Bone Loss Prevention

Bone Loss Prevention Through Strength Training

Strength training is not just about changing how your body looks—it is about protecting your ability to move, balance, recover, and live independently as you age.

In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn explores bone-loss prevention, longevity, and why weight-bearing movement becomes increasingly important for women in midlife and beyond. She shares her own experience rebuilding strength after a car accident, navigating pain flare-ups, returning to exercise gradually, and learning how to listen to her body without giving up on long-term goals.

This conversation also looks at the emotional side of exercise. Knowing that you “should” work out is not always enough. Autumn walks through the stages of change, common barriers to movement, all-or-nothing thinking, and practical ways to begin before conditions feel perfect.

You will hear ideas for adding strength and bone-supporting movement through weightlifting, barre, yoga, body-weight exercises, walking, jumping, lunges, and other accessible options. Autumn also discusses lifting heavier while maintaining safe form, finding supportive gym environments, asking for help, adjusting workouts around pain or fatigue, and creating backup plans when life disrupts your routine.

The goal is not perfection or pushing through pain. It is building sustainable habits that support posture, muscle mass, balance, bone strength, confidence, sleep, stress regulation, and long-term independence.

Start with what you have, notice what your body needs, and take the next realistic step.

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings." 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we are going to talk about longevity in the form of weightlifting. Bear with me. This can be triggering for so many people. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. There are so many studies coming out, and it's become this plethora of activity, especially for women, that if we want to live well into very old age, we need to be weightlifting. And the reason why is because as we get older, and I'm that magical age of 40, we suffer from bone loss. And if you think about it, if you know anyone older, it feels like as soon as a bone is broken, when they're in their 80s, 90s, life goes downhill from there. So let's think about it from that standpoint and ask ourselves: what can we do to turn back the wheels of time in terms of our bone health? And before that, what can we do to stop it and then reverse it? So I've been doing a lot of research for myself. And I've been having a lot of conversations with people that I've been coaching and that I'm friends with, and just out in the world about this because I'm working on it for myself. I'm seeing it in other people, they're asking me about it. And let me start with when I coach other people. It's the conversation seems to be about I know I should, and then insert things here and having to do with exercise. And for any of us who are my age and older, we have been told or we have seen, think of the 80s videos, right? With the colorful spandex and the sweat bands. We need to be doing a lot of cardio. Research is telling us cardio is great for our heart health, but it does not help us lose weight. It does not help us with our bone health, it does not help us with other aspects. And so many women are still stuck on the I need to do a whole bunch of cardio and why am I not losing weight? This is where weightlifting goes in. So I'm talking specifically about weightlifting here, but really think about what do you want longevity-wise? What do you envision? And then what I need to do to get myself there. Maybe it's sleeping more, maybe it's reducing your stress, and those really go together. And I promise I'm going to have a full episode about sleeping well. It's what this is going to be. But I've been having a lot of conversations lately about bone health and weight lifting and seeing family members who have fallen and gotten hurt and they aren't recovering. So this is coming first. Next up, my next solo will be talking about sleep. So thinking about stages of change, and this was a huge light bulb moment for me during my undergrad because I would be coaching, quote unquote, advising, giving free advice that people were asking for and not seeing them change. It's not coaching, by the way. And then I realized not everybody was ready for that. And when you give somebody advice and they're not giving themselves advice and seeing their own way through it, they're not going to listen. It does not work the same. So let me go over the stages of change. It's this poster behind me for people watching the video. So pre-contemplation, that's no intention of changing behavior, and we are all stuck in that in one way or another within our lives right now. We are human. Contemplation, aware of problem, but no plan to change. We all have several errors of our lives with that too. I do. I can give you so many examples. Preparation, planning to take action. Action, actively making new habits. And with that means you are falling off the bandwagon, so to speak, and you're getting back up. And that's really where the change happens, is where you're seeing the pro the places where things aren't moving smoothly and you're figuring out ways to make it run smoothly. Maintenance, sustain change with new behaviors, and that's what gets you to that next stage. And then relapse. This is what I was talking about. You fall back into old habits when triggered. And the reason why there's arrows here is because you go through it in cycles. Right. And another thing that I'm realizing is that we can only focus on so many things at a time without having everything fall apart. We can only have so much honor plate at one time. Even if you go to a buffet and you try and pile it on, things start falling off, right? That's life, not just food, where this happens. So let's think about this. We all have the same amount of hours in a day, and we all use them differently. So let's just take a breath here. We know our shoulds, we know our whys, the color of the brain. So just take a breath with me.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Let's think about what is standing in the way of you just simply exercising.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Let's just start there. Moving your body a little bit more. And what can you do about it? For me, I've been through so many stages of this, and I will continue because we have different seasons of our lives. Right? It was hard in different areas for different reasons. Pregnancy or the nauseous stage, that was not fun. Busy times of life. Right now, for me, post-car accident, a year and a half later, I'm still struggling. It frustrates me to no end. Complained to my husband about it last night. So I have days where I can work out and days where I can't. And it's very frustrating. Days where I can put forth all my energy into coaching and days where I can't as much. Ebbs and flows. And you would think I'd be used to it simply from having periods. I'm not. It's still frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

So what stands in your way? Okay, you have those ideas.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

And without letting it feel heavy for you. Let's get into the what can I reorganize out of this? What can I let go of? What can I re-delegate?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

What comes to mind for you? Okay, you have ideas now. Maybe you don't, but just being open to it'll come to you later. I promise.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

And at weird times. So you have those ideas. And we know that we want to get into weightlifting. We know that we should be walking a certain amount of steps a day. We know all of these things. So where do you want to start with this? What can add in a little more movement? And know that when you create one habit, it'll want you to create a new one and a new one. So what is that step that you want to take? Maybe while you're walking, you can add in a little bit of jumping. So think of it this way with weight lifting, you're still adding those movements with the jumping. So you're putting weight on your bones, on your joints. And that helps you to gain more bone mass. Think of it in terms of if anybody has seen an x-ray of a broken bone, and afterwards, when it's healed, it's a little bit stronger. So you're doing that same thing for your body. Maybe you can add in some lunges. Maybe you can add in some weights. I think of old ladies with this, but I'm chuckling. But it's amazing. I've even seen people in my bar class that do this. I don't teach bar. The bar class that I am participating in, and they have the weights on their wrists or their ankles. Maybe you can add in some different yoga exercises that use as body weight, some push-ups, some I forget what that is called. It's my least favorite. I always cringe. You can add in some jumping jacks. You can do some jump rope. You maybe you could include other people. So think about what could work. Get that creativity cap on. I have found for most people, if you get a buddy and you start a plan together, it works so much better for anything. So let me tell you a little bit more about science. Because for women, remember I told you that we were told that we needed to have more cardio. So some workout programs for women have a ton of cardio with lightweights. And studies on women are telling us that we actually need to lift heavy. That helps. And there are studies also that tell us that the more muscle mass we have, the more we burn fat. Yay. We've also been told that there are different times of day that are better for us. But it also goes with your sleep schedule. So play around with this. Try working out at different times a day and see what works for you. For me, it's better for me if I work out in the morning. For one thing, I'm not mentally awake until about 10 a.m. So if I work out early in the morning, I'm not as stuck in my head. I'm more in my body, which is really good for me. So I can focus more on having the correct posture, which is important for me post-car accident. Plus, I'm a taller person and I had abuse in my childhood. So I do the hunching, that whole idea of trying not to be seen. So I'm making sure I have the correct posture and I'm exercising with weights. I'm doing the ones that are posture related. I'm focusing on that. I'm focusing on areas where I know I'm weaker. So making sure I'm not flaring out my neck. That's an area that's weaker. And I'm working on the other supporting muscles, especially around my shoulder area, because I made a mistake of carrying all my children on one side. So if you're watching a video, if you look at my shoulders, you can totally tell one shoulder is a little bit higher than the other. You can even see one muscle is a little bit stronger than the other. Oops. You can think about these things. Would I do better working out at home because I don't want other people to see me? Or is there a gym that would feel better for me because I want to feel comfortable with wherever I'm going. For me personally, I'd rather go to a family-friendly gym. So I do. I love the YMCA. Huge shout out to them because they are very community-oriented. There's people of all shapes and sizes. I've made so many friends there. I swear every time I go, I make a new friend. It's really fun. Sometimes I come home later, it's summertime, and my oldest is old enough to watch the younger three. So I'll come home later than expected. And he said, Where were you? Well, I made a new friend at the gym. We were talking for a while. Find ways to make it fun for you. Would a class be helpful? I do a mixture for myself of classes versus solo because I need that solo time in my head, not just chatting and noise. And I need to tune out of my head and get back into my body, like I was saying. So think about what works for you. For me, with my baby steps, was especially during COVID, I did YouTube videos because I had all my family home and talking to me. And I just needed not that. And with baby stages and everything else, it was easier to have a home gym. Still do. Don't really use it. So most of it's put away so the kids can use the basement area. That's a really good thing about living on the East Coast. We have basements out here. More fuller space. So think about what works for you. If you don't have a ton of space, maybe you work out on carpet, so you have that traction. Maybe you have a yoga mat and you can do different things there. You can do Pilates, you can do some at-home bar, you could do yoga. Think about what you would enjoy doing. If you don't enjoy exercise at all, what would you enjoy doing that can still have physical activity? And then build upon that, knowing that you eventually want to get to weightlifting because it helps with bone mass in a big way. So if that needs to be your motivation, for me, I'm at the point where it's about my bone mass because I worked with a functional medicine nurse and found out I'm losing quite a bit of calcium. And it was because I had to stop working out for a while. Everything was flaring out my neck. Put myself back together, started with cardio, put a lot more yoga into it. So it was really listening to my body. Highly recommend that. Okay, it's gonna be triggering. Take another breath with me. And while you're at it, let's do a body scan. What feels tight in your body? And you can start with this, and you can go to YouTube Chat GPT if you're not ready to work with a personal trainer, and you can build your plan based off of where I am most commonly tight in my body. For me, neck and shoulder. But outside of that, it's also my hips. And I noticed that I am sleeping better, feeling better. And my hips did not get tight when I was playing in a pickleball league yesterday, which was surprising. So when I was driving to the gym this morning, I was thinking about why is that I've started taking a bar class. And during that class, it's very difficult. And I have a friend that goes with me, and I've looked at her and I've told her, my butt and my quads better look amazing after this wine class because I have to dig deep during some of that. And it has enough movements in there that I am working on my hips specifically, which is important to me because I felt like all four of my children in particular were digging into my right hip. And I've noticed my balance is not as good on that hip. And it makes me wonder if I could convince doctors and the insurance company to do a DEXA scan on me, which is very difficult if you're not the magical age of 65. Might be 67 now. I need to look that up. But if you're not that magical age, they don't want to do the scans on you, which drives me crazy because right now is when I'm in the more preventative stage of my life with this. By the time you qualify for DEXA scan, you're not in preventative stage anymore. Anyway, that's why I'm talking about this for so many people. Most of my demographic is my age that are listening. So what I'm doing for myself, see what you can apply to yourself here. But we do some jumping in bar and we do a lot of hip work. So that is perfect for me. And that one class a week is perfect for me. And then I built on weightlifting in that part of the gym for the other two days a week. So that has three days of weightlifting for me, which two to three days a week is what's recommended for women. And try to lift heavier instead of lighter. But here's the caveat: lift as heavy as you can while still having the correct posture. And this part can be hard if you are a little bit more shy like me. I finally felt confident enough and remember that I'm doing this for me. Doesn't matter what other people think. And I went and talked to somebody who works in the weightlifting area of the gym, and I had him show me specifically how to do Y raises. I did the whole YouTube chat GPT, talked to my husband to try and make sure I had the right posture, and it was not feeling right. And this is somebody who, if I decide I want to do personal training, I will go to him because I felt very good. And with other people at the gym that I've spoken to, I haven't felt good, especially postpartum with I think my second kid, I was told that I did not have very good core muscles, and literally I'd just give them birth two months before. Of course, I didn't have core muscles. So I didn't, I definitely did not use him or talk to that guy again. It's not very helpful. But anyway, this guy I felt really good around. And he told me that he also used to do physical therapy. So he'd be perfect for me if I decided to go that route. But anyway, he showed me the way that the YouTube video was showing me, and then he found me another way that works so much better for my body. It was actually with a yoga ball instead. So if you when you feel confident enough, talk to somebody at the gym. Or for me, I've had conversations with my friends and found out they they have done different classes as the instructors. So now I know, oh hey, I can talk to these two girlfriends about this and get better posture techniques. It's really helpful. And because so many of us are women that are listening, remember to talk to your community about what you're working on. Because you might find that friend to motivate you. You might find somebody who, oh hey, I've done this same workout for this same reason. Let me share it with you. It's very, very helpful. But remember, going back to what I said, like a paragraph ago, make sure you're lifting as heavy as you can while keeping the correct form. If you're not ready to talk to anybody, check out YouTube, Chat GPT, make sure you do it in front of a mirror. If you're doing it at home and you don't have mirrors, see if you can record yourself and then look at it. I did that um during COVID when we bought a rowing machine. And my husband and I kept checking each other's posture. And then he finally, after correcting me several times, he's like, Let me take a video of you so you can see what you're doing. It was super helpful because I realized I was doing this, which was not helping. So putting my shoulders back, remember that it needs to feel like I'm squeezing a pencil between my shoulder blades. And that's with most check chest workouts that you're doing this. So it really helped to remember that and to focus on how my shoulders back. And then eventually we put a mirror down there so I could watch myself. Isn't that funny? Many of us made fun of the people who checked themselves out in the mirror and we thought it was because they were literally checking themselves out, like, oh, I look good. The reality is, and what most people are doing is they're checking their form. They're not checking themselves out. It's a big difference. And then when you're trying different exercises, tune into yourself and does this feel good? Because of where I'm at post-car accident, there are certain exercises that flare up my neck too much and are huge no-no. So listen to your body and know that from one day to the next, we're going to be lifting different amounts. Some days we can push ourselves and we feel like this super person, right? We've done so much more than we've ever done before. And then we go on another day and we can't as much. Maybe it's because of your ministration cycle, how much you slept. Your stress, have you eaten enough protein, drinking enough water, blah blah blah? And then let's think about also preparation. Maybe you don't have the correct workout gear. You know what? That's okay. What do you have that's close enough? We and I was talking to somebody about this, and I love what she said. That we not all of us are neurodivergent, but the studies that have been done on people who are neurodivergent, specifically those who are ADHD with the all or nothing mentality work for everybody else because everybody has all or nothing to a degree, right? Where we pendulum. So let's take another breath, slow down. If you're anything like me, once you get the idea in your head, you're gonna go full force and you're gonna do all the things and buy all the whatever you need for it. So let's slow down. What do you have right now that will work? Or what can you steal from somebody in your family that'll work? Let them know ahead of time if you're stealing it. I call it stealing, it could be borrowing. It's probably a better term.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Okay. You have ideas now.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Now here's the other part. And this is a part that I am in for myself, and I've done so many times coaching people. I'll have a call later talking about this to somebody else, I promise. Okay, things are going to go wrong. For me this morning, the reason why I'm wearing workout gear, I never got pitchheads that work out the way I wanted. I showed up for my bar class and I wore flip-flops there, so I was not able to easily pivot to something else. They forgot to email or text that there wasn't a class, but they had a printout, right, where you sign in saying there's no bar class today. And I'm still partially pouting, got over a lot of it. I wasn't able to work out, so it was okay, what can I do instead?

SPEAKER_01 24:09

I could weightlift, except I'm wearing flip-flops.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

So think about that. Like, what can you put in for a buffer? My husband, during the middle of winter, I think it was like 32 degrees out, he forgot a change of clothes. Specifically, he forgot pants, and he took a picture for me. It was so funny. He had his polo on that he wears to work, and his little itty-bitty workout shorts. And 32-degree weather because he didn't have pants. So now he has backup clothes in his car. He even has a backup jacket. For me, I've gone to the gym. This happened a couple weeks ago. And I decided since it's summertime, I want to also shower at the gym instead of coming home and showering. Because once I get home, I'm in mom mode, the kids all need me because they haven't seen me for two hours by the time I'm done at the gym and do the sun and all the things. So I hacked my bag, had everything ready that I thought, except I forgot to change the clothes. So I took a shower and had to put on my sweaty workout clothes after that. Not the best feeling. But I thought about okay, what can I do next time to make it better? So think about that each time. What can I do to make it better? But caveat, make sure you're not too stuck in your head that you're thinking about that, that you're not enjoying yourself. And then here's the check-in. How am I feeling each time you're trying to do a different exercise? And then afterwards, how am I feeling? How did I sleep? I use a pre-workout mix. And I love it. However, I've realized I can't use it in the afternoon or evening. Otherwise, I wake up at 3 a.m. ready for the day. No, thank you. Done it twice. And my husband realized it. And he told me, I'm about to hide that on you. Don't do that again. Sometimes we're stuck in our head that we need somebody else to yell at us in a loving way to make us realize, oh, duh. Right. Totally human, totally normal. So realize there's going to be some friction here. What can you do to get rid of it? What can you do to make it better each time? I'm also realizing there's an area that I can park where I'm not allowed to exit there because it's emergency exit. But because of the way my van is, I have to be close enough to it to remote start it, which is honestly stupid. Who designed that? It needs to be further away. So I make sure that to park there so I can see the lights blinking and see that it turned on since it's the middle of summer, so I can get into a nice cold car. Well, cold-ish because it's the middle of summer. So at least not 100 degrees when I get in it. Let's put it that way. I've um made sure that I have extra socks because I don't want to put sweaty socks on. I have now specific shower sandals because my flip-flops were not drying. And then I live in Maryland, I don't want moldy sandals. Ew. So think about that along the way. And think about what you can do to reward yourself afterwards. Think about energy levels. Maybe you need to have some electrolyte mix for with you. That is instead of water, I put it, I have a 40-ounce water bottle and I put electrolytes in it and water. So it's not pure water. And then in my car, I have a tumbler with ice water. So it's gay. After all this, I get nice cold water. I have a yummy protein bar. I found out that protein powder mixes hurt my stomach. So I found different ways. So that goes with that whole self-check-in thing. And we live in such a society that we're under so much stress and go, go, go, go, go, that we don't take the time to check in with ourselves. And I made a specific playlist for myself that I look forward to listening to. And I only listen to it when I'm doing this specific workout. So think about different ways that you can reward yourself, especially if you have any type of neurodivergency like I do. And I make sure that it has a really good beat and a really positive message. So we have many obstacles that get in our way to weightlifting. How can we overcome them? Needy children. Maybe we can have them join us. Maybe we join a gym and we go with a girlfriend who has a kid the same age and they have a child care center and they can go together and they can look forward to that. Especially now that it's summer. I feel like this is the best time to implement it because it's the hardest time. This is you showing yourself that you're worth it and that you're going to figure out a way to make it work because it's so much harder right now. Instead of saying I'll do it in September, August, whenever school starts for your kids, or I'll do it in the winter or whenever you're trying to put it off till. How can you start implementing this now? And if you don't feel like you have enough time in your day, what can you delegate out to somebody else so you have that time? If you're not good at sleeping, this will help. And if you find that you're not sleeping well when you start working out, maybe you need to taper that back a little bit or change the time of day you're working out. Maybe you need to think about your meal plan a little bit more and make sure it is something that is going to fuel your body in a better way. Maybe your muscles are yelling at you for a reason. Maybe you need some more magnesium, maybe taking a bath afterwards, doing some kind of self-massage. Think about what hurdles do you need to get over? What do they look like? What can you do to pamper yourself for working out? What can you add in? Knowing that things are going to fall off. And if you think about what's important to you and put those in place, the things that are not important will start to fall off. The things that are important might start to fall off too, but as you're putting the things that are important on top, everything else will start to fluff off. Hope this is helpful. I hope this was a little bit more coachy than advice. I know you did get a little bit of advice with this. And the last thing that I want to add in is with thinking about diet, there is so much going on about creatine. And it used to be for weightlifting, which is why I started it. But I have also seen an improvement in my mental health. So maybe add that to your diet too. And think about protein. What are different ways that you can add protein to your life? This is one that I really like. It's the Chibani yogurt that I'm slowly finishing. Smells really good. It doesn't need to be add more meat to your diet. I found for me specifically, this is that going to listening to your body, more meat means more pain in my stomach. That's a no for me. So I'm finding non-meat alternatives. I add um pea protein to my smoothies in the morning. That sits really well in my stomach. It took me a while to build up to the taste. It tastes like a vegetable, kind of like dirt. So I add in a little bit more berries to offset it. And now at this point, I can do a full scoop. Before it was just a little bit. So remember, it's that adding in a little bit more each time. Knowing that as we know better, we do better. I don't know if you've heard that saying. So get rid of the shoulds in here and just add in a little bit more to your routine to make it a little bit better for yourself. Knowing that when you do this kind of deep self-care in terms of longevity, you're going to sleep better, which impacts your longevity too. And exercise helps with stress, helps with longevity. Those who are stressed a lot, as well as those who don't sleep well, shows up in every area of your body, including aging faster. So this was a lot here. Know that I love you. Know that you taking the time to listen to this is showing yourself that you love yourself. Now share this with somebody else. And maybe along with that, ask, would you like to be my workout partner? And you guys can come up with a plan together. And when you do that, think about areas that you want to work on specifically in your body. And along with that, think about it, because we all need this, and think about it longevity-wise, think about posture. What can you do to help build up your posture? Lose muscles specifically. And that's what led me to the bar class is I wanted to work out the so thinking the corset muscles, the ones in the back. My front ones are doing pretty good at this point with all that I've added into my exercise routine, but it was that, especially during the summertime, because during the winter is when everything flares up for me. So I'm focusing it on now. And then I added in even more of okay, now I want to work on the neck muscles that I can work on without flaring up the other ones. That's been a little tricky to work with. And then I want to work on my shoulders because I hunch a lot, especially when I'm on the computer. And along with that, I've also worked on making sure that my desk is, I want to say economical, but ergonomical. That's the right word. So think about these things. And if you're not ready to work out quite yet, totally fine. Maybe you work on your sleep and making sure that you have good posture right before you fall asleep in the hopes that you stay in somewhat that position throughout the rest of the night. So there are things that you can do along the way, knowing that you can build upon them to get to where you want to go and where all of us should be trying to focus on, especially with the wellness podcast, is I want to live a long time and I want to live well during this journey of called my life, my personal life. What do I need to implement to make that happen? And that is the whole point of this podcast and this episode in particular.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

I'll see you in the next one. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for. As part of the legal language, I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health. That is what I am leaning on for this. This is general advice taken us up. See you in the next episode.