Muscle & Longevity
Fuel Your Strength
Steph Gaudreau
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2023
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When you think of muscle mass in women, does your brain immediately jump to the image of ultra-muscled competitors and quote-unquote meatheads? Building muscle mass as a female athlete does not look like this image most of the time, yet women are still afraid of getting bulky. In this episode, I want to dive into what building muscle mass as a woman really looks like and the massive benefits for your overall health and longevity that can come from it.
Key Takeaways
If You Want to Get Deeper Into the Conversation Around Muscle Mass, You Should:
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Stop letting society tell you that you should be afraid of getting ‘too bulky’
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Dive deeper into the topics touched on in this episode
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Learn and explore how muscle mass can improve your longevity and quality of life
Muscle is More than Aesthetics
For so long, the conversation around muscle mass has stopped at the aesthetic value. But the truth is, building muscle as a female athlete, especially a female athlete over 40, is about so much more than aesthetics. I want to challenge this conversation and urge you to dig deeper into the benefits that building muscle mass and getting strong can have for you.
Building muscle mass can help with your insulin sensitivity, boost your bone strength, enhance your longevity and quality of life, decrease the risk of falls, improve your cognitive health and cardiovascular function, and much more. It's time for the conversation around muscle mass to focus on those things, rather than just the aesthetic value of muscle.
Quality of Life Matters
Longevity is one of the key benefits of building muscle mass. But I don't just mean longevity in terms of living to 120 without the functionality or independence you want in order to live your life fully. I am talking about an all-encompassing longevity that not only maintains and improves your quality of life but gives you the confidence to keep going.
When it comes to muscle mass in females, the benefits are so far beyond the exterior. If you are looking for a way to preserve your freedom, gain confidence, improve your quality of life, and age in a way that makes you look and feel good, strength training is crucial to your success.
Are you ready to dive deeper into muscle mass than what lies on the surface? Share your thoughts with me in the comments on the episode page.
In This Episode
- Understanding why some women are afraid of muscle and lifting heavy (4:44)
- Different roles that muscle mass plays which can be associated with longevity (6:47)
- The broad role your metabolism plays in relationship with your muscle tissue (10:09)
- How your muscle mass can regulate your blood sugar levels and insulin sensitivity (12:23)
- Why your adolescence can have a significant impact on your menopause transition (14:31)
Quotes
“When it comes down to things, we have to build muscle if we want to experience some kind of sculpting or toning or any of that.” (2:35)
“The conversation, in my opinion, is lacking some of the deeper reasons why muscle plays very crucial roles in the body, and how those are associated with longevity.” (6:02)
“Our capacity to move through life, to do those activities of daily living, to perform physical exercise, which is also a very clear health-promoting habit. Those are associated with better longevity and improved quality of life.” (8:57)
“It is really important to lean on things like exercise, or specifically strength training or resistance training, to help us improve our insulin sensitivity. Exercise is a really important tool in your toolbox.” (13:55)
“We've talked about here mobility and physical activity, the sit-to-stand test, why this matters for discussions of quality of life, overall wellbeing, independence, being able to have mobility, and complete activities of daily living as well as physical exercise.” (18:21)
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Related Episodes
FYS 416: Is Muscle Anti-Aging?
FYS 406: Creatine, Bone, and Brain Health with Dr. Darren Candow
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | When it comes to women and muscle, the most common thing I hear as a rebuttal is, I can't do that, it's going to make me bulky. |
| 0:08.8 | And in this conversation today, we're going to talk about why it's time to take the topic of muscle mass and move it past just a conversation about aesthetics and really understand how muscle mass and building it is associated with better health and better longevity. |
| 0:27.8 | It's time to take muscle mass away from just the meat heads and show you why as a woman over 40 it is absolutely |
| 0:34.5 | crucial for you and yes you belong in the gym lifting weights too. |
| 0:39.2 | If you're an athletic 40-something woman who loves lifting weights, challenging yourself |
| 0:47.9 | and doing hard shit, the fuel your strength and |
| 0:54.0 | podcast is for you. You'll learn how to eat, train, and recover smarter |
| 0:56.0 | so you build strength and muscle, have more energy, |
| 1:00.0 | and perform better in and out of the gym. I'm Strength Nutrition Strategist and |
| 1:05.1 | weightlifting coach Steph Godro. The Fuel Your Strength Podcast dives into |
| 1:09.8 | evidence-based strategies for nutrition, training, and recovery, and why once you're approaching |
| 1:16.1 | your 40s and beyond, you need to do things a little differently than you did in your 20s. |
| 1:21.9 | We're here to challenge the limiting industry |
| 1:24.1 | narratives about what women can and should do in training and beyond. If that |
| 1:30.0 | sounds good, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app and let's go. |
| 1:39.0 | What's going on? Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. We are doing a series on muscle mass and strength and really looking at some of the lesser talked about benefits or some of the reasons why you may want to consider strength training as a woman over 40 if you're not currently and if you are currently lifting thinking about why you're doing something super positive for your health and well being. You know when the conversation of muscle and building muscle and adding muscle mass comes up around women, there is no shortage of ways that the industry likes to codify language |
| 2:17.0 | and say, oh, but we want to sculpt and we want a tone. And while I understand that that |
| 2:22.2 | might be more palatable to a lot of women in particular, |
| 2:27.2 | when it boils down to things, we have to build muscle if we want to experience some kind of sculpting or toning or any of that. |
| 2:35.6 | So it's important to be clear and frank and say if you've been using the word toning, |
| 2:40.0 | that's fine. |
| 2:41.0 | You're welcome to be here in this conversation but just muscle mass tends to |
... |
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