#123: Bulking & Cutting - should you be doing it?

Should you bulk to build muscle? And then go into a cut to get toned?

These phrases are everywhere online — but are they actually helpful for women in midlife?

In episode 123 of 40+ Fitness for Women, I explain what bulking and cutting are and explain why these bodybuilding tactics don't make sense for most women in their 40s, 50s, and beyond.

I also touch on something that’s been bothering me — the subtle promotion of GLP-1 microdosing by fitness influencers who should know better.

In this episode:

• What bulking and cutting actually mean
• Why “bulking” is probably going to leave you with results you don't like
• What to do instead if your goal is muscle, strength, and long-term results
• A quick word on GLP-1 micro dosing and online promotions that feel... off

If you’re tired of complicated trends and just want clear guidance on what works, this episode will help you cut through the noise and stay focused on what matters.

Resources mentioned:

• Learn to Lift – VIP Edition > (Join now for live coaching with me this June)
• Midlife Fat Loss Formula > (Mini course for sustainable fat loss in midlife)

Transcript

#123: Bulking and Cutting

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, and I help women to start strength training and also to lose fat in menopause and beyond, and I am super excited this week. Because I'm in the middle of my liftoff challenge, and this has been, I mean, just really an amazing, amazing experience because I've been here on the podcast sharing how important strength training is.

Trying to describe what it is, what it's like to an audience who has. Let's face it, we've grown up on group fitness classes and going jogging and running, you know, half marathons and 10 Ks and these kinds of things. And strength training is not something that most of us have ever done. And so it's kind of hard to understand like what it [00:01:00] really is.

It sounds kind of mysterious. And the challenge has been an opportunity to actually try it out yourself. So yeah, so that has been so exciting. And what is really wonderful is being able to help women who have never done it before and they have questions and then hear them, you know, say that, wow, they have actually enjoyed this.

Much more than they thought they did. They would. And then also mention that, oh, I was at the gym yesterday and did this workout, but when I did your mini workout, I felt like it was just so much more effective. So, yeah, so it has been really, really amazing. I hope to run it again in the fall. So if any of you want to join in, just keep your ears open for that.

It's been a lot, a lot of fun. I. And off the back of it, [00:02:00] I am actually going to, of course, women who are getting started. Uh, they are asking, so what next? So I do have my learn to lift programs, which are normally do what you're. Self programs. You know, you, you buy the program and then it's got videos and everything to help you get going and you get going on your own.

But I got so excited about just the interactions that, you know, just working with the women much more closely in this challenge that I decided that I would do something a little different this time, which is that I'm offering a VIP edition of the Learn to Lift program. So. It's not gonna cost anymore, and that's the crazy part of it.

But if you get started with the women here in June, then you'll be able to participate in four live sessions with me. And that means that I'll be able to [00:03:00] like have discussions with you about how it's going. Make sure that you know you're applying progressive overload properly. We can talk about when you should be increasing your weights.

Look at form, all kinds of things. So I'm really, really excited for that because I know that one of the challenges is often that you want a little handholding and maybe a little more accountability. So I was thinking if I can get a cohort of women to start at the same time, and then I'm there. Over the 10 weeks, or maybe it'll be over 12 weeks, having a call every now and again, it helps with the accountability and building that habit because that's really the biggest thing that we need to do is build the habit, right?

Once you get started, then it's more likely that you'll keep going. And what do they say? It's like 10 weeks to build a habit. So I'm trying to think of ways. To help you build that habit [00:04:00] because it is just so important. All right, so that's kind of the news from me and what I wanted to talk about today is actually something which I almost decided to do an episode that would be like my pet peeves on social media because, oh my God, I saw this.

Oh my God. I saw this reel from a woman who I've really loved her stuff up until now. She is somebody who has been on MLAs, so there are these marketing, whatever, where you, you sell somebody else's products basically, and they teach you how to do social media really, really well. And, and she's been a great salesperson and she started out like selling makeup.

I think it was Saint Saint, I don't know how you say it, but anyway, that makeup brand. And then, uh, she kind of moved over into the fitness space and she's been sharing her workouts [00:05:00] and she's one of these women who develops really nice looking muscles and she has a really nice leaning body, you know, overall and all that.

So obviously she's accumulated a ton of followers and she's been promoting strength training and that's wonderful. I have been completely on board with everything she's doing up until right now, so, so I had to just come on and talk about it. And I'm not gonna tell her name, but maybe you'll know of her based on the few little facts that I just shared.

But today she had a real out where she was sharing that she is going to be microdosing GLP ones now. Okay. And she gives a reason that she's doing this. And by the way, she is not one bit overweight, but she has just been bulking all winter long so that [00:06:00] she could build more muscle. And now, you know, after you bulk bulking is basically on purpose eating more than you need calories wise, so that you gain weight and the idea there is that if you feed your body more food, then it'll more easily put on. Muscle. Well, this is a trick or a cycle that bodybuilders go through. They'll go through like a bulking phase where they overeat and they train and they try to build as much muscle as possible, and I. The problem is though, that that means that then they are carrying more fat on their bodies, and since they're competing and they need to be very, very low body fat, at that point, then they need to go through a cut phase, which is an extreme diet where they go down to very, very low body fat per percentages.

And at the same time, [00:07:00] since they're going down to very, very low body fat percentages, they will lose some of that muscle while they're. Dieting, even though they are strength training at the same time

Anyway, so cutting and bulking, cutting bulking, cutting bulking. These are cycles that bodybuilders do, the ones that compete.

And, and I have to say that my, my very strong opinion, and this was kind of the topic that I wanted to get into today, was this bulking cutting topic.

Is that we do not need to be doing it. Okay. If your intention is to start bodybuilding, like actually compete and whatever, then you know, you, you're probably listening to the wrong podcast.

To be really, really honest, I am not in that world. I'm not interested in being in that world. Yeah, and uh, that's enough said. So if that's [00:08:00] your thing that you wanna do bodybuilding, then. Of course everybody makes their own choices, but, but that's not who I'm talking to. I'm talking to women who wanna get stronger.

They wanna put muscle on their bodies because of the health and lifestyle benefits, and also the visual benefits of having more muscle on your body, and they wanna get their bodies stronger, so they're bones, their muscles, their tendons, their ligaments, everything stronger, and they wanna get all the benefits of strength training and having more muscle, like having stronger bones, fighting osteoporosis and better blood sugar regulation. So avoiding type two diabetes and all the other things that there are out there. And so if you fall into that category, and I definitely fall into that category.

You do not need to worry about bulking and cutting. [00:09:00] Please don't bulk. I mean what you will do is you will just gain weight and then you'll need to lose the weight or else just be happy being. Fatter, and I say that word, I'm choosing that word very carefully fatter, because what happens in bulking is you're eating more than your body needs and therefore your body will store those extra calories as fat and so therefore you will be fatter when you have bolt.

And the evidence as far as the bulk helping you to build more muscle is not very, I mean, I don't see it as very convincing, especially for this group of women. In other words, if you are a woman who maybe has a little extra, I even have a little extra. Some people might think that, oh yeah, I'd love to [00:10:00] be as thin as Lynn, but I have extra.

You know, so if I have extra, most likely you have extra. I think 99% of the women walking around have a little extra. And when you are strength training, if you have a little extra, then you undergo something called body recomposition, which just means if your body needs more fuel to build those muscles, then what you are feeding it, then it will make use of those fat stores that you have on board.

So the fat doesn't turn into muscle directly. It's not like there's a metamorphosis that those fat cells turn into muscle. No. Your body uses the energy that you've got stored as fat to drive the processes that create the muscle, and you need the protein, the amino acids, actually, to create the muscle. So this bulking and cutting thing is something I would not recommend, and this is the one of the things that this [00:11:00] influencer online had done is she had spent the winter in a bulk, and so she was fatter, surprise, surprise, because that's what she was doing. And then I. Not happy with being fatter. She wanted to lose the weight faster or didn't want to diet, or was having food noise and noticed that dieting is not so easy.

And so she decided that she's going to do the microdosing of the GLP ones. And the thing that concerns me, I think the most about this is that I know probably most people who are watching her aren't thinking about this aspect, but how does she make her money? Right? She is on social media. Yes, she has some really great messages to give about feeling good at this age, that we don't need to become invisible, we can be strong.

All these things which are [00:12:00] really empowering, wonderful, wonderful messages and she also makes her money by, well, she used to by selling makeup, but I think that company went defunct. And now what I am afraid of is that she has teamed up with a GLP one provider and is going to be kind of. Subtly, you know, pushing audience in that direction, making money that way.

And I think that, I hope I'm wrong. I really hope I'm wrong. Uh, so this was the first post that I've seen of her. She was kind of in inviting everybody to come along on her journey. And I'm just wondering, she's probably got as much fat percentage as I do, so like. She's perfectly healthy and not big or anything.

And yeah, going on the GLP ones, so in anyway, in any case, it brought up in my mind that, please, when you [00:13:00] hear about these people talking about, oh, I'm in a bulk, oh, I'm in a cut. Remember that the bulking may seem like, oh, I should. I should maybe do that because I'm not getting enough muscle.

No, don't do it because you will get fatter, you will get more fat on your body. You'll get some muscle on your body. But honestly, if you haven't been strength training for, I. Yeah, at least five years, six years, and I mean, seriously strength training where you're reaching the end of your biological capacity, your genetic limit on building muscle, and you want to go on stage, then I would just leave that alone and, uh,

just focus on progressive overload and following a good program and just doing that program for a minimum of eight to 12 weeks at a time before switching [00:14:00] out.

So really, it's about getting the big rocks in place.

Let's not over complicate things. What you need in order to build muscle and strength, the kind you need to look toned to be firmer, to be fit, to be stronger to age well, to strengthen your bones. And to fight type two diabetes and get the other health benefits of having muscle and of strength training, the first thing you need is a good program.

So that's the list of exercises that you are going to do. Then you need to follow it for a minimum of eight to 12 weeks before swapping out. Third thing is you need to be applying progressive overload, so moving the same weights for the same number of reps week in, week out. You are pedaling in place. You need to be progressing over time.

Eat protein. Make sure that you have those amino acids coming into your body from which those beautiful [00:15:00] muscles are built. And finally, make sure that you're recovering so. I recommend two recovery days a week and just not overdoing it. I know we have very extreme, the two extremes of women. There are people who are couch potatoes, and then there are the ones who are, you know, twice a day at the gym doing all kinds of cardio classes and, and love to sweat and all that.

And just remember the recovery 'cause that is really important too. 'cause that is when the magic happens, when your muscles are able to grow.

All right. So with that, I will leave you and I hope that you will not bulk, and I will also remind you that if you do feel like you wanna get a little bit of fat off your body, I do have the midlife fat loss formula. It is a course, it's a mini [00:16:00] course which really goes through all the things that you need to do, my system for fat loss. And also that same system is amazing for kind of managing your meals, you know, getting some structure to your eating, which allows you to keep the weight off too.

And with that, I will see you next week and I wish you happy training.