27 Oct Shamed on Set, Skinny Culture’s Comeback, and the Truth About Lifting, Calories, and Cortisol in Midlife with Jill Brown
Have you ever scrolled for ten minutes and walked away more confused than when you started? One post tells you to lift heavy or don’t bother. The next says cortisol is the reason your belly won’t budge. Another says you need to eat your body weight in protein, and the one after that is a 25-year-old telling you a waist trainer changed her life.
If you’re a midlife woman trying to figure out what’s real in the world of fitness trends, I want you to hear this first: you are not doing it wrong. The information overload is real, and it’s harder than ever to separate science from marketing.
I’ve been in this industry long enough to remember fitness DVDs, infomercial sets, and the era when every magazine image was airbrushed. I’ve seen trends come and go, and I’ve watched women get caught in the crossfire every single time. That’s exactly why I wanted to bring Jill Brown onto Midlife Conversations.
Whether you’re on a GLP-1, lifting weights five days a week, loving your Pilates class, or just trying to figure out where to start, this conversation is for you. There’s no judgment here, only clarity.
Who Is Jill Brown? A Midlife Fitness Expert Before the Influencer Era
Jill and I first met years ago on the set of an infomercial for one of those bouncy fitness gadgets. She was the credentialed expert in the room, and she still is.
Jill started teaching fitness classes in college after a gym manager noticed how quickly she was progressing and offered to pay for her certification. That opportunity launched a career that includes personal training, master spinning and master step instruction, and traveling the world training other instructors. She went on to become a Precision Nutrition coach and a national board certified health and wellness coach, a credential that allows her to work with people managing metabolic conditions on the behavior change side of health.
At 59, Jill is one of the original voices who helped make exercise mainstream for women. Long before everyone at the gym became a fitness influencer, she was doing the real work. She also practices what she preaches, which is rarer than you’d think.
We reconnected recently on Instagram when she posted about being body shamed in the fitness industry. I commented because I had lived through almost the exact same thing.
Body Shaming in the Fitness Industry: The Moment That Stays With You
About 15 years ago, Jill was hired as one of the background exercisers for a major home workout series. She was strong and muscular, wearing a crop top and shorts. When she bent over during filming, a small roll of skin showed above her waistband.
The cameras stopped. She was pulled aside to wardrobe and handed a longer top. Nobody had to explain why.
Jill shared that she was mortified, and that once someone points out a flaw like that, you never stop seeing it. She even wonders whether that moment is part of why she has kept pushing to stay leaner with age, at a stage of life when women are often meant to carry a bit more.
Hearing her story took me right back to my own. On the very first fitness DVD I ever appeared in, I had visible abs, but I was a mom and had a little extra skin. A producer stopped filming, zeroed in on my stomach, and said it needed to be fixed. What came up for me wasn’t anger. It was the belief that I had failed and that something was wrong with me.
That’s the part I want you to sit with. The conditioning runs deep. And when women like us were on magazine covers and in workout videos with every imperfection edited away, we were unknowingly sending other women the same message: you have to be perfect too.
How Skinny Culture Conditioned a Generation of Midlife Women
If you’re in midlife now, you grew up surrounded by diet culture. Many of us watched our mothers count calories and drink diet soda. We saw cigarette ads that equated slim with sexy. Fitness eventually became more glamorous for women, but in a lot of ways it was the same pressure repackaged.
Jill pointed out an important difference between then and now. Back then, Photoshopped images lived in magazines. You flipped through Vogue, put it down, and went on with your day. Today, the filtered highlight reel lives in your pocket 24 hours a day.
The body ideal keeps shifting too. We moved from the waif look of the 90s to a fit, athletic aesthetic. Then came a few years of the health at every size movement. Then GLP-1 medications arrived, and as Jill described it, skinny culture came roaring back. Now we’re seeing women in their 20s and 30s achieve fitness model physiques in a fraction of the time it once took, which only skews body image further for everyone watching.
So if you’ve reached midlife feeling exhausted, confused, and carrying years of self-criticism, that’s not a personal failing. It’s the result of decades of conditioning.
GLP-1 Medications and Muscle Loss: What Women Need to Know Before Starting
Let me be clear, and Jill was clear too: this is not an anti-GLP-1 conversation. Jill has clients on these medications for obesity, and she believes they can be lifesaving. I agree that they can be life-changing for severe obesity and diabetes, and there’s promising research in areas like heart health and inflammation.
What concerns both of us is how they’re being used and what women aren’t being told.
Jill explained that anyone starting a GLP-1 needs to decide early whether they plan to stay on it long term. If not, the nutrition, sleep, stress, and exercise habits still have to be built, because without them the weight tends to return when the medication stops. She also noted that plateaus are common, which can lead to repeated dose increases. In her experience fielding questions during her live Q&As, very few women had been warned about this.
The bigger issue is muscle. Rapid weight loss tends to take muscle with it, while slower loss is more likely to come mostly from fat. Jill shared a story about a woman who approached her after losing 35 pounds, wanting to know what to do about her arms. Her advice to anyone considering a GLP-1 is simple: start lifting weights before you start the medication. Building muscle in your 50s after it’s been lost takes real time.
I’d add one more thing. If your appetite is so suppressed that you’re barely eating, you can’t build muscle no matter how hard you train. Jill put it perfectly: lifting sends the signal to build, but without enough protein, it’s like showing up to a construction site with no bricks.
The good news? It is never too late. Jill referenced landmark research showing that people in their 90s can build measurable muscle with strength training. Your body is always willing to respond when you give it the right signal and the right fuel.
How Much Protein Do Midlife Women Really Need?
Protein advice online is a perfect example of how a good idea becomes confusing. Many women see the guideline to eat their body weight in grams of protein. For a woman with significant weight to lose, eating her current body weight in protein may not make sense, and it can crowd out the other food groups she needs.
My approach with women in that situation is to build each meal around a solid portion of protein rather than chasing a big number. Jill’s perspective is that protein should be prioritized first, especially while losing weight, because a calorie deficit without enough protein puts your hard-earned muscle at risk. We’re really saying the same thing: protect your muscle, and don’t let protein math overwhelm you.
Calorie Deficit Not Working? Here’s What Might Be Going On
This is one of the most common frustrations I hear, and Jill hears it daily too: I’m in a calorie deficit and I’m not losing weight.
Jill’s view is that a calorie deficit is personal. The number an app or formula gives you is an estimate, not a guarantee. If you aren’t losing weight, from her perspective, you haven’t yet found your own deficit.
She also challenged some of today’s most popular explanations for weight loss resistance. In her view, research shows people with insulin resistance, high cortisol, or hypothyroidism can still lose fat when they’re truly in a deficit, even if their metabolism runs slower. She sees cortisol and insulin as factors in where fat is stored and how much we eat, especially through stress eating, rather than the root cause on their own.
Now, here’s where my lens comes in, and Jill agreed: not all calories are created equal. Your body doesn’t count the calories you eat. It counts the calories you absorb.
Protein costs your body a significant amount of energy just to digest. High-fiber foods feed your gut bacteria, so part of those calories never reach you. Rice that’s been cooked and cooled develops resistant starch, which lowers the calories you absorb from it. Highly processed foods, on the other hand, are absorbed almost completely.
Jill shared a great example of two friends on the same program, eating the same number of calories and doing the same workouts. One was eating mostly processed and fast food. The other was cooking at home with whole foods. Same number in the food log, very different results. Add in differences in gut health and everyday movement, like whether you fold your own laundry or have help, and it’s easy to see why two people can get completely different outcomes.
Beyond the scale, whole foods deliver phytonutrients and antioxidants that support your skin, hair, and long-term disease prevention. That’s a benefit no calorie counter will ever show you.
Can You Out-Exercise a Bad Diet?
Jill learned this one the hard way. She grew up in Queens in a family that rarely cooked. Breakfast was sugary cereal, lunch was packaged snacks and sandwiches on white bread, and dinner was fast food or deli takeout. She watched her mother pass away young from preventable diseases, which is a big part of why she chose a life in fitness.
For years, Jill believed she could out-train her diet. She was strong and muscular in her 30s, but it wasn’t until she seriously studied nutrition around 40 that she became truly lean.
She referenced metabolism researcher Herman Pontzer, who has estimated that someone who only changes their exercise, without changing anything else, might lose around five pounds of fat in a year. Exercise matters enormously for your health and longevity. It just can’t do the job of nutrition alone.
Midlife Fitness Trends Rated by an Expert
I couldn’t resist putting Jill on the spot with some of the biggest fitness trends midlife women ask me about. Here’s her take.
Elliptical Machines
Fine if you truly can’t tolerate impact. But if you can walk, Jill prefers incline walking on a treadmill. Because your feet never leave the elliptical pedals, it does little to stimulate bone, which matters a lot for women facing osteopenia or osteoporosis.
CrossFit
Not a favorite for midlife women unless you have an excellent coach. Many coaches are young and may not understand the needs of a midlife female body. Jill shared that a physical therapist once told her CrossFit was great for his business.
Pilates
Jill is a certified Pilates instructor and loves it for mobility, flexibility, and core strength. Her spine doctor is a fan too. But Pilates alone has limits when it comes to building strength and muscle size, so she sees it as a great once-a-week addition rather than your entire program.
Waist Trainers
A hard no. All they do is shift your organs around.
Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Training
A big yes, especially if you’re recovering from injury or surgery. Jill has used BFR bands for years, including around her hip replacement. They make lighter weights feel much heavier, which brings your muscles to fatigue faster.
Barefoot and Minimalist Shoes
Jill believes most people would benefit from barefoot training. A former client of hers was about to undergo back surgery when she noticed an odd movement pattern in his foot. He had broken his ankle years earlier and never rehabbed it. A gait specialist confirmed his back pain was coming from that old ankle injury. Everything is connected, and foot problems can travel up the chain to your knees, hips, and back.
Cold Plunges and Cryotherapy
Great for building your tolerance for discomfort, but Jill doesn’t consider them a fitness or fat loss tool. Here’s the part most people miss: she advises against cold plunging right before or right after strength training, because the inflammation from a workout is part of how muscle repairs and grows. Wait a few hours. Sauna, on the other hand, is fine anytime.
Do Women Need to Lift Heavy? Strength vs. Muscle Size
This was one of my favorite parts of the conversation, because it clears up so much confusion.
Jill explained that muscle growth doesn’t respond to the number on the dumbbell. It responds to fatigue. You can build muscle with 5-pound, 15-pound, or 50-pound weights, as long as you take the muscle close to fatigue.
Strength is a separate goal. If you need to lift a 50-pound suitcase into an overhead bin, carry a grandchild, or move a television, you need to train to lift that kind of weight.
My take has always been similar. Many women aren’t challenging themselves enough, repeating the same three sets of 12 for years. But blindly following an influencer’s heavy lifts can lead straight to injury. What you need is progression and intensity that’s right for you, starting from wherever you are today.
Why Injuries Increase in Perimenopause and Menopause
In my late 40s and early 50s, I had injury after injury: a ruptured disc, a torn bicep, a broken foot. Every one was on my right side. I couldn’t understand it, because I knew this stuff.
Jill explained that dropping estrogen during perimenopause and menopause is strongly linked to joint issues and injuries, because our tissues change. Most women are never told to expect this.
Then there are the muscles we default to. Many women squat by bending their knees first instead of hinging at the hips, which means the glutes never really engage. Jill described your body like a tree: your glutes are the roots, and your spine is the trunk growing out of them. Without stable roots, the trunk takes the strain. Weak glutes often lead the hamstrings or quads to overcompensate, and that’s a common path to back pain.
That was me. Back in my early 30s, I was getting regular cortisone shots for hip pain. Nobody asked why my hip hurt. Looking back, it was high heels and underdeveloped glutes, and masking the pain likely pushed the problem up into my back. And let’s be honest, in the 90s, having a strong backside wasn’t the goal. We tied sweatshirts around our waists.
Jill’s advice: almost everyone has a muscular imbalance, and overuse injuries usually come from small biomechanical errors repeated thousands of times. A few sessions with a physical therapist, which many insurance plans cover, can identify where you’re weak and give you targeted exercises. Then add a little extra work for that weak area a few times a week.
She also cautioned against the fear that follows an injury. It’s natural to become overly cautious, but with the right guidance, you can keep progressing safely.
Jill Brown’s Non-Negotiables for Midlife Women
When I asked Jill for her non-negotiables, here’s what she shared:
- Don’t try to out-exercise your nutrition. Muscle supports longevity, but poor nutrition undoes many of those benefits as heart disease and insulin resistance risks rise after menopause.
- Stay on top of your blood work. In Jill’s words, what you see in the mirror is only a small fraction of your health. You can look fit outside and have a very different story inside.
- See a physical therapist if you’re injured, even for just a few sessions, to learn where you’re weak and what to focus on.
- Eat a balanced diet. Jill emphasized getting essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, and healthy carbohydrates, since your body considers glucose so important it will make it from protein if needed.
- Prioritize sleep and stress management. Poor sleep disrupts hunger hormones and drives sugar cravings. Stress often shows up as stress eating.
Her four pillars are nutrition, fitness, sleep, and stress, and they all feed into one another.
Midlife Fitness Is Always a Practice
The thing I appreciated most was Jill’s reminder at the end: nobody is perfect at fitness, nutrition, sleep, or stress. We’re all practicing. That takes so much pressure off, especially for those of us carrying decades of being told our bodies weren’t good enough.
You don’t need to chase every trend. You need to understand your body, protect your muscle, fuel yourself well, and keep showing up.
The contents of the Midlife Conversations podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider. Some episodes of Midlife Conversations may be sponsored by products or services discussed during the show. The host may receive compensation for such advertisements or if you purchase products through affiliate links mentioned on this podcast.
