One of the seemingly unavoidable pitfalls of aging is unwanted weight gain. In fact, it is such a widespread problem that I made it the focus of my previous book, The Perricone Weight-Loss Diet, and also devoted an entire chapter to it in this book. This is not because of the aesthetics of being overweight—it is because excess fat is highly toxic to the body and therefore highly aging as well.
Traditionally women tend to gain weight in their hips and men gain weight in their abdomen. However, as they get older, women are particularly subject to weight gain in the abdomen. And it often seems that no matter how carefully they control their diet, it becomes more and more difficult to lose this weight with each passing year. But there is good news on the horizon. According to a recent University of Pennsylvania study, weight training is especially effective in helping to eliminate central obesity, or excess fat in the abdomen.
Funded by the NIH, the study found that just two 1-hour sessions of weight lifting per week can bring down the chances of agerelated fat buildup in the abdomen. As we know, there are two types of fat: subcutaneous (under the skin) and visceral (found in the abdomen and surrounding our vital organs). Central obesity is visceral fat and is considered the most dangerous because it surrounds vital organs and is metabolized by the liver, which turns it into blood cholesterol. Visceral fat also puts pressure on the heart and the arteries, increasing the chances of heart trouble. In fact, physicians refer to this type of fat as “toxic fat” because it produces a veritable factory of inflammatory chemicals, increasing the risk for heart disease, strokes, and diabetes.
While the average woman will not be developing the large bulging muscles of her male counterpart, she will, however, significantly increase her strength and muscle tone. The actual shape of the body may also be significantly enhanced by weight training in women because of the changes that occur in the all-important ratio of fat to muscle.We know that muscle burns more calories than fat does and that increased muscle enables us to burn excess calories even while resting. But building muscle can also tighten and tone our bodies in ways that simple weight loss cannot.
Posted in 
Tags: 
