#97: 6 Things I've Changed My Mind About as a Menopause Fitness Coach

After menopause, I noticed big changes in my body as my familiar fitness routines stopped working. The lessons I’ve learned — from studying menopause and midlife fitness, from my personal experiences, and from coaching a wide variety of women — have completely transformed my thinking.

In this episode, I share six things I’ve changed my mind about:

1. My definition of being in “good shape”
2. Tracking calories burned during a workout
3. The importance of sleep
4. Weight training
5. Aging
6. Tracking what you eat

Listen to the episode to hear what I’ve learned—it might change the way you think about your own health, fitness, and aging journey too!

Transcript

#97 - 6 Things I've Changed My Mind About As a Menopause Fitness Coach

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. 

And today I wanted to share six things that I have changed my mind about since turning 50. And these, some of them are maybe opinion things and others are really due to the fact that I know so much more about. What our bodies have gone through and what our bodies need in perimenopause and beyond. So I wish I had known most of these things already when I was in my mid thirties, because that's probably when I started to have perimenopause symptoms, but better late than never.

And hopefully this will help some of you to get to that next [00:01:00] phase in your fitness journey a little bit sooner than I did.

I have to start by saying that my fifties have been wildly different than I ever thought. ever imagined they would be. I somehow always thought that when you turn 50, it was kind of the beginning of the end and you get all settled down and you don't do new stuff. You're kind of old, right? But I think 50 is really, really changing.

For me, I think the biggest change probably came from the fact that I got divorced and kind of got to reinvent myself or get back in touch with who I really am and what I really want and need. One of the things I noticed that I really enjoy is going out. I love music. I love going out dancing. I love to hang out with friends.

I love to, laugh and talk and just enjoy life. Hang out on a beach. [00:02:00] I've learned how to boat. I'd never been on a boat before I started dating again in my late forties. So many things. And one of the most recent ones is that, and I never ever envisioned myself, this is one of those things.

I am dating a guy who also is totally into weight training and fitness. So. I never thought I'd be one of those, you know, couples training in the weight room together. Oh, and here I am. I mean, we don't train together. We go to the weight room together and he does his thing and I do my thing because he does his typical guy stuff, which is, you know, he has 16, 000 different chest exercises he needs to do and bicep tricep and all that.

And then he'll spend half an hour on legs, you know? And in the meanwhile, I'm this super optimizer who is like, Hey, I want [00:03:00] to get max results for my time there. And so we do very, very different looking workouts, but both with the same goal. And we're both there and eating our protein and getting our sleep and all those things.

So really, really fun, but today I wanted to get into kind of the biggest things that I've changed my mind about when I think about what I used to think about fitness and eating and health. And the big trigger for me was when I realized when I was about 49 and a half, right when I was about to turn 50, I noticed that even though I was training.

Like a maniac, you know, going to body pump classes, bootcamp classes, all these things and sweating like a pig, feeling really, really accomplished. I was not looking like it. I had like lost my muscle tone and [00:04:00] gained fat all over my body and belly fat particularly. And I was like, holy cow, this is not what I look like.

I refuse to look like this. And so I started to figure out what is it that I need to be doing? And what am I doing wrong? And, um, and that has led to so many changes in my thinking. I'm not the same person as I was back then. So I wanted to share six of those. Things that have really changed in my thinking.

First of all, my thinking has completely changed around what being in good shape is. I was an athlete as a young person, like all the way in high school. I played Division I lacrosse for Dartmouth, college. And, For me, it's always been about cardio fitness, you know, that I can run more than other people.

I can sprint down the field [00:05:00] more than other people. I go to the group fitness classes and I'd be sweating and I'd be jumping higher than others and, and whatever, you know, always like harder, harder, harder, harder, harder, harder. Don't take breaks. You know, like when, when the teacher's talking, you know, you're jogging in place because I'm in such good shape, yes, I was in amazing cardiovascular shape and, as mentioned, I lost all my muscles being in that kind of amazing cardiovascular shape.

 And now what I realize is that, okay, that is great cardiovascular shape, but Is that really being in good shape? What is the point of exercise in the end? And now, as a 50 plus woman, I realized that the point of the exercise is to keep this body that we have been given in good functioning, working condition.[00:06:00] 

And when I talk about good functioning, working condition, I mean, above average, right? I mean, I'm never going to be like, Oh, yeah, medium is good enough, at least not for me. So in order to keep my body functioning at its top possible level, all right, maybe top is wrong, because then it would be like I was an Olympian or something, but at a higher than average level, I need to be doing things differently.

And that that really is the goal. It's not about how many hours a week I can do punishing workouts. No, it's about how am I going to be able to manage in my life going forward?

And the biggest thing that I've learned is that actually, you do not need to be doing these grueling, punishing workouts, really about strength training and then some cardio. Of course, cardio health is important. You need the two, right? Cardio and strength [00:07:00] training. But I was way overdosing on thinking that cardio is king. It is the answer. Then I'm in shape. In shape used to be being able to do a lot of cardio. Now in shape means having my body functioning. So that I can manage until the end of my life.

The second thing I have totally changed my point of view on is calories. When I would go to do those grueling cardio workouts, of course, I would be checking my calories afterwards. Woo hoo! If I was, 550 calories or more in that hour session. It was not unusual for me. That's how hard I was going.

And what I have realized now is that actually, (a) those calorie monitors are completely [00:08:00] inaccurate, you cannot rely on them at all. So if your treadmill is telling you something, forget it, if your sports watch is telling you something, forget it. And in fact, The better shape you're in, so the more of whatever exercise it is that you're doing that you do, your body becomes better at it, and your body becomes more efficient at doing it, so it actually burns fewer calories per minute than the first day that you tried it out.

So in fact, when you're able to do the hour of sweaty exercise and feeling great and whatever, and it was telling me that 500 calories plus, I was not burning 500 calories plus I was probably burning fewer calories than I was the first day that I went there because my body had just gotten better at doing those exercises and become more efficient.

So that was completely thrown out the window. And then the other thing [00:09:00] that I've learned is that. Even if you are doing that hour of cardio, it does not make up for all those other hours, those other 23 hours of the day that you are being sedentary. So I am somebody who worked at a desk job marketing, executive.

And so I was sitting in front of my computer. It was not unusual, eight to 10 hours a day, plus traveling to and from the office, sitting in the car, sitting when I'm eating dinner, sitting, watching TV, you know, so much sitting. And so really the movement has become a far more important feature in my life than looking at the calories Burned in my particular session that I did.

So if you think about like number one and number two combined, my whole mindset around exercise in general has [00:10:00] changed from becoming this kind of, uh, Burn calories, sweat activity to it being something that I do in order to support keeping my body in as healthy, functioning, and honestly, good looking condition as I can.

Right? So that, that's a complete mindset shift.

And by the way, as far as calories go, the place where I do look at calories is in how much I'm eating. I nowadays totally ignore the calories burned that my watch or my walk pad is telling me because I know that those are inaccurate and I don't want to be influenced by those numbers.

Number three, I've changed my mind about weight training. So back when I was in college, I did weight training and we had a strength coach for the [00:11:00] lacrosse team. And in fact, I kept weight training up until my first child was born. I don't know if I actually trained through most of the pregnancy because I had some Issues at the end, but in any case, I stopped when my first kid was born and then when I finally had enough time to start exercising again outside of the house, I went to group fitness classes.

I was like, been there, done that with a weight room, way more fun to do the group fitness classes. They have these group fitness classes with weights so I can do weight training in a group fitness class. And there's the teacher there. I love moving to music. I mean, I'm a dance lover and all that. And I thought that that is the way to go.

But as I mentioned in the very beginning of this episode, that's exactly what I was doing when my muscle tone disappeared. So clearly it is not sufficient for maintaining and building [00:12:00] muscle. Okay, if you've been a complete couch potato and then you start going to one of those group fitness classes, you may notice some improvement.

In fact, I would be surprised if you don't notice some improvement. But if you actually want to get to where you are building significant muscle, and significant does not mean that you will look like some bodybuilder. I mean, honestly, especially in perimenopause, menopause is just so much harder to put on that muscle.

But if you want to build a significant amount so that you can do some body recomposition, start taking advantage of the increase in metabolism that you can get and the health benefits of having muscle like, increasing in your insulin sensitivity, decreasing your risk for type two diabetes, then the weight room is really going to be your friend. You can also lift at home. By the way, when I say weight room, I mean that you do systematic strength training is going to be your friend

 And even if you're not [00:13:00] somebody who loves weight training, you should view it as a necessity, kind of like brushing your teeth and do the minimum, you know, one to two times a week, preferably twice a week to keep your body strong and functional. Now, A lot of people who think that they're not really weight training people when they keep at it for a little while and a little while, I mean like six months and they start to see the muscle come on. They notice the increases in strength. They notice that they can do things around the house, like pick up heavy bags of dirt. Groceries are easier to bring inside. moving the furnitureYou don't need to ask for help. You know, if you want to redecorate your living room, they get addicted to that. And they realize that being strong just feels amazing. It makes you feel so powerful as a woman. I mean, I think as a woman in particular, it makes you just feel [00:14:00] so badass, when you are strong and. you can do things on your own.

All right, then to a totally different extreme for number four, sleep. I used to think, I can sleep when I'm dead. Sleep is so undervalued, I think, and especially in American hustle culture. It's like, Get up at three o'clock in the morning and go do your workout. And, and that's, you know, the most important thing or you're only cool if you do that and sleeping is for wimps.

Sleeping is for wise women is my new point of view. Sleeping is critical. If you haven't gotten enough sleep, you're not recovering. Your mind is not going to be working in the same way. Your hunger and satiety hormones are going to be out of whack. So you're going to eat incorrectly, then you're going to start gaining weight.

And it's going to be this whole, you know, [00:15:00] downward spiral that starts to happen. So sleep has become really One of my top, top priorities to the point where when I was dating, this was a serious criteria for the guys, right? If, if, if I was on a date with somebody and it's like, I have sleep apnea or I snore or, you know, I roll around a ton in bed.

red flag, red flag.

 My current boyfriend. The first night we spent the night together was amazing. I was so happy because I got to sleep. He wasn't one of these people that wiggles around. He is like me. Falls asleep, stays in one position, maybe flips over once or twice a night, but oh, it is so important for me to get my sleep unbelievably important.

So that has risen in priority, like so, so, so [00:16:00] much. If you have not been getting sufficient sleep, or if you're tired during the day, you feel like you're living on caffeine, you're just dragging around the house. Try a week or two, if you can, of making a point of getting enough sleep and just feel the difference of what your life can feel like. If you get enough sleep, I really think that is amazing.

Number five that I've changed my mind about is aging. So I used to not really think about aging, and then suddenly I got scared to death of aging as my parents started getting older, as their friends started to decline and they kept telling us Oh, so and so, couldn't come over because they can barely walk these types of stories kept coming up. And then I started noticing. older women out and about, and [00:17:00] noticing how hard it was for them to get up out of chairs in restaurants, or go down like two little stairs when they're leaving a restaurant. And I'm thinking, how old are these women? They don't even look that old. And they're already having trouble getting around.

And I started to really freak out about aging. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be limited. I don't want to be the one who can't travel or is holding everybody up or slowing everybody down. I want to be in good shape. And now that I have changed my perspective on working out to be something that supports healthy aging, and not just healthy aging, But the ability to really have an excellent health span and quality of life to the end.

I mean, what's the joy of living to be 90 if you are dependent on others or [00:18:00] bedridden or your world has really shrunken, to your own house because you can't walk enough to go outside or whatever. So. What, uh, changing my whole workout philosophy has done for me and being stronger has done for me is I feel so much more in control of my destiny. I feel like there are so many levers that I can pull to stay healthier, stronger, fitter. Quality of life, all those things, and I'm pulling them and it makes me feel so much more confident and in control of this whole aging thing.

And finally, number six, I have changed my opinion on tracking what you eat. So yeah, I understand that tracking what you eat is important when you're dieting. For sure, that's clear. But what about when you're not dieting? Maybe you're somebody who doesn't really need to lose weight. What's the [00:19:00] point of tracking? And what I learned through tracking myself, um, really, really strictly is That you learn so much, oh my God, and the things that you learn help you to maintain your weight, eat in a more healthy, maybe that's a weird word, healthy, but like achieve your, uh, kind of nutrition goals, like, for example. Getting in a protein or getting in the fiber. And tracking is really the only way to do it. I can't tell you how many people I have had start tracking. And then they say, Oh, I thought it was eating more protein than I am are, oops, you know, or they think that they're eating a certain number of calories and they realize that, ooh, okay, now that [00:20:00] I really weigh it and measure it and track it, I realized that my serving sizes are quite high.

And, and for me, I actually, I don't, I don't track like put things in a tracker all the time, but for serving sizes, because I buy like these big tubs of Greek yogurt, for example, and then, you know, I scoop out of that my serving. Well, I'm really bad at eyeballing it. So. I do weigh out how much Greek yogurt I'm going to have because I want to stay in my serving size.

I don't need to eat like one and a half servings of it. One is plenty for me. And so tracking has really, really helped me to build new eating habits. And by new eating habits built by tracking, I don't mean that I've cut things out of my diet, but I just know that, hey, if I'm going to have a sandwich, yeah, I could choose to put turkey or ham on it, for example.

And they're, they're [00:21:00] not that hugely different for me as far as my enjoyment. I have turkey that I really love. And. Now I make the choice of eating the turkey most of the time, but sometimes I want the ham, but I'm making the conscious choice that, all right, today I will have the ham. And I know that's a little bit more, and maybe the turkey would be a little bit less, but I feel like having the ham.

So I think for that reason, the tracking is important. is really helpful and I hope that doesn't sound like, Hey, you need to be obsessing about everything that you eat.

It's more about being aware and eating purposely and consciously,

so in summary, the six things that I've changed my mind about in my fifties are number one, what being in shape is. So now I have much more of a long term perspective on that rather than how well I can get through [00:22:00] a sweaty cardio class. Number two, calories burned. I have started ignoring them completely because I understand that the measurements are very inaccurate, not really worth looking at at all.

Number three, systematic weight training. I used to think that cardio classes with weights was enough. Now I know better. 

Four. Sleep. I have understood the value of sleep and it is one of the things I prioritize super highly in my life. Getting in the seven to eight hours every night and if I have a shorter night, trying to catch up on my sleep afterwards.

Five, it's aging. I used to be scared of it and now I realize that I can control What my aging journey is going to look like by keeping my body fit and healthy.

and finally tracking what I eat. [00:23:00] That has been an amazing tool for making sure that I hit my protein goals and my fiber goals. So I hope this episode was helpful to you. What have you changed your mind about in midlife about health and fitness? I would love to hear. So drop me a message in Instagram. The link is in the show notes.

And with that, I leave you till next week. Happy training.