Your muscle mass is one of the best indicators of your long-term health. There are so many long-term health benefits to building your muscles, and all it takes is eating enough protein and lifting weights. It’s never too late to start building your muscles, and the benefits are so many. In this episode, I break down the reality of the traditional scale, how to build muscle mass for your body type, and so much more.   To Gain Muscle Mass, You Have To Commit To: Moving your muscles Feeding your body   Let’s Make Some Muscle Building muscle mass is one of the best things you can do for your long-term health. There are benefits to your longevity, your skeletal bone mass, and even your insulin resistance. Many women shy away from gaining muscle because they don’t want to get bulky – but that’s just one of the common misconceptions of muscle gain. Making the decision to start gaining muscle is something that will benefit you in so many ways. Think about if it’s the right goal for your body. You also need to consider how your body type will respond to strength training. But overall, it is never too late to start making changes to your body composition.   Muscle Gain for a Long Life If you’re only using a traditional scale to measure your weight loss, that’s simply not giving you the whole picture. You need to use an in-body analysis to see the changes happening to your body fat mass to skeletal muscle mass ratio. This is what matters, not your weight. Gaining muscle is as simple as eating an adequate amount of protein and regular, consistent strength training. The health benefits of gaining strength and muscle mass will help you live a longer, healthier, and more stable life.   In This Episode  Some of the misconceptions about muscle gain in women [7:00] How to make the decision that muscle gain is the right goal for you [8:30] How to use in-body analysis to get a baseline measure of your body composition [10:00] How each body type responds to body composition changes [14:00] How to gain muscle [20:30] How muscle gain will improve your health [25:00] What happens when you make body composition changes based on long-term health [27:00]   Quotes “We can always optimize. It doesn’t matter what your age is” [7:05] “If you are out there and the only way that you measure your body is on a standard scale that only gives you a number, I’m going to give you some tough love here. It’s not that useful. At all. It’s not even a little bit useful.” [9:14] “Building your Basal Metabolic Rate through muscle gain? That’s like investing in an awesome stock.” [22:56] “When you start to really consider where you are with your health now, [..] what you can do right now, something that’s going to be sustainable long-term, that’s going to benefit you overall.” [26:38]   Resources Mentioned Check out the full episode page here Find Life Coaching for Women Physicians Online Follow Dr. Ali Novitsky on Facebook | Instagram | YouTube Subscribe to Life Coaching for Women Physicians on Apple Podcasts Podcast production by the team at Counterweight Creative   Related Episodes  Episode 161: Barriers To Optimal Body Composition  Episode 163: Optimal Body Composition and Your Genetics  Episode 162: Impact of Sugar and Alcohol on Body Composition