This is the body recomposition revolution.
I am a former personal trainer and educator for over a decade
who is obsessed with teaching women 35 plus how to finally
drop fat and completely reshape their bodies through science
backed nutrition and training protocols optimized to meet your
body's changing hormones. Classes in session Welcome back
ladies to the body Recomposition revolution.
This is episode 3. Today we are addressing one of
the most common misconceptions women and people in general have
about lifting. Can you guess what it is?
You guessed it, because I know you're thinking it.
It is that lifting will make you big and bulbous and masculine or
bulky or whatever. And I hear that the phrase if I
had a nickel would really make me a rich woman if I had a
nickel every time I heard somebody go on about not wanting
to be bulky. So today we're going to debunk
that. And if you have tuned in before,
you know, I like to start my episodes with a learner
objective. What are we covering today?
What will you learn by the end of this episode?
As I would say in my classroom listening years on, today's
learning objective is by the end of this episode, you will be
able to explain why lifting weights helps women 35 plus, but
everybody burn fat, build muscle, visible muscle and
boosts your metabolism. So again, by the end of this
episode, you will be able to explain why lifting weights
helps women burn fat, build muscle that you can see, and
boost your metabolism. And at the end, I'm going to ask
you this question. Why is strength training more
effective than cardio alone for body recomposition after age 35?
You're listening for why strength training is more
effective than cardio for body recomp after 35.
That means why it's more effective for dropping fat,
gaining muscle. Let's start right off the bat by
debunking the myth, the misconception, the all too
common narrative that lifting heavy weights will make a woman
bulky. If you are tuned in, I'm going
to assume you're a woman, but if not, keep listening.
This applies to everybody. I'm going to assume you are a
woman. You are a woman that is looking
to drop fat. You would love to have that
lean, muscular physique. Some of you would love to have
kind of a small dancer body, and then others would love to be on
the other end of the spectrum and they love the bodybuilding
physique. They love that quote, bulky
look. And most of you fall somewhere
in between. I am right in the middle.
Sometimes I'm more towards the left and I like to be smaller
and sometimes I'm more towards the right.
And the great thing about that is it's all up to you.
You can change your body composition, your aesthetic
whenever the heck you want to. And what is awesome and what
most people don't understand is that whether you want to be a
tiny little muscular thing or on the other end of the spectrum, a
a little bit bigger, a little bit more defined, rounded
shoulders. If you're on the far right,
either way, you are going to have to lift weights and drop
fat to build your lean muscle and get that physique either
way. And that right there is the cusp
of it. That is what I hear from women
over and over again. They are always saying the
phrase, well, I just want to be small.
I just, I just want to be tiny. Got it.
Great. You still have to lift weights
because what you're saying is you want less body fat and in
order to drop your body fat and to keep it off, you have to have
more lean muscle. You have to.
There's no in between. Well, there actually is.
It's called skinny fat. So if you are not lifting and
you're starving yourself, you end up with that small but
flabby, malnourished, unathletic.
It's not a good look. That's not what we're shooting
for on this podcast at all. That's what you end up with.
And then newsflash, you can't maintain it.
You end up gaining all that weight you ran off every day of
the week plus more because you damaged your metabolism and the
first thing to go was your lean muscle, which is what boosts
your metabolism. Now I want to be very open and
very clear that learning the difference between skinny fat
and having a lean, strong physique was not just a switch
that turned on for me one day. It really wasn't.
It was a gradual realization that took me years to fully
grasp. I have had so many points in my
life where I have been continuously lifting, staying on
point with my nutrition and getting enough protein.
And then somewhere along the line I either had a kid or fell
off the wagon nutritionally. And my instinct, my brain's
natural response to how am I going to get this weight off is
always. Always has been, always will be.
It is always to eat way less than I need and start running.
I became a certified personal trainer in college.
I understand the science, but it is so innately ingrained into
who I am as a woman and the messages that were sent to me as
a child. The messages that are still
peddled to young girls every single day.
But it is getting better that you need to eat less, take up
less space, do more, be tiny, do an hour of cardio every single
day until you are a skinny fat size 0.
So I'm sure while all of you have heard you need to lift to
look the way you want to look, you probably are like me and
every other woman who falls into that continuous cycle, the same
cycle of falling off the invisible wagon that doesn't
actually exist or, you know, just kind of falling out of your
routine. You, you put on some weight,
whatever. You fall into that cycle of
crash dieting, picking up a rampant running habits, losing
all that weight, but then gaining it back and reevaluating
all your life choices, throwing yourself into endless research
and how to get that look. But as I know, you know, just
like I knew all those times I've done this cycle, I know you know
all roads lead back to lifting weights and getting enough
protein. I know it stinks, it feels off.
It's but it's truth. It's science.
If you have tuned into me before, you may have heard me
talk about my exercise and nutritional training protocols
for women and how I base my philosophy around Doctor Stacey
Sims. She's an exercise physiologist,
she specializes in Women's Health from 35 and beyond, and
she bases all of her protocols off of research done on subjects
who are actually women because, believe it or not, all the
widely known published, distributed and implemented from
very credible sources. A lot of that is done on men who
are obese or men who are overweight because the
scientists assumed that their body composition would respond
to training the same way a woman's would.
That is above the age of 35. False.
What Doctor Stacey Sims has found, and many other people who
are up to date with their research is that that women are
not men. Women do not respond to exercise
and nutrition the same way men do.
And while we are closely aligned in our bodies responses
throughout our entire lives, once you hit 35 and beyond, it's
not the same. It's not the same and you need
to train and eat a little differently.
Not super differently. But those tiny tweaks, the tiny
tweaks that I implemented into my own training and nutritional
protocols made all the difference.
And now here I am, I'm 37. I am the leanest I've ever been.
I am the strongest I've ever been.
I am also the smallest in terms of pants and dress sizes than
I've ever been, that I've ever been.
And that's because I finally started following the science
instead of what I thought would work.
I hired a professional, I did my own research, and then I started
this company to help women just like you do the same thing.
And I want to drop a little factoid on you, one that stands
out in my mind. I always think about it.
It's from Doctor Stacey Sims, and she stated that we lose .1%
of our entire body's lean muscle mass every single year after age
35. That is when you start
experiencing muscle loss and a metabolic decline.
OK, 35 years old is when your body will naturally shed a
little bit of muscle every year and your metabolism will in turn
go down. So no, it's not in your head.
You are getting bigger and you are getting, I don't know what
other word to use then a little bit flabbier I guess, because
that's what I was experiencing. I was losing muscle.
I mean, I I wasn't losing it so much because I was lifting
weights, but I definitely wasn't putting it on to the same degree
I was previously before I got into my mid 30s as doctor.
Stacey Sims, the boss, says women need strength for life.
We need it to support our hormonal changes and we need it
for our overall health. It is imperative to have muscle
to strength train. Now, I love all of my clients,
all for different reasons, but I do see commonalities.
I see commonalities in their mindsets about lifting weights
and the comfort level of lifting weights in a gym versus at home.
And I think it is interesting. I found this research paper kind
of talking about the history of women and weightlifting, and it
talks about the evolution of women's resistance training all
the way. It dates back all the way to the
1900s. No, I don't want to nerd out on
you. I'll try to keep this brief, but
I just thought it was so cool to see.
Where does this mindset come from?
Why are we so afraid of looking bulky, and why are we so afraid
of lifting weights? Why do we feel all these
feelings? Well, because of societal norms
that have honestly been imposed on us since the 1900s.
Very briefly here. 1900s women were limited to light exercise
because of the societal norms. During the 1950s and 60s we made
slight progress with aerobics and calisthetics.
Strength training pretty much remained a man thing.
Then the 1970s and 80s came rolling around and the fitness
boom started. Aerobics icons like Jane Fonda,
all those people. But strength training at this
point, it's still seen as a male pursuit.
It is on the sidelines to women. And now we're in the 80s,
nineteen 80s here. Shape magazine came out and I'm
dating myself. But Shape magazine was right up
there next to Oxygen magazine with my idol Jamie Eason.
Shape magazine started encouraging women to embrace
that strong toned physique. This is right when society
started being OK with women having kind of a muscular bod, a
muscular look. Now we're in 1990s to 2000s.
This is when all the inclusive gyms started, the mainstream
gyms, They had environments where women could comfortably
engage in resistance training right alongside men.
Woo. And now here we are in the 21st
century and we are all about strong is beautiful.
This movement is huge. You can feel it.
You can see it on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, wherever.
Finally, women are embracing it now because this shift of
encouraging women to be on the wait floor exists now, and we
are embracing it now. The data for women over the age
of 45 is so limited. There's so limited.
And the data that we do have, as I stated earlier, a lot of it
revolves around men. And that infuriates me, but it
also makes me so passionate about educating women in general
on how to treat their bodies so they can have longevity, they
can have health, they can have Wellness.
They can be the strongest versions of themselves that they
don't even know exist. And when you are the strongest
version of yourself, when you are happy putting on your
clothes in the morning, you are the best wife, you're the best
mom, you're the best friend, you're the best sister, you're
the best coworker, you're the best neighbor.
You're the best you you can be when you commit to making the
changes in your life that you need to make in order to be
stronger, in order to be healthier, in order to like what
you see when you look in the mirror, in order to step out of
your sweatpants and maybe once in a while, put on some jeans
and feel good about it. It's possible, I promise you.
And now we're going to move on to the science behind heavy
lifting. Why does lifting heavy?
And that's a subjective statement, but why does lifting
weights matter? How does it benefit women over
35? When you lift weights, that is
stimulating neuromuscular adaptations that leads to
increased strength and muscle mass.
The more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism is.
It is vital for metabolic health.
And as I stated in the beginning of the episode, after age 35,
you're losing .1% of your muscle every single year from this
point on. So if you are not strength
training to combat that natural our body's response to shed
muscle naturally, if you're not combating that with lifting
weights, lifting weights that are going to be heavy enough to
stimulate that neuromuscular adaptation, then that muscle you
had is going away. OK.
And the muscle you think you're getting from lifting those tiny
little 5 LB weights around in your aerobics class or your
whatever class, that isn't going to do anything.
That's why a lot of you who are in those classes that they toss
around £510.00 with, that's not focused enough to actually
stimulate neuromuscular adaptations, That's not focused
enough to give you real strength.
You have to be intentional about splitting your lifting sessions
to designate muscle groups where you are honing in on really
challenging yourself. So I want to wrap up today's
episode with some facts and some facts that I hope will just
drive home the objective of understanding why lifting heavy
is not going to make you bulky in any capacity that is more
geared towards your nutrition and how much you're eating.
OK. Lifting weights is just going to
increase your lean muscle mass. You don't have enough
testosterone to look the way you're envisioning when I say
the word bulky. Let's start at the metabolic
rate. So lifting heavy increases
resting metabolic rate, which means you burn more calories
just living your life. Strength training increases your
resting metabolic rate by about 7 1/2%.
That's big. So if you are strength training
consistently, know that your metabolism is going up over 7%.
Just by living your life sitting there on the couch doing
absolutely nothing. Your metabolism is higher.
You can eat more food. After the age of 35, hormonal
changes make muscle building more important than ever.
So after 35, your estrogen goes down.
And when your estrogen goes down, so does your muscle mass
and function #3 And I'm going to pray tattoo this on my forehead.
You can't tone what isn't there. So when you say I want to look
toned, what do you have to tone? You don't have any muscle.
What are we going to do? Tone your bones?
That doesn't make sense. You cannot tone what is not
there. You have to have some muscle
there to look toned. Muscle is what gives your body
shape. This one kind of coincides with
the metabolic rate, but building muscle equates to burning fat
even when you're not working out.
Muscle tissue burns more calories at rest compared to fat
tissue, which helps you drop fat doing nothing again just because
you have more of a solid base. Another factoid about why
lifting heavy will not make you bulky, but it will in fact do
the opposite. It reduces your belly fat more
effectively than cardio alone. Yes, you heard me, daily weight
training is way more effective than aerobic exercise at getting
rid of that belly fat. The belly fat I hear everybody
complain about, including myself.
And the reason that is, is because when you are lifting
heavy, that builds lean muscle, which increases your resting
metabolism and it helps your body burn fat even more when
you're just living your life. Now, here's another little myth
Buster for you. As you get older, your
metabolism is not slowing down. It's not slowing down.
What's happening is your body is slowly releasing that lean
muscle mass after age 35 because of hormone fluctuations.
Your estrogen, your progesterone, that's hard for me
to say, and your growth hormone, all of those begin to gradually
decline after age 35. And that does three things.
That reduces your muscle mass, which lowers your metabolic
rate, that increases your insulin resistance, which makes
it easier to store fat, especially around the stomach
area, and it leads to more inflammation and cortisol
dysregulation. And I I battle that.
I battled that. I am still battling it actively,
but I combat it intentionally by lifting heavy, by lifting heavy,
and by doing my high intensity interval training instead of all
of that steady state cardio. So as your estrogen levels
decline, that decline impacts your strength.
Lifting helps offset that loss in strength.
Now I could go on and on about the benefits of lifting and how
important it is for anybody, even outside of aestheticals for
health, longevity, your insulin sensitivity.
I could go on. But I want to address the
overarching point, the objective of this lesson.
Now if you were tuned in with your listening years on, you
will be able to answer this question.
Why is strength training more effective than cardio alone for
body recomposition after 35? And what that means is that
strength training is better for dropping fat than cardio.
Why is that? Short pause?
And the answer is because it builds muscle, which increases
your metabolism, it improves your insulin sensitivity, it
balances your hormones, and it burns more fat, especially
around the belly, than cardio does.
Facts, and I also really want to impress this upon you before the
end of this episode. And that is lifting heavy is
important for both aesthetic ends of the spectrum.
If having a little toned tiny dancer esque body is your thing,
great. You have to lift.
If having a stronger, more athletic presence, maybe a bit
heavier really developed muscles is your thing, great.
You still have to lift heavy for both looks for both the toned
lean look. Heavy lifting builds dense
muscle without size, it tightens up your body, it burns fat, and
it gives you that fit but petite shape.
And for the more muscular physique, heavy lifting is still
the foundation, just combined with more food.
OK, more food, more recovery to support the muscle muscle
growth. Either way, lifting heavy.
Improves your muscle quality, your metabolic rate, and your
body's definition. That toned look on both ends.
The only variable here that is to be considered is the amount
of food you're consuming. Right now I'm in a deficit I'm
cutting down. I kind of want to look a little
more lean this summer, so I'm eating less food now.
During the winter, I upped my calories.
I focus on muscle growth For a while.
My shoulders were a bit more developed than I liked, so I cut
back. I cut back on lifting shoulders
for a bit. You, it's fun.
There are a lot of moving pieces that are all up to you.
Shape your body, make it look the way you want.
You have control here, nobody else.
You. Now, if you're interested in
beginning a strength training regimen, you can click on my
Instagram link in the bio. You can visit my website, which
is also in the show notes. I have an app.
I do programming for women of any age, but I specialize for
women above the age of 35. But if you would like just a
free printable that will show you a few lifts you can begin
doing at home, I'm going to include that in the show notes
as well because my mission is to help women understand how
attainable those physiques that you dream of are.
So in the show notes, I'm going to put a free workout log with
some foundational lifts you can begin doing at home with just
your body and some dumbbells. That's all I have for you
ladies. Thank you for tuning in to
another episode of The Body Recomposition Revolution.