Yes, I Lift. Please Stop Calling Me Bro.
(Photo: Courtesy of Getty/Illustration by Alyssa Recht)
It’s inevitable. The arched eyebrow, the befuddled stare. A snigger here and there. Whenever someone asks me what I do to stay in shape — a surprisingly common conversation where I live in New York, which boasts a gym on every fourth corner, along with a Chipotle, a Citibank, and a Duane Reade on the other three—I tell them that I lift. The reaction is almost always the same: confusion followed quickly by mild contempt.
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Confusion because I don’t look anything like this:
Meathead Rob Lowe.
And contempt because of the assumption that I must want to look like this:
Meathead Rob Lowe, with frame.
Occasionally I’ll say “strength train” in an attempt to fool them, but it doesn’t matter. They know. The simple truth is that, just like Meathead Rob Lowe, I go to the gym at least three times a week to grunt my way through dead lifts, bench presses, bicep curls, and all manner of weighted exercises in order to get and stay fit. And yes, I follow up those workouts with meals calculated to optimize fat burn, glycogen replenishment, and muscle growth. And yes, my kitchen pantry is currently home to two giant tubs of protein powder. And no, I don’t own embroidered jeans or a neck chain.
The reason I lift is not because I have a secret fetish for rhinestone sunglasses and bronzer, it’s because lifting, or more accurately strength training, is the most efficient way to get in shape, and at 38, it’s something that keeps me feeling like I’m still 20. According to a 2006 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, muscle is one of the most underappreciated assets in terms of overall health. Aside from helping to maintain your whole-body metabolism, the biggest benefit of muscle is that it burns fat.
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See muscle, unlike fat, is an “active” tissue. Which means that, post-workout, while the muscle is rebuilding, it burns calories without you even doing anything, about 6 calories for every pound of muscle. So the more muscle you add to your body, through say, I don’t know, lifting, the more fat you burn while binge-watching House of Cards. That won’t give you a six-pack, but it’s nice to know that your body will still be working out even when you are finished working out.
Now, I get why weightlifting has such a bad rep. Walk into the weight room of any gym and you’ll see several bright orange dudes gazing longingly at themselves in the mirror while flexing (I once saw a guy high-five his own reflection after orgasmically grunting his way through a set of bench presses). But we’re not all like that. In fact, none of my friends who lift are anything close to that. One of them is a clean-cut computer programmer who routinely gets compared to Clark Kent. But what we do share with the chest-shavers of the world is an understanding of the differences between an anabolic and a catabolic metabolism, and why anabolic workouts are better for getting ripped.
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The best way to think about it is that anabolic is “building up,” while catabolic exercise is “breaking down.” Three primary sources of energy for your body are glucose stores, fat, and muscle. Strength training is an anabolic workout in which energy is taken from your glucose stores in order to feed muscle, so it builds up. Cardio, on the other hand, is a catabolic workout that initially takes energy from glucose stores and fat, but, because of the high amounts of energy needed, quickly moves on to muscle. Hence the breaking down. Too much cardio and you will decrease your muscle mass, meaning that a.) you won’t look ripped, and b.) your body at rest won’t burn as many calories. The bros in the weight room may be the most annoying guys in the gym, but at least they’re still burning calories while getting their eyebrows waxed.
So yes, I lift. Not because I’m some attention-starved alpha male with an Instagram full of shirtless selfies, but because, well, science. Now if you’ll be so kind as to stop judging me for it, I’ll be happy to tell you where I got my discounted diamond ear studs.
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By Scott Christian
