The Simple Way to Boost Bone & Muscle Strength for Women with Celiac Disease Ep. 198

For those of us with celiac disease, maintaining strong bones, muscles, and overall fitness is essential—especially as we head into perimenopause. In today’s episode, I’m sharing my latest wellness tool and explain why I've added it to my routine, how it supports bone mineral density, strengthens muscles, and even boosts metabolism. Whether you’re looking to improve your posture, make daily activities more effective, or just add a simple health upgrade to your lifestyle, this episode has got you covered. 

Tune in to find out if this is the missing piece in your wellness journey!

Check out the weighted vest I bought here https://amzn.to/43m5EUq

 Find out how Ultimate Celiac System can support your Celiac journey here  https://belindawhelantraining.com/ultimate-celiac-system

Wish you could get gluten free meals on the table fast that the whole family will love? Check out Meal Plans Made Easy
https://belindawhelantraining.com/gluten-free-meal-plans-made-easy

Join my free community and grab your copy of 11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free here https://www.belindawhelan.myflodesk.com/11mistakes

Check out my Daily Health Tracker here
https://www.belindawhelan.com/dailyhealthtracker

 And I would love to connect with you on Instagram thehealthyceliac
 
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Music Credit bensound.com 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Bone and Muscle Health
• 10:24 Benefits of Wearing a Weighted Vest
• 25:24 Incorporating a Weighted Vest into Daily Life

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

For those of us with celiac disease, maintaining our bone strength, muscle strength and overall fitness is so, so important, especially going into the perimenopause period of time. And on today's episode, I'm going to share with you my latest addition to my wellness tool belt to help with all of these areas in your life. So welcome back to this week's episode and let's jump on into it. So I've just popped on my new weighted vest. So, for those of you that can see the video, this is an incredible weighted vest that is made of beads. It hasn't got sand in it A lot of them use river sand but it's a weighted vest suited for my body type and my weight. So, for those of you listening at home, it's basically like almost putting on a backpack. So it's got straps and it's quite heavy, but the way that it sits is kind of like a backpack. So just turning around.

Speaker 1: 1:28

For those of you watching, so that you can see and what the recommendation is for one of these weighted vests is to wear one that is 10% of your ideal body weight, so you can find different sizes of weights online and choose one that suits your body type. So let's talk about how introducing a weighted vest into your lifestyle can improve your bone health, your muscle health and your fitness. So one of the most important things for those of us with celiac disease is to really focus on our bone mineral density. So you can improve your bone density through exercise and weight lifting, but you can also do it through wearing a weighted vest, and what I love about this is it's so easy to incorporate into your life already. So you might be the type of person that perhaps doesn't have any intention of ever joining a gym, or you don't have access to weights and you're like great, this is wonderful, this information that Belinda is sharing on the podcast and on the show that. You know I can't do these things. I've got bad knees or I've got a bad back or whatever it is.

Speaker 1: 2:36

But it's really easy to incorporate a weighted vest into your day-to-day activities. So, for example, you could wear a weighted vest doing your housework. You can wear it while you're doing the dishes, while you're doing the laundry you know, vacuuming, things like that. So stick with me and we're going to talk about a little bit more about our weighted vest and the benefits of it and why you might want to incorporate it into your wellness routine. Now, when you wear a weighted vest, it also helps with your muscle strength, believe it or not. So when you bend over, usually you are using a lot of core activation. But when you've got extra weight strapped to you and onto your back and the sides and the front of you, you are going to have to engage your core more when you are bending over. So let's just say, if you were vacuuming, it would take more muscle strength to do, you know, just a simple day-to-day kind of activity, or doing the dishes, or folding laundry, anything that you know you deem is just you could do something a little bit extra in your day-to-day.

Speaker 1: 3:42

I've been wearing mine when I've been sitting at my computer. I have a standing desk and sometimes I put my desk at standing height and I'll stand there with my weighted vest on, and something I have noticed when I do wear it is I actually stand up straighter because of all the weight. It's actually pulling back my shoulders and I'm standing much straighter and having a better posture. So that's been another added benefit that I've personally noticed when I've been wearing my weighted vest. So you know, if you've got bad posture, that might be something that you could go. This could possibly help me as far as improving my posture and making me stand up straighter and holding my shoulders back. So that's something to think about there.

Speaker 1: 4:25

Another thing a weighted vest can do is it can actually help you burn more calories. So if you're looking at trying to reduce your weight a little bit, or just an added hack of trying to be, you know, more fit, this is another way to add it in, because it can also boost your metabolism. So, you know, if you're boosting your metabolism, you're getting more exercise in your day and you're able to lose weight, then that can be a win-win for a lot of people. Obviously, not everyone is in this to lose weight, but I know a lot of people in you know in this space. They do want to lose weight and they're looking at little hacks of how to lose weight. So this can be a really great addition to your wellness routine.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Now, if you have, you know, inflammation in your joints or you have issues, like I mentioned before, you might have knee issues or back issues a weighted vest is fantastic because it's low resistance, so you're not doing any high impact exercising, but you're just adding something to your body to make that resistance just a little bit harder, but it's not putting impact on your joints as such. So that can be a good addition, purely if you've got, you know, the bad knees, bad joints, that type of thing. So you know, if you struggle with other exercises but you want to add just a little something to your routine, this could be a really small addition that could make a huge difference. So you know, think about how much of an impact it could make if you added this, you know, regularly into your lifestyle. So let's talk about some ways that you could add a weighted vest into your lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 5:59

I mentioned cleaning. So definitely, doing cleaning, you know, things around the house. That's simple. You can put it on for as long as you need to and take it off when you've had enough. Because, I'll be completely, completely honest, they are quite heavy and they do take a little bit of getting used to and I recommend building your time up with wearing them. You know you're not going to be able to wear one for an hour if you're not already fit and strong and healthy. You will need to work up to it. So that's something to be mindful of, that. It's really helpful just to be able to wear it around the house until you're used to it. If you are a bit fitter already, then you could wear it going for walks, you could wear it when you're doing a workout and it's just adding that extra you know weight and extra resistance when you are doing your exercises. Already, you know, going for a walk it's going to take more effort and it's going to burn more calories and help you with your weight loss goals faster. So that's an easy way to incorporate it if you are already feeling quite fit and healthy.

Speaker 1: 6:57

If you live in a two-story house like me, you'll notice that going up and down the stairs is a really great way of adding extra movement into your daily lifestyle, and I've found that it's so much more exerting when I wear my weighted vest going up and down the stairs. So you might want to do a couple of stair climbs in a day wearing your weighted vest, whether you've got, you know, access to stairs at home or you might live somewhere where there's some outdoor stairs that you can access. You know, I live near the Esplanade here at the beach and we have multiple lots of wooden stairs that go down to the beachfront, so that could be something that you have access to, or in a park ground, something like that. So that's an easy way of just upping the ante when you're doing a stair climb. And then there's other activities like gardening or outdoor activities or even just running errands. You know, just wearing it for a little bit while you go off doing things.

Speaker 1: 7:52

People might look at you a little bit funny, like what the heck is she wearing? But who cares? Like, if it makes you feel great about your health goals and you know it's giving you that extra added layer of you know building up your health, then so be it. Who cares what other people think? So you know wearing it to the shops. Maybe that's something you want to do, maybe going to the post office, maybe ducking to your friend's house that lives down the street. You wear it walking there and you take it off when you get there. I don't know. There's so many ways that you can add this into your lifestyle and your routine and to make it work for you. But, yeah, just think about how you can incorporate it into your day-to-day activities because, like I said, it's so low impact and it has so many added health benefits to wearing a weighted vest.

Speaker 1: 8:42

Now, obviously, going into perimenopause and dealing with all these changes, it can make a big, big difference to your you know, your health goals and your lifestyle goals and keeping your weight in check, because, as I mentioned on last week's episode, I've stayed started on HRT and I've noticed a difference in my body due to the hormones, and this is just something that I'm so excited to build up and have in my toolkit so that I can continue to improve my health and wellness. As you know, my body starts to age and change and you know I want to live a really strong, amazing, healthy life, and that's what I want for you as well. So this is something that you think you might like to add into your wellness routine. I'll pop a link below to the one that I purchased it. I just grabbed it off Amazon. There's heaps of different ones.

Speaker 1: 9:35

You'll probably need to look through a few different options, but I really liked this one because, like I said, it's got beads in it rather than like a stinky river sand or anything like that. So, yeah, have a look, check them out and, like I said, look for one that is 10% of your ideal body weight. So if you were, say, quite a bit overweight at the moment, you would probably do yourself a disservice to go 10% of your current body weight. So think about what a good weight is for you maybe a previous weight that you felt really really comfortable in and you want to get back to that goal, then that would probably be a good starting point. If you are really really unfit or you're severely overweight, even that might be too much, so you might want to go down a little bit.

Speaker 1: 10:23

So do what works for you. If there's a sports store near you, you might want to go down a little bit. So do what works for you. If there's a sports store near you and you want to try one on and see what feels right, and you could walk around the shop and get a feel for how much your body can handle, that might be a good option for you as well. But otherwise I'll pop a link below to the one that I got and you can check it out from there. But otherwise, I hope this episode inspires you to add this to your wellness toolkit and I look forward to talking with you again next week on the show where I'm talking about a super important topic that we all need to tune into. So make sure you pop back for that episode and I'll talk to you then have a great week. Take care Bye.