5 Reasons You’re Not Losing Weight or Gaining Muscle After 50

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. If you are exercising, you're checking all the boxes, but you are not either losing weight or gaining muscle in menopause, depending on what your personal goal is, this episode is for you.

I'm Debra Atkinson and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond. Before you know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman.

It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence.

My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert and international speaker to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause-and-beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve.

Okay, as I mentioned in the teaser, if you are not losing weight or you're not gaining muscle— and I want to come back to at the very end of the day, not gaining muscle is really everybody's goal, because even if weight loss is your goal specifically, let's be real, it's fat loss we want to lose. We don't want to lose muscle. And that brings us to gaining muscle is really the objective no matter what. And, and I will have women say, well, it seems like my muscle mass is really good, so I just need to lose fat. And they will say that in conclusion after having done, say, something like Adexa Fit. I would argue that if your body fat is too high, that no, your skeletal muscle mass is not okay because we need more metabolically active tissue in order to inspire fat loss. So through exercise and/or through nutrition, and we're going to talk a little bit about both here today. As we talk about this, I want you to realize that you should be tuning in and these are not two separate things. It really is— this is for you. So you don't need to ask, is this for me if I want to lose fat, or is that meant for the other girl who wants to gain muscle? Gaining muscle is really all of our objective and our goal. And at the very least, it's preserving lean muscle mass. And so it almost takes the same stimulus because as we age, we are more anabolically resistant, meaning we don't gain muscle as easily as we did when we were younger. It gets harder. And so we've got to really fight for it. And essentially what we're doing is fighting for our versus the readily available ability to gain fat. We've suddenly gotten really good at it. It's easy for us. So we really have to consciously make decisions about what we eat, potentially when we eat it, how much of it we eat, and how much and when potentially we exercise. And those things could matter. Look, in general, if you're exercising at all, you're doing better than not. However, you might be either pushing it too hard or pushing it in a way that isn't as beneficial. And I know that if you've got goals, you want an outcome and you're not getting it, you want some specifics. So that of course is why you're here. So when I say the not so obvious reasons, which is really what this is, because of course you'd make the changes if you knew the importance of them. So this is for all of you exercising but not getting results. In any way. Recently I did an episode about being tired all the time. Well, let me phrase that. We've recorded one, so it will be coming up. If you haven't seen it yet, don't worry, it's coming. Because hearing women feel like they have to put up with this really drives me nuts, thinking that it's normal to be tired all the time. A lot of times I will start working with women and they don't even admit it to me. I have to really dig and ask some long list of subjective questions in order to get to the bottom of— no, they're tired all the time. And here's the thing I want everybody to realize, that if you are a woman exercising compared to the 80 to 85% that are not in the population, not doing the minimum amount of exercise, you should be probably most everywhere you go the most energetic woman in the room. And if that's not true, then something about the exercise that you're currently doing is not right for you now. And I carefully phrase that because I don't want you to hear that you are doing it wrong. You're doing it right based on what you think is the way to get to the goals that you want. And you're probably driving forward with lots of discipline, willpower, maybe motivation, and yet not getting the results you want. So I want you to come back to using one of the measures of evidence you're on the right path as you have more energy than when you don't exercise. The all-day energy, not just during exercise but after the evening energy that you have, you're okay. And yes, you're good, tired, ready for bed, but you're not so exhausted that all you wanna do at the end of the workday is lay on the couch. That shouldn't be you. So I encourage you, don't settle for that. If it is, don't settle for having to use caffeine to exist. In a way that is functional in your world. Don't settle for, you know, reaching for sugar or something sweet as a pick-me-up. That shouldn't be your case if you are one of the exercising ones in the very small percent leading the pack. All right, so whether it's you or it's somebody that you work with, say you're a coach or a trainer who's interested in gaining muscle after 50, you may like this. I am hosting a workshop, and this will be in the near future. We'll probably make it available if you're listening later, much later. This topic is going to be relevant for a very long time. You can probably get your hands on it. It's how to design strength training programs that work pre-, peri-, and post-menopause. It's a new workshop I'll be offering complementary to our Flipping 50 membership and to our existing menopause fitness specialists. However, if you are neither of those and want to get in, there will be a fee for registration. If you'd like to hear about it, you're just asking right now to get on the notifications list. There's a link in the show notes for this, so you can just let us know you want to know about it, and you can keep adding your name to this in the future. Even then, when it's readily available, we'll let you know how you can get your hands on it. Okay, let's dive into this. 5 reasons that you may be struggling to either lose fat or gain muscle after 50. Number 1— and each of these, by the way, to my science girls out there, is backed by evidence. We're talking primary research in a peer-reviewed journal, ideally randomized controlled studies. That means that there was a bit of blind placebo that sometimes researchers don't even know, but sometimes that's very hard to do, but the subjects don't know which group they're in. And again, sometimes that's not possible because it's so very obvious, but at other times is. But we try to choose those and not simply, number one, just anything could appear on PubMed, by the way, it doesn't mean it's a peer-reviewed journal. Peer-reviewed means it goes through an advisory board, gets scrutinized, sent back if it doesn't meets standards and that ideally it's something that is not just a narrative, meaning it's not just researchers who are very intelligent and have a basis and a reason for being asked to do it, but it's not just their opinions and kind of hypothesis about what to expect, but it literally was seen, shown, statistically significant. That's really what randomized controlled studies mean. So number 1, not working to muscular fatigue. And what we'd say generally, you know, when you're starting out, you have 5 to 6 repetitions to go to reach truly muscle fatigue. But there's a difference here, so let's define it. Exhaustion, muscle exhaustion, like you, you go to muscle failure. That is literally, you have to be in the middle of a repetition and you're like, I can't, can't get it all the way up. That's muscle failure. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about muscle fatigue or temporary muscle fatigue. And generally that means by temporary, you put the weight down and within 30 seconds or a minute, you're probably recovered. You could easily pick it up and do a few more reps. That's temporary fatigue. But when you're just starting out, you're a beginner, being a novice, not experienced with exercise or with resistance training or the exercise you're doing, 5 or 6 reps left, you could still do that many. You will make progress in doing that. But you know that saying, you can't go back to holding hands once you've gone all the way? Okay, well, those of you who are experienced, we really need to get closer to that temporary muscle fatigue. We need to either be to that point where, you know what, I'm starting to feel like I'm cheating. And we know that if we've got experience, we know what that feels like. And/or you're really beginning to maybe shake. Some people feel unstable, or you're about 2 repetitions from reserve. And when you're a beginner, you probably have no idea. You don't know if you're there or not, but you've got some idea. We're all a little bit intuitive about that. It's like if you were to, carry a bag of groceries from the car to inside to the kitchen, you know if it's really heavy and you are like, like, get out of my way, I have to put this down, you know? So a really heavy bag, you sense when that's true. If you've ever— I think about moving a lot, maybe it's just because in the last 5 years I've moved a couple of times, right? And you go, you're moving it to the truck, then from the truck to the inside, You know when you're like, I've got one end of the couch, somebody else got the other. You know, it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I have to set it down. Wait, I need a pause. You know when you are about to drop it. I think we all know that even intuitively with weight. Doesn't have to be a couch, doesn't have to be that heavy. So give yourself some credit, whether you're a beginner or you're more experienced. I think we all have a better idea than we might give ourselves credit for, but you have to work to muscular fatigue. Now what's important And I'm not quoting this science today, but we have recently unpacked light, moderate, and heavy weight all work to gain muscle strength. Now, it may be true that there is an advantage in going heavier for the neural firing that happens. The signal from the brain to the muscle signals a little bit more muscle fiber, so more muscle is activated, the muscles that is activated is activated to a stronger extent. There is something better that happens in the nervous system if you can go heavier. However, if we look at purely look at strength, strength is related directly to your longevity. How well are you going to age? You can gain strength with a lightweight if you go to that muscular fatigue. So clearly you're going to have to do more repetitions to do that, or with a moderate weight, or with a heavy weight. Just to give you an idea of what are we talking about with lightweight, the absolute all-over range is between about 6 and 30 reps. So if you can do more than 30 reps, that weight is really probably too light for you. And then we're starting to go to wear and tear stress. So if the reason for picking up a lightweight is because I don't want to get hurt, you're actually going too far the other way, and we're just going to have wear and tear of that joint. We don't want that either.

Either.

So you want to say, okay, 28 is actually the top of the line where I tend to take people, but it's always within 2 reps, right? So 28, 30 reps, no more than that. That's high repetition range. So that is lighter weight. Moderate ranges— and we're going to skip some ranges. You're going to say, well, what about that? You know, and it's, it's all a matter of trial and error. So there, those repetitions are going to show up. But moderate is generally associated with kind of 15 plus or minus on either end of that. Heavier is 10 or fewer repetitions. And we can give you, I could give you all kinds. I could say heavy is between 5 and 7, moderate might be 8 to 12, and really lightweight might be 20 to 28. So all of those are right. There is no absolute, But if you were looking at one study versus the next, the researchers would have had a clear definition. And in different textbooks, you're going to read different things, but I want you to just get an idea of when those are used, and that would be this. So if we were focusing on giving you some sports-specific benefit, meaning you participated in a sport like golf or pickleball for that matter, or we wanted to improve your gait, your walking speed and coordination, we would go for those higher rep ranges in the activities or the movements we were having you do. If we wanted to work on something more related to gaining muscle strength, muscle endurance, and beginning to really increase benefit for bone density, that moderate weight around 15 repetitions is a good place to introduce that. We don't necessarily want to stay there. If your joints, ligaments, tendons all tolerate more, ideally we will continue to progress to a heavier weight later because the biggest benefits for metabolism and for bone density do happen with heavy weights. Notice I haven't said 3 pounds, 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 35 pounds, because it's relative to you. The weight you pick up is relative to you, and none of us should be telling you, you want this rate range when you're doing this exercise, because it is again based on your experience, your injury risk, any conditions you might have, and it can be also impacted significantly by your stage of menopause. But again, that it impacts significantly your injury risk. But not working to muscle fatigue is really the point, whether you're picking up lightweight, moderate weight, or heavyweight during a set. And I want to make that clarification. I'm often working with people, and less and less lately, so I think we're getting the message, but people often think, well, that's a cumulative effect, of course, which is not true. Meaning if I'm asking you to do 3 sets, then by the end of that third set I should reach muscular fatigue. No, no, no. Set number 1, I want you to reach muscular fatigue. Set number 2, after some rest between 1 and 2, you're going to reach muscular fatigue and some rest comes again. And then set number 3, you've got to reach muscular fatigue. So all 3 of them in order to make that successful 3 sets. So we've got that cumulative effect. Number 2 is too little recovery. So you're gonna find there's a theme here and it goes back and forth. So really not working to muscular fatigue, the first one we've just finished with, is about not enough stimulus for the muscle. Well, too little recovery is like not enough recovery once you've done the stimulus. And we need both of these to be equally represented. So too little recovery has to do with multiple things, though. It is not just the muscle. And this is where, number one, we go wrong. We misunderstand how much recovery we need. There is this prolonged myth It's like a rumor that got started and just kept going that you should work out every 48 hours. Well, it's not true for a lot of people. 48 hours was the minimum amount of rest that anyone should take between exercising in resistance training or in a very challenging and intense way for same muscle groups. So we might also say if you do a really hard lower body work or your total body workout included lower body work, we might not want you to do a really intense high impact sprint workout the next day because your muscles are already torn up and we're gonna do more muscular damage instead of allow that recovery process to occur. So a minimum of 48 hours between stimulating the same muscle group again, certainly from resistance training work to resistance training work. For a lot of adults, you may have gotten away with that— a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule, for instance. But as we age, we tend to need more relative to our own needs when we were younger, and it is very different from one individual to another. It— yes, if we get more fit, we will probably need less recovery time. However, I would also challenge that in that as we get more fit, we are going to up the challenge. We're going to go heavier, we're going to do more sets, that is, more volume will come to that. Your body will need more recovery from that in order to benefit from the fitness level that you're challenging it to reach. So I don't know that recovery needs are going to go down. Even as you get fit, as we age, you're going to have a slightly greater need for it. It's hard to know that you're done recovering, but you will know over time. There is a trend. If you take too little recovery time, you will find you're more tired than you're better. You find you potentially are not gaining lean muscle mass. And, and think that you deserve to. And I, in lots of cases with my clients, would agree. So we sometimes will add a recovery day. We don't add a harder workout or another set. We add a recovery day in which we're still eating high protein, getting lots of good rest. We move, but we're not challenging in a high-intensity way. And often that is the thing that helps them get more muscle mass and make more progress in terms of strength. We have 3 things that have to recover. It's not just muscle, but it's also your connective tissue. And that's collectively, that is ligaments and joints. We could also include fascia there, but for this conversation, I'm just going to talk about ligaments and joints. So the connecting tissue from connecting muscle to the bone and the joint itself, the the bone proper, that connective tissue with age is not as resilient and with a lack of estrogen after menopause. So when we enter perimenopause, it begins to come down. By the time we've transitioned, it really is dropping. So the first 5 years after menopause, if you hadn't noticed much change, you may notice more aches or pains or more need for recovery. Maybe more injury after that if you don't, right? And if you're not getting enough protein and high-quality nutrition, you may notice more injuries occur if that's true. So your recovery may be slower and healing from an injury or a strain might take a little bit longer as well. Nothing wrong with that as long as get it. Don't shortchange yourself because we are so conditioned to think the more I exercise, the more I'm going to get results faster. Might be the opposite. Yes, get that exercise, and then yes, absolutely get that recovery. Allow it to happen fully. Higher cortisol, just overall, not because of exercise necessarily, but higher cortisol levels overall that occur for most women in menopause and in response to exercise combined can inhibit the benefits and the recovery from exercise. So collectively, that means take your time with your warmups and cooldowns. No longer can you afford to skip them or skimp on them. Work on your mobility around key joints like your ankles, your hips, your shoulders, and do that regularly, both with your warmups, cooldowns, but also days between. Mobility is what will keep the gate open for you to gain strength and maintain activities that allow you to increase your VO2 or your cardiovascular capacity. Very tied to longevity. Prolonged elevated cortisol after a workout is problematic if you were already chronically elevated in the first place. So it just means if you have are going through a period of life where it is like lots of stress coming at you. Life is not just throwing you a curveball, it's throwing it from 3 directions at one time. That means probably you're going to take a little longer in your recovery, or you need to shorten or condense those workouts somehow so, hey, you can stay regular, consistent, but doing less may actually keep you more fit and not allow a reduced immune system, for instance, to start causing problems with recovery and illness getting in the way of you exercising. Long endurance exercise or long strength plus resistance training beyond current capacity can cause that to occur, meaning you can elevate your cortisol if you just you're stringing exercise together, like you're doing your cardio and you're doing your workout, your strength training workout. You're just making everything longer, or you're walking the dog 2 to 3 miles, then you're doing HIIT, and then you're doing strength. You've made some anaerobic movements actually endurance because you put them all together. And realize that that may backfire. I'm a huge fan of splitting your workouts up so that you're doing the intense work one workout at a time so that you come into your HIIT fresh. And now you may also be going for a walk or doing yoga on that day, but making sure you're not necessarily stringing together a long walk and HIIT and your weight training workout so that you're fresh coming into both. So think about that. You know, once or twice, you know, you learn and you adapt a new plan. But if you frequently do this, you can result in the opposite of desired effects. So not gaining muscle, but also potentially gaining fat or storing it. And what looks like it when it's inflammation, it's not something else. So to kind of capitalize on this whole point of not recovering, estrogen regulates your HPA axis. Your cortisol-adrenal signaling function. So with less estrogen, the ability to regulate during and after stressors is reduced. Elevated levels of cortisol result in an increased blood sugar level, and together with insulin resistance that is so common for women in midlife once they hit perimenopause, these changes altogether show up as broken sleep or belly fat or both in spite of exercise that you're doing, which seems in alignment with traditional recommendations. So let's talk about that. You know, what is too much is often the question somebody will say. What is too much exercise or what is too little recovery? And nobody can answer that question for you. We can give you a framework, but if you have some of this evidence you're doing what you're doing right now, or have been, say, for the last 3 or 4 weeks. And if you have results that suggest you've got belly fat, you're more tired than energized, you're feeling fluffy or puffy— meaning it looks and feels and acts like fat, but it's not necessarily fat, it's probably inflammation— then whatever you're doing right now is is one of two things: either not enough recovery between the workouts, or potentially it is too much during the workout. Here's how you know. Too much exercise is like overreaching. You've done too much too quickly. You ramped up the number of sets you've done, or the weight you're doing, or the volume within a workout, you added more exercises. So now it's an hour and a half as opposed to an hour or 45 minutes, and you did it kind of overnight. You were doing a really short workout, now you're not, you're doing a really long one. That would be an example in resistance training. If it were some other kind of cardio exercise, it would be the equivalent of, say, you're used to walking 3 miles, all of a sudden you walk 6 or you walk 8. Well, your body's probably not used to that and you didn't ramp up, so it's probably going to talk back to you negatively as opposed to responding with a sudden in— surge of fitness level. So those are things that you can use to gauge. So of course, do we want challenging workouts for powerful aging? Yes, absolutely. Can we keep adding water to the leaking swimming pool floaty and expect it to hold air? No, right? So we have to plug the hole first. So just be sure you're listening, and that might mean stepping back on the exercise for a moment to reduce inflammation and the taxing of the adrenal system, to improve your sleep, improve your nutrition sufficiency, and identify ways to reduce negative effects of cortisol with tools that work for you first. Okay, number 1 and number 2, not reaching muscular fatigue and not getting enough recovery time or rest time. Number 3 is too few calories. Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there's one thing that you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself to not only get the protein but the fiber, fruits and veggies that I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day over 30 years ago. When I realized all the junk, the sugar and the extras that you don't want hiding in most protein powders or pre-made shakes, I finally caved in after years of saying I'd never ever ever sell supplements Look, stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning and after workouts by always being prepared. Protein plus fiber kill cravings and boost satiety and build muscles and a strong future. Use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at flipping50.com. And within that, we kind of have to open the curtain and say it also could be too little protein. But often, here's the deal, if you're eating too few calories, often we're eating less protein than we normally would. Unless you're very consciously reducing calories to be in a caloric deficit and increasing protein while you're doing it, so the calories you do eat are made of protein. That actually actually has been proven if there's a moderate deficit, meaning 500 or fewer calories below what you need or below your normal, combined with resistance training— so we'll hold on to that lean muscle mass— and a high protein intake can help preserve muscle during fat loss. But, but, okay, for muscle growth those of you that really want muscle growth, and those would be you listeners who you don't really have anything to spare, you're not in need of losing weight, you need to maintain your weight, but you need to gain lean muscle, then you need a calorie surplus in order to do it. You're not going to gain muscle in a caloric deficit. I must say that again for the people in the back, okay? You're not going to gain muscle in a caloric deficit. The exception to this rule— someone who's, say, of average weight and they're a beginner— you may be able to. But again, after a certain point, you're going to find that what once worked won't work for you anymore. Your body will need a little bit more stimulus, and your body will need more fuel. So for those of you who've plateaued and you were coasting along, you were doing great, and you wonder all of a sudden, why am I not getting any more fit? Often when I've brought— and I, I literally can see myself sitting in an office across from a client right now because it's happened so many times— the reason is when we review, what are you taking in? It's like you're not eating enough. You're not feeding this new muscular athletic body that you have created. And so your body is going to do everything possible to shed some of this and conserve energy. And in fact, whatever might've taken you 100 calories to do, we'll say walking a mile, your body is going to reduce the energy that it takes to do that. So maybe it's only going to burn 85 calories. And every day, all day, in everything you're doing, that will add up fairly quickly. So realize that you may need to change and go through cycles of calorie surplus. And if you create that with protein, you will help yourself preserve lean muscle and— listen to this— burn more fat. It's been proven. So I'm going to share a study with you that is extremely high, extremely high in protein, but that is proven to work. An 8-week study featuring a heavy resistance training program. It was performed in a split routine, and by the way, they did a split routine, something every day, 5 days a week. So some of those days were maybe biceps and core, but they were still exercise every day. This was fairly young adults, 25-ish, 28, I think, on average. So realize that this not— has not yet been done maybe on midlife women, but I think it's bearing listening to this and what happened. So there's heavy resistance training performed in a split routine suggesting much higher protein intake successfully improved fat loss when paired with resistance training in active adults. So that was— wait for it, maybe you want to be sitting down— this is 3.4 grams per kilogram of body weight protein intake. So doing the math for me, keep in mind the RDA is 0.8. It starts there, goes to about 1.2, and many will say 1.2 or 1.4 is actually better. At least it's more reasonable and some will say up to 2.2 for very active and/or for bedridden and very sedentary older adults. But 3.3, I weigh 130 pounds. My equivalent of daily protein intake using that would be 200 grams of protein. I can easily say that would be nearly impossible simply from a satiety standpoint, meaning I'd be so full. Protein is very satisfying, right? So it keeps you sated and full. And I enjoy protein. I actually really crave it. But 150 grams of protein takes very conscious consideration for me. I would end up supplementing with essential amino acids. You can do that in a pill form or in a powdered form. And, and that would be necessary, mandatory, in order for me to hit that amount of food. Even if you could do it, the amount of calories would be significant. The digestibility of those proteins is also generally accepted as less bioavailable. If you were trying to do this with plants in particular, plants in isolation would be super hard. So for those of you who are plant-based, essential amino acids, in order to have a protein surplus, might be necessary, almost mandatory. So I won't go down this rabbit hole in this episode, and the reason is there's so much to unpack here, but I do want to plant, pun intended, this seed. Soy and dairy. If you're plant-based, and, and some won't do dairy, you won't maybe do cheese even, depending if you're vegan. But a lot of vegetarians will. But soy and dairy are often not tolerated well by midlife women. So even though those are two sources of plant protein foods they're out for a lot of women. They cause hot flashes, or are, by removing them, helping reduce hot flashes and inflammation. So if you've got an autoimmune disease particularly, or you have osteoarthritis, which is not autoimmune, it's wear and tear of aging, kind of coming into, you know, arthritis will happen with age, and all of us who've led a very good life at all And when we talk autoimmune, we're talking somebody who might have Hashimoto's, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, um, are some that come to mind. And if this is you, almost always eliminating dairy and often gluten and/or wheat are the first things to go and help improve it dramatically. Those are not things we have them reintroduce. We're not necessarily testing to see. We know that there are some properties in it that actually cause the inflammation, and it's worse and apparent for them. If you have achy joints, it may be worth testing at least temporarily to remove them to see if you feel better when they're gone for a minimum of 3 weeks, and some will say up to 3 months to test and get it fully out of your system. But the quality of plant protein is also a consideration. The level of essential amino acids is not nearly as high compared to calorie-per-calorie source in animal protein. So you have to almost double the serving of a plant-based protein in order to have the same amount of essential amino acids that you would in the— in calorically in an animal protein. And then it is equivalent, but then look at how many more calories you're taking in. And it can get difficult not to gain weight, but also just is this the pure satiety factor, because almost all plant-based proteins are high in fiber as well, which is obviously a good thing for digestion and diversity, but makes it challenging again to have this homeostatic control of calories in, calories out. And it's not the whole thing, but it's something we have to consider. It's not something we can totally ignore either. A recent study pointed out that for muscle strength, older adults need adequate protein, and for mass, also need adequate micronutrient density. So for those of you who are of diet culture, and you know who you are, you try to cheat the system having as little as possible. Now, I also find with women who are doing that, you're leaning into things like crackers or treats. You've got a sweet tooth, you will call it, but I think that's the body's intuition telling you you haven't eaten enough micronutrients, and I'm going to keep telling you you're hungry, giving you a craving until you actually satisfy that. What we've seen in women who've done a challenge and finally built up their vegetable intake to 6 to 9 cups a day— now some of that is leafy greens, so imagine it's, you know, it's not, you know, all broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, asparagus, the bulky stuff, but still 6 to 9 cups. You're taking in a huge amount of micronutrients, and that changes the game. Cravings, desire almost disappear naturally for women who are doing that. So something to think about as we age, we need both both adequate protein, but also we need adequate micronutrient density. So you can't just slip in those essential amino acid pills and think, okay, great, I don't have to take in calories, this will be awesome. You're missing part of the equation. So number 3 is too little sleep— or sorry, number 4. Let me recap where I've gone so far. Number 1, not working to muscle fatigue. Number 2, too little recovery. Number 3, too few calories and too little protein, and then number 4, too little sleep. And if we go back, I hope you see how all of these are related. They're like at a family reunion, okay? Too little sleep is really a part of too little recovery. So when we say recovery, we could be talking about the time between exercise sessions. We can also be micromanaging and talking about the time between exercise sets. But with too little sleep, we're talking about how deep is that total recovery, because there's a lot of repair in our soft tissue and brain that goes on during sleep. Inadequate sleep can lead to a decrease in muscular strength in the post-night session. So let's say I don't sleep tonight. Tomorrow, if I'm going for a workout, I'm not going to be as strong strong. And if that happens during that workout, or during very many more of those workouts in the next coming weeks or months, obviously I'm not working at my capacity, and I will start to see a reduction of total muscle mass. Sleep, post-exercise recovery, and athletic performance seem to be significantly related, and it appears that vigorous exercise can intensify the negative relationship between sleep deprivation and recovery. Let me say that again. So vigorous exercise can intensify the negative reaction or relationship, meaning if you're doing a lot of intense exercise and you are not sleeping well, you will actually like lose muscle mass, but the quality of your muscle goes down significantly. I've got friends and, and friends in high places, but you know, when they've spent a night here, for some reason they're staying in town. And, you know, one night I woke up to get up, go to the restroom, and normally, you know, I'm right back to sleep. And there was noise coming from the next bedroom, and I am like, what is that noise? Go figure, my friend is not sleeping, so she's watching a video on her phone. I'm like, what? And the next morning she looks normal as usual, no comment meant that she didn't sleep. It's her normal. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I've been encouraging you to do hard workouts. We need to fix this problem first, otherwise I'm being part of the problem. So I want you to understand that we've really got to get more sleep. And the more challenging your workouts are, hopefully your sleep improves, because even In a 2013 study, and this was a survey by the way, so surveys are not, not certainly not a peer-reviewed, certainly not a randomized controlled study, but a survey nonetheless by the National Sleep Foundation found that just 10 minutes of self-selected exercise intensity a day— we're not even talking intense exercise, it was probably walking— increased self-sleep reports overall up by 33%. It's a pretty good return on investment. But we also see with people overtraining, doing too much, going too hard, that there's also the other side. You hit the other side where sleep also gets disrupted. It doesn't improve because you're doing more and more and more. And a lot of times people think, well, you know, I'm gonna sleep great because I'm so tired. You can actually take that too far. By this point in your life, I'm preaching to the choir. You already know this. You're so exhausted and can't sleep. It's a ridiculous statement, but very true. Okay, last but not least, let's recap. Number 5 is not enough quality volume. Now, this almost comes back to number 1 where I said not reaching muscular fatigue. So realize that that is a part of the quality, right? So not enough volume— we have to clarify, because most women, if we think, I want you to turn up the volume, you might think add another day, or instead of the hour, I'm going an hour and a half or hour and 15 minutes. And I'm going to say No, not exactly. But postmenopause is when this really kicks in. Postmenopause requires more volume than premenopause for adequate stimulus when we talk about the impact of the work on adipose tissue. Postmenopause and premenopause can gain strength However, when a premenopausal woman will have a benefit to her adipose tissue, reduced total adipose, and often reduced visceral belly fat, a postmenopausal woman won't get the same result from that same stimulus. So if you suddenly are at that point where you're saying what I used to do doesn't work anymore, bingo. It won't. You need greater stimulus volume. And here's where we have to dance this dance like Ginger in heels and backwards. We can't just throw more out there. We have to really look at, is what we're doing quality? Meaning, I don't want you to do 16 sets of bicep curls so you can have great arms. You're going to get great arms when you really focus on metabolism-boosting muscle in compound exercises for your chest, your back, your glutes, your quads, and your hamstrings. Those are really your biggest major muscle groups. Now, and, and I know arms, your biceps and triceps, your calves, those will also get thrown into the mix. However, we have to agree, your biceps are smaller than the chest muscles, your triceps are smaller than the back muscles. Your calves are smaller than your glutes or than your quadriceps. So the smaller those muscle groups, the less I want you to work them, and the more I want you to focus on major muscle groups. So while recommendations in general for premenopause work— this is 6 to 8 sets of exercise for any one muscle group. So let's say we're talking chest muscle during any one week, I need to be doing 6 to 8 sets of them. That could be 2 workouts, and I would do 3 sets for the chest each of those. I'm at 6 sets for the chest. Okay, I could do on one day 3 sets and another day 4 sets. Now I'm at 7, and you get it, right? Or I could do 4 sets on both days, obviously. So So there's the range. And so it gives you an idea of that's pretty doable in 2 workouts a week. And those recommendations work before estrogen and other hormonal declines have occurred post-menopause with a significant change that occurs with also being 60, whether male or female. We see this occur. We have a decline in our strength and our muscle mass at 60. It seems to be a pivotal time. Others will say, and I hate to plant this placebo seed. There's a time at 34 and at 60, and it seems that there's another one looming at 74. But I think if we all change our habits right now before we get there, we're going to change the curve. Okay, I vote that we do. Let's raise the bar and change that. By comparison, so 8 times. So if we have 8 sets and we have either 6 or 8 8 major muscle groups, then that's somewhere between 48 to 64 sets if we're talking the whole body. So per week. So we could do that. I think we can agree we can do that during any given week. We could do that in 2 workouts, right? But that's like doing 3 or 4 sets per muscle group, as I said earlier, but it jumps— the number we need of sets jumps to between 77 to 144 for postmenopausal women. That's a wide range, I realize, but researchers— don't shoot me— the researchers suggested that more and within that range is needed. So more research still needs to be done to determine if this is really true or not, but I have found at getting at least 80 sets per week total, right? And I want you to realize that this is total, but this is a minimum of, say, 8 sets per muscle group, but changing it so that the total is about 80. And often it works better to do that in at least 3 workouts a week. My preference for women is one total body and then an upper body and a lower body. And those upper body, lower body workouts are not just, say, half, and it's not just the upper body and lower body exercises that were in the total. It's now we're going to amplify and do a little bit more. So it's a little bit longer. We'll add another exercise, maybe 2 exercises for the hamstrings, an exercise that is squat loading, that is lateral, so we're doing some kind of a side movement, a hip thrust. So we're doing more exercises and higher set range, which might mean lower repetition range as we do that, so that we're not adding tons and tons of time. But that makes it easier to hit that over the threshold of 80 sets per week. For all major muscle groups. That's not just for one. Of course, somebody asked me that the other day. I'm like, oh heavens, no, no, no. All right, so more importantly, you should test to see if you're still doing the workout you were doing when you were perimenopause and you're still seeing great results on your smart scale. You're seeing your muscle mass, you're seeing your body composition really within range, you're looking in the mirror and you're like, yes, I like what I see, I'm getting good results, my energy is great, my sleep is great, then I would say we don't change it. But we do stay aware that if we start to slip back, we may need to change so that we get a little bit more volume in terms of the total sets that we're getting and really quality in that we're reaching the muscular fatigue in each of those sets. In order to get the response. So there you have it. Let me do a recap. Those 5 again were: if you're not reaching muscular fatigue or near it, whether you're a beginner who needs between 5 and 6 repetitions left, or you're more advanced and you need no more than 2 in reserve. Number 2, not enough recovery. If you feel tired all the time, achy and sore. Yet that is not the only indicator. Some of us don't feel achy or sore really almost ever. That's somewhat genetic. But if you're not feeling like you're recovering or you're tired all the time, I would take another day of rest and see how you do. But on that day of rest, continue eating high protein. Number 3 is too few calories and/or too little protein. Number 4, too little sleep. And number 5, not enough quality volume. And that is it. The references will all be in the show notes for resources. If you want to sit down, pick this apart, talk about what you're doing now, what you could change, realize 30 minutes with a coach who's got experience may be invaluable to you and priceless as far as getting your results as you go forward and knowing which one, where do I start so I'm not turning my world upside down. I'll put a link to the discovery call with me in the show notes. That's not complimentary, by the way, just to save my time to make sure that you show up. And believe me, I need to do that. And that's, there's a little fee for that, but well worth it if it helps you get the results that you want. I will put a link to reach me if you're interested in learning how to program for yourself. You don't have to be a trainer, but I think if you are a science geek and you like to know how is this working and why is the program maybe I did not working, I will also link to a couple other things that may be helpful if you're not sleeping. We have a Sleep Yourself Stronger book that you may want to grab for the solutions, because I know you're not, not sleeping on purpose. So I hope that was helpful. What are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today.

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