What Women in Menopause Learned About Exercise May Be A Lie | Debra Atkinson | TEDxMountPenn

[Music] in my 40s I was the fitness director at a club with three locations and I was teaching in kinesiology at Iowa State University I was working about 60 hours a week teaching to fitness classes a day and I'd started doing my own triathlon training I was in what I thought was the best shape of my life as satisfying as all that work was I was only able to reach about 200 people a week and I knew the importance of the positive influence of fitness on life and on health and I wanted to reach more

people I took a risk at 49 I left the safety and security of that stable paycheck to start my own online fitness business flipping 50 I was all in I jumped with both feet the day after I turned in that resignation letter I panicked I tossed and turned thinking how am I going to pay for my son's college tuition and what if I don't reach more people and I reached no people what if I'm out of money in six months I felt so much pressure to make that business work I barely let myself away from

the computer I was designing my website designing the copy for the website figuring out what videos I was going to sell on that website and I went from a person who exercised 10 or more hours a week to someone whose sole source of stable exercise was walking her Old English Sheepdog Truman around the block on top of that a 10-year relationship with the man I thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with fell apart I hadn't seen it come I was devastated it gets worse there was a whole lot money more money

going out than coming in and I had to put my house up for sale I had insomnia anxiety and hot flashes I have every indication that menopause was right around the corner great so imagine my surprise when months later I'm editing these online videos and looking at the woman in the screen and I barely recognize her it was me and I actually looked better then a year ago and I thought I was in the best shape of my life I looked leaner stronger I was healthier looking I was like what how can that be that

flies in the face of everything I had been taught and everything I taught as a senior lecturer in kinesiology with 30 years of fitness research as a strength and conditioning coach so I dug into the research to find out what had happened for me and this is what I found I have been doing everything wrong in fact most women are doing everything wrong and following recommendations for exercise based men and men have very different metabolisms body composition and hormones than women in fact did you know only 39 percent of all exercise research features females that's

according to the European Journal of Sports Science we can reason that only a small fraction of that features women in any phase apply for instance pair menopause menopause menopause who is featured most often it's young athletic males in the peak of their muscle mass whatever makes us think that what works for young athletic men in the peak of their muscle mass will work for a middle-aged woman in menopause essentially at the peak of her fat storage no wonder women have a hard time getting in shape no matter how hard or how much they exercise I

began to realize that most of what I learned though true was a really bad advice for women I dug into exercise fitness in women and found that it's not just the fitness profession that's steering us wrong and confusing us but it's also what we learned from our parents in our influencers growing up I interviewed middle-aged women about what they learned about exercise and fitness growing up one woman remembered running home from school when she was 9 or 10 her mother was awaiting Karin what's wrong why are you so out of breath I ran all the

way home from school Oh Karin girls don't do that whoa imagine the lessons being taught there number one if you're out of breath something's wrong number two girls don't run this is double jeopardy and this is why so many women struggle to lose weight to get rid of belly fat or just to improve their fitness level no wonder I hear from middle-aged women almost every day nothing I do seems to work anymore do you want the good news there's a solution to all this and it's not more exercise it's less exercise it's not less food

it's more food what I know you must be thinking right now you are crazy hear me out I've now had the privilege of helping over 150,000 women change their minds their energy and their bodies to get the energy they won by exercising less and eating more my favorite success story is Jennifer but she didn't start out that way she resisted everything that I suggested when we first met Jennifer was a diabetes educator which means she was very familiar with the benefits of exercise and the evils of sugar in fact when we met she was getting

up at 3 a.m. to exercise before work and then often she would leave work to exercise for a couple more hours and if you can believe it she was eating fewer than a thousand calories a day most days and this went on for years Jennifer's waited yo-yoed over the years and at once she had lost a hundred pounds and she was determined to do it again when I suggested let's exercise less and eat more she wasn't having it it flew against everything she learned her entire life my heart and respect went out to Jennifer she

was totally committed and she was doing everything she thought were all the right things but it wasn't working she wasn't sleeping and she was frequently ill or injured she very reluctantly agreed to follow my recommendations for 10 weeks fast forward 10 weeks there is no extreme weight loss story here but she wasn't exercising hours a day she wasn't starving herself anymore and she hadn't gained weight that she feared she would at what was really the start of Jennifer's success story she was already feeling better not so fast forward six years Jennifer lost and kept off

90 pounds she's taken up golf and right now at age 66 she's learning to swim just because she can a good day it's no longer what the scale tells me it's whether or not I can play 18 holes she tells me every day bingo that's what it's all about doing the things we love with the people we love to do them with when we want to do them and that reminds me a lot of Linda Linda was a nurse getting up at 3:00 a.m. to do her 12-hour shifts she was exhausted on her days off

but she was making matters worse because she was exercising four hours a day on the treadmill trying to lose that Metapod weight I said Linda those 12-hour shifts those are your workout they're a marathon you're bending you're lifting you're carrying on your days off what you need to do is what I call restore before more she said what I put Linda on a treadmill elimination diet I said if you want to walk walk with your husband after dinner when I saw Linda again a few weeks later she said you will never believe what's happened I'm

still walking after dinner with my husband and it spilled over to our son we're now hiking on the weekends together as a family I quit the treadmill and lost weight and found my family and that is often an unexpected benefit of exercising less you free up time whether it's for yourself or it's to strengthen relationships with people you love how about you and by the way if you're a man sitting here think about a woman in your life your mother significant other or a sister do you find that the more you exercise the more tired

you get do you find that no matter what you do or how hard you work you cannot get the results that you want maybe you too are following recommendations intended for someone other than you when you honor yourself you will get the results that you want I have two suggestions if you are frustrated and exhausted like Jennifer or Linda no matter what you do you can't get results for two we follow my advice exercise less just cut it in half - half the running have to Zumba half the weight training and restore before more instead

of that long run all by yourself go for a run or a walk with a friend go to a yoga class ask a family member to shoot hoops I'm exhibit a about the difference between exercise and movement I've trained for eight Ironman triathlons that is a formula of a lot of intensity and a lot of volume and you have to do it in order to complete one but in all that triathlon training my weight and my percent body fat before and after have been virtually the same so if you think it's about more intensity and

more exercise I have taken one for the team and you can dismiss all that but there was one training experience that was different my fitness level was better my endurance was better and I had a more athletic look the difference that year was that I was also fulfilling my role as golf mom I was doing the triathlon training as usual but I was also traipsing around 9 and 18 hole golf courses following my son now if you know golf you know that this is not power walking this is long slow all-day activity and I loved

it it was my favorite golfer it was outdoors and it was a rare connection to my past my stepfather had been an avid golfer his last name was Palmer and I'd be willing to bet you could guess his nickname now I'm not here to tell you that you don't need intense exercise because in our contemporary sedentary lifestyles and in your middle and older age you absolutely do but not according to a formula for exercise according to anyone but you if you remember two things from this day and this speech remember this ask everything about your

exercise is it making me feel better or making me feel worse and to consider me I went from hours of teaching classes a day and doing my own workouts two minutes of appropriate exercise to get leaner and stronger and healthier when you honor your body and the unique needs you have in this moment you will get results in the mirror on the scale and in your life and finally be creating the life full of energy that you want need and deserve and what I found may work for you to exercise less and restore before more

thank [Applause]