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Menopause: Is This Really My Future? · Making Muscle Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: We all know that menopause is a very real thing, but the story that you're powerless really deserves to be challenged.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: After 40 years of work in the fitness industry, I have learned that real strength isn't just built through exercise, but through experience.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I will share with you some of the science as well as the stories that have shaped my work.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: We are all building muscle memories.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: One rep, one story, and one day at a time.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Making Muscle Memories.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Lauren Irk, and in today's episode, we're going to tackle some of the most common myths around aging and menopause.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are someone that is currently dealing with lack of energy in the morning, maybe you are tight all over, you're dealing with chronic joint pain, you feel a lack of strength, and maybe even in showing up in your muscles, bone density as well.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I have been working with men and women just like you for over 40 years.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And through progressive resistance training, I can show you how you can take a lot of that back and start to feel a lot more confident, especially if you've oftentimes gone and exercised and felt very defeated when you were done.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can click the link below for FIS on demand.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have an entire platform and I'd love to offer you seven days free to experience a quick win and start taking control of your health.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in this episode, I want to talk to you about a story that I heard in my early 20s that really shaped the way that I thought I was going to age because I just, spoiler alert, I'm 57, I've already gone through a lot of the menopause.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also going to talk with you about some very real principles that you can apply to your current exercise program that will make a huge difference.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go over some of the research about aging, the menopause, and muscles, and finally at the very end, I'm going to talk to you about inspiration that you can take with you that hopefully will make your day, your week, and even your year.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So as we get started, I want to frame this episode by a locker room story.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Years ago, I used to work with a company called Milestone Fitness Center, and they were very much known for dealing with aging, dealing with seniors, aging, and a lot of the people that taught there, we had a lot of older people in our classes.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now at the time, I was in my, I think, maybe late 20s, early 30s.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I had taught some classes that day and I was in the locker room changing to go home.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Two of the ladies that were standing beside me had been in my class earlier that day, and they were telling me how hard my class was, which looking back, I don't really know that that was really a compliment, but that's just kind of how it was.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So they were telling me that, you know, to enjoy this time of my life because when I hit menopause, it was all going to change.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've listened to any of the episodes on this podcast, you'll know that my beginning started off with uh anorexia nervosa, it came into bulimia, and I've suffered from body image and self-esteem image around that my entire life.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So hearing the story is something that I have thought about many, many times.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: What they said was I better enjoy where I was now and the ease at which it was to keep control of my body through exercise because eventually I would be powerless.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't be able to deal with my body changing, that I would have a menopause body, uh belly, it would stick out and I would lose a bunch of my muscle and I would be just basically uh powerless to the weight gain that was gonna ensue.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've thought about this so many times in my life, and I thought, oh my gosh, what if this is true?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of afraid of what it was gonna look like going through menopause, but I always thought that it was gonna be so far down the road and that I wouldn't have to deal with it for a very long time.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: However, I can also remember sitting in the gynecologist's office recently, and they were asking me how long it had been since I had, you know, had my period, and I and I remember thinking to her, hmm, I don't remember when that was.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely know that I've gone through the menopause thing.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what I what I often thought of when they were telling me this story was, you know, this is not going to happen to me.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way that I'm gonna go through this.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I am not gonna have a menopause belly.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in fitness, I know what to do, I'm just gonna keep working out and I'm gonna just change my caloric intake and I will be fine.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I have to tell you, that's exactly what happened.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that I could go back and find those women because I'd like to tell them listen, you just giving me this story and making me fear for my life, basically, that I was gonna be, you know, under the influence of menopause and there's nothing I could do about it, that's not helpful.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that's what our culture does.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It just gives us all these warning signals, but it also gives people permission to age.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: They uh they blame everything on, well, it's just aging.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's just menopause.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing I can do about it.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is so not true.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope by the end of this episode you're gonna change your mindset.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's go into science because I think science, if we just look at the research that's out there, it's gonna back this up.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, I talk about this a lot.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: When we get older, as we get older, 30 and up, we lose a percentage of muscle mass every year.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna happen whether you exercise or not.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely have less muscle on my body now than I did in that locker room back when I was in my 20s or 30s.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely do.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I haven't stopped exercising.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine if I hadn't been exercising.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people that I know that are now blaming menopause on their weight gain were skinny in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have to exercise, and now they're overweight and they're blaming it on menopause, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we're gonna lose muscle, but we're also gonna gain fat if we're not careful.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do we have to do to keep ourselves from losing muscle?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have to work out, we have to exercise.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna happen if your exercise is running or walking outside.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: That may have worked with for you when you were 20 or 30, but it's not gonna work for you as you get older because we're losing muscle.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: When you just either sit around and do nothing or just think, and I always hear this from my clients, well, I do a lot.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I pick up my grandchildren, I clean my house, I walk up and down steps.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that you've been doing your whole life that is just basic normal stuff, that is just your energy that you expend during the day is not going to maintain muscle.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to strength train more as you get older because of the muscle loss.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is a biological fact.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You have to resistance train more.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that you go for 30 years of not exercising and then you just start lifting as heavy as possible because of some Instagram post that you saw.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: This means that you have to be able to go from where you are, and that may be at zero, and you have to get to the point where you can pick up external loads.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been lifting external loads your whole life, you're gonna have to ramp that up, but you've been preparing for it your whole life.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't been resistance training, you're gonna need to learn where your weak links are.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna need to learn how to navigate your own body mass, and you're gonna have to slowly and incrementally build muscle over time.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what I do on my platform.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I help men and women every day do just that.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you are gonna have to combat this muscle loss and this fat gain.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is a biological fact.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the second point I want to make is about metabolism.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was a study done in 2021 in PubMed.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put the link below, you can read about it, that looked at a longitudinal study of men and women of the ages of 20 to 60, which is this is the area of aging, right?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: 20 to 60, to find out is it really true that your metabolism slows down just because you age?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: It does not.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your metabolism that's slowing down.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening is that you're losing muscle.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about this all the time.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a car that's a V6 engine, I talk about cars a lot because of my sweet dad who's been in the car business his whole life, and he's taught me so much about the body by understanding cars.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: If the car has a more complex engine, you're gonna have to put better gas in it, and it's gonna burn gas a lot quicker.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you don't want those kind of cars if you're going a lot of long distances.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a fuel-efficient car that doesn't burn a lot of gas, meaning you have a lot of body fat, you don't have a lot of muscle, you're gonna burn calories a lot slower.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because your metabolism is altered, it's because your body composition has altered.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you combat this?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: With metabolism, we have to look at these four areas that the study looked into.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is, I think, 2019, 2021 when they did the study, but it holds true.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, our nutrition may have to change as we get older because of the muscle loss.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have to look at our ability to intake more protein, more fiber, and change in the fact that we can't just eat sugar and carbs all day because of the fact that we need to maintain muscle.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: We also have to look at how we're strength training, which I just talked about.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk about that more in this episode.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: We also have to take a look at, in terms of our metabolism, our hormonal changes.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be a conversation between you and your doctor.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is not going to GNC or some of those stores and just start to take a bunch of supplements.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: This has to be done by a doctor that can draw blood and figure out what uh what hormone therapy that you're going to need as you age that is independent for you.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Have you lost testosterone?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Have you lost estrogen?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Have you lost progesterone?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are you having a difficult time maintaining it?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: I lost a lot of estrogen.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: My bot my doctor has talked to me about it.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a this is a a sort of a biological fact.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: We also have to take a look at our changes in behavior as we age.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is another part of that study that they looked at.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do now as compared to what you did back then?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: When I was growing up, my brother and I, we would get up in the morning because we didn't have a car, we'd get on our bike.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: We'd be on our bike all day long.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: We would go to the store to get our candy, we'd have to bike to the store, we'd bike to our friends, we'd bike to the tennis court, play tennis for a few hours, then we'd bike back home to have lunch, then we hop on our bike and go back to our friend's house.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: We were always active.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end of the day, we were like, that was normal.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: We would get in the bed and we would sleep, we'd get up the next day and we'd do it again.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when we get older?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: We sit at the computer.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I do it.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: We might say, yeah, I went to the gym.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: People always say this to me.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I did my hour-long class every week.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I joined this Pilates studio and I got my membership and I go every day.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's one hour.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's one hour that you may have been laying on a reformer moving back and forth with springs.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't combat the 23 hours that you didn't exercise.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are you taking more stairs?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are you lifting things?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Are you having to call people to open up jars because you can't open them up yourself?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: When's the last time that you went for a sprint outside?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have to have assistance when you pick up a heavy object all the time?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many things that tell you that your body is losing muscle.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I even did an episode on this, the signs that your body is losing muscle.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to it.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: See if you can start adapting a more active lifestyle.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things are why your metabolism is changing.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just blame it on aging.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the third point that I want to make is your training style, how you exercise.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: This does need to change as we get older because of the muscle loss and because of the fat gain.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have to do a much better job of controlling what we do and being intentional about how we exercise.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you're telling me right now that your walking program that you've done your entire life, or your pickleball that you've suddenly picked up, is enough to combat the aging process, I'm gonna tell you it is not.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do more to deal with the muscle loss than a lot of these long durations cardio.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you're gonna say, you know, oh, this cardio is good for my heart rate.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, your heart is a servant of your muscles.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that a teacher of mine told me years ago that I've that I've really is really stuck with me.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can't take your heart out and stick it on a treadmill.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Your heart can only beat if your joints are moving and your joints move through muscle.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: If we're not taking care of our muscle, it's going to diminish the health of our joints.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can't move our joints, if you all have knee pain, back pain, shoulder pain, whatever, we can't affect our heart rate.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not about the walking and the cardio, it's about the squeezing and engaging of the muscles.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about that.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that I adhere to, and I and I love talking in sound bites because I feel like this helps people.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are three basic principles that I use so much, both in my platform with my online clients, and I use it with my in-person clients, and I have my entire life.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: The first principle is range of motion.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: We want to visit and train our available range of motion throughout our life.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about the fact that I've always lived with animals and I love animals.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: My cats every day visit their range of motion.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: They stretch, they move, they jump, they're always stretching their paws.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: They look at it all the time.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's how they stay limber.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: We don't, as humans, we never visit our range of motion.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't notice that it's diminishing.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we train, we train in predictable ranges of motion.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like this is my available range of motion from here to here.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can bend my arm from here to here.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just doing this because if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see me sitting here and I'm actually moving my arm, right?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I am I can move through my available range of motion, but am I training there?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And am I training there mindfully?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to train way up here just as much as we need to train way back here under load.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: But we also need to be observing this throughout our lives.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: When we don't do this, our available range of motion diminishes.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So think about it.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: How much range of motion does your hip have to go through when you're walking through your neighborhood?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Does it go through your full available range, both externally and internally?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Out to the side and coming back in, flexion extension.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do all of that with your walking program?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that that is your exercise.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I always hear this from clients.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I walk.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my doctor said that was really good for my heart, it was really good for my bones.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not good to maintain your range of motion of your hip.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your hip is a ball and socket joint that is a weight-bearing joint, which by the way is one of the areas that we lose bone density in our lives.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: When we don't visit that range of motion, visiting it is one thing, but training it is another, training it under tension, not just stretching ourselves into it, because you know that I've taught yoga for years.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I taught yoga, and I still teach yoga, but whenever I taught yoga in groups and I had a studio, we would take people to their end range.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we'd have them on their back performing hip flexion, but it was never with a strap pulling.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I would always have them pull their leg towards them and put a resistance against that so that they would have to contract against that resistance.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I would have them stand up and raise their leg and do the same thing.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I would even have them stand up in a yoga class with a weight on it and we would do that.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And people noticed that they would not only have range of motion, but they had they were able to own that range of motion.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I always say owned, I've said own my entire life because we have to be able to have the a range of motion that we are strong in.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can get more range of motion and a massage, but if I'm not strong there, it made me more unstable.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my first principle is understanding our range of motion, visiting it, and owning that range of motion throughout our life.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: The second principle is that we want to produce force, not just counting our repetitions.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people all the time if you can do 12 to 15 reps and you can just count these things, it doesn't say anything to me.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is always going to be the quality of those individual reps that's going to matter.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the only way to do this is by slowing down and observing, again, that range of motion.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the range of motion and throughout that range of motion, we want to make sure that we're contracting muscle.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if we think about menopause and weight gain, and we think, oh, it's our metabolism and it's our you know, it's the fact that we we put on weight and we can't control it, it's our hormones are out of control.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things can be held up and stopped and controlled through maintaining our muscle.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: How are we gonna maintain our muscle?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna maintain our muscle by contracting our muscles.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Muscles contract, muscles produce force.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just going in and going to your hour-long class.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know Pilates is really popular.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how many Pilates people that have been studying with me, MAT, working on my platform, whatever, and they get in my platform and they go, Oh my gosh, that core training thing that you did for 15 minutes was so hard.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've been going to Pilates for the past year on a monthly membership, and I could barely get through that 15 minutes.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because I'm trying to kill people.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's not it at all.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that they've never been taught how to actually engage their muscles, why they did a crunch, or why they did a leg raise, or why they did a side plank.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: They've never been cued on how to engage those muscles.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't do me any good to move through a range of motion if I'm not contracting my muscles.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I have such a bias towards people that tell me that their cardio is giving them everything that they need.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Your muscles are not engaging really a whole lot when you're doing cardio.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're just being used.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Your body is being used to go through a specific amount of time.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I grant it, if you're running up a mountain, you're using your quads, and yes, there are there definitely is going to be some muscle force that has to be produced when you're outside walking through your neighborhood for sure.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be able to propel yourself forward.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: But as momentum takes over, and as you do this on a daily basis and your body adapts to it, your skeleton adapts to it, your joint adapts to it, that range of motion becomes adaptive.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your muscles stop becoming strong.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: They kind of become stagnant.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, how are we gonna get our muscles to be strong?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, goodness gracious, I can I have had workouts before where on Tuesday I can pick up a weight and I could do 20, and then somehow or another the next week, 20 feels really, really heavy.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, three weeks from later I can now pick up 30s.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want to observe what my muscles need on a given day and I want to contract through those muscles.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure those muscles are actually working.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So making sure that you're producing force, squeezing our muscles is hugely important.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And lastly, I want to make sure that whatever it is that I've chosen to do, that my setup matches the goal.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure that when I'm resistance training, certain muscles are holding still, while other joints and certain muscles can contract and they can do the job that I'm asking them to do.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So just because I'm doing a chest press, standing up with dumbbells, doesn't mean that I'm actually working my chest.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to make that time, we have to take that time to understand that whatever exercise that I'm doing, the resistance is opposing me, I'm actually pushing against resistance, and then I'm staying within the path of motion that my body can dictate.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Laying on a on a, I'm not just gonna beat up Pilates because Pilates is so popular.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: If I am doing a Pilates exercise, like legs and strap, let's just say, and the strap is pulling me into hip flexion, and I'm allowing those straps to pull me into hip flexion while I'm moving my legs around a circle, it might feel really good.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we might make the argument that, oh man, this just helps me to loosen up.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I hear this all the time.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: But again, if I'm not producing force, if I'm not producing force through my available active range of motion, and I'm talking a range of motion where I'm not hurting, where I'm not eliciting pain, when I'm not eliciting cramping, when I'm not trying to have all these other body parts kick in.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: If I am not producing force against the areas that I am weak in, then that exercise may not be giving me as much of a benefit as I thought.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with them feeling good.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: But again, what is our goal as we get older?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Menopause.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maintain our muscles, maintain our strength.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we don't have this weight gain.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have menopause belly, all right?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, all that being said, this is going to be my inspiration to you.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, science, research, studies, we can rely on these things because they give us information, they give us validity, they give us objectivity, subjectivities as well.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the major books that we can all look at that gives us inspiration, and it's right there, it's been there for that hundreds of years, is the Bible.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And in Romans, I'm gonna read this to you, chapter 12, verse 2, it says, Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do not conform.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if I would have conformed to what these women said in the locker room, you're gonna have a menopause belly, you are going to gain weight, then I just would have given up.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just would have said, Oh, pfft, oh well, I'm just gonna end up getting gaining weight anyway, so it doesn't matter.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just might as well just get bigger sizes as I got older.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I heard that and I thought, I am not gonna be that way.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I have trained resistance training, I've been lifting weights religiously since I was 13.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, whatever, 57 minus 13, that is 40, 44 years that I've been resistance training consistently.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, we don't want to conform to the patterns of this world.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: What are the patterns that you're telling yourself that you've just heard that you've accepted?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: But be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do we transform ourselves?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: How do we take this knowledge that hormone replacement is out there, that better nutrition is out there, that better that resistance training principles are out there, that we can lift weights, we can transform our bodies.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to give into aging.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to age by gaining weight and looking bad or whatever, or feeling bad in ourselves, or walking around with joint pain, or walking around with less energy.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: We can transform our bodies.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then it says in this verse, then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Stop thinking that it is a waste of time for you to, you know, have to exercise, that you're taking away from your job or your families or whatever by taking time to take care of yourself.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to also refrain exercise, reframe it.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a punishment.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, I gotta exercise, I gotta go and do my strength training, I hate lifting weights.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Stop thinking of it as a punishment.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know that it is God's will, it is a testament to Him who created you to take care of your body as we age.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So as my muscle minute, and I hope this inspires somebody, as my mindful muscle minute, remember that when we think about the fact that our body is changing, our our our body is going to change, but what is not going to change and what we don't have to adhere to is our ability to change with it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: As our body changes, we must change.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to hear if you're listening to this on YouTube, leave a comment.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: What are some things that popped into your head today about what you can change?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was about your nutrition.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: What do I need to change?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was about how I train.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was about why I'm training.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was about producing force.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was about the fact that I maybe need to look at my overall activity in my daily life.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: How can I get more activity, not just in my hour-long exercise with my trainer or at my gym, but throughout the day, how can I introduce more activity?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: How can I get back to that kid that hopped on their bike all the time?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: How can I do that, right?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't have to stop taking care of ourselves, right?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: That ability that we have to take care of ourselves hasn't ended.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you know somebody that this could help, that you know that is going through the pains of menopause or the pains of aging in general, I would love it if you would forward this episode to them to give them more episode, if you are uh, excuse me, to give them more inspiration.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you are listening to this on Apple or on maybe Spotify or something like that, if you loved it, it resonated with you, I'd love it if you give me a five-star review.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, if you are listening to this and you are a man and you're thinking, well, how is this important to me?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Next week we're gonna tackle some of the sort of um memes that are associated with men as they age.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because even though women are always dealing with the menopause belly and the weight gain and all that, men have their own things that they deal with as well.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned for next week.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, I hope that this episode has helped.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening or watching, depending on where you are, and I'll see you next time.