Reasons To Strength Train #47

Yesterday I was sent three different links to the same compelling study (thanks guys):

Fast/Glycolytic muscle fiber growth reduces fat mass and improves metabolic parameters in obese mice.

which I’m sure sounds exactly like something you’d want to read about in your spare time. 

Let me cut to the chase: the mice in the study were fed the equivalent of a rodent McDonalds diet – high-fat, high-sugar. The researchers activated a gene in these mice (Akt1) that coded for increase in type IIb muscle fiber size (the same fibers that in you and I would grow as a result of strength training), and an interesting thing happened: the negative health effects of the diet were canceled out and the mice lost weight.

In other words, the “strength-trained” mice lost body fat, decreased fat deposits in their liver, and increased fatty acid oxidation. 

Read that again.  That means that you could conceivably nullify (or even reverse) the effects of a poor diet through increasing muscle via strength training.  Pretty compelling finding, and it could be a glimmer of hope for America (since, as I alluded to in a previous post, Americans won’t likely be changing their eating habits anytime soon).

No, that doesn’t make eating a crappy diet ok.  But it does provide more evidence as to why strength training (and not cardio, endurance training, or random activity-just-to-be-active recreation – which focus primarily on type 1 ‘endurance’ fibers, not type IIb) is the way to go for health and longevity.

Rob, you said it: validation.