Research
Adherence
Maintaining or increasing muscle mass and strength is a primary strategy for promoting healthy aging and reducing mortality risk in older adults, potentially mitigating the risks associated with obesity.
As you age, prioritize building and keeping muscle over just losing weight. Engage in regular resistance training and ensure adequate protein intake. This preserves your metabolic health, reduces cardiovascular risk, and is more important for longevity than simply trying to lower your BMI.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Efforts to promote healthy ageing should focus on both preventing obesity and maintaining or increasing muscle mass.
Why this rating
Based on strong associations between muscle mass/strength and mortality.
Source
Muscle loss and obesity: the health implications of sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity
S. Goya Wannamethee et al. · Proceedings of The Nutrition Society · 2015
DOI 10.1017/s002966511500169x
narrative_reviewCited 565×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- In older adults, BMI is a poor indicator of obesity-related mortality risk because it fails to distinguish between fat mass and lean muscle mass, which have opposing effects on survival.Good
- Sarcopenic obesity (high fat mass combined with low muscle mass) is associated with higher mortality and worse cardiovascular risk profiles than obesity or sarcopenia alone.Good
Related findings · Adherence
- Regular physical activity (at least 150 minutes/week of moderate-intensity) reduces all-cause and cardiovascular mortality by 20-30% and lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes by 25-35%.Strong
- Increasing physical activity from a sedentary lifestyle to an active one in middle adulthood significantly reduces the risk of coronary events compared to remaining sedentary.Strong
- Resistance exercise is the only intervention capable of consistently restoring muscle function and strength in sarcopenia, partially overcoming age-related anabolic resistance.Strong
This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →