The Pilates Goddess Podcast

141. How I Increased My Bone Density 5%

pilatestci@gmail.com (Lynda Lippin) — Tue, 3 Feb 2026 22:07:00 +0000

It's true! I increased my bone density 5% in just two years, without any hormones, medications, or special supplements. All the goodies are in here.

Faster Way To Fat Loss

Osteoporosis Modifications for Pilates

Puff Puff Pilates

NEW - Transcript:

Hey everybody, it's Lynda Lippin.
Welcome back to the Pilates Goddess podcast.
I am so thrilled to be here with you in February 2026.
Even though you know, things in this world are really hard right now.
Things in this country are really hard right now.

0:19

I'm personally having an OK entrance into 2026, so the biggest thing that's happened over the last two years for me is that I did manage to pay off a chunk of debt that I really needed to pay off.

0:44

I worked my little butt off to do that and I also managed to increase my bone density by 5% in the last two years. That's right, 5%, another 3% and I will be back to normal range and not in osteopenia anymore.

1:07

And I also managed to pack on about 20 lbs of muscle but net lose about 20 lbs. So you know, I am just happy with how the body is working right now. And in addition to all of this, because I have so much arthritis in my joints and they are indeed going to need to be replaced, I'm seeing a physiatrist at Mount Sinai and we're kind of working through some stuff.

1:32

But realistically, you know, I can't 'cause my joints any much more harm. And right now it's good for me to be in less pain to kind of reset my nervous system, get my sleep back on point, maybe get off more of the gabapentin because THC seems to be working well for my pain.

1:54

That the injections that I'm getting, steroid injections, in my hip and shoulder and my neck will keep me pain free enough to avoid the joint replacements for another year or two.

2:12

That's all I'm doing. Like I know I need the joints replaced, but I'm not ready to do that now. And the way forward is to basically shoot 3 in 1 oil in there like the Tin Man. But I got to tell you, I had my left hip injected last Thursday and it felt so much better.

2:38

I had kind of a rough Thursday, you know, because the injection site gets sore and I was tired and whatever, But by the time I went out on Saturday, I was feeling like significantly better. I can walk stairs now without having to hold on to the banister, which is really exciting.

2:56

My balance is better. I don't have to limp when I first get up from bed or the couch, which was starting to happen. And I'm getting my shoulder injected next Thursday and I am so excited because my left shoulder is so clunky and so fucked up that if to just have that smoothed out a little is gonna be awesome.

3:21

Now, these things are temporary, right? So an injection might last, you know, three to six months. So I just figure, you know it somewhere between probably two and four times a year, I will need to go get these shots.

3:37

And when I'm tired of that, I'm gonna get my joints replaced and I will then be bionic and even more awesome than I am now. All right, in other news, Puff Puff Pilates is going really well.

3:55

I, as I'm sure you can all imagine, am really enjoying this Stoner Pilates goddess era of my life. I am thrilled to be open about my use of cannabis, about my use of cannabis for pain, for anxiety, regulation, for sleep, for all kinds of things.

4:18

I've been doing it for 47 years, my friends, but it's finally legal, so I talk about it. And if you want to know if I talk about it with my doctors as freely as I do here and with friends and whoever wants to hear about it, yeah, I do.

4:35

My doctors all know what I do. They all know how much plant I use, how I use it, and they're all fans because I'm doing well. So let's kind of deep dive into what I've done for the Osteoporo Osteopenia and why.

4:59

As you may know, if you've been a long time listener of the podcast or you know me or you've read some of my articles, my struggles with endometriosis. For most of my life I had pretty severe endometriosis with bladder and bowel involvement.

5:16

I was in pain, I had to pee all the time, felt like I had a urinary tract infection even though I didn't for like 2 years. That was fun and finally had a total abdominal hysterectomy about 30 years ago after a year of being on Lupron, which is an injection that a monthly injection that essentially stops any kind of sex hormone in your body.

5:47

So it stops estrogen, it stops progesterone, it stops testosterone, all the things, right. I therefore have had low estrogen levels, which are intrinsic, you know, crucial to bone strength for much of my life.

6:09

In addition, I struggled a lot with food when I was like 12/13/14 and and a little bit after that. My mother was bipolar and there was just a lot of dysregulation going on around me and people didn't always notice really what I was doing.

6:34

So I regulated food and I was eating literally 600 calories a day. I remember 600 calories a day. I was writing down my meals, and that's really not enough calories to build bone for an adolescent girl.

6:52

So in addition to the hormonal challenges, you also have kind of the old anorexia challenges. But now I'm good with food, right? And I'm really good with exercise.

7:09

During the two years prior to my last bone density scan, I was in horrible, horrible chronic pain from long COVID. And with that chronic pain, I could not do a lot of strength training or high intensity exercise.

7:31

I had to really stick to very low intensity Pilates, you know, yoga, very low intensity in home, like walking and cardio workouts and such things as that. Pain started to abate.

7:48

I discover that my bone density is like down. I went from normal. I went from like at least 0.3 to -1.8. So I looked at the results of that DEXA scan.

8:06

I saw osteopenia in my lumbar spine and I said hell no, no, no, no, not today. Osteopenia. I am not dealing with this shit. I do not have time. So the first thing that I did is I know of an extraordinarily effective online at based community based resistance training program called Faster Weight of Fat Loss.

8:37

I've talked about it on here before. The founder, Amanda Tress, is a friend of mine. I was a beta coach for her for many moons and knew her before. Faster way. And it's effective and basically half an hour a day, half an hour to 45 minutes.

8:58

So I let my husband know that I was signing back up for the program. I reached out, I signed back up, and because I'm a pretty talented personal trainer who knows you know how to do things, I was easily able to translate all of the resistance workouts where they were using kettle bells or dumbbells into one dumbbell and bands and tubing.

9:36

I live in a studio apartment with my husband. All of my workout equipment fits into a small drawer. I use heavy tubing. I mean, I have metal doors so my my doors can take the weight. I overhead press, you know, 30 lbs of tubing.

9:56

I chest press 60 lbs of tubing off the door right now. It you know, I'm using heavy stuff and I use also looped mini bands for things like preacher curls and concentration curls. I've really broken down the entire program into doable band and tubing and I just started working out.

10:24

Now, when I first started back on faster way, I was certainly not using this level of resistance. I think I was using maybe a 10 LB tubing and maybe a 20 LB tubing and that was like as far as that was going. And then I, you know, as things get easier or sometimes I can tell, you may think this is funny, but I connect my tubing to the bottom of my bathroom door, which faces my galley kitchen and my microwave.

11:01

So if I'm doing chest pressing and I get super close to the microwave, I know it's time for me to up the resistance and get something new. And then I start further back so that I am consistently challenging myself.

11:19

If you've ever used looped mini bands at all the colored ones, I now deadlift with the extra heavy. The heavy and the light. So you know, it's it's a lot it's a lot of poundage, but being consistent and doing the work has led to me having 5% more bone density without having to take medication.

11:54

I didn't start any hormone therapy. I haven't taken any shots. There's nothing else is going on. I'm resistance training and if you don't do classical Pilates, but you're doing some other form of of Pilates that might be a little faster paced, that might use slightly lighter resistance.

12:19

I want you to understand that that work is not necessarily going to give you bone strengthening benefits in the way that working on classical Pilates equipment will. Now why is that? Because the springs are heavier, there's no ball bearings in the wheels on the reformers, so a lot more strength is required and a lot more strain through the larger muscles.

12:46

And every single exercise is modifiable for osteopenia or osteoporosis. I don't give a shit what anybody says. You can go on my website, go to lintalippman.com/everything and you will see teacher workshops that I recorded, very simple ones for Matt and for all of the apparatus just talking about osteoporosis modifications.

13:15

So I started doing more Pilates. I added in the faster weight of fat loss resistance training and I'll put a link to all these things in the show notes. But doing the consistent work led to me increasing my bone mass and my strength and my muscle mass.

13:37

Now it was very interesting and I want to talk to you about this because I think this is important for everyone to hear. OK, this is not just me patting myself on the back. It is important for everyone to hear is that we can all do this.

13:54

It just requires the work. If you're not the kind of person who wants to exercise with an app then and or you are comfortable with working out at home, but you want somebody say on Zoom to be watching your form and help put you through that, then you know, contact me, contact some online trainers and get somebody to do that with you.

14:19

OK, That's a thing people do that if you are not comfortable working out at home, but you want to go to your gym, then go to your gym. There's also a gym track actually in faster way to fat loss. So if you want to go to the gym, they take you through the whole workout using the equipment you would commonly find any any gym.

14:42

But again, if you want to use tubing, if you want to use free dumbbells or free weights, if you want to use kettle bells, that's, you know, easy, easy, easy to do. So when I went to see the physiatrist at Mount Sinai for my intro visit, we kind of talked about my joints and my body.

15:03

And he saw where I could move and where I couldn't move. And, you know, we started talking about injections and joint replacements and things. So when I came back into him after I had had, you know, the X-rays and the MRI of the neck and I came back in to get my hip injected, he said to me, do you want to have a phone call in two weeks about this hip injection?

15:33

Or would you rather come back in and let me do your shoulder? And I of course, was like, let me come back in and do my shoulder. So I'm doing that next week. But he said to me that my range of motion and my strength were remarkable.

15:51

That was the word he used - remarkable. He he informed me that my hypermobility has both hurt me and helped me over the course of my life. And that I know! We discussed the fact that I was right over the past few years in prioritizing strength and protection around my joints as much as I could instead of prioritizing mobility.

16:16

That I was right in prioritizing strength so that now I have the bone mass if I need to get joint replacements. Yeah. Hello. And he was like, you have done remarkably. You have the most mobility and the most strength in these really horrible joints.

16:40

He's like, if I, if I looked at you move and I looked at your X-rays and didn't know they were connected to the same human, I wouldn't necessarily believe that they were connected to the same human. So I was thrilled. I was thrilled with that because frankly, my friends, this is what I do.

17:00

This is what I do for my clients. This is what I do for, you know, my loved ones and this is what I do for myself. What I'm really good at is binding those areas of weakness in the body, getting the nervous system to calm down enough so that the body is able to move in a better way and then really work on strength and mobility.

17:33

I view it almost as trying to put, say, a badly arthritic shoulder in the best place. I envision where the bones could be or should be for the best movement. And then what I do strength-wise is basically try to build enough scaffolding around that joint using some of the muscles that maybe aren't there or overstretched or aren't working so well.

18:06

Build scaffolding around that so that the majority of the time the joint holds in place and functions properly. There are a few positions which some of my Pilates teachers have seen over the past six months where that shoulder is clearly not, not able to work properly.

18:27

And I and I, I can picture Melissa Castro at Real Pilates just going, "don't do that. I don't like that shoulder!" when I was on the chair. So this happens. But you know, we age or if we are prone to arthritis, our joints get arthritic.

18:50

If we were prone to hypermobility, sometimes we moved our joints in inappropriate ways, dislocated things, had things popped back in. We've had car accidents, we've had boat accidents, we've had falls. We've, you know, lived and I view the role of exercise, the role of Pilates, the role of anything that we're doing literally to keep us feeling and functioning at our highest levels for as long as we can.

19:23

Feel and function at your best for as long as you can. OK, That's all I'm asking. That's all I wish for you. So, my friends, you know I love you so much. I know life is really hard right now in these United States and in this world, OK?

19:46

I am feeling for the people in Maine and Minnesota and and California and Chicago, and like everywhere, I am feeling deeply, deeply for all of us.

20:04

And I wish you all the best, but I'm telling you right now, if you can get your body to feel and function as best as it can, and I promise you that is at a much higher level than you may think.

20:22

Because I am feeling and functioning at a much higher level than even my like Mount Sinai physiatrist thinks I should be. That is a great place to start because if you're doing better, then you can help other people do better.

20:41

So I leave you with that. If you'd like to get in touch with me about anything I spoke about today, feel free to reach out lynda[AT]lyndalippin.com. Spelled like my name. DM me on social media, register for a Puff Puff Pilates event if you're in New York City.

21:00

I'll be at Mighty Lucky on a February 22nd for Awaken Bake and I will talk to you guys soon. Bye.

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140. Money & Year End Planning

pilatestci@gmail.com (Lynda Lippin) — Tue, 9 Dec 2025 19:30:00 +0000

We start with a reminder about my Puff Puff Pilates event tomorrow 7-9pm at To The Moon HQ in Bushwick (just a few blocks from L). Pilates starts at 7:30pm - click here to rsvp

Then I give the dirt on my financial illiteracy, how that screwed me, and how I'm moving forward now.

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139. Thanks

pilatestci@gmail.com (Lynda Lippin) — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 17:33:00 +0000

A personal recap, thoughts on Pilates biz, and lots of gratitude!

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138. On Competition In Pilates

pilatestci@gmail.com (Lynda Lippin) — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 20:21:00 +0000

Competition may be scary, but shouldn't be business-altering. Here's why I'm not worried at all about the new "Pilates" studio opening down the street. also, some updates on Puff Puff Pilates and on me.

Follow me:

Instagram, Facebook, Threads, LinkedIn, YouTube

PuffPuffPilates.com

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137. Pitching & Networking for Pilates People

pilatestci@gmail.com (Lynda Lippin) — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 18:00:00 +0000

This past weekend I attended Revelry, the professional NYC cannabis convention. I went for 3.5 hours to do a very targeted networking session (there were over 200 brands there). I spoke with over 30 brands - about 1 every 6 minutes - and left with 18 new contacts who are interested in discussing partnerships.

How did I do that? A clear elevator pitch & QR code for more info. Listen for the exact formula I used.

Also, it's my 59th birthday next week, so use code happy59 to take 59% off all my Pilates Teacher Mastermind® & Strong Bones digital downloads.

Come celebrate with me tomorrow at The Collective High 9/17, 6-9pm, midtown - consumption, vibes, pilates, food, goodie bag

And join Puff Puff Pilates at Le Flora Cannabis in the FIDI 9/28, 2-3:30pm - smoke sesh, pilates, food, goodie bag

Music by Nerd Salad
Love the podcast? Please review on Apple or Podchaser,
Thank you!

The Pilates Goddess Podcast

141. How I Increased My Bone Density 5%

0:19

0:44

1:07

1:32

1:54

2:12

2:38

2:56

3:21

3:37

3:55

4:18

4:35

4:59

5:16

5:47

6:09

6:34

6:52

7:09

7:31

7:48

8:06

8:37

8:58

9:36

9:56

10:24

11:01

11:19

11:54

12:19

12:46

13:15

13:37

13:54

14:19

14:42

15:03

15:33

15:51

16:16

16:40

17:00

17:33

18:06

18:27

18:50

19:23

19:46

20:04

20:22

20:41

21:00

140. Money & Year End Planning

139. Thanks

138. On Competition In Pilates

137. Pitching & Networking for Pilates People

136. Puff Puff Pilates

135. Thoughts On The Pilates Body

134. Pilates Helps Everything

133. Simple Ways to Organize Pilates Exercises

132. Mixed-level Pilates Classes

131. Updates & More About Cheap & Easy Pilates

130. Why Cheap & Easy Pilates Isn't Always Great

129. Don't Overcomplicate Things

128. Why Do A Comprehensive Pilates Certification?

127. Pilates After Spine Surgery

126. Keeping Pilates Clients Safe

125. Easy Pilates Progressions

124. Pain Doesn't Equal Weakness

123. Pilates Is Always Whole Body

122. Clarity In Pilates Cues

121. For Experienced Pilates Teachers

120. For New Pilates Teachers

119. Back to Basics

118. Replay - Cues Pilates Teachers Shouldn't Use

117. Pilates Class Structure