AT 43,
SHE PICKED UP A DUMBBELL
Nick Fancher
By Nadia Tuma-Weldon
5 Minute Read
After decades of cardio, yoga and restrictive diet culture, her body stopped responding to her workouts. She chose to get strong, and she’s never looked back.
Forget everything you've been conditioned to think about shrinking or restricting. The most radical thing a woman can do for herself is build a strong, capable body. It took me decades to figure this out.
At the age of 43, I found myself in the gym, picking up a dumbbell. I walked in there without much of a plan, and truthfully, I didn’t really know what I was doing. My journey to lifting was more like a 30-year detour through various trends. I ran, though I hated it. I did spin classes, the elliptical, and the Stairmaster. I tried yoga and HIIT before landing on Pilates at the age of 40. Movement was never the problem. I always moved. I just never built anything.
As a former dancer still very much in a restrictive mindset, Pilates felt safe: my physique is petite, and it gave me the burn without making me too hungry. It was low-impact enough to practice every day, and it delivered results quickly…at first. But after several years, something felt off. I needed to do more to get the same effects, and the sessions felt easier despite adding weight. My body had adapted.
Then, I came across a podcast called MindPump, by three old-school trainer bros making a clear case for building muscle. Something about their straightforward, science-backed approach intrigued me, and I started to explore old-school bodybuilding culture. I listened to hours of episodes, including live coaching calls where women with similar experiences—former cardio devotees with a restrictive diet, afraid to build—called in. They were gently and methodically guided toward lifting, eating enough, and practising rest. From there, I discovered the work of bodybuilders Lisa Lyon, Pudgy Stockton and Rachel McLish, who proved that muscle and strength are sexy and feminine. I decided to go all in and trust the process.
That first session wasn't cool or glamorous. Because of my intense work schedule, I decided to go DIY. I ordered a starter set of dumbbells on Amazon (6, 8 and 10kg), and put together a simple 3-4 day training plan with the help of ChatGPT. I learned about targeting push, pull, hinge and squat patterns across the week. It was Spartan but appropriate for a newbie; I watched YouTube videos to gain a rough sense of the movements. The experience felt thrilling, dangerous, ridiculous and foreign all at once. But something in my gut recognised what my mind hadn't yet articulated: building muscle is what women truly need.
“At 44, I feel stronger, sexier and more confident than I did at 24.”
I had ample inspiration. I grew up watching my exquisite mother exercise every morning. Light years ahead of her time, she began lifting weights in Beirut, aged 15. And yet, despite her setting a gold standard example for me, I spent the next three decades doing what the culture told me to do instead, all before I reached the age of 10. In the Nineties, I grew up surrounded by fat-free everything and adverts with waif-like models. As a ballet dancer, I was susceptible and impressionable to the narrative. The message was always ‘be smaller’.
Generations of women have been deeply conditioned by diet culture. The Sixties were an era when thinness equated to fashion. Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's; Edie Sedgwick; Twiggy. Later, celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna popularized yoga and plant-based diets. “Fifteen years ago, I wanted to be thin, so I ate less and less,” says Brie-Anna Stanton, a 44-year-old health store employee in New South Wales, Australia. “I started lifting at age 18 and continued through my early 30s, but I went vegan at 32, and my strength (naturally) started to decline. I switched to yoga, but eventually even that exhausted me.” She now lifts regularly and has seen her energy and her health return.
Entering our 40s is often a tremendous period of transition for women. For many of us, it is perimenopause that delivers the final wake-up call; it manifests in disrupted sleep, mood swings, hot flashes, and brain fog. At a time when women are often at the peak of their careers, relationships, and creative lives, perimenopause can make it feel impossible to function and show up fully. It is, quite frankly, brutal. Previously, women suffered in silence, but influential voices such as Dr Stacy Sims, a New York Times bestselling author and Stanford professor, are now linking strength training directly to hormonal health.
The conversation is finally entering the mainstream. Tech firms such as Oura and Midi have launched menopausal tracking. The French government recently sent an email to every woman over 40 in the country, giving guidance around this period of transition.
Starting weightlifting in your forties is radical. But many of us are doing just that. Cecile Boutelet, a 43-year-old journalist and mother of three based in Berlin, says her sleep cycle and hormones improved almost immediately. “My luteal phase is amazing now,” she says. “I have no more depression." Brie-Anna Stanton, a 44-year-old health store employee in Australia, says weightlifting has improved her joints and helped her reverse insulin resistance. She’s also seeing muscle grow. Romina Bocahut, a Paris-based 44-year-old mother of two, says starting strength training after her second pregnancy “allowed me to feel like myself again.” My own debilitating hot flashes and moodiness disappeared after I began lifting.
These women, like myself, are proof that it is never too late to take ownership of your journey. It’s never too late to transform both your experience of, and your relationship with, your body.
Something that is important to note: it's not an overnight transformation. There are both mental and physical roadblocks that define a very real period of transition. While Pilates changed my body nearly overnight, weight lifting takes time. You are quite literally growing a body, and when you have spent decades trying to shrink, the experience of feeling fuller goes against every conditioned instinct we as women have. I have stopped more than once and crept back towards Pilates, where, in my mind at least, I was in control because I felt lean. It takes a lot of effort to counter our own conditioning.
Whenever I felt that panic creep in, I’d defer back to those MindPump podcasts. The mindset I adopted was to measure progress in one way and one way only. Not the mirror, not the scale, but asking myself the simple question: am I getting stronger? It took about three months of consistent lifting before the mirror finally reflected a new kind of femininity. It was one that I didn’t know I could love so much. My arms had definition, and my jeans were tight because my butt had grown. Instead of punishing myself, I felt empowered.
At 44, I feel stronger, sexier and more confident than I did at 24. I love my body in a way that has less to do with how it looks and everything to do with how it works and how it feels. My message to women in their 20s and 30s: start now. Don't wait for the hormonal shift, the wake-up call, or the moment of crisis. Build a body with the intention that it will carry you through everything that life throws your way.
About the writer:
Nadia Tuma-Weldon is a New Yorker, leading strategy for luxury and beauty brands at a creative agency in Paris. Her weekly newsletter, Nouri Paris, dives into the philosophy of weight training. She can be found on Substack and Instagram at @nouriparis.
