Hello friends~
I’m clearing my mind this week on vacation on a gorgeous island, where the real world feels so far away. I drafted this blog post last week, pretty sure that all this serenity might make it hard to gather thoughts. I was right I hope it’s possible to maintain a bit of this calm when we get home!
Thoughts from last week..
These are challenging times. People are more polarized than ever – you can feel it whatever your politics are. If you’re feeling unsettled, I get it. I feel it too.
Recent media has politicized women’s bodies. Pilates Princesses vs Muscle Mommies. Current messaging implies that women should make choices that keep them weaker, quieter, take less space, and defer to, ahem…the men in their lives.
I think it’s even tougher to navigate all this if you’re midlife or older. The most challenging years in a woman’s life are between 35 and 50+ while raising kids through puberty, and navigating perimenopause at the same time. We need and deserve to focus on our power and our strength.
Here’s how muscle, confidence, and capability change the aging conversation:
There’s an insidious message about aging that many of women have accepted as inevitable: that getting older automatically means weakness. Slowing down. Loss of strength, balance, mobility, confidence, and even mental sharpness.
That story just isn’t true.
An additional lie is the concept of “anti aging”. We’re all aging and we can’t stop it, but youth culture has permeated everything. Surgical procedures are intended to make the face and body look younger (but often end up weirder), products and supplements offer “anti-aging” ingredients. Go for it if you believe the hype. It’s a personal thing. But most important is to build a foundation of strength and mobility that promotes your health span – whatever the number of years in your life span.
Age does NOT mean inevitable decline. We’re not destined to become fragile with age. Aging doesn’t have to mean we have to take away the area rugs because mom might trip. It doesn’t mean having to live in a one story house, or contemplating assisted living, using a walker, giving up mobility, balance … or losing mental acuity.
The shrinking female body. I’m increasingly concerned that many women are once again embracing thinness, smallness as a body ideal. More women in every demographic are exercising primarily to burn calories rather than to build strength, and they’re unknowingly sabotaging their health and their future ability to live active, independent lives.
Strenuous group fitness classes are super fun, and can be worthwhile as part of a whole fitness program, which includes a couple of strength sessions each week. But doing HIIT workouts multiple times a week – mainly chosen for how much they exhaust you, or for how much you sweat – will burn muscle, not build it. And it’s even worse if fuel (food) is restricted, whether by choice or aided by medication – excessive high intensity exercise leads to muscle loss.
As muscle is lost, the number on the scale goes down, and the long-term consequences can be disastrous – bone loss, osteopenia and osteoporosis, frailty – resulting in a fall, a broken hip, immobility, and ultimately a long slow death. There is no other way to say it.
The internet has helped promote extreme thinness and disordered eating, and big pharma is a culprit making it easier to lose weight with drugs. Use of GLP1s can be lifesavers for those who need them for medical reasons, but the thin trend is now the engine helping to drive their use for an aesthetic result of a smaller body, instead of for health. Whatever your politics, skinny culture sure looks like a plot against women – to keep us believing that our worth is tied to being smaller, taking up less space.
The good news!
One of the most powerful tools we have as we age is the choice to build physical strength. Happily, there is a steady chorus of coaches and experts in longevity and living well encouraging women to train strength, and many women are doing it!
Strength isn’t just about muscles – strength training benefits the brain too: The brain benefits from strength training – Psychology Today.
Physical strength = strong brain.
Challenging the body physically improves coordination, balance, and focus – strength training stimulates the nervous system, which supports cognitive health. Muscle is metabolically active tissue that innervates and connects the body and brain, protects your bones, supports your joints, stabilizes you, and keeps you independent as you age.
Strength is beautiful. Strength helps you live with confidence, and mental as well as physical empowerment will enable you to function your best and look great too. I’m just gonna say it – visible muscle, joints that move as they are designed to, and the ability to use your body any way you choose is beautiful. And did you know that strength training might be the best skin care hack?!
Strength training doesn’t require hours in the gym. Beating yourself into exhaustion and a puddle of sweat will ultimately backfire. Short, measured consistent bouts of basic functional strength training will help you adopt a habit that will serve you your whole life. Squats, hinges, pushes, pulls, carries, and core work done with intention, challenging enough to matter, repeated over time – and I promise, you got this.
Show up for you. If you’re new to training muscles that have been out of service for a while, it’s ok. Most people working out in any facility are feeling just as uncertain as you are. Find an experienced coach who gets YOU. Start where you are at any age. Training builds resilience, and you learn that you are capable, adaptable, resilient, durable, and strong.
Last week I wrote about strength being the foundation of the body – it’s the house you live in…
There’s more to that analogy, thanks to my friend Ed, @nodustontheseshoes, who commented on my Substack:
Foundations of buildings use all sorts of different materials,(cinder blocks, bricks, cement, stone, etc.) Builders use the materials that work best to support the structure they’re building. Training the body rely on the basics for the foundation, and include a variety of materials and tools that support you and your life.
Endurance, balance, power, mobility, a fit cardiovascular system, and brain health all rest on that base.
Frailty is not inevitable.
Strength is an investment you can start making at any age.
x
Polli
