Listener Menopause Exercise Question: Are You Exercising Too Much, Too Little, or Just Right?”

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I'm Debra Atkinson, and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to questions about fitness and 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.

If you too have wondered or you wonder what is enough, what is too much, or what is the Goldilocks for you, this is for you. And hold on, in case you don't wonder, in case you think I've nailed this, I've got this, I will offer this as an incentive to stick around. Based on a study done in Ireland, called Meno Wealth, not to be confused with the bars, by the way. Almost 70% of us get our information from our friends. So you may think you've nailed this. You may think, I'm getting the results I want, I feel good, I know I'm in my sweet spot, I don't need this episode. I would encourage you to listen so that you can answer for maybe a daughter or a friend, a colleague, a sister who's asking because your exercise won't be hers. And you should know how to answer this. And if you're inclined to do this and you really would love to be a Flipping 50 Metopause Fitness Specialist, please reach out to me directly. We close the doors, we're open for enrollment only twice a year, but for the right candidate, if we've just recently closed, I just might let you in the back door. Reach out to me. We, we, we close. We say we close. We close. We mean it. And let me know if this is you. Okay. So a word about that, by the way, about asking from our friends or any other place. This any other place really bothers me. Social media provides a soundbite from, say, a 60-minute interview. Intended to pique interest. That little soundbite that they put out on social media, that little clip, it's intended to pique your interest, not to provide facts and science. So just like the media, the news will put something inflammatory that gets your attention, that actually ruffles your feathers because it will make us pay attention. So too does that happen on social media. A post is designed to get your attention, not to teach and educate. Often Influencers know if it isn't shocking and inflammatory, it won't stop our scroll. So beware, even researchers right now are spending a lot of time and energy getting eyeballs and making shocking statements instead of merely sharing the facts. They are being as inflammatory as the influencers they claim not to be and want a discount. It's really alarming where our wasted energy and resources seems to be go. But I mention that because if we get 70% of our information from our friends, we're getting 50% of information from social media. Statements like, well, social media tells us to do that, oh, makes me crawl out of my skin, and I hope it does you too. We may read some credible sources online and they may be on social media. I'm on social media. And I'm hoping you're listening to that, but you just don't know if you're hearing little soundbites of truth or it's somehow been twisted and manipulated. So take everything with a grain of salt and test it, look it up, confirm it. So let me give you a quick overview and why this question is so relevant and why we all should be asking, am I doing too much? Am I doing too little? And I love it for that reason. I don't love it for the reason that you feel like you have to ask an expert because I would love for you to be the expert and to know, "No, wait, this is working for me right now." I do have this big statement and I think I'll always stick to this simple cliché, "Don't fix it if it's not broken." But there are two ways to decide, "Not broken." We're not just looking for, "Am I fitting in my skinny jeans now? Am I as thin as I want to be?" And I'm hoping you're not basing success on those two questions anymore, but it's hard not to. I get it. But we also need to look at not just now and that immediate gratification that we all have been trained to get, want, and still thrive on, but we have to really be taking a better look at, will my 85-year-old self be glad I did this, or will she be mad as You know, because I knew better. The science was available. I simply ignored it. And that, I think, is where we go wrong. Because if we look back into the '80s when I was just beginning my journey as a fitness instructor, and I'm sure, you know, in the late '80s, I thought I knew everything because I've been doing it since 1984, you know. And I had— I've had students, I've had trainers work for me, and they'll say, I've been doing this for a decade, and you You know, at that point when you're— you have 35 years experience, it's like, yeah, and, uh, you're still a toddler. So, you know, but you can't do that, right? So in all respect, and there's some very mature young trainers, but life experience is also a part of the game. So let's talk about why this is important question to ask. Menopause can bring— and I state The power in those 3 little letters in that word can— it doesn't have to, and we know better now, but it can bring bone loss, muscle loss, metabolic changes, negative metabolic changes, shall we say, mood shifts, and symptoms like hot flashes and sleep troubles. And by the way, I would say all those things I just mentioned are symptoms. Some are objective. We can measure bone loss and muscle loss and body fat increases, but We can also subjectively measure mood, hot flashes, intensity of them, frequency of them, sleep issues. But we know that happens. And what you should know, if you don't, is that exercise can have either a positive or a negative effect on each and every one of those. Not just on bone loss and muscle loss, metabolic changes, meaning storing or burning fat. But on your mood, on your cognition, your memory. We can impact the hippocampus by walking 10 minutes a day. It's all it takes. No, no imposition of intensity or speed. Walk at your own self-selected pace. Improve your memory 10 minutes a day. Improve your sleep by doing almost the same. It's all it takes. But we also want to make sure that we're looking again at the future. So my promise to you is by the end, you'll know how to determine if your exercise now is working. That is my number one focus. I'm not going to give you an exercise prescription and say, I want you to check these boxes on the number of times a week you should strength train. And by the way, I think everybody should start with 2. I can't help myself. I'm not going to give you a recommended number of times that should be walking, although I think everybody should be walking every day. I know, can't help myself. Or the number of times that you should be doing HIIT, that varies significantly. People in perimenopause, I would suggest 1 to 2, and maybe 0 if you're in an adrenal fatigue moment and it's not helping, it's making you worse. For women post-menopause, I would say 2 to 4 because we need that fast-twitch muscle fiber. We're also older, no doubt. So there you have it, that's your checklist if you really needed one, and that's why you came. You got it. And we're going to move right on. What I want to give you though is how do you gauge what it is you're doing right now, if that's working or not. Okay, all right. I want to also share with you this— this episode is brought to you by the Flipping 50 membership. With monthly and annual joining membership options. We open for enrollment just twice a year. Since 2016, we've been the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause fitness membership in the world, with the science of exercise physiology plus the science of menopause to fill in the gaps where science doesn't yet serve enough of the women who are in menopause. You get and keep your muscle, your bone, and your brain health while optimizing body composition and energy for the symptoms you may have right now and for the life you want, maybe even don't dream about yet at 85. We'll put the link in the show notes for this one. So here's why exercise is non-negotiable. Let me just state a couple of facts. Number 1, exercise is medicine. By the way, that's a copyrighted term by two very important entities, the American Medical Association and the American College of Sports Medicine. The latter writes my Bible, or did when I was reading that Bible. The guidelines, the position statements that are established to teach trainers and fitness instructors how to administer exercise. It was a framework. And it worked for a while until it didn't, until we had this critical mass of women in menopause changing all the rules. Their hormones changed. Suddenly those exercise prescriptions were making many women feel worse, not better. And trainers dedicated to giving them— this is the exercise prescription, check this box— forgetting to say, how do you feel? Does this make you more tired or feel better? And we have learned so much since that, although we still now have research, we have new, even emerging research saying there's not that much difference in some cases between men and women in their exercise. There's not that much difference in when you eat protein, what time of day, and a difference in the benefit of resistance training between men and women or of younger and older. However, there's not enough women represented in studies yet, and the evidence of practical application— I see it every day, every day inside of our membership. We have 1,000 members every month. They don't all fit in these tight little boxes based on the subjects that were in these studies. Some of them feel miserable. They're gaining weight, they're not feeling better, they're not sleeping, they're having hot flashes and night sweats, and they're storing fat, not losing it, doing a traditional exercise program. We have to stop ignoring them and say, no, there's no difference between you and a man, so here you go, exercise like this anyway. That's not going to work, and we should stop listening to anybody who says it should. So muscle is really the medicine. Muscle is an endocrine organ, and that is literally scholarly content right there. It is an endocrine organ. It takes up blood sugar. It is responsible for many things throughout the body, not just for lifting a weight or looking good in the mirror. We need to start treating this as if it's non-negotiable. It's not an option. So many women will say, I don't like to lift weights. Do you like to brush your teeth? I don't know. I don't. Um, it's a pain. It's— wish I didn't have to do it, you know. Do you like to use toilet paper? You know, I mean, there are just things where we need to think— well, you don't get to choose if you want to live really well, if you want to live healthfully, you know. You can choose if you want to smoke, right, or not. It's just very different. So if we can answer this, how much is too little? I could answer in a very generic way, right? The WHO, World Health Organization, the guidelines say 150 minutes of moderate aerobic and 2 strength training sessions a week. By the way, if you're doing more vigorous exercise, it's more like 75 minutes, and that actually may be better for health. So it's not just more is better. By the way, though, this is not a generic podcast, so I'm not going to give you that generic answer. You're not a generic woman. So let's answer with the uniqueness that you deserve. So whether you're exercising too little or too much, your body leaves both objective and subjective data. Let's use data. Let's use the science. The red flags of overtraining or undertraining are one and the same: persistent fatigue, ongoing symptoms like your hot flashes, your night sweats, your low libido, your low muscle, your Saggy skin, can't focus, plateau in your strength. You're not gaining any strength, maybe you're slipping backward. Your weight, you're gaining weight, and it— promise you, it's probably not muscle if all these things are true. So I want to interrupt and share one more summer secret with you before I forget, and that is I live in Arizona. I love the sun. Recently, it does not love me back. I had a precancerous mole, and if you're watching the video, should be able to see it. It looks really kind of like a cigarette butt. It's not, by the way. But I've joined a new church, the Church of Religious Sunscreen, when I'm out for more than 15-20 minutes, you know, not just a dog walk. So swimming this summer while I'm healing from stem cell is one of the only things I can do. You can bet I'm putting on sunscreen. And if you haven't tried OneSkin, this is your sign. I've also been using them as cleanser, as eye cream, and facial cream for the last 7 months just to test because I wanted to honor them and exclusively use their products, and I love them. So there's so much science behind them and a unique peptide they discovered for reducing oxidative stress, kind of turning back the clock. I hate the word anti-aging, so I refuse to use it. However, their SPF products are amazing. So the SPF for face, for lips, and I'm using also for body because, yes, as you might guess, uh, I love it all. The SPF for face is— I'm using tinted. You can get non-tinted, but I love the I love it and the feel of it better than I love my foundation. I'm using it for foundation. It is awesome. So it is a part of my summer collection. It feels clean, it feels smooth, makes my skin look great. And it's not just sun protection, it is skin promotion and is also marine-friendly. So it's no cakey white zinc oxide here, although it's got some in. It's marine-friendly, which is very unique. I use it even when I'm not in the sun. So you can go to flipping50.com/oneskin to try it for yourself and ping me when you try it. I want to know how much you love it too. So when exercise becomes too much, if you've got excess high-intensity strength training, HIIT training, too much too soon, you're going to experience all those things I talked about. Your appetite could go crazy. It could go up, it could go down. More cravings are much more likely. You're probably not going to sleep as well. So instead of sleeping more, which will happen, or better quality if you're exercising right, the opposite will happen. Overtraining stress or undertraining stress can both do that to us. Here's how you find your sweet spot and you answer this question for yourself. Measure. Objective measures are measure your muscle and your body fat. So muscle mass in pounds or kilograms, not a slippery slope of percentage. Get a smart scale. I'll give you my list of 4 different picks for 2025 in the show notes. Get a smart scale for your bathroom. If you're in a gym where you can go and do this with an InBody or something very similarly, very regularly, okay, then do that. But track that. You do not want to lose muscle mass at this age or stage in your life. Measure your waist girth. So you want to see that's not going up. 35 inches or less for an average height woman. If you are petite, I would say you are probably playing with fire if you have a girth or a waist measurement that's even less than that. But if you look in the mirror and you're storing all your weight around your central adiposity, that mid belly fat, that's a problem. And if bone density is your reason for exercise, you've got to get a DEXA scan to know, and then you're going to probably get another one, not until at least 9, probably 12 months later if you're doing it medically with your doctor, because that's as soon as your insurance would likely cover it again. But these are the things that you want to use to measure. Now, if you tell me your goal is only stress reduction, you don't care about muscle when you age, you don't care about your bone or your brain health. Okay, I might not buy that. However, 'cause when you think about it, most of us are concerned with those things. We don't wanna be a burden to anybody. We wanna thrive. We wanna keep making choices because we want to make them, not because I have to do that now that I'm this old, quote unquote. So you're gonna track things like your energy, your sleep, your mood, your focus, libido, digestion, elimination. We have what we call a progress tracker at flipping50.com. Anybody who's ever gotten something free with us or is in a program or a membership can log in and keep track in one place. You may have an app where you keep all of these things. It's very similar to that, but you can track weight, percent body fat, your lean muscle mass, and all of those subjective responses as well and know if you're going in the right direction. Between those subjective and objective measures, are are you getting what you want? Not just immediate, but your long-term goals are getting met. That's really what you need to know in order to answer the question, is that too much or too little for you? What is your purpose? Why are you doing it? And hey, a lot of us want it all. You may not have just one, but maybe it's stress relief, muscle Body composition. You can list them all, order the preference or the highest priority, and then answer those questions. And if you need support, I do discovery calls and we can sit and chat about it. But the other opportunity, join our Flipping 50 Insiders group and you can ask questions within that Facebook group that we will use as another question here. I'd love to hear from you and I'd love to know if this was helpful so that you can make your own decision. On how's my exercise serving me right now. I'll see you on the flip side.

Thank you so much for listening. To listen and access a decade of episodes and the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all of our prior episodes. And I made it easy for you to make the most of your listening time by selecting 5 specific areas most commonly high priorities for our community and giving you a top 10 list if you let me know you'd love them. If you know a midlife woman or a soon-to-be one who wants to optimize her midlife energy and time with the right exercise and lifestyle changes and a mindset shift about just what is possible, share this podcast with her, and I thank you. There is no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman.