Guest Post: To Be Hornier and Happier, You Should be Lifting Weights

A guest post by Mikala Jamison

Something a bit different today! I’m publishing a guest post by Mikala Jamison. Mikala is the writer of the Body Type newsletter about body culture and body image, and has a book coming out next winter about why exercise makes everything in your life better. Give her a subscribe while you’re at it!

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Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

In October, The New York Times published the article, “‘I’m on Fire’: Testosterone Is Giving Women Back Their Sex Drive — and Then Some.” Following an incredibly r/ATBGE animation were the stories of women who “never” had sex with their husbands, or who hated it when they did, before they started taking testosterone. (One woman had “revulsion at so much as the thought of her husband’s breath,” and another spoke of “years of ‘wanting to rip someone’s face off’ if her husband so much as touched her.” I have to wonder if something a bit more insidious than a diminished sex drive was going on in those cases, but anyway …)

By taking testosterone, these gals are horned up more than ever before. Some women are taking amounts that raise their levels higher than what they’d ever naturally produce, and in turn some are experiencing some unsexy side effects: Some are becoming more argumentative and aggressive, are losing their hair, are developing acne, or are hearing their voices get deeper and raspier. To me, it’s yet another example of the Great Health Care Trade-Off For Women Especially: One thing gets potentially kind-of-maybe-fixed at the cost of some other, potentially more important thing – see also birth control pills that might make you bloated, irritable, and constantly wondering when the next seemingly random breakthrough bleed is going to embarrass you on the subway (just me?).

It’s also yet another example of how there’s really no great pharmaceutical option for women who are experiencing low libido or lack of arousal. I wrote about this a few years ago for the now-defunct website The Outline, in an article the editors hilariously titled “Horny pens for all.” There was a new drug called (for reasons unknown but perhaps because it sounds like Khaleesi) “Vyleesi,” which was meant to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), which could loosely be defined as distress about one’s libido. The main ingredient, bremelanotide, had long been posted about on bodybuilding forums, where men and women both proclaimed it turned them into supercharged fuck fiends. My husband and I tried it after procuring it through [redacted].

It definitely did something. As I wrote in the article, I was all tingly and excited, and my orgasm was more intense than usual. It was fun! But as is the case with testosterone, bremelanotide-slash-Vyleesi has side effects, most commonly nausea. Not to mention, it’s hard to come by – to be prescribed the “horny pen,” a woman has to be diagnosed with HSDD; it’s not exactly an option for a woman who says she’s not distressed, per se, but wants to be a little more energetic and enthusiastic about sex. Women must be truly suffering before anyone gives enough of a shit to make their lives better – classic!

There is a lower-risk option for women, and anyone, who wants to feel turned on more often, though. It’s exercise, specifically weight lifting/strength training.

I started seriously lifting weights more than a decade ago and it changed my whole life. It helped me recover from a binge eating disorder and lose around 60 associated pounds, and eventually I became a certified group fitness instructor and trained for and competed in a powerlifting meet when I was 31. My experience with and perspectives on all this led me to start my newsletter, Body Type, and eventually get a contract for a nonfiction book about exercise and body image (it’ll be out next winter). It also helped me have a much better sex life.

There are physical reasons for this: Per a couple of experts who were interviewed in this Women’s Health article, resistance training releases androgens like testosterone (and so does cardio, at a certain level of intensity). Plus, they say, “pumping iron = pumping blood,” and some of that blood is going to your vag. Speaking of blood, one study – which also said that “regular exercise participation, particularly resistance training, has been associated with favorable alterations in sex hormone profiles in women” – showed that this post-exercise testosterone spike peaks in the middle of the menstrual cycle.

In other words, perhaps some women wouldn’t need to take a hormone that gives them raging zits and makes their hair fall out if they just lifted some dumbbells while they were ovulating.

In my experience, the “I’m hornier when I’m lifting” effect is psychological too, of course. Not only does exercise make my body feel physically better and more energized, thus making me typically more down to clown in the bedroom, I also think of myself as a sexier being: When I’m locked into my lifting game, there’s a sort of “I am generally a healthy person” feedback loop happening that makes me less likely to get couch-locked with a magnum of wine and a sleeve of Oreos and more likely to drink water and go to bed early. In turn, I look well-rested, less puffy, and more suffused with a titillating joie de vivre, if I do say so. And, given that I personally find muscular women attractive, when I am at my Muscle Mommy peak it’s like I’ve become my own sex symbol. Narcissistic? I guess! Whatever gets the juices flowin’.

There’s something else to it, too – as one of the Women’s Health sources said: “A regular workout routine can help you feel more in touch with your physical self. Exercise is ‘one of the best ways’ to practice being present in your body … because you’re focusing on the sensations you feel as you move, like whether you’re tired or sore. This can enhance your capacity to feel present sexually, too.”

That’s totally right. I wrote an entire chapter of my book about the concepts of embodiment and interoception, which for the purposes of this post I’ll clunkily summarize as “the feelings of being in your body and aware of everything going on with it.” When I was an emotional wreck of a person suffering from an eating disorder and totally sedentary – hey, any of my family members who are somehow CHH subscribers, stop reading here – I had a lot of bad sex with randos not just because I was craving any scrap of ostensible validation, but also because I was totally disconnected from my own body. I almost never orgasmed from sex because I didn’t know what felt good because I wasn’t really feeling anything at all. My body was like this alien, pain-in-the-ass thing that existed away from my larger concept of “self,” and buddy, that’s not exactly the condition that gets one all hot and bothered.

When I got deep into strength training, though, the mind-muscle connection that gym people are always yapping about kicked in. You know when they go on about “being in touch with their body”? Yeah, that – from lifting, I learned where my muscles were on my body and how to engage them (if you’d told me 15 years ago to “engage my lats” I would have had zero clue what you were talking about; now I do it without thinking all the time when I realize I’m slouching), and considering that sex tends to engage a lot of body parts, having more awareness and control of them made it generally a thousand times better.

Of course the barrier here is that it’s easier for most people to start taking a shot – testosterone, a GLP-1, whatever – than it is to dial into a habitual exercise routine. For women especially, strength training has long been besieged by the feeling that it’s a Thing For Guys, that the weights area of the gym is filled with tank-like bros primed to either creep on you or gymsplain stuff to you without your consent. This is changing (more American women are strength training now than ever before, and CHH has her own guide) but as I’ve written before in my own newsletter and for the Mental Hellth newsletter about exercise as an antidepressant, I was able to get into exercise in a big way because I have a privileged, cushy, easy-ass life, and a lot of people don’t.

I just think that we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, here – no woman has to overhaul her entire existence and become a careerist gym rat like me in order to feel a little better in her body and hornier to boot; she could start doing some more strength training with a couple sets of dumbbells and two days per week in her own living room. (Mayo Clinic says just a couple 20-30 minute sessions per week will do it. I wrote a whole guide to exactly how to start, as well).

If any woman wants to give a jab or med of any kind a try because that’s what she feels is best for her life and her health, great. The concept of bodily autonomy is one I’m always going on about in my newsletter, and I am absolutely not anti-medicine, GLP-1s, vaccines (as if lol), any of it. But I do try to nudge people, especially women, toward strength training before other things because – and here’s where I sound like a pink-hued self-help Instagram infographic post, sorry! – it’s very empowering. It’s not the latest offerings of Big Pharma or the dubious internet peptide market making you feel better, it’s you. You are taking your libidio into your own hands, you might get leaner and stronger as a result, and you get to keep all your hair! I really can’t think of anything hotter.

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