Why muscle is a woman’s best friend…
Whether a muscular, toned and/or lean physique is your preferred aesthetic, skeletal muscle is about way more than looks!
Our muscles not only give us strength and with that, a sense of confidence – but they also play an important role in a range of different functions and processes outlined below.
Blood Sugar Balance for Sustainable Energy, Managing Inflammation and Weight Management
As well as providing strength, muscle is a store for glycogen – giving it an important role in balancing blood sugar levels. After a meal, once insulin has taken enough glucose into our body cells, it stores this excess sugar in our muscles and liver, and then in our fat cells (in order of preference). Therefore the more muscle we can build as a proportion of our body mass the less glucose will be stored as fat.
As we enter peri-menopause our sensitivity to insulin can decrease with oestrogen fluctuations (increasing the risk for insulin resistance and that weight gain around the mid section), and so the more help we can give our body to support blood sugar through dietary, lifestyle and workout choices – the better!
Weight Loss
When it comes to exercising to lose weight many of us will automatically think of cardiovascular based exercise, aka. cardio. Running, cycling, spin and aerobics classes get us sweating, out of breath, and our watches will show we’ve burnt off a few hundred calories – so it’s easy to rely on this to reach your goals.
However, although there are many benefits to cardio – including as the name suggests, benefits to our cardiovascular system (heart and lungs) – relying on it to lose weight (even with a good nutrition plan) may slow or even stall your progress.
Resistance or strength-based exercises, focus on working our muscles. Whilst this type of training may not rack up the same numbers on our watch (and remember those figures can be wildly inaccurate!) – resistance training could be the key to reaching your fat loss goals.
Muscle, or more specifically skeletal muscle is metabolically active. This means that even at rest, it will increase your metabolic rate – making it an ideal tool for fat loss!
Stress Hormones
For those of us experiencing chronic stress, our cortisol levels may be chronically elevated. Once again, as we approach perimenopause, this can become even more apparent. Raised cortisol levels themselves can dysregulate blood sugar levels, and like insulin, cortisol can also contribute to fat around the mid section.
But guess what?! Strength training can help to lower your cortisol levels.
Hormone Balance
As much as we might think of testosterone as a male hormone, women need it too but in lower levels. In women this hormone is needed to maintain muscle mass, bone density and a healthy libido. Strength training is a great way to boost testosterone, which can decline as we age.
How to Build Muscle
Strength or resistance based training is the best way to build muscle with the body. Exercises can use bodyweight, suspension training, resistance bands, dumbbells, ketllebells, bar weights and resistance machines. Talk to your trainer about a programme that works for you, or join a class that focuses on this type of training.
If you are using weights, I implore you to consider two things:
Lift heavy – the small weights (eg. 2-3kg) we used to see in workout videos in the 90s/00s to “tone” the body just won’t cut it. Go heavier whilst working within your capability!
Get someone to check your technique – weight training done correctly is safe, but poor technique increases your risk of injury, and at best will be less effective.
Want to work to a personalised programme? Get in touch!