Fitness After 50: Strength Training, Healthy Aging, Energy, and Confidence

Fitness after 50 is not about punishing workouts or trying to turn back the clock. It is about building strength, improving energy, supporting longevity, and creating habits that help you feel confident and resilient at every stage of life.

In this episode of the ANEW Insight Podcast, Dr. Supatra Tovar continues her conversation with fitness expert, healthy-aging advocate, author, and Pursue Your Spark founder Heike Yates. Together, they explore how women can build a more sustainable relationship with fitness, health, and their changing bodies during midlife.

The conversation examines body dissatisfaction, all-or-nothing thinking, unrealistic fitness goals, caregiving pressures, people-pleasing, and the importance of setting boundaries. Dr. Tovar and Heike also discuss how nervous system regulation, breathing, Pilates, and mindful movement can help women reconnect with their bodies and choose exercise that genuinely feels supportive.

You will learn how to:

• Build strength and confidence after 50
 • Move beyond all-or-nothing fitness thinking
 • Create sustainable health and exercise habits
 • Set boundaries without unnecessary guilt
 • Ask for help instead of doing everything alone
 • Rebuild trust with your body after years of dieting
 • Use breathing and nervous system regulation during exercise
 • Choose movement based on how it feels, not how it looks
 • Become your own best health and fitness expert

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome back and midlife identity shifts
 00:58 When women feel betrayed by their changing bodies
 01:39 Choosing one manageable fitness goal
 02:50 Appreciating what your body can do
 03:25 GLP-1 medications, nourishment, and muscle health
 05:00 Shifting away from body criticism
 05:55 Breaking the all-or-nothing fitness cycle
 06:43 Are your health goals actually your own?
 07:50 The pressure on women to do everything
 08:42 Sustainable habits for work, family, and health
 09:31 People-pleasing, caregiving, and perfectionism
 10:03 Letting go, delegating, and saying no
 11:00 Why putting yourself last is not sustainable
 11:50 Self-care, boundaries, and valuing yourself
 13:00 Setting boundaries while caring for aging parents
 14:00 Recognizing what you need without guilt
 15:00 Setting emotional boundaries with family
 15:45 Listening to anger, exhaustion, and depletion
 16:38 Creating sustainable limits with family
 17:22 Asking your community for help
 18:00 How dieting disconnects you from your body
 19:00 Using what you already know about health
 20:00 Adapting past fitness lessons to your current body
 21:00 Why body awareness begins with the nervous system
 22:00 Hearing the body’s kinder, more supportive voice
 23:00 Choosing exercise based on what feels right
 24:00 Following joy instead of forcing workouts
 24:18 Breathwork, Pilates, and emotional release
 25:00 Using breath to regulate during exercise
 26:00 Becoming your own best expert
 26:20 Where to connect with Heike Yates
 27:00 Closing thoughts

The timestamps follow the episode’s progression from midlife body image and sustainable habits to boundaries, body trust, nervous system regulation, and mindful exercise.

Key Topics Covered

 Fitness after 50
 Healthy aging
 Strength training for women
 Midlife fitness and health
 Body image and self-acceptance
 People-pleasing and caregiving
 Nervous system regulation
 Pilates and breathwork
 Mindful movement
 Body trust
 Confidence and resilience

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

unknown 0:00

Wow!

SPEAKER_00 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, heal 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. Welcome back to the A New Insight Podcast. We are here for the second half of our conversations with Heike Yates. Haike, welcome back. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

I'm super excited to be back with you again.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

I am too. We have been exploring midlife fitness, mindset, what it takes to create sustainable change. I can't wait to continue this conversation. So, Heike, midlife comes with some pretty major identity shifts. How do these transitions impact a woman's relationship with her body and her health habits?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

I've heard hear this over and over, Supadra. I hate my body. My body betrays me. I do everything right. And look at me, I still don't have the results that I want. And we, yes, we understand that maybe the hormone changes. And interesting enough, the just yesterday, a client of mine that I hadn't seen in years has come back and asked me for help. And she said, Heike, I'm doing, I'm horseback riding, I'm doing yoga, I'm doing qi gang, and I'm doing some weights. I have all the gadgets you can imagine, like you have in your studio, I have at home. I don't use any of them. I don't really know what to do with them. Although at some point I knew what to do, and I do some videos. But she said, What is the best thing that will help me right now to reach my goal? And I said, Well, what is your goal? And she says, I want to lose. And that ties in with our earlier conversation. She said, I just started GLP1 and I want to I need to lose 80 pounds. And this is relief as an obesity drug to help her lose the weight so you can she can get her health markers down. But I look at her and we've worked together before, and life is so overwhelming for her that she sits there and I said, Listen, there is no best thing. Pick one thing and run with it. Pick the don't if the one thing that we love the most go with that. Your body is not betraying you. And she said, You know, I started and I only lost two pounds. And she had been on the drug for two months. And I said, Listen, this is a conversation between you and your doctor, and not with me. I am not a uh doctor, I'm not any physical background. Um, I can't help you with this. But what I can help you with is really understanding your body and what really is amazing about your body, because she had complained that her thighs are humongous. She said, What can we do about those thighs? And I said, be proud of those thighs. You need them for horseback riding, they're they would carry you through life. You're a woman. Find the spots that really you go, like, wow, my legs are really strong. This is great.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yes. I I think it's really hard when we introduce these GLP ones in. And I'm not saying anything uh negative about them. They have been life-saving for people, but they're very difficult because they don't necessarily allow you to truly listen to your body. They are, you know, artificially elevating certain hormones that make you feel full, that make you not hungry. Um, well, not hungry, and then your your digestion slows as a result, too, with these medications. And so it's really hard for people to uh eat adequately, to feel good on these, because even if you might feel full, you're not necessarily full and your body is confused. It's like, wait, uh, am I full? And it does, you know, keep the food in your stomach for longer. So it is kind of tricked into feeling full. Uh, so it's just it's just difficult to help people navigate their nutritional needs when they're not hungry. So you see people, you know, really drastically reducing their calories, and that's what's helping them to lose weight, but they're also not getting a lot of the nourishment that they might need to keep their muscles from atrophying, to really sustain them, to have positive mental health. So I'm glad that you're not necessarily entering that conversation. That conversation has to be with your doctor, with your dietitian, um, or or both, and with your mental health professional, because you see so many things being affected in this area. But I love what you say about okay, that aside, what do you appreciate in your body? We're so conditioned to look at our bodies and to point out all of the flaws and to say, then this I've got to change and that I've got to change. So having a perspective shift to I have strong legs. They have helped me carry my children, you know, from here to there. They're what's, you know, really making me um, you know, able to move. And I think having that perspective shift is so important. But I think it comes down to some all or nothing thinking. How can women begin, and men too, uh, shift toward a more flexible and a sustainable approach without feeling like they're losing progress? It's either all or nothing for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Oh my God, this is really one of the big problems is either I go all in or I don't do it at all. What is it worth if it if it doesn't produce the results that I want? Which brings us back to okay, you give it your all, but how much do you really need? What is your all in order to reach what goal? Who determined the goal? And so many times when I ask women, I say, oh, you're a fitness expert, you know, you know the answers. And and they tell me all their things, and it's either they criticize themselves for being too big, too flabby, too, whatever you name it, right? But then it comes down to why am I not seeing the result? And then I ask them what the result actually, where did the result come from? And the result comes from I saw on the internet, I used to be before my children, when I had whatever I had at this point in my life, I was like this. And it's either unhealthy behavior like under-eating, it's over-exercising, it is not really embracing what the body, like we said earlier, what the body really needs, and not listening and saying, you know, the goal you set is not your goal, it's somebody else's goal. Somebody else said, You need to have a perky or butski. Who says? All butskis are different.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

That's so cute. Perk perky or butski. Yes, I do think that we are put under tremendous amounts of pressure. We talked about this in the last uh half of the podcast, and that we have this conditioning now that we have to have everything, you know, us be a size zero to four to have a career, to successfully raise children, to be able to come home and cook dinner and do all of this stuff. And I think that we need to get some realistic habits that actually are, you know, more mindful to our sustainability. It's impossible to have all of those things and to do all of those things. So, what you know kind of sustainable habits would you promote people to adopt in order to balance work, family, and personal responsibilities?

SPEAKER_01 9:02

I think we all need to look first of what we have on our plate. Because as women, we tend to be also people pleasers and caretakers or caregivers, and we're also the perfect wife and the perfect mom. So when we dissect our roles, what does all what does each role entail? And I always like to go back to the way most of us are raised. You are the maiden, you're learning. Then you become the mother, you're another, again, nurturing. They're all nurturing roles, and then you become the crown, which I'm supposed to be in the crown age. And uh, all of those are nurturing and giving, but not taking anything for yourself. So I want people to look at each role that they have in their life, whether it's be the grandmother, the executive, or whatever it is your role, what are the roles that you have taken on that you feel you must fulfill to be perfect, to be this all or nothing person? And what are the things that you can let go of or give away, like especially with work, I'm thinking, you can delegate, you can delegate work to other people or say, no, I'm not taking on this project if you just know it's way too much, and really put yourself or trying to put yourself first, which I know it's so, so hard to say no to deny maybe babysitting hours, or tell your parents, well, you know, I'm not coming over this weekend. You have to figure it out yourself. And it's so, so hard. And I think we've been impregnated with these three roles the mother, the maiden, the mother, and the crown. And we we have been progressing forward. And I love to see it on social media. How many of us are speaking about it, are arguing against the things that we're inundated with and saying, no, I need me, and I need that spark in me, and I need to continue to be curious about what I want, not what everybody else wants.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yes, I think we tend to get taken advantage of in work for those reasons, uh, because we feel like we have to please everybody, do everything, put ourselves last. And that's the takeaway, everyone. Putting ourselves last is not sustainable. You don't see men doing this, you really don't. And they weren't conditioned to do this, they were actually conditioned to put themselves first. And I'm not saying put yourself first in the same way, meaning go about life selfishly. But when we put ourselves first, what that actually means in a sustainable way is that we take care of ourselves first. And and I think a lot of people are really conditioned to think that self-care is selfish. Well, okay, maybe it is because you're taking care of yourself. But if you don't do this, how are you going to care for anyone else sustainably? And we always talk about the oxygen mass and putting it on yourself first for a reason. So I think it comes down to self-care and it also comes down to boundaries. And I love what you're talking about. Like, ask yourself, how much can I actually do? Should I actually do? What is my actual role here? If is it to be here at work until you know nine o'clock at night and to take emails after that and work until midnight while I'm trying to feed myself and my family? No, you can set up some really firm boundaries. And firm boundaries actually they communicate to the world that you do value yourself, that you are not a pushover, that you are not a people pleaser, but that you do care for yourself so you can care for others. So say it's, you know, say it's caring for your, you know, elderly parent. That's a really hard place to put boundaries, but how can you do that and and still be there for your aging parent?

SPEAKER_01 13:29

You know, I just encountered this just recently. Both of my parents went to the hospital in Germany. That's where I'm originally from. And I flew over to see really what see what's going on with them. So there was a big commitment. I said, all right, I'm gonna fly over for a week, but I do want to know what's going on because I do everything long distance, and my brother's in Germany. He always relays the information. So I went over there, and everything was okay. They were super happy that I came and we had a great time together. But then something happened with my brother and his wife that really upset me. And uh, I'm not getting into this because my brother needs to figure this out on his own, but I was really, really upset. And I really needed to see my best friend who lives in Munich. And I was sitting there with my mom, and I said, I was really exhausted from the conversation with my brother's wife, uh, in drained physically and emotionally. And I said, Mom, I can't drive over there. I'm so exhausted. I'm just gonna hang out here. And she was like, Oh, this is great that you're here. And then I sat down, I set myself down and I said, Heike, what do you need right now? I texted my friend, I said, I'll be there in an hour. And I told my mom, I said, I'm gonna go. And I see my friend, and she was disappointed, and you could see it on her face that, oh, you said you wouldn't go. And I said, I need to go. And that ended the conversation. And six hours later, I was totally okay after the conversation with my best friend that I've known since I'm five years old. And uh, but it is, you know, be clear with the boundaries. We always think boundaries with other people, but set also boundaries for yourself. How far do you let people in? And I learned this with my brother's wife's conversation that I let her in too much to get to me in that way that I felt so exhausted and literally beaten down. And I said, All right, I let her in. I didn't set up my boundaries, but now I need to push back and set up a boundary with what's happening with my mom and really take what I need right now without guilt, without second-guessing myself, because this is what I needed right there and then.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yes, I think we have this kind of internal metric that's happening where our bodies are actually telling us what's right for us and what's wrong for us. And oftentimes, when you start to feel angry or you start to feel exhausted, or you feel depleted, or whatever negative emotion that's your body telling you, you have gone past that boundary. And when we actually listen to it and we we ask ourselves, well, what can I give in this moment that feels right to me? That's when you actually feel that uh metric in your body going the opposite direction. You feel a lot of ding ding-ding. You're like, Yeah, this is exactly right. I can give you this amount of time. I can give you this amount of care. Beyond that, I can't. So let's figure this out together. How can we find you the rest of the care that you need without depleting me so that I can continue to do this sustainably? When you look at that kind of model, you can see that that can be applied in every single aspect of your life with your kids. Like, how much can you give them? How much is realistic for you if you're working, right? You can, you know, take them to the soccer games on the weekend, but it might not be every weekend. You might need to have some help, you might need to, you know, recruit other family members, you might need to really rethink taking on everything in the family and the husband doing nothing, right? And and really getting everybody on board so that you're working as a team. And I think that that is so important. Wouldn't you agree?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we oftentimes don't include our community because we don't want to inconvenience other people or are hesitant to ask for help. But that's the first thing that we need to do, ask for help because it's not that you're needy, but you need something for yourself. And everybody is more than happy to help and support anytime I ask. Everybody's like, absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Yeah, absolutely. So let's go back to uh what might work in terms of rebuilding trust for the body. I think you you've talked about this somewhat. We talked about this a little bit in the last half that dieting in particular takes you away from trusting the body. You tend to look at the body as a math equation. If I have this many calories in and if I exercise this many calories out, then I'm supposed to lose this much weight. And it doesn't work. It really doesn't work. It may work for a little while in your 20s and 30s, and then it really starts to backfire. Or what you see in your 20s and 30s is you go on the diet, you lose the weight, and then you immediately gain it afterwards. How and and when you look at the diet itself, the diet keeps you from really listening to your body. So, what are some of the ways that you suggest to people really learn how to rebuild that trust with their bodies?

SPEAKER_01 19:20

When we think about the whole health and wellness realm, is you know so much. Look at what you already know, look at how your body is responding at the moment, because it does change literally every five years at least, where we need to do something different. And really trust what you know is a good thing because we oftentimes say, Oh, what I've learned in the past, it worked back then, it doesn't work now, but we've learned something from through the process. We learned that calorie counting is not the thing, that over-exercising is not the thing. But that doesn't mean that you don't have not learned to build a healthy diet. It doesn't mean you've learned how to properly do weight training or do a good Pilates workout, that you know your alignment in the body. So you've learned these bits and pieces. Take those bits and pieces and move with them forward. And take and said, you know what? I really enjoyed a dumbbell training. That was my favorite thing. I want to do it differently this time, and I know I have good form. Take those things that you've learned in the past because they weren't wrong. It's not that whatever else you did before was wrong. It may have worked, it may have not worked, but you learned something in the process. Take that knowledge and put it forward to where you are now. What can you take away from that that you can apply now?

SPEAKER_00 20:58

And so, in that sense, there's a bit of that's a cognitive effort where you are like examining what worked in the past and then seeing how you can tweak or modify it to work now. I would add on that a lot of people stay only cognitive in what they are thinking about doing for their bodies. They're like, okay, and calculating and you know, being logical about it. And I honestly think that the only real way into like being in the body is through the nervous system. It's not through our thoughts. Our thoughts are very important, they are extremely important. But when we are listening to the body, we can only do that when our nervous system is regulated. I tend to, you know, ask people to turn their thinking brain off for a little while. And learn how to regulate their nervous system. And that can be through controlled time to breathing, that can be through bilateral stimulation, that can be through splashing cold water on your face. You know the difference when you are calm and relaxed as opposed to stressed out and in your thinking brain. And the moment when you're calm and relaxed, that's when you can actually tune in and listen to the body. That's when you'll start to hear what the body's actually saying. And normally when you're in your thinking brain, you are pretty hard on yourself. I think if you were to actually like say those thoughts out loud, you'd be like, oh, I am the meanest person to myself in the world. But when you're calm and you're in your calm nervous system, it's really cool, y'all, because the voice that comes out is loving, kind. It's it's this beautiful voice. When I take people through this exercise of getting them into their nervous system, what I usually hear from them is like, oh, you need a nap, or I really want nourishment, or I think I need a hug right now. And it's this loving, kind voice. And I think that we really need so much more of that than the calculating, uh thinking, thinking about what might come next, or you know, how we're supposed to kind of hack our health and all of these things. So I love your um taking exercise into what feels right for you now. And I want to emphasize the feels, not the think, what feels right for you now. So as you're exercising, if you are calm and relaxed, your body's also going to say, Hey, I love that. That feels really good. That's what it says to me every time I do Pilates, hey, I love that. Keep doing that. Um, and then if I'm doing something like jumpy burpees, I am sorry. You cannot pay me to do a burpee. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like my body's like, stop it, stop it. I hate that for my wrists. I don't like the jumpy jumpy. No, no, no, no. Listen to your body as you are working out, as you're exercising, and you're gonna start to hear your body either sing or get really mad at you. And you just make it as simple as that. Like just follow your bliss, follow your joy and exercise. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, I like what you say about the the tactile, like the tapping, or I love the breath work in Pilates. I go through the breath a lot and I focus a lot on the breathing because it when the clients come to me and they're all all over the place, it's like, okay, we'll start with breathing. We start with slow movement, let's let's calm everything down, and then we'll go from there. And and I've more often than not, people open up like a flower. They they share with me things that were on their minds and they were not gonna tell anybody, or they have these emotions and they start crying as they go through their exercises. And I said, No, this is a good thing. You finally in touch with what you want. Yes, the thinking is great and you're the planning and peeling back and all of that, but then you take action to that. Once you're you exhaled, you're ready to go.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Yeah, I can totally relate to that. That's actually why I went on to become a dietitian and a therapist because I was like, I'm practically your dietitian, your therapist right now, although I need way more education for this. Uh, but I I think that that's true. It's like once you start to do a Pilates routine, you're so connected to your breath that you cannot help but become regulated. And that is, I think, so important as you're exercising. So even if your exercise is, I love running, get connected to your breath and then ask your body how it's feeling. If it's starting to hurt, you know, your body's like, hey, you gotta slow down. You need to stop. Whatever the exercise is, connect to your breath, everyone, and you'll see and you'll hear your body talking to you. And I invite everybody to listen to that because once you do, you become your own best expert. So, Heike, how can people find you? What are all your handles and ways to find you and connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 26:40

People can find me everywhere with my name, Heike Yates, H-E-I-K-E-Y-A-T-E-S, anywhere on social media, you'll find me most often on Instagram, on YouTube, and on LinkedIn. And my book, Pursue Your Spark, can be found also in any bookstore, either in softcover, in ebook version, or also as audiobook if you want to take me on a walk with you. So you can find me everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

I love that. And I think uh Instagram and YouTube and LinkedIn are the most fun of all the socials. So I'm I'm most active on those as well. Well, Heike, it's been such a pleasure to meet you. I'm so glad to have you on my podcast, and I hope everybody goes and learns a little bit more about Heike so that they can pursue their own spark. Thank you everyone for tuning in. I'm looking forward to the next exciting conversation, and I hope you join me next time. 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. Tune in next time and evolve with us.