At Seasoned Athlete, we are passionate about dispelling myths and sharing facts about aging women and our fitness needs. Too often, we are told the wrong information, studies are done with only men in mind, and it leaves us burnt out and unwell.
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We’re thrilled to be kicking off this season with Dr. Stacy Sims!
Stacy T. Sims, Ph.D., is an applied researcher, innovator, and entrepreneur in human performance, specifically sex differences in training, nutrition, and environmental conditions.
We discuss:
- Key things to ACTUALLY focus on in the gym when in peri and post menopause.
- Why resistance training is so important for 40+ athletes.
- Movement and exercise modalities that can mitigate perimenopause symptoms.
- Why intermittent fasting isn’t beneficial to women.
- Recovery practices that benefit the aging women population.
… and more!
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Here are some highlights.
Key things you should be focusing on in your workout routine as an aging woman
“So [one of] the two big things, if you're just starting to get into exercise, is resistance training. And it's not the 10 to 12 reps, three sets, five-pound dumbbells. Yeah, none of that. None of that, because it doesn't do anything for you. It's not a strong enough stress to actually build lean mass. It might give you a little bit of a cardiovascular workout, but not the kind that you want, and it doesn't create any kind of neuromuscular change. We want a really strong neural signal to the muscle to recruit more fibers for a strong contraction because that's how we do power and that's how we maintain the integrity of the muscle mass.”
Intermittent fasting doesn’t work for women
“So a lot of the problems that we see when people are complaining about low metabolism or wanting to use fat burners and all that kind of stuff, it’s because you’re not eating properly. We're designed to move all the time, and if we're designed to move all the time, our body needs a certain amount of calories coming in all the time. The body in Western society has become so sedentary and not moving all the time, but people are eating all the time, and there are no set meals, intermittent fasting, time restricted eating has come back into vogue because of the health benefits it actually gives you where you have a certain amount of time where you're not eating and the body can focus on repairing itself.
But when we look at exercise, exercise is the same thing. Like exercise is a really strong stimulus to break the body down, but it's also a very strong stimulus to help repair it. When we're looking at intermittent fasting women do so much better in a fed state, not in a fasted state, and this is regardless of age. And the reason for that is in the brain, in the hypothalamus specifically there are two areas of neurons called kisspeptin in women, but only one in men. And when you look at the interment fasting, time restricted eating, most data comes from men, primarily obese, diabetic men who needed to lose weight quickly for surgery or metabolic control. It’s all based on male data. When we start looking at the female data and looking at what's happening in women, especially active women, it's very counter intuitive, because when women are doing fasted training, that drives the cortisol up. you have a higher baseline of cortisol, which means you have a greater stimulus for putting on belly fat.”
Chronic recovery is just as important in training
“When we think about chronic recovery, especially in the mid-40s where we're all highly stressed, we might be top in our job, we have kids, we have older parents, so there’s all these life stressors, we need to start implementing more parasympathetic responses. So this is something like every day, finding five to 10 minutes to sit quietly. It could be under a tree in the sun, and just feeling what a breeze feels like. Just concentrating on that. Or any quietness, first thing in the morning where you're just doing a little bit of mobility work and no one's talking to you. Focusing on one thing, so that you take that feeling that's calming you down with you. So when you start to get stressed, you can take a step back and bring that in.”
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