is:

  • If you only care about muscle growth, any complete sources of protein are fine

  • If you care about your general health too, then avoiding red meat is best, but other common protein sources are all fine

  • Unprocessed is (unsurprisingly) better than processed in either case

What exercises are best for muscle-building?

Of course, different muscles require different exercises, but for all of them, resistance training is what builds muscle the most, and it’s pretty much impossible to build a lot of muscle otherwise.

Prepare to fail!

No, really, prepare to fail. Because while resistance training in general is good for maintaining strong muscles and bones, you will only gain muscle if your current muscle is not enough to do the exercise:

  • If you do a heavy resistance exercise without undue difficulty, your muscles will say to each other “Good job, team! That was hard, but luckily we were strong enough; no changes necessary”.

  • If you do a heavy resistance exercise to the point where you can no longer do it (called: training to failure), then your muscles will say to each other “Oof, what a task! What we’ve got here is clearly not enough, so we’ll have to add more muscle for next time”.

Safety note: training to failure comes with safety risks. If using free weights or weight machines, please do so under well-trained supervision. If doing it with bodyweight (e.g. press-ups until you can press no more) or resistance bands, please check with your doctor first to ensure this is safe for you.

You can also increase the effectiveness of your resistance training by doing it in a way that “confuses” your muscles, making it harder for them to adapt in the moment, and thus forcing them to adapt more in the long term (e.g. get bigger and stronger):

Make time for recovery

While many kinds of exercise can be done daily, exercise to build muscle(s) means at the very least resting that muscle (or muscle group) the next day.

For this reason, a lot of bodybuilders have for example a week’s schedule that might look like:

  • Monday: Upper body training

  • Wednesday: Lower body training

  • Friday: Core strength training

…and rest on other days. This gives most muscles a full week of recovery, and every muscle at least 48 hours of recovery.

Note: bodybuilders, like children (who are also doing a lot of body-building, in their own way) need more sleep in order to allow for this recovery and growth to occur. Serious bodybuilders often aim for 12 hours sleep per day. This might be impractical, undesirable, or even impossible for some people, but it’s a factor to be borne in mind and not forgotten.

See also:

Anything else that can (safely and healthily) be done to promote muscle growth?

There are a lot of supplements on the market; some are healthy and helpful, other not so much. Here are some we’ve written about:

Take care!

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

52 Weeks to Better Mental Health: A Guided Workbook for Self-Exploration and Growth – by Dr. Tina Tessina

We’ve written before about the health benefits of journaling, but how to get started, and how to make it a habit, and what even to write about?

Dr. Tessina presents a year’s worth of journaling prompts with explanations and exercises, and no, they’re not your standard CBT flowchart things, either. Rather, they not only prompt genuine introspection, but also are crafted to be consistently uplifting—yes, even if you are usually the most disinclined to such positivity, and approach such exercises with cynicism.

There’s an element of guidance beyond that, too, and as such, this book is as much a therapist-in-a-book as you might find. Of course, no book can ever replace a competent and compatible therapist, but then, competent and compatible therapists are often harder to find and can’t usually be ordered for a few dollars with next-day shipping.

Bottom line: if undertaken with seriousness, this book will be an excellent investment in your mental health and general wellbeing.

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Wishing you a wonderfully restorative weekend,

The 10almonds Team