#162: Lose Weight, Not Muscle - Why It Matters

As summer approaches, it's tempting to focus purely on the number on the scale. But losing weight and losing fat are not the same thing, and the difference matters.

Whether you're using a GLP-1 or counting calories, if you're not paying attention to your muscles, you could be setting yourself up for serious problems down the road.

In this episode, I share 5 reasons why muscle matters far beyond just looking toned, and why holding onto it as you diet might be the most important thing you do for your future self.

Enjoy the show!

Resources mentioned:

1. Learn to Lift 10-week beginner program
2. Strength Training Membership
3. Summer Shape-Up: 8-week group coaching starts April 20

Transcript

#162: Lose Weight, Not Muscle - Why It Matters

 [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. 

Today I wanna talk about the obsession with thinness that we are seeing on the red carpet and among celebrities and even among fitness influencers online right now. Because this obsession is setting women up for big problems in the decades ahead 

today I wanna talk about why muscle is such a big deal and why dieting be that using some GLP ones or doing it the old fashioned way without paying attention to your muscles, is going to come back and bite you in the butt.

So I wanna talk about five reasons why muscle is important for more than just looking good. Because we all know that it looks great to have muscle, to have [00:01:00] that toned look, that definition that it is beautiful, but it's not just there for looks. Actually, there is a reason why we want to have muscle on our bodies.

The first is that we're gonna be stronger. Okay? That should kind of come without saying, and that is important because we wanna be able to manage in day-to-day life. So if we're allowing our muscle mass to decline, we are. Getting weaker, and that does not set us up for a great future going forward.

If I look at my parents whose muscle mass has declined and how much weaker they're getting. Normal. Things like getting off the toilet or carrying the groceries, home, get to be very difficult to do and that may not be something that you're thinking about right now as you're like admiring yourself in the mirror as the pounds drop off. But trust me, you will care later in life [00:02:00] and that future you will be cursing the current you, because you let the muscle go.

 The second thing muscle does is it gives you a faster metabolism. So there has been a study done taking people of all ages to study how metabolic rate actually changes with age. They took people from children to grandparents, and what they discovered was that your metabolism actually doesn't change between about age 20 to about age 60. If your muscle mass stays the same. So the reason that we're noticing that our metabolism is "slowing down", is that we are losing muscle as we age. And it's really interesting because I have noticed this myself and also some of my clients who have started to build muscle and noticed that it is actually very much easier. For [00:03:00] them to manage their weight as they put more muscle on their body. Well, first of all, they're able to eat a little bit more. And I mean, that's not a huge amount more that you can eat. So don't start thinking like, oh yeah, I'm gonna have cake every day, you know, when I put on some muscle.

What they're noticing and what I've noticed is that things like Christmas or holiday season, Thanksgiving, where you're eating more for a little while, you are able to bounce back from that in a whole different way when you have more muscle on your body. And this isn't something that I've seen any studies about. So this is just, anecdotal evidence. But I think the muscle changes something in your body anyway that makes it easier for you to manage your weight going forward so you don't have to stay on a perma diet. 'cause who wants to do that, right? I mean, it's one thing to get yourself to being totally lean and then if you've got to be watching everything you eat for the rest of [00:04:00] your life to maintain that, that's no kind of life at all. So hold onto that muscle to help you keep your metabolism running smoothly.

The third thing is your metabolic health, so how your body handles insulin and blood glucose, I have a lot of women who have started strength training with me because they're pre-diabetic and their doctors have said, get some muscle on your body. Muscle is your body's glucose sink. When you eat, about 70 to 80% of the glucose that gets released into your bloodstream is absorbed by your muscle. So the more muscle you have, the better your body is able to quickly respond to and manage blood glucose, and that means that you're just healthier metabolically. Your insulin sensitivity is higher.

Fourth is better recovery from illness. Now this might not [00:05:00] be something you think about just day to day, like, oh, what if I get sick? But the fact of the matter is that it actually does not take very long of being in bedrest, like in hospital if you, end up in a car accident or something. God forbid happens to you or you get knocked out with a really bad cold or something like that. Or let's say you break a leg, you know where you're less mobile, it is very quick. That you start to lose muscle. This has been studied that bedrest is really awful for muscle, so you want to have. More than you actually need. So you have a little bit in reserve. It's like most of us want to have that extra reserve of cash in case we lose our job or we're too sick to work or something happens, right? And similarly, our bodies should have an extra reserve of muscle to help us in times of need.

 Research shows that people with [00:06:00] more muscle mass actually recover faster, have fewer complications. , and maintain their independence better. And this is particularly important as we get older and we're losing muscle mass anyway along the way. I mean, how many of you know, or have seen your parents or aunts, uncles, older people around you who are Yeah, they're, they're doing okay. They're managing, but you know, if they were. Laid out for a week, they might not be managing anymore. So don't let yourself end up in that situation. Get yourself stronger than you need to be now. So you have those reserves to call on if something happens to you. 

And it doesn't even need to be that you're like ending up in the hospital and spending a lot of time, you know, laid out. Just a couple years ago, I had my knee, my arthritic knee kind of blow up on me, and this was before I got my legs really strong. My arthritic knee blew up on me and I couldn't bend it. Okay, [00:07:00] so imagine I had issues with things like a. Going to the bathroom because I had to keep my leg straight out in front of me. So I was basically doing a one-legged squat to go down onto the toilet seat and having to boost myself up from the toilet seat with one leg. Well, that takes quite a bit of strength to do even when you're, you know, only 50 something, right? And not 80 something, and the likelihood that something is gonna happen to you, like that gets higher and higher as you get older. So muscle is kind of like a insurance policy for you for when you get sick or injured.

Fifth thing is that muscle stabilizes your joints. I hear this over and over again that women have joint aches and pains. I hear this among my friends actually a lot. Like my knees are starting to hurt, you know, that I need to start strengthening my legs [00:08:00] to support my knee joints. That is absolutely true. If you have stronger muscles around your knees, your knees have more support and therefore your joints won't hurt as much. 

So my knee, my arthritic knee, that caused me the problems, the toilet problems. Uh, a couple years back when I started to strength train more and more. Now I haven't had any problems with that knee, so I can attest firsthand. And then I've seen it with my clients too, that getting your body stronger really does help with these kinds of, age related. Problems that you have, like arthritis or old injuries coming back to haunt you. So maintain your muscle for that too.

And then in addition to those five things, the very fact of strength training. So the thing you need to do in order to build that muscle that has benefits to, in [00:09:00] addition to building muscle. So one of them is very much related to those joint issues. So when your strength training. You actually also stimulate your tendons and your ligaments to get stronger. Now they get stronger at a slower rate than your muscles do, and that's why I really recommend that you start gradually easing your body into strength training if you haven't done it before. So don't jump in with a five days a week program, but rather a couple days a week, maybe three days a week at most, so that your tendons and your ligaments. And the rest of your body, kind of keep up with what's going on in your muscle. I mean, we're not 20 anymore, but it'll help. Strengthen those tendons and ligaments. And by the way, your bones, so that's something you probably have heard. But when your muscles are, you know, flexing, they are [00:10:00] pulling bones closer to each other, right? They're moving parts of your body and the very act of pulling on your bones. Of course, they're attached by the tendons, but as they pull on the bones. The bones are stimulated to get stronger by that stimulus of being pulled on. Your bones say, "Ah! Lynn needs us to be stronger than we are now!" And then they start to respond and lay more bone tissue. It's a slow process. Once again, not as fast as getting stronger muscles, but still it stimulates that bone strengthening. So a lot of women will start strength training once they've been diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis.

So there's a lot of talk about how exercise can help with your brain health. On preventing dementia, Alzheimer's, helping, alleviate symptoms of those, even improving executive function and [00:11:00] those kinds of things. And strength training is one of the forms of exercise that can contribute positively towards your brain health.

And it's also been shown to help with depression. So in addition to the other treatments that you may be getting, add strength training and see if it gives you a nice boost.

So muscle is about so much more than just looking better. It helps you, yes, be stronger so you can manage in daily life. It improves your metabolic rate, so weight management is easier. It improves your metabolic health, so blood glucose regulation is better. It helps you to recover from illness and injury better. And the very act of strength training, which is how you get your muscle, has benefits too, like strengthening your tendons, your ligaments, your [00:12:00] bones, and contributing to your brain health and your mental health.

 So many reasons to hold onto your muscle and continue to strength train. So don't think of it as just like, oh, this is exercise so that I burn calories so that I can lose weight. Make sure that if you are dieting, be that through using a GLP one or other weight loss drug or other kind of weight loss, um, mechanism, or doing it the old fashioned way, just counting your calories and watching what you eat. Be sure that your strength training to hold onto your muscle, because otherwise 30 to 40% of the weight that you lose is going to be your muscle, and you do not wanna be skinny fat. Plenty of people out there who can fit into small sized clothes who are not healthy because their body fat percentage is higher than it should [00:13:00] be. because what is body fat percentage? They look at how much of your weight is from fat, how much is from muscle, and if you don't have any muscle, then even if you don't have very much fat, it's still gonna be a huge percentage of your overall weight, and that is not healthy. So hold onto your muscle, keep building muscle, and stay healthy. Fit and functional for life. 

And if you need help building muscle, I'm here for you. I've got my beginner programs Learn to Lift, and then I have my monthly membership. So if you are somebody who's been strength training, maybe been building your own programs or following some free stuff that you've been getting online and you want to start doing in a structured, efficient, effective way, join my membership.

The links are in the show notes. 

And by the way, if you're interested in losing fat and building muscle for the summer, [00:14:00] I have my new eight week group coaching program starting on April 20th.

It's called. Summer Shape-Up and in it I walk you through and am, they're coaching you on fat loss and strength training, so it is a great way to get ready for summer. I do group coaching about once a year, and this is also the. First time that I have combined strength training and fat loss, I've normally sort of kept them separate, but now I'm combining the two and we will set everything up and get you going, meal planning, figuring out your calories, your macros, all those things, and making it a system that works for you so that you can continue to maintain your new weight, your new body going forward.

If you're interested, link is in the show notes. And with that, I leave you till next week and wish you [00:15:00] happy training