Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Lifting Weights vs. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for Fat Loss Over 40 | Ep 278

Transcript

Lifting Weights vs. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for Fat Loss Over 40 | Ep 278 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Should you lift weights?
• 0:02
  Philip Pape: Should you get hormone replacement therapy?
• 0:04
  Philip Pape: Should you do both for fat loss over 40, men and women?
• 0:07
  Philip Pape: If you're wondering if lifting weights alone can make a big difference in your hormone levels, we're going to talk about that today.
• 0:13
  Philip Pape: I'm answering a question from our Facebook group about optimizing hormones and body composition after 40, and you'll discover what the research actually says about strength training's impact on your endocrine system.
• 0:26
  Philip Pape: Whether you're dealing with menopause, andropause or any other age-related changes, the goal is to you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
• 0:54
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are answering an excellent question from Angela L in our Facebook group, and she asked can strength training impact hormones, specifically in menopausal women?
• 1:07
  Philip Pape: Does strength training provide benefits in production and or regulation of hormones that can help with fat loss?
• 1:13
  Philip Pape: Is strength training a good first step before trying HRT?
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: Now, the reason I love this question is it gets to the heart of something that I deal with constantly in nutrition coaching people wondering whether lifestyle interventions like strength training lifting weights are enough, or do they still need medical approaches like hormone replacement therapy or HRT?
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: Now the research here reveals some, I'll say, fascinating, overlooked connections between resistance training and hormone regulation that we don't talk about a lot and I wanted to dig deeper into that subject today.
• 1:47
  Philip Pape: So, angela, your timing couldn't be better, because I've got lots of clients that navigate this exact challenge and it's been really amazing to see their ability to improve their hormone levels without HRT or in complement with HRT, and we're going to cover that today Before we get into it.
• 2:04
  Philip Pape: If you find value in some of these discussions based on evidence and you want to connect with others, like Angela who asked the question, who are on their strength training journey, join our free Facebook group.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: Just search for Wits and Weights in Facebook or click the link in the show notes.
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: It's really an amazing community we're at about a thousand now are really trying to grow.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: People sharing their experiences, asking great questions.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: We do a biweekly live.
• 2:29
  Philip Pape: I share lots of free resources.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: Sometimes I just do ad hoc videos and lives to help you out with specific topics and help each other succeed.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: So click the link in the show notes to join the Facebook group and I will see that.
• 2:41
  Philip Pape: Come in and I'll approve you and you can join the group.
• 2:43
  Philip Pape: All right, so let me show you how we're going to break this down today I want you to think of your body as a complex system with multiple interconnected feedback loops.
• 2:54
  Philip Pape: Right, we've talked about this concept before.
• 2:56
  Philip Pape: It's the kind of thing we deal with in engineering.
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: We've got hormone production, receptor sensitivity, tissue response, and all of these work together.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: If you can understand the connections, we then can optimize the system instead of just focusing on one single component.
• 3:13
  Philip Pape: So I'm going to start by laying out exactly what happens to our hormones as we age, because then that sets up everything else we'll discuss.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: It's probably why Angela asked the question and then I'm going to show you specific ways that strength training itself influences these hormone systems.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: And that's, I think, where it gets interesting.
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: Even I always learn something new when I do this research behind the scenes.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: And then, finally, I'll give you a practical framework, as always, for deciding whether strength training alone might be enough for you or if combining it with HRT makes more sense.
• 3:47
  Philip Pape: So first let's talk about what happens to our hormones after 40.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: And for some of you, it might start happening in your 30s.
• 3:54
  Philip Pape: You know, the period of perimenopause for women can start in your 30s.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: Everybody's a little bit different and of course, men can have a decline in their hormones as well, predominantly testosterone.
• 4:04
  Philip Pape: I'm going to get a little bit technical here, which I think you guys like, but I do like to nerd out.
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: I hope you do too, but I think it's important to understand this.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: So, for women entering perimenopause and menopause, what we see is the major change in two key hormones estrogen and progesterone.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: Now most people know about the drop in estrogen, but what usually gets missed is it's not just the having less estrogen, it's about how that decline affects your metabolic system, your metabolism.
• 4:34
  Philip Pape: The research shows that when estrogen drops, especially a form called estradiol, three major things happen.
• 4:41
  Philip Pape: First, your body starts storing more visceral fat, that is, the dangerous fat around your organs.
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: Your muscle tissue becomes harder to maintain, and so that leads to accelerated sarcopenia or muscle loss.
• 4:56
  Philip Pape: And then your insulin sensitivity also decreases, making it easier to gain fat and then harder to lose fat.
• 5:03
  Philip Pape: And so I see this play out a lot with clients, and we talk about this in the Physique University.
• 5:09
  Philip Pape: We just had one of our live calls and I showed the timeline.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: That happens when you get into peripost-menopause, and again, this is going to apply to men and women to an extent, but predominantly women right here, and clients are frustrated.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: Women are frustrated, right Because you are eating the same way you've always had.
• 5:27
  Philip Pape: But then you start gaining weight, and not just anywhere, you're getting it around your belly right.
• 5:31
  Philip Pape: So we hear the phrases menopause, belly, belly fat.
• 5:34
  Philip Pape: And then your doctor says, even if you have a halfway decent doctors, they might mention HRT.
• 5:41
  Philip Pape: I know a lot of doctors won't even mention it.
• 5:42
  Philip Pape: That's a whole separate discussion.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: So HRT hormone, bioidentical, hormone replacement therapy and you either start down that path or you're like well, before I do that, let me try some other approaches, some lifestyle approaches and clients that come to me.
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: Either Either they start on HRT because they've addressed an issue, a deficiency, or they haven't done it yet and they want to see if some other things will normalize their hormones first, to see where the real issues lie, if there are any.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of where I'm getting to with this episode today, and what I usually see with women in that situation is women are storing more fat.
• 6:20
  Philip Pape: They're responding differently to their usual diet and exercise routine that they've done for years.
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: What worked in the past no longer works now.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: And it's not that you're broken, it's not that, like all of physics has changed, it's not that you're doing anything wrong, it's that the context has evolved and we have to evolve with it.
• 6:38
  Philip Pape: And for many of us, for many of you listening and watching, when you were younger, you could kind of get away with more types of training and types of eating and your body would be cool with it.
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: And so then in your brain you're like, okay, this works, but in reality you were just delaying the inevitable.
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: Now, for men, the changes are, I'll say, more gradual, but they're still very impactful.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: I mean, you know, men are really affected by these, uh, this situation as well, because around age 30, testosterone starts to drop roughly at 1% per year on average, and you know that might not sound like much, but if you compound it over 10, 20 years, you're looking at pretty significant changes.
• 7:16
  Philip Pape: And then, by the age of 50, many men have testosterone levels that are like a quarter, you know 25% lower than their peak.
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: And so what's interesting is for both men and women, they see growth hormone drop and IGF-1 drop with age, and so those are like your repair and regeneration hormones, if you will.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: You know, when they decline, everything from your ability to maintain muscle, to metabolize fat, becomes more challenging.
• 7:42
  Philip Pape: It's like stacking on top of each other.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: Then there's another hormone that tends to be a boogeyman but it does increase with age, and that is cortisol.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: Cortisol, the stress hormone, and that can affect your body composition.
• 7:54
  Philip Pape: If it's chronically high and higher, cortisol then leads to increased belly fat storage and it could actually break down muscle tissue.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: And then the, of course, physical and psychological stress of aging just more obligations, and you're older and there's lots of things going on in your life.
• 8:11
  Philip Pape: They drive cortisol up just when we would hope that it's more regulated.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: So I get it right, I'm 44.
• 8:17
  Philip Pape: I'm just experiencing a little bit of this now.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: Fortunately, I started lifting about five years ago and I've noticed how beneficial that has been to a lot of different things, including testosterone.
• 8:26
  Philip Pape: Uh, but we're going to get into that now.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: How does strength training influence the hormone systems?
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: Because Angela's question was um and by the way, if I sound a little hyper, it's because I've just had my coffee but strength training, um, the?
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: The question is can you just lift weights and will that, you know, fix your hormones, so to speak?
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: And this is where I think, like the technical engineering background kind of helps the systems thinking so, when you lift weights, you are, yes, building muscle, but you're also creating a cascade of hormonal responses.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: It's like you're tuning multiple control systems in your body simultaneously together.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: Right, they're not independent variables, they're all working together, and the research here is pretty robust and also pretty amazing.
• 9:11
  Philip Pape: So I reviewed some of the studies.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: There is a 2022 meta-analysis, which is a study of studies, and they looked at 50 studies and they found that strength training influences hormone regulation through three main pathways, and I'm going to break them down.
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: The first one is that it improves hormone receptor sensitivity.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: So, even if your hormone levels are lower, your body becomes more efficient at using what you have.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: So it's kind of like upgrading your hormone software.
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: Right, even as the hardware changes.
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: The hardware's evolving, but now you're upgrading the software to kind of keep up.
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: It's older hardware but newer software, and I've seen this with male clients.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: A lot of my male clients are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, so you start to see this around the 50s, especially dealing with lower testosterone, and some men are like jumping at the chance to go on TRT and others don't want to go there yet because they want to see like, is there something else I can do?
• 10:07
  Philip Pape: And so we focus on a structured strength program keeping the stress levels down.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: Right, you're not necessarily going to the gym seven days a week and what you sometimes find when you lift is that total T doesn't necessarily go up.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: It could, but free T, the amount available for your body to use, can improve.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: We see this a lot with those situations where you're more efficient with your testosterone, which is it's emboldening.
• 10:34
  Philip Pape: It's empowering to think that, because then you know it's not, you're not just trying to crank up your T level, you're trying to better use it right, and then your energy improves, you start having better symptoms, maybe building muscle more easily and have improvements in your body composition, even though your hormone level, your total, hasn't changed that much.
• 10:52
  Philip Pape: So the sensitivity is important to understand.
• 10:55
  Philip Pape: The second.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: Well, okay, I think I might cover this later, but you think of how insulin sensitivity increases when you lift weights.
• 11:01
  Philip Pape: So apply that to any hormone in a good way.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: The second pathway is the acute hormone response, right.
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: So, like the in the moment, short-term hormone response.
• 11:11
  Philip Pape: When you perform heavy compound movements, right, like the squat, like the deadlift, your body produces a surge of anabolic hormones.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: Growth hormone can increase by up to 400% during an intense training session.
• 11:27
  Philip Pape: Testosterone rises significantly Even in menopausal women, who have a much lower baseline testosterone but, as I learned from Karen Martell, that is still the highest hormone in your body.
• 11:40
  Philip Pape: Like you have the most of that of any hormone, even though it's much lower than men.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: The acute response from lifting helps maintain your muscle mass and your metabolic health.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: So it's super important.
• 11:48
  Philip Pape: But wait, there's more right, because I mentioned cortisol.
• 11:53
  Philip Pape: Strength training helps regulate cortisol, the stress hormone, because and the irony is that when you lift weights it causes an acute cortisol spike during the workout, but over time it actually improves your body's stress response system, kind of like how it raises your blood pressure during the workout but it actually gives you lower overall blood pressure and metabolic health.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Studies show that regular strength training can lower baseline cortisol levels and improve how your body handles stress hormones, and I think I touched on this a little bit in another episode about how just being a lifter helps your body handle lots of things better stress, alcohol, whatever Very important concept to remember.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: And then the third pathway is about insulin sensitivity.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: So I promised I would get to that.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: Your skeletal muscle is the largest glucose sink in your body.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: It's this nice huge pool to store glucose.
• 12:45
  Philip Pape: The more muscle you have, the better your body then handles blood sugar.
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: So strength training increases something called GLUT4, glut4 transporters, and that helps shuttle glucose into your muscle cells without needing as much insulin.
• 13:01
  Philip Pape: And so that is massive for fat loss as well, because better insulin sensitivity means better nutrient partitioning and then better metabolic health.
• 13:09
  Philip Pape: It all works together.
• 13:11
  Philip Pape: It's really, really cool.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: I hope you find this stuff as fascinating as I do.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of how strength training impacts hormones through three pathways that are very important.
• 13:21
  Philip Pape: Now what do we do with this information?
• 13:23
  Philip Pape: So we're going to use what I call systems optimization approach, right?
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: Systems?
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: We talk about systems the same way we would tune an engineering system, right?
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: That's where I come from.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: So you need, I'll say, four key components to tune your system.
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: You need the input right, these are going to be your training parameters for your lifting.
• 13:42
  Philip Pape: You need the control that's going to be progressive overload and managing recovery.
• 13:47
  Philip Pape: You're going to need feedback.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: So these are your like, writing down what you're doing in the gym, your performance metrics, as well as your biofeedback and then output.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: So how does your body composition change and how do your hormone markers change?
• 14:01
  Philip Pape: And, by the way, in the feedback, that can also include the blood work and the hormone panels as well.
• 14:07
  Philip Pape: You may not need to go to that level, honestly, it could be just symptom driven by biofeedback, but just keep that in mind.
• 14:14
  Philip Pape: So for the training parameters, research shows that the sweet spot for hormones is going to be what we talk about all the time, something like three to five sessions per week, prioritizing compound movements, big heavy lifts that use multiple joints.
• 14:28
  Philip Pape: But it doesn't always have to be in the heavy rep range, which I would say is like four to six and four to eight.
• 14:33
  Philip Pape: It could also you know, you could definitely have some accessory work in there in the eight to 12 rep range.
• 14:38
  Philip Pape: More importantly is the mechanical tension and depends on what your goals are, but some, some combination of those.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: You then have to have progressive overload consistently applied.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: What does that mean?
• 14:48
  Philip Pape: That means you are always pushing yourself to your current limit so that you can adapt and create a new limit that's stronger over time.
• 14:55
  Philip Pape: So if you were able to lift you know, 135 pounds for your squat this session, you might lift 140 next time.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: Or if you're able to get eight reps at a certain weight, you would get 10 reps at a certain weight, some combination of that, which we're not going to get into super great detail today, but I have other episodes about it.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: I also have some guides on that.
• 15:14
  Philip Pape: Okay, and then you know, interestingly, when we look at what types of movements create a large hormonal response, it's going to be the ones that use more muscle mass, more of your system, more of your body, the bigger, the ones that recruit more muscle fibers.
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: So squat, deadlifts, um presses, rows, pull-ups, lat pull-downs, really any compound lift you can think of.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, you can branch out into other movements to compliment that.
• 15:38
  Philip Pape: So it's yet another reason to lift, lift heavy and use compound lifts and use all the things we talk about, as opposed to the YouTube workouts that change every time, that have like 20 reps.
• 15:50
  Philip Pape: That are circuits.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: You know the circuit training yeah, it's got to be heavy where you're taking long rest periods, you're in fairly lower rep ranges and you're progressing over time.
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: My female clients who stick to those types of programs are the ones that have massive success and they find that this cascade of hormones leads to lots of other benefits, including fat loss.
• 16:12
  Philip Pape: It makes it so much easier.
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: The rest periods I mentioned that they matter more than most people realize.
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: Um, the rest periods I mentioned that they matter more than most people realize.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: Um, if you're trying to maximize strength and muscle, you need longer rest periods, but it also doesn't hurt to have shorter rest periods for endurance, for work capacity, for even for hormone output.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: There is some correlation.
• 16:32
  Philip Pape: So I like to mix both right.
• 16:35
  Philip Pape: I like to have big lifts where you're resting three to five minutes and then a couple accessories after that where you might rest anywhere from rest anywhere from 30 seconds to two or three minutes.
• 16:43
  Philip Pape: So that's just training in general.
• 16:47
  Philip Pape: The question here now getting back to Angela's original question is should you do strength training instead of HRT or should you use both?
• 16:54
  Philip Pape: It depends.
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: This is where context becomes really important, because this is I'm not a hormone.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: I'll call it expert.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: I'm not a hormone coach.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: This is not a hormone podcast, but I listen to a ton of information about, and research a ton of information about hormones, and I'm always working with clients on trying to, I'll say, not interpret their hormone panels, because that's technically outside my scope of practice, but take the interpretation and then apply it to okay, what are we doing for our training and our nutrition that can be improved?
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: That might then translate back to an improvement in hormones.
• 17:29
  Philip Pape: And the research shows.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: I'll say three scenarios that you might fall under.
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: The first one is if your symptoms are moderate and primarily related to body composition so increased fat storage, increased muscle loss I think starting with strength training is the best thing you can do.
• 17:48
  Philip Pape: It's very accessible, right.
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: You can literally start this week.
• 17:52
  Philip Pape: You don't have to hunt around for a good medical practitioner and I mean it's a whole can of worms when you talk hormone replacement therapy.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: Good medical practitioner, and I mean it's a whole can of worms when you talk hormone replacement therapy.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: And I would give it three to six months with a before and after, with everything you care about.
• 18:04
  Philip Pape: So if that means hormones, get a hormone panel, maybe work with a hormone therapist, but then see what happens with just the strength training as its own variable.
• 18:12
  Philip Pape: It's good to know that for yourself because that'll give you the confidence that a lot of this is in your control.
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: Okay, and that doesn't preclude you then using HRT anyway.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: After that.
• 18:23
  Philip Pape: We're only talking a few months.
• 18:25
  Philip Pape: And I say this because I've had a lot of clients who have these perimenopausal symptoms, right, and some of them have, like you know, the hot flashes and all the symptoms, I mean the laundry list of 10 to 15 symptoms that start to occur, and they come to me for lifestyle changes, and so sometimes what they're doing is a lot of cardio, a lot of um, high rep work.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's not consistent, maybe they're not progressing, they have a lot of stress, maybe they're not sleeping as enough enough, maybe they're not walking as much.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: So there's usually a lot of low hanging fruit, and oftentimes you're so overwhelmed with life or you've you've tried so many things or you've paid so many coaches you just feel lost or like you've hit a wall.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: And, frankly, I get men in this situation too, where they keep jumping around diets.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: It's like I'm gonna do carnivore, that's gonna fix it.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: Nope, I'm gonna switch up my lifting to this thing where I don't have to irritate my shoulder at all, and then I'm gonna make progress.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: Nope, something has to change.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: You know, something has to change.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: And so when we take the stress out, we focus on sleep, we focus on recovery, and then we have a reasonable level of intensity and volume for your training right, which for a lot of women means getting stronger, not the circuit stuff.
• 19:34
  Philip Pape: Body composition starts to improve and then the symptoms start to improve, and then, when you get blood work, you notice your hormones are improving as well Not always, but often and then it becomes manageable and then you can say, okay, if I still need HRT, I could at least target it.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: So all of that was the first scenario.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: The second scenario is if you've got severe menopausal symptoms so debilitating hot flashes, significant bone density loss you may need to jump right into doing both Strength training with HRT, right, and frankly, a good medical practitioner who's an expert on hormones should be able to tell you that hey, you're far off the range that you should be on this thing and so we need intervention and even lifting, and lifestyle isn't going to fix that.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: But a lot of people are kind of on the hairy edge and it's because the lifestyle isn't great and we fix the lifestyle and then everything comes back normal.
• 20:22
  Philip Pape: And then guess what you don't have to do HRT, at least for a while, or you don't have to do as much, or you don't have to do as many different hormones.
• 20:28
  Philip Pape: And then deal with potential you know potential symptoms from that, which, again, I'm not um, I'm not dissing HRT at all.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: I think it's awesome.
• 20:35
  Philip Pape: A third I think it's awesome.
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: Third scenario if you're already on HRT, if you're already on it, which a lot of my clients come to me having gone through a hormone therapist or you know I mentioned Kara Martell before and others like her working with her and then they'll come to me.
• 20:48
  Philip Pape: The proper strength training, then, can enhance the benefits of the HRT, and sometimes you end up finding that you need to reduce it.
• 20:54
  Philip Pape: People who strength train regularly respond better to hormone therapy as well, so sometimes it makes sense to do both together.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: All right, hopefully I haven't gotten off on too many tangents.
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: But to sum all this up, in general, the research shows that people who maintain consistent strength training through their 40s and 50s often maintain hormone profiles that are closer to their younger years.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: And that makes sense because physique-wise, body composition-wise, strength-wise, I've seen people turn back the clock 10, 20 years because they improved their lifestyle.
• 21:26
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 21:26
  Philip Pape: There was a recent study that found that resistance-strained individuals over 50 had growth hormone and testosterone levels which averaged 30 to 40% higher than their sedentary peers.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: Right?
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: So we can't stop the hormonal changes, but we can significantly influence how our bodies adapt to them and are efficient with them by incorporating lifting.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: There's no reason not to do it, I hope, is the message you've taken from this.
• 21:49
  Philip Pape: So, as we wrap up, remember your body is very adaptive.
• 21:53
  Philip Pape: No matter what age you are, it's always going to adapt to what you give it, and so, if you choose to pursue HRT or not, you should always have strength training in the foundation of your lifestyle.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: It's the one intervention that improves every marker of health and fitness.
• 22:08
  Philip Pape: We care about Every single one.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: There's no downside whatsoever.
• 22:11
  Philip Pape: The key is doing it right, being consistent, using progression right.
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: You don't have to be a power lifter.
• 22:18
  Philip Pape: You don't have to be a bodybuilder.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: You're not going to get bulky.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: You don't have to gain weight.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: You can gain a tiny bit of weight, but it'll be mostly muscle.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: That's a whole separate topic.
• 22:25
  Philip Pape: You just have to challenge your muscles and push the limits right.
• 22:31
  Philip Pape: The weights have to feel heavy.
• 22:32
  Philip Pape: You've got to be training hard.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: You've got to be moving and growing.
• 22:34
  Philip Pape: Start where you are, progress systemically and then let those compounding effects of training accumulate and improve your home run profile over time.
• 22:45
  Philip Pape: All right, if today's episode resonated with you, if you want to connect with others like Angela optimizing their health through strength training, join our Facebook group.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: Search for Wits and Weights on Facebook or click the link in the show notes.
• 22:57
  Philip Pape: Share your wins.
• 22:58
  Philip Pape: With training, you can ask questions, become part of the community.
• 23:01
  Philip Pape: Have fun.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: That's what we do.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: We have fun.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: We're positive.
• 23:03
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your body's systems get stronger and more resilient with every training session, no matter your age.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.