Muscle, Not Thinness: What Women Over 40 Really Need for Long-Term Health

When I thought we were finally talking about health, I realised that the obsession with thinness was coming back.

There is something that deeply bothers me about the way society views the female body. For a large part of our lives, we receive the same message, expressed in different ways: your body needs to conform, it needs to be smaller, thinner, firmer, younger. It feels like there is always a new standard to be achieved.

Social media and the media reinforce this idea daily, turning unrealistic bodies into a reference point and causing us to start seeing our own bodies as a problem to be corrected, rather than as a valuable part of who we are.

And, alongside adult women, we have children with absolutely no protection or boundaries on social media, some as young as 11 or 12, who are also comparing themselves to others. They end up believing, very early on and incorrectly, that their appearance determines their worth. And, as a result, many develop a difficult relationship with food and with their own bodies. I find that very sad.

I grew up in a time when all the women’s magazines said that you needed to have the extremely thin look of the models, eat this and not eat that.

It was the era of the “heroin chic” movement, a 1990s trend that favoured an extremely thin, pale and frail appearance, associated with models such as Kate Moss. She was the beauty icon of the time.

It was part of that culture to spend hours and hours doing aerobic exercise, such as running for a certain amount of time to burn off the calories from a single biscuit! In other words, eat little and exercise a lot.

The problem is that this behaviour is very harmful to women’s hormonal health, and can lead to hypothalamic amenorrhoea, which is the absence of ovulation due to hormonal dysregulation caused by physical and metabolic stress. I myself went through this stress and stopped menstruating for a while. I was doing intense exercise on an empty stomach, only having one cup of black coffee, and eating much less than I needed for the rest of the day. At that time, I didn’t feel well at all. I was always irritable and slept poorly.

I grew up immersed in that whole diet culture and the idea that I needed to look like Kate Moss. As a result, I developed binge eating disorder, which took years of therapy to overcome and coincided with a very difficult period in my health.

And now, all of that is coming back with full force!

Mainly with the help of medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro, it is having an impact on the lives of women who are now over 40, in their early 50s and beyond.

The indiscriminate use of these drugs is causing disordered eating patterns in an older population. It is a reaction to the mindset we had when we were growing up. It is a return to the anxieties of the past, where we were pressured to achieve a certain body standard, where we “needed” to be thin to be “accepted”, to “please”.

Whatever happened to the popular slogan from the 2010s, which advocated for valuing physical strength instead of extreme thinness?

I went through all of this with a lot of suffering, many losses and countless lessons learned. Gradually, I understood that health cannot be measured only by the number on the scale or by the size of the clothes. Health is much more than just surviving in a thin body.

It was exciting to see important discussions emerging about body composition, preserving muscle mass, metabolic health, autonomy and quality of life. The focus seemed to have shifted from the relentless pursuit of thinness to building a stronger, more functional and resilient body. This was a valuable change, because it allowed us to see that the real goal is not to have a certain appearance, but to live with more health, energy and ability.

And now?

It is extremely tiring to revisit all those anxieties, all those demands placed upon us...

It’s incredibly exhausting to be put back in that box, in that idea that we need to have a certain weight, a certain appearance, and be extremely thin.

Why? How does this benefit our well-being, our health?

I always come back to the same question: what do we really gain when we are constantly focused on losing weight?

One thing that comforts me is realising that women today have access to information that was not part of my reality when I was growing up: the importance of muscle strength for health. For a long time, the message was always the same: lose weight, eat less, do more exercise to burn calories.

Today, fortunately, more and more women are discovering the benefits of strength training, not just for aesthetic reasons, but to preserve muscle mass, protect their bones, maintain their independence and go through menopause with more vitality.

Diet culture still makes a lot of noise, but the goal should never be to become thinner; it should be to become stronger and live better in your own body. By thinking this way, we move away from the focus on thinness and direct our attention to physical ability and long-term health.

When I think about healthy longevity, I decide that I will continue to take care of myself physically, mentally and spiritually with wisdom. And I will continue to apply all my life knowledge, combined with all my training in the field of nutrition, to make a difference in the lives of my daughter, my nieces, their friends, and to influence future generations.

Woman, understand this: you shouldn't spend the next few years of your life obsessing over a number on the scale, or trying to fit your body into standards that were never designed to respect your individuality. Your health is much more than that. It lives in your energy, how you wake up every day, and your ability to fully experience each phase of your life.

If you feel you need help during this phase of your life, it will be a privilege to walk alongside you! In my practice, I welcome women who want to take care of their health while respecting their body, their history, and their hormonal cycle. Because, in the end, the goal is to live better and not to fit into a standard created by who knows who.

More of herself!

With love,

Gisele.