#29: The anti-aging effects of lifting weights (How weight training prepares our bodies for the NEXT 40 years)

Many younger people start lifting weights in their teens and 20s for aesthetic benefits or to support their performance in a sport. 

But the fact is that weight training is a superior way to keep your body functioning properly throughout your lifetime. This is especially true for women because of the fact that we go through the menopause transition.

When we go through menopause (ie. through perimenopause and into post-menopause), the level of estrogen in our bodies declines and all but disappears. Estrogen has played an important role in keeping our bodies working properly. Without it, our bodies start to decline.

Fortunately, we can do something about it - we can work to keep our bodies functioning: lifting weights can make up for some of the gaps left by the loss of estrogen. 

In this episode, I talk about the anti-aging effects of lifting weights. After hearing the facts, you'll hopefully agree that weight training is the best thing you can do to fitness-wise to maintain your quality of life in your 40s, 50s, and beyond. 

I discuss:

• The role of estrogen in keeping our bodies in good working order
• What happens when estrogen declines in perimenopause and post-menopause
• How weight training can turn back the hands of time - it's anti-aging effects.

Enjoy the show!

Transcript

#29: The anti-aging effects of lifting weights (How weight training prepares our bodies for the NEXT 40 years)

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host. And today we're going to talk about how weight training is anti aging for women in perimenopause and menopause in particular. So fall is here. And at least at my gym, the group fitness classes are packed. To the rim filled with women who have started on their fitness journeys again, and I am really hoping that if you find yourself among those, that you will really consider a better way of spending your time.

And that is going to be with. Weights doing consistent weight training and hopefully this episode will help you to understand why you really kind of are wasting your time in those pump classes and those other classes where you've got small [00:01:00] weights and you're doing lots of reps and getting really sweaty and your heart rate is pounding because those are not what you need to challenge your muscles.

I spent way too many years. Wasting my time. That is one of my biggest regrets. I really wish that I had hopped back into the weight room right after my first child was born. But what I wish even more is that I had skipped the whole seven years of going to body pump classes, because that is working really on muscle endurance and not on strength and power.

And what we need to prepare ourselves for the next 40 years of our lives. Is really that power and strength. And today I'm going to talk about how lifting weights in the weight room can really help you to revitalize anti age your body, however you want to think of it. So if you think [00:02:00] about it, what are the kind of signs that your body is getting older?

If you think about like, let's say your mother or an aunt or some older woman that you know, and how you see them physically, what's happening with them? Uh, I remember when I was younger, I heard this. A joke or somebody commented maybe to my grandmother, I can't even remember who it was, but that person was getting up off the sofa and they were making this kind of, uh, groan as they were hoisting themselves off the sofa.

And someone commented that, Oh my God, you've gotten old that you're making old people sounds. And I think this is one that definitely comes to mind is. You know, the trouble getting up. I mean, something as simple as that, that we've taken for granted for so many years of our lives. But now, like, as you get older and certainly, you know, if you're not doing anything about it, you see older people, they're having [00:03:00] trouble getting up off chairs, off of deep sofas, later off the toilet seat.

You know, they're needing something to hold on to something to push off of and some help with that. So, that's definitely one sign of aging in your body. Another is that you may notice that you're not able to lift the things that you used to be able to lift. So, if I think, if I go shopping with my mom, like grocery shopping, because we're spending the weekend together, I am not going to expect her to be able to carry in, you know, the groceries.

I'm going to take the heavy ones. She's going to, you know, take the bags full of bread or whatever, something lighter. And it's just because she's weaker. She is 25 years older than me and she is weaker. And by the way, I'm 52 and I am expecting to live into my nineties. So I want to be strong, like for the next.

40 plus years. And if you're in your forties, I would [00:04:00] hope that you're hoping to be strong and your body to work for you for the next 40, 50 years. So it's really a long time that we still need to manage, right? Then you may have things in your everyday life. Like, like I have a cabinet on top of my refrigerator where I save things like my picnic basket and some things I don't use very often.

And whenever I need those, I grab a chair and I got to hoist myself up in the chair and lift those things down and lower myself down in the chair at the same time. Sounds pretty elementary, but. I think watching my mom do that same thing. You know, she has to take a little ladder where there are steps because she can't, you know, take that big hoist onto the stair.

And then there's the question of, can she really manage grabbing the things from up high and lowering them down safely? So, you know, these kinds of. Of things, right? Imagine if she's at home alone and she's got to do [00:05:00] that. She may not be able to do that. Then one that comes up easily and actually at quite a young age is not being able to open jars, right?

We have all kinds of aids for opening jars when really what the problem is with opening jars is that our grip strength has gotten weaker and that happens. Oh, I definitely noticed it. When I was 50 that I wasn't able to grab things as well, even even things where I had to squeeze like my son has this lamp, Ikea lamp on his bed post where you have to squeeze really hard to open the clip and then.

You can get the lamp on the bedpost and yeah, I was having trouble even squeezing that. So that kind of grip strength, uh, loss that is needed in a lot of different places. Then a really practical one is walking slower across the street. So how many old [00:06:00] ladies and old men do you see that are like kind of shuffling across the street?

They're in great shape. They're probably living independently, you know, great shape as in that they're healthy, right? They're living independently, but they can't make it across the street in the amount of time that that light is green. And that really has to do with the power that they have in their muscles to kind of propel them forward.

So the speed of your walking gait is also a function of your muscle strength. Then you have things like, can you get down on the floor and back up off the floor easily? Let's say you want to go down there and play with your grandkids or, you know, pet a dog or cuddle with your cat or whatever, you know, you may stop going onto the floor because you have a hard time getting back up.

I noticed when. You know, my parents, for example, get flat pack furniture and they've got the boxes on the floor, you know, for them to like, get down on their knees to [00:07:00] open those boxes. It's like they have to hold on to something, kind of lower themselves down and, and back up. And so that's another, you know, sign of aging that is showing up in your ability to do things physically.

And then. Your balance is not so good. I noticed this very much with my mother that, you know, she needs to hold on to things if the footing is not even, and that also has to do with your muscles. And then what happens when you lose your balance, you know, your ability to quickly move your, uh, leg out to the side to recover your balance, to avoid those dreadful falls, which can cause, you know, hip fractures and all those things that also has to do with your muscle power and strength.

So if you think about it, what is happening, you know, as you're aging is that you are [00:08:00] less able to do things that you need to do. These are just examples of like concrete ways you can look at older people and notice that their bodies are getting older. All of those things are things that you can actually affect.

By choosing your fitness, by adding weight training to your fitness. So when we're talking about the anti aging properties of weight training, I can say for myself that I've been weight training now consistently, well, it's coming on two years. You know, again, I've been going to pump classes for seven years before that, at least.

And um, and I noticed that my body just feels younger. I feel like I am in a younger version of my body [00:09:00] because my body just moves more easily. The posture is better. I feel capable. I can like lift stuff if I decide, Hey, I want to move my. Furniture. I can do that when my walk pad was delivered. I mean, it is a heavy box and I carried it up three flights of stairs to get it up to my office.

And I was really proud of myself because I don't have anybody here that can help me. So I would have otherwise had to, well, either wait till my kids came, you know, for my exes 2 weeks later, or have a friend over, ask help from a neighbor. But it felt really good that I could do it all on my own. And in addition, my body actually feels good.

It doesn't feel run down in the same way as it did when I was doing so much hard cardio on it. And for me in particular, the Achilles, my Achilles tendons were really a sore spot for me. They were so sensitive and I was always kind of walking on this edge of, [00:10:00] okay, are they going to start bothering me or not bothering me?

And now that I've incorporated. Doing a lot of heavy calf exercises that have strengthened my calves, then my Achilles tendons have not bothered me at all. I'm knock on wood, right? And all of these things I really attribute to weight training. Now, I started weight training after menopause. Like years after menopause.

So I, I mean, man, I wish somebody had talked to me about this stuff already when I was 30, because what I have learned about what goes on with your body in menopause as your hormones shift really, really, really makes the case for starting to weight train early as possible. I wasted those seven years in pump classes.

If I had spent those hours in the weight room, oh my God, I can't even imagine how much [00:11:00] further ahead I would be because at that point when I was in perimenopause, it would have been easier to build muscle, build strength. I wouldn't have lost muscle and strength, all the things. But. I have to do what I can do now, which is continue to weight train.

And the thing is, and the thing that I didn't know, and so many women don't know because nobody tells us is that estrogen plays a critical role in our physical wellbeing. And then when the production of estrogen declines, when we hit perimenopause. And then when our estrogen pretty much flatlines as we go into menopause, when we're in post menopause, that really has an effect on our bodies, our bodies.

Actually, really start to decline. I wish I didn't, you know, I, I wish that was an exaggeration, but estrogen is doing so many things to keep our body in [00:12:00] shape that when you get rid of it, it's like you're losing a really, really valuable ingredient. To staying physically young, functioning, you know, your body working well.

So just some of the things that estrogen does for us is one, it promotes muscle growth. So after when you're in post menopause, like I am, it's harder to grow muscle. So I wish I had done it before when I had estrogen helping me out. And then also it promotes. Muscle function. So allowing your muscles to contract strongly.

So this is why you lose things like being able to open those jar lids or being able to hoist yourself onto chairs, whatever. So. Yeah, you need that strong contraction power to be able to do that. So exciting news, the group program is happening and I [00:13:00] wanted to share a little bit more information about what that means.

So I've run into so many women who want to start lifting weights, but they realize they don't know what to do, how to do it. How heavy weights all the things, and they really don't wanna waste their time or look stupid. And this program is meant to really lower the barrier to getting started. So you can get started either at the gym, if you have a membership to a regular gym or at home with just dumbbells and you can train either two, three, or four days a week, whatever suits you best.

I am giving you lots of options. Because really the most important thing is for you to get started. So in this group program, I will be giving you the information that you need to get started. So what you should be doing, how you should be doing it, how often you should be doing it, and also what you should be doing outside of your training sessions.[00:14:00] 

You'll get a program. So that's the list of exercises you should do to strengthen your body and build muscle. You'll get videos to show you how to do the exercises. You'll get instruction on how heavy to do them, a tracker to ensure that you're applying progressive overload. You can also. Take videos of yourself doing the exercises and send them to me for feedback of are you doing them correctly, is your technique looking good, and I will comment on them.

And in addition, the thing that's going to make this really fun is the community aspect of it. So I'll be setting up a Facebook group. Where all the students will be, and you can ask me questions, you can share your own experiences, we can celebrate your wins, all the things together. So just imagine yourself in a few months time, feeling stronger, your body feeling younger because you are stronger and weight training and [00:15:00] all the ways that it helps to keep your body in good shape as you age.

And then of course, there are the aesthetic benefits. You'll start looking more toned. Your body shape will change. Most likely you will also be able to lose some fat as you gain muscle. So if you are interested, sign up now. We kick off on September 14th. The link is in the show notes. Estrogen also promotes insulin sensitivity.

So you become more insulin resistant as estrogen levels decrease in your body. Another is that it regulates your hunger and satiety hormones. So I've talked recently about how important sleep is for satiety hormones, but estrogen also plays a role here. When your estrogen levels start to decline, then Those are not regulated so well.

And Hey, by the way, so that means that that [00:16:00] sleep is probably even more important than before in managing your hunger and making sure that you're not getting the weight gain that you might get when you hit a midlife. It helps to control your cortisol levels. And that's why when you go into perimenopause, your cortisol levels are higher, just your baseline cortisol levels are higher than they used to be when you were in your, I don't know what you want to call it.

Reproductive years. I use little air quotes. Uh, so, so you need to be paying attention to that more than you did before. Estrogen also helps with calcium absorption, and that's important for your bones so that your bones say strong. And then finally, estrogen is important for your tendons and your ligaments and their stability.

So you can see that when you get. Estrogen out of the [00:17:00] picture, there's a whole lot of bad stuff that's happening in your body. And you know, I don't want to be like scary here, but to me, if you get rid of all those wonderful things, that is really not a good thing for your body. We still have 40 plus years left in our lives, and don't we all want to have well functioning bodies so that we can really enjoy those final decades?

I mean, really, it's not like we're getting ready to die. We still have a lot, a lot, a lot of life. left. So for me, it is a pretty scary thing to think about all those things that are not being supported now since I was age, whatever, 39, because my, um, menopause came early. So like really for a long time already, those things, estrogen has not been doing for me.

And so my body has already [00:18:00] been kind of allowed to decline to some degree. And now I'm trying to kind of make up for lost time. I want to have a full life. When I discovered there was something that I could do, which was weight training, then you bet I am here like on my soapbox trying to help everybody understand that, Hey, don't just think that you need to resign yourself that, Oh yeah, now I'm in menopause.

Of course I'm going to get weaker. Of course I'm going to get slower and no, I'm not going to be able to do the things that I used to be able to do. That's just not the case. Please don't fall for that kind of fatalist thinking. You can do something about it, and that is weight training. So when you lift heavy for you, and that's for you, right?

Your heavy and my heavy are going to be different. It depends on what level you're at now and you keep lifting consistently, applying progressive overload, pushing your muscles, pushing your body. [00:19:00] You can actually counteract these things and slow down this decline and even reverse some of these quote unquote inevitable signs of aging.

So you can maintain your muscles and even build it back. I mean, here I am, I'm the poster child of that, that already in the almost two years that I've been weight training really, really consistently, I've been able to build back muscle and start looking toned and I am much stronger. When I was doing the pump classes, I was curling five kilo dumbbells.

Now I'm curling. 10 kilo dumbbells. That's a huge increase, right? And I mean, I've been doing those five kilo dumbbells for probably five of those seven years and no bells went off in my head that, Oh my God, is this actually effective if I'm just lifting the same weights over and [00:20:00] over again? It's not so anyway, so you can maintain an even build back your muscle and you can get your muscles contracting strongly again.

So that's that power. That is that thing that's going to let you hoist yourself off the sofa, get you across the street faster, uh, get that jar lid open. That is something that can definitely change for me. I think 1 of the 1 of the most obvious signs of this was I have these adjustable weights and you have to squeeze.

Um, they have like this holder so that the plates don't. Slide off the weights on the ends and you have to squeeze that in order to pull that flip off. And I remember I used to be like two hands squeezing as hard as I could and like, Oh, I'd move it a little, a little bit more and a little bit more. And I was like, geez, how am I going to change these weights?

Cause this is such a hassle to [00:21:00] squeeze this, this clip and get it off. And now it's no problem. I just squeeze and pull, right? I mean, obvious changes in my grip strength and my, my ability to use my hands to do things. I mean, it feels so, so great. Then you can increase your bone density. So this has been studied that when you lift heavy, what is happening is that.

Your muscles are attached to tendons, which are attached to your bones. And so when your muscles contract, they're pulling on the tendons, which are pulling on the bones. And when you're lifting heavy, your body gets the signal that, Hey, wait a second, we need to be doing things that are more than what we're equipped to do right now.

And therefore the tendons. And the bones get the signal that, Hey, we need to be stronger than what we are today. And that starts to cause changes. I mean, [00:22:00] this doesn't happen overnight. You do this for months and years and you start to see a difference. I've definitely seen a difference. And I think my Achilles tendons are in much better shape now because of my weight training.

That's like been a concrete benefit for me. So, so basically this is the message that I would love for every, every woman to take away from this. It is that lifting weights will really make a difference in how your body works. You will feel like you're in a younger body when you can do things that you used to be able to do when you were younger, right?

Getting off a couch was no problem at all. When lifting something from up high was not a problem at all. When jumping into a bus was no problem at all. All right. And of course there are the other benefits, which I talk about also, [00:23:00] because I think that is a huge motivator is the aesthetic benefits, right?

I mean, I love the fact that my muscles show now that I am, you know, looking more toned. I love the fact that I. feel more firm and, and dense, right? I don't feel flabby like I did for a while there. So there are definitely those benefits, but the main reason why you really need to do this, even if you don't care about the aesthetic stuff is that you probably do care about what your life is going to look like for the next.

40 to 50 years going forward. And if you think about the things that you want to be able to do, play with your grandkids, travel, go hiking, whatever it is that you want to be able to do, play golf, get in and out of a swimming pool. Those all require your body to be working properly and. Such a big part of that is that your muscles are in shape [00:24:00] so that you have the strength and the power to do the things that you want to do.

So there was my hopefully, hopefully enlightening, uh, episode for today. And please, if you know of somebody who has started in pump classes or is thinking about their fitness, please share this episode with them because this. If any message I would like to get out to as many women as possible, it really is about this and it is not too late to start, even if you're 50 plus, like I am definitely not too late to start if you have preexisting injuries conditions, I mean, you know, at this age, who of us doesn't, then I would recommend that you talk to like a physical therapist or your doctor in case there are some.

Thank you. Exercises that you should do differently. For example, I have one client who had her shoulder dislocated a couple of times. And [00:25:00] so what we do with her is she gets her shoulder exercises from her physical therapist. And then I train the rest of her body and that works great. That's definitely a way to start.

If you have, you know, some osteoporosis issues, then please get some guidance from your healthcare provider. Share that with your personal trainer and get a program designed just for you because there are ways. to work weight training into your life so that you can reap these benefits that I shared today.

Great. And with that, I will wish you a wonderful week ahead and happy training. Before you go, could you do me a favor? If you've enjoyed my podcast and found it useful, would you please go and give me a five star rating and review? It would really mean the world to me and help more women. Find the show.

Thanks so [00:26:00] much.