Build Bone, Strengthen Muscle, and Create a Beautiful Body in the Bargain

Bone Building Body Shaping Workout
by Joyce L. Vedral, Ph.D.

Women need extra-strong bones at every age — from adolescence, through pregnancy, and especially after menopause. All you need is 8 minutes a day four days a week, or 16 minutes a day two days a week — to achieve a strong, sexy, shapely body while you build protective muscles and denser bones.

Vedral's groundbreaking program includes:

• Easy-to-follow strengthening exercises for the most vulnerable body parts

• Safe and simple body-shaping exercises to tone, slim, and beautify your entire body

• Targeted muscle- and bone-strengthening exercises to guard against injury for dozens of sports — including tennis, skiing, running, bicycling, dancing, and golf

• Mother-daughter secrets of putting BONE-IN-THE-BANK — creating extra reserves of calcium to draw upon as you grow older

• Nutritional information for jump-starting your weight-loss, healthy-body program

• Handy 6-page cutout wall chart to make exercising even easier!

Chapter 1

Yes, you read it right. You can build bone and strengthen, shape, and define muscle — and build an exquisite body at the same time. And you will also increase your metabolism so you can eat more without getting fat, increase your energy level, reduce your stress, and look and feel younger. You can do this by working out with light, handheld weights and following a specific routine.

Aha! Specific routine. Therein lies the secret. In order to get the promised result, you have to follow a specific plan that will exercise each and every body part to create a balanced, strong, efficient, sculpted body. This book shows you exactly how — and you can do it in just sixteen minutes a day (the standard routine) or cut your time in half, that's only eight minutes, by splitting the routine into more sessions.

How This Book Differs from My Other Exercise Books

Many of you already know me. You've seen me on the talk shows. You've used one of my previous exercise books. Maybe you've even written to me, and I've answered your questions regarding a workout in one of my books. So why buy another book? This book is different! It's the only one I've written that focuses on building bone and muscle in specific areas for strength, health, and energy. It shows you how to do this in every body part in order of importance for daily life activities, sports, and adventures — no matter what age you are. In addition, this book will give you a beautiful, shapely, toned, defined body that has no excess body fat. Your body will not only look great, but it will also feel great to the touch, and you'll have energy that you never had before.

For those of you who, like me, are already over forty or perhaps are well into your fifties, the routines in this book will not merely preserve the bone and muscle you have but, more important, will increase your bone density and replace lost muscle — and replace it with better shaped, defined, and tighter muscle than you have ever had, whether or not you are on estrogen replacement therapy. (See page 5-6 for my bone density test results without the aid of estrogen.) For those of you who are in your twenties or thirties, the routines will seem to "hold back the hand of time" and guarantee that you stay looking and feeling young and healthy well into your fifties, sixties, seventies, and older. They will serve as a hedge against osteoporosis and a host of other problems. (See chapter 2, Bone in the Bank.)

How can I promise this? I can offer medical proof. But don't take my word for it. Everything you are going to read here is being reconfirmed every day by studies done by doctors and researchers, and related in medical journals, newspapers, and books. The word is out: Working out with light weights the right way is the fountain of youth, health, strength, and beauty. I've been saying this for a long time, but now I have medical proof and a specific plan on how to target your most vulnerable areas — for the young, before the problem starts; for the middle-aged, exactly when the problem has started; and for the senior, after the problem has started and has taken a toll. It is never too late.

How Can Working Out with Weights Build Bone?

Bone is continually breaking down and being rebuilt by an automatic system in the body. But as we get older, this system slows down, and bone is not rebuilt as quickly, so we lose bone density. We now know that we can stimulate bone growth (bone density) by working out with weights, no matter what our age. If we are young, we put a rock-solid bone structure "in the bank." If we are middle-aged and don't have a solid base or even if we are elderly and have lost bone, we can build bone. Here's how it works:

Bone is made of calcium phosphate and collagen. There are hundreds of concentric rings called haversian canals within each bone. When you lift a weight, your muscles react and do work. Because muscles are attached to bones, pressure and tension are put on the bone as well. Blood flows through both the muscle and the bone, carrying nutrients to the bone-building cells. At the same time, an electrical charge shoots through the haversian canals, stimulating bone growth. This process is triggered by weight lifting.

There is a very important connection between muscle and bone strength: The more muscle you have, the denser your bones will be! Studies prove this. If you increase muscle mass, you build bone. If you reduce muscle mass, you reduce bone density. This link is so strong that archaeologists are able to calculate the muscle strength of prehistoric people by using bone strength and form as a guide. Studies show that lean body mass is the best predictor of skeletal strength. So as you build bone, you are also building firm, shapely, feminine muscle.

You Can Build Bone at Any Age

In chapter 2, Bone in the Bank, I talk about building bone in your most formative "bone-peaking" years (your twenties and thirties), but here, let's talk about proof that bone call be built at any age.

Many studies are now being published which show that women in their forties, fifties, sixties, and all the way through their nineties can and do build bone if they work out even with light weights. The Journal of Bone and Mineral Research has reported a study done by Dr. L. A. Pruit and associates in which a group of seventeen women in early menopause were put on a weight-training program for nine months. Another similar group did not work out. Neither group took estrogen (hormone replacement therapy). The results were that those who worked out with weights significantly increased their lumbar bone density. Lumbar bone is the most porous bone as well as the most quickly lost; it was also the bone previously thought "impossible" to build and replace.

But what if a woman is taking estrogen replacement therapy? Can she build bone that way and not work out? No. Estrogen will help preserve the bone women have, but it cannot "build" new bone. A study cited in the same journal, by Dr. M. Notelovitz and colleagues, discusses two groups of menopausal women who were given estrogen, but only one group was allowed to work out with weights. At the end of one year, the women just taking estrogen did not increase bone density, while the women taking estrogen and doing weight training significantly increased the bone density of their spine as well as their forearms.

You Can Prevent and Even Reverse Osteoporosis

Weight training not only halts osteoporosis, it reverses it!

In her book 150 Most-Asked Questions About Osteoporosis, Ruth Jacobowitz says, "Today, exercise physiologists believe weight lifting (resistance training) to be one of the most effective exercise regimens for osteoporosis prevention. That is because lifting weight stresses your muscles which build mass, which in turn puts stress on your bones, which can help to maintain, or even enhance, your bone density."

At Fifty-four I Have the Bone Density of a Woman with Peak Bone Density — a Twenty-five to Thirty-five-year-old!

Medical experts agree that women reach their peak bone density at twenty-five to thirty-five years of age, and they lose one percent a year every year after that. But in menopause (and I was three years into it when I had the QCT-Bone Mineral Analysis test) most women lose about 5 percent a year. If this is true, when I had the bone density test, I should have already lost about 15 to 20 percent of my bone mass. But when my bone density was measured, the result was 219.5 — nearly double the bone density of an average woman my age. The doctor called me at home because he was astounded. "You went off the curve," he said. "You have the bones of a woman in her twenties." He quickly began my workout himself and recommended it to all the people in his office, especially the women.

Apparently, not only had I not lost bone mass, I had gained some — and at the time of the test, I had not taken estrogen (or hormone replacement therapy).

How Does Working Out with Weights Build Muscle?

Let's talk about muscle. You already know about the muscle-bone connection, but exactly how do muscles grow and change when you work out with weights?

When you lift more weight than usual, your muscle contracts against the resistance and calls into play muscle fibers that were formerly resting. In order to cope with the work being required of them, the muscle fibers begin to synthesize protein, and new cells are added. At the same time the muscles endure microscopic tears. The "soreness" you feel after a workout is the result of this normal microscopic tear process. When you stop working out, perhaps while you are sleeping, your muscles repair themselves. The entire process, including the "repair" during rest, causes the muscle cells to enlarge and grow stronger over time. In addition, your connecting tissues (tendons and ligaments) get stronger because they, too, are stimulated by the work being done.

Small Shapely Muscles — Not the"Bodybuilder" Kind!

I almost skipped this section! Why? Today, most women know that you don't just pick up a weight and wake up looking like Arnold. But just in case you're worried, I want to assure you that by working out with light weights for such a short amount of time, there is no way you could possibly build huge, hulking muscles. In fact, female bodybuilders wish it were that easy. They use hundred-pound weights and more, and work out for hours a day. You, on the other hand, will work out only eight to sixteen minutes a day (thirty-two at the most if you go the extra mile) and lift only one, two, and three pounds to start (fifteen to twenty pounds much later if you choose).

Where do we get the idea that we will bulk up if we use weights? We see female bodybuilders on TV who quite often look like men with women's heads attached. Well, chances are that the ones who really look like men, in addition to working out with heavy weights for hours a day, ingest steroids — male hormones called testosterone, a substance that women also produce naturally in a very small quantity. When women take this hormone in great quantities, their muscle-making ability multiplies, but in addition to getting huge muscles, many of them develop other male traits, such as facial hair, deepened voices, and rougher skin.

So don't worry about looking like a man. You'll be using very light weights. And you certainly won't be taking steroids.

You Can Reverse the Aging Process at Any Age

I've always said that women who work out with weights look and feel and indeed are physically ten years younger than their chronological age. Why? They replace lost muscle and bone, improve their posture, increase their energy levels, and walk with the same spring in their step that they had ten years before. But recently, to my joy, I've been proven wrong: Their bodies are, in fact, fifteen to twenty years younger. Yes. Miriam E. Nelson, Ph.D., who is the associate chief of the Human Physiology Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, and professor at the School of Nutrition Science and Policy, studied forty postmenopausal women, none of whom was on hormone replacement therapy. She divided the group in two. Twenty of the women lifted weights twice a week, and the other group did not. The group that did nothing lost bone and muscle mass. The group that worked out with weights were "fifteen to twenty years more youthful."

But what about older people? In 1991, The New York Times Magazine presented a study done at Tufts University. William Evans, the director of the physiology laboratory at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, took women and men ranging in age from eighty-seven to ninety-six and put them on an eight-week weight-training program. The average strength increase in the front thigh muscles for the group of nine was almost 200 percent!

Copyright © 1998 by Joyce Vedral

About the Author

Joyce Vedral has become a legend in her own time!! In fact, in many ways, it was Joyce who gently edged the women into daring to pick up weights!! Yes, Joyce even got housewives from Iowa working out?as their bodybuilding son's stood by in awe. “Mom, I can't believe you're doing hack squats,” became a familiar cry. From the time Joyce appeared on The Sally Jesse Raphael show in 1991 to the present, her books have sold nearly two million copies. She has been on the New York Times and USA today bestseller lists four times?and once even beat every book in America?including Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh. Her books are bestsellers in Australia and other countries.