Strength Training for Women Over 40: Olympian Louise Hazel on Fat Loss, Not Weight Loss

Self-love and wanting to change are not opposites

Rosie has written about learning to love her body, and then perimenopause changed it again. She describes a quiet shame about wanting to get fitter: if she is the person writing about self-love, what would people think if she started posting body transformation videos? Meeting Louise (Lou) Hazel helped her let go of that. Wanting to be at your best health, Lou says, is your business and nobody else’s.

Lou competed in the heptathlon for Great Britain, won gold for England at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and competed at the London 2012 Olympics. She now runs SLAY, a personal training gym in Hollywood where Rosie trains. Her approach is refreshingly unglamorous: no quick fixes, just the right kind of training, enough protein and habits you could keep for fifteen years.

What this episode covers

• Why Lou asks whether body pressure is coming from society, or from you
• How what you consume, from magazines to your social feed, shapes how you see yourself
• Everyone is an athlete: finding the kind of training your body is built for
• Why cardio is a safety net, and what it takes to actually change your body
• Fat loss versus weight loss, and why the scale misleads you
• Why muscle matters more with every decade, and how often to lift
• How alcohol affects sleep, recovery and metabolism in perimenopause
• Consistency over perfection: habits you could keep for the next fifteen years

Whose pressure is it?

Lou does not dismiss the images society puts in front of women, but she pushes back on the idea that we are helpless against them. Everyone, she says, feels out of place in their body at some point, whether in the teenage years, around pregnancy or through menopause. The useful question is whether the pressure is coming from outside or from inside, because what you absorb is partly up to you.

She tells the story of a friend who brought a pile of glossy magazines to her house, each one making her feel worse. Lou’s advice was to stop buying them, and it worked. Social media, she says, is the same habit at higher speed. If an account leaves you feeling jealous or sick rather than inspired, unfollow it. Lou recently unfollowed around a thousand accounts herself. You are feeding the algorithm, so feed it what helps.

Everyone is an athlete

Lou’s central idea comes from the heptathlon, where she competed against the world’s best shot putters and the world’s best hurdlers, two body types that could not be further apart. Her message to clients: you have a body, so you are an athlete; you just have not found your sport yet. Pilates and yoga are wonderful forms of movement, but if you have a strong, powerful build and want your body to change, you need to train to that strength.

Cardio, in her view, is the safety net. It is good for your heart and lungs and it keeps you where you are, but it is easy and uncomplicated, which is why women stay on it. To lose fat, build muscle or get stronger, the body needs a reason to adapt: more load, more duration or more complexity. She suggests taking the next small step out of your comfort zone, whether that is a class or asking someone who lifts how they got started.

Fat loss, not weight loss

Lou would like to banish the phrase weight loss. A lower number on the scale could be water, muscle or fat, and losing muscle is the opposite of what most women want, especially with age. Muscle, she says, helps prevent falls, supports metabolism and is central to staying healthy for longer. The better goal is often to weigh about the same while carrying less fat and more muscle.

She is blunt about crash approaches. One client lost ten pounds on a five-day juice cleanse and regained more than that within two weeks. Fat loss, unlike weight loss, means fueling your body: Lou recommends about one gram of protein per pound of body weight daily, and insists carbohydrates are not “naughty”. It is all about dosage, including the occasional pastry.

What changes in perimenopause, and what to do about it

Many women believe midlife weight gain is inevitable and out of their hands. Lou’s first step is awareness: know the symptoms, from mood swings and hot flashes to vaginal dryness and low libido, and connect early with a doctor who specializes in hormones. She describes fat distribution shifting toward the abdomen in perimenopause, and resistance training as the counterweight. Every woman, she says, should be lifting heavy two to three times a week to preserve lean muscle.

Then the unpopular part: alcohol. Lou says it impairs sleep and recovery and makes it easier to store fat, so the most effective change is to stop drinking, or at least set clear limits. For people who say they have tried everything, she asks three questions: have you tried weight training, enough daily protein and giving up alcohol?

This conversation is educational and is not medical or nutritional advice. Talk with a qualified clinician before major changes to your training, diet or alcohol use, especially in perimenopause or with a health condition.

Timestamps

Times refer to the YouTube video.

Explore the conversation

Questions explored in this episode

Related resources

• Perimenopause: start here
• Cortisol and menopause: stress, sleep and weight
• Self-compassion, and why it is not the same as letting yourself off
• Yoga for menopause
• Perimenopause and menopause coaching with Rosie Acosta
• All episodes of The Radically Well Podcast