Most people really are low in vitamin D. The reasons have nothing to do with moral failure or weak willpower. The “right amount” depends on age, body fat, sun exposure, health status, and how broken your metabolism already is. Vitamin D can be helpful, boring, or harmful depending on how casually you treat it. As with most things in health, the danger lies not in deficiency or supplementation. The danger is oversimplification.

Vitamin D is technically a hormone, not a vitamin in the classic sense. Your body produces it when ultraviolet B light hits your skin, converting cholesterol into vitamin D3. That alone should tell you something important. This is not kale dust. This is a system that evolved when humans spent most of their time outdoors, half-naked by modern standards, not under fluorescent lights and SPF 50.

Progressive overload isn’t some gym-bro mantra screamed over pre-workout fumes. It’s the grown-up truth that your body only gets stronger when you give it a reason. Lift the same weight for the same reps forever and congratulations, you’ve mastered standing still. Push just a bit harder, keep two reps in the tank, and your Type II fibers start waking up like somebody finally flipped the breaker back on. That’s how you grow muscle after sixty, not by wishing, not by nostalgia, but by applying pressure that your body has to answer. Strength is freedom, and this is how you reclaim it.

Most people your age don’t need more supplements. They need more muscle. The kind that protects your bones, sharpens your brain, and keeps you out of the waiting room with the sad magazines. Time to lift something heavier than your excuses.

We’ve been sold a lie that we’re fragile. That age means weakness and movement equals risk. The truth? The body isn’t weak, it’s waiting. Waiting to move, rebuild, and adapt. Sitting all day is to back pain what bourbon is to alcoholism — the cause disguised as comfort. Aging brings challenges like anabolic resistance and sarcopenia, but the antidote isn’t rest. It’s movement, strength, and enough protein to keep the engine running. You’re not fragile. You’re just out of practice.