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Metabolically Supportive Exercise: Why Building Muscle Beats Cardio for Lasting Health
92 Plays19 days ago
If you’ve been told that more cardio is the answer to better health or weight loss, it’s time to reconsider. In this week’s episode, we explore why metabolically supportive exercise (especially strength training) is key to supporting your metabolism, hormones, and long-term well-being.
Here’s what we cover:
- Why muscle is essential for metabolic health
- How excessive cardio can negatively affect your hormones and metabolism
- Practical tips for starting strength training without feeling overwhelmed (and actually enjoying it!)
- Why muscle burns more energy than fat
- The connection between cellular health, metabolic function, and generational wellness
- Why metabolic health is more than just weight loss
Links:
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to the eat like a mother podcast where we take complicated topics surrounding hormones and metabolism and make them simple and applicable to your daily life as a woman. I'm your host castie. Well fell.
00:00:25
Speaker
My hope is that you walk away feeling empowered to start taking radical responsibility for your health and lean into this body. God created for you. Are you ready to eat like a mother? This podcast is meant for educational purposes only and is not meant to be taken as medical advice.
00:00:43
Speaker
Please consult your physician before making any dietary or lifestyle changes.
Castie's Education Journey
00:00:47
Speaker
Well, in 2019, I graduated from the greatest university in the world, Texas A&M University. Whoop for all of my Aggies listening.
00:00:57
Speaker
But I graduated with my degree in exercise science. And at that time, i was on the fast track to becoming a physical therapist. If you've listened to any of my other podcasts before, I've shared the story a few times, but I was going into physical therapy school and then COVID happened and we had to make the decision to not do that.
00:01:18
Speaker
And then a lot of things unfolded and that's why I'm here now. I quickly made a shift in life and in career path. And that's why I've been coaching and doing the work that I'm currently doing and not working in a hospital as I intended. And I start off this podcast by telling you that because today we're going to be talking about
Understanding Metabolically Supportive Exercise
00:01:40
Speaker
just that. We're going be talking about metabolically supportive exercise. And actually, this is something that is so near and dear to my heart because this is what my formal education is in. It's what I put myself through school to study. You know, I was not a college student that...
00:01:54
Speaker
hated being in class and that slept my way through those four years. No, I worked my butt off. I worked night shifts. I worked full time while I was in school to put myself through school. And I was like a kid in a candy shop in every class. I was the person that everybody hated in school. I sat on the front row. I asked all the questions. All of my professors knew my names. I had great relationships with all of my professors because I absolutely loved what I was studying. I love study. I love learning, which served me well in the work that I do now because the majority of my nutrition education has come from self-study. So the work that I do with women when it comes to nutrition and lifestyle and habit changes, that has all been pretty much from self-study and different things, different work experiences and and things like that that I've done over the last six years is how I've built the business that I have now.
00:02:47
Speaker
but getting to talk today about something that I actually have formal education in and that i just i love talking about because I think it's so fascinating how healing movement is to the human body. I'm just really excited to talk about this.
00:03:01
Speaker
So I want to jump right in because I feel like a lot of people, especially women, are lost on what and how healing to exercise in a way that is appropriate for their body.
Rethinking Metabolic Health Markers
00:03:12
Speaker
I feel like all too often we look at weight loss as really the only metric to health and we get fixated on a number on the scale as a marker of health.
00:03:24
Speaker
And then it kind of clouds our judgment on what we should and shouldn't be doing because that is all we're focusing on. I'm not going to be talking about weight loss on this episode, but I want you to know that weight is not an adequate biomarker. And I'm very adamant about the importance of women learning their metabolic markers in order to make Decisions that are appropriate for your body and weight just isn't a great metabolic marker because it doesn't give you a lot of information as to what's going on on the inside.
00:03:54
Speaker
Other metabolic markers that are more beneficial are going to be things like your temperature, your pulse, your libido, your mood, your hair, your skin, your nails, your digestion. These things are going to be more beneficial to understanding the state of your metabolism, the state of your thyroid and your hormones and all of those things.
Exploring Thyroid and Metabolism via Webinar
00:04:12
Speaker
We're not going to go into all of those today.
00:04:13
Speaker
i have linked in the show notes my free webinar on assessing your thyroid and metabolism from home using one of your most important biomarkers, in my opinion, which is your temperature.
00:04:24
Speaker
it is so useful. It is one of the best skills that you can learn, again, in my opinion, to best improve your thyroid without spending a crap ton of money. But again, we're not going to be going into all of those things in this episode, I really want to focus on metabolically supportive exercise and how you can choose exercise that is good for your body.
The Role of Muscle in Metabolism
00:04:47
Speaker
And more specifically, i want to key in on why it is so freaking important to be focusing on building muscle, because this is something that I feel is lost in translation for a lot of women. Because if you're like me, and you grew up in the eighty s and 90s and early 2000s,
00:05:04
Speaker
There was a push for women to be skinny, skinny, skinny. And what gets you that body frame is excessive cardio training. And I think that was pushed on women a lot was just do cardio, crush it in cardio, do all the Hyatt training, do all of the running and the sprinting and whatever you can think of biking to maintain a smaller body type when that doesn't actually look at what is truly metabolically supportive and metabolically appropriate for people. So today we're going to be focusing in on specifically building strength, why muscle matters for your metabolism,
00:05:43
Speaker
Why, again, strength training versus cardio is so much more beneficial for your body. And then I'll give you some tips on how you can practically get started and start implementing strength training in a way that's not overwhelming.
Components of Metabolic Health
00:05:55
Speaker
So we all know that metabolic health refers to your body's ability to produce and utilize energy.
00:06:01
Speaker
This is its very basic dictionary definition. Now, when you expand out, that definition includes our ability to utilize blood sugar or control blood sugar.
00:06:14
Speaker
It includes our cholesterol health. It includes our blood pressure, and it includes our ability to burn fat. And there are a lot of different signs of poor metabolic health that goes back to our metabolic markers, like your temperature, your pulse, your libido, your cycle, your hair, skin, nails. There's a lot of signs and symptoms that our body gives us as to the state of our metabolic health.
00:06:36
Speaker
So being able to understand those metabolic markers, you'll be able to see when your body is waving the yellow flag and saying, hey, let's slow down and let's make an adjustment. But so often because of our society and because of how we've been trained and i know this because like i said this is my formal education this is how i was trained is to push through those yellow flags and stick to the formula because there's a certain formula that you need to be putting into place to become a certain body type but it disregards metabolic health, which is how our body is functioning on a cellular level. And if we can respect how our body is functioning at the cellular level, then we are looking to generational health. We are looking towards the future of being 50, 60, 70, 80 years old and being mobile and cognizant.
00:07:24
Speaker
and able to spend our elderly years fully functional because we are supporting our metabolism.
Beyond Weight Loss: Broader Metabolic Health
00:07:33
Speaker
We are supporting our mitochondria now.
00:07:35
Speaker
So I want you to take a step back if you're someone that is stuck looking at the scale and stuck in this mindset of, I just need to lose weight. And you're just trying to make one specific thing happen. You have maybe one specific goal in your health and wellness journey. And I want you to just lay that down for a second.
00:07:54
Speaker
and take a step back so that you can see the forest through the trees. Because metabolic health is so much more than just our ability to lose or gain weight. So let's talk about how you can support your body at the cellular level through building muscle and why building muscle matters for your metabolism.
Muscle's Impact on Insulin and Glycogen
00:08:11
Speaker
So muscle tissue actually stores glycogen, which is the stored form of glucose, a form of carbohydrate. After meals, insulin helps to shuttle glucose into muscle cells to be stored or used for energy.
00:08:24
Speaker
More muscle means more places for sugar to go, thereby reducing blood glucose spikes. Studies have shown that strength training actually improves insulin sensitivity, especially in people with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes. So muscle is like a glucose cabinet where glucose can go to be stored for future use, for future energy use.
00:08:51
Speaker
Now you've probably been told that muscle weighs more than fat, which is true, but muscle also burns more energy than fat. Think about Michael Phelps, arguably one of the greatest athletes of our time.
00:09:03
Speaker
Michael Phelps eats, I think, and don't quote me on this, I read it in a habits book ages ago, right? But it's somewhere between like six and 10,000 calories a day.
00:09:13
Speaker
It is absolutely insane the amount of food that this man eats, but when you think about it, his muscle mass is so great that his body is actually effectively and efficiently utilizing those calories better than say if you did not have a greater muscle mass and you were eating that much. Like yeah, if you had ah higher fat percentage and you were eating that much, you would probably just gain more weight. So muscle burns more energy than fat even at rest and at rest,
00:09:43
Speaker
your muscles preferred source of energy is actually fat. So the more muscle that you have, when you're at rest, like say you're sleeping and you're in a natural fasting state, your muscle is going to be pulling from your fat stores to keep them firing because a lot of people don't think about this, but your muscles are still active.
Energy Efficiency and Metabolic Flexibility
00:10:03
Speaker
Even when you're sleeping, they don't just atrophy completely over one night of sleep. They have to have energy stores to keep them functioning and firing while you are sleeping. So during activity, during the day, your body is utilizing glucose. it's utilizing those stored glycogen or those glycogen stores to produce energy. But at rest, your body is going to pull from its fat stores. Your muscles are going to pull from its fat stores to keep firing.
00:10:29
Speaker
This is one way that you're able to maintain a healthy body composition without absolutely destroying yourself in the gym or overexercising if you have greater muscle mass. Your body utilizes about six to 10 more calories per day per pound of muscle than it does fat, which doesn't seem like a lot, but when you build weight,
00:10:54
Speaker
10, 15, 20 pounds of muscle in your body, that starts to add up really fast.
Mitochondria and ATP Production
00:11:01
Speaker
And so having a greater muscle mass actually allows for more metabolic flexibility, where your metabolism is able to shift from burning glucose and burning fat at different points of the day or at times of activity versus times of rest.
00:11:14
Speaker
And being able to do that, being able to have that adaptability, that flexibility in your metabolism that actually protects your cells, your metabolism from slowing down with age or maybe during a weight loss season.
00:11:28
Speaker
Another really big key benefit of improving your muscle mass or increasing muscle mass is because muscle cells have a lot more mitochondria than fat cells. And what happens in the mitochondria?
00:11:43
Speaker
The mitochondria is where ATP is produced. That is where the thyroid is moving glucose and oxygen into your cells to produce ATP. It is moving those nutrients into the cell, into the mitochondria, so that energy can be produced. So the greater muscle mass you have, the more mitochondria you have, and therefore, the more energy that will be produced, meaning the more efficiently your body will utilize calories, aka energy, because calories are just a unit of energy,
00:12:16
Speaker
And so you'll be able to eat more, which we all know is so important if you're a full-grown woman. You have to be eating a lot of food to maintain good, strong metabolic markers.
00:12:28
Speaker
And then having this muscle mass and strength training increases your mitochondrial density and improves their function. This means better energy levels, better fat burning, and less oxidative stress in the body.
Myokines and Hormone Regulation
00:12:42
Speaker
Now muscle is also an endocrine organ. Just like fat tissues release hormones, primarily estrogen, which is why if you have greater fat storage in the body, you're likely producing more estrogen because that's what's more so produced in fat cells and estrogen causes fat cells to multiply. But having greater muscle mass, your muscles actually release myokines, which are signaling proteins with anti-inflammatory and metabolic benefits. They help regulate fat metabolism, reduce systemic inflammation, and even influence brain health.
00:13:17
Speaker
For example, exercise-induced IL-6 improves insulin sensitivity and fat oxidation. Lifting weights, growing muscle boosts growth hormone, testosterone, and IGF-1, all of which support fat loss and lean muscle retention.
00:13:33
Speaker
And having more muscle mass also improves cortisol levels. Think about it. Estrogen and cortisol are actually very closely related. So the more estrogen you have in your body, it's going to increase cortisol.
00:13:45
Speaker
But when we bring estrogen down by bringing fat storage down and increasing muscle mass, We're going to actually have more adaptability to cortisol and less stress hormones being released in the body, which will lead to a in a better hormonal environment, better energy, sleep, mood, libido, all of those good things that we want to see happening that are signs of a functioning, a high functioning metabolism.
The Long-term Benefits of Building Muscle
00:14:11
Speaker
So now you know, strength training has a lot more benefits other than making you look sexy AF, okay? So I don't want you to get fixated on just a number on a scale and on just trying to have a specific body type. I want you to think about building muscle as a way to protect your metabolism, protect your bones,
00:14:30
Speaker
protect your hormones for the rest of your life. This isn't an aesthetic thing. This isn't just about how you look. This is about how you feel and move and function for the rest of your life.
00:14:42
Speaker
And that's really important because we want to have energy and we want to be able to be functional and cognizant and mobile for a long
Strength Training vs. Cardio
00:14:52
Speaker
time. So let's switch gears for a second and just talk a little bit about strength training versus cardio for metabolic health.
00:14:58
Speaker
There is a time and place for cardio training. I feel like in the pro metabolic world, especially there's a lot of stigma around cardio training. And so people just stopped working on cardiovascular fitness. I don't think that's a great idea. There is a time and place for it, but as with anything, and I teach this in my course,
00:15:18
Speaker
understanding your temperature and your pulse can actually help you to make adjustments to your exercise routine to know what kinds of cardiovascular fitness are working for you.
00:15:29
Speaker
So don't hear what I'm not saying. It is important to train cardio. Just pay attention to your temperature and your pulse to see how your body is responding to it. But one of the reasons why it is, in my opinion, more important to train for strength, train for muscle mass is Number one, cardio only improves cardiovascular fitness and burns calories during the time of the workout. So let's say you run for an hour, you are only increasing your metabolic rate for that hour that you are working.
00:15:58
Speaker
But strength training keeps your metabolism elevated for hours to days after the exercise. This is known as Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption or EPOC.
00:16:11
Speaker
Basically, strength training builds an engine that burns more fuel long-term and has shown greater long-term improvements in insulin sensitivity compared to cardio alone.
00:16:23
Speaker
So in short, build muscle. Muscle is more metabolically active. It stores glucose, burns energy, regulates hormones, and reduces inflammation.
00:16:34
Speaker
Strength training supports your metabolism now and as you age. So what can you do?
Enjoyable and Simple Exercise Routines
00:16:40
Speaker
I am a firm believer that the best kind of exercise is the exercise that you enjoy.
00:16:47
Speaker
i feel like we so overcomplicate building muscle and exercise and we make it more complicated in our head than it actually needs to be. When really, find a routine, find an exercise that brings you joy and stick with that.
00:17:02
Speaker
And pay attention to your temperature and your pulse before and after the workout. Again, i go into this more in detail in my course to tell you kind of the nuance about that, but don't overcomplicate it.
00:17:13
Speaker
I personally, i love going to the gym. It's great for my mental health. I love getting to go and lift really heavy and sweat hard. But I don't think you need a fancy gym membership in order to strength train.
00:17:24
Speaker
There have been seasons where the only strength training capacity that I had was to do body weight and some dumbbell exercises from home because I have three small children and getting to the gym is very difficult in this season.
00:17:38
Speaker
But I can very easily do 10 to 15 minutes of lifting weights with my children running around me every day. So my encouragement to you is pick a time frame that works for you, whether it's two times a week, three times a week, every day, whatever it is that works for you, that you can do and make it as easy as humanly possible.
00:17:58
Speaker
So if you need to put on a show for your children for 20 minutes, gasp by no for all of the crunchy people. I don't even have a TV, but there are times where I'm just like, yeah, I need 15 minutes of silence so I can work out and get my blood moving, sweat a little bit, lift heavy so that I can do and be all the things that I need to do and be for my
Practical Strength Training at Home
00:18:20
Speaker
family.
00:18:20
Speaker
Whatever you need to do pick a routine or time frame that works for you and focus on things that are functional. Squats, push-ups, lunges, lifting dumbbells, or picking things up that are heavy and doing that intentionally at home.
00:18:35
Speaker
Taking the time to do this, even if it's in small bits and it feels like it's not doing everything that you want it to be doing, even having those small little bits of exercise and strength training during the week is going to be protective of so many different diseases.
00:18:53
Speaker
So don't discount the small little bits that you can do right now. If you can do more and go to a gym, great. Or if you have an at-home gym, great. Just pick something that's fun for you that you actually enjoy and that you can stick to.
00:19:06
Speaker
Don't overcomplicate it Don't let all of the health and fitness gurus on Instagram confuse you and tell you that it has to be done a certain way. In my opinion, lifting heavy and moving your body and fueling your body appropriately is more important than doing anything fancy or all of the different biohacks out there.
00:19:27
Speaker
So this week, I want you to just pick two or three days, you know, whatever is good for you, whatever you can manage, two or three days to do strength workouts.
00:19:38
Speaker
Even if it's 10 to 15 minutes, start with body weight. If you have dumbbells, great, but start with body weight and grow from there. That progressive overload is what we call it.
00:19:49
Speaker
Starting with body weight and then increasing the weight over time is how you're going to see long-term gains in your muscles. But you have to start from somewhere. I recently got back into going to the gym because like I've said, I i love exercising. i love being at the gym. I love sweating and lifting heavy.
00:20:07
Speaker
it is so good for me and it's something that i truly enjoy. And when I got back into the gym, I was a little embarrassed because, you know, I've just had three kids and I'm not as strong in certain areas that I know I have been in the past.
00:20:22
Speaker
And i almost didn't go up to the squat rack and start lifting, even though I enjoy doing squats. I almost didn't go do it because I was embarrassed. And then I had a moment, I paused and I thought, just lift the bar.
00:20:35
Speaker
I'm just going to lift the bar. And that's what I started with. And if you hear anything from me today, i want you to know, just lift the bar. Just do what you can and start from your ground zero and work your way up. Your strength, your level of muscle mass is going to look different from the next person.
00:20:53
Speaker
And you don't need to be embarrassed about that. We all have a lot of different extenuating circumstances that affect our muscle mass, that affect where we are in our fitness journey.
00:21:03
Speaker
So don't be discouraged and don't be embarrassed because everybody is coming at it from a different point. So whatever you can do do that. Don't overcomplicate it. Make it as simple as possible and Just squat the bar.
00:21:17
Speaker
I hope this week's episode was informative and encouraging for you. And I can't wait to see y'all again next week.
00:21:28
Speaker
If you found this podcast helpful or encouraging, would you mind leaving us a rating or review? I love hearing from you. So be sure to shout us out on Instagram and tag me at Cassidy.Weltbell.
00:21:38
Speaker
And we'll be sure to shout you right back out. Let's get this message to as many women as possible. Until next time, friend.