What Actually Changes for Strength Training After Menopause

What if it's not the diet or the workout routine? What if it's something else entirely? Look, spoiler alert, I am an exercise and sports psychology guru. And that, between the ears, has been so much more important to me ever since the late '80s when I realized I was gonna have no hope of helping people with things below the shoulders if we don't get between the ears. So I'm hosting a masterclass this month called What If It's Not the Diet and the Exercise? The Missing Link to All Fitness Programs That You've Ever Done. If you are listening to this and you've tried it all, you're doing it all, this may be the missing link for you. And in this, I will give you the spoiler alert. Yeah, the diet matters. What your dietary habits are matter. And? Your exercise matters, and both most often need a change when you hit menopause. Midlife and beyond, the gut changes and the metabolism does change, but they are generally the easy part. We can learn. You're intelligent. But what's harder is mindset. I'm going to tap into that in this masterclass. You can go to flipping50.com/missinglink. No spaces between missing link and watch for free. And hopefully you'll have some sort of a breakthrough while you're on. Okay, so if you're in post-menopause or you're coaching women in post-menopause, this is for you. What changes when you're in post-menopause compared to pre-menopause and perimenopause? This is part 4 in a 4-part series. There may be a couple more coming, but this is based on the Halo Method. When we look at your hormone phase, your activity age. And those 2 we've really focused on for these first 2, and I'll— or first 3 in this series. The last 2 of HALO— H for hormones, A for activity age, L for limitations, and O for optimal outcomes. What do you want? When we looked at beginners versus somebody who's more experienced in lifting, what are the 2 nuances? What are the differences between those 2? That was the Podcast part one and two. The third one was what about what's the nuance with perimenopause? Now you are both. If we look at one and two, you're one of those. And we look at episode three and now four, you are one of these as well. And we have to layer them together. It's like we need to take them and say, okay, what was true of you? What was true of you? So you're not going to dive right into the end zone of Post-menopause and score. You gotta first look at, but if you're a beginner, we still have to start there. So it's really important that you understand the distinction of what we're talking about and how you can use all of these to your advantage. And what's going on with the physiology really matters. So here we go. Resistance training for every stage of menopause, the stronger way. This is part four. You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down. You're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been working with women to get them back in shape. For 30 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12, right here on this podcast, and, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week, you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get. Answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger. Okay, so here's the deal. A lot of women think that your aging means slowing down. I think we're getting the message. It's 2026. We're no longer talking about that. We started talking about longevity 3 and 4 years ago and what that really means. And I think You know, anti-aging is really going by the wayside. It's a little offensive because we're not going to do that successfully. I think pro-aging— looking the best you can, feeling the best you can, being the strongest— changing the way all people age, not just us. And the biggest challenge I think many of us have going forward is we don't have a great deal of role models. You may have been really lucky in your family, but many of us Watch people get older, and then this is what happens to them. And if we've seen that repeatedly too many times, we start to assume that's just the way that it happens. And I think we all want to be naive to some extent. Naivety is really of a beginner. The expectations are different. The it's like a child. A child doesn't think, oh, I might fall. So I'm not going to start walking. You know, they don't. They do fall over and over again and they bonk their head on the wall and the table and the— and that's kind of part of learning to walk, but they keep getting up again because their drive to do it is so naive that they— there is this assumption, I think, going on in those little minds that, I'm not going to fall this time. And I think it's really beneficial when we have a bit of that. So why would we not assume that you're going to continue to feel as good as you do right now. And then realize too, intellectually, you're just gonna have to do some things to maintain it a little bit more. Your insurance policy has to be a little bit better. And so realize that that's where we're at in this episode. That is really what we're looking for. The evidence says the opposite. We don't age and slow down automatically because we age. There is some, and supposedly at 44 and 60, there are 2 bigger spots where we cross over. I'm 62. I'm glad somebody didn't tell me that. We weren't saying it left and right before I was 60, so I certainly didn't think that. I don't want to think it now, although I can say, okay, well, 5 years post-menopause, there's definitely some link to Maybe collagen changes. I, I can see it visually, but you know, I would say overall, you know, I'm going to continue assuming I can lift just as hard, I can be just powerful, and maybe more so because now I'm focusing on the right things and I'm letting the things that really don't pay off as much drop down on my priority list. I'm not going to do them so much because they're a waste of my time and energy, and I have limited amounts of both. As I'm sure that you do. All right. We need more as we age and we're postmenopausal. We need more power. We need more speed training in our lives. And that doesn't mean you need a session that's entirely dedicated to that. It means it needs to be more prevalent, even if it takes 2 to 3 minutes when you do it. So realize that we're not saying another workout. More time, because we're not actually what you'll find. And across the board, as I talk to people who in a prior life, their younger selves were athletes, competitive athletes, maybe pro athletes, that this is really true for them. And these people, guys and females, look pretty good. So it's working, at least if we can judge that superficially. And I think you know that was probably a misnomer by me to say we can, but. I think your eyes don't lie. Your energy doesn't lie. The way you hold yourself doesn't lie. You can't fake that. I would say it shows up and we can look at somebody and we can actually get a sense of their energy. You can't fake that. Many of the people who have been really active, hyperactive in fact, in endurance exercise find now, I am doing far less. Like, I work out, You know, and I maybe maybe you're somebody who does lift five times a week, but those workouts are like really short, like hit it and quit it. I love that statement, and you know it didn't always have a positive connotation, but it's literally hit it and quit it. Get the work, do hard, do power, and then be done, and then go play because it is in the play and the mobility and the you know functional activities that we're doing, whether that's pickleball for you, it's golf, it's stand up paddle boarding, it's all of these. Above, you know, go play like you were a kid, do the things that you enjoyed. And you know how that changed? Well, at least for me, seasonally it changed. I lived in the middle of the Midwest, so in a northern climate you did certain things in winter like sledding and, and ice skating, or wearing boots and having to shovel. And then in the summer it was all day at the pool, diving, learning to do flips off the board, swimming, detasseling, walking beans. Playing softball, all the things seasonally that changed. You want to think about what season are you in? Not so much bikini season, but the season of life. And what do you need? And what does it say to you? That's where we're going. So there are— if you listen to this series, you know by now there are 5 priorities you want to focus on for postmenopause resistance training specifically. Number 1, you want to train for strength. And a side effect of that is train for power. Effort matters more than how heavy you're doing your resistance training. So anybody out there who's, number one, vulnerable, you're scared, you're just getting started, and that's part of the reluctance in getting started is, I don't want to get hurt. I've been injured before. Effort matters. Start with lightweight. We all start there. We progress to moderate weight. You will not get an injury if you start and you progress slowly. You listen to your body, you'll feel a niggle, you'll feel a little ache or pain, and it will be telling you, but with a whisper so that you can, okay, say, I need either a little bit longer runway before I add that power or add anything more. And/or maybe that move is not appropriate for me, but is there another way to do it? There are a lot of ways to look at it. But effort means at the end of every set, a set our group of repetitions of 10 or 15 or 20, you are at the last few that you can do really well. You have to get to that point. So this is where— and I don't discriminate because I'm a reformer and mat Pilates certified instructor, I'm a 200-hour yoga instructor— they're wonderful, but not for this, not for helping you maintain your strength and your power in aging, maintain the quality of your muscle. They do some things that this kind of resistance training doesn't do, but they are not a substitute. They are an and. And maybe for some of you who are unable to lift yet because things are just not functioning really well, they are a let's get started, and they're your on-ramp, and then you move. But if you start doing Pilates, say, 2 or 3 times a week, you want to be sure that as you add resistance training That you're not allowing the Pilates to squeeze out the resistance training. That once you establish you've got some of those stabilizers working so much better, they only need a little bit of attention in order to keep them and maintain them so that you can do the strength training that you really need. There is room for both, I promise you. But you won't get everything you need from Pilates. You need to do the resistance training, reaching muscular fatigue. 3 times at least. And the goal, 6 to 8 times or sets per week per muscle group. And for women, it's probably a little bit higher postmenopausal, between 10 and 20 sets. And 20 is a lot. I wouldn't necessarily suggest that because I think we're squeezing out resistance or recovery from resistance training, recovery from hard things. If we don't recover, we end up tearing down, tearing down, tearing down. We don't actually get the benefit. Important distinction. So effort matters more than heavy resistance. However, if you can lift heavy, you want to. You want to find what's the heaviest I can personally safely lift without having undue fatigue, aches and pains, or be imposing injury because I'm doing it. You want to lift with power. I'll talk a little bit more about what that looks like in a minute. And for function, you need it for for getting up and down out of a chair, for when you get down on the floor. You know, we're all going to have a time where we need to do that. You need to get down and pick something up. I mean, I maybe you don't have a dog or a cat or but if you do have pets which make life richer, I think you're gonna have to get down and pick up that. Fuzz, you know, or something else. And I won't go into what happened here last week. Bone. You need to train for strength because it supports your bone density. We need the muscle to be strong to pull on the bone, and we need the bone to get the force so that the bone responds positively. You've got to challenge yourself. So again, it is the effort that really matters. And again, you can do it with higher reps and lower weight if you need to, but there is some advantage to going at least as heavy as you personally can. Don't compare your heavy to somebody else's heavy. Don't ask, well, what is heavy? Heavy is determined by fewer repetitions to fatigue. So if you start and I say, I want you to do between 15 and 20 and make sure you reach muscle fatigue. And then over months, many, it would be not until the 4th or the 6th month, I might say, I want you to now fatigue it at about 10 repetitions. You've got to pick up a much heavier weight in order to do that, right? Okay. Number 2, add power. If there's one thing that I could change about my aging skin and I had to choose, it would be my neck. Look, as skin changes in midlife, the skincare that worked for years can stop feeling like enough. Dryness makes fine lines look deeper, more puffiness hangs around, and getting that healthy glow just takes a little more work. Holistic Goddess Frankincense Castor Oil Roll-On is a simple nightly face oil made just for those changes. Organic castor oil deeply moisturizes while frankincense helps soften the look of fine lines. Yes, please. I roll it over damp skin on my face, but especially in my neck and even under eyes. The cooling rose quartz applicator massages puffy eye areas and puts the oil exactly where I want it. No dropper, no greasy mess. It's USDA organic, third-party tested, and made with just 2 ingredients. Go to holisticgoddess.com and use code FLOOPING50 for free shipping. That's holisticgoddess.com, code FLIPPING50. Power means the strength that you've developed as a part of your foundation with speed. And we're not talking the momentum that used to be so common in the '80s. We would, we would see this repeatedly, but we're looking at power and explosive movement. Control at the endpoint. We call that decelerating. Like your car goes into a stop sign, into a 4-way, you better stop before your nose gets out in the middle. And similarly, you don't want your knee to go too far. You don't want your shoulder to be too far open. You decelerate so that you're, oh, I'm in control stopping. So we're not talking momentum, we're talking explosive Stop, pause, and then lower down with control. So concentric moves, the against gravity, the resistance, you're going to do that quickly and rapidly, having a fast intent to complete one phase, not both. So power work can happen in your weight training as I just described. You've been used to going slow Controlled. Now you've got a good foundation, you know the pattern, your brain-to-muscle connection is good. We want you to add that degree of speed, and you can do that starting today if you're doing your strength training. Try it. Try it on an exercise first that you're really confident about. Let's say you were doing a squat. You're going to hold on to some weight, or you're wearing your weighted vest, or maybe you try this with body weight first. You're coming down. And then you're going to explosively come up with a really quick burst and then slowly lower down. So protecting those joints and decelerating, that would look like explosively up but not locking the knees. You've stopped and decelerated before you got to that point. If you were doing a chest press, you're lying on your back on a bench or the floor, maybe you would— on a ball. You're going to explosively push the weights up. But not lock the elbows at the top, and then you're going to pause. Just I'm under control, and you're going to slowly lower that back down to do it again. So you could try it with any exercise that you're doing. That's an important distinction. So medicine balls, if you've got a weighted ball, now you could try this with a basketball. It's got some weight. It's not air, but it's going to be better if it's got a little weight to it. You can get medicine balls that are four and six and eight and ten pounds. Twelve. Some of them actually are meant to bounce. And those are the kind, if you're buying one for home use, I would get. You can find them in the gym, but some of them you may go and throw it down and it's like, oh, that didn't come back up. You're gonna have to bend over and get it, which is not a bad thing either, but just know you, you may not be using the tool that you expect the reaction from. But throwing them just as far as possible. If you are throwing them against a wall repeatedly, that is it. Stand and push it down. You can stand on two legs, or you can challenge your balance. Stand on one. You've got more core activation. You can throw a medicine ball back and forth with someone. You're doing power there. Stand to sit, or the sit to stand. The sit to stand is actually a test of power, kind of an easy test to perform. How quickly can you stand and rise? And we'll put the Strong Aging Index in the show notes for you so that you can download that. You can see here's how I do it. We give you 30 seconds. There are many protocols. I choose the one where you're going to do 30 seconds. You need a timer or you need somebody to time for you. You're going to start sitting in the middle of that chair, and then every time you stand and your butt hits the chair, that one counts. And then at the end of 30 seconds, what did you get? You'll go to the table in the chart and say, Compared to women in my age group, I got this. Where was I? Were you poor? Were you average? Above average? Excellent. And by the way, every one of you listening here, my hope is that we are not average because average is the norms. A lot of women not working out, not in very good shape, not strong, not powerful are taking that test. I don't want you to do well for norms. I want you to think, okay, I'm above average. I think you still should be thinking, I want to be off that chart, because you and me should be doing so well that we start— some researcher here has to do a new study, come up with a new set of norms. We want optimal, you and me. Okay? I'm seeing you out there if you're seeing this. Okay? All right. And that's not necessarily that you're going to do that repeatedly in order to get good at That's your check-in. That's your test. Doing your squats, your explosive squats with a weighted vest, with more weight on it, that's going to get you there. Fast concentric lifts, we've talked about, but hops and leaps and jumps. And here's where you'd start, with jumps. 2 feet to 2 feet. You can jump on the floor. You can jump to the bottom step of your deck. Maybe it's not a traditional 6 to 8-inch riser, it's a little smaller. Great. And then find a little bit bigger step and go jump to that. Watch your shins. So if you're doing this in a gym, sometimes there are soft-sided boxes, probably a little bit safer, smarter to do. But you're not going to go for the 18-inch and the 24-inch one right off the bat. But you may actually find you can get there. You can. It's just that we haven't been trying. But it's also good to do legs independently. And I learned this probably 2000 2018. It wasn't 2019 yet. I take that back. It was anyway. It doesn't really matter. But at the end of the year, I was doing a test of my physical fitness because I was about to train for the last Ironman. I wanted to be my most fit year ever. That that goal went down the drain. It didn't happen like that's why you never heard about it. It was actually one of the worst years in my Yeah. 35-year career. But hopping on one leg, totally different story. You're not using both for takeoff, and you will suddenly realize as you're trying to hop up and land hard, oh my goodness, big change, right? So when we do any one-legged thing with strength training, sometimes it's a big eye-opener. My legs are different. This is really hard when I don't have 2 there. It's why we should do it. But you want to know that you can hop on one leg. So think about the times we've done hopscotch. If you have a ladder or agility drill, or if you don't, you use the squares on your floor in your tile, but you can use your imagination as well. Hop and hop and hop. Try to hop up vertically and hop lengthwise as well. And you can start with leaping. So if you're on 2 feet, if you just kind of leap and leap and leap. You're just putting a little air between you and the ground. That's a little bit easier entry. And then get to hops on one leg. Those of you who say, hmm, my ankle, I don't know if I tolerate that. Good awareness. Know what you can and can't do. Know what you should and you shouldn't do. You have to know if it's ready. And I would check if you've had surgery on an ankle, you've had a recent injury, Check with your physical therapist, who I hope that you've worked with after on rehab and strengthening those muscles. Some of the one hops or one leg stand even may be good post rehab things for you to do, but we're not going to go for maximum yet. The third thing, so we've talked about add strength, add power work with explosive moves. The third thing you want to focus on during post menopause is prioritize your bone density. So there is a significant drop-off of estrogen when we hit menopause. And depending on when that happened to you, it could have been early 30s or late 30s, could have been early 40s, late or early 50s. It could have just recently happened, but we need to prioritize that bone. And we want to do it not with a focus only on bone and only thinking internally, because if we focus only on the bone density, we're only going to measure that once a year, maybe every second year. If you're waiting for somebody else to pay for it, to be covered by insurance, which may not be a good idea. If you keep your eye on the ball and you know you're going to have a test at the end of the semester or midterm, you're going to keep studying, right? You've got a little more pressure. But if nothing is due until the end of the semester, you might wait for that research paper till you have 2 weeks left to do it. I know you procrastinators out there. I taught college for 15 years. But here's the deal. We need the bone density, we do, but we need to see the muscle strength and the muscle power because they impact whether we're actually getting the bone anyway. And you want to prioritize the not having a fracture. What is that? Well, it's mobility, stability, and agility so that you, you need to put the muscle to the test. You, you can move easily side to side. You slip on ice and you You can wait— catch yourself. And you know what? You might pull a muscle, but far better to pull a muscle than fracture a bone, right? So it's important that you work on bone and you think about bone-density-specific work. We do know that starting out and then progressing to a moderate repetition range, which is 15 to 16 reps, that continues to get you increases in bone density until about 48 weeks. That's almost a year. Wow. And then you may plateau and need greater load in order to gain more. It doesn't mean you're going to slide backward and lose that, what you've got, as long as you continue to lift. And you are. We've already decided that, you and me, right? You're going to keep going. It's not going to end. This is a lifestyle. This is what you do. It's who you are. It's how you're going to age better than any generation we've ever seen before. You are a part of that generation. It's very cool. So use it. All right. Power declines faster than strength, and that's why it's so important. We lose our fast-twitch muscle fiber 2 times as fast. We move slowly in everyday life, in just walking, going to the grocery store, those things. So it makes sense. We maintain them fairly well as long as we live, but the fast-twitch, not so much because we overemphasize moving slowly. Um, recover intentionally is number 4. So we can't get the strength and the power or the support for bone density without recovery. We're gonna do things. We like activity. Many of us, it's like, gimme something to do and I'll do it. What if I said, take a rest, take a rest day? We're not as good as that in a lot of cases. And I get it. So realize that your to-do list could still have something on it. You still, you focus on mobility, you focus on balance. If you like to do yoga and organized work, go to a yoga class or do one in your living room. That is beneficial. And mobility, by the way, is going to keep the door open to us to be able to do all of the other things. If we lose the mobility, we Yeah. We lose the ability to do these things that will keep us active as much as we want to be for as long as we're living. So recover intentionally. What's included in that? It's not just time between doing something hard and then doing something hard again. It's adequate protein, at least 3 meals during the day. If you struggle to eat enough, You may want to look at your gut health, certainly, but you also want to— maybe you add a 4th one. So you're getting at least 30 to 50 grams of protein, but you've got to get over that hump of 30 for muscle protein synthesis. It was 20 to 30 when we were younger. We were pretty good at it. We're not as good at it, even if you try, right? We have to take at least 30, 35, and probably 40 grams of protein in to simulate And use the same amount that we did when we were younger. We're not as good at muscle protein synthesis, so it takes a higher level of stimulus. Likewise, with the strength training, with the jumping, we can't get by with not doing it. And unfortunately, we've had both things happen. We've gotten older, so not good at it, and then we've stopped doing it. So 2 things going wrong there. We can fix one. We're going to be older. Cannot fix that. But we can bring it back into our lives slowly. Okay. So recover intentionally with protein, recover with sleep, focus on it, prioritize it. I know you get started in a movie or a Netflix series and it's like, I want to watch one more episode, one more episode. Stop it. Stop it. Right? Pick up a good book, not a great book. And, you know, try to put the screens down, do all the things for sleep hygiene that will help you. And I promise you that I've heard this many, many times. I've tried all the things, but often when I come back to, so you've tried this and then what happened and how did you do it? When we dig into it, it hasn't been consistent. And many of the clients that I've worked with didn't actually know, oh, I'm not just supposed to take it as I take 2 and then that's it. And, oh, it doesn't work for me, so it doesn't work. You might need more than that in certain cases. So there are different things that would potentially change if we tried things consistently and sequentially and then decided, you know, you're right, I don't find that working. Let's move on to another one. And so now we're doing more of an experiment, but it's got some rigor, some planning on purpose. It's not accidental. Or remembering to take things if it is a supplement. Creatine. So I'm going to put that in there and it's an option, but it really should be at the bottom of the list. If you don't have the protein in there, the adequate caloric intake, the sleep in there, the mobility work that is a part of it, the moving, For you, it might be walking. Maybe for you, you prefer bike riding and you enjoy doing that, or you have an elliptical, you enjoy doing that. You like to go to a Zumba class, and that's a part of your recovery. But movement is actively getting circulation and oxygen to the muscles to repair, and it helps them repair a little bit faster. But creatine can help you recover. Better and therefore feel stronger at each workout. But it is a layer that comes after you've done all the foundational things. So don't jump to a supplement to do the work that you should be doing first before— lay that foundation. Recovery allows consistent, repeated, challenging workouts so that you can get in better shape faster. But I don't mean put another workout in and you'll get there faster, because if you're not recovered, it will actually slow you down. So it is the recovery that matters. Number 5, the 5th thing is train for your next 30 years. So not swimsuit season. Let's train for the season of your life. And to me, that sounds like We must be talking to an old person. Does it to you? Like, that's the time I used to hear that— the season of your life. Like, we're in the fall or the winter. I, I want to stick my finger down my throat. Okay, but what I mean is we are in a different season. We don't have the same muscle, we don't have the same bones, we don't have the same hormones we had when we were 20 or 30. We cannot train like we did, but we also need to be training for if we are in the so-called Fall season of our lives. That's third quarter for you and me. I'm not yet in fourth quarter. I don't know if you're going to qualify yourself, and I'm probably going to stay in third quarter for as long as I possibly can. But I'm thinking and playing out of the playbook for who and how I want to feel in my fourth quarter. So I've got to do it not just for now, not just so that I can wear the swimsuit. And by the way, just go put the swimsuit on. Boom. That one's solved. Okay. So think about carrying your luggage. Would anything ever make you pause about travel because you feel like, I can't navigate all the luggage and the baggage, or I can't climb the hills to get to the villa in Italy or Greece or to see the castles in Germany? I mean, wherever it is you wanna go. I mean, think about that. Does anything give you pause? Train for that. Train for it now. And even if you're taking for granted, I can do it now, no problem, you won't keep that without testing it and training for it regularly. Playing with your grandchildren, that is a very functional skill. Up and down, off the floor. They want, you know, what they want when they want it. You have to be able to react and respond. And probably in a way that the parents identify you as a safe place to leave their children. Important. There's an episode with Kristen Coffield who really deemed this whole active grandparenting thing. It was first just a hashtag. Now it's actually a trademarked business. And it's so good. So if you don't have any other motivation, that may be one for you. Travel, I've mentioned. Train as if you're avoiding falls. Agility, do things that require it. I love pickleball because it can train agility. However, what I don't love is that we've seen so many injuries go up because people took to the pickleball court without anybody suggesting, we need to do a very functional warmup here. We should probably be doing some drills and skills before you hit that because there's a lot of lateral movement. You haven't been doing that for years, so let's figure it out. Things move a little faster than if you were playing tennis once or doing something else. So avoid for falls— independence. So I would have you right now think about the house that you're in. I think about the house that I just bought at 62, and a lot of people would never have bought this house. Why? Well, because it's big, it's expansive, it's Got stairs, not a lot of them. I can not have to use the stairs if I don't want to, but I'm probably going to want to because the garage is downstairs. And yet it's big and it's a lot of work, people will say. And they look at it like that. And I'm like, you and I, we don't think the same way. You know, my older sister would say, you don't need a house that big. I'm like, you don't know what I need. Yeah, I do. I need space. I need a lot of windows. I do need that. Thank you. End of conversation. But I want you to think about you. Maybe you don't want space. Maybe you want the smallest space possible and you, you'd rather have a view at the beach. Now, I probably can't afford the house that I'm in sitting on the water at the beach. Yeah. So there's a trade-off. You may prefer to do something else or To just have a place that you call home and to travel far more. But I want you to think about what does independence mean to you someday? I mean, my whole goal is that my son will bury me in this house and that I've already apologized that he's going to have to get rid of this house. I mean, he'll have to sell it and it's eclectic and somebody else won't. But I, in my mind, I'm gonna live here until the end, right? Because I love it. And you know, that is, I think, something that you want to consider. What will happen? What are you doing to make sure that that happens? And then train for longevity. But I think this is, this is one that for me and for you is so far off because longevity means we're thinking about the end. We're thinking, oh well, I would've been an average woman who lives till 79. So I hate those posts that say, you know, the average woman at 50 has 14 years left. Well, good. I'm whole— you know, if you can't see the video, holding up my middle finger would be my reaction. I'm like, I never aspired to be an average woman. I'm way above average. We're gonna live optimally. So why would I ever premeditate? Okay, I only have 14 more summers. That is not a good plan, my friends. We need to be thinking like, you know, I want to go all the way. I just want it to look so differently that it doesn't mean checking into a retirement community, doesn't mean going to assisted living. It doesn't mean sitting somewhere where in the cafeteria they make Jell-O. That's just not a part of my game plan. So I don't know what's in your playbook, but I hope you've thought about some of these things and that you're preparing for it. If you buy insurance, you know, make sure you're— this is feeling like insurance, and it costs probably less than any insurance policy that you're paying for. I can't even tell you, I pay probably close to $1,000 a month for health insurance. I never use it, you know? And I think that's actually a good thing, but I should probably have it there. But I mean, imagine, it's crazy. And if you use this insurance policy, you resistance train, you jump, you focus on mobility, you will use it every day. You'll reap the rewards. Every day gets better. Your sleep gets better. Your appetite, your cravings go away. All of these things. Are improved because you do it. So there you have it. These, all of these training for the carrying the luggage, the playing with grandchildren, the travel, the avoiding falls, the independence that you want. If you train for these, the outcome of that training that you do for those things equal better blood sugar control. Today, better sleep tonight, craving crushing from the two to four when you want that cup of coffee. Speaking for myself, better focus, improved self-confidence. Do you know that with age many people lose confidence? You know, number one, I think it's partially because of social media. I mean, in a very. Very short time, we're going to record another podcast, but I'm going to be talking about this. You know, we're no longer just competing with other women or women in Hollywood who look really good and have done work. We're competing with AI, and you don't even know it. You're looking at images that were AI-generated, and sometimes you don't know, you can't tell because they're that realistic. And we feel bad. So you've got to be careful. Realize self-confidence is priceless. You walking into a room, you carrying yourself in a way that says, I feel good about myself, I am confident, is everything. Changes your world, expands it. The biggest mistakes that women in post-menopause are making And remember, you have to layer in this piece of, am I a beginner or am I more experienced? Because that has to be there too. But number one is thinking, I'm too old. I'm too old to do this. Here's the deal. You're too old not to, right? That's the answer these days. I'm avoiding lifting weights without trying heavier weights. If you're doing that, Right? So many people avoid. I don't want to get hurt, but you haven't even tried them. You might realize you spend less time lifting. You have less wear and tear on joints because you don't lift as many times, and you get better results. You may be shocked to find, oh my gosh! Are you mean to tell me that that's what I've been missing out? Yes. So at least try only walking, only doing Pilates, thinking it's safe. So I'm going to keep doing this. I want to point out something just about Pilates, and I don't mean to fearmonger, and there's a chance I will, so I mean, there's no way around it. But there are about 7 moves in Pilates that are really not great for women to do who might have prolapse. That's prolapse of their bladder, their uterus, or anal prolapse. Any weakness in the pelvic floor could be strained more by about seven moves in Pilates. We cannot assume that every move in certain things that seem more gentle and lighter in resistance are actually still healthy. So you've got to be careful and cautious about certain things. There are many moves that for somebody with back pain or lumbar issues. There is a lot of forward flexion that occurs in Pilates, so we also want to be careful about that. So just assuming because it moves a little bit slower, it's against less resistance, that oh well safe—that may or may not be true. So challenge yourself training like you're trying to burn calories instead of building your strength and your power. That ship sailed 1980. Called and wants it back. Okay, so there's a recall on that one, and I just want you to think about the value of any activity that you're doing goes far beyond burning calories. Yes, when you do cardio, you may be burning calories, but that's not the benefit of it. The benefit of it is what are you doing to your hormones as you do that? So you may be. Improving your cortisol levels by doing certain activities. You may be improving your insulin sensitivity by doing certain activities. You may be improving your growth hormone or testosterone— better for strength, better for focus, better for muscle power, bone density. But think about the benefit to your hormones, not just the burned calories and how many did I burn, and so did I create a deficit. Again, you're not that math equation. In and out just doesn't add up. The in and out math doesn't math very well anymore, and I will leave you with that thought. Remember, in this episode at the show notes, we will link to part one, part two, part three of this four-part series. If these have been helpful, I would love to hear from you. You can DM me; that's direct message me. Behind the scenes in Instagram. It's always me, I see those. And/or you could reach out to us in the Flipping 50 Insiders group on Facebook. So Flipping 50 Insiders group, that's everybody who's not already in a program or in the membership. It's where you would go if you're already in a program or a membership. Don't ask us questions over there, ask us questions behind the scenes where you more direct access. Thank you so much. And what are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today. The information shared on Flipping 50 the Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified healthcare provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcomes resulting from information presented on this podcast.