Muscle Is Your Retirement Account

[00:00:00] Emily Field: Welcome back to the Macros Made Easy podcast. I’m Emily Field, registered dietitian and personal trainer, and this is episode 79. Today, I wanna make the case that muscle deserves to be treated a lot more like a retirement account, something that you intentionally build now so that you have more strength, capacity, and independence to draw from later in life.

[00:00:21] Emily Field: Most of us understand that if we wanna be financially secure later in life, we can’t wait until we’re 65 or 70 to begin saving. We contribute while retirement still feels far away, sometimes decades before we expect to need that money because we understand that the small deposits we make now create more options for us later, and muscle works in a remarkably similar way.

[00:00:46] Emily Field: The strength and muscle you build in your 30s, 40s, and 50s becomes a part of the physical reserve you get to draw from later in life. They help determine whether climbing stairs feels ordinary or exhausting, whether you can lift your suitcase into an overhead bin on your own, whether you can catch yourself when you trip, whether you can get down on the floor with a grandchild and stand back up, and whether your body continues to support the hobbies and experiences you wanna say yes to.

[00:01:12] Emily Field: And the reason I wanna talk about this now, especially to women in their 40s and 50s, is because we tend to wait until something starts going wrong before we decide it deserves our attention. We think about bone health after a DEXA scan comes back concerning, we think about balance after someone falls, and we think about muscle after we notice we’re weaker, but the research tells us that the process of losing muscle begins much earlier than that.

[00:01:38] Emily Field: Muscle mass can begin declining around our 30s at a rate of roughly 3 to 8% per decade, and that decline tends to accelerate after age 60. After age 70, estimates suggest women may lose around .7% of muscle mass per year. That doesn’t mean that you wake up one morning at 40 and suddenly cannot carry your groceries.

[00:01:58] Emily Field: It’s much quieter than that. It may be a small withdrawal this year and another small withdrawal next year happening in the background while you still feel perfectly capable, and that is exactly why I want you investing before you notice the balance getting low. Today, we’re gonna talk about what muscle actually does for you, why strength training becomes increasingly important after 40, what some of the research says about bone health, blood sugar, recovery, and independence, and most importantly, why it’s absolutely not too late to build muscle if you have not started yet Before we get into the episode, I wanna share a really great review from a listener named Jessie.

[00:02:37] Emily Field: She wrote, “Thank you, Emily, and your RD team. I’m a few months into my macro tracking journey and feel more energized and strong and seeing better body recomp than have before. Finding your pod is giving me so much more confidence and advice to progress and stay motivated.” Jessie, thank you so much for taking the time to leave that review, and I especially love the words that you used were energized, strong, confident, and motivated because that is so much of what I hope you take away from this podcast.

[00:03:06] Emily Field: Yes, we talk about macros, we talk about body composition, we talk about nutrition strategies that can help you make progress, but ultimately, I want those tools to help you feel more capable in your body and more confident in the decisions you’re making for it. And honestly, this review could not have been a better lead-in to today’s episode because we’re talking about one of the biggest pieces of that equation, building and preserving muscle.

[00:03:31] Emily Field: If this podcast has helped you feel more confident about your nutrition, your training, or how you’re taking care of your body, would you take a minute to rate the show five stars and leave a review? Those ratings and reviews really do help more women find the podcast, and I read them. I love hearing what’s clicking for you, what you’re putting into practice, and what has changed because of something you heard here.

[00:03:52] Emily Field: You might even hear your review shared on a future episode. And while you’re in your podcast app, there is another episode I wanna point you toward that pairs really nicely with this one. I previously recorded an episode with strength coach Mark Breeden called The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Strength Training in Your 40s.

[00:04:10] Emily Field: And if you search something like Macros Made Easy Strength Training 40s, it should come right up, but I will also put it in the show notes of this episode. Mark and I got very practical in that episode. We talked about how many days per week you actually need to strength train, whether two or three days can be enough, what progressive overload means, why random workouts are not the best way to build strength, how to think about recovery, and what to do if you feel intimidated by the gym.

[00:04:36] Emily Field: So I don’t want this episode to simply repeat all of that. Today, I wanna give you a bigger reason you should care enough to actually do it There is a concept in finance that most people understand intuitively. The earlier you start contributing, the more time you have to build something meaningful. You would never hear a financial planner tell a forty-two-year-old, “Don’t worry about retirement yet.

[00:04:59] Emily Field: Wait until you’re sixty-seven and then start saving.” And yet physically, that is how a lot of us operate. We assume strength is something we will deal with when we’re older. We’ll start lifting when the kids are grown. We’ll prioritize muscle when work is less busy. We’ll think about bone health after menopause.

[00:05:17] Emily Field: We’ll worry about balance when balance becomes a problem. Meanwhile, we may spend our thirties, forties, and fifties devoting a huge amount of time and attention to losing weight, burning calories, and trying to make our bodies smaller while doing very little to intentionally build the tissue that is gonna keep us independent for a very long time.

[00:05:37] Emily Field: And I wanna be clear, wanting fat loss is not inherently a problem. But if every decade of your life is spent asking, “How can I weigh less?” without also asking, “How can I become stronger?” you may end up sacrificing an asset that becomes much more valuable later. The research on aging and muscle gives us a really good reason to care about this early.

[00:05:59] Emily Field: We generally reach peak muscle mass and strength in early adulthood, and from around our thirties onward, muscle mass gradually declines. Estimates vary, but researchers commonly cite losses of roughly three to eight percent per decade after thirty, with the pace increasing later in life. Again, that sounds almost insignificant when you hear it as a yearly number, but zoom out over thirty or forty years and it becomes a very different story.

[00:06:27] Emily Field: Imagine putting one dollar into an account every week versus removing one dollar every week. Neither feels dramatic in the moment, but after several decades, those accounts look very different, and muscle works similarly. A word you may have heard associated with all of this is sarcopenia. Sarcopenia refers to the progressive age-related loss of skeletal muscle strength and physical function.

[00:06:53] Emily Field: And I think it’s important to put some numbers around that because it’s not just something that suddenly begins when you’re 75. Research suggests that muscle mass begins gradually declining as early as our 30s, a roughly 3 to 8% per decade, and that rate tends to accelerate after age 60. In women over 75, estimates put the average loss of muscle mass around .7% per year.

[00:07:17] Emily Field: But even more important is the part where strength appears to decline faster than muscle mass itself. In one eight-year study of active older adults, researchers saw an average decline of about .8% per year in muscle mass, but about 2.5% per year in muscle strength. Another large longitudinal study followed more than 1,600 older adults for five years.

[00:07:42] Emily Field: The women in that study lost about 13% of their leg strength over that period, and the loss of strength was two to five times greater than the loss of actual muscle size. So you can see why I don’t want this conversation to be reduced to will my arms look less toned as I age? Yes, changes in muscle can affect the way your body looks, but that is not what concerns me most.

[00:08:05] Emily Field: What concerns me is losing capacity because strength is what allows you to translate that muscle into real life. Capacity is being able to get off the floor without looking for a couch or coffee table to push yourself up. It is stepping onto a boat without feeling like you need someone to steady you.

[00:08:23] Emily Field: It’s arriving at a vacation rental and realizing your bedroom is upstairs, then carrying your 35-pound suitcase up those stairs without wondering whether your body can handle it. It’s moving a box in the garage, lifting a bag of mulch, putting something heavy onto a high shelf, hiking over uneven ground, or standing up from a low chair without thinking twice about it.

[00:08:44] Emily Field: These are not glamorous fitness goals. Most of the time, they’re things that you barely notice when your body can do them, but they’re also the things that eventually determine how independently you can live. And this is why I think strength loss can be so deceptive. A loss of 1 to 2% in a given year may not feel dramatic.

[00:09:03] Emily Field: You might not notice anything happening at all. But if strength is gradually declining by a few percents per year over many years, eventually the gap between what your life asks of you and what your body can comfortably do starts getting smaller. And then something that used to be easy becomes hard.

[00:09:21] Emily Field: Something that used to be hard becomes something you avoid, and eventually something you used to choose not to do becomes something you cannot physically do. That distinction matters to me. One thing Mark said in our previous strength training episode has stuck with me because I think it captures this beautifully.

[00:09:40] Emily Field: He talked about strength training giving you more choices. You may never choose to hike. You may have absolutely no desire to do a pull-up. You may not care whether you can deadlift 200 pounds. That is completely fine, but there is a very big difference between saying, “I don’t wanna do that,” and saying, “My body will not allow me to do that.”

[00:10:01] Emily Field: Strength keeps those options wide open At this point, I don’t want anyone listening age 48, 58, or 68 thinking, “Well, great. Apparently I have been losing muscle since I was 30, so I guess I missed my chance.” You did not. This is actually one of the most encouraging parts of the research. Older muscle is still trainable.

[00:10:22] Emily Field: In research looking at adults over 75, resistance training consistently improves strength, including in people well into their 80s. And when researchers specifically look at post-menopausal or older women, resistance training programs produce measurable gains in lean body mass. One large analysis included programs that lasted an average of about 16 weeks and involved roughly three days of training per week, and women still gained lean mass despite an average age in their mid-60s.

[00:10:51] Emily Field: I wanna make that practical. 16 weeks is not 10 years. That is roughly four months. Four months of consistent resistance training is enough time for researchers to measure meaningful changes in muscle, and that lines up with what we see in real life. In that previous episode, Mark talked about a client named Jill who really began lifting seriously around age 50.

[00:11:14] Emily Field: By her mid-50s, she was doing pull-ups for repetitions, deadlifting around 200 pounds, running 5Ks with her daughter, and going on long hikes feeling far more capable than she had before. He also shared an example of a woman who deadlifted 210 pounds on her 65th birthday. I’m not sharing these numbers because I think a 200-pound deadlift needs to become your goal.

[00:11:36] Emily Field: I’m sharing them because it makes something abstract very concrete. Your body can become stronger after 40. It can become stronger after 50. It can become stronger after 60. The body is not done adapting simply because you crossed some imaginary age threshold. Of all the reasons I want women to build and preserve muscle, independence may be the one I care about most.

[00:12:00] Emily Field: And when I say independence, I don’t just mean being able to carry your own groceries or lift your own suitcase. Those things matter, but independence becomes much bigger as we age. In aging research, you’ll often hear about activities of daily living, or ADLs. These are the basic things required to take care of yourself, getting out of bed or a chair, bathing, dressing, using the bathroom, eating, and moving around your home.

[00:12:23] Emily Field: And there are w- researchers call instrumental activities of daily living, and these are more complex things that allow you to actually live independently, shopping for your groceries, preparing meals, doing laundry, managing medications, handling your finances, getting around your community, and maintaining your home.

[00:12:41] Emily Field: When these abilities start disappearing, someone else has to step in And if you’re an elder millennial or Gen X woman listening to this, there is a good chance you are already seeing some version of this play out around you. Maybe you have a parent who will not go downstairs anymore because they don’t trust their legs.

[00:12:59] Emily Field: Maybe you find yourself carrying things for them that they used to carry themselves. Maybe they stop traveling because airports require too much walking. Maybe you’ve noticed them pushing hard off the arms of a chair to stand up, avoiding getting down on the floor altogether, or asking someone else to do things around the house that used to be routine.

[00:13:18] Emily Field: And sometimes those changes happen so gradually that nobody labels them as a loss of independence at first. You just start helping more. You pick up the groceries. You move the laundry basket. You drive instead. You take care of the yard. You start joining them at appointments because getting around has become harder.

[00:13:36] Emily Field: And eventually the question is no longer simply, “Can Mom carry this box?” It becomes, “Can Mom safely live here by herself?” And that’s what I mean when I talk about physical capacity. The National Institute on Aging reports that about 30% of adults over age 70 already have difficult with things like walking, getting out of a chair, or climbing stairs.

[00:13:58] Emily Field: And when older adults lose mobility, they’re less likely to remain living independently and more likely to experience falls, hospitalization, disability, nursing home admission, and poorer quality of life. There’s also research showing that muscle strength itself predicts some of this future independence.

[00:14:18] Emily Field: A large meta-analysis looked at muscle mass, strength, and physical performance in older adults and found that people with lower strength were more likely to develop difficulty with both basic daily activities and those more complex independent living skills. Lower grip strength, for example, was associated with a greater likelihood of future dependence, and measures like slower walking speed, poorer balance, and difficulty repeatingly standing from a chair were also strongly associated with worsening function over time.

[00:14:49] Emily Field: That is why I care much less about whether you become impressive in the gym and much more about what your training allows you to continue doing outside of it. The deadlift is not really about the deadlift. The squat is not really about the squat. The carry is not really about the carry. We practice producing force in a controlled environment because life is gonna continue asking us to produce force outside of one And then there’s this layer I think that many women in midlife are especially aware of.

[00:15:20] Emily Field: You may be watching your parents age and realizing that there are parts of their experience you don’t wanna repeat. I think that can be a powerful motivator without turning aging into something we should fear. You can love your parents deeply, help them willingly, and still think, “I wanna do everything within my control to preserve more of my own independence.”

[00:15:40] Emily Field: You may wanna reduce the likelihood that your daughter has to leave work to help you to get to the grocery store. You may wanna continue living in your own home. You may wanna travel without needing someone else to manage your luggage or your mobility. You may wanna keep driving, cooking, gardening, walking the dog, or going out to your own appointments for as long as possible.

[00:16:00] Emily Field: You may wanna keep driving, cooking, gardening, walking the dog, or going to your own appointments for as long as possible. None of us gets to have complete control over how we age. Illness, injury, genetics, and plain bad luck are real. Strength training is not an insurance policy against ever needing help, but muscle and strength are two of the physical resources we can actively build before we need them, and that’s why I keep coming back to the retirement account analogy.

[00:16:31] Emily Field: The goal is not to accumulate muscle so you can admire the balance. The goal is to have something available to spend later. You want enough reserve that when age, illness, injury, or simply time starts making withdrawals, you still have enough capacity left to live your life on your own terms for as long as possible.

[00:16:51] Emily Field: That, to me, is one of the most meaningful benefits of strength training Bone health is another reason I want women thinking about this before there’s a problem. We know that women experience accelerated bone loss around or after menopause, in large part because of declining estrogen. And bone, like muscle, responds to stimulus.

[00:17:11] Emily Field: It responds to loading. One study I really like because it makes this tangible is the LIFT MORE trial. Researchers studied post-menopausal women with low bone mass. These were not 25-year-old athletes with perfect bone density. The average woman in this study was about 65 years old, and the participants already had osteopenia or osteoporosis.

[00:17:33] Emily Field: One group performed supervised high-intensity resistance and impact training two times per week. And I want to emphasize the time commitment because I think women hear strength training for bone health and picture spending their entire life in the gym. The sessions were about 30 minutes twice per week for eight months.

[00:17:51] Emily Field: Now, the comparison group did a low-intensity home exercise program. At the end of the study, the women doing the higher intensity resistance training had increased their lumbar spine bone mineral density by about 3%. The control group lost about 1.2%. At the femoral neck, another area we care about because of hip fractures can be so consequential later in life.

[00:18:15] Emily Field: The lifting group essentially maintained or slightly improved their bone density, while the control group lost almost 2%. Think about that for a second. Both groups aged eight months. Time passed for everybody, but the bodies receiving a meaningful loading stimulus responded differently from bodies that were not.

[00:18:36] Emily Field: And that’s the concept I want you to take away from this. Aging is happening. Your body is changing, but that doesn’t mean that you have no influence over the direction of those changes. Strength training is one of those signals that you can send that says, “I need this tissue. I still need this strength.

[00:18:52] Emily Field: I still need this bone to tolerate load.” There’s also some interesting longer-term research around falls and fractures. In one study of women in their 70s, participants completed a year-long program that combined resistance exercise with balance and jumping work. Researchers then followed them for several years and found substantially fewer injurious falls and fractures compared to the control group.

[00:19:15] Emily Field: Because that intervention included several types of training, I wouldn’t say that resistance training alone caused that difference, but the broader point matters. Strength, balance, power, and bone health are not separate concerns. They work together to determine what happens when you miss a step or trip over a curb or fall on an icy sidewalk This is where the conversation gets especially relevant to the work I do around nutrition and metabolism.

[00:19:42] Emily Field: Women often think about muscle as something related to metabolism because they’ve heard that muscle burns more calories, and that’s true in a very basic sense, but it’s also one of the least interesting things about muscle metabolically. Muscle is one of the major places your body can take up and store glucose.

[00:20:00] Emily Field: When you eat carbohydrates and those carbohydrates are broken down into glucose, skeletal muscle is one of the primary tissues available to take that glucose out of the bloodstream and store it as glycogen. And muscle contractions themselves help stimulate glucose uptake. So when we talk about insulin sensitivity, blood sugar regulation, metabolic health, muscle matters.

[00:20:23] Emily Field: This is one of the reasons I don’t want a midlife metabolism conversation to revolve exclusively around eating fewer calories. Sometimes building a healthier metabolic body means building more tissue that can actually use the fuel you’re eating. A meta-analysis of 12 randomized controlled trials in adults over 60 found that resistance training improved both insulin resistance and hemoglobin A1c compared with control groups.

[00:20:49] Emily Field: And newer research looking at middle-aged and older adults with type 2 diabetes has found similar results, with resistance training improving fasting glucose, hemoglobin A1c, insulin resistance, muscle mass, and strength. Now, I don’t want you hearing those numbers and thinking strength training is a replacement for medication or medical management if you have diabetes.

[00:21:09] Emily Field: That’s not the point. But the point is that skeletal muscle is part of metabolic health. Your workout does something far more interesting than burn 250 calories. You’re creating and maintaining tissue that helps your body handle glucose. You’re improving the machinery that allows you to use fuel. And this is why I cringe a little bit when someone finishes a strength workout and the first question is, “How many calories did I burn?”

[00:21:35] Emily Field: That’s like evaluating the value of your retirement account based on whether it earned $12 today. You’re missing the larger asset. One more reason I want women thinking about strength training and muscle as an investment in their future is brain health. Because when we talk about healthy aging, most of us are not only thinking about whether we’ll be able to climb a flight of stairs at 75, we wanna remain mentally sharp.

[00:21:59] Emily Field: We wanna remember things. We wanna make decisions, solve problems, manage our own lives, and continue feeling like ourselves. And increasingly, the research suggests that physical activity and resistance training specifically belongs in that conversation too. We’ve known for a while that being physically active is associated with better cognitive health as we age.

[00:22:21] Emily Field: In fact, physical inactivity is considered one of the modifiable risk factors associated with cognitive decline and dementia. But there’s also research specifically looking at what happens when older adults lift weights. One study that I think is especially relevant to this audience followed 155 women between the ages of 65 and 75.

[00:22:42] Emily Field: The women were assigned to resistance training either once or twice a week or to a balance and toning program. The women who resistance trained showed improvements in executive function. Executive function is basically the collection of mental skills that help you plan, focus your attention, remember instructions, switch between tasks, and make decisions.

[00:23:02] Emily Field: Those are not obscure skills you only need to complete a brain teaser. These are skills that you use to manage your medications, plan a trip, drive somewhere unfamiliar, organize your finances, follow a recipe, solve a problem when something goes wrong, and navigate your life independently. Researchers followed some of those women longer term, and they also found benefits in executive function and memory.

[00:23:27] Emily Field: The women who strength trained twice per week showed less loss of white matter volume in the brain compared with the control group. There’s newer research looking at actual changes within the areas of the brain involved in memory and cognition after resistance training too. Now, I want to be careful here.

[00:23:44] Emily Field: I’m not telling you that doing squats twice per week guarantees that you’ll never develop dementia. We don’t have evidence that allows me to say that, and cognitive health is influenced by a lot of different things: genetics, cardiovascular health, blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, sleep, social connection, education, physical activity, and a lot more.

[00:24:04] Emily Field: But I do think that we have enough evidence to say that movement is a part of the brain health strategy, and resistance training appears to be one valuable piece of that. And once again, I come back to the retirement account. When you make these deposits now, you’re not only investing in the muscles that help you stand up from a chair.

[00:24:22] Emily Field: You may also be investing in the brain that allows you to plan your day and manage your life, remember the people that you love, and continue making your own decisions. When I picture aging well, I want both. I want a body capable of taking me where I want to go, and I want a brain capable of deciding where I want to go in the first place The retirement account analogy becomes even more meaningful when you talk about the seasons when your body is not able to keep making deposits, because eventually almost everybody encounters a period when normal activity gets interrupted.

[00:24:55] Emily Field: Maybe you need a joint replacement or another surgery. Maybe you break an ankle and spend several weeks unable to move normally. Maybe you get pneumonia, have a complicated hospitalization, or simply experience an illness that keeps you in bed much more than usual. Those stretches of inactivity can take more out of the body than most of us realize, particularly as we get older.

[00:25:17] Emily Field: There’s a small but really interesting study that illustrates this. Researchers took healthy older adults whose average age was about sixty-seven and had them stay in a complete bed rest for ten days. These were not sick or frail people. They were healthy adults, they were eating enough calories, and they were getting the recommended amount of protein.

[00:25:36] Emily Field: After only ten days, their knee extension strength had dropped roughly thirteen percent, their ability to generate power climbing stairs had dropped about fourteen percent, and their aerobic capacity had fallen about twelve percent. In a related study of bed rest in older adults, participants lost an average of roughly one point five kilograms or a little over three pounds of lean tissue in ten days, with much of that loss coming from their legs.

[00:26:04] Emily Field: Researchers also saw muscle protein synthesis drop substantially during that period of inactivity. I think those numbers are worth sitting with for a second because ten days is not an unusually long period of time. Ten days could easily be the amount of time someone spends mostly inactive after surgery.

[00:26:22] Emily Field: It could be a hospitalization followed by several days of recovering at home. It could be the aftermath of a bad fall or significant illness. And for a younger, stronger person, losing some strength during that period may simply mean that the first few weeks back at the gym feel harder. But for an older adult who is already operating close to the minimum amount of strength needed to function independently, that same loss can have a completely different consequence.

[00:26:48] Emily Field: Now, I want you to imagine two women in their seventies who both spend ten days in the hospital. One of them went into the hospital regularly strength training, walking, and carrying a relatively large reserve of muscle and strength. She comes home weaker, but she still has enough capacity to stand up from the toilet, walk through her house, climb the stairs to the front door, and begin rebuilding.

[00:27:10] Emily Field: The other woman was already struggling to stand from a chair without using her arms. She loses strength during the same hospitalization, but now she comes home below the threshold required to safely do some of the things that she used to do on her own. The hospitalization may have been temporary. The loss of independence that follows may not be This is why I think of muscle as more than something you build for the body you have today.

[00:27:35] Emily Field: It is a reserve. You are building more capacity than you need for an ordinary Tuesday because eventually there may be an illness, injury, surgery, or other season when life takes some of that capacity away. Think of it like an emergency fund. You don’t need to save because you’re planning for your furnace to break.

[00:27:53] Emily Field: You save because the unexpected expenses are a part of life, and you’d rather enter that moment with something available to draw from. Muscle works in much the same way. I cannot guarantee that strength training will prevent me from getting injured, needing surgery, or becoming less active for a period of time.

[00:28:10] Emily Field: What I can influence is the physical reserve I bring to that experience. I would much rather enter a difficult season with more muscle, strength, and capacity than I currently need, knowing I have something available to lose while I recover. That is another reason I don’t want women waiting until they feel frail to start building strength.

[00:28:30] Emily Field: Build the emergency fund before you need it. At this point you’re probably thinking, “Okay, Emily, you convinced me that muscle matters. I strength train already, so am I good?” Maybe. But there’s an important difference between doing workouts that happen to include weights and actually training in a way that gives your body a reason to build or preserve muscle.

[00:28:50] Emily Field: I want to explain that distinction, but first let’s take a quick break Using weights is not automatically the same as building muscle. This is where I wanna pull from that episode I recorded with Mark, because I think we spent a lot of time talking about one of the most common disconnects I see with women who tell me they’re already strength training.

[00:29:10] Emily Field: A lot of women are using weights, but they’re not necessarily training in a way that gives their body a strong reason to build muscle. For example, someone might tell me she’s been taking the same strength-based class for three years, but when I ask what weight she’s using, she’s still reaching for the same pair of 12-pound dumbbells she started with.

[00:29:29] Emily Field: Or maybe she’s been doing completely different workouts every time she goes to the gym, so there’s never enough repetition to know whether she’s actually getting stronger. In other cases, the entire goal of the workout is to move as quickly as possible, keep a high heart rate, and feel exhausted by the end, which means that the weights have to stay light enough so she can keep moving.

[00:29:50] Emily Field: All of those things can absolutely count as exercise. They may be enjoyable, they may improve your cardiovascular fitness, and they may be a great way to stay active, but building muscle requires a slightly different question. Instead of asking, “Did I get a good workout?” I want you to ask, “Am I asking the body to do something that it cannot already do easily?”

[00:30:13] Emily Field: That is really the heart of progressive overload. Mark said something in our earlier episode that I think is worth repeating because it is so simple. Your body needs a reason to change. If your muscles already have enough strength and capacity to handle the exact same workload you give them every week, your body has very little incentive to invest energy into building additional muscle That doesn’t mean that you need to add five pounds to every exercise every single week or constantly chase heavier and heavier weights.

[00:30:43] Emily Field: Progress can happen in a lot of ways. You may eventually lift more weight, but you might also perform more reps with the same weight, move through a greater range of motion, control the lowering portion of an exercise better, improve your technique, or progress to a more difficult variation. The specific method can change, but over time there should be some evidence that your capacity is improving.

[00:31:08] Emily Field: You should be able to look back three or six months and say, “I can do more now than I could then.” Maybe the dumbbells that used to feel heavy now feel manageable. Maybe you can complete 10 good pushups instead of three. Maybe you’re squatting with more weight, carrying something heavier, or moving through an exercise with much more control.

[00:31:27] Emily Field: Those are signs that the training stimulus is actually creating adaptation. And one of the most reassuring parts of my conversation with Mark was that none of this requires you to turn strength training into a second job. For someone who is brand new to lifting, he talked about how two full body sessions per week, each lasting roughly 30 to 45 minutes, can be enough to make meaningful progress.

[00:31:50] Emily Field: Once that habit is established, three days a week could be really productive long-term, and he’s worked with many women who have trained three days per week for years while continuing to get stronger. I think that’s important because I don’t want anyone listening to this episode and thinking, “Great, now I have to become the kind of person who spends two hours in the gym six days a week.”

[00:32:09] Emily Field: That’s not the goal. The goal is not to make fitness your entire life. The goal is to train in a way that makes you more capable in the life you already have. You don’t need endless workouts. You need enough challenge repeated consistently for your body to have a reason to adapt And the training piece is only one side of this.

[00:32:29] Emily Field: Strength training provides the signal, nutrition provides the resources to respond to that signal, and this is another place where women can unknowingly work against themselves. They say they want to gain muscle, but they are also constantly trying to see how little they can eat. They strength train in the morning and then they eat a tiny yogurt for breakfast because they’re afraid of calories.

[00:32:50] Emily Field: They tell me they want to get stronger, but they are chronically under their protein target. They want their body to build tissue while also making sure very little energy is available to build it. That’s like telling your financial advisor, “I want this account to grow, but I would also like to withdraw money from it every single day.”

[00:33:08] Emily Field: At some point, those goals begin competing. Protein is obviously important because it provides the amino acids required to repair and build muscle tissue. But total energy matters too. Carbs matter because it helps fuel the kind of training that creates meaningful stimulus. Sleep matters. Recovery matters.

[00:33:27] Emily Field: The muscle is not actually built during the hour you spend lifting. The workout is the reason your body needs to adapt, and the adaptation happens afterwards. This is why one of the identity shifts I’ve been talking about lately is moving away from trying to maintain the smallest body possible and toward asking, “What does this strong body require from me?”

[00:33:50] Emily Field: Sometimes it requires you to eat more than the dieting version of you feels comfortable eating. Sometimes it requires a rest day instead of another calorie-burning workout. Sometimes it requires spending time at maintenance instead of immediately starting another deficit. Those are deposits too If you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking, “Okay, I’m convinced, but what do I actually do?”

[00:34:12] Emily Field: I wanna make this very simple. First, start strength training at least twice per week. If two days fits your life right now, that is a meaningful place to begin. You don’t get extra points for creating a six-day schedule that you abandon three weeks from now. Second, follow some kind of structured program.

[00:34:30] Emily Field: You want to repeat movements long enough that you can tell whether you’re actually getting better at them. If every Monday is a brand new surprise workout, it’s very difficult to tell whether you’re gaining strength or simply getting tired in creative new ways. Third, progressively challenge yourself.

[00:34:46] Emily Field: Track your weights or repetitions. Notice that the dumbbells you used six months ago now feel easy. Notice that you can do a pushup that you couldn’t do before. Notice that you can squat deeper, carry heavier bags, or hike farther without feeling wrecked afterward. Those are returns on the investment.

[00:35:05] Emily Field: Fourth, eat enough protein and enough total food to support what you’re asking your body to build. And finally, zoom out. Think in years. I’m not interested in what you can accomplish in a 30-day challenge. I’m interested in what happens if you strength train two to three times per week for the next 10 years.

[00:35:25] Emily Field: That woman walks into her 50s or 60s with an entirely different physical account balance than someone who waited 10 more years to begin If there’s one sentence I want you to remember from this episode, it’s this. Do not wait until you feel weak to decide that strength matters. By the time weakness is obvious in everyday life, the withdrawals may have been happening quietly for years.

[00:35:49] Emily Field: Start contributing while you still feel strong. Build muscle before you desperately need muscle. Train your balance before you’re worried about falling. Support your bones before the DEXA scan scares you. Practice producing force before getting off the floor becomes difficult. And remember that starting now doesn’t mean that you missed your opportunity because you didn’t start at 25.

[00:36:12] Emily Field: The research is incredibly encouraging on this point. Women can gain lean mass and strength well after menopause. Women in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s respond to resistance training. But if you are 40, 45, or 50 right now, you have something even more valuable on your side, and that’s time. You have years available to make deposits.

[00:36:32] Emily Field: So picture the woman you want to be at 60, 70, or 80. Don’t picture what she weighs. Picture what she’s doing. Maybe she’s carrying her own luggage through Europe. Maybe she’s hiking. Maybe she’s on the floor playing with grandchildren. Maybe she’s walking the dog, gardening, biking, skiing, volunteering, moving furniture, climbing stairs, or simply living independently in her own home.

[00:36:56] Emily Field: There is a body underneath every one of those visions. A body has to carry the suitcase. A body has to climb the hill. A body has to catch itself when it trips. A body has to stand up from the floor. A body has to recover when illness or injury takes something away. And the work that you do now helps determine how much capacity that body has later.

[00:37:18] Emily Field: You do not strength training because you’re afraid of getting older. You strength train because you fully intend to get older and you want as much freedom as possible when you get there. That’s why muscle is your retirement account. Make the deposit. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Macros Made Easy podcast.

[00:37:37] Emily Field: If you want the practical companion to this conversation, go back and listen to my episode with strength coach Mark Breeden, the ultimate beginner’s guide to strength training in your 40s. Search Macros Made Easy, strength training 40s, wherever you listen to podcasts, and you should be able to find it easily.

[00:37:53] Emily Field: And if today’s episode made you think of another woman who keeps saying she knows she should probably start strength training someday, send this episode to her. Make sure you follow or subscribe to the show so the next episode automatically shows up for you. See you next time.