#101: 10 Reasons Muscle Matters for Women Over 40 (Benefits of having more muscle on your body)

Muscle isn’t just about looking toned—it’s the key to living stronger, healthier, and more confidently in midlife and beyond.

In this episode of 40+ Fitness for Women, I share 10 surprising benefits of having more muscle and why it’s so important for women in perimenopause and menopause. 

Muscle plays a role in nearly every aspect of your health and quality of life, from boosting your metabolism to improving your balance and even helping you recover from illness.

Curious about how muscle can transform your body and your future? Tune in to learn more—and to get inspired to start building yours today!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to 40+ Fitness for Women
• 0:44 Personal Challenges and New Year Reflections
• 2:56 The Importance of Muscle Mass
• 5:15 Understanding Muscle Loss with Age
• 6:56 Real-Life Examples and Motivation
• 8:25 Top 10 Benefits of Building Muscle
• 15:26 Health Benefits and Insulin Sensitivity
• 19:30 Muscle and Metabolism
• 21:12 Healthy Aging and Independence
• 26:04 Conclusion and Encouragement

Transcript

#101: 10 Reasons Muscle Matters for Women Over 40


[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto your host, and I am a certified menopause fitness coach. Today, we are going to be talking about muscle and why it is so important for us to have muscle on our bodies. So last week I talked about the benefits of weight training, strength training in general.
And today it's really about having muscle tissue and more muscle mass on your body and why that is a good thing. And again, I have a list and it's a list of benefits. 10 reasons why having more muscle is a good thing. 
But before we get into that, I'm going to say happy new year again. It is now the 9th of January when I'm recording this and I have had a heck, a heck of a stressful start to my year and to last [00:01:00] year with dog almost dying, um, My website being deleted by accident by the tech support team when they were trying to upload a new template for me and Then now I discovered that actually my email is not showing up in people's inboxes. It's showing up in their spam boxes. And that's another technical glitch, uh, that I've now encountered as I've moved my email sending from one tool to another. So if you haven't been getting emails from me lately, that is why. And please check your Spam folder your junk folder. I actually had one Woman who I know has been on my email list for a really long time She re subscribed because she had not been getting my emails. So I feel really really bad that I didn't catch this sooner, but I'm now doing what I can to make the situation [00:02:00] better. And if all else fails, I will move back to my old tool. But in the meanwhile, I have been sick with the flu. I think it actually was influenza. So I had a high fever and I was just completely wiped out. So I've been doing the absolute minimum, uh, here. Of course, when you're running a business, you can't just take a sick day. But doing as much being sick as possible and finally got back into the weight room yesterday. And I was a little bit hesitant because I'm not a hundred percent yet, but oh, I was strong. So it felt really, really good. Now I'm thinking might be a little sore tomorrow, but let's see. But I wanted to make sure to hold onto my muscle because it is so, so important for us to have muscle on our body. And I also want to say that I know in the [00:03:00] US huge, huge trend to start using, the weight loss drugs to lose a couple more pounds or a few more pounds, you know, so not just for obese, uh, pre diabetic people anymore. And please. If you are going that route, take care of your muscles. So make sure that you are eating a lot of protein, and I've understood that it is not so pleasant to be eating a lot of protein when you're on those drugs. And please make sure that you're weight training, because your body will get rid of your muscles unless you are reminding it to do otherwise.
And how do you remind it? You use those muscles, you load those muscles really hard. So your body is kind of fooled into thinking you need to be stronger than you actually do. [00:04:00] Because even though day to day. You may be able to manage with less muscle. There are situations where, I mean, even day to day, you know, you need to lift the grocery bags or put something on a high shelf or run up the stairs or get across the street where you are going to need that muscular strength and power. Okay. So that was my preamble. Today, and I hope you are staying healthy and yeah, and keeping your stress levels low. I think my stress levels were just through the roof and that's part of the reason that I was so susceptible to getting sick. Plus I missed my flu shot and that was my bad. Not happening ever again. I will be taking it religiously because losing a week like that, especially it was like a holiday week So I could have been spending time with my friends and my boyfriend and my kids And I was like at the bottom of my bed trying not to get them sick. [00:05:00] Anyway Let's get into the benefits oh, and by the way, the one of the reasons I wanted to tell you that I'm sick Is that if I sound a little crappy it is because of that. My voice is really not back yet, so sorry about that. 
Okay, so at the back of all this, we need to understand that we are losing muscle as we age. And that is happening across the board, men, women, starting about age 30, could start a little bit earlier, we're losing three to 8 percent of our muscle mass each decade. Now that seems like, Oh, three to 8%. What's that? But that actually is. a lot of muscle mass that you're losing over time. And in menopause, when your estrogen levels change, that decline in muscle mass [00:06:00] actually is even higher.
, the reason I'm here is that I experienced that drop in muscle mass, despite the fact that I was training and working out hard. body pump classes three days a week, you know, bootcamp classes, all these things that I thought were holding on to my muscle and they weren't. And, um, and suddenly it was like, I woke up one day and I was like, okay, what happened to that toned body that I'm used to walking around in?
I saw pictures of myself and realized that, okay, I don't look like I'm, I thought I looked like I don't look like I used to look and that's when I started to really pay attention to muscle because it is a use it or lose it. It is that you are getting weaker by the day that your muscle is disappearing every day that you don't do something about it.
It just reminds me of one of my. Very [00:07:00] closest friends. When I first started talking about this business and really learning about weight training, she was like, Hey, Lynn, once you have something, I want to be your first guinea pig. And she still hasn't started weight training. And, you know, I don't, I don't want to be unkind or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that this is a woman that when I met her, she was doing a lot of these aerobics classes and everything. And she had muscle. She's somebody who actually builds muscle very easily. One of those genetic freaks as women. And she was muscular. You looked at her and her legs were muscled, her arms muscled. You could see her biceps and her triceps. triceps and all those things. And she's still just as much of a maniac for those classes. And she has so little muscle anymore. And she even says that she notices that she's not strong anymore and she still [00:08:00] hasn't gotten started. And so I hope, I hope, I hope that you have gotten started or that you will get started now. Don't put it off any longer. It doesn't take much time. It's like twice a week.
All right. So that's the scary fact. 
And as a population, we are under muscled and we need to be doing something about it. But so what's the big deal about muscle? Let's think about it. So ten things. 
The first is that obviously, and this is probably the most obvious one that everybody will think of, so if you have more muscle, what does that mean? It means that you are stronger and more powerful and you can do things. You know, so you need to carry in the groceries. You can get them in. You need to put your Christmas decorations on that top shelf and you can lift it up there with ease. You need to carry that bag of dirt, so you can do [00:09:00] your gardening and you can do that. Or if you live in the North like I do, you need to shovel snow and you can get that done too. So honestly, muscle is necessary just to get through day to day life. And the more muscle you have, you're going to be stronger and able to like manage those kinds of things better.
Number two is probably the one that women care about most, especially in the forties and early fifties. Is when you are kind of getting your head out of the sand or out of the. family and being so focused on everybody else. And you finally have a moment to think about yourself. You notice that, Oh my gosh, I'm starting to look different than I used to look. I still want to look good and you want to be toned. So the more muscle you have on your body, the more toned you are. Cause what is toned? [00:10:00] Toned is muscle. showing. So it requires two things, having muscle. And the second thing is having a low enough body fat percentage that you can actually see the shape of the muscle underneath.
And when you are looking toned and feeling good about your body, then your self confidence goes up.
I had one client who is a single mom of two teenage girls, and she was really just focused on her family, going to work, taking care of the girls, you know, this kind of thing. And she started strength training with me in my group program a year ago. And. By summer, she was noticing such great changes in her body. She was noticing that she, her, you know, her shoulders were getting some definition and all that and her confidence just soared and she started dating again. I thought that was amazing and an amazing way of like how [00:11:00] when you're feeling good about yourself and you've muscle on your body, it can really affect a lot more things than just your ability to like curl a bigger weight, right?
better mobility and balance. So having muscle and power will also improve your stability, your ability to stay upright and reduce the risk of falls. One of the things, one of the biggest places where people do fall. And I mean, this is something that unfortunately, even at 40, we need to be still. And I'm 53, by the way, but even in your forties, like you need to start looking ahead because we're going to be here for a long time. And one of the biggest risk factors we have is if we fall and break a bone. And so balance and stability and our ability to avoid falls is super important and having muscle and power so that you can move quickly [00:12:00] so that you can maintain your balance and avoid those falls. Is important. Plus, one of the biggest places where people fall actually is when they're taking a step down, not a step up, but a step down. So you know, because you're having to put on the brakes to stop your whole body weight from moving downwards. So yeah, and it is one of the reasons why if you have stairs where you live, like if you live in an apartment, take the stairs, take them down. Take them up because they will also help to maintain those muscles.
Plus your overall health. I remember back in high school. We, uh, as a senior year, we were on the top floor of our high school. So we're like on the fourth floor. Was it fifth floor? And we had to go up the stairs. So every day, you know, you had to trudge up the stairs to the fifth floor to your lockers [00:13:00] to put them away in the morning.
And then the lunchroom was, of course, on the bottom floor, and, you know, you had classes on the other side of the street, so you had to, like, climb up and down that five flights of stairs many times a day. And the first weeks, it felt like not fun. I mean, even in my teens, it didn't feel great. But then soon, you're like, Like coming up them two at a time and zipping down them. It really is great exercise. So an aside, but it's a great way to keep yourself in shape and you don't have to like have an ex separate exercise session to do that.
Third reason why it's great to have muscle is you will have happier joints. So the muscle around your joints supports the joints. I, for example, have a cranky arthritic knee. It has been MRI'd. And the thing that the orthopedic surgeon said to me was, get back in [00:14:00] the weight room, keep your legs strong. And it is true. My knee is doing much, much better now that I'm strong. Doesn't hurt me. 
And another part of my body, which was bothering me for years, years, and nobody could figure out what was wrong with it was my left hip. It was, it was really torture, you know, sitting everything. And once I started strength training and I got my left hamstring and left glute strong, Now my hip doesn't bother me anymore.
So instead of thinking of joint pain as a reason why you can't start weight training, think of it as the reason why you should start weight training, to keep those joints in shape. And of course, you don't want to like go from zero to a hundred right away. So start weight training gradually. If you do have arthritis or severe [00:15:00] joint pain, whatever, then get a clearance from your doctor. If you have any kind of hesitations about starting.
Okay. So, so far we have talked about muscle to give you more strength and power. You will look and feel better and that boosts your confidence. You'll have better mobility and balance and happier joints. So that's already like quite a nice list of things.
Now let's talk about health. So one of the big ones that has talked about a lot and is a problem because of people being overweight is insulin sensitivity. Now, muscle is a glucose sink. It stores glucose in your body. So I have clients who have started weight training because they're pre diabetic, and that is one of the ways that they are combating this by adding muscle to their body so that they have [00:16:00] better glucose sinks and better glucose regulation in their bloodstreams.
Muscle tissue acts as a glucose sink, lowering blood sugar levels. and reducing the risk of type two diabetes.
And overall, having more muscle improves your health, your cardiovascular health, your hormone regulation, and your immune function. So it's, it's interesting because I started weight training really, really for aesthetic reasons, but the longer I've been doing it and learning about the benefits of muscle and weight training, it's just like, Why the heck haven't I been doing this my whole entire life? And I'm so glad that my children all weight train because it is just so beneficial. I hope they've picked it up as a lifelong habit.
And number seven, having more muscle allows us to be better prepared for the unexpected, like injuries, [00:17:00] right? Or if you need to have a surgery. Imagine that you have an injury, and this happened to me when my knee blew up a little over a year ago. All of a sudden I didn't have the use of my right leg in the same way because I couldn't bend my knee.
And I had to, for example, Get myself off the toilet with using just one leg. I had to go up and down the stairs in a different way because I couldn't use my right leg. And thank goodness my left leg was strong so I could manage with being kind of one sided. And then I think about my friend who is getting hip replacement surgery. And for her, it would be amazing to be really strong. Going into that, 
and even if you think about illness, if you're constantly living in a state of you're just barely strong enough to [00:18:00] manage, I am sure you know of older people who, you know, they can just make it up the stairs kind of With effort. Well, what happens if they're sick for a few days or even a week, then their muscle mass declines during that time because they're not using it. Right. And because they're so on the edge, they end up in a situation where They maybe aren't able to live independently at that point. In fact, here in Finland, where I live, they had this issue with, older people who are living alone and they're managing to live alone, but then they get sick. They have like a two week extended illness, whatever the flu or COVID and all of a sudden they need care and they tested having, personal trainers go in and work with them with weights for a few weeks and they got their strength back up so that they could [00:19:00] continue to live independently.
Now we probably don't have the luxury of having a personal trainer show up when we're recovering from illness. So it is a far better thing for us to be a little bit stronger than we kind of need to be to get through day to day. And that way we have that buffer in case we are sick in case we're injured to help us to get back and to allow us to, you know, to remain independent
okay. And then number eight is the one that probably everybody loves, including me, is that having more muscle boosts your base metabolic rate. That means how many calories you're burning just sitting on the couch, , if I were just sitting on the couch four years ago before I had built the muscle that I've built, I would need fewer calories to maintain my body. Then what I do need [00:20:00] today, so your basal metabolic rate goes up. And that means that you can eat a little bit more freely.
And what I've found since changing my body composition to having a lot more muscle on my body is that it's easier to maintain my weight even through periods of time, like the holidays where I do kind of, I mean, I hate to use this word, word, . Overindulge. I mean, I let. Myself kind of eat a lot of candy, for example, last year and this year, and I go out partying more. So I'm having more alcohol and more, stuff off of the snacks table and eating out more, you know, those, those things just bring in a lot more calories where logically I should have gained a lot more weight and I will gain maybe half a kilo. And that's like after three months of Really really not following, [00:21:00] you know, my normal eating habits So I feel like the muscle has really buffered That for me.
And the last two are really around healthy aging. So number nine is having more muscle delays age related decline. So the more muscle you start out with, obviously, If the decline is a certain percentage each year, you are going to be in a better position, the more muscle you start out with.
So even if one day You're at a place where you can't do strength training because of whatever. Um, you're going to be starting at a place where you have a lot of muscle. And then when you start declining from that, you are still going to be at a higher place than you would be if you would never put that additional muscle on your body. I [00:22:00] hope you understand the logic that I'm going through there. And that means that you'll be able to manage in your day to day life. For longer, even if you're not able to maintain your strength training going forward.
And number 10, you will be able to maintain your independence longer. That's one of the things we've talked about, but also let's talk about like, not just getting through the day to day, but being able to do the things that you want to do. Muscle is really important for that. So for example, my client who has grandchildren, one of her. big motivators was that she wants to be able to pick up her grandchildren as they grow. Right? So she has to maintain her strength and even get stronger because they're becoming heavier and heavier over time. And one thing that she noticed quite early on was that when she was picking up her grandchildren, [00:23:00] Who, of course, have gotten, you know, bigger and bigger every month and heavier and heavier every month that her lower back was not bothering her anymore. So already after a few months of strength training, she was seeing a difference in this ability to do something that is, is so important to her. 
And I had another client who. Started strength training two times a week at the gym as a single woman living alone, it was, it was amazing to listen to her talking about how excited she is, that she feels stronger, like she can manage on her own, that she doesn't need help to move heavy things around her house. I mean, This is the great thing about having muscle.
So I think overall, like the greatest things about having more muscle from the perspective of my clients, women I've talked to, and my own personal [00:24:00] experience is a, that you look better because that affects so many things, your self confidence, what you dare to do, what you dare to wear, how old you feel, all those things, it makes a difference that you feel good about yourself and having more muscle on your body really correlates very highly with how you feel about your body. 
Second thing is how strong you are. Gives you a totally different level of confidence as far as your ability to cope and manage in life. And to manage on your own. It's, it's, it's, it's. I think especially for women, this comes out really, really strongly because we are, you know, we are the weaker sex, right? Even if we lift a ton, we're not going to be as strong as some guy, but we are stronger and then we can manage better. We can, Do it on our own. We are more [00:25:00] independent. And whether you have a boyfriend or not, or a husband or whatever, or somebody that we can help you, it still feels really good and empowering to be strong. 
And the third thing is the fear around aging that we can manage, because The thing is, for women, we do get frail. Honestly, frailty is a problem for women as they age. And aging can feel really scary when you think that your independence and your ability to do the things that you want to do is going to disappear. The thing is, it is in your hands. You have the ability to affect what your future looks like. I am not ever going to be a frail old lady if I can help it. And I'm trying to help it every single day of my life. And I hope to [00:26:00] help you. with that as well. 
Okay. So those were the 10 reasons why having more muscle on your body is a great thing. And I hope this was helpful to you and motivating for you to keep going with your weight training journey if you are already started.
And if not, I hope it's motivating you to get started on your weight training journey. And I will point out that there is a method for actually building muscle, and it unfortunately does not involve things like tons of reps with low weights and feeling the burn, sweating a lot and getting your heart rate up. Really building muscle is a systematic process. And it is something that I would be happy to teach you in my learn to lift courses or in my group [00:27:00] program. So if you are in doubt about whether you're doing these things right, sign up for one of those. And, um, yeah, happy to help. And with that, I leave you until next week and wish you happy training.