It's mutual to see former men with sparse artillery and legs, but fatty bellies…

Always notice how many quondam men have skinny legs and arms, only plenty of fat in their bellies?

In fact, equally they age, men typically lose mass in their legs and arms — they get thinner, while their belly just gets fatter and fatter.

There is a perfectly logical, and quite uncomplicated, explanation for why, as men go older, their bellies get bigger while their legs and arms get thinner or scrawnier. It has to do with the metabolic furnace.

This miracle happens to men who don't perform weight-bearing workouts on a consistent basis.

To put it some other way, the increasing stomach size and decreasing leg and arm size will happen to well-nigh every man who doesn't exercise, every bit he gets older.

The only exceptions are very underweight men, and it's rare to see an old man with scrawny artillery and legs and a flat firm tummy.

The metabolic furnace is the body's muscle.

For inactive men (and women), beginning at about age xxx, the trunk begins losing muscle mass. As musculus mass decreases, metabolism slows down.

A slower metabolism means that the rate at which you fire calories from food slows downwards.

A man, who was never into working out, as he approaches middle age, continues to lose musculus, nearly 5 pounds' worth per decade.

By historic period 50, this sedentary private has lost around x pounds of musculus.

This shows in thinner legs and arms; they've lost muscle mass. The barrel sags. The thighs look, pardon my bluntness, pathetic.

So why does the abdomen in these men get fat?

Because the muscle they used to take in their legs and arms, which is no longer at that place, is no longer at that place to burn some of the food they swallow.

Muscle burns more than calories than whatsoever other body tissue; muscle is the body's metabolic furnace.

The less musculus you have, the slower your metabolism (even though it may notwithstanding exist on the fast side, but relative to what you had when you had more muscle, information technology is slower yet).

So food that used to go used past the muscle that was once in the legs and arms, is now getting stored every bit fatty, and the first place men shop fat is in the belly.

This phenomenon doesn't just happen to skinny men as they go older.

A medium or even portly man will notice that as years go by, their abdomen only keeps getting bigger and bigger, while strangely, once thick legs are now smaller.

These men no longer take the musculus mass in their arms and legs to back up their daily food intake, and thus, the non-used calories get stored in their belly as fat.

I might also mention that the muscle loss also occurs in their chest, back and shoulders.

Yet, loss of musculus is most axiomatic in the legs and buttocks.

The fat belly in an otherwise "healthy" (free of illness) aging human is entirely preventable through force grooming workouts.

Shutterstock/Straight 8 Photography

I see this all the time at the gym: old-timers with washboard abs, potent sturdy shoulders and backs, muscular arms and strong, toned legs.

Men over xxx who accept noticed an always-growing belly of fat tin can opposite this situation 100 pct in many cases (depending on variables including age).

The best style for men to lose the paunch is to hitting the weights for their legs, back, chest and shoulders, and not camp out – yes, I said "not" – at the crisis machines.

Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Full Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.