An approach to building muscle for middle-aged women

From one of my Fitness Corner readers:

Q: I am a 58-year old woman who was always skinny with a fast metabolism. However, after (menopause), my metabolism slowed down significantly. I put on 3 pounds a year for eight years. I have now lost 20 pounds of it through a doctor-supervised program.

Now that I am slimming down, I would like to firm up what’s left. I want to (strength train), but I am an all-or-nothing person. So when I try to go back to (strength training), I do too much too fast and feel nauseated and shaky. I get disappointed and stop. I have been sedentary (in a desk job) for some time, other than walking the dog after dinner. How do I get started again?

Note: The reader also told me that she does not currently have access to a gym.

A: First of all, I’ll say that I definitely understand what you mean when you say you are an “all-or-nothing” person. I can be like that sometimes as well. While the determination with this kind of attitude is good and even necessary for starting exercise programs, it’s also detrimental because, as you’ve said, you can burn yourself out. Even worse, you can injure yourself.

So, before I recommend any specific strength training, I suggest this. Set one goal — yes, just one — and maintain a bird’s eye focus on that one goal until you’ve done it for at least a month.

For example, say you started out with an exercise routine that consisted of one exercise per muscle group. You could set a goal of doing that exercise routine two times a week, with two sets per exercise. Now, it might seem like this is too little to have any effect on building muscle, but trust me. When you start an exercise program, developing consistency is far more important than the exercise routine itself.

Once you’ve done the routine with perfect consistency for a month, you can make it more intense by adding another set per exercise, using different exercises for each muscle group, or adding another strength training day. By disciplining yourself to be patient with a simple exercise routine that gradually becomes more challenging, you will maintain your muscle, and you’ll also greatly decrease the likelihood that you will quit.

Let’s talk a little bit about some exercises you can do without having access to a gym. Stick with the basic moves, which are presses, pulls and squats. If you have dumbbells, you can do dumbbell presses, dumbbell rows, and squats with dumbbells in each hand.

If you don’t have dumbbells, you can do table push-ups, broomstick pull-ups and bodyweight squats. Your abdominals will have been exercised indirectly with these moves, but if you want a little more abdominal work, you can do planks.

Start off with two sets of eight to 10 repetitions, using the best form that you possibly can. If you want to see demonstrations of the bodyweight exercises, you can visit my YouTube page, and for the other exercises, exrx.net is a good resource.

Let me add just one more tidbit. In women past childbearing age, metabolism, which has to do with the rate the body uses energy, slows down with the decrease in female hormones. Because muscle is very metabolically active, building and maintaining muscle through strength training is one of the best things that women can do for their health as they transition into middle age.

I hope this helps. Readers, I hope you’ll continue sending me more great questions like this one!

This story was originally published May 14, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "An approach to building muscle for middle-aged women."