Excerpt from Chapter 1:
Yes, You Can Turn Back the Clock!

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Strong Women Stay Young, Revised Edition by Miriam Nelson with Sarah Wernick (Bantam, 2000) What's new in the revised edition? Order from Amazon.com

Maida Louis used to stop her mother, also named Maida, when she started to lift something heavy. “Let me carry that for you,” she'd say. “After all, I'm younger.” The older Maida had never been physically active - until a few years ago when she volunteered to be in an exercise study. At the end of the study, the two Maidas took a series of tests to compare their strength. At the time, the older Maida was sixty-six. Maida Lois was thirty-nine, and she trained for road races by running five miles five days a week. Maida Louis didn't hold back during the tests. “I got competitive,” she admits; “ I tried hard.”

It didn't help. Maida outscored her daughter by 12 to 18 percent on three of the four strength tests and was only 8 percent behind on the fourth. After that, Maida did her own lifting. “After all,” she'd tell Maida Lois, “I'm stronger.“

In high school, Evelyn wore a size 16. At age 30, she had her first child and her weight climbed to over 200 pounds. Then she came to work at Tufts University. “I started doing aerobics and got down to 160 pounds. I was thinner, but complete flab,” she recalls. What's more, her weight loss stalled. Inspired by her colleagues' research - and the success stories all around her - Evelyn started strength training, and dropped the last 30 pounds.

Now 38 and the mother of two, Evelyn recently attended her twentieth high school reunion. She recalls a thrilling evening: “Some of my girlfriends never got back in shape after having kids - and there I was in a slinky black evening dress, size 6.”

I’m one of the Tufts University scientists who developed this remarkably successful exercise program. Let me tell you about my part in this research. For my study, I recruited forty postmenopausal women. All were healthy, but sedentary; none was taking hormones. Half the volunteers - our control group - were simply asked to maintain their usual lifestyle for the next year. Their before-and-after measurements would show us what physical changaes a woman can expect after a year just because she's that much older. The others - including Maida - came twice a week to our laboratory and lifted weights.

Most women begin to lose bone and muscle mass at about age forty; in part because of this, they start to slow down. And that's exactly what happened to the women who didn't exercise. One sedentary year later, their muscles and bones had aged, and they were even less active than before.

The women who lifted weights changed too - but in the opposite direction. After one year of strength training, their bodies were 15 to 20 years more youthful.

Instead of losing bone density, they actually showed small but significant gains. Their scores on strength tests toared to levels more typical of women in their late thirties or early forties. All the participants had agreed not to gain or lose weight, because that might have confused our results. But those in the strength-training group traded fat for muscle. So they looked trimmer - and some even dropped a dress size or two.

As these physical changes unfolded, we saw emotional changes too. The women felt hapier, more energetic, more self-confident. Self-imposed stereotypes shattered, and their lives began to change.

Our volunteers turned back the clock with just two strength-training sessions a week. They recovered bone; they recovered muscle. But even more important, they recovered energy and enjoyment of life they thought they had lost forever.

These dramatic findings may sound too good to be true, but I can assure you they're not. This study was conducted at the world-renowned Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. Our report was scrutinized carefully by other scientists and accepted for publication by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) – one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world.

When the study appeared in December 1994, it drew an outpouring of interest. Dozens of newspaper and magazine articles were written about our work; I was interviewed on many TV and radio programs. In the weeks and months that followed, I received hundreds of queries from doctors and from women. Letter after letter pleaded: "Please tell me how to do those exercises!" So I wrote Strong Women Stay Young.

The book, published in 1997, became an instant bestseller. Thousands of women, fitness professionals, and doctors contacted me. Their feedback helped me refine the exercise program, making it easier and more efficient. I developed instructions for men in response to requests from physicians, male readers – and my own father and husband. Meanwhile, scientific findings continued to accumulate, documenting the benefits of strength training. I decided to revise Strong Women Stay Young so I could incorporate all these improvements and new information.

Is this book for you?

• Have you lost strength over the past decade?
• Do you ever say, “I know I should exercise, but I just don't have the energy”?
• At the end of a normally busy day, do you feel tired and worn out?
• Do you notice fat where there used to be muscle?
• Do you feel older than you'd like?
• Is it more difficult to maintain your weight - even though you're eating less?
• Are your favorite sports harder and less fun than they used to be?
• Do you look at your older female relatives and worry that someday you'll be just as limited physically as they are now?

For many women past 35, these changes - the loss of strength, the lack of vigor - are painfully familiar. If you're experiencing them, you may have figured it's all an inevitable part of getting older. Wrong! Scientists at Tufts and elsewhere now know this isn't true. The main reason most people slow down when they get older is that they lose about a third of their muscle mass between ages 35 and 80. Yes, aging plays a role. However, inactivity is a major factor - and that's something you can address.

If you've lost strength, you can regain it.
If your energy has sagged, you can raise it.
If you've lost muscle and gained fat, you can reverse it.
If you've become flabby, you can get trim.
If you feel old, you can feel younger, stronger and more vigorous - perhaps better than you've ever felt in your entire life.

Strength training, we have learned, is a fountain of youth.

Pioneering Research on Strength Training

I first came to the Tufts Center on Aging in 1983, when I was a graduate student. At the time, our research focused on the effects of aerobic activity. Then, in the mid-1980s, one of our scientists, Walter Frontera, MD, under the direction of the Center's Physiology Laboratory chief, William Evans, PhD, decided to look at a different kind of exercise: strength training. And they decided to work the volunteers – men in their 60s and 70s – at a higher intensity than any researchers had ever done before.

At the time, scientists generally believed that loss of muscle and strength were inevitable as people got older, and that neither could be restored. The few previous studies of strength training in this age group had measured the maximum subjects could lift, then put them on a program using weights that were only about one-third as heavy. Anything more, the investigators assumed, might cause injuries or cardiac problems. These timid programs didn't accomplish much – in strength training, feeble efforts produce puny results.

Not discouraged by conventional wisdom, Dr. Frontera took a different approach. Younger athletes trained with weights almost as heavy as their maximum, because low-intensity workouts didn't make them stronger. Why, he wondered, would older people be any different? Instead of working out at 30 to 40 percent of their capacity, his volunteers exercised at 80 percent.

The findings shattered myths about aging. There were no injuries, no cardiac episodes. These men didn't merely survive a challenging strength-training program, they thrived. In just 12 weeks, the muscles they were exercising became 10 to 12 percent larger and a whopping 150 to 175 percent stronger. Most of the men reported with delight that they were now stronger than ever before.

These results inspired an even more startling research proposal from a new member of our group, Maria Fiatarone, MD. If strength training could help 60-year-olds, she reasoned, it should be even more beneficial for the very weakest men and women – the frail elderly.

Together with William Evans, Dr. Fiatarone approached the medical director of a nursing home, asking permission to conduct a small strength-training study with volunteer residents. They had a lot of explaining to do. No, this wasn't one of those typical exercise programs for the elderly, where they sat, extended their arms and slowly made circles in the air. These research subjects would be doing high-intensity strengthening workouts on the same kind of machines 25-year-olds use at the gym.

The medical director was skeptical, to say the least. How could it possibly be safe for a nursing home resident to lift weights? But Drs. Fiatarone and Evans convincingly explained the logic of the program, which was based on principles of rehabilitation medicine: Start at a safe level, and progress gradually as strength increases.

You can hardly imagine a less likely group for an exercise study than the six women and four men who volunteered to work out with Dr. Fiatarone. They ranged in age from 86 to 96. Some people remain vigorous in their nineties, but these were typical nursing home residents. All had at least two serious chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis. Most relied on walkers or canes, and several had leg muscles so weak they couldn't rise from a chair without assistance from their arms. But three times a week, for eight weeks, they faithfully came to the exercise room at the nursing home and they lifted weights.

The results – published in JAMA in 1990 – were truly remarkable. In just eight weeks, these frail elderly men and women increased their strength by an average 175 percent. On a test of walking speed and balance, their scores rose by an average of 48 percent. Two participants discarded their canes. These findings inspired my study, as well as larger clinical trials – and all confirmed the results.

The more we look at strength training, the more benefits we find. Recent studies at Tufts and elsewhere suggest that strength training reduces the risk of heart disease and adult-onset diabetes, lifts depression and boosts self-esteem, eases sleep problems, relieves symptoms of both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, combats constipation and stress incontinence – and even improves the quality of life for people with AIDS. I'm confident you'll be hearing more about strength training in the future. So watch for news of the latest developments.

How This Book Will Help You

The Strong Women Stay Young program goes far beyond the five exercises I used for my JAMA study. Those exercises were performed using sophisticated machines and designed to provide scientific information. For this book, I wanted to create an at-home program for all women – not just those with access to a modern gym. Most of all, I wanted you to have the best possible all-around program, based on up-to-the-minute information. Because some women might prefer to train at a gym, I've included a chapter with instructions for a strength-training program using machines.

The exercises are simple. Unlike aerobics, they're literally no-sweat. There's no need to get down on the floor (and struggle up again), because everything is done standing or seated on a chair. And you don't need a Lycra leotard or any other special clothes. The program doesn't take a lot of time. You can exercise at home, with just two 40-minute sessions per week: one in front of the evening news and the other during the Saturday night movie. Results are rapid. You will see significant improvements in just four weeks.

Strong Women Stay Young is based on a scientifically-tested exercise program developed at Tufts University, so you can rely upon its safety and effectiveness. The book will be helpful even if you've done strength training before. Unless you received accurate information, you may not be getting the full benefit you deserve for your efforts. For instance, many women, misled by popular advice, faithfully lift soup cans in hope of improving their muscles. Or they work out with three-pound weights week after week in a “Tone and Firm” class. Sadly, these approaches don't make you stronger. Weights must be considerably heavier than soup cans to make a difference. And if you don't systematically increase the load as your muscles develop, you won't progress very far.

The Strong Women Stay Young program will improve the quality of your life – not just now but for years to come. It's an exciting program, because progress is so rapid and so visible. As you become stronger, everything you do will become easier. Like many women, you may find this applies to more than physical activities. Strength training challenges your muscles. But it also dares you to venture beyond limiting stereotypes and to develop in unexpected ways. As your muscles grow, so will your self-confidence and self-esteem.