What Are the Biggest Health Benefits of Weightlifting for Women?

There are a ton of benefits when it comes to lifting weights and resistance training specifically for women—and a lot of women do not realize everything that comes out of it. Let's talk about it.

Biggest Health Benefits of Weightlifting for Women

1. Balance Your Hormones

One of the first benefits would be helping to balance your hormones and helping to make sure that you have healthy hormones. For women specifically, this is something that we don't necessarily think about. But when you're resistance training, this can influence your hormones greatly—specifically your sex hormones.

As we age, going through pre-menopause and menopause, estrogen levels tend to decline, which is normal? That's a normal part of aging. But research shows us that lifting weights can actually help to manage those estrogen levels and keep them in a good place. And also, it's important to realize that testosterone is something that will decline as well. And women need testosterone—a lot of people think that testosterone is the male hormone and estrogen, estrogen is the female hormone.

While males have more testosterone than females, females still need testosterone to age gracefully. Lifting weights is a really great way to boost healthy testosterone levels in both men and women.

2. Improve Mental Health

Another benefit would be just improving overall mental health. Lifting weights can also boost other feel-good hormones like dopamine and serotonin in the brain. And that can be super beneficial to just make sure that you're feeling good overall, that your mental health is there.

Weight lifting also helps to reduce stress and makes sure that digestion is in check—helping you to sleep better at night. All of these play a role in your overall health.

3. Aging Better

Another huge benefit to lifting weights is aging better. Typical declines that happen in our health as we age that people think are inevitable. Losing muscle mass, bone health—just lifting weights and resistance training can actually slow that down dramatically, and sometimes even stop it.

I know for my parents, when they started to get into weightlifting, they noticed a huge difference in what they saw in their everyday activities, right. Even just thinking about getting off of the toilet, as you're getting older, that takes having a muscle to be able to sit down and stand up—that's literally a squat that you're doing.

Iif you are building muscle, you're going to age so much more gracefully. And it's going to make everyday things that you're doing in your life a lot easier, and it's just gonna help you live longer.

4. Improve Metabolism

Another benefit to think about is that muscle is actually a very metabolically taxing tissue. The more muscle you have, the better off you're going to be in the long run, especially if you're looking to enhance your body composition, or maybe lose some body fat.

The more muscle you have, the more effortless that fat loss is going to be. Because you're going to be able to eat a little bit more and still be able to get to the results that you're looking for. Because that muscle is super taxing—your body is going to soak up the nutrients that you take in. And if you have more muscle, it's going to go there versus your body fat.

Having more muscle actually means that you can sometimes get away with a little bit more in the sense of maybe eating a little bit more and just in general feeling better overall—specially if you're looking to lose body fat and you're in a deficit. The more muscle you have, the better you're going to feel overall, and the better you're going to look when you actually do lose that body fat.

Especially if you're a woman who is looking to get more toned or have a lean physique—that is going to come from the muscle you have. Building muscle is going to be very important if you're looking to enhance your body composition to any degree.

5. Embrace Empowerment

Last but not least, another huge benefit to lifting weights for women especially is it's very empowering. This is another one that a lot of people don't think about. But when you're lifting weights, there's some sense of empowerment that you get. And that will translate to every other aspect of your life—you're going to feel so much more confident in what you're doing.

In your family, with your friends, with your work—it's just going to cause you to feel more confident and more empowered in what you're doing. And that's a huge benefit that a lot of people don't think about. Those are just a few of the benefits that come out of lifting weights, especially for women. There are tons more but those are the ones that a lot of people tend to not think about.

Want to learn more about the benefits of weightlifting for women? We got you covered? Browse the blog and podcasts to learn everything you need to know, as well as plans to help you get started.