#34: Why weight training is a MUST in perimenopause and menopause (benefits of lifting weights)

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• Starter exercises you can do at home >>
• Buy me a coffee >>
• More about the menopausal decline in estrogen & anti-aging effect of weight training: Episode #29
• What about cardio: Episode #31
• How often should you lift weights: Episode #20
• Factors affecting the results you’ll get from lifting: Episodes #12 and #13
• Some basic muscle biology: Episode #4

In this episode, I go through 5 reasons why weight training is a MUST for women in perimenopause and menopause. These include: 

1. How weight training counteracts the deterioration of our bodies that comes with age and loss of estrogen
2. How weight training improves our quality of life – after all, we’re not dying at age 50!
3. How lifting heavy helps us decrease visceral fat (get rid of "menobelly")
4. How weight training enables us to stop our metabolisms from slowing down
5. How weight training helps in the treatment of depression.

Enjoy the episode!

#menobelly #menopausefitness #visceralfat #liftheavyshit #fitaftr40 #fitafter50 #strongafter40 #strongafter50 #fitforlife #healthyretirement #qualityoflife #beginnerweighttraining #benefitsofweighttraining #startliftingafter40 #midlifefitness #podcastforwomen #menopausepodcast

Transcript

#34: Why weight training is a MUST in perimenopause and menopause (benefits of lifting weights)

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host and a 40 plus fitness coach for women. Today, we are talking about why weight training is really a must for women in perimenopause and menopause. And this may sound like a little bit of a funny thing because Actually, most of us have been taught throughout our whole lives that what we need to be doing is a whole lot of cardio.

And that is only part of the story. So I'm kind of excited this week, um, particularly about my podcast. I've been publishing this pub podcast since. February. And the audio version is what you're probably listening to since most of the people that listen to this podcast, listen to it on audio. But I have also always recorded a video of the [00:01:00] podcast and published that in YouTube.

And last week was the first time that actually it got more views. In, um, YouTube then in the audio version. So more and more people have been finding the audio version every week. And, uh, and I have listeners who, you know, start from basically podcast. Number one at one woman, write me an email this week who said, yeah, I'm up to podcast 16 now and okay.

We're at 34 today. Uh, so she's like going through them one by one by one, but. Every week I kind of look at how does that new podcast do? And this is the very first time that it's done better on, uh, YouTube than in the audio version. And so that's, that's kind of exciting. And actually for you to know also that if you would rather watch or listen on YouTube or whatever, I know [00:02:00] some people are YouTube fanatics.

I can be found there. And the podcast goes out on Tuesdays, they're just the same as in the audio version. Anyway, so that's my little excitement for this week that I wanted to share. But back to the topic at hand, um, so I think it is super common for us Gen X women. We have been raised thinking that, you know, aerobics classes, cardio, that is what fitness really is.

And it's funny how strong that pull is. I think of myself as an example that. I mean, I played division one lacrosse in college and played varsity lacrosse and field hockey in high school. So throughout my, you know, teenage years and even before my teenage years, I was running and uh, cardio [00:03:00] fitness was like the thing because I wanted to be able to perform on the field.

And then when I went to Dartmouth, uh, which is where I went to college. I started weight training and we did weight training that was very specific for our sport. We had a weight training coach who analyzed what does a lacrosse player need to be able to to do on the field. And then we got corresponding workouts to do.

And then on the side, I also did just a general circuit to hit all my muscles. Um, and I got, you know, nicely muscular. I felt really strong. Um, I'm not somebody who puts on a whole ton of muscle no matter what, but I definitely my body changed during college because of that. And I actually continued to weight train after college all the way until the birth of, or all the way until I was pregnant with my first child.

So I was 30 when I gave up weight trainings. That was a good. [00:04:00] What, like 12 years of weight training consistently every single week. I was very, very, very consistent. But then when the kids came, you know, it was hard to get away. And so I started running on a treadmill that we had at home. And actually what happened was that I lost my job, um, back when I was 41.

So 11 years later, and that's when I joined a gym and I didn't go back to the weight room. And I really regret that. That would have been absolutely the perfect. Last minute to go back to the weight room, but I did what most women do. I went to the group fitness classes and I loved them, loved them. I mean, it feels so good to go in there and sweat and push your body and, you know, feel like you've [00:05:00] been run over by a truck afterwards.

I felt so accomplished. I was in such. Good cardiovascular shape that, you know, one class wasn't enough. I was like, oof, one class, what's that? You know, and then I started going to two in a row and this kind of thing. And then I found body pump classes and I thought, oh yeah, I'm taking care of my muscles here.

And really, yeah, they're not very effective. So yeah, so that's how I was going along and perimenopause happened, menopause happened and my muscles were. Yeah, they definitely were not growing. Let's put it that way. But then I suddenly noticed that actually I had lost a significant amount of muscle mass.

And that was despite the fact that I was doing all this working out. Effective working out, but really the thing was that even these pump classes and various other [00:06:00] classes that I was taking that were, you know, where you're using weights, it was not really for muscle power, but much more for muscular endurance.

And the thing is that those are two different things. Right. So quick reminder of muscle biology. And I actually have a podcast where I go through just kind of the basics that you should understand about muscle biology. So if you haven't listened to episode number four yet, that's a really good one to listen to just so you understand like what are muscles and what, what we need to be doing to them in order to actually get stronger and to maintain them.

But just a quick summary is that. You have different kinds of muscle fibers in your muscle. Uh, I won't go into the details, but let's suffice to say that there are. The ones that are for endurance and there are the ones that are for strength and power, [00:07:00] and it's the strength and power fibers, which decline with age.

So they're the ones you actually need to be training. And when you're doing these classes with low weights, high reps, feeling the burn, that kind of thing, they are endurance classes. And so you're kind of. training the muscle fibers. You're not actually so much in risk of losing, right? So you need to be training heavier.

Anyway, luckily I started studying this stuff and found out that that's what I need to be doing and got into the weight room and here I am now on my soapbox. Really trying to encourage other women to do the same because I have seen, I've not only seen, but I also feel so much of a change in my body in even this, I think it's now two years coming on two years since I picked up my first weight.

Again, [00:08:00] intentionally, of course, I've done that back in college and after college before my kids, but this was the first time I started to progressively train, applying progressive overload and really pushing my muscles. And I'll tell you that the. The change is really remarkable. Not only have I gotten muscle back, so I look athletic again, like I did way back when, when I was younger, but also my body feels completely different because I am stronger.

I mean, just everyday things are easier to do. And it. It's amazing. I feel younger, right? They talk about it being the fountain of youth and anti aging. I've done an episode on how it's anti aging, but it really is, right? This is, it's not just like clickbait. It really does make you feel much better. And, uh, if any of you out there are listening, who have been weight training and you have found the same thing, I would love to [00:09:00] hear it because I want to get that word out to more people that it is so, so, so worth it.

But now if we go into my list here, aside from the anti aging of what kinds of things or what reasons I have for why weight training and doing it, you know, applying progressive overload is so important for women in perimenopause and menopause. The biggest, biggest reason is that we have the hormonal decline that's going on.

And that causes all kinds of havoc in our bodies. I talked about this in an episode not too long ago, the anti aging effects of lifting weights that was episode 29. So if you want to learn more about that, then please go back and listen to that [00:10:00] episode. The fact is that as our hormones start to decline in midlife, our body's deterioration, the rate of deterioration increases.

It really does. So every human men, women, our muscle mass starts to decline with age, but with women as we hit perimenopause menopause, that decline speeds up. And women in particular have an issue with bone density, right? That also increases in the perimenopause menopause stage of our lives. So I mean, this is really making up for that hormonal decline.

The fact that we are weight training. When estrogen disappears, our bodies age at a faster rate and weight training can stop and even reverse some of those aging trends. So super important. And listen to that [00:11:00] other podcast. I'll put it in the show notes as well, so that you don't have to remember the number.

If, if you're not good at keeping numbers in your head, which if you're in perimenopause may very much be the case. And the really important thing to remember. So point number two is that this affects our quality of life in a huge way. I mean, we are not dying at age 50. I think this is like becoming my new slogan.

We are not dying at age 50. So what are you going to do with the next 40 or even 50 years of your life? And how do you want to spend that? And when your body is functioning. more properly. So when your muscles work, when your bones are strong, when you can get across the street faster because you have some power in your stride, when you can get off the toilet seat, when you can open that jar of the lid, your quality of life is better when you [00:12:00] don't have to be using tools all the time.

You don't have to ask for someone to help you lift something off a top shelf. We have a ton of years ahead and the best way that we can prepare this vessel that we are traveling in our body to enable us to have a really, really fulfilling life is to weight train. Hey, if you're ready to start weight training, but you don't really know what to do.

I wanted to remind you about my self study courses. called Learn to Lift at Home and Learn to Lift at the Gym. They have everything you need to get started, including a program to follow and videos explaining how to do each exercise. Check them out on my website, www. befitafter40, that's four zero, dot com slash DIY, or check the link in the show notes.

Okay. You're going to stop losing muscle and be able to [00:13:00] build it back. You're going to increase your bone density and you can even, yeah, and that happens even after menopause, right? You can strengthen your tendons and your ligaments, and that's important for your mobility and balance and all those kinds of things.

And also. Insulin resistance, that is an issue for a lot of people as they age and weight training increases insulin sensitivity. Point number three is that one of the things women really notice in midlife with the changes in their body, I mean, you notice that your skin starts to be different, right?

It's like, ah, saggy, right? It's not. Nice and firm, like it is younger, you're looking at your daughters and thinking, well, my skin used to look like that. And I used to feel bad showing off my arms when my skin looked like that. Yeah. So you're probably noticing things like changes to your skin, one of the.

Most [00:14:00] hated changes is the belly fat that you start to get. It just doesn't feel nice to have stuff accumulating around your waist. And the thing about weight training is that it, especially if you're weight training heavy, so not these light pink weights, you know, not this. Let's do this for five minutes and feel the burn, but when you're lifting heavy, it actually sets off a cascade of events in your body, which tells your body to start using that visceral fat.

So you reduce your visceral fat. This is definitely happened for me. Okay. I've also done. you know, fat loss journey here along the way. And that has helped, but the visceral fat already started going down just when I switched from doing all cardio and body pump and boot pump classes, boot camp classes to switching to focusing mainly on weight training.

So, so it [00:15:00] does really help. And then the other thing that women complain, so this is number four. The other thing that women complain about a lot in midlife is that, Oh, my metabolism slowed down. I'm gaining weight because I'm getting older and my metabolism slowed down. And that's actually not the case.

So what is happening in midlife is you have reached kind of a stage where your muscle decline has gotten to a point Where it is noticeable that you are eating too many calories. Now muscle, as you have probably heard, muscle burns more calories than fat, even when you're laying around the house doing nothing.

So if you think about your muscles have been shrinking away, disappearing since about age and your twenties, beginning of your thirties, it's been disappearing. You've been busy with your [00:16:00] kids. You're not like really focused so much on yourself. Then all of a sudden, you know, at age, well, in your forties and your fifties, you kind of look up, you, you have a little bit more time for you and you notice that, Oh, I've actually gotten a little bit round.

Well, it's probably because your muscle mass has decreased and you haven't decreased your calorie consumption accordingly. Right. Your metabolic rate has decreased because you have lost muscle. And plus most of us are less active at this point in life. We're just getting in less steps, sitting at desk jobs.

We're driving the kids, standing on the sideline, cooking, you know, not moving as much as we did when we were younger. And those two things really compound and make it so that We are in a calorie surplus, right? There is actually a study done of people of all [00:17:00] ages. So they were both sexes and all ages, all the way from children to, I think it was like 80 years old, somewhere around there.

And what they found, and they were studying specifically this, uh, metabolic rate. What they found was over time, from about age 20 to 60, people's metabolism It doesn't change with age if your muscle mass stays consistent. So the changes in the metabolism, the metabolic rate, the basal metabolic rate were linked to how much muscle that person had on their body.

Now after age 60, there started to have, you know, be something going on there and it'll take more research to figure that out. But the fact is that. You don't need to get heavier just because you hit midlife. You can do things to avoid that and to reverse that and [00:18:00] what you eat is super important for that.

Okay. And number five, which is one that people don't. Um, hear about very often it is talked about somewhat like the effects on your psyche, your mood, um, of exercise in general, like people who exercise feel better. And I just read about a study in the newspaper here, um, where they looked at different types of exercise and how they differently affected people's moods and weight training was actually linked.

To improving depression and to the point where it was suggested that weight training could be like a treatment for depression along with, you know, getting therapy. So you can work on the deeper issues going on, but it helps you to actually feel better. So, if you're not feeling so [00:19:00] great, don't skip your workout.

And another thing that they pointed out there or another type of exercise that they mentioned there was that this kind of yoga, um, Pilates, like more calm type of exercise was good for anxiety. So, yeah, that was pretty cool to hear. So I hope that this has given you some inspiration to start weight training if you haven't started yet.

And if you have, then gives you good reasons to continue, I mean, really for the rest of your life. This is not a quick fix kind of thing. You need to just keep doing it. And that's why it's important for you to find a schedule, find a way to fit it into your life where it works long term. This is not kind of a, okay, now for, you know, two months or three months, I am going [00:20:00] to neglect everything else in my life.

And I'm just going to focus on that. Okay. Maybe you could do it for two or three months. But it is far better for you to think about, okay, well, what I could do is I could do two times a week for an hour. And that's something I could maintain if I could do it at home because I don't have time to travel to the weight room, you know, and, and then stick to that consistency is.

key. So just quick reminder of the reasons why perimenopause and menopausal women should be weight training. So we have this hormonal decline going on and it counteracts many of the negative effects of losing our estrogen. As we age, there's the quality of life issue. We are not dying at age 50. So think about how you want the next 40, 50 years of your life to look.

And if you want a good quality of life, you need your body to be [00:21:00] functioning. You need to be strong. Women hate That visceral fat thing, their waist getting bigger, weight training, applying progressive overload, pushing yourself close to failure, like good solid weight training is going to trigger to your body to start using that visceral fat instead of just, you know, leaving it there and forgetting about it.

And then our metabolic rate. As we change our body composition and start to carry more muscle on our body, our metabolism will slowly go up. I'm not going to say that this is some humongous effect, but. I will say that normally if you lose weight, you go from being a heavier person to a lighter person, your daily calorie intake should [00:22:00] decrease because you're smaller, you know, you have less body to keep alive and wiggling.

But at least for me, I have lost weight and increased muscle. And that has. Led to my calorie, my maintenance calories staying just about the same, um, even though my weight has dropped. So if you want to continue to eat or not have to be in a constant, like watching every little morsel in your mouth, you know, that's going in, get some more muscle on your body.

And by the way, this kind of yo yo dieting is the very worst thing you could possibly do because you lose muscle when you diet. And then fifth thing was alleviating signs of depression. So if you are depressed and this really happens to a lot of women in perimenopause and menopause, there's stress, [00:23:00] there's depression.

I know I suffered through. Uh, major depressive episode when I was in perimenopause and weight training. God, I wish I had discovered it then that could have helped me, you know, then too, but weight training is an effective form of treatment. Of course, with other treatments, I'm not saying like, Hey, you know, just do weight training.

If you are depressed, of course, go to a doctor, get help. Right. Don't try to deal with it on your own. Okay. And then I just wanted to quickly, there are some frequently asked questions that I thought might come out of this episode of me talking so strongly about weight training. You might be asking, so what about the cardio?

Right? I love my cardio. What about it? What do I do with it? Well, I have talked about that in episode 31, so go back and take a listen to that. I will also put that in the show notes so you don't need to [00:24:00] remember the number. And then another question people ask is how often do I really need to be weight training?

Well, I did talk about that also in a podcast episode. It was episode number 20, but in a quick nutshell, what you want to be doing is hitting all your muscle groups twice a week and not on back to back days. And how are your results going to be affected by doing less and more? Well, that I also cover, uh, in, uh, episodes, let's see, there were 12, uh, episode 12 and 13.

I talk about the factors that are going to affect how quickly you actually see results. And of course, how often you train is one of those things. How you train is another thing. What you're doing. Outside of your weight training sessions is also important. And that's why I actually ended up doing two episodes on that because there's just so much [00:25:00] ground to cover.

Plus there are things like genetics, you know, that, that play a part. And so if you're interested in understanding like, okay, what are all the variables? Because it's not as simple as go to the weight room and just weight train twice a week, though, let's say getting even to that point is going to be a huge jump forward.

And I got an interesting question a few weeks ago about like, so are there any things that I could do at work, you know, in a 10 minute work break or at home and a 10 minute break where I don't need any weights where I don't need to go to the weight room and. I got to thinking about that and absolutely, yes, there are some things you can do.

I mean, just to, if you have not been doing really any kind of exercise or any kind of strength exercises, these would be really good for you to get started with. And you can already Start getting [00:26:00] stronger before you jump into a weight training program or start going to the gym So if you're interested in checking those out Then check the link in the show notes.

It leads you to where you can download those from me Okay. So I feel like that was actually a lot today, even though I thought, Oh, this is going to be a quick and easy one and hope you got some good tips out of here and some good motivation either to get started or to continue your weight training journey.

And I will talk to you next week. Happy training. By the way, I wanted to mention that. If you would like to support this podcast, I mean, I put a lot of time and effort into these episodes and I've heard, and I love to hear that people are enjoying them and getting something from them. And uh, I'm not taking [00:27:00] any advertisements and I'm not going to start doing that, but if you want to support.

The podcast, you can buy me a virtual cup of coffee. I have a link for you to do that. And that's a kind of a way of leaving me like a little tip, which would be very, very appreciated. Um, and the link for buying me a cup of coffee is in the show notes.