#167: Why Your Workouts Aren't Working Anymore
[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, 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. And today, I want to talk about why your workouts are not working anymore, that happened to me when I was 49.
The workouts that had kept me looking and feeling amazing for decades, all of a sudden left me looking blobby, feeling soft, and also just wrecking me, like feeling super depleted. And I'm gonna explain in this episode what is actually going on with your body in midlife that causes this shift, and how I changed my workout habits so that today I'm actually fitter, stronger, healthier, [00:01:00] and feel more confident in my body than I ever have before in my life.
So I had been working out for years, decades, decades really, using the same kind of model, about five days a week, working out, sweating. I mean, I am a former Division I athlete from Dartmouth College, played lacrosse. I played in high school at National Cathedral School in Washington, DC, if there are any Washingtonians there. And I was used to pushing my body, sweating. It feels amazing. You get the endorphins. You feel so accomplished, you know, all the things. I was in BodyPump class three days a week because I knew that I needed to do something, to keep up my muscles.
And then I was doing dance classes, boot camp, booty, core, you know, all kinds of classes, sometimes a couple of them in a row. And for years, this kept me [00:02:00] looking amazing. I was really happy with my body. I was happy with my weight. I was happy with what my body could do performance-wise. And then it was like something just shifted.
It was the year that I turned 49, and I remember so well that I saw a picture of myself in a bikini, and I didn't recognize myself. I, all of a sudden, was looking like this blobby, middle-aged, heading downhill kind of person. And you know, I was divorced- Got divorced 10 years ago. It's my 10-year anniversary, this year of getting divorced. But anyway, so I was divorced, on the dating scene, and I was feeling amazing, you know, amazing inside. I Really had, come to terms with my divorce, come to terms with my perimenopause, feeling amazing inside, and then my outside was just betraying me, and I was like, "I want my [00:03:00] body back." I am not ready for everything to just kinda fall apart and for me to look like crap on the outside when on the inside I'm feeling like, I'd been reborn, right? And I knew that the key was I wanted to get my muscle back. I had always liked having that toned look, seeing the, muscle definition in my arms, my shoulders, that is what I wanted back, and I knew that building muscle was going to be the key. So, I was like, "How do I do that?"
So first of all, , what had happened in my body? So, let's take a step back so, in midlife, our hormone levels change. Our estrogen starts to kind of go haywire, and then it leaves the building. And estrogen has been doing things like defining where fat is stored on our bodies, and when it goes, our fat starts to come to our middle.
That's why we're getting more visceral fat, in other words, that stuff between our organs in the [00:04:00] center, and also some more fat around our waist, which is that beautiful muffin top that we all love so much. And I talked about that a couple of episodes ago, and you can go check it out. The link is in the show notes. So, that is causing that "Why am I all of a sudden, chubby in the middle when I never was chubby in the middle?" Well, okay, I- I always had a little bit of trouble with the chubby in the middle, but it was, like, 10 times worse than it ever was.
And then the second thing that's been going on here is that our muscle mass has been in decline for a long time, ever since we were, 30, our muscle mass starts to decline if we are not actually systematically challenging our muscles. And really the way to challenge your muscles is strength training. So if you haven't been doing some systematic, progressively overloading, consistent strength [00:05:00] training, then you have not been taking care of your muscles.
So I've been doing all these BodyPump classes, and yes, they're great for muscular endurance. And for sure, I was stronger than if I had been sitting on a couch and not doing them, but I had been slowly losing muscle mass over time. And now that I had less muscle overall on my body and my fat had increased, especially around my waist, then I really started to look blobby and not toned and not, the way that I was used to looking.
And then there are aspects of midlife that start to come into play that can really make this even a little bit worse because, uh, I don't know about you, but for me, sleep, huge issues in midlife, getting sleep. And if you're not sleeping enough, then everything kind of suffers for that, [00:06:00] right? Your hunger and satiety cues go out of whack, so you're eating a little bit more than you should. You're not feeling full even though you've eaten enough. You don't have much energy. also, when your estrogen walks out of the building, then your baseline cortisol levels rise. So what that means basically is that, uh, estrogen's been there as a little bit of a damper on your cortisol levels all the time, and now that it's gone, your cortisol levels can rise, so you need to just start managing your stress better.
I don't wanna be all like woo, woo about cortisol, right? But it is something to keep in mind, and that's why things like doing a little meditation, doing some mindfulness stuff, cuddling with your cat, cuddling with your boyfriend or husband, you know, hugging your kid, all those things that, calm your nervous system are important to do.
so there are a lot of things going on in midlife that [00:07:00] are kind of exacerbating this effect of loss of muscle and the increase in belly fat in particular and of course, most of us haven't adjusted our eating habits we're losing our muscle mass, which means that our basal metabolic rates are going down over time, and I don't think many of us are like, "Oh, I've lost some muscle this year, so I better, I better eat slightly s- smaller portions," So then you end up gaining weight or your weight might stay the same, but your body is becoming a much less healthy composition as you're losing muscle, you're replacing it with fat. Okay, so lots and lots of stuff going on there.
So what do you need to do to start turning this around, and what did I do? I started really focusing on building muscle. In the past, I had also thought about, "Oh, I gotta burn calories," So this was one of the big [00:08:00] mindset shifts that I made, was that forget about burning calories. I don't even think about nowadays. It- it's so funny to think back on the days when I would actually look after one of my sessions and be like, "Oh, yeah, I burned 500 calories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a great workout." Nowadays, I don't even look at the calories.
But so I started to really focus on building muscle. I didn't even look at my nutrition at that point, but building muscle. And what that means is that you need to consistently, challenge every one of your muscle groups in your body twice a week.
That's it, twice a week. That's why you hear them saying, even two 30-minute sessions, a week is going to do a lot. It really, really will. But you wanna challenge all your muscle groups with those two workouts. So you wanna get your hands on a full body program, that [00:09:00] you can do in a reasonable a- amount of time. And of course, I have them to offer, you know, my Learn to Lift program and my strength training membership. So Learn to Lift is for beginners who have maybe not lifted before and need, a little bit more of the tips for beginners. And then if you have been lifting, maybe you haven't just been lifting strategically or, following any kind of plan, then my membership is good for you 'cause you'll start tracking and making sure that you're applying progressive overload and all things, and you'll start actually seeing results from the time that you're spending. But anyway, so that was my commercial break there.
so I started consistent strength training. And it was really incredible because, , I had been going to these BodyPump classes and using the heaviest dumbbells that they had, which were these five kilo dumbbells, so that's about 12 pound dumbbells, and I'd been, you know, [00:10:00] using those, and I was one of the only women who could actually use those. And I was feeling the burn, and oh my God, it was so hard when the set was over. My arms were like Jell-O, all the things. Then I start progressive strength training, and nowadays I lift over twice that amount in my bicep curls. If I had continued in BodyPump, I would never be at this level, right? And it was when I started challenging my muscles that I finally started seeing my arm muscles again, and that was so rewarding for me. I got my toned arms back. I am a crazy lover of tank tops, summer, winter. I'm currently wearing a long-sleeve shirt 'cause it's a little cool today, but normally I'm in a tank top, and I love feeling confident in a tank top.
So essentially, the mistake that I had been making all those years with my five-days-a-week hard, sweaty [00:11:00] classes was that I was exercising, and it was really cardio. It was endurance stuff, which is important as well. I don't wanna discount that. I was definitely cardiovascularly extremely physically fit, right? But I had been neglecting my muscles, and so my muscle mass, my lean muscle mass, had declined over time. My strength had declined, over time, and my power had declined over time, and those are things you really wanna hold onto, not just to look great because the looking great, yes, I agree, 100% huge motivator, and it feels great to feel good about how you look. But also, the confidence to know that these muscles are gonna m- help me stay independent as I age. They also help me to stay healthier, So the strength training is improving my bone density, [00:12:00] keeping my joints happier. My arthritic knee and my old injury hip are doing way better now that I am strong, that I have the muscles to support those kind of weaknesses that I have
so the thing that moved the needle for me was I started to follow a structured strength training program rather than just exercising with weights.
I learned about and started applying progressive overload.
I was tracking everything that I did, and that's super important to make sure that you are progressing.
I trained every muscle group twice a week.
And I kept the same exercises in my program for at least eight weeks
Because there's a huge difference between just exercising and then having a goal and working in a [00:13:00] systematic way to get to that goal, and it doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to be fancy, but it does need to be done with intention.
And the fun thing about this was that I didn't have to work out any more often than I had before. In fact, I'm working out less, but I'm doing it in a smarter way to get results,
all right, so a quick checklist for you to see whether what you are doing is moving the needle or whether you really need to think about swapping out and doing something else.
The first question to ask yourself is, are you doing the same things week after week with the same weights? I've had so many women who've joined my program, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't realize I've been using the same 10-pound weight following this whatever YouTube program for ages, and thinking, that I would, get some results." but no, if you're actually doing the same thing over and over again and [00:14:00] not progressing, not increasing your weights or increasing reps, or somehow making it harder for yourself over time, you've stopped asking your body to adapt, so you'll just stay at that level that you are now.
Are you tracking what you lift? And I know I harp on on this a lot, but it is really, really important. If you're not tracking, how do you know if you're progressing? How do you, check that you're doing more than you did last month or last year? So it kind of goes hand-in-hand with that first question.
Are you actually getting stronger? So are you able to lift more weights in those exercises than you did before? So for me, I was doing that BodyPump class forever with those five kilo weights. I was not getting stronger. I didn't get stronger until I started strength training for real.
And by [00:15:00] the way, you can start proper strength training at home with just dumbbells. And women ask me all the time, "What size dumbbells should I have?" so the truth is that start with what you have, but pretty soon you are gonna need something else. So I just started with some dumbbells that I'd gotten from a friend years ago that had been gathering dust I started with those. And pretty soon, because I was doing the structured strength training, I had to get heavier dumbbells, and then even heavier dumbbells. And nowadays I lift such heavy weights that I don't even wanna manage that big of weights at home, so I have moved to the gym where I can really work with heavy weights. So if you've been working out at home with dumbbells and you haven't had to buy more dumbbells- that is a sign that you are not doing proper strength training, Buy more dumbbells. Invest in yourself. I'm not kidding. And I have a link in the show [00:16:00] notes for some dumbbells that I recommend on Amazon that are adjustable, that go up in increments that are pretty good for women, 'cause some of them, you know, are built for m- huge guys who can go up in bigger increments, but these have been pretty good.
Okay, so to recap, the reason why your workouts have stopped working is not you. It's not that you're doing anything wrong, it's that your body has changed. Your hormones have changed. You've lost muscle mass as you've aged, and now what you need to do is build more muscle on your body. And the best way to do that is with systematic progressive strength training. If you have no idea what that would feel like and you wanna give it a try, I do have a 10-day introduction to strength training that you can try out. I'll put the link in the show notes. And if you're like, "Yep, ready to get going, [00:17:00] Lynn," I have my 10-week beginner program. Now, that is a real strength training program. You can lift two, three, or four days a week at home or at the gym. You decide. And then for those of you who have been lifting weights on your own, maybe you've even been going into the weight room, but you don't have a program, you don't have structure, you don't know how to make sure that you're hitting all your muscles each week, I have my monthly membership. And that will give you exactly what you need to do, so you just show up and train, okay? And in both Learn to Lift and in the membership, you get me through the app. So you can chat with me one-on-one when you have questions, if you want me to check out your form on something, whatever. You have access to me, ' I would love to work with you.
I am here because I had this crazy thing happen to me when I was 49, and I figured out how to fix [00:18:00] it. And by fixing it, I also improved my health, my longevity, my health span, my independence as I age. And so I want that for you too. I would love to help you. if you have questions, please send them across, and otherwise, I will see you next week.
Happy training.
