Building muscle is one of the most important things you can do for your health, especially when you get older and you start to lose muscle mass every year.
But a new study shows that if you’re overweight then adding muscle may be even more of a struggle.
Researchers looked at 18 people, nine of them obese and nine of them in the normal range for weight. None of them were avid exercise people, meaning they fell far below the amount of recommended exercise.
The subjects were tested and and given biopsies throughout the study, and they were asked to do a leg exercise that was strenuous enough to give them a good workout. Then they all ate lean pork afterward (weird choice) for recovery and were tested to see how their bodies were building muscle.
And for the obese test subjects the results were not great, according to this article:
[There were differences in the] rates of protein synthesis in myofibrillar proteins, the muscle proteins that generate force and allow muscles to grow bigger in response to exercise.
Rates of myofibrillar protein synthesis increased in both legs in all participants after pork ingestion, the researchers found. But the expected boost in protein synthesis in the exercised legs was more robust in the normal-weight adults than in their obese peers.
If you are obese, don’t be discouraged. Cardio and resistance training can still have huge impacts on your health. And what’s most important to take from this study is that the more you workout, the more weight you will lose, and the more efficient your exercise will be in building muscle.
-Shane M.
