– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

As a little girl, I loved playing sports.

I also loved painting my fingernails

and parading around my mother's house in her high-heeled shoes.

From the beginning of time, I have lived in contrasting worlds.

Contrasting and often conflicting ideas

about what women should and shouldn't do,

or maybe how we should and shouldn't look.

A pivotal moment came for me when I was a sophomore in high school.

My mother took me to an audition for a modeling agency,

and I can't tell you how nervous I was that day

or even what I was wearing.

But I will never forget the way I felt the next morning.

As I was walking into school, I got a phone call.

They wanted to sign me.

As a plus-size model.

I was a size 10, by the way.

If I could go back and talk to that 16-year-old version of myself,

I would tell her exactly what my own mother told me that day.

"You were built for bigger and better things."

So I turned down their offer,

and I went on to play NCAA college softball,

where I was a weightlifter of the year, twice.

I loved being in the gym and I loved throwing those heavy weights around,

but what I really loved the most was the confidence

that my physical strength instilled in me.

But there was always this nagging feeling,

this sort of whisper in the back of my mind,

and it sounded a lot like the voice on the phone that day.

Telling me that I was different,

somehow not ideal.

Because I would shrink inside

every time somebody commented on my muscular body.

You see, at the time, the only social media we had

was something called “Cosmopolitan Magazine.”

(Laughter)

And those Cosmo cover girls,

well, they didn't have a lot of muscles.

Frankly, they looked kind of frail,

somewhat unhealthy.

But to the world,

they were beautiful and they were idolized.

And as a young girl, I let that frame the way that I looked

and thought about myself.

And this is the problem.

Even though something like weightlifting

has a multitude of proven health benefits,

there continues to be a stigma for women

based on cultural and societal myths

about what women should and shouldn't do.

I believe that if we can create a new culture

that shifts the focus from aesthetics to health,

that women's health

and frankly, everybody's health

could be transformed forever.

Now, I'd like to be able to tell you that after college,

I continued to train really hard in the gym,

ate a perfect diet amidst a family and children,

and a stressful career.

But that is not what happened.

What really happened is I went to medical school,

I survived residency,

I got married and had three children,

and I woke up one day

dealing with the same metabolic diseases

that I was helping my own patients manage through medication.

I could see it, I could feel it.

But I told myself that I would just take care of it when I had more time.

And so many of us let ourselves believe

that we have a lot of time.

Now, according to the CDC,

the top three killers of women is heart disease,

cancer and stroke.

The major contributing factor to these causes of death

is what I call metabolic disease.

And even though our modern, high-fat, high-carbohydrate,

highly processed diets play a major role,

there's one thing that women are not doing across their lifespan

that could tremendously reduce their risk of death,

and that is building muscle.

The data is actually very clear when it comes to resistance training.

So why aren't more women doing it?

The answer lies in three primary myths

that continue to exert a powerful force

and prevent women from doing just that.

Myth number one is that if we lift weights,

we're going to get big and bulky.

Women think that if they pick up a 20-pound dumbbell,

that they will somehow look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

(Laughter)

Now, I can tell you that it takes years of very serious training --

and steroids --

to accumulate that kind of look.

And if you take a look around the gym,

you can see that achieving the physique of somebody like the Hulk

is actually difficult, even for most men.

Now we're all born with a certain genetic potential

when it comes to our muscle size and distribution.

But beyond that, it takes years of very serious training

and a concerted effort to build and maintain that lean tissue.

Although women have a similar relative natural muscular potential to men,

we're also prone to the same age-related muscle loss.

And the medical term for that is called sarcopenia.

On average, after age 40,

we lose about one percent of our muscle size.

With these age-related declines,

we become weak, we become frail,

and the risk of all chronic diseases starts to go up.

In a study, they found the more days, time and effort

that women devote to strength training,

the better their body composition is.

Myth number two is that weightlifting is hard

or maybe too hard on our bodies.

You see, even as women, if we make a decision to go work out,

we're more likely to choose the cardio equipment.

But let me dispel this myth.

Strength training meets you where you're at.

The first day you're in the gym,

you're not going to be doing a 500-pound back squat.

It's about being stronger today than you were yesterday.

But we don't have the same role models when we walk into the gym,

because when we walk in

and we see this man with multiple plates on the bar

and he's making crazy faces --

(Laughter)

And even crazier sounds -- Arrgh!

It's not very inviting to most women.

But you see, women actually have an advantage over men

in certain parts of our life.

We make more estrogen than men,

and estrogen means that we don't fatigue as fast

and we actually recover faster.

Which means that we can handle more volume in weight training

without overtraining.

Myth number three

is that weightlifting is for the boys

and aerobics is for the girls.

You've seen it when you walk into the gym,

this big room of treadmills, ellipticals and stair climbers filled with women.

But in the “Journal of Exercise Science,”

they found for every woman

that was using the free-weight section of the gym,

there was 27 men.

This disparity continues to make it difficult to foster health

for women across their lifespan.

Resistance training happens to be the only non-pharmacological intervention

that has been consistently shown

to offset these age-related declines

in skeletal muscle mass, strength and power.

This cannot be achieved on a treadmill.

The male bias in gym culture is literally everywhere,

and it's time for us to counter it.

All humans have muscles.

Muscles make us healthy.

Muscles combat the top three killers of women.

Resistance training meets you where you're at.

We think that we need these fancy machines

and free weights to build muscle.

But in a 2021 study,

they examined a population of women 65 and older.

They put these women through body weight

and resistance band training

three times per week for 16 weeks.

And do you know what they found?

In the treatment group,

these women improved their strength,

improved their functional fitness,

improved their grip strength

and even improved their gait speed.

The amount of work required to see benefit is actually quite small.

You can lift weights,

you can lift your groceries,

you can lift your children,

or when you're first starting,

you can even just lift your own body weight.

It's my mission to make sure that women live a long and healthy life,

and that means building and maintaining their muscle.

What made me realize the urgency of my own health problems

is when I lost one of my best friends very suddenly,

at the age of 29.

And there I stood,

face-to-face with my own mortality.

I was weak.

I was tired.

What was missing?

Something that I had literally wished away after college.

Muscle.

I knew I had to get back into the gym and start training again,

but I had to get over the fact that through my formative years,

society told me that muscles were for boys.

Two years after I set out to regain my health,

I competed on a show called “Titan Games” with real, everyday heroes.

And in that same year, I competed at the Mrs. America pageant.

Doing both of these things in the same year

was my attempt to shatter the cultural stereotypes

that continue to tell us that muscles are just for men.

So let me leave you with a very clear call to action.

Start lifting heavy things now.

Nobody can do it for you.

Literally.

Your older self will thank you.

Or if you are your older self, it's never too late.

This is not about aesthetics.

This is about health.

And physically strong women are healthy women.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
lift /lɪft/ A2	verb - to raise something to a higher position
muscle /ˈmʌsəl/ B1	noun - a tissue in the body that produces movement
health /hɛlθ/ A2	noun - the condition of being free from illness
strong /strɔŋ/ A2	adjective - having great physical power or force
train /treɪn/ A2	verb - to prepare or teach someone for a particular skill or activity
build /bɪld/ A2	verb - to construct or develop something over time
myth /mɪθ/ B1	noun - a widely held but false belief
stigma /ˈstɪɡmə/ C1	noun - a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance
weight /weɪt/ A2	noun - the heaviness of a person or thing
compete /kəmˈpiːt/ B1	verb - to take part in a contest or game
recover /rɪˈkʌvər/ B1	verb - to return to a normal state of health
frail /freɪl/ B2	adjective - weak and delicate
bulky /ˈbʌlki/ B2	adjective - large and heavy
heavy /ˈhɛvi/ A2	adjective - having a lot of weight
power /ˈpaʊər/ A2	noun - the ability to control or influence people
strength /strɛŋθ/ A2	noun - the quality or state of being physically strong
gym /dʒɪm/ A2	noun - a place where people go to do physical exercises
aerobic /ɛˈroʊbɪk/ C1	adjective - relating to exercise that increases oxygen intake
healthy /ˈhɛlθi/ A2	adjective - in good health
shrinking /ˈʃrɪŋkɪŋ/ B2	verb - becoming smaller