So why do you need to do anything beside run or walk? People ask me that stuff a lot, and it's always around the fact that they don't want to get "too big" or "too bulky."

The fact is that if you want to have healthy bones, muscles and feel your best, you need to do resistance exercises. When I talk about resistance exercises I mean everything from body weight stuff like pushups and lunges to lifting weights. Basically anything where you have to move a weight around, even if it's your own body.

The reason you need to do this is because every year that goes by you lose a little bit of muscle and bone density. It's between .5 and 2% a year after 40. If you live another 20 years past that you might have lost 40% of your muscle. Scary huh?

It's a process that just happens, but if you want to feel and look young then you need to combat it. Think of these exercises as anti-aging.

But what about gaining weight from lifting weights right? Well it takes a lot of working out and a lot of drugs to look like a bodybuilder so if you're doing it for health reasons and to look better you're safe there. You're not going to bulk up. But you might not lose the weight you think you want to lose.

So what do you do about that? I always tell people do you really care what you weigh? I mean if you looked the way you wanted to look, felt great and were 10 lbs heavier than you thought you'd like to be in a perfect world, would it matter? Of course not.

So don't stress out over what your weight is as long as you're in a healthy range. Concentrate on getting healthy and looking the way you want to look. And to get in that shape you need to do some resistance exercises.

Happy lifting.

d