Lifting Weights vs. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for Fat Loss Over 40 | Ep 278
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Can strength training alone help optimize your hormones after 40, or do you need homone replacement therapy (HRT)?
Learn what the research actually says about how lifting weights impacts your endocrine system and body composition.
Whether you're dealing with menopause, andropause, or age-related changes, discover how to make informed decisions about combining lifestyle interventions with medical approaches for optimal results.
Main Takeaways:
Strength training influences hormones through multiple pathways beyond just building muscle
Your body becomes more efficient at using hormones through proper training
The type and intensity of training matters significantly for hormone optimization
Context is crucial when deciding between training alone or combining with HRT
Consistency and progression are key for long-term hormonal health
Timestamps:
00:01 - Can strength training really impact your hormones after 40?
03:47 - Breaking down what happens to hormones with age
08:29 - Three key pathways strength training affects hormones
13:21 - Systems optimization approach for hormone health
17:32 - Three scenarios for combining strength training and HRT
21:04 - Research on maintaining youthful hormone profiles
22:45 - Closing remarks and community invitation
Should You Lift Weights or Use HRT for Fat Loss Over 40?
As you move into your 40s and beyond, changes in hormones, metabolism, and body composition make fat loss and muscle maintenance harder than they used to be. The common advice? Get on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or lift weights—or both. But which approach is best for optimizing body composition, and can strength training alone be enough to regulate hormones?
Let’s break down the science behind lifting weights, hormonal changes, and fat loss to help you decide what works best for you.
How Aging Affects Your Hormones and Body Composition
As we age, hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and growth hormone naturally decline, leading to:
✅ More fat storage, especially around the midsection
✅ Muscle loss (sarcopenia), making it harder to stay strong and lean
✅ Decreased insulin sensitivity, making it easier to gain fat
✅ Higher cortisol levels, increasing stress-related fat accumulation
For women, menopause causes a steep decline in estrogen, which leads to a slower metabolism and increased visceral fat storage. For men, testosterone gradually declines by about 1% per year after 30, which can reduce muscle mass and fat-burning capacity.
With these changes, the way you approach fitness and nutrition needs to evolve.
Can Strength Training Improve Hormones and Help with Fat Loss?
The short answer? Yes. Strength training is one of the most effective tools for managing hormones naturally. Research shows that lifting weights influences hormones in three key ways:
1. It Increases Hormone Receptor Sensitivity
Even if your hormone levels decline with age, your body can become more efficient at using them. Strength training enhances receptor sensitivity to hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and insulin, meaning you get more benefits from what’s already in your system.
2. It Triggers an Acute Surge in Anabolic Hormones
Heavy compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, and presses stimulate:
🔺 Growth hormone – Can increase up to 400% during training, supporting muscle growth and fat metabolism.
🔺 Testosterone – Rises significantly even in postmenopausal women, improving lean mass retention.
🔺 Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) – Helps with tissue repair and regeneration.
3. It Improves Insulin Sensitivity
Muscle tissue acts as a storage site for glucose, reducing insulin resistance and making fat loss easier. Strength training increases GLUT4 transporters, helping your body store and use carbohydrates efficiently—without spiking insulin.
Should You Do Strength Training Instead of HRT? Or Both?
The answer depends on your symptoms, hormone levels, and goals. Let’s look at three scenarios:
Scenario 1: Mild Symptoms & Body Composition Changes
If your primary concerns are muscle loss, slower fat loss, and mild energy dips, start with strength training first. Give it three to six months while tracking changes in:
✔ Muscle tone and strength
✔ Fat distribution
✔ Energy and recovery levels
If these improve, you may not need HRT at all or might choose a lower dose if you decide to go that route.
Scenario 2: Severe Menopausal Symptoms or Significant Hormone Deficiencies
If you're experiencing hot flashes, extreme fatigue, major muscle loss, or severe metabolic decline, combining HRT with strength training is likely the best approach.
HRT can restore optimal hormone levels, while lifting ensures those hormones are effectively utilized for muscle retention, fat loss, and metabolic health.
Scenario 3: Already on HRT and Want to Maximize Results
If you’re already using testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), estrogen therapy, or bioidentical HRT, strength training will enhance the benefits and may even allow for a lower dose over time.
Many individuals on HRT find that adding a structured strength program improves their results dramatically by boosting muscle mass, fat loss, and overall energy levels.
Best Strength Training Approach for Hormone Optimization
To get the biggest hormonal response from lifting, follow these science-backed training principles:
✅ Train 3-5 times per week – Focus on progressive overload and consistent resistance training.
✅ Prioritize compound movements – Squats, deadlifts, presses, pull-ups, and rows engage the most muscle fibers.
✅ Use heavy weights with proper intensity – Work in the 4-8 rep range for big lifts and 8-12 reps for accessory exercises.
✅ Rest 2-5 minutes between sets – Allows for maximum strength output and hormone response.
✅ Track your biofeedback – Monitor strength progression, recovery, sleep, and mood to see how lifting impacts your hormones over time.
The Bottom Line: Strength Training Should Be Your Foundation
Whether you choose HRT or not, lifting weights should be part of your strategy. It preserves muscle, improves metabolism, and supports hormone health, helping you stay strong and lean well into your 40s, 50s, and beyond.
If you're on the fence about HRT, start with strength training first, track your progress, and then reassess if additional intervention is needed. Either way, the barbell should be your best friend for longevity, strength, and body composition.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
Should you lift weights? Should you get hormone replacement therapy? Should you do both for fat loss over 40, men and women? If you're wondering if lifting weights alone can make a big difference in your hormone levels, we're going to talk about that today. I'm answering a question from our Facebook group about optimizing hormones and body composition after 40, and you'll discover what the research actually says about strength training's impact on your endocrine system.
Philip Pape: 0:26
Whether you're dealing with menopause, andropause or any other age-related changes, the goal is to you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are answering an excellent question from Angela L in our Facebook group, and she asked can strength training impact hormones, specifically in menopausal women? Does strength training provide benefits in production and or regulation of hormones that can help with fat loss? Is strength training a good first step before trying HRT? Now, the reason I love this question is it gets to the heart of something that I deal with constantly in nutrition coaching people wondering whether lifestyle interventions like strength training lifting weights are enough, or do they still need medical approaches like hormone replacement therapy or HRT? Now the research here reveals some, I'll say, fascinating, overlooked connections between resistance training and hormone regulation that we don't talk about a lot and I wanted to dig deeper into that subject today. So, angela, your timing couldn't be better, because I've got lots of clients that navigate this exact challenge and it's been really amazing to see their ability to improve their hormone levels without HRT or in complement with HRT, and we're going to cover that today Before we get into it.
Philip Pape: 2:04
If you find value in some of these discussions based on evidence and you want to connect with others, like Angela who asked the question, who are on their strength training journey, join our free Facebook group. Just search for Wits and Weights in Facebook or click the link in the show notes. It's really an amazing community we're at about a thousand now are really trying to grow. People sharing their experiences, asking great questions. We do a biweekly live. I share lots of free resources. Sometimes I just do ad hoc videos and lives to help you out with specific topics and help each other succeed. So click the link in the show notes to join the Facebook group and I will see that. Come in and I'll approve you and you can join the group.
Philip Pape: 2:43
All right, so let me show you how we're going to break this down today I want you to think of your body as a complex system with multiple interconnected feedback loops. Right, we've talked about this concept before. It's the kind of thing we deal with in engineering. We've got hormone production, receptor sensitivity, tissue response, and all of these work together. If you can understand the connections, we then can optimize the system instead of just focusing on one single component. So I'm going to start by laying out exactly what happens to our hormones as we age, because then that sets up everything else we'll discuss. It's probably why Angela asked the question and then I'm going to show you specific ways that strength training itself influences these hormone systems. And that's, I think, where it gets interesting. Even I always learn something new when I do this research behind the scenes. And then, finally, I'll give you a practical framework, as always, for deciding whether strength training alone might be enough for you or if combining it with HRT makes more sense.
Philip Pape: 3:47
So first let's talk about what happens to our hormones after 40. And for some of you, it might start happening in your 30s. You know, the period of perimenopause for women can start in your 30s. Everybody's a little bit different and of course, men can have a decline in their hormones as well, predominantly testosterone. I'm going to get a little bit technical here, which I think you guys like, but I do like to nerd out. I hope you do too, but I think it's important to understand this.
Philip Pape: 4:13
So, for women entering perimenopause and menopause, what we see is the major change in two key hormones estrogen and progesterone. Now most people know about the drop in estrogen, but what usually gets missed is it's not just the having less estrogen, it's about how that decline affects your metabolic system, your metabolism. The research shows that when estrogen drops, especially a form called estradiol, three major things happen. First, your body starts storing more visceral fat, that is, the dangerous fat around your organs. Your muscle tissue becomes harder to maintain, and so that leads to accelerated sarcopenia or muscle loss. And then your insulin sensitivity also decreases, making it easier to gain fat and then harder to lose fat. And so I see this play out a lot with clients, and we talk about this in the Physique University. We just had one of our live calls and I showed the timeline.
Philip Pape: 5:14
That happens when you get into peripost-menopause, and again, this is going to apply to men and women to an extent, but predominantly women right here, and clients are frustrated. Women are frustrated, right Because you are eating the same way you've always had. But then you start gaining weight, and not just anywhere, you're getting it around your belly right. So we hear the phrases menopause, belly, belly fat. And then your doctor says, even if you have a halfway decent doctors, they might mention HRT. I know a lot of doctors won't even mention it. That's a whole separate discussion.
Philip Pape: 5:44
So HRT hormone, bioidentical, hormone replacement therapy and you either start down that path or you're like well, before I do that, let me try some other approaches, some lifestyle approaches and clients that come to me. Either Either they start on HRT because they've addressed an issue, a deficiency, or they haven't done it yet and they want to see if some other things will normalize their hormones first, to see where the real issues lie, if there are any. So that's kind of where I'm getting to with this episode today, and what I usually see with women in that situation is women are storing more fat. They're responding differently to their usual diet and exercise routine that they've done for years. What worked in the past no longer works now. And it's not that you're broken, it's not that, like all of physics has changed, it's not that you're doing anything wrong, it's that the context has evolved and we have to evolve with it.
Philip Pape: 6:38
And for many of us, for many of you listening and watching, when you were younger, you could kind of get away with more types of training and types of eating and your body would be cool with it. And so then in your brain you're like, okay, this works, but in reality you were just delaying the inevitable. Now, for men, the changes are, I'll say, more gradual, but they're still very impactful. I mean, you know, men are really affected by these, uh, this situation as well, because around age 30, testosterone starts to drop roughly at 1% per year on average, and you know that might not sound like much, but if you compound it over 10, 20 years, you're looking at pretty significant changes. And then, by the age of 50, many men have testosterone levels that are like a quarter, you know 25% lower than their peak. And so what's interesting is for both men and women, they see growth hormone drop and IGF-1 drop with age, and so those are like your repair and regeneration hormones, if you will.
Philip Pape: 7:36
You know, when they decline, everything from your ability to maintain muscle, to metabolize fat, becomes more challenging. It's like stacking on top of each other. Then there's another hormone that tends to be a boogeyman but it does increase with age, and that is cortisol. Cortisol, the stress hormone, and that can affect your body composition. If it's chronically high and higher, cortisol then leads to increased belly fat storage and it could actually break down muscle tissue. And then the, of course, physical and psychological stress of aging just more obligations, and you're older and there's lots of things going on in your life. They drive cortisol up just when we would hope that it's more regulated. So I get it right, I'm 44. I'm just experiencing a little bit of this now. Fortunately, I started lifting about five years ago and I've noticed how beneficial that has been to a lot of different things, including testosterone. Uh, but we're going to get into that now.
Philip Pape: 8:29
How does strength training influence the hormone systems? Because Angela's question was um and by the way, if I sound a little hyper, it's because I've just had my coffee but strength training, um, the? The question is can you just lift weights and will that, you know, fix your hormones, so to speak? And this is where I think, like the technical engineering background kind of helps the systems thinking so, when you lift weights, you are, yes, building muscle, but you're also creating a cascade of hormonal responses. It's like you're tuning multiple control systems in your body simultaneously together. Right, they're not independent variables, they're all working together, and the research here is pretty robust and also pretty amazing. So I reviewed some of the studies. There is a 2022 meta-analysis, which is a study of studies, and they looked at 50 studies and they found that strength training influences hormone regulation through three main pathways, and I'm going to break them down. The first one is that it improves hormone receptor sensitivity.
Philip Pape: 9:31
So, even if your hormone levels are lower, your body becomes more efficient at using what you have. So it's kind of like upgrading your hormone software. Right, even as the hardware changes. The hardware's evolving, but now you're upgrading the software to kind of keep up. It's older hardware but newer software, and I've seen this with male clients. A lot of my male clients are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, so you start to see this around the 50s, especially dealing with lower testosterone, and some men are like jumping at the chance to go on TRT and others don't want to go there yet because they want to see like, is there something else I can do? And so we focus on a structured strength program keeping the stress levels down. Right, you're not necessarily going to the gym seven days a week and what you sometimes find when you lift is that total T doesn't necessarily go up. It could, but free T, the amount available for your body to use, can improve. We see this a lot with those situations where you're more efficient with your testosterone, which is it's emboldening. It's empowering to think that, because then you know it's not, you're not just trying to crank up your T level, you're trying to better use it right, and then your energy improves, you start having better symptoms, maybe building muscle more easily and have improvements in your body composition, even though your hormone level, your total, hasn't changed that much. So the sensitivity is important to understand.
Philip Pape: 10:55
The second. Well, okay, I think I might cover this later, but you think of how insulin sensitivity increases when you lift weights. So apply that to any hormone in a good way. The second pathway is the acute hormone response, right. So, like the in the moment, short-term hormone response. When you perform heavy compound movements, right, like the squat, like the deadlift, your body produces a surge of anabolic hormones. Growth hormone can increase by up to 400% during an intense training session. Testosterone rises significantly Even in menopausal women, who have a much lower baseline testosterone but, as I learned from Karen Martell, that is still the highest hormone in your body. Like you have the most of that of any hormone, even though it's much lower than men.
Philip Pape: 11:44
The acute response from lifting helps maintain your muscle mass and your metabolic health. So it's super important. But wait, there's more right, because I mentioned cortisol. Strength training helps regulate cortisol, the stress hormone, because and the irony is that when you lift weights it causes an acute cortisol spike during the workout, but over time it actually improves your body's stress response system, kind of like how it raises your blood pressure during the workout but it actually gives you lower overall blood pressure and metabolic health. Studies show that regular strength training can lower baseline cortisol levels and improve how your body handles stress hormones, and I think I touched on this a little bit in another episode about how just being a lifter helps your body handle lots of things better stress, alcohol, whatever Very important concept to remember.
Philip Pape: 12:33
And then the third pathway is about insulin sensitivity. So I promised I would get to that. Your skeletal muscle is the largest glucose sink in your body. It's this nice huge pool to store glucose. The more muscle you have, the better your body then handles blood sugar. So strength training increases something called GLUT4, glut4 transporters, and that helps shuttle glucose into your muscle cells without needing as much insulin. And so that is massive for fat loss as well, because better insulin sensitivity means better nutrient partitioning and then better metabolic health. It all works together. It's really, really cool. I hope you find this stuff as fascinating as I do. So that's kind of how strength training impacts hormones through three pathways that are very important.
Philip Pape: 13:21
Now what do we do with this information? So we're going to use what I call systems optimization approach, right? Systems? We talk about systems the same way we would tune an engineering system, right? That's where I come from. So you need, I'll say, four key components to tune your system. You need the input right, these are going to be your training parameters for your lifting. You need the control that's going to be progressive overload and managing recovery. You're going to need feedback. So these are your like, writing down what you're doing in the gym, your performance metrics, as well as your biofeedback and then output. So how does your body composition change and how do your hormone markers change? And, by the way, in the feedback, that can also include the blood work and the hormone panels as well. You may not need to go to that level, honestly, it could be just symptom driven by biofeedback, but just keep that in mind.
Philip Pape: 14:14
So for the training parameters, research shows that the sweet spot for hormones is going to be what we talk about all the time, something like three to five sessions per week, prioritizing compound movements, big heavy lifts that use multiple joints. But it doesn't always have to be in the heavy rep range, which I would say is like four to six and four to eight. It could also you know, you could definitely have some accessory work in there in the eight to 12 rep range. More importantly is the mechanical tension and depends on what your goals are, but some, some combination of those. You then have to have progressive overload consistently applied. What does that mean? That means you are always pushing yourself to your current limit so that you can adapt and create a new limit that's stronger over time. So if you were able to lift you know, 135 pounds for your squat this session, you might lift 140 next time. Or if you're able to get eight reps at a certain weight, you would get 10 reps at a certain weight, some combination of that, which we're not going to get into super great detail today, but I have other episodes about it. I also have some guides on that.
Philip Pape: 15:14
Okay, and then you know, interestingly, when we look at what types of movements create a large hormonal response, it's going to be the ones that use more muscle mass, more of your system, more of your body, the bigger, the ones that recruit more muscle fibers. So squat, deadlifts, um presses, rows, pull-ups, lat pull-downs, really any compound lift you can think of. And then, of course, you can branch out into other movements to compliment that. So it's yet another reason to lift, lift heavy and use compound lifts and use all the things we talk about, as opposed to the YouTube workouts that change every time, that have like 20 reps. That are circuits. You know the circuit training yeah, it's got to be heavy where you're taking long rest periods, you're in fairly lower rep ranges and you're progressing over time.
Philip Pape: 16:02
My female clients who stick to those types of programs are the ones that have massive success and they find that this cascade of hormones leads to lots of other benefits, including fat loss. It makes it so much easier. The rest periods I mentioned that they matter more than most people realize. Um, the rest periods I mentioned that they matter more than most people realize. Um, if you're trying to maximize strength and muscle, you need longer rest periods, but it also doesn't hurt to have shorter rest periods for endurance, for work capacity, for even for hormone output. There is some correlation. So I like to mix both right. I like to have big lifts where you're resting three to five minutes and then a couple accessories after that where you might rest anywhere from rest anywhere from 30 seconds to two or three minutes. So that's just training in general.
Philip Pape: 16:47
The question here now getting back to Angela's original question is should you do strength training instead of HRT or should you use both? It depends. This is where context becomes really important, because this is I'm not a hormone. I'll call it expert. I'm not a hormone coach. This is not a hormone podcast, but I listen to a ton of information about, and research a ton of information about hormones, and I'm always working with clients on trying to, I'll say, not interpret their hormone panels, because that's technically outside my scope of practice, but take the interpretation and then apply it to okay, what are we doing for our training and our nutrition that can be improved? That might then translate back to an improvement in hormones. And the research shows.
Philip Pape: 17:32
I'll say three scenarios that you might fall under. The first one is if your symptoms are moderate and primarily related to body composition so increased fat storage, increased muscle loss I think starting with strength training is the best thing you can do. It's very accessible, right. You can literally start this week. You don't have to hunt around for a good medical practitioner and I mean it's a whole can of worms when you talk hormone replacement therapy. Good medical practitioner, and I mean it's a whole can of worms when you talk hormone replacement therapy. And I would give it three to six months with a before and after, with everything you care about. So if that means hormones, get a hormone panel, maybe work with a hormone therapist, but then see what happens with just the strength training as its own variable. It's good to know that for yourself because that'll give you the confidence that a lot of this is in your control. Okay, and that doesn't preclude you then using HRT anyway. After that. We're only talking a few months.
Philip Pape: 18:25
And I say this because I've had a lot of clients who have these perimenopausal symptoms, right, and some of them have, like you know, the hot flashes and all the symptoms, I mean the laundry list of 10 to 15 symptoms that start to occur, and they come to me for lifestyle changes, and so sometimes what they're doing is a lot of cardio, a lot of um, high rep work. Maybe it's not consistent, maybe they're not progressing, they have a lot of stress, maybe they're not sleeping as enough enough, maybe they're not walking as much. So there's usually a lot of low hanging fruit, and oftentimes you're so overwhelmed with life or you've you've tried so many things or you've paid so many coaches you just feel lost or like you've hit a wall. And, frankly, I get men in this situation too, where they keep jumping around diets. It's like I'm gonna do carnivore, that's gonna fix it. Nope, I'm gonna switch up my lifting to this thing where I don't have to irritate my shoulder at all, and then I'm gonna make progress. Nope, something has to change. You know, something has to change. And so when we take the stress out, we focus on sleep, we focus on recovery, and then we have a reasonable level of intensity and volume for your training right, which for a lot of women means getting stronger, not the circuit stuff. Body composition starts to improve and then the symptoms start to improve, and then, when you get blood work, you notice your hormones are improving as well Not always, but often and then it becomes manageable and then you can say, okay, if I still need HRT, I could at least target it. So all of that was the first scenario.
Philip Pape: 19:47
The second scenario is if you've got severe menopausal symptoms so debilitating hot flashes, significant bone density loss you may need to jump right into doing both Strength training with HRT, right, and frankly, a good medical practitioner who's an expert on hormones should be able to tell you that hey, you're far off the range that you should be on this thing and so we need intervention and even lifting, and lifestyle isn't going to fix that. But a lot of people are kind of on the hairy edge and it's because the lifestyle isn't great and we fix the lifestyle and then everything comes back normal. And then guess what you don't have to do HRT, at least for a while, or you don't have to do as much, or you don't have to do as many different hormones. And then deal with potential you know potential symptoms from that, which, again, I'm not um, I'm not dissing HRT at all. I think it's awesome. A third I think it's awesome.
Philip Pape: 20:41
Third scenario if you're already on HRT, if you're already on it, which a lot of my clients come to me having gone through a hormone therapist or you know I mentioned Kara Martell before and others like her working with her and then they'll come to me. The proper strength training, then, can enhance the benefits of the HRT, and sometimes you end up finding that you need to reduce it. People who strength train regularly respond better to hormone therapy as well, so sometimes it makes sense to do both together. All right, hopefully I haven't gotten off on too many tangents.
Philip Pape: 21:04
But to sum all this up, in general, the research shows that people who maintain consistent strength training through their 40s and 50s often maintain hormone profiles that are closer to their younger years. And that makes sense because physique-wise, body composition-wise, strength-wise, I've seen people turn back the clock 10, 20 years because they improved their lifestyle. Right? There was a recent study that found that resistance-strained individuals over 50 had growth hormone and testosterone levels which averaged 30 to 40% higher than their sedentary peers. Right? So we can't stop the hormonal changes, but we can significantly influence how our bodies adapt to them and are efficient with them by incorporating lifting. There's no reason not to do it, I hope, is the message you've taken from this. So, as we wrap up, remember your body is very adaptive. No matter what age you are, it's always going to adapt to what you give it, and so, if you choose to pursue HRT or not, you should always have strength training in the foundation of your lifestyle.
Philip Pape: 22:04
It's the one intervention that improves every marker of health and fitness. We care about Every single one. There's no downside whatsoever. The key is doing it right, being consistent, using progression right. You don't have to be a power lifter. You don't have to be a bodybuilder. You're not going to get bulky. You don't have to gain weight. You can gain a tiny bit of weight, but it'll be mostly muscle. That's a whole separate topic. You just have to challenge your muscles and push the limits right. The weights have to feel heavy. You've got to be training hard. You've got to be moving and growing. Start where you are, progress systemically and then let those compounding effects of training accumulate and improve your home run profile over time.
Philip Pape: 22:45
All right, if today's episode resonated with you, if you want to connect with others like Angela optimizing their health through strength training, join our Facebook group. Search for Wits and Weights on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. Share your wins. With training, you can ask questions, become part of the community. Have fun. That's what we do. We have fun. We're positive. Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your body's systems get stronger and more resilient with every training session, no matter your age. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.
