The Bank of Muscle: Why Your Real Retirement Account Isn't Your 401(k)

I used to think retirement planning was all about money. Put enough away, let compound interest do its thing, and someday you'll enjoy the rewards. As I've gotten older, however, I've come to appreciate another form of savings that may be just as important.

It's your muscle.

Nobody reaches eighty-five and wishes they had less of it. Instead, people wish they could get out of a chair more easily. They wish they could carry groceries, travel, garden, and play with grandchildren. In other words, they wish they had more reserves.

That's really what muscle buys us.

Dad's First Retirement Account

I was fortunate. My father lived nearly ninety-nine years old, and he didn't simply survive. He lived.

At eighty-five, Dad was walking three and a half miles every day. That's remarkable. Many people half his age don't walk that much. He had survived several heart attacks over the years, but he had reserves. Looking back, I realize that making it to eighty-five is one thing. Reaching eighty-five healthy enough to begin the sprint into your nineties is something else entirely.

Dad didn't do anything exotic. He wasn't biohacking. He wasn't chasing supplements. He wasn't optimizing every laboratory value.

He walked.

And my mother cooked.

Their meals weren't complicated. They enjoyed meat, potatoes, vegetables, soups, and desserts. They enjoyed life together. In hindsight, Dad was making deposits into his Bank of Muscle every day without ever calling it that.

Then Life Changed

As my mother's dementia slowly progressed, things began to fall apart. Dad stopped walking, not because he wanted to, but because he didn't want to leave Mom alone. He worried she might wander. At the same time, Mom stopped cooking.

Breakfast became something out at a diner. Lunch might be a sandwich. Dinner often became cereal.

I watched them both lose weight.

Then I got the phone call no child wants.

"Dad's in the hospital. He fell and couldn't get up."

The fall wasn't the problem. Falls happen. What concerned me was that Dad no longer had enough reserve.

After a couple of weeks in rehabilitation, I convinced him to move into an assisted living center close to our house. He wasn't thrilled with the idea, but something remarkable happened. Once Mom entered memory care and Dad had regular meals again, he began to thrive.

He complained constantly about the food while gaining seventeen pounds. But he made friends and was always talking to someone or another. I would drive by and see him talking to anyone, from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who lived there, and had a crush on my dad. My dad was making sure his neighbor got the newspaper, and yet he continued to complain about the food. All while gaining 17 pounds the first year.

Twice a week, I would take Dad to dinner, and we would split a steak.

The waitresses had a standing joke. They would ask him whether he wanted the kale salad.

Dad would smile and say, "I grew up in an orphanage in Alaska. We grew kale, but we fed it to the cows. I'll eat the cow."

He charmed every waitress in town.

Eventually, after Mom died, Dad moved back home to Oregon and lived independently again. Visiting Angels helped with meals and companionship, but he was back in his own house.

Looking back, I learned two things.

Food matters.

Muscle matters.

Frailty Is the Enemy

We spend a lot of time talking about heart disease, cancer, cholesterol, and blood pressure. Those are important. However, frailty is another great enemy of aging.

Frailty steals independence.

One broken hip can change everything. A fall that would have been a nuisance at sixty can become life-changing at eighty-five. Muscle gives us reserve, and reserve allows us to