379: Avoid These 3 Training Mistakes in Perimenopause

In episode 379 of the Real Life Runners Podcast, we focus on women experiencing perimenopause and dive into the three most common training mistakes they make, leading to decreased energy, weight gain, and reduced performance. We discuss hormonal changes, particularly the decline in estrogen and its effects on muscle and bone health, emphasizing the need for appropriate training and recovery. We explain the importance of incorporating polarized training and heavier strength training while highlighting the pitfalls of calorie restriction during this phase. We stress the impact of hormonal imbalances on training outcomes and urge listeners to make informed nutritional and recovery choices. This episode, which also marks the celebration of our podcast's seventh anniversary, offers actionable insights for maintaining health and running performance during perimenopause.

03:24 Understanding Perimenopause and Menopause

05:40 Hormonal Changes and Their Impact

08:44 Common Training Mistakes in Perimenopause

11:24 Importance of Strength Training

15:07 The Dangers of Calorie Restriction

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 379. Today we're going to be talking specifically to women in perimenopause. But if you are a male and you're listening to this episode, there's definitely going to be things here that apply to you also. So if you are a woman and you're going through perimenopause or menopause, basically that means if you're over the age of 40. You may have noticed some changes in the way that your body is responding to exercise and to training. And so today I'm going to be talking about the three biggest training mistakes that I see women making in this phase of life. That's leading to decreased energy levels, more fat gain and weight gain and decreased performance. So stay tuned. What's up runners. Welcome to the show today. I'm super excited to jump on and talk to you guys about. Some of the training mistakes that I see women making in perimenopause and you might notice that today is just me It's a solo episode. So I am flying solo today. Kevin's not with me and Not not to worry. Kevin is still a part of the podcast. He's not going anywhere Um, I have, if I'm going to be completely honest with you, basically the week kind of got away from us and we did not record on our normal recording day because of life stuff. And so, um, I decided to do a solo episode this week because you know, life, it's homecoming week in high school and Kevin's a high school teacher and we've had activities every night. And so, um, we just haven't had a chance to sit down and record. So. I still want to put great content out there for you guys and, um, give you things that are going to help you every single week. And you know, we're committed to this podcast. And so I want to make sure that we're releasing an episode for you. And as a really exciting thing, um, I don't think we mentioned this last week. We just celebrated over the weekend, September 28th was our seven year podcast anniversary. Woohoo. Um, so I am so happy and excited that we've made it to seven years of this podcast. And I just want to say thank you. If you are listening to this podcast, whether you just found us or you've been listening since the beginning or for years now, I just want to say thank you for tuning in every week. Thank you to all of you that have left us a review and, um, you know, left us stars on either spot. Spotify or Apple podcast that really helps other people find the podcast. Thank you to all of you who have ever shared this podcast with a friend or a running group. We appreciate that so much and that is such a wonderful thing that you can do to, to just help us out, um, with sharing the message that we're trying to get out there every single week. So thank you to all of our wonderful, wonderful listeners. Um, we do this for you and so I'm just super excited that We are celebrating seven years. That's completely wild. Um, and if you are one of our email subscribers, make sure that you check your email because we are running a special, um, promotion this week for the Academy in order in celebration of the, um, podcast seven year anniversary. So make sure you check that out. If you are not currently an academy member. So today we're going to dig into three of the biggest training mistakes that I see women making in perimenopause because perimenopause is this very weird, ambiguous term for a lot of people. Like a lot of people don't even know what perimenopause is. So let's just start to define it, right? So basically. If you are a woman over the age of 40, you are probably in perimenopause or you're after menopause. So menopause essentially is that time, it's one date in time that it has been 12 months since your last menstrual cycle, since your last period. So if you are before that time, if you are still having periods, you are considered premenopausal. Perimenopausal and if you're after that time you are postmenopausal. So during this time There's a lot of things that are changing in a woman's body Hormonally, so basically the long story short is that we are losing estrogen and progesterone In this lead up to menopause and as these hormones are shifting and changing, there's a lot of other things that are shifting and changing in our body and it can lead to all sorts of symptoms that women experience. But some of the biggest ones that I often hear are fatigue, like extreme levels of fatigue, just not having the energy for your workouts or just. Feeling really tired just in daily life as well. Um, women, a lot of women notice weight gain specifically around the belly and increased belly fat and more aches and pains, you know, aching muscles, aching joints, um, noticing that they're just more sore after a hard workout or they need more recovery. They're just, they're more sore for longer periods of time. Their body's just not recovering and responding the same way that it used to. So if any of those sound like you, This tune in right because this episode is for you, and if you are a male There's also mistakes that I'm going to be talking about here that apply to you as well So I do see that these mistakes are even more prevalent in women, and I think that Because of what the changes that we're going through with our hormones When we make these mistakes the effects of these mistakes are even more prominent in women versus in males But they are still So, one of the main things that we need to understand in this phase of life, whether you're a woman or a man, is this concept of anabolic versus catabolic. Basically, there are hormones, and the hormones are essentially like messengers in the body. And some hormones are anabolic and some hormones are catabolic. What does that mean? Anabolic means building up and catabolic means breaking down. So if it is an anabolic hormone, it's going to help the body build back stronger in whatever area, um, it has a cat, an anabolic effect. So for example, estrogen is an anabolic hormone in general. It helps us to build lean muscle mass, right? It helps us and it helps our bodies to repair. After exercise, because exercise is a catabolic activity, especially hard exercise. Exercise is actually breaking the body down and it is in rest and recovery that the body builds back up stronger than it was before. So estrogen is an anabolic hormone. So as we lose estrogen in perimenopause, it becomes harder for us as women. to build muscle and bone, which leads to conditions like sarcopenia, which is loss of lean muscle mass that starts at age 30. We can, we actually, unless we are training and exercising and doing something about it, we start losing lean muscle mass after the age of 30 by about 8 percent every 10 years. Okay. So almost 1 percent per year, unless we're doing something about it, which is crazy, right? Osteoporosis is another condition that we need to be really aware of because Osteoporosis is in, affects 50 percent of women over the age of 45. Over age 45, 50. 7 percent of women have osteoporosis and that number becomes even higher as we move into the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th decades of life. There was one statistic I saw that said 70 percent of people over the age of 80, people, not just women, but. people in general, 70 percent of people over the age of 80 have osteoporosis. And so bone health is something that we really need to be very aware of. We need to help people. Use our training to help us build stronger bones because bone health is very important not only for us as runners But for us as just healthy human beings because if we have decreased bone density and decreased bone health and we're out there running Guess what? We're at more risk for a stress fracture or for a stress reaction or shin splints or some of these other injuries that so many runners Experience. So we have to make sure that we are training in a way that's going to help us build stronger bodies and help to protect us from some of these conditions that affect so many people as they age. So what does that mean? Well, now we know that training is catabolic and Estrogen and rest is anabolic, so we have to make sure that we are training in the right ratios for us to accomplish our goals, right? So going back to the three common training mistakes that I see, one of the things that I notice in a lot of women that When they start to notice that their body is not responding the same way to exercise, they're, they're gaining weight. There's noticing that their paces are slower. They're noticing body changes or performance changes. A lot of times what women do is they try to train more, right? They think, okay, well I'm, I'm. I'm getting slower. That must mean that I'm not doing enough. So they go out and they do more. They try running more. They try pushing harder on their runs. Um, and just this whole idea of, I just need to do more if I want to get better. And that often leads the problems to getting even worse. That leads to more fatigue. It leads to more breakdown and it leads to more weight gain. So it's a very frustrating thing because women are trying to, training harder and they're doing more, but they're not getting the results that they want. And that's because of the hormone imbalance that's going on. Not just with estrogen and progesterone, but estrogen also has an effect on cortisol levels and human growth hormone and a lot of other hormones in the body that allow our body to recover and allow our body to build back muscle and, and, um, be, become stronger runners and also affect the way that our bodies hold onto fat or burn fat. You know, it affects cortisol levels, ghrelin and leptin, which are like our satiety hormones that let us know if we're hungry and we need more food or if we're full and we've had enough. So estrogen has an effect on all of those things. So if we are. So we're noticing that we are not getting the results that we want and we're just going out and training more, training more, training more. We're putting our bodies into that catabolic state and we're just breaking the body down over and over again and not often getting enough recovery to help the body build back stronger than it was before. So what does that mean? What do we need to do? We need to have. More of what looks like polarized training. Okay, where we have hard days are hard because it is still important in our training we need to make sure that we are training hard because we need to make up for some of the losses that our hormones normally do, right? So we need to make sure that we're training hard, but we also need to make sure that we're allowing enough time for recovery because it is during recovery that our body builds back stronger than it was before. So if it is, yes, it's important if we want to get stronger, if we want to get faster, we do have to push our bodies hard, but we also need to make sure that we are balancing that with appropriate. Um, amount and levels of recovery so that our body can build back stronger than it was before. Okay, so going back to our idea of sarcopenia and osteoporosis, this, this, We'll tie into the second training mistake that I often see and so when we understand that we need to start focusing on muscle health and bone health Because of this risk of osteoporosis and one in two women will experience a fracture from osteoporosis At some point in their life one in two fifty percent So fifty percent of women over the age of 45 already have osteoporosis Eighty percent of us of people with osteoporosis are women and one in two women you will experience a fracture from osteoporosis at some point in their lifetime. This, these are scary statistics, you guys. So we need to really Start to make training choices that are going to protect us against these things. Like, yes, of course. Do we want to run faster? Yes. Do we want to build our endurance? Absolutely. We also need to be thinking of our overall long term health and longevity, right? How do we want. Um, to look and feel and be able to, uh, you know, behave when we are in the later decades of our life. We are training choices. Now our nutritional choices, now our lifestyle choices now are setting us up for all of that when we're in our sixties, seventies, eighties and beyond. Okay. So as we lose estrogen, we are losing muscle mass and bone because estrogen is anabolic, right? Estrogen also helps with the production of human growth hormone. And dampens the effects of cortisol. So as we lose estrogen, our body is not able to build back that strong muscle. And this is why our training choices are so important. If we're doing the wrong things in our training, we are just adding to that breakdown, but what we need to be focusing on is building up that muscle, building up that strength. Building up stronger muscles, stronger bones. And so that's why we need to incorporate more strength training. So it's training mistake. Number two is that a lot of runners just focus on running and they ignore strength training, but that's not something that you can afford to do anymore, especially in this phase of our life. So you need to be incorporating strength training at least two to three times per week, depending on your training goals. And we also need to be lifting heavier weights, lower weight, higher repetition is not the best way for us to train as women in this phase of our life. We need to be lifting heavier weights, lower repetitions to actually build muscle and lead to some of those neuromuscular changes that can really help to us to build stronger muscle and stronger bone. Okay, so do not skip your strength training. You need to be doing strength training and also you need to be making sure that you are incorporating rest after your strength training to allow your body to build back stronger than it was before. Again, because remember training, whether it's running hard, like when you're doing speed workouts, anything above like an easy workout, you know, we talk about effort levels. On this podcast a lot, if you're running at an easy effort level like an L two, that that can be considered an easy day, a recovery day. If you're training at anything above like a level two or three, that is considered a harder day. You need to make sure that you're recovering from that, and you need to be making, making sure that you are polarizing your training and getting enough rest and recovery and easy days, um, after those harder workouts. So lifting heavier weights. is going to break your body down. That's the point. We need to make sure that we are allowing the body rest and appropriate nutrition to build back up stronger than it was before. So that takes us to training mistake number three, which could be one of the worst things that we can do as women, active women in perimenopause, which is restricting calories. When you notice that you're gaining weight or maybe not you, but if you are, you know, if you are someone that has noticed that you're gaining weight. What happens? Right? What is the first thing that. You often do, maybe you do, or you've seen people do, or you're told to do, right? The way that we were conditioned to think about food growing up in the 80s and the 90s is to go on a diet. We were raised in the 80s and the 90s, which is arguably the peak of diet culture. So this is what we know, right? We know that if you want to lose weight, or we were told, I shouldn't say we know this, but we have been told that you need to restrict your calories if you want to lose weight. lose weight. But this could be one of the worst things that you're doing for your health because the people that tell you it's just calories in calories out, that is not completely accurate, right? When we eat food, especially carbs, it gets converted into glucose or sugar in the blood. And then the hormone insulin helps to pull the sugar out of the blood and deliver it to the cells that need it to convert energy. Estrogen helps insulin and improves insulin sensitivity, which is something that we want. So as estrogen declines, we have decreased ability to use carbohydrates and clear blood sugar, which increases our risk of diabetes. It increases our risk of other metabolic diseases. And so. When we are training hard and noticing weight gain, and then we decide we're going to restrict calories on top of that, we are just throwing our body and our hormones into a full state of chaos, right? We've been taught to cut calories, but this is not the full picture, and it can lead to more problems than the opposite of what we want. Like, if you are someone That has ever noticed and this happens a lot in marathon training as well Like I see this with a lot of people especially women that gain weight during marathon training and they don't understand what's going on They're like what in the world is happening. I'm running more I'm training more than I ever have before why in the world am I gaining weight? And it's because of the hormone imbalance that happens because a lot of women when they're Increasing their training levels, they're not increasing their calories to match that. And some of them are even trying to lose weight. So they're restricting calories on top of the additional training that they're doing. And so this puts your body in a catabolic state. When you restrict calories, you're actually raising your cortisol levels because the body is in a stressed out state because you are asking it to do all this training, do all this running, do all this lifting, whatever it is that you're trying to do, which is again, catabolic. And you're not giving it what it needs to build back up stronger. So protein, carbohydrates, food is what our body needs to build back stronger muscles. So if you're constantly breaking the body down during training and then you're restricting calories on top of that and not giving your body what it needs, your body is going to continue to break down. And it's really, really important for us to understand that this also leads to changes in overall body composition, which is the opposite of what we want, right? Most of us, if you were to ask yourself this question of like, would you like to build muscle and lose fat or would you like to gain fat and lose muscle? I think everyone would probably say the first one. I would rather build muscle and lose fat. But when we restrict calories and increase our training load. What we're doing is the opposite. We're actually losing muscle, we're breaking the body down, and we're gaining fat. Because when our body is in a stressed out state and cortisol levels are high, one of the things that cortisol does is it packs on fat, especially around the belly. Because our body is losing fat. in a state of chaos. I shouldn't say chaos, but it is in a state of stress. Like cortisol is the stress hormone. And so it's saving, it's, it thinks that it's not getting, it notices that it's not getting what it needs. And so it saves whatever calories are coming in for later because it's in a state of survival. So. You're actually sabotaging your metabolism by training more and eating less and restricting your calories. So this whole idea of eat less and move more, we've heard that for a very, very long time. And this might be good advice for people who are sedentary, but it's terrible advice for active women. You need to be giving your body the fuel that it needs to perform and move. The fuel that it needs to recover properly, because again, going back to our catabolic versus anabolic, if your training is breaking the body down, which is what you want, that is the goal of training. You also need to make sure that you are giving your body the food That it needs to build back stronger muscles, stronger bones and a stronger body and not pack on extra fat, right? Because that's the opposite of what we want, especially as women in this phase of life when we tend to gain more weight and gain more body fat. more easily because of the losses of estrogen because estrogen helps keep cortisol in check. That's one of its jobs. And so we, as we lose estrogen, cortisol is more unchecked. And so we are more prone to accumulating body fat specifically around the middle, especially specifically around the belly. Right? So that's why it's so important for us to be making sure that we are. Training. Absolutely. We need to train. We need to train hard. We need to make sure though that we are also getting enough recovery so that our body has time to rebuild itself after those hard workouts. We need to make sure that we're lifting weights and building that muscle and building that bone because resistance training helps to build lean muscle. It helps to be better. to build stronger bones because of the way that resistance training works. It's pulling on the bones like any time that you're contracting a muscle, you're pulling on a bone. So that helps us to decrease our risk of osteoporosis, decrease our risk of stress fractures and regular fractures. It helps to, you know, when we have stronger muscles, we're going to be able to do our daily activities a lot easier. We're going to have more energy. We're able to run faster. It's going to improve endurance. If we have more lean muscle, we actually burn more fat at rest. Okay. So strength training, again, super important, not just for our running, but also for, if you are someone that wants to lose weight, wants to lose fat, improve your body composition, you have to be lifting weights. We can't just focus on our running anymore. And then, um, uh, The third mistake, like I said, is restricting those calories. We want to make sure that we are fueling our bodies appropriately. We're giving our bodies enough protein because protein is the building block of muscle. We need to also give, be giving ourselves enough carbohydrates because carbohydrates are our body's preferred source of fuel during running and during cardio exercise. Um, But our body starts to use carbohydrates a little bit differently during perimenopause as well because of the changes to insulin because of estrogen's effect on insulin, right? So what I hope that you understand through this episode is that we can't just, you know, Eat less and move more. That is not the way that we need to be operating. We can't just expect to train more and push ourselves harder and get the results that we want. We have to be so much kinder to our bodies because as our hormones are shifting, we need our training choices matter more. Our nutrition choices matter more. Our recovery matters more. All of it matters more because estrogen doesn't have our back anymore, right? Estrogen. It did so many wonderful things for us as we were in that phase of life. And now we have to be a lot more aware of our choices and make smarter choices to support stronger muscles, stronger bones, and be able to run for as long as we want to be able to run here. So I hope this episode was helpful. If you are someone that is making these mistakes and you need help on figuring out what to do instead, you want more specifics, I gave you guys some general guidelines, obviously in this podcast. But Um, it depends on who you are, what you're training for, you know, what your goals are. There's a lot of different variables and factors at play here. So if you want more specific coaching and help figuring this out, I would love to invite you to join our priority list for the press play program. So I've created a group coaching program perimenopause and the doors for that are going to be opening in a few weeks. Our next group kicks off in November. So if you want to be. If you want to learn more about the program and if you want to be first to know when those doors are open again, head over to realliferunners. com forward slash priority and just put your name, you just need, you know, your name and your email address, put your name on the priority list. It doesn't commit you to anything, but it does allow you to be the first one notified when you know the doors are opening and you can decide if the program is right for you at that point. So, um, So, if this was helpful, I would love for you to leave us a review either on Apple iTunes or Apple Podcasts on Spotify or share it with a friend that you think would benefit from this information. And as always, thanks for joining me today, not us, but me, uh, this has been the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 379. Now get out there and run your life.