Perimenopausal Women Don't Need Weighted Vests. We Need Systemic Change.

Sorry Dr. Mary Claire Haver stans. What she's selling you won't give women what we actually need.

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screenshots from a reel titled, "menopause regimen of a 56 year old OBGYN" -- most of the videos of her weightlifting while wearing her weighted vest have been taken down

A few years ago, one of my students asked me if she should start wearing a weighted vest when she was out taking a walk in her neighborhood. This student had started to see recommendations encouraging women in perimenopause and post menopause to wear weighted vests to help mitigate the impacts of aging, particularly to protect against bone mineral density loss and osteoporosis.

This student was in her late 50’s at the time, well past perimenopause. She was also very physically active, with a consistent daily movement practice that included both strength training and yoga. So what would make her think she also needed a weighted vest?

I told her as much, saying that not everything has to be optimized for peak fitness results. It’s ok to casually walk your dog without strapping on a weighted vest. Plus, if you’re really worried about increasing bone density, regular old strength training is the best way to do that. So if you’re already lifting loads that feel heavy for your body on a regular basis, no need to add something else that might actually be lighter than the weights you’re currently lifting.

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In the 2 years since, weighted vests have become even more ubiquitous, particularly for women around my age. Women who might be heading into perimenopause or already there. Women who are caring for their kids while also maybe caring for their aging parents while also trying to hold down a job while also trying to stay healthy.

And I get it.

Wearing a weighted vest feels like an easy exercise hack.

I don’t say that with any judgment. I’m a movement pro who offers a program with 5 minute classes and an online membership featuring classes between 8 and 30 minutes long. I’ve often made “hack-like” movement suggestions like using the edge of the bathtub for incline pushups while your kid is taking a bath. I strongly believe in making movement easier and more accessible.

So I’m not opposed to things that might make it more possible for someone to incorporate movement, particularly strength training, into their daily routine.

I understand why wearing a weighted vest while doing something else, like walking your dog or going grocery shopping might feel like a simple way to get some strength training in when you otherwise wouldn’t. For women in perimenopause, this feels especially helpful because we know that with the decrease in estrogen comes a decrease in bone density, which strength training is proven to counteract.

The problem is that the science doesn’t back this up.

Wearing a weighted vest isn’t a substitute for strength training and as a result, won’t help keep your bones healthy and strong.

Here’s why:

When it comes to increasing bone density, you need to actually stress your bones. While that might sound scary, as long as you’re not already severely osteoporotic, your bones can handle stress. In fact, your bones require “a certain amount of pressure to stimulate growth.

And as your body adapts, you must increase that pressure over time. This is what progressive overload is all about—increasing the weight or impact to keep your bones responding and getting stronger.”

I’m actually quoting myself here, from an article I wrote for Fit Bottomed Girls about “Why Yoga Isn’t Enough to Increase Bone Density.” It’s true for weighted vests, too.

First of all, weighted vests are typically not a significant enough stress on your bones to actually increase bone density. The standard suggestion for a weighted vest is 5-10% of your body weight.

If you’re a woman weighing 150lbs, that means your “ideal” weighted vest would likely be between 7.5 and 15lbs. If you have young children that you occasionally pick up and carry, they likely weigh more than your weighted vest would. Your groceries probably weigh more than a 15lb weighted vest.

For me personally, 15lbs wouldn’t cut it for building bone or muscle. Not just because my youngest, who I still occasionally carry around, weighs more than that, but because I am actually capable of lifting significantly heavier than that in basic strength exercises.

And while I can see the convenience of incorporating weights into other activities, this is no different than the previous trend of wearing ankle and wrist weights while walking in your neighborhood and just as ineffective.

Another issue here is that your bones need to be regularly challenged. That means once your bones adapt to the load you’re lifting, you need to increase that weight in order to continue to build bone. You can’t just keep lifting the same amount of weight and continue to see results.

Proponents of weighted vests say that you can progressively load your weighted vests, which is sort of true. Weighted vests have pockets into which you can add small sandbags of weight to increase the heaviness of the vest. But your vest will max out eventually. You’ll likely have to upgrade to a new weighted vest if you want to go past a particular weight. And eventually, if you want to progress further, the weighted vest will no longer be able to accommodate your strength, unlike hand weights or barbells, which increase as high as you need them to.

Lastly, as I said before, I’m not opposed to things that make movement more accessible. What I am opposed to is marketing that preys on women who are already vulnerable to misinformation about health, in part because perimenopause and post menopause are still woefully understudied, especially when compared to midlife health issues that impact men like erectile dysfunction.

The other part of it is that women are routinely gaslit about their physical experiences. Consider the fact that when a woman complains of pain, the severity is frequently dismissed as just “part of what it means to be a woman.”

While the latter issue is changing and women’s health concerns are being taken seriously by more and more doctors, it’s slow and not yet widespread.

Health professionals and health influencers alike take advantage of this, convincing women in perimenopause that they need a wide range of supplements, extra protein, weird superfoods, GLP-1’s, collagen, and yes, weighted vests, to maintain their health in perimenopause.

What’s notable about this is that the same recommendations are not being made to men in midlife. No one is telling 40+ year old men that they should take a bunch of supplements, shoot up with GLP-1’s, and wear a weighted vest to stay healthy as they age.

When I did an internet search to confirm this, searching for “male fitness influencers who wear weighted vests,” I received this response to my inquiry:

“The provided context does not mention any male influencers who wear weighted vests. The information focuses on female influencers, celebrities, and fitness experts, such as Mary Claire Haver, Jessica Alba, Katie Couric, and Kaia Gerber, who have popularized the trend. While the trend has gained significant attention on platforms like TikTok and among fitness communities, the sources do not identify or discuss male figures in this context.”

I’m not saying that men aren’t targeted by grift-y influencers who seem vaguely science-y (looking at you, Andrew Huberman). It’s more that for women it’s also tied up in diet culture and productivity culture, using misinformation to misdirect and manipulate.

To that end, weighted vests have lately become a punchline with famous midlife influencers like The Holderness Family and CsaPunch doing reels featuring weighted vests. My personal favorite perimenopause comedian is Laura Benanti and while she has not yet done anything about weighted vests, she does have a whole stand up comedy routine about perimenopause that is laugh out loud funny.

I’m not suggesting these influencers are manipulating women, but they are seeing this trend and responding with humor because good grief the world is insane and we could all use a relatable eye roll/belly laugh combo right now.

Unfortunately, the punchline is more that women in midlife are being pulled in so many different directions and told so many conflicting things about our health that the easiest thing to do is just strap on that weighted vest and go for a walk and feel like you just accomplished something, dammit.

The thing is, women don’t need weighted vests any more than women need collagen or supplements or Ozempic. These are simply tools that are used to deflect from what women really need in midlife: systemic change and structural support.

Women need more robust scientific studies focusing on perimenopause and post menopause that brings more clarity to how hormonal changes impact our lives. We need fewer health professionals promoting their own brand of supplements and more health professionals promoting boring things like sleep, hydration, eating whole foods (you know, for fiber and protein), and exercise. It’s not as fancy and you can’t sell most of it, but it’s foundational for baseline health at any age.

It would also be great if health professionals simply recognized that weight fluctuation is a normal part of having a uterus. That our hormonal changes, over the course of our lives, will impact how our bodies are shaped. That diet and exercise can only take you so far and maybe being obsessed with thinness for our entire lives isn’t actually as healthy as the broader culture wants us to think it is.

Perhaps if we stopped punishing women for weight gain and started seeing health as something beyond what our bodies look like, women wouldn’t feel pressured to start injecting themselves with diabetes drugs, taking unregulated supplements with unproven effects, and wearing a weighted vest while doing housework.

Unfortunately, so much of that pushes back against the dominant culture, which prefers women to be small and compliant for their entire lives. Or as Laura Benanti says in the standup that makes me laugh/cry “Calm down. This is nature. For the next 10-15 years your body is going to slowly melt until it shuts the whole thing down and you’ll finally be invisible.”

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Listen, if you like wearing a weighted vest, cool. There are a few benefits to weighted vests that have absolutely nothing to do with building strength or bone density, but are still beneficial.

One study indicates that wearing a weighted vest can help you increase your balance (although it’s true that strength training with hand weights, kettlebells, or barbells does the same). And wearing a weighted vest is a great tool for those who have arthritis in their hands or poor grip strength and as a result can’t hold hand weights comfortably.

And if strapping on a weighted vest feels good for your body, far be it for me to tell you to stop. If that weighted vest motivates you to get moving, I will wholeheartedly support you. What matters to me as a movement professional is that you have found something that helps you move your body in a way that feels good.

What I would simply encourage you to consider is where and who you’re getting your information about weighted vests from. Who benefits from you purchasing and wearing a weighted vest (spoiler alert: the person with the amazon store affiliate link). And I’d also gently encourage you to consider how you want to move your body as you get older. Also, how you want to feel in your body as you get older. Would you rather chase trends that don’t have scientific support or would you rather establish simple, sustainable foundational habits that you can continue to do and adjust as needed as you get older?

For me, I’d rather stick with the basics. Habits that are simple, science-based, and supportive of my needs.

It’s what I recommend to my students, too.

This kind of approach is less complex, less tied to capitalism, and less likely to bypass my needs in favor of diet culture or the whims of the fitness industry.

It’s kind of boring, but it feels good. And when it comes to health and fitness, that’s always the path I’m going to take.

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There are a lot of resources I recommend that helped inform this piece. These are a few of them:

First, take a listen to the Movement Logic podcast, which is the best health and fitness podcast out there. It’s all science-informed, rigorously researched, and hosted by 2 women who walk their talk (and teach women in midlife how to lift barbells to actually get strong as they age). They have one episode in particular that deals with weighted vests and it’s relatively short, but packed with easy to understand information.

Second, Anna Maltby wrote a great piece a few weeks ago about weighted vests that is definitely worth a read because Anna is a great writer and like me, teaches movement from an anti-diet, body neutral perspective.

Third, I recently wrote a piece about what exercise in perimenopause actually looks like from the perspective of 4 different perimenopausal women who are also fitness professionals. Not a single one of them is using a weighted vest as part of their movement practice.

Fourth, Virginia Sole-Smith has recently shared 2 separate podcasts about perimenopause health, one featuring Cole Kazdin and the other featuring Mara Gordon, MD and both are great listens.

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