Build Muscle (Healthily!)

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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:

Shedding Some Obesity Myths

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:

BMI and all-cause mortality in older adults: a meta-analysis

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:

Protein, & Fighting 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:

Protein: How Much Do We Need, Really?

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

Longer version: Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head

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.

Check out: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

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):

HIIT, But Make It HIRT: High Intensity Resistance Training

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:

Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise (According To Actual Science)

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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  • Pear vs Peach – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing pears to peaches, we picked the peaches.

    Why?

    Both are great! But peaches are exceptional in some ways that pears just can’t match up to:

    In terms of macros, pears have more carbs and fiber, the ratio of which results in an approximately equal glycemic index. Thus, we’ll say that pears win this round by virtue of being the nutritionally denser option.

    Looking at the vitamins, pears have (slightly) more of vitamins B6, B9, and K, while peaches have (much) more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B7, C, E, and choline—thus sweeping this category easily for peaches.

    In the category of minerals, pears have more calcium and copper, while peaches have more iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. This time, the margins of difference for each mineral are comparably low (i.e. pears are close behind peaches on all those minerals), but still, by strength of numbers, it’s a clear win for peaches.

    When it comes to polyphenols, not only do peaches have more, but also, they have anticancer properties that pears don’t—see our link below for more about that!

    Meanwhile, adding up the sections makes for an overall win for peaches, but as ever when it comes to fruits, by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer ← peaches in the #2 spot! They induce cell death in cancer cells while sparing healthy ones

    Enjoy!

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  • Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Social Media, But Healthy

    Social media has a bad reputation, and rightly so. It’s calculated to trick you into doomscrolling and rage-posting, and it encourages you to compare your everyday life to other people’s carefully-curated highlight reels.

    Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)

    But it doesn’t have to be so.

    Find your community

    One of the biggest strengths social media has going for it is that it can, if used well, be a powerful tool for community. As for why that’s important from a health perspective, see:

    How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    Loneliness & isolation do, of course, kill people. By:

    • Accidents, e.g. household fall but nobody notices for a week
    • Depression and resultant decline (and perhaps even active suicidality)
    • Cognitive decline from a lack of social contact

    Read more:

    So, what’s “community” to you, and to what extent can you find it online? Examples might include:

    • A church, or other religious community, if we be religious
    • The LGBT+ community, or even just a part of it, if that fits for us
    • Any mutual-support oriented, we-have-this-shared-experience community, could be anything from AA to the VA.

    Find your people, and surround yourself with them. There are more than 8,000,000,000 people on this planet, you will not find all the most compatible ones with you on your street.

    Grow & nurture your community

    Chances are, you have a lot to contribute. Your life experiences are valuable.

    Being of service to other people is strongly associated “flourishing”, per the science.

    Indeed, one of the questions on the subjective wellness scale test is to ask how much one agrees with the statement “I actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others”.

    See: Are You Flourishing? (There’s a Scale)

    So, help people, share your insights, create whatever is relevant to your community and fits your skills (it could be anything from art to tutorials to call-to-action posts or whatever works for you and your community)

    As a bonus: when people notice you are there for them, they’ll probably be there for you, too. Not always, sadly, but there is undeniable strength in numbers.

    Remember it’s not the boss of you

    Whatever social media platform(s) you use, the companies in question will want you to use it in the way that is most profitable for them.

    Usually that means creating a lot of shallow content, clicking on as many things as possible, and never logging off.

    Good ways to guard against that include:

    • Use the social media from a computer rather than a handheld device
    • Disable “infinite scroll” in the settings, if possible
    • Set a timer and stick to it
    • Try to keep your interactions to only those that are relevant and kind (for the good of your own health, let alone anyone else’s)

    On that latter note…

    Before posting, ask “what am I trying to achieve here?” and ensure your action is aligned with your actual desires, and not just reactivity. See also:

    A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It

    Take care!

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  • Lemon vs Lime – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing lemons to limes, we picked the lemons.

    Why?

    This one’s simple today. They’re both comparable fruits in most ways, and their macro profiles are almost identical. When it comes to vitamins, however, they stand apart a little.

    Both are most well-known for their vitamin C content, but lemons contain about 2x the vitamin C of limes.

    In other vitamins, they’re not too far apart. Technically limes have 2x the vitamin A, but this doesn’t count for much because it’s a case of “two times almost nothing is still almost nothing”.

    In the category of minerals, neither fruit is a very good source of most minerals, and the minerals they do have, are mostly more or less the same.

    Both are acidic, and this can have blood sugar benefits in both cases (and, if not careful, damage tooth enamel in both cases). Nothing to set either apart from the other here.

    So, it comes down to the vitamin C! In which category, lemons take the prize with their higher content.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars ← where it talks about the use of vinegar here, it’s about the acidity, so lemon juice or lime juice is an option too!

    Take care!

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  • The Power of When – by Dr. Michael Breus

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    There’s a lot more to one’s circadian rhythm than just when one wakes and sleeps. This book goes into that quite deeply!

    For example, those items in the subtitle? You could do them all at the same time, but it probably wouldn’t be optimal (although honestly, that does sound like quite a good life!). Rather, there are distinct times of day that we’re going to be better at certain things, and there are distinct times of day when certain things are going to be better for us.

    Of course, some items are not so simple as a one-size fits all, so Dr. Breus outlines for us how to figure out our own chronotype (within four main schemas), and how to make that work for us as well as possible.

    They style is easy-reading pop-science, with frequent summaries, bullet-points, quizzes, and so forth, making it easy to understand, learn, and apply.

    Bottom line: if you feel like your sleep could use a do-over, then this book can help you get it into order—and the rest of your daily activities too!

    Click here to check out The Power of When, and optimize your health!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • The Lies That Depression Tells Us

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    In this short (6:42) video, psychiatrist Dr. Tracey Marks talks about 8 commonly-believed lies that depression often tells us. They are:

    • “I don’t measure up”
    • “No one cares about me”
    • “I’m better off alone”
    • “No one understands”
    • “It’s all my fault”
    • “I have no reason to be depressed”
    • “Nothing matters”
    • “I’ll never get better”

    Some of these can be reinforced by people around us; it’s easy to believe that “no one understands” if for example the few people we interact with the most don’t understand, or that “I have no reason to be depressed” if people try to cheer you up by pointing out your many good fortunes.

    The reality, of course, is that depression is a large, complex, and many-headed beast, with firm roots in neurobiology.

    There are things we can do that may ameliorate it… But they also may not, and sometimes life is just going to suck for a while. That doesn’t mean we should give up (that, too, is depression lying to us, per “I’ll never get better”), but it does mean that we should not be so hard on ourselves for not having “walked it off” the way one might “just walk off” a broken leg.

    Oh, you can’t “just walk off” a broken leg? Well then, perhaps it’s not surprising if we don’t “just think off” a broken brain, either. The brain can rebuild itself, but that’s a slow process, so buckle in:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to know more?

    You might like these previous articles of ours about depression (managing it, and overcoming it):

    Take care!

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  • Singledom & Healthy Longevity

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    Statistically, those who live longest, do so in happy, fulfilling, committed relationships.

    Note: happy, fulfilling, committed relationships. Less than that won’t do. Your insurance company might care about your marital status for its own sake, but your actual health doesn’t—it’s about the emotional safety and security that a good, healthy, happy, fulfilling relationship offers.

    We wrote about this here:

    Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much!

    But that’s not the full story

    For a start, while being in a happy fulfilling committed relationship statistically adds healthy life years, being in a relationship that falls short of those adjectives certainly does not. See also:

    Relationships: When To Stick It Out & When To Call It Quits

    But also, life satisfaction steadily improves with age, for single people (the results are more complicated for partnered people—probably because of the range of difference in quality of relationships). At least, this held true in this large (n=6,188) study of people aged 40–85 years:

    ❝With advancing age, partnership status became less predictive of loneliness and the satisfaction with being single increased. Among later-born cohorts, the association between partnership status and loneliness was less strong than among earlier-born cohorts. Later-born single people were more satisfied with being single than their earlier-born counterparts.❞

    Source: The Changing Relationship Between Partnership Status and Loneliness: Effects Related to Aging and Historical Time

    Note that this does mean that while life satisfaction indeed improves with age for single people, that’s a generalized trend, and the greatest life satisfaction within this set of singles comes hand-in-hand with being single by choice rather than by perceived obligation, i.e., those who are “single and not looking” will generally be the most content, and this contentedness will improve with age, but for those who are “single and looking”, in that case it’s the younger people who have it better, likely due to a greater sense of having plenty of time.

    For that matter, gender plays a role; this large survey of singles found that (despite the popular old pop-up ads advising that “older women in your area are looking to date”), in reality older single women were the least likely to actively look for a partner:

    See: A Profile Of Single Americans

    …which also shows that about half of single Americans are “not looking”, and of those who are, about half are open to a serious relationship, though this is more common under the age of 40, while being over the age of 40 sees more people looking only for something casual.

    Take-away from this section: being single only decreases life satisfaction if one doesn’t enjoy being single, and even then, and increases it if one does enjoy being single.

    But that’s about life satisfaction, not longevity

    We found no studies specifically into longevity of singledom, only the implications that may be drawn from the longevity of partnered people.

    However, there is a lot of research that shows it’s not being single that kills, it’s being socially isolated. It’s a function of neurodegeneration from a lack of conversation, and it’s a function of what happens when someone slips in the shower and is found a week later. Things like that.

    For example: Is Living Alone “Aging Alone”? Solitary Living, Network Types, and Well-Being

    What if you are alone and don’t want to be?

    We’ve not, at time of writing, written dating advice in our Psychology Sunday section, but this writer’s advice is: don’t even try.

    That’s not nihilism or even cynicism, by the way; it’s actually a kind of optimism. The trick is just to let them come to you.

    (sample size of one here, but this writer has never looked for a relationship in her life, they’ve always just found me, and now that I’m widowed and intend to remain single, I still get offers—and no, I’m not a supermodel, nor rich, nor anything like that)

    Simply: instead of trying to find a partner, just work on expanding your social relationships in general (which is much easier, because the process is something you can control, whereas the outcome of trying to find a suitable partner is not), and if someone who’s right for you comes along, great! If not, then well, at least you have a flock of friends now, and who knows what new unexpected romance may lie around the corner.

    As for how to do that,

    How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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