Improving Muscle for Functional Independence Trial

Aging is associated with declines in muscle strength, power, and overall functional ability that lead to disability and loss of independence. Furthermore, the existing high prevalence of obesity in the elderly is greatly exacerbating these aging-related declines in function. To date, regular exercise, especially resistance exercise, is the only known treatment to consistently improve muscle function and perhaps delay the onset of disability. However, not all individuals experience the same magnitude of benefit from a given exercise stimulus, and accumulating data show that obesity limits muscle adaptations to chronic exercise.Therefore, the proposed study is designed to determine the effects of caloric restriction on improvements in skeletal muscle function in response to RT.