A leading female physiologist is calling on women to “fight back” against the societal expectation to be skinny, saying muscle is often what is needed as women enter their later years.
In the latest episode of Rova podcast 'Grey Areas with Petra Bagust', Dr Stacy Sims challenged the traditional ‘calories in, calories out’ mindset, explaining why it can be counterproductive and how popular fitness trends often ignore the distinct needs of women.
A trailblazer in the science of female physiology, Dr Sims says it’s really hard for a lot of women to understand that being small is not necessarily beneficial, especially through perimenopause and menopause.
“I go around telling young girls, as well as women who I give talks to, that I'm tired of being told we have to be a certain size and be put into a box and be small and watch our language,” she told Petra.
“I want women and girls to walk in and take up room. I want them not to feel like they have to shrink down and move over on the footpath," she added.
I want them to take up space.
“With that builds confidence, and when we have confidence, then we can go in and say, 'you know what? I don't want the list of classes that you have. I want someone to teach me how to lift heavy, I want to be on that lifting platform'."
“It's that fight back. But it's an additional barrier that we have to overcome.”
Dr Sims says the idolisation of super-thin 90s supermodels like Kate Moss has led to a desire to burn fat and not grow muscle, which “does so much damage” for women.
“If you go into a modern gym, and you're just a first time woman walking in, they're going to most likely turn to you and say, ‘Okay, well, the spin classes and the bootcamp classes and all the exercise classes are over there’,” she explained.
“They’ll ask ‘How much weight do you want to lose? You’ll want to lose weight and tone up.’ If you're a dude walking in, they're going to say ‘How much weight do you want to gain? The lifting platforms are back there.’
“It's just the gendered nature of the fitness industry.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Dr Sims tells Petra about how our bodies change as hormone levels fluctuate in midlife, why it's essential to focus on resistance training and high-intensity exercise, and the fear of ‘bulking up’ with weight training.
Listen to the full interview with Stacy Sims on 'Grey Areas with Petra Bagust'.
