How to help slow muscle loss as you age with 4 simple habits: fitness expert

As Americans increasingly turn to GLP-1 medications — which have been linked to a loss of lean muscle, especially during rapid weight loss — experts say preserving strength and mobility should be a priority as people age.Jacob Zemer, a New York-based fitness coach who primarily trains clients ranging from 35 to 55 years old, said that beyond GLP-1s, there are several other reasons that adults start losing muscle as they get older.“The biggest change is lifestyle,” he told Fox News Digital.“When you’re in your teen years or your 20s, you’re running around, you’re doing activities that lend themselves to building muscle.”That tends to change as people shift focus to career and family, the expert said.“You simply become more sedentary, which lowers your metabolism and your level of activity, so you’re going to have less muscle.”As people approach their 40s, hormone levels begin to change for both men and women, Zemer noted.“That means we partition the calories we’re using less and less for protein and building muscle, and more and more for simply storing as fat,” he said.“We see this all the time … people start to store fat in their tummies, and they start to have less muscle.”Zemer said he believes that everyone should be “very mindful” about building muscle, starting from a young age.“All the way up into your 50s, your goal should be to build muscle so that when you enter your golden years — your 60s, 70s, 80s — it’s kind of like your 401K,” he said. “You’re going to be depleting from it as you go through life.

So in your 30s and 40s, you just have to be more strategic about it, because your lifestyle has changed.You need to go to the gym and train in order to have that muscle later in life.”Zemer shared the following strategies that can help people slow down muscle loss as they age.Protein helps to stimulate muscle protein synthesis, the body’s process of repairing and building muscle, according to Zemer.I...