The Hormonal Benefits of Regular Exercise: What You Need to Know
I used to think people were crazy when they said they felt ‘so good’ after lifting weights. What could feel good about salty sweat pouring down your face as you squatted and pressed heavy things above your head?
Then 3 weeks ago, it happened. I was feeling super stressed and for some reason, the crazy idea hit my brain: “I need to lift something heavy right now. I’m going to lift something heavy until I feel a shift in my emotions and I’m going to pay attention to how long that takes.”
About 12 minutes in, following several different reps and movements, I started pouring sweat and it happened - I felt the rush of endorphins, the decrease in cortisol, and the burst of energy. THIS is what those crazy people mean and I’ve just officially joined the crazy people club!
Beth Learn, founder of Fit 2 B (and well-earned certificate collector), was my recent podcast guest, and she echoed my enthusiasm for this new-found love for weight lifting. “Weightlifting continues to rise to the top of all the research in terms of what helps our hormones and our mental health, and our bone density the most,” she said. Then she dropped a big bomb: “Bone density is not usually on women's radar. We've all heard of brittle bone disease or like the Dowager's hump, the grandma hump. But a few years ago I heard the statistic that over age 40, women spend more time in the hospital dealing with bone density related issues than breast cancer.
Breast cancer makes the news and it gets our attention because, hello, it's about our boobs and boobs are sexy and they feed our babies. But meanwhile, what's actually killing us is bone issues at a higher rate. And over age 65, falls are the number one killer. And what contributes to falls is strength, balance, and bone density. And what builds healthy bones? Weightlifting & resistance. Resistance training.”
But weightlifting and resistance training means I’m going to end up looking like a bulky, body-building, She-Hulk, right?
Nope.
“We see movement as this big, sweaty, muscly mess. And we think that’s what it has to look like! That it has to hurt to work. That it has to be every day for an hour until you hurt and can’t walk the next day and that’s the badge of a good workout. No. I call BS. It’s just not true. In fact, your muscles need 48 hours to rest. They need to not pick up heavy things for 48 hours [in between workouts] so they can rebuild the DNA and RNA, grabbing protein and rebuilding the cells to make them stronger.”
In a world of one-size-fits-all-fitness, paying attention to how our hormones are handling the workouts is rarely a focus. But if we truly want to have a healthy relationship with fitness, we need to ensure we’re in-tune with how our bodies are responding to what we’re incorporating.
If we’re finishing a workout absolutely exhausted and the workout wasn’t necessarily difficult or for a long period of time, our bodies may be telling us a story. Perhaps we haven’t been getting good, quality sleep. Perhaps we haven’t been eating well or eating frequently enough throughout the day. Are we getting enough protein in our meals? How about enough carbs? And are we working out at the right time during our cycles? Yep. You read that right. THAT’s a thing.
If you’re like I was just a few weeks ago and you have NO idea where to even start with all this fitness business, here are 4 simple strategies to get you started:
4 ways to have a great relationship with fitness:
Redefine your goal - Fitness is an emotional process. It signifies that we’re changing, that we’re aging, that our bodies are different than they once were. But no matter how old we are, we can interrupt what's happening in our bodies, bones, muscles, and tissues. Our goal should be strength! When our bodies don’t show results through weight loss or pant sizes, it doesn’t mean it isn’t working. Fitness should be about giving our bodies our best everyday! If that looks like a 10-minute walk or a 15-minute chair workout where we’re lifting 5-pound weights, that’s amazing because we aren’t hurting our backs and we’re not over doing it.
Prioritize it - we’ll always find a reason for other things to trump a workout. We have to pen fitness into our calendars with the same immovable importance as grocery shopping, brushing our teeth, or taking a shower. And if we find ourselves in a place where our stress is high and we’re accumulating more fat and we’re feeling ‘too tired’ to work out - we have to do the thing that feels the opposite of what we want to do. We have to move when we want to sit.
Just start - Establish a baseline that’s sustainable. The goal is consistency. If you have to start with just 2 workouts a week, start there! Then you can work yourself up from there. That also means that you’re also free to come back down to that. If you have a surgery or a loved one gets sick and you have to care for them, you can reduce your workouts back down to 2 a week.
Pick something up, put something down - Many of us will prolong establishing a fitness routine because of what we think we ‘don’t have’. “I don’t have a room to work out in.” “I don’t have weights to lift”. But Beth is adamant that all it takes to start is just something to pick up and something to put down. “A can of beans weighs 15 or 16 ounces. That’s 1 pound per can of beans!” Before the recording of this podcast with Beth, I did a quick weightlifting exercise in my office between client calls. You aren’t limited by anything you don’t allow to be a limit.
I started with these simple weights, and kept within my low budget! I started with 3 lb and 5 lb weights, so don’t be intimidated by larger weights! Start low and slow and build your confidence from there.
I also subscribe to Beth’s Fit2B workouts- you can access her low monthly membership here!
