Overdoing Exercise in Menopause: The Struggle to Scale Back

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What are you waiting for? Good night. Been in the fitness industry for 40 years, and during that 40 years, you know, there were a lot of days where I was in multiple facilities every single day, at least 5, 6 days a week.

So I've had to go to the university first to teach a 6:30 AM class, then go to this private sector to teach an 8 AM class or a 9:30 AM class, go back to the university, teach at noon where I also had undergraduates underneath me in a room where we had faculty and staff and alumni members from the university in that room as our constituents, our students, and then I also may have taught classes, movement classes or lecture classes involving PE majors, those who wanted to be fitness professionals, whether that was instructors, personal trainers, they might have been pre-med or pre-PT because that was also a part of their curriculum. And so I've seen a wide variety of unique places, studios, gyms, universities, academics, and I've seen what happens with people. And although that was the university town of about 50,000, and that was when school was in session. So that means when the students go home for the summer, as they used to anyway, you know, we were back down to maybe 25,000, you know, so about half that., but a fairly good-sized community. And yet when I went to multiple gyms, I often saw many of the same people in the same day. That is where I will start this story.

Look, if this is you overdoing exercise in menopause, it's very possible you may be saying, well, this is not an episode for me. This may feel like the least of your problems. But I am gonna go here anyway in this episode. And the reason is, whether you're actually doing some of the extremes that some of the individuals that I'll share their stories, actual accounts, the names have been changed to protect the innocent, you may not be doing anything like that, not hours a day of exercise, and yet still very unintentionally you could be exercising too too much during menopause and not in fact getting results, but in fact getting the opposite of the desired effect.

Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing 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, not only to get the protein but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want, that I don't want, hiding in most protein powders, that's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never, ever, ever sell supplements. Stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared. Look, yep, I agree, real food first, but it's just not convenient to carry a turkey sandwich sometimes. The protein— and don't forget the fiber— they kill cravings and they boost satiety. And you've got to make it easy to do the right thing. You can use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at flipping50.com today. I'm Debra Atkinson. 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 knew to ask them. Yeah, the goal: to help accelerate your results with 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. And it's not just about you, but 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 an 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 scenes and 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 that you want, need, and deserve.

If this is you, remember this, we often don't recognize it. We can't see the picture if we're in the frame. We sometimes aren't a good judge of whether this could be happening to us or not. So just bear with me, listen to it. Maybe it's a colleague, maybe it's a best friend, maybe it's a daughter, and you can prevent her from making mistakes that could lead to prolonged, you know, not just a block of the results that she wants, but actually long-term damage, maybe in muscle loss or bone density issues, fatigue that lasts too long. So let's talk about low dopamine receptors. Like, where'd that come from? There's that, a left field, right? And addiction. Yeah, I know that's a strong word, but here's the deal. We see this kind of over-exercise, overuse in all kinds of people recovering, recovering from drugs, recovering from alcohol, recovering from gambling, recovering from shopping addiction, from sex pornography addiction, but also from exercise. And I find this to be true, and, and maybe because it was near and dear to my heart with Someone I used to know a long time ago very closely, you know, in recovering from drugs, often people will find exercise as a good substitute because the drug itself was a source of feel-good hormones. It gave them a sense of euphoria, and that generally is why someone will do that hit again. It's not just to say get out of pain, but it's actually It's like, wow, I like this, you know, alleviating the pain and getting a little, you know, euphoria of some kind depending on the drug. And I don't know enough to know, we won't go there. It's not Drug Education 101. But many times if they're taking a break from drugs and/or they are recovered, you will find that they switch to become obsessed with exercise. It's the similar phenomena. They want to feel good. The only time they do feel good might be when they're at the gym or running, depending on the activity of choice of the individual. For midlife women, exercise sometimes goes flat, the opposite, and the same exercise that we used to do no longer gives us that sense of a high, a feel-good, but we keep reaching for it, keep thinking, okay, well, it'll get better and I'm going to discipline, willpower my way through this little phase that I'm in. But there's a little science to this, and I've mentioned this in prior masterclasses, so I'm not going to quote unquote the science. We've documented that elsewhere in our community, but we don't have as many dopamine receptors in midlife due to some hormonal changes. Dopamine is part of or one of the family of feel-good hormones. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins from exercise also fall into that category. But the same exercise that you used to do no longer gives you that sense of high. The feel-good hormones aren't released at the same level, and it's because of those fewer dopamine receptors. So the thing you might be willing to do is do more, more frequently, go harder, or go longer. All bad choices, right? Especially if you do all three more often, longer, and harder. For midlife women, that can backfire. The very thing you're doing, the discipline that you probably have in spades, the regular schedule that once was admired, and possibly it was a source of pride for you and a reason that you were fit and envied now can actually be causing exhaustion, loss of muscle, and not just not working, but actually is likely getting the opposite desired effect. You may be actually gaining fat, storing fat, and/or inflammation, which means maybe you're looking on the scale and your muscle mass hasn't gained or lost, your fat mass hasn't gained or lost, but you have gained weight. That to me is inflammation in spades. You're retaining a little bit more water. It's not water being stored in your muscle, which is where we really want it to be. It's something else. And inflammation is the root cause of most disease. So this is not something we want to stick around, right? So you might just watch a friend, you know, an inactive cohort until, say, now, say midlife, and she starts And she makes beginner progress that leaves you envious. And you wonder, why is this happening to me? Right? It's almost like an addiction. You want to feel good. Exercise has always done that. And so for you, you know, to get back to how you feel, you might try the exercise you used to do. And that is going to backfire, my friend, big time. The hardest thing for you to do is the thing you must, and that is stop working out so much.

So how do you stop doing that?

You know, it's hard. So I've got a few suggestions for you, but I first want to tell you a few stories. Now, these are people that over a 40-year career, I'm pulling out 3, 3 that come to my mind first right away because they were so significant and I just had this front row seat. So there was a time when We weren't all online. How about that? And I was in gyms, multiple gyms, as I described earlier, every day, many days a week at the very least. I had the opportunity to see and to observe a lot of people, and I worked with a lot of people in a community. And when you're in fitness and you're teaching that much over a very long period of time, 30 years, you get to know a lot of people. You know the regulars, you know, the ones who go from gym to gym to gym. And they may check in at multiple gyms on the same day. And that, my friend, is a bit of over-exercise.

But, you know, think about this.

So this was back in the '90s before we were really keeping good track of check-ins and not check-ins. Nobody did it electronically. They signed in on a piece of paper. Kelly was a client back in the '90s, and she worked a full-time job, and she got up daily to work out before her job. And you might know her. You You know, every gym has a Kelly. She was at the gym before it opened, usually waiting outside in the cold, or maybe in the car if it was sub-zero temperatures, waiting for the employee with the keys to arrive to unlock the doors and turn on the lights. But Kelly's over-exercise in midlife finally caught up with her, combined with her under-eating and too little recovery time. Got her injured and unable to do anything high impact or strength training except for swimming. So in a university town with no less, no fewer than 3 pools, Kelly couldn't find one with hours that would help her get her exercise in before work. So she would get up by 4 AM, she would get on the road to drive 30 minutes to a neighboring town to use the Y pool, do her long-hour swim, shower, ready herself appropriately for work, and then be at her early starting job. And she would do that 5 days a week and still go to the Y on the weekends in order to get a workout in because she couldn't not. Exercise. Janet is another client I'll tell you about. She worked a shift at a hospital and still belonged to a gym in a neighboring town where she used to live. So it was a recent move. She still had this habit, you know, that's her gym. She was familiar, comfortable, no gym intimidation there. She would get up at 3 AM, drive 45 minutes one way to work out at the gym, and still make it back in time for her early starting shift. She'd put in a all day, and if it was light outside at the right time of year, she would walk for 1 or 2 more hours in the evening, even though as a part of her job, she was in healthcare, she was on her feet with patients all day long for 8 hours. Erin was a pre-physical therapy student, so an undergrad, but pretty rigorous study. She was as driven by her workouts as she was to succeed in school. She would work out for 1 or 2 hours And we're talking strength training. We're talking really kick-ass strength training back in the '90s. She'd work out for 1 to 2 hours every morning and again at the end of her school day. So 2 a day, having a bagel and some tuna for lunch, but eating very little else and rarely, if ever, taking a day off, a recovery day of exercise. She'd get ready for school in the locker room and over a month's time, She would get ready, she was drying her hair in her underwear, and little by little becoming so emaciated that her ribs protruded from her chest, her pelvic bones from her hips, but she still felt fat when she looked in the mirror. And while some of these situations, you know, might overlap with eating disorders, they are also of an addictive nature. Eating disorders are. The drug of choice here is exercise. The feel-good that somebody is seeking from exercise can be a positive or negative. Now, most of the time, most of America doesn't have an over-exercise problem. I think we can all agree with that. But often those addictive personalities, those of us that are really Type A and driven or who have ever been addicted to anything else are the most likely to become. And it's hard to see because it's rewarded. We envy people who have discipline. We envy people who are so into fitness that we sometimes don't see that it's what it is, which is problematic and beginning to have a negative impact on life. So these over extremes are not necessarily you, but often we get so lost in our own thoughts and we believe that whatever we're thinking is true. And here's what I wanna bring you down to your knees on, and that is how do you feel? Because there really should not be a quota for how much you need to exercise or for there being a gold star for doing more. We need the recovery days as much as we need the exercise days. You don't have to be at such an extreme to experience accelerated aging and negative effects on muscle mass, and therefore also on bone density. So the solution has to be something to support the balancing of your hormones. Muscle is an endocrine organ, and it can influence insulin, cortisol, growth hormone, and testosterone. And of those, do you know which one of those is the most important? I'm going to give you a pregnant pause here while I wait for you to answer. Here they are again. Which is the most important? Insulin, cortisol, growth hormone, testosterone. Okay, I'm hoping you have your answer, and here it is: cortisol. So if we could simplify anything at all, and I tell our trainers and health coaches this all the time, you know, even if you never ever take the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist, know this: you could be a part of the problem if you're leading your clients down a path where they are becoming more exhausted, they're doing more exercise than they should as a unique individual. You are a part of the problem if you're increasing their cortisol levels and/or tanking it. We need cortisol to be in its sweet spot. There are 4 times when we typically measure it through a saliva test, and yes, you can do that through a dried urine test. My instantaneous preference is a saliva test, so we're actually seeing it in real time. But it should be high at certain times of day and low at others, and it should have a bell curve, and it should be something that leaves you feeling good. I'm energetic. I function really well. I can focus. I don't have cravings. I don't want to put my head down on the desk and take a nap. These are things that you need to know, that this is feeling good. The most important hormone that you can control is cortisol. And you don't need hormone replacement to do that, but you do need to listen to your body's own signs and symptoms and respond before they become louder than a whisper. And we women are not always great at that. So enlist a friend, a coach, or a trainer if you have one. Here's what happens. This negative spiral because of cortisol looks like this. Cortisol rises. As cortisol rises or tanks, either one, blood sugar rises even if you ate nothing. That's an inflammatory response none of us wants. Insulin then rises, and guess what? You're in fat storage. Cortisol blocks production of progesterone, which is our calming, chill out, get a good night's sleep hormone. And so if that's true, it can put you in what's called estrogen dominance. Even though your estrogen may be trending downward, you're still in estrogen dominance because relative to progesterone and estrogen, they should be even. But remember, cortisol has said, no, no, no, progesterone, I'm blocking you. Estrogen is higher. Than it should be relative to the progesterone. Now again, it may be lower than it ever used to be, but still could be dominant. Cortisol being wonky— I know, very technical term— usually negatively impacts the quality of sleep, whether it's too low or it's too high. Either way, you may be waking in the middle of the night if it's too high or too low, but you also may be Waking up never rested, no matter how long you're in bed. The day after a night of sleep deprivation or your cortisol is wonky, ghrelin and leptin, two hormones that are tag-teaming, making you hungry, having cravings when nobody else who had the same meal you did is having cravings. And leptin that says, yes, go get that bag of chips. Yes. And no, you're not full. Go ahead, eat the whole bag. Yummy. Yeah. So ghrelin signals you are craving. Leptin does not tell you you're full. It's left the building. And those things are really off after one night of sleep deprivation. Just a loss of an hour or two can make a huge difference in the way that you feel and the way that your hormones respond the next day. So imagine one day a year when we all have this happen, this time changes. Well, all of you, but if you have that, you know, that spring ahead where we don't get another hour, we've lost one. But a lot of people also are still a little messed up in the fall when they get an extra hour because their circadian rhythm is just off. It's just an odd thing. It matters quite a bit. Here's the problem. Cortisol, we associate as stress, right? We can't shoot all of our stressors. That would be people we care about, but we can find joy. Positive hormones like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins from exercise and movement all help to offset cortisol. So it's like putting the teeter-totter back in here, like estrogen and progesterone, they're supposed to be here. Well, if cortisol is up, but we then say, I'm gonna listen to some music I love. It's gonna elevate maybe your oxytocin. I'm gonna do some exercise I love and I'm gonna do it outdoors. My dopamine is really gonna go. Maybe now you're evening this out. So relative, your cortisol level comes down because cortisol and the feel-good hormones can't both be up. Hold hands, pet your pet, hold your pet in your lap, make love, hug. All of those things can improve your mood. Here's a couple others. Go for frequent walks, not long ones, but frequent ones. Get outside. Being outdoors helps. Spend time with a pet. Call a friend. Enjoy a belly laugh. Maybe that comes from stupid sitcoms, right, where you don't have to think. Jokes, laughing babies on YouTube, friends. Try yoga instead of HIIT. Try Pilates for a week instead of tough strength training workouts to rebalance the cortisol levels.

Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show notes, visit flipping50.com. Where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes. And I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly what you want to listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra-important topics we've identified as has our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife women. So go and listen right now.

Do you want to lift and lift heavy? And does HIIT have a place? Absolutely it does, but not if it's backfiring. So for a moment, you may need to push pause on this and try something else. And then we take those out, we build the movement foundation again, and once we regain the energy, we start climbing upward again with intensity. And at Flipping 50, we call that restore before more. It's the number one tenet of Flipping 50. In a state of cortisol imbalance, you and I don't have the building blocks for lean muscle. Once you essentially plug the holes on a sinking ship, it stops sinking and we can start focus on moving forward again. Can you relate to this and any of the stories about Kelly or Janet or Aaron, somebody that you know, or maybe you yourself now or a time ago? I'd love to hear from you if you want to share your story, even if you want to share it anonymously. One place to get to us is in the Facebook group, the Flipping 50 Insiders. Flipping 50 Insiders. What are you waiting for?

Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you'd love to ask, or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers? My community coaches and I provide answers daily inside of this group, but it's also where I go when I occasionally say, Okay, open call for podcast questions or tell your story. Would you like to be a guest? So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their health, strengthening their mindset, and looking forward to every new year, join the Flipping 50 Insiders group. That's Flipping 50 Insiders on Facebook.