Can female fitness delay aging?

I have been going to the gym for 6 years, and I am surrounded by sisters who are over 30 years old and love to struggle. To be honest, it can be done if the method is right, but it is definitely not a magic medicine that can kill age. Currently, whether in the fitness circle or the academic circle, the understanding of this matter is not completely unified.

Sister Zhang, who was training with me a while ago, is 42 years old. She just gave birth to her second child two years ago. She stayed up most of the night, and her face was so slumped that she complained that she felt like she was being pulled down. She spent 60,000 to 70,000 yuan a year on Thermage and collagen fillers, but the results only lasted two or three months. Later, I followed my regular strength training three times a week, and occasionally added a 40-minute brisk walk. I didn't go on a diet, but I drank less milk tea. After a year and a half, my last physical examination showed that my bone density was higher than that of a 26-year-old girl who just joined the company, and most of the depression on my face disappeared. Last week, when I took my baby to an amusement park, the staff thought she was my baby's aunt. Do you think this can truly delay aging?

But I have also seen counterexamples. Last year, a girl came to the gym. In order to lose weight quickly for wedding photos, she ran 10 kilometers on an empty stomach every day. She did not dare to eat staple food. After practicing for three months, she lost 20 pounds in weight. However, my aunt stopped immediately. Her face turned sallow and her temples were sunken. She looked almost 3 years older than her actual age. Later, she stopped exercising and adjusted for more than half a year before she regained her weight. I have read literature on sports medicine before and found that long-term excessive aerobic exercise will cause excessive accumulation of free radicals in the body, which will in turn accelerate cell oxidation. This is why many people say, "I have also been working out and I don't look younger." It is most likely that they have stepped on the trap of excessive or inappropriate symptoms.

Of course, many nutrition and geriatric medicine scholars believe that there is no need to exaggerate the anti-aging effect of fitness. Aging is a multi-dimensional process. Genes, work and rest, emotions, and diet may account for more than 70% of the total. Fitness is only one of the variables. I used to have a friend who practiced with me. She practiced harder than anyone else. She went to the gym five days a week, but she stayed up late every day, went to bars and ate late night snacks. She was only 36 this year, and she had more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes than her sister who didn’t work out but went to bed at 10 o’clock every day.

To put it bluntly, in fact, fitness is like regular maintenance for the body, a car. If you change the oil and check parts on time, it will definitely last longer and be in better condition than a car that is never cared for or built. But if you drive it on bad roads every day, no matter how well maintained it is, it will not be able to withstand the build.

And when we talk about anti-aging, we don’t mean that you will never get wrinkles. After all, no one can avoid natural aging when you get older. Fitness can help you retain the muscle mass that you lose every year after the age of 30. If your muscles don’t collapse, your face will not collapse, and your basal metabolism will not lose too much. It is fast and not easy to gain weight. In addition, weight-bearing training can help preserve bone mass, so osteoporosis is less likely to occur after menopause. When you are old, you can carry vegetables and climb stairs by yourself. This kind of real "not old" is much more useful than having two wrinkles on your face.

Anyway, after practicing for so long, my biggest feeling is that you don’t have to worry about whether you can be ten years younger than your peers. If you are in your fifties or sixties, you can still wear a beautiful dress to go out and walk for a day without feeling tired. It is already worth the price of admission.