Fitness That Actually Lasts: Building Strength and Energy in Midlife

Fitness over 50 does not have to mean pushing harder, exercising longer, or forcing your body to follow routines that no longer feel right. In this episode of the ANEW Insight Podcast, we explore how women can build strength, energy, confidence, and resilience through realistic, sustainable movement during perimenopause, menopause, and beyond.

Dr. Supatra Tovar is joined by Heike Yates, an award-winning author, midlife fitness and consistency expert, and founder of Hey Life Training. With more than 35 years of experience in health and fitness, Heike helps women stop repeatedly starting over and create movement habits that support their changing bodies and lives.

In Part One of this conversation, Dr. Tovar and Heike discuss why restrictive diets and punishing workouts often backfire, especially during midlife. They explore the importance of listening to your body, choosing movement that brings you joy, starting with small and achievable habits, and building strength without adding more stress or burnout.

You will also learn how Pilates, strength training, walking, dancing, and even five-minute movement breaks can support bone health, posture, energy, confidence, and long-term wellness. The goal is not to become younger. It is to become stronger, healthier, wiser, and more connected to yourself.

In This Episode

• Fitness over 50
 • Healthy aging and longevity
 • Sustainable exercise habits
 • Perimenopause and menopause
 • Strength training for women
 • Pilates and bone health
 • Diet culture and restrictive eating
 • Exercise burnout

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and introduction
 02:45 Redefining when midlife begins
 04:20 Why restrictive diets often backfire
 05:30 Finding community and joy through movement
 07:00 From bodybuilding to ultramarathons and Pilates
 09:00 Why movement should feel enjoyable
 10:40 Why so many midlife women feel exhausted
 12:00 Replacing dieting and restriction with balance
 13:00 When exercise creates more stress
 15:00 Diet culture, extreme weight loss, and midlife health
 16:40 Viewing midlife as a turning point
 17:00 Why more fitness information is not always the answer
 19:00 Learning to listen to your body
 20:30 Finding movement that lights you up
 21:40 Why smaller workouts are more sustainable
 22:20 Five-minute movement habits that add up
 23:20 Strength training for long-term health
 24:00 Pilates, posture, muscle, and bone density
 26:40 Final thoughts and Part Two preview

Connect With Heike Yates

Website: https://heikeyates.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/heikeyates

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heikeyates/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heike-yates

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pursue-your-spark-midlife-fitness-mindset-for-women/id1231586317

Connect With Dr. Supatra Tovar

Continue Your Journey
 📘 Book: Deprogram Diet Culture: Rethink Your Relationship with Food, Heal Your Mind, and Live a Diet-Free Life

🎓 Course: Deprogram Diet Culture
 https://anew-insight.com

🌐 Visit the Website
 https://drsupatratovar.com

🎥 Watch More Episodes
 ANEW Insight Podcast

🎤 Watch the TEDx Talk
 Rethinking Your Relationship with Food in the GLP-1 Era

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to the A New Insight Podcast, empowering and inspiring your journey to optimal health. Hosted by Dr. Supatra Kavar, clinical psychologist, registered dietitian, fitness expert, and author of Deprogram Diet Culture. Rethink your relationship with food, feel your mind, and live a diet-free life. I follow my guests' journey to optimal health, providing you with the keys to unlock your own wellness path. Tune in and evolve with us. Hi and welcome everyone. I am so glad to have Midlife Fitness and Consistency Expert Heike Yates with us today. Heike, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

And it's my pleasure to be here, Supata.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Well, so glad to have you to talk about all things midlife and fitness. I think there's a lot of people out there with misconceptions, with questions, and I think you're the perfect person to give us the answers. I'm going to read a little bit about Heike first before we get started, and then we'll jump into the questions. Heike Yates is the author of the award-winning book Pursue Your Spark and the founder of Hay Life Training, H-E-Y. With more than 35 years of experience in the health and fitness space, she helps midlife women move out of the frustrating cycle of starting over and into a more sustainable path toward energy, strength, and confidence. Her work is deeply rooted in both professional expertise and personal experience. As a single mother navigating financial hardship while raising two children, Heike found resilience and stability through fitness. What began as a lifeline became a lifelong mission to support women through the physical, emotional, and identity shifts that often come with midlife. Today she guides women to build realistic habits that support not just their bodies, but their lives, helping them redefine what it means to feel strong, capable, and confident at any stage.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Aike, welcome. Thank you. This is so lovely when I hear you say all these things about me. I was like, my heart just melts.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

That's what everyone says about my bios. So I'm kind of proud of my bios. I I think I've got a talent with bios. Um, I really do love to highlight uh people's expertise and really highlight what drew me to my guests. And I think um, you know, having this combination of fitness in midlife is something I haven't explored yet on my podcast. And I think it's so important because we have so many misconceptions in midlife about what we should and shouldn't be doing. Um, you know, I'm always of the mind to really tune in and listen to the body, as you know from listening to my podcast, you guys. And I think Heike is uh really similarly minded, um, but she can give us some more specifics on how we can really um help our bodies move through midlife. So um give me a picture of you. You, you know, kind of term midlife as starting over. What did that mean for you? And how did you find yourself navigating through midlife to where you are today as an expert?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

You know, when I think midlife, I don't think 50 as a hard stop for most people. It's like, oh, somebody in midlife has to be 50 years old. To me, midlife starts from 40 to about 80. I feel that around the age of 40, we're going not only through pyramidopause, but we also may become already uh empty nesters. We may change careers. And as we go through our midlife, we're experiencing so many different facets of ourselves and the opportunities could that come along. And when I look at the women that I work with, they're up to 80 years old. And my oldest client actually is 100, but so he. But oh, since we're talking women, it's 80 years old. And I feel that after the age of 80, you need different approaches to your fitness and health. The body becomes more uh frail or needs more orthopedic approaches than up to that for them for most people or many people. But I found that I I started my fitness journey. I was a young mom and I had gained 50 pounds in my first pregnancy, and I had really no idea of what to do. And I tried all the diets on the planet because everybody diets in order. If you want to lose weight, you diet. That's what you just do. And it you still I hear this over and over.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

And yes, and that's what I'm trying to dispel for people.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Continue. And we don't want to eat unhealthy. That's not what I'm saying. But a diet means you eat strict and you only eat this, you do not deviate. This is how you lose the weight. And for so many people, that has backfired. And I did the Scarsdale diet, and I don't know if people can relate to the Scarsdale diet or the cabbage soup diet was one of those big diets that promised us amazing weight loss and a lot of hunger, too. And it just backfired again into regaining the weight. So as I started to figure out what to do with my extra baby weight that I didn't need it, I found a friend found actually me and said, come on, let's go and do exercise classes, organized exercise classes at the YMCA, and they hold uh classes at the local church basement, and all we need to do is drop our kids at child care. So we're rid of them for an hour, and we can go exercise. And that's how it started. And when I got to the church basement, and I was thinking, oh my God, there's the teacher, which later became me showing up with a boom box. Like, picture it, 1980s, Jane Fonda, headband, shiny tights, high-size knees, and then t-shirt wrapped up on the side, and she showed up with her boom box with three-pound weights, which was the thing, and uh a yoga mat. And then she had play and she started teaching, and it was so much fun. It was not about the looking great, having the latest outfit, and it was about a community getting together and exercising. And I always said, not in a million years will you find me in one of those classes, hopping around. Well, lo and behold, I started teaching, and um, it was just so much fun, and I enjoyed it, and I saw the benefits on my own body that I started doing like a jazz or size style of class. Then I got into personal training because I said, Oh, you know, strength training is really good for women at any age. Well, what would that look like? And as I got older, my kids and two of my kids at that point started growing up. So grew my audience with me. They we took us that took us from mommyhood to then, oh, the kids are in school. What are we going to do with that time? The kids are in school now. We can do more exercise, I can do more exploring. And and as I got a sports nutrition certification, I learned more about the scientific parts about nutrition and how we can make it possible to be healthy, strong, and have energy, which is what we are losing through midlife. And as I, you know, I learned all these things, I became a bodybuilder because I thought that women want big muscles. Anybody wants big muscles. That was my thinking way back 20 something then. And I learned to be put put on muscle mass and I became a bodybuilder only to learn that women don't want big, ginormous muscles. And that that then translated to like my fitness journey translated into all those things where I met women where they were at, not with the bodybuilding, but then I started becoming a runner because one of my clients was a runner, and I said, Oh, what is running like? So the complete opposite of what bodybuilding was.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

And I started exploring running, and then the more I got into it, the more excited I about things I got. So I am an ultra-marathon runner running 50 miles at one race, and that was so much fun. But then my body started complaining because I was in my 50s at that point. My knees started complaining, my back started complaining, and so were the conversations with my clients. I said, hmm, we need to do something a little different here. And that's when Pilates came along.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Oh, you just spoke my language right there. I've been a Pilates instructor for oh gosh, now 23 years. You know, Heike, it sounds like, and what I really like to hear about your fitness journey is that it was fueled by fun and interest. I think so many women don't approach movement. And I like to call it movement more than exercise because I think exercise has that connotation of you have to work to get your results. You need to, you know, no pain, no gain, all that stuff. And I think that that really bites us, especially in midlife. In midlife, what we see for most women, and this is, you know, pretty well documented, you've got all these, of course, hormonal changes that are happening. Um, the hormonal changes alone affect our energy level, affect our stress levels. But then you add just everything else that's on top of, you know, the social pressures, the uh the stress from having to do, be, and have it all that you know, women constantly put themselves under, they are constantly in stress mode. And when you add stressful exercise on top of that, and you add a restrictive diet, all of that I think backfires, usually uh resulting in some kind of burnout, uh, weight regain, um, just general poor mental health. So talk about that time when you start to see it, and it's usually in perimenopause. Give people that picture of the key like physiological and lifestyle shifts happening during the stage in the clients that you see.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

When I look at them, most of them are tired. They're just permanently tired. They don't sleep well, number one. They're stressed out, as you just mentioned, Supadra. They're stressed out by life. Too many demands, family demands, uh, maybe even the sandwich moment that they're in with taking care of their parents or aging parents and then their kids somewhere in school, maybe in college, but that causes stress in itself or separation anxiety from your children if you had children. Or it could be at this point also, as we're aging, that we're worrying about our jobs, that we worry about not keeping up with who what's going on in the company, and that we're getting older and we're not living up to what's expected of us. So a lot of stress during that time. And the stress also in doing everything right and not seeing results. And right, we should add air quotes to that.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Total air quotes to that. I I think that's a huge thing. And I this is something that I've always tried to dispel for and women of any age. That's why I wrote this book, Deprogram Diet Culture, because diets don't work. I just really want to repeat that. Diets don't work. The body does not like restriction, it does not like it, it likes balance, it likes it when you listen to your hunger rather than ignore it. It likes it when you eat mindfully and you pay attention while you're eating it. It also really likes when you're really listening for that moment when you're full. And if we could replace dieting with balance, I think we would see a lot of improvement in women. And I think that that also translates into exercise. What does balance look like in terms of exercise for a woman entering, you know, perimenopause and menopause?

SPEAKER_01 13:18

You hit it all with your diet, is especially you got to listen to your body. But we often don't know how to listen to our body. We don't know why we're exhausted, we don't know why we're unhappy, we don't know why we keep doing what we're doing, and nothing brings us results. And we keep pushing, and and I just talked about this. Um we keep pushing something that's no longer working for us under the impression that it has worked before, now it should work because I've been doing it for so long. And and it should be working because it worked before. Not seeing that really the change that's, and you pointed uh to it earlier, the hormones are hormones are changing, but there's so much else going on around it. And when we're beating our head against the wall harder, going back to those high-intensity classes that we think are good, and again, you pointed at this earlier, it's exercise increases stress in the body. It can be a good stress or it can be a not so good stress for women in perimenopause. And it's it's easy to overlook what we what is beneficial to us. And I always feel that we need to back off and stop banging our head against the wall saying, this has to work, it worked before, and not follow the beauty and health industry that shows us those, even you know, you look at the 80-year-old and has a six-pack. I'm like, this is not normal, let's face it. And and the person that eats 8,000 calories a day and is slim and trim, this is 100 calories a day, you mean? Or both ways, yeah. It's not normal, you know. When you think about I exercise a lot, I need to eat a lot. Let's, you know, this will all turn into muscle. No, or the you under eat because you want to be as thin. And that's that's probably worse in my book than than overeating. It's overeating, you can manage this, but under eating is really uh an underlying psychological reason. And I'm sure you address this in your book as well. But with exercise, it is a similar path. Why do we do what's we know is no longer working?

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Well, I think it's conditioning, I think it's completely what we're looking at in social media. I think, especially with the um inclusion of these GLP ones as like methods for extreme weight loss, which is something I just recently spoke about in my TED talk. I think the extreme weight loss is the problem at this point right now, and this desperation that many people are feeling like they can't keep up with what celebrity culture is promoting as far as this kind of ideal. And I think it's especially detrimental for women in midlife when you see extreme thinness in midlife. You see a lot of different kinds of problems come up, especially issues with bone density, muscle loss, all of these things that really do us harm. And you see, especially extreme weight loss aging people very, very quickly as well. Like they are, you know, becoming very gaunt and very thin, and they just don't have enough fat on their bodies to, you know, look the way that they want to look. So I think we need to really reformulate what midlife can look like. You describe it as a turning point rather than a decline. And that's so important. That's what I embrace. You know, I'm 53 and I'm like, no, I'm sorry. There's no declining here. There's only getting better, richer, you know, in wisdom, um, you know, more grounded. So, what needs to change in how women think about this phase of life in order to fully step into that new perspective?

SPEAKER_01 17:34

I would say the first thing that would come to everybody's mind that's listening may be, I need to learn more. I need to have more information. And I would say, no. At our at our age, and you're 53, I'm just turned 65. We have so much information. We have been inundated with more than we can digest. And what I find more often than not is that we're overwhelmed by this amount, that we don't know where to go, because so and so says this is working. But then on the other hand, we see this, and you go, oh, this could be what's working. Go back to what you know has worked for your body. Start with simple steps. If walking has worked for your energy level, for your your uh strengths, go back to that. Peel back your your onion of knowledge and peel away what somebody has said you should do at whatever point in your life or whatever, wherever you were, then look at your onion and say, well, when I when I was a bodybuilder, I was in my mid-30s. I had completely different goals and time availability, even as a single mom. But now this would no longer be my desire because it touches also uh use the bodybuilding as an example because I literally had to starve myself for competitions to be lean and showing all those muscles off. And then I had to gorge myself for a period of time to put on more uh muscle mass. And this kept this yo-yoing keep really was so unhealthy for my metabolism and overall health.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

So maybe less about going back to what worked before, but it's more about listening to what it your body is calling for today. If you were, you know, an extreme bodybuilder in the past or you engaged in you know copious amounts of cardiovascular, high-intensity workouts, and you try it again today, and it doesn't feel good, that's always my indication. Like, I think we need to be thinking more internally. Yes, like don't listen to all of the experts out there, but listen to the expert in here. What is your body telling you? Does it feel good while you're doing it? Does it feel good after you've done it? That I think if we can gravitate toward that, that's I think why a lot of women are really gravitating towards Pilates. And I'll tell you, just like the moment that I started doing Pilates, and this was you know, 20 uh some odd years ago, all I knew was I felt amazing when I was doing it. I felt strong, I felt capable, I felt aligned, I felt centered. And that's what I've been using this entire time to really help me and balancing it out between more, you know, higher intensity bursts of energy that want to come out through dancing, um, you know, through other kinds of movement. So I think that people really need to start to listen internally. Now, for these people who are overwhelmed completely and exhausted, how can they begin rebuilding a fitness routine in a way that feels realistic and sustainable?

SPEAKER_01 21:03

This is where my onion comes back again. And also my spark framework that I use in my book, Pursue Your Spark, is like you're peeling back the layers. Really sit down with yourself and peel back what it is that lights you up, that really ignites your spark. What is that spark that you may have had? And you mentioned dancing. I love to dance. And dancing is a great cardio workout. We do want to do something for our health, and we do want to do something for our strength. But I think peeling back what really brings you joy, what really lights you up, and not measure it by how hard it is, how uh long the workout is, and and how much you have to put in to get more out of it. But see what is what brings you that joy, what you can sustain over a long period of time, no matter what what you choose, it could be anything, guys.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Yes, I agree, I agree, and I would say too, like. A lot of people think that they, like you said, they have to do this for you know an hour a day. I think the most sustainable um habits that you can build are when you think really, really small. Like, what's the smallest amount that I can do every day or most days of the week? Sometimes that might only be 20 minutes. Sometimes it's 30. For me, it's 30. It's like 30 is my sweet spot in the morning when I get up and I work out. And I want to make sure that I move before I'm sitting in front of clients all day. 30 minutes feels absolutely perfect. Anything more than that, I'd be like, no, I just don't have time for that. Would you agree with making the workouts as small as humanly possible?

SPEAKER_01 22:45

I would even go five minutes a day. I even go do a push-up on your kitchen counter, which I've people have heard this before from me. If you cannot seem to find any time to exercise and you're dreading even five minutes, when you go in the kitchen, you boil a cup of tea, water. You can do five, 10 push-ups while the water is boiling, while the coffee is brewing. You can do squats while you're waiting for something to stir in the kitchen, or you're on the phone if you're on a phone call. You can get up and do a couple of squats. You can add it in so little that it becomes not noticeable, but it adds up over the long run. And then work towards the 30 minutes that you mentioned. I am a big fan of 15 to 20 minute workouts.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Anybody can do that.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

So let's talk about strength training because everybody hears this, and I will concur that it is very important as we get older. But you know, it doesn't have to be bodybuilding, y'all. It doesn't have to be like going, you don't even have to go to the gym to do this. But let's let's talk about why it's so important and how women in midlife should approach it differently to support their long-term health and resilience.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

We have different camps. Now, both of us are a Pilates background. We swear by Pilates. Pilates, I've been teaching for over 23 years, and anybody, any size, so nobody could say, hey, I am too heavy, I am too tall, I am whatever. No, anybody can do Pilates. Pilates is a strength train. It's a different, so there's different camps. So Pilates is not a strength training regime by itself. It strengthens the body, but more in an isotonic, is a kinetic fashion. So there's a lot of isometric, like holding in the spine, strengthening the spine. Strengthening the spine has been shown. Um the bone density improves in the spine through Pilates because of the pressure. And if you work with machines or even the mat work, will improve bone density to prevent or uh halt osteoporosis, osteopenia, very is uh also helpful, and also helpful for um posture. Very important. Posture is my thing.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

And then you then I will add though, I will add that you can build muscle when you are different doing bodies. It's different, but you know, especially with the uh resistance of the springs with the reformer, with the Cadillac, with the chair, you are building muscle because you are using resistance. It's not the same as say uh, you know, using uh, you know, hand weights or being on those machines, but you certainly can build muscle. And I think a lot of people really love the the longer, leaner muscle that's built through Pilates.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Pilates doesn't build bulk because we're not, as a traditional strengths training, we're going through repetitions and different sets and progressive overload of the muscle, which is in general what not what we not do with Pilates. In particular for women in midlife that already have so much stress on their joints and have achy joints, is a kind of gentler workout. Do we can we push it in Pilates? Absolutely, for the right body, so the right conditions. But it is a thing to know that, because there is the controversy that is Pilates strength training? And strictly spoken, no, because you're not building bulk, you're building muscles, but not to the uh point of atrophy for being very specific about that. Now, with that said, all of my clients do Pilates, whether they come for strength strength training, body weight exercises, or whatever they want to do. Everybody does Pilates because of the benefits of Pilates, of being low impact to no impact, lengthening the spine, breathing, alignment of the entire body, which you don't get a lot from traditional weight training.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Yes, yes. And I would say that, you know, even if you don't classify it as traditional strength training, you are still gaining strength. You are still building muscle, just not in that bodybuilder kind of way. But that's the most important thing is that we need to build muscle to support our bones as we age. So however we do it, whatever you know, method works for people. And for some people, it is CrossFits. For some people, it is bodybuilding. For some people, like me and like you, it is through Pilates, but it is important to help support our bones. I can't believe this, Heike. We're out of time for this half of this podcast, but we're gonna be coming back. We're talking more about this. So don't, you know, don't freak out, everyone. We're gonna come back and talk more about this. So thank you so much for joining us for this half. Stay tuned for the second half of this conversation with midlife fitness and consistency expert Heike Yeats. Thanks for tuning in to the A New Insight Podcast. Please remember the content shared on this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. You can find us anywhere podcasts are streaming on YouTube at my.anew.insight and at anew insight.com under the Anu Insight Podcast tab. Tune in next time and evolve with us.