We are so used to going after what we want. Metaphorically speaking, we curl our hands around that bar as we do pull ups or around those dumbbells as we do bicep curls - working hard towards a goal. We can easily equate “opening our palms” as letting go of the hold we have on our goals.

“What happened?” “Wanna talk about it?” were my typical responses to whenever I saw that worried, upset expression on the face of a boyfriend I had in my early twenties.  Sometimes, he’d talk, but a lot of the times he’d say: “I’ll work it out in the gym”.  He would then return from the gym transformed, either saying he didn’t want to talk anymore or he talked with a calmer look on his face.

In my previous blog, I wrote about how changes in body composition due to strength training affects metabolism and how this helps in weight loss and weight maintenance. If, on the other hand, your objective is to gain weight, together with increases of fat, you also would want to gain more muscle mass to support the extra weight and to avoid chronic conditions linked to a body composition leaning towards higher body fat percentages.

You may be surprised to know that between ages of 30-50 we lose approximately 5 pounds of muscle per decade (Evans and Rosenberg 1992) and after age 50 we lose 10 pounds of muscle per decade!!!  (Nelson et al. 1994).  Crazy right?! This is an unfortunate fact that has really made me become passionate about the importance of helping people develop their muscle mass. 

Although moving one’s body seems simple enough on the surface, things are more complex than they appear.  Just like eating seems like a simple enough task, a registered dietitian is often needed to guide us to an individualised healthy path. So why hire a personal trainer?