HSOS #30: The Real Reason Women Over 40 Need to Lift Weights

Episode Summary

Strength training after 40 is not about getting smaller. It is about protecting muscle, bone density, metabolism, balance, and confidence as hormones shift. This episode breaks down why cardio alone is not enough, what progressive overload really means, and how the STRONG framework creates real results without random workouts.

Let’s talk.

Welcome to Her Season of Strength—where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy—registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman when it comes to aging like you mean it.

This show isn’t about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It’s about building real strength—physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I’ll share straight-talking nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies, and conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin once again.

Menopause is not an ending, it is only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

Here’s What We Cover:

• Why strength training should be non-negotiable after 40
• Muscle loss, bone density decline, belly fat, and slower metabolism
• Shifting from weight loss to strength gain
• Why random workouts and cardio alone don’t build muscle
• What progressive overload actually means
• The STRONG framework: Sets, Total body/tempo, Reps, Optimize recovery, Note, Growth
• Getting close to fatigue and lifting heavy enough
• Recovery, protein, sleep, and stress management
• Real fears: gym intimidation, bulking up, not knowing what to do
• Click here: How Fit After 50+ structures 30-minute workouts with built-in progression and form guidance

Links & resources for this episode:

Fit After 50+ Program: 8-Week Nutrition Coaching & Strength Program for menopausal women.  Join the interest list today for the best discounts, bonuses and updates about the next program coming Fall of 2026!

Free cheat sheet: "20 Tips to Crushing Menopause"

Join my free weekly newsletter list and get a new high protein recipe sent to your inbox every Thursday. 

Find me on social media: Instagram I Facebook I Tiktok

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to Her Season of Strength, where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy, registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman. When it comes to aging like you mean it, this show isn't about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles.

[00:00:20] It's about building real strength, physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I'll share straight talking, nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies. And conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin. Once again, menopause isn't an ending. It's only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

[00:00:39] Hello and welcome back to Her Season of Strength. I am so happy you're here and thanks for just taking a minute out of your day to listen in. Today I wanted to chat about strength training. I know that you all hear me talk about this all the time, but I wanna specifically talk to those women over 40.

[00:00:56] I wanna help you understand. What [00:01:00] is why do we care? Why is strength training so important? What exactly is it and how can we create a program that actually helps us to see progress and see results? So before we dive into that I just wanted to tell you that I am in my five day launch for my signature eight weeks Fit After 50 plus program, and that is my nutrition and strength program for women over 40.

[00:01:27] I know it's called FIT After 50, but I do take women over 40. Basically, I'm looking for those women who are seeing hormonal changes. I'm looking for women who are struggling with. Finding ways to, to work with their changing body as compared to against it, right? And so it is my program where we dive into specifically, what types of strength training workouts, what kind of nutrition should we be focusing in on in order to balance or support our hormones, in order to build our strength, to build our [00:02:00] metabolism, to help stop this random fat gain, which we are seeing.

[00:02:04] Also to move away from the idea of we're always trying to get smaller, we're always looking at how can we lose weight? And I'm doing little quotation, air quotation marks because we need to move away from that. And we'll talk a little bit about that. But yeah, it's an awesome program. We start on Monday, February 23rd.

[00:02:24] My, the doors close for enrollment on Friday, February 20th. So that is gonna be when this episode comes out, that is gonna be the next day. So if you're listening to this and that sounds interesting to you, I will put the link in the show notes and you can take a look at it. We'll talk a little bit more about it here towards the end of the podcast, and I'll give you some more specifics, but.

[00:02:43] Let's just dive in. So if you know me or if you've listened to me before, when I say I didn't start strength training until I was in my forties it's actually, it's truly true. I didn't, I exercised before that. I did cardio. I took classes, I chased sweat because I always felt [00:03:00] if I was sweating, that meant it was a good workout, right?

[00:03:02] But if I'm honest, I started lifting because first of all, my weight was higher than it had ever been. And it continued to slowly increase every year due to perimenopause. And I didn't realize it at the time, but I had noticed that I had started gaining weight in an area I've never had a problem with in my waist.

[00:03:20] As a big butted, pear shaped girl. I never had to worry about my waist. It was always in my legs and butt and I started panicking. I wanted to stop that. I wanted to lose weight, get smaller. I wanted to be quote unquote toned. Okay. I wanted my arms to look better in tank tops, but fast forward more than a decade later and.

[00:03:42] My mindset has just absolutely shifted. Now I don't care so much about getting smaller. I care about being strong enough to carry my own luggage strong enough to play with my grand baby strong enough to not worry about falling and, breaking a hip or getting hurt strong enough to open jars without [00:04:00] staging some kind of whole production, and having to ask my husband for help.

[00:04:03] I hate that. I hate that and strong enough just to most importantly, live the life that I wanna live. I wanna travel, I wanna be independent, I wanna be active. Most importantly, I don't wanna slow down, become more sedentary. I want to speed up, I wanna do more. I'm 50, I'm gonna be 55 here in, in a couple weeks, and, here's what I know for sure. If you're a woman over 40 and you are not strength training intentionally, we need to have this conversation. You need to listen in because cardio alone isn't going to protect your future. Strength training should be a non-negotiable after age 40 because let's break down specifically what is actually happening in your body.

[00:04:46] So starting in our thirties, we begin losing muscle. It's slow at first, then it accelerates, especially once our estrogen starts declining consistently. So less estrogen means faster muscle loss. It [00:05:00] means decline in our bone density. It means increased belly fat storage, like I was telling you. That's why we're starting to see our midsection, specifically our midsections are just getting wider and we can also see a slower metabolism.

[00:05:14] And here's the part that no one talks about enough is that muscle is your metabolic engine, right? When we lose muscle, we are gonna lose that metabolic flexibility. We're gonna lose strength, we're gonna lose stability, we're gonna lose balance. And over time, that impacts our independence. It's not about vanity here.

[00:05:33] It's about preventing falls. I never used to if I was in my twenties or thirties, I'd be like, oh my gosh, talk about not falling and breaking a hip. But you know what? As we get older, that becomes a real thing, right? We wanna prevent falls, we wanna preserve our bone density because we are much more inclined to, to be diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis.

[00:05:56] We want to maintain good blood sugar control because we [00:06:00] know that this is so important when it comes to balancing our, our supporting our hormones. Is blood sugar control. And I've talked about that so many times before. We wanna support our joint health because we start feeling everything right?

[00:06:12] Oh, my knees, oh my hips, oh my shoulders, oh my elbows, oh my ankles, whatever. We start to notice more pain and issues in all of the joints. We wanna protect our metabolism and we want most of all to feel more confident to build that self-esteem because we can definitely see it take a hit. As we aren't as active as we do gain weight or increase body fat, we do take a hit in our self-esteem and strength training can help with all that.

[00:06:44] I promise. And I wanna gently challenge something. For so many years, women we're taught to focus on weight loss. I just, what comes to mind is I think about those women, like back in the fifties with the I [00:07:00] don't even know what it's called, but with those bands that are standing in those machines and they had those big giant rubber bands around their waist and it was just jiggling them, right?

[00:07:09] And they were like, oh, help to decrease inches around your waist and help to lose weight by just standing there doing nothing while this band jiggled your waist. You didn't see men on these machines. You saw women. But what if instead, we focused on strength gain? What if the win was lifting heavier this month than last month?

[00:07:28] What if the win was feeling more stable? Walking downstairs or uphills or standing on one leg or hopping and skipping with your kids or your grandkid? What if the wind was feeling more energy at 3:00 PM that time when normally we're just like, we're pooping out, we're looking for some caffeine or a little treat or something to pick us up 3:00 PM It's just that low when we need that nap.

[00:07:55] It's a whole different mindset and it changes everything. So let's [00:08:00] touch base of why, why it can be that women are saying, I've been working out and nothing is changing. Because this is where it gets important. Muscle does not grow from random workouts because our bodies adapt very quickly. If you lift that same eight or 10 pound dumbbell for three years, your body has zero reason to adapt and change.

[00:08:24] It's not being challenged. Cardio has its benefits, right? I'm not anti cardio. I think it's very important to, to keep our hearts healthy with cardiovascular endurance. So I do believe that it is important, but as the sole form of exercise, it does not build muscle effectively. It can be very good for mental health.

[00:08:49] I absolutely, a hundred percent. There's nothing better than getting outside and going for a brisk walk and the sunshine. Nothing better for your mental health, but muscle is the key player here. If you want [00:09:00] to build muscle, if you want to improve bone density, if you want to boost your metabolism, you need something called progressive overload.

[00:09:08] And if you've listened to any of my other episodes, I know that I touch on this. I talk about this frequently because it simply means that we're giving our body a reason to adapt and change. We're giving it more load. We're giving it more volume. We're giving it more tension. We're giving it more demand.

[00:09:25] Without that, we're just maintaining it best. Okay, so this is where I wanna walk you through something simple and practical, and it's a framework that I use in all of my Strength programs, and it is called My Strong framework, S-T-R-O-N-G. And I want you to use this to think about progressive overload because strength is not random, it's structured.

[00:09:48] We need a structure, we need a plan. So let's break it down. Strong S is for sets. Sets are just, simply how many rounds of each exercise [00:10:00] you do. Two sets versus three sets changes that stimulus. Obviously it's going to, it's gonna take you a little more time to do more sets, but sometime you can do less exercise and more sets of that same exercise and see improvement.

[00:10:14] So over time, increasing total volume. It can help signal muscle growth in your body. You don't always have to lift heavier to progress. Sometimes just adding in another set is progression. The next letter is t means, or it stands for total body and time under tension. Total body means just we're hitting all those major muscle groups.

[00:10:38] I always find it funny you think about guys always focusing on like their arms, their biceps, wanting to be strong up top. But then they skip leg days, so they have these tiny little bird legs, but total body just means that we're hitting all those major muscle groups.

[00:10:51] It's so important just for full body. Core strength, just whole body strength. We're hitting, we're doing push exercises, [00:11:00] we're doing pull exercises, we're doing hinging exercises. We're doing squat exercise, we're doing core. Our body works as a system, so we train it as a system. But time under tension matters too.

[00:11:13] So if you slow an exercise down, I call this tempo, you can also increase that muscular demand. So if we're slowing things down, especially in like the centric phase, which is usually the, the lowering phase that's where a lot of growth can happen. So I love to do that. And it can be challenging, don't get me wrong.

[00:11:33] Say you're doing a deadlift and you slowly go down and then we pop back up, slowly go down, pop back up. We can do this with all of our exercises which really can help to increase that amount of time, that muscle is under tension. And we can see a lot of progress, a lot of growth from this.

[00:11:50] Momentum and speed is not our friend. We're not always looking to just bust a move through every single exercise, right? We're not gonna see as much progress with that. [00:12:00] So our stands for repetitions and repetitions matter. We can do lower repetitions with heavier weight to build strength.

[00:12:08] We can do moderate repetitions. They're gonna build muscle and then we're gonna notice that those high repetitions, so if we're doing, 12, 14, 16, 20 reps, they're gonna be more inclined to build endurance because we're likely not gonna be able to lift as heavy, we're not gonna be able to use as heavy of a weight for that many reps.

[00:12:26] So here is the important part. You need to get close to fatigue. So if you are doing, 20 reps of bicep curls with 10 pound weights and you feel like if, I always ask my clients after they finish with that exercise, how many more could you have done? And if they say like 10.

[00:12:44] Say, okay, we need to go up and wait because this is not a heavy enough weight to en challenge you and to, get to that close to fatigue point. So if you finish a set and said, I could have done 10 more, it probably wasn't heavy enough. That's where a lot of women get stuck. They're [00:13:00] working hard, but not challenging their muscles enough to grow.

[00:13:03] Oh, stands for Optimize Recovery. So this is the one we forget. We don't get stronger during the workout. We get stronger when we recover, and our body adapts after the workout. That means in order to optimize recovery, we need to give our muscles enough protein to actually rebuild because we've tore 'em down in those workouts.

[00:13:25] We need to get enough sleep. To recover, we need to provide our body with some rest days, right? So at least resting the muscles that you've worked. So it doesn't mean that oh, every other day I have to have a full rest day. I can't do anything. That's not the case. But maybe, you're doing leg days, you're having, then the next day you're doing arm days, or maybe you're doing some like cardio, and then lastly, super important. I know many people don't think that this, is plays. Or makes as much of a difference, but it's managing stress. Stress is huge. I talked about that in my last podcast where I was talking [00:14:00] about my five m system. We talked about the importance of mindfulness and managing your stress.

[00:14:07] 'cause recovery is not laziness, it's strategy. It's actually part of the plan. So now n in my strong framework is note. Note how your body feels. This is just about awareness. Are your joints talking to you? Are you having pain with certain movements? That's a no go. We don't do pain.

[00:14:25] Sometimes if we're having pain or discomfort with certain movements, it can mean that our form is not good, our form's off. 'cause sometimes it's a matter of just changing even the slightest movement or changing the slightest positioning. And you can see that, oh gosh, that doesn't bother me anymore. But it can also be like, say you have a bad knee, a bad hip or something, you know you're having pain. Then well, maybe we need to try a different movement. Maybe this movement is not right for you. So another piece of noting how your body feels. Are you noticing that your [00:15:00] energy's improving?

[00:15:00] Are you noticing that you're getting stronger week to week? You're able to lift heavier amounts. You're not getting quite as winded or tired after the workouts, you're bouncing back a lot quicker. Pay attention because progress is not just numbers. It's about how you feel walking through your life right now, G And our last letter is growth, physical growth, mental growth and confidence.

[00:15:26] The moment you realize I can do hard things, I'll tell you what, that growth spills over into everything. It is so cool to see that. Because for women, I don't know. I think sometimes we can really be reliant on men to do everything for us. Especially like those hard things that we deem as, oh, that's, men versus women's work, right?

[00:15:51] Oh gosh, I can't go out and, work on the car. I can't build something. I can't retile my bathroom. I don't know. It's [00:16:00] cool as a woman to go, I can do this. I can do whatever I set my mind to. I think that's pretty awesome and it can really be eye-opening, especially for women our age, especially for women, in their forties and fifties that maybe they've always had their father or their husband, or.

[00:16:17] Another male figure doing all the quote unquote hard things for them. So I wanna talk about the real stuff 'cause I know what stops women from strength training. Things like, I don't know what exercises to do. I'm scared I'll hurt myself. How heavy is heavy enough? Some women are like, I feel ridiculous in the free weight section.

[00:16:40] Maybe you don't feel comfortable going and picking up weights and doing an exercise 'cause you feel like, oh I look silly. Or maybe I'm not doing it right, or the gym bros are gonna be judging me. Another thing women are scared of bulking up. Women are I tell you, this has gotta be the biggest one is I don't [00:17:00] have time.

[00:17:01] And this is one that really makes me sad because, we know that time is relative. And I know you might be busy, but like how important is your health? Because the moment when you know something comes up and you're not able. To do the things that you normally are do is when we realize, oh gosh, you know what?

[00:17:20] My health is important. I should have prioritized my self care better. All of these things, they make sense because most of us were never taught how to lift properly unless you were like an athlete in high school or something and or in college. Most women were, this is not a comfortable area where they just jump in and go, oh yeah, I can do this.

[00:17:38] We were told to do cardio and eat less. Walking into that weight room, it can feel intimidating. And I remember feeling that way. But here's the truth. We don't need to be doing this 90 minutes a day. We don't need fancy machines. We don't need to bulk up. And by the way, that's very hard to do.

[00:17:56] You're not gonna get bulky, I promise you. You [00:18:00] need structure, you need progression, and you need guidance, and that's it. Right just to get to that point where you're like confident and go, oh yeah, I can do this. Like I know this exercise. I know what kind of weight I use for this. I know proper form and this is exactly what I use in my Fit after 50 program.

[00:18:21] It's 'cause I kept seeing women at the gym just just doing random workouts, feeling frustrated because they're not seeing progress or they're not seeing results even though they're working their butts off, so inside the FIT after 50 program, that's why we do. Workouts that are 30 minutes in length, because I don't want women to say, I'm too busy.

[00:18:43] I don't have enough time. I want something that's easy for them to slide into their schedule. And, the goal for strength training is usually two to four times a week. So I, in my fit after 50 program, I have four workouts per week and I always. [00:19:00] I always hope that women will, or I encourage women to look at what they're currently doing.

[00:19:05] If you are not doing any strengthening at all then maybe two times a week is amazing, at least to start with. And let's work our way up. What fits into your life, into your schedule, and where are you starting from? 'cause that's the most important piece, not, you can't put everybody into this same cookie cutter framework.

[00:19:23] And I build my workouts around progressive overload. So I'm always using, I'm adjusting things like reps and sets and time under tension. And all of the things, because I wanna apply all of those things in that strong framework automatically so that you're not having to think about that, oh gosh, am I gonna see results or progress from this?

[00:19:46] And I deliver it in a personalized phone app so that, you can literally take your workouts wherever you go and you can do 'em wherever you are. So maybe you're traveling for work, you're in a hotel room, you got your phone, and you got your workout. [00:20:00] You have no excuse and we can deal with, the, I'm busy, I'm I don't have a lot of time because you can do 'em wherever you are as long as you have, some dumbbells is and there's even some exercises that, we're only using body weight.

[00:20:11] And some of the exercises I use those loop fabric loop bands, which I think you can do so much with. I love those, especially for kind of activation exercises to start workouts with. And I provide everyone with form videos for each individual exercise because you can see exactly what is the proper way to do this exercise.

[00:20:31] I don't wanna get hurt. What are the cues that I need to remember? What muscle am I working on? I don't want there to be guesswork. I want women to know exactly what to do. Not wandering around the gym, no wondering like, oh gosh, is this program you know, working? Is it, am I gonna be successful in it?

[00:20:52] Because it's built specifically for menopausal women. Your body deserves a program that actually understands it personally, [00:21:00] intimately, and. So the Fit After 50+ program, I was telling you that my door's closed tomorrow. So if you've been, sitting on the fence, this is me gently nudging you.

[00:21:08] You don't need more motivation. You need a plan that works. And yeah, the Fit After 50+ program also contains a large nutrition component as well as weekly coaching calls just to help you to stay on track, to stay motivated, to stay accountable so that you're not. Quitting after trying a couple times because you're frustrated.

[00:21:27] You can ask your questions. You can say, Hey, you know what? I can't do this movement. What is something else that I can do? Because honestly, this stage of life has made me more committed to strength than ever. Becoming a grandmother has shifted things for me. I wanna be active, I wanna be capable, I wanna be energized, not just now, but in 10, 20, and 30 years from now.

[00:21:48] Because strength training isn't about looking a certain way anymore. It's about showing up for the life that you want. And I want that for you too. So let's bring this full circle. Strength training after 40, it's not [00:22:00] optional. If you wanna age progressive overload is required if you want to see change because random workouts, they're not gonna, they're not gonna show you that progress or those results.

[00:22:10] We need a structured plan. So let's shift that focus from weight loss to strength gain, from shrinking to building, from chasing skinny, to protecting our independence and our quality of life for the future. So if this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who needs to hear it. Give me a give me a follow, I would love that.

[00:22:32] Leave a rating or a review so more women can find this message and a fit after 50 plus is, has been on your mind. If you're thinking about it, today is your day to decide, because tomorrow the door is close. Okay? You can find the link in the show notes and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at info@strengthinnutrition.com.

[00:22:51] Send me an email and I'd be happy to chat with you. And remember, this is about progress over perfection. We're in this for the long haul, and this is [00:23:00] your season of strength. Have a fantastic day.