Strength exercises are beneficial for women...but is excessive exercise healthy?

Editor's Note: Ona Hanson is a writer, educator, and parent coach who helps families cope with diet culture and eating disorders. Like many Generation For years, women have avoided strength training for fear of gaining too much muscle.

For decades, cardio has been at the forefront for women, but as awareness of the benefits of building muscle increases, especially in middle age, more of them are lifting weights. Strength exercises can help maintain bone density and promote health as you age.

But the increasing pressure on women to lift heavy weights and count grams of protein may lead some of them to become excessively preoccupied with exercise and food, and to the emergence of a new standard for ideal appearance that is difficult to achieve. Liz Bucar, a religion professor at Northeastern University in Boston, previously relied on cardio and was "always trying to get smaller."

Boukar, who is going through middle age, emphasized that, “We are all being told now that all this advice was actually bad... Your bones are eroding because you are not menstruating, and you were spending hours a day on the stair treadmill.”

The Power of Strength Training Bukar, who now strength-trains with a trainer, said that moving from counting calories to lifting weights represents an important shift, because it “protects our health more” and “challenges prevailing beauty standards.” “I love the idea that we are raising a whole generation of grandmothers who may not know how to knit or bake or whatever, but they are the first generation of our ancestors who are able to raise their husbands above their heads,” she said.

Fitness journalist Mikala Jamison, who writes the newsletter Body Type and author of the forthcoming book "The Forever Project: How Exercise Strengthened Me Inside and Out for the Long Haul," believes that strength training can help women build a healthy relationship with physical activity and their bodies. “For many of us, exercising was linked to toxic issues about our bodies and our way of thinking, and it was intertwined with diet culture,” Jamison noted.

Although strength training was a key part of Jamison's recovery from an eating disorder, she remains concerned about the way the trend is presented in the fitness world. The ideal image of women is still thin Although women of all body sizes seek to build their strength, social media images suggest that it is about “both strength and thinness,” according to Jamison, who believes that this is “just another body standard that can be very harmful.”

“There are more women doing strength exercises in America than ever before,” she said. “But the message is mostly promoted by thin women, even if they now have more visible muscles.”

Keri Harvey, certified personal trainer and co-owner of Form Fitness Brooklyn in New York, agrees that larger women who lift weights are underrepresented. “There are people with bigger bodies who are strong, and they also have cellulite and fat,” Harvey said.

Their bodies may not look like the person you see on Instagram or the cover of a magazine, but they are still strong bodies.” Gaining strength often means bulking up Building strength is often at odds with trying to slim down.

“Muscles need space,” Harvey explained. “When the latissimus dorsi muscles get stronger, that may mean we need a larger bra size.”

“As your biceps get stronger, a shirt that you expected to be a little looser may become a little tighter.” She encouraged women to accept that their bodies change as they get stronger, even if the change is not what they expected.

The growing popularity of strength training may also establish a “body ideal that is difficult to achieve,” says Jamison. “Okay, so it's about being strong, but is it really that? Or is it actually about us being too thin?”

These risks concern Megan Hellner, a registered dietitian and co-founder of AthleatMD, a medical and nutritional program for athletes with relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) and eating disorders. “We seem to be replacing a very narrow standard of body shape with another,” she said.

Hillner warned against trying to change the body shape to match the “athletic appearance,” but she acknowledged that focusing on strength instead of thinness has a positive side, because it requires obtaining sufficient energy from food to build and maintain muscles. Harvey said that building strength and muscle requires eating food, adding that many foods that were stigmatized as bad in previous trends are needed by the body to build muscle.

Does fitness turn into unhealthy behavior? Instead of preoccupying themselves with body weight, some women may find themselves preoccupied with increasing the amount of weight they can lift within a training approach known as "progressive loading."

Harvey called on those who feel that their relationship with strength training has begun to turn into an obsession to remember that “our primary goal is to feel strong enough to carry out our lives.” Hellner advised women to pay attention to the body's signals, noting that pain or injury while ignoring the need for rest, as well as feeling severe distress when unable to do strength exercises, are warning signs.

Harvey noted that those who are accustomed to doing vigorous cardio every day may need some time to adapt to a strength training schedule. “Your body needs rest as much as it needs strength exercises. We do not want to constantly tire out the muscles,” she warns, warning that lifting weights without adequate rest may “wear out the body instead of strengthening it.”

Hellner encouraged women to view food as a source of energy for vital processes, hormone production, organ functions and daily activities, rather than just a means to support a fitness routine. Harvey and Jamison stressed the importance of finding balance and establishing a routine that matches personal needs.

A woman who wants to feel more comfortable in her daily movement does not need to do strength exercises as if she were preparing for a weightlifting competition. Harvey advised them to find sustainable ways to achieve their goals, rather than focusing on appearance or getting carried away by a passing trend.

Separating exercise from appearance may be the best way to build a healthy personal relationship with physical activity. That's why Jamison doesn't believe "the only way to appreciate or find fitness to be praiseworthy is to have a skinny body with very visible muscles."

That image alone should not be the standard for health, strength or fitness.”