PART 2 INTRO
Megan (00:00)
Welcome back to Mornings with Megan. If you haven’t listened to part one of my conversation with Noelle yet, go back and start there, because what we covered, muscle as a metabolic organ, why bulking up overnight is basically impossible, and how progressive overload actually works, is the foundation of what we’re going to talk about today. In part two, we’re getting into the metabolic side of this: research out of the SWAN study, the largest long-term study we have on women in midlife.
Found that hot flashes are directly correlated with higher insulin resistance, independent of weight or hormone levels. And insulin resistance rises through the menopause transition independent of age. This isn’t about getting older. Something is shifting metabolically, whether or not you’ve gained a pound. Noelle is going to tell us exactly how building muscle helps mitigate this.
Then we’re talking about what the scale doesn’t show you, training for the life you want instead of the body that you see in the mirror. And Noelle is going to speak directly to two different women, one who’s never touched a weight and one who’s done everything except strength training. Let’s get back to it.
THE SWAN STUDY: INSULIN RESISTANCE AND PERIMENOPAUSE
Megan (01:09)
I would love to switch gears here and step into the metabolic space. Something that I think most women are never going to hear from their doctor is the research out of the SWAN study. It’s the largest long-term study that we have on women in midlife, and it found that hot flashes are directly correlated with higher insulin resistance, independent of weight. And separately, insulin resistance rises through the perimenopause transition, independent of age. So this isn’t about getting older, which is I think the rhetoric that a lot of people are told, and it’s not about what the scale says. Something is metabolically shifting in our body with this hormonal change, and your body handles blood sugar at a biochemical level differently, even if you’ve never gained a pound.
So from a strength training standpoint, how does building muscle help prevent, or maybe I should say mitigate, this shift?
Noelle McKenzie (02:03)
So as you get older, especially for women, when you start losing estrogen, building and sustaining muscle becomes harder, and along with that, we notice that lifestyle changes happen. We just become more sedentary as we get older naturally. And so those together are the perfect storm.
In terms of making you more insulin resistant, which then puts you at risk for diabetes. Next thing you know, now you’ve got high blood pressure, you’ve got all this stuff, and you’re wondering, is this just because I’m getting older? But building muscle is the way to combat all of that. Because remember, the thing about muscle, it has the unique ability to literally pull sugar out of your bloodstream and store it in the tissue. How cool is that? Your body literally has its own defense system.
MUSCLE AS BLOOD SUGAR’S DEFENSE SYSTEM
And so the more of that you have, the easier it is to regulate not just your blood sugar, but also body fat storage, because muscle is so metabolically active that it burns calories just existing on your body, without doing anything. And so the more of it you have, the much easier it is to regulate your weight.
Muscle is literally the only way that your body knows how to solve this problem. So you’re not going to end up with a high body fat percentage, which also causes other health issues. I don’t know if you’re familiar with PCOS and fatty liver, but that’s also a side effect of having too high a body fat percentage in your body. So the best way to regulate blood sugar and regulate your weight is always, always, always muscle.
And it’s easy to think about it because muscle is something that anyone can attain just by doing this work. It’s not something that only certain people can build. Every one of us is capable of putting on muscle, regardless of your genetics, regardless of your exercise history, even if you never worked out a day in your life. It’s something we can all latch onto and take advantage of.
THE TYPE OF TRAINING THAT MATTERS MOST
Megan (03:53)
Is there a specific type of training that matters more as we get into the perimenopause space when it comes to our insulin sensitivity goals?
Noelle McKenzie (04:03)
Strength training, lifting weights. You’ve got to lift weights.
Megan (04:05)
Does it matter if we are lifting heavier or lighter? Is volume a factor? Can we play with that, or is there a better way to think about it?
Noelle McKenzie (04:16)
Lifting heavier equates to this muscle protein synthesis process, allowing your muscles to break down and build back up stronger. You have to have the demand there. But honestly, any kind of resistance training, if you’re not comfortable lifting super heavy, if you only feel comfortable working with 15, 20 pound weights, anything is better than nothing. The first thing is just getting yourself used to moving load. But I have to ask, if you’re not lifting more than five pound weights, how heavy is your suitcase? How heavy is your child?
THE SUITCASE TEST: TRAINING FOR REAL-WORLD DEMANDS
Because the reality is, if you want to be able to show up in life and live the life that you want and meet the demands that life places on you without having to rely on someone else to do it for you, then you have to start thinking about lifting and training your body under the same load that you expect from it in real life.
Otherwise, it’s like it doesn’t know how to do it. Our body responds to the demands we place on it. If there’s no demand there, that’s how we get hurt. That’s how we lose the ability to do so.
Megan (05:10)
I’m hearing that it’s kind of this use it or lose it mentality. If you want to be able to put that suitcase above your head, you have to tell your body that it’s important to put a suitcase above your head, and you have to practice putting that suitcase up.
Noelle McKenzie (05:14)
You have to practice. Yeah, because we’re either regressing or we’re progressing. There is no other way. Even you and I, people who are super fit, work out all the time, if I take two weeks off, what do you think is going to happen? Of course I’m going to start to regress. This is just a natural process that happens. Our body is literally always responding to the demand we place on it. So if I stop placing the demand on it, it doesn’t just stay there. This is a lifelong commitment. This is a lifestyle. We’re not in it for six months. We’re not in it just to get to that certain goal that we’re after. We’re in it for the long haul.
WHAT THE SCALE DOESN’T SHOW
Megan (05:58)
So let’s talk a little bit about the number on the scale. Why can it stay exactly the same, or even go up, while somebody’s body is fundamentally changing for the better?
Noelle McKenzie (06:02)
So muscle weighs the same as fat. And this is why, when clients ask, I want to lose weight, I say, well, let’s rephrase that. We want to improve our body composition. And let’s forget about BMI, that is so outdated now. Body composition is everything, because this is what tells us what our body is actually made up of. The scale just gives us one number. It doesn’t tell you how much of that is fat, how much of that is muscle, water weight. So you need a better understanding of what that number actually means. And that’s where having a smart scale, which is so awesome that these are so popular now and so readily accessible, gives you more insight. So you see exactly what’s happening on the inside.
THE SKINNY FAT PROBLEM AND BODY COMPOSITION
Someone could weigh, let’s just say 125 pounds, and from the outside be super slender, and you might think that person’s in pretty good shape because they’re slender. But they have a high body fat percentage that you can’t see with the naked eye, and that actually carries very high risk factors for things like cancer and heart disease. It’s not just the stereotypical overweight person that you see. Skinny fat is a huge, alarming problem in this country too that we have to be aware of. So 125 pounds, that person could look from the outside very slender. And then you have another person who weighs 125 and has more muscle in their body, has a very muscular physique. Does that mean they’re equal because they weigh the same weight? No. Very, very different body makeups.
And I always use myself as an example, because when I started on this journey, I actually intentionally put on 30 pounds of weight. Can you believe that? At my lightest, I was like 127, and I got all the way up to about 160. Right now I’m 155. But if you look at me, you would never guess that in a million years. Because size wise, I take up the same space. Weight wise, I weigh a heck of a lot more. But again, that’s why the scale is so deceiving. And we have to really let go of this obsession with a number. In fact, we should be thinking the opposite: I always tell clients, if you’re trying to build muscle, if that scale is not going up, you’re not putting on muscle. Unless you are losing fat at the exact proportion in which you’re gaining muscle, which is very unlikely, or will just happen for a short period of time, at some point it’s going to tip. If you’re not seeing that scale go up, you’re not building muscle. So we have to get comfortable with seeing a higher number, even knowing that our body composition is improving.
Megan (08:34)
That’s such an important distinction to make, because I think so many people have this idea in their head of what a healthy person and a not healthy person looks like. And I think we’ve decided certain body types are or aren’t healthy, and they’re missing the entire point, which is how metabolically healthy they are. It’s like judging a book by its cover. You don’t know what’s going on under the hood. And that person you were describing, who’s 125 pounds, might be walking around with full insulin resistance. They might be walking around with high blood pressure. They might be walking around with extremely out of bounds lipids, and you’re never going to know that just from looking at them from the outside. And so thinking about the structure and the way you’re supporting your body by having this muscle really can change how you look.
LETTING GO OF THE NUMBER: A MINDSET SHIFT
And I think there’s this other misconception about that number on the scale being related to how they’re going to feel or how their pants fit. How would you walk through the frustrations of a client who has that going on: she can’t let go of that number on the scale, but her pants are looser, she feels stronger, but she still just can’t let go of that number, because I think that’s a really big challenge that a lot of women are working through, especially in this phase. They’re attached to what they weighed when they were like twenty two.
Noelle McKenzie (09:52)
Yeah, and it’s such a thing that we attach so closely to our identity. It’s amazing how I see that all the time still, women who don’t care about anything else, they just want to see that number be what they want it to be. I like to challenge these women to think about it this way: wouldn’t it be awesome if you were the fittest you’ve ever been in your life, and you weighed a lot more than you’ve ever weighed in your life, and you go to ask someone, well, how much do you think I weigh? And they say, I think you weigh 130, because of how you look. You look fit, you look lean, you look strong. And you actually weigh 15, 20, 30 pounds more than that. I find that to be more gratifying: props to you for being able to fool that person, because this is such a mindset shift. It’s just how we associate what we look at as fit and healthy. It’s just a shift in your perspective. It’s really being able to look at it from a different angle. Because nobody is walking around looking at you trying to guess your weight. How silly is that? And nobody cares. If you hit your goal weight, who are you trying to prove it to? Do you think your best friend’s going to care? Is that going to be something they remember you by?
Megan (11:07)
No. Definitely not.
Noelle McKenzie (11:21)
Are your kids going to care? Is your partner going to be like, yes, my wife is finally at the weight she wasn’t when I married her? What they’re going to care about is how you move, what your body’s capable of, how strong you are. That is so much more telling than a number. And I think women realize that. When you see someone walking down the street who you know works out hard and is obviously in incredible shape, you’re not thinking about what they weigh. You don’t care what they weigh. You’re paying attention to how good they look, and you’re thinking, I wonder what they’re doing.
Megan (11:47)
No, you’re definitely not. I’m looking at her arms and going, what is she doing at the gym?
Noelle McKenzie (11:55)
Exactly. So if that’s not what we fixate on in other people, why are we so fixated on it in ourselves? If no one cares but us, then why do we care so much?
Megan (12:03)
Culture. The media. I feel like we’ve been trained since we were young to have this number, and it’s such an unfortunate myth or stereotype or story that just won’t die. I’m hoping that if we keep getting more information about the importance of muscle and having strong bodies, we can put this to bed and get women focusing on the things that are more important. So you’ve talked about training for the life you want, not the body you want to see. Can you say more about that?
TRAINING FOR THE LIFE YOU WANT, NOT THE BODY YOU SEE
Noelle McKenzie (12:14)
Yes. So I always think about the changes in your body as being the bonus. I always tell clients this too: we’re not training to look a certain way. That just happens to be something we gain in this process. We’re training so we can show up in real life the way we want to. So if you want to be able to pick up and do an activity that you’ve never done before that’s physically demanding, and not have to think twice that your body can handle it, that’s what we’re training for. Your kids are getting older, you want to be able to still pick them up if you need to, run out of a burning house if you need to. That’s what we’re training for. You want to do your gardening and be able to do it all yourself, not have to hire someone to do the labor for you. That’s what we’re training for. We’re training so we can continue living the life we want now. And what we do now is what decides how we’re going to show up 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now. So it’s really about setting yourself up for long-term health, long-term independence, and having autonomy in your body, and what that means in terms of your risk factors with aging. Because as we get older, we have more risks that come into play. So what we’re training for is to keep a body that we know is capable of fighting off those risks, and keeping ourselves out of the doctor’s chair. That’s really what matters most. If, God forbid, something happens to you, you’re not going to be thinking, well, I wish I looked better right now. You’re going to be thinking, I wish I could still do what I used to do. If only I did then what I know I should have done, where would I be now?
THE RETIREMENT ANALOGY: PHYSICAL FREEDOM
Megan (14:05)
The way you’re speaking about this reminds me very much of thinking about your financial future, when we think about retirement and savings, putting into our 401k or our IRA, and how we’re taking care of the financial health of ourselves and our family and our future generations. And the way you’re talking about this makes me think, how are we setting up ourselves for that retirement from a physical standpoint? How are we building that freedom? Because you work all this time, you put into your 401k, you do all those things, but if you don’t take care of your body, then you don’t have that freedom. You can’t do the things. And that is just unfortunate.
Noelle McKenzie (14:38)
Right, exactly. And then what’s retirement if you can’t live your life, and you’re just stuck in a chair all day? What did you live your whole life for?
Megan (14:52)
Until sixty five, only to be so metabolically unhealthy and unfit that you can’t get on a plane and go see the places you want to, or you can’t pick up the grandbaby, you can’t get on the ground and play with them. That is just so sad to me, thinking about that as the gradual beginning of the end. It’s a slow decline from there if we don’t spend time focusing on this.
TWO WOMEN: JUST STARTING OUT
So let’s speak to two different women listening right now. First, let’s talk to the woman who has never set foot in the gym. Maybe she’s a little intimidated, maybe she hasn’t had time to learn. What do you tell her about getting started?
Noelle McKenzie (15:32)
When you’re starting out, you actually have an advantage. Because someone who is completely green to lifting and working out, your body has to work twice as hard to adapt and learn this new thing you’re asking it to do. So you’re going to see a lot of change happen quickly. Whereas someone who’s more seasoned, who’s been doing this for a long time, their bar is much higher, so they have to work out a lot more frequently each week to get the same progress you’re making week over week, because they are more experienced. So that’s a nice special benefit that you have, being so new. And the nice thing is that once you start, you start reaping the benefits right away. It’s not something where you have to give it three months before you start seeing any change. The beauty of doing this and following a program is that every week you see incrementally how your body is getting stronger, recovering faster, building more stamina, your tolerance is improving, you’re capable of more, and it just keeps getting better. It becomes more and more rewarding. So it’s like the more you show up, the more you get back. You invest, but you gain so much more than what you invest.
TWO WOMEN: THE LIFELONG CARDIO LOVER
Megan (16:40)
I’m a little jealous of this green body you speak of. Sometimes I think, it’s really nice that I can do all these things at the gym, but wouldn’t it be great if I could just go back and have those quick gains? I remember when I first started working out, you’d be like, my gosh, I only worked out for half an hour and boom, okay, great, if I just add a little bit more, what else can happen?
Now let’s speak to the woman who’s probably been working out her entire adult life. She loves cardio, maybe she’s dabbled in Pilates or yoga, but she has never thought about strength training until she heard this conversation. What’s different about how you would speak to her about getting started?
Noelle McKenzie (17:17)
So there’s nothing wrong with cardio. We need to have cardio. Cardio has its place. But strength training is the glue that holds it together. Strength training is not only going to help you improve your body composition, help you put on muscle, help you live better, live longer, but it’s also going to help you become a better runner. If you love running or cardio, strength training is going to help you gain more power. It’s going to train those muscles to have more resilience. So you’re going to get more out of your performance doing what you love.
MOVING IN MULTIPLE PLANES AND BONE DENSITY
And it’s important to also think about your bones too. Running, for example, is a very repetitive sport. Your joints take a lot of impact. And so one of the ways you can really protect your joint health is doing strength training, because we’re not just training our muscles, we’re training our bones. We’re building bone density. Women in particular are more at risk for osteoporosis, and I think runners, women who are runners, are also even more at risk for osteoporosis. And so this is how we prevent that: developing a well-rounded program that checks all the boxes and helps us not only get faster, if running and cardio is your thing, but also become more resilient and stronger in your body.
Megan (18:33)
I think you’re right. When I look at the literature, women who are running are not doing the things they need to put enough stress on the bone to help with that turnover to preserve bone density. So runners and swimmers are both in that space. If they’re not putting that strain on their bones, they’re not getting that bone protection.
Noelle McKenzie (18:41)
And it’s important, because it’s just a forward motion. So strength training is important, too, that you’re thinking about how do I get stronger in a lateral plane. You have to think about how you’re using your muscles when you play that sport or do that activity, and you need to be training your muscles differently so that they’re not only getting stronger doing that one thing, but that they become resilient in other planes and moving in other forms. That’s the other part when you think about programming.
Megan (19:19)
Moving in multiple planes. I love this idea, because life does not just happen in forward motion. We move sideways, we jump up and down and backwards, and bend over and pick things up. So it’s important to be thinking about all the directions we might be moving our body.
THE ONE THING TO REMEMBER
If someone is only going to remember one thing from this conversation, what do you want that one thing to be?
Noelle McKenzie (19:44)
I think, we didn’t talk about this, but this is the thing that really hits home for me. We do this work. We work on our strength, we work on building a body that is bulletproof against aging and against disease and all-cause mortality. Because we want to be able to have a baseline of what a healthy body feels like, so that we know when something is wrong. If we don’t do this work and develop this regimen, then we can never know the difference between a good day and a bad day, or when something is just not right. And a lot of times, when something strikes that’s a problem we need to resolve, it’s always something simple. You’re more out of breath, your body just feels more tired than it usually is. It’s the small little details that we tend to overlook, but we’re less likely to overlook those details if we’re living in a body that is performing and moving at its best.
Megan (20:44)
I love that. Knowing the difference between having a good day and a bad day. And you’re right, when we’re not well, when we’re not maintaining our body, sometimes it’s really hard to tell the difference between a good day and a bad day.
Noelle McKenzie (20:55)
And just knowing when something is wrong, when something needs your attention.
CLOSING AND WHERE TO FIND NOELLE
Megan (21:00)
Knowing when to address things is also super important, so we’re not ignoring that and getting more unwell. Noelle, it has been such a pleasure having you on today. Please let us know where everyone can find you.
Noelle McKenzie (21:07)
Yes, so you can find me on my website, which is leadingedgeny.com. You can find me on Instagram, also Leading Edge NY, or my personal Instagram, Body By Noelle.
Megan (21:28)
Don’t worry everyone, we will link everything in the show notes. Thank you for spending this time with us. I am so pleased that you got to hear Noelle speak. I think she had so much information to share with us on how to take care of our bodies, think about longevity, and how we want to move in the world. Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you next Wednesday.
