159 | Tailoring Workouts for Midlife Hormonal Changes

Curious about how hormonal changes are impacting your exercise routine? Discover the secrets to maintaining health, strength, and energy through midlife as we delve into the effects of fluctuating estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. We'll share how progesterone can play a key role in managing anxiety and mood swings and offer practical tips for hormonal balance through cycle syncing. Learn how to adjust your strength training to avoid overexertion, reduce the frequency, and honor the need for longer recovery times while prioritizing self-care.

Understand how to manage cortisol levels with tailored workout routines that prevent muscle breakdown and fat storage. We emphasize the benefits of shorter, less intense workouts, with recommended sessions of 10 to 20 minutes, and highlight key strength training exercises like squats, lunges, and deadlifts to support metabolism and maintain muscle mass. Additionally, we offer tips for better sleep and stress management, and the importance of low-impact cardio for heart health during perimenopause and menopause. Join our community and take a step forward in your wellness journey with the Move Better bundle, designed to help you navigate midlife with confidence and support.

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Chapters

• 0:01 Hormonal Changes Impacting Exercise in Midlife
• 10:55 Managing Hormonal Changes Through Exercise
• 25:37 Supporting Heart Health During Midlife

Transcript

Courtney: 0:01

Today's episode, we are going to dive into a crucial topic for midlife women, and that is how hormonal changes are impacting your exercise and the adjustments that you can make so that you're staying healthy, strong and energized. Many of you may have noticed some of these shifts that are occurring. You may not feel as strong in the gym. You may also notice that your muscle tone is changing. You may also notice an increased weight around that midsection and this lack of energy, almost as if there are days where you just feel like you have hit a brick wall. We are going to discuss that how you can adapt your exercise routine to meet these challenges coming up. So let's dive in. Welcome to Moving Through Midlife. I am your host, courtney, a personal trainer and movement specialist who wants to help you move through midlife with more grace. Each week we will discuss ways we can show up better for ourselves and our children without the burnout. We will focus on overall health through habit stacking to help increase energy, provide movement snacks to help you move more throughout the day, while also moving your body more, and learn from professionals on moving through midlife with ease so that you can feel confident with aging gracefully. Grab your earbuds and join me on a leisurely walk while we discuss moving through midlife.

Courtney: 1:43

It is important to first understand the hormonal changes we're going through. In midlife, you're dealing with fluctuations in your estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. The biggest one that I personally notice is the decrease in progesterone and if you've heard me before, you'll know that for me, I deal with a lot of anxiety and progesterone is that calming hormone. Progesterone is also produced when you ovulate, so it is obvious that we are losing progesterone. We are not going to be ovulating as much in this perimenopause, right? We're going to start missing ovulation cycles. It is important that those of you who are in early stage of perimenopause so anywhere from what? 35 to 45 years old you need to really work on supporting your body during this time, because this is going to be the time you want to try to hold on to the progesterone as long as possible. And the ways you support this is one through cycle syncing, which I have an episode about that had to go back into my account to find out which one it was Episode 41, supportinging your Hormonal Cycles and that is going to provide you with information on foods to eat during your hormones, how you should be exercising, things to pay attention to in the way of how you program your days and activities going out with friends and date nights and different things like that. All of those can be affected by your hormone cycle and there are times that you should live into that and then times where you should kind of be more at home in a calming atmosphere. So if you lean into those things during your hormonal cycle each month, then you will be able to hold on to that progesterone longer, so you're able to ovulate longer, which will help you through this phase where you're starting to deal with more anxiety. Because as that starts to taper off, as you start to lose that progesterone, you will start to deal with more anxiety. You will deal with more mood swings and things like that. So we want to try to keep that amount of time as short as possible. It's going to happen, but if we can, you know, deal with it maybe five years instead of eight to 10 years, then we're going to feel a lot better.

Courtney: 4:26

These changes are also going to be affecting us from a fatigue standpoint. You are going to notice that when you work out, it is going to possibly take longer for you to recover. You may not have as much energy when you go work out, maybe feeling weaker through the workouts, maybe noticing, you know, one of the things that I noticed for myself I couldn't do push-ups on my toes anymore, like I started having to drop down to my knees. I also noticed, started dealing with wrist pain. You'll notice little aches and pains in your body and then when you recover, your recovery time is not as good. You're taking longer to recover. So usually what I recommend women do is I used to recommend three to four days of strength training. Now I recommend two to three days of strength training and there might be weeks.

Courtney: 5:26

If you're trying to go heavier or you're trying to max out or anything like that, you may drop it down to one. Obviously we want to try to vary the muscle groups that we're working, but just understand that if your body is tired you need to respect it and lean into that and support it during that time. I'll let you know that the other day I decided to do heavy weights for, like my leg day, I went a lot heavier than normal. I was doing kind of a progressive overload situation where I went heavier than what I normally do just to kind of test my body and my recovery. I was spent. I probably overdid it a little bit, but I did not do. I did, you know, maybe pushups and stuff, but I did not do strength training again. The reason I'm telling you this is it's okay to back off. Don't think of being the person who has to go hard or go home right. That mentality one should have never been there, because it's not designed for everybody. Men can do that.

Courtney: 6:45

Women, we need to look at things differently and definitely in this perimenopausal phase, you need to be supporting your body during this time. I always find it interesting that we look at the time when we hit puberty. If you have children and you're watching them go through puberty, you have accepted the fact that, oh my goodness, they are eating so much and then also they're sleeping a ton too, like that is a natural thing and we are not saying anything about it. We're like, yes, eat, eat more, support your body through this time. Same thing during pregnancy. You know, we during pregnancy, we tend to eat more, you sleep more, you rest more. We are nourishing our body during this time, during these two times, but then yet we hit menopause or perimenopause and we feel like we have to deprive our body.

Courtney: 7:48

That doesn't seem fair, does it Like your body is still shifting and changing hormonally? You should still be supporting it, give it the sleep it needs, give it the rest it needs. You don't have to go hard all day long, you don't have to keep yourself busy all day long. Rest and then support it, nourish it. Eat healthy foods, eat nourishing foods. That's really what I want to say when I say healthy, nourish, nourish your body. Eat those comforting foods. Nourish, nourish your body. Eat those comforting foods. Maybe instead of grabbing the chips and the crackers and the things like that, maybe look at you know what were some foods that you ate that kind of nourished you as when you were younger. Are there soups that you could eat that would provide you some of the nourishment that your body needs? That's where I would try to lean into with the comfort foods, rather than thinking back to childhood and wanting those Twinkies baby's child. But those of you who you know, looking at the nourishing foods that you can eat to support you during this time is imperative.

Courtney: 9:07

So with this comes hormonal changes and the impact on exercise, how they are affecting your exercise programs. So the first thing is you are starting to deal with lower estrogen levels, which are going to decrease your bone density, which is going to mean you need to strength train. If you never thought you needed a strength train before, you need to strength train now. So it is figuring out what you can lift. Does it mean you need to be in a gym lifting weights? Not particularly. If you can find ways where you are picking up heavy things throughout the day, then that is fine. If your job is labor intensive, where you're having to pick up heavy items, then that may be your strength training. It doesn't mean you have to do things on top of that. I would encourage you all to find ways Now. I'm not a big proponent of high intensity training during this phase of life, but there are some plyometrics that you should be adding into your life, because so plyometrics is like jumping movements, because this is going to help increase bone density. Not always do we have to add strength, but you can add maybe like squat jumps or sit to stand jumps, so you sit on a chair. When you stand up, you jump up. That is going to help build that bone density, as well as lifting weights. Okay, so understanding that there are some things that you can do to help during this time to increase your bone density.

Courtney: 10:55

You will also notice increased cortisol. I talk about this a lot. You can go back through past episodes. I have one specifically on determining what your cortisol not what your cortisol levels are, but how much you are at risk of increased cortisol. So we are naturally dealing with higher cortisol during this time and this can lead to muscle breakdown and fat storage. And this can lead to muscle breakdown and fat storage If your workouts are too intense for you or too long. That is why I usually recommend 10 to 20 minutes is all you really need with your workout sessions anymore. 30 is okay, but make sure you've got a good warm up and cool down for that. We don't need to be going hard with our exercise. Our cortisol levels are going to be up there. As it is.

Courtney: 11:49

We're dealing with lots of stressors not just stressors in life, but stressors hormonal stressors as well. So we want to make sure that we are supporting ourselves. That is one reason why, if you listen to last week's episode where I talked about creatine, that can help keep the muscle breakdown from occurring. So if you do I think I even mentioned it in there if you still like your high intensity workouts, make sure to take creatine right after. That's going to help support your body so you won't get some of those insulin spikes, that stress response spike that you're dealing with or that you might deal with. If you do a high intensity workout. It will also decrease the breakdown of the muscle, like I mentioned before. Also, you're going to be dealing with slower recovery. I saw it for myself just last week.

Courtney: 12:52

Listen to your body. Don't beat yourself up if you haven't done your two or three days of strength that you had written out. This is really an opportunity for you to hone in to you and what you need and really listen to what your body is asking for. The other thing that occurs is because we're struggling with sleep. We're not getting as good of sleep as we used to. You're going to notice you're going to lack the motivation and the energy to work out.

Courtney: 13:29

This is where I recommend taking that 20-minute nap midday, if you can, if there is an opportunity, or when you come home from work, if there's an opportunity for you to just kind of sit in silence. That does not mean scrolling on your phone. Remember, when you're scrolling on your phone, you are creating a response in your brain. You may not think you are. You may think, oh, I'm using this to zone out, but you're getting that dopamine hit, you're getting that cortisol response. Just sit and do nothing for five or 10 minutes on your lunch break, right after you get home from school or, you know, from work, sorry, maybe picking your kids up from school, anything like that. Take five minutes, take 10 minutes and just sit in your car before you walk in through the door. No one needs to know. Just sit in your car for five minutes in silence, no radio, no scrolling, no doom scrolling. No, I just am going to do this for fun. Scrolling Nothing, just sit and be, and that will allow your body to have a few minutes of rest, which you may notice helps you to sleep a little bit better at night. Also, make sure that you go back to episode 25, how to get a better night's sleep. As a busy mom, I give a lot of tips in there on things that you can do to help you get a better night's sleep.

Courtney: 15:02

So what can we do for our workout routine? We want to focus on strength training. That is, if you do nothing else, focus on strength training. You want to do that, so it helps keep that muscle on your body and helps you to support your metabolism. Helps you to support your metabolism. So the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn At rest doesn't even have to be doing anything. So at rest, the more muscle you have, the more calories you'll burn. So that is a natural thing. You want to increase muscle mass on your body.

Courtney: 15:43

We do this through things like squats, lunges, deadlifts, your big body movements. Not so worried about bicep curls and things like that, although I do love them and I do think you still need to work your upper body. I'm just saying that when we're thinking of strength training and building muscle, we're looking at those big movements, those lunges, squats, hip hinges which deadlift. All of those are going to build bigger muscles, so leg muscles and then work through some of the smaller muscles, maybe not using as heavy of weights. Don't worry as much about top body weights being heavy, because that's where you're at an increase of injury, especially when you start working into those shoulders. You want to stay heavier weights on the bottom half and then work on strength training the upper half with whatever weights feel comfortable.

Courtney: 16:42

Two times a week is what I usually recommend. Some of you can do three times a week. It just kind of depends. Always, always, always, listen to your body. When we think of cardio. We want to do low impact cardio, so walking, swimming, cycling, gentle aerobics that's going to help with your heart health. We want to think zone to cardio, so that steady state cardio. You feel like you can communicate a little bit but you're taking heavier breaths, having to breathe a little bit more, not able to talk as well, but still can talk a little bit to you know a neighbor if you're walking or something, but still can talk a little bit to you, know a neighbor if you're walking or something. And we don't want to put added stress on the joints during this time. These are all great for you to do.

Courtney: 17:38

Now one thing I will add in there for your cardio, once or twice a month, I do believe that we can test our heart. It's like heart rate variability or our VO2 max. We want to look at which would be your oxygen consumption. We want to look at testing our body a little bit. And that's where I might say like a sprint drill. Sprint drill does not have to be done as a run. It can be done on a bike, it can be done on a rower, something like that where you're just going all out for, say, 15, anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds and then you give your body ample, ample time to recover so that the stress load doesn't become too much. But I would do a few of those, say three, maybe four, depending on your fitness level, just to recover. If you're new to this, you know sprint does not mean everybody has a different speed of sprint. So it does not mean, like I said, first get out of your head to run, because some people think that's going to be too extreme for them, but get on a bike and ride the bike as fast as you can. Ride for 10, 15 seconds and then recover. That's going to challenge your heart. It's going to make you breathe a lot heavier. You can even do a run up and down the stairs once or twice. That would be plenty. That's going to get your heart rate up a little bit, testing your heart a little bit more than that steady state cardio. Okay, so we've done strength, we've done low impact cardio, maybe twice a month doing some sprint drill Does not need to be done on a weekly basis.

Courtney: 19:23

Mobility and flexibility Always make sure you're adding this. You're going to feel a lot stiffer. You're probably going to be dealing with a lot more aches and pains as we deal with these hormonal shifts. So it's important to incorporate some yoga, some Pilates, some stretching in your life. If you have worked with me before, you will notice that I try to incorporate some of these basic stretches into your daily routine. One thing you may have heard me talk about is the basic calf stretch while you brush your teeth. These are things that you can do and incorporate into your day. You do not have to go take a 45-minute yoga class. You can find opportunities to move your body and stretch in different ways, even like why I mentioned sitting on the floor and moving your hips around. That's mobility. So even little things like that can be incorporated into this. We tend to think so much about going to a place for our exercise routine or laying down a mat, getting our outfit on and watching the screen for our workout. But what if you just started incorporating these things into your day, into your work week, where you're not having to go outside of the home to create it, you're not having to create a specific routine with your exercises? Maybe I just do 10 countertop push-ups when I walk by the counter today because that felt good. These are the little things that you can start to do to work on strength, flexibility, mobility, all of those things and then prioritize your rest and recovery.

Courtney: 21:15

Be very mindful of overtraining. You are going to be at an increased risk at this age of dealing with overtraining, straining muscles. All of that it is more important than the workout itself. So, taking that time, listen to your body. Make sure that if you are doing some of these exercises that I'm recommending, that you are supporting your body with the nutrition it needs, not protein bars, protein shakes all day long. Give it nourishing foods, nutrients to help support you during this time. Protein is crucial. I have many an episode where I talk about this. It is imperative to help with your muscle retention and supporting you as you age, because remember that you know as we get older we are thinking about.

Courtney: 22:15

Exercise now is to support our body as we age. The stronger you are now, when you get into your 70s and 80s, you will be weaker if you didn't do the strength training, if you didn't do that, so weaker you may deal with balance issues, you may fall. The stronger you are, the better able you are to handle those situations. So making sure that you are strong for longevity and I know if you are like myself, in those upper 40s, getting ready to hit 50, it comes like that light bulb goes on Like, oh my gosh, the last 30 years have flown by. I'm going to be 80 before you know it. Gosh, whoa, that was scary right there. But yeah, that's like. That is how fast it goes. So we do need to. You will hit this point where you're like, oh, oh, okay, I really do need to do this for my longevity because it's going to come by quick.

Courtney: 23:30

Make sure you're balancing your macronutrients, so your fats, your proteins, your complex carbs. Make sure you're also eating lots of fruits and vegetables for those micronutrients, for those phytonutrients. We want to make sure we're getting all of that in us. That is going to help with so many things. Things Magnesium again another important one to ensure that for heart health, making sure that you're getting enough magnesium. If you deal with a lot of stressors, if you've been one who's kind of done those high-intensity workouts, you are probably depleting the magnesium in your body. Drinking coffee, drinking alcohol, eating sugar all of these things deplete magnesium. So making sure that you are supplementing with some sort of magnesium and then making sure that you're staying hydrated. Again, I do like electrolytes for you at this stage, but, you know, make sure that you look into that for yourself. If you are dealing with hot flashes and night sweats, you know hydrating can help with a lot of that.

Courtney: 24:47

Understand that you need to go about thinking of this a little bit differently at this stage of life. So, exercise we want to pull away from how I'm going to appear, how I want to look, and really focus on how it will help me feel. If you focus on that, other things will come from it, but I don't want you focusing on the wrong thing. Exercise should not be about what you see in the mirror. That is a side effect to it. Exercise should be about how it helps you mentally, how it helps you live longer.

Courtney: 25:37

Heart health helps support your heart, helps support everything, the whole system, like think about the lymphatic system, how your nervous system. It helps with all of that, helps build strong bones. You want to think about it that way, and then there's some bonus side effects from it as well. So that is basically what you want to make sure that you are doing when you are hitting this perimenopause menopausal phase Just really supporting your body, listening to it, understanding that this is definitely a time that things are going to change. You're not going to be able to work out like you used to, and that is okay. And, instead of being hard on yourself, be accepting and lean into this time. This is the time for you to remember that you should be moving your body in a way that feels good for you, because that's what matters most is how you feel.

Courtney: 26:46

If you are ready to take that next step in your wellness journey or you need help with your exercise routine, I would encourage you to reach out to work with me. You can head to movingthroughmidlifecom. Click on the information about the Move Better bundle. That is where we will work together and I will help create a program that is part of my bonus right now. If you pay in full, you do get access to a 12-week workout program, so if that is something you're interested in, make sure to check that out.

Courtney: 27:28

We do have also our community over on Facebook, where I share information, we talk through things, and you can use that to help guide you and motivate you. Keep you motivated along the way. Hope you all have a wonderful week and, as always, make sure to keep moving. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found something to take away to help you practice healthier habits, move more or handle the midlife and aging with grace. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave us a review to help us reach more moms just like you. Head to movingthroughmidlifecom to join the free community or learn how you can move more and feel better in your daily lifecom to join the free community or learn how you can move more and feel better in your daily life.