Transcript

what are a few of the common myths or misconceptions out there that are
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actually doing more harm than good when it comes to women’s health I think there’s a few undercurrents here one
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that the calories in calories out conversation keeps being had and that women age in a linear fashion so what
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they do in their 20s can keep carrying them through and then I think the other one is a lot of the diet culture that’s
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out there especially when we talk about cardio and trying to do modern training
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and different types of things that are being promoted to women who are 40 plus
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that can cause more catabolism or breakdown of lean mass and Bone than
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actually building it why do you think that people tend to believe these things despite people like yourself and others
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coming out and talking about what the actual science and research says long history of how women have been treated
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in media and media portrayal all the images now on social media and people
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promoting something that’s not necessarily what they’re doing and it’s that rhetoric of this is what someone
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does so this is what I need to do to look like them or be like them when we know that you can have a case study of
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one and put that out there instead of looking at the general recommendations and going is this applicable to me or is
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it applicable to someone who’s in a different population and if it’s not applicable to me then what is so there’s
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a lot of confusion out there because we have this skewing of you know influencers we have a skewing of how
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women are supposed to be we have the sociocultural constructs of lifting like
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people are look at lifting in a different fashion versus 20 and the 40s
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yeah it’s interesting to see how we have such a cultural divide on how that influences how women are perceiving
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their health and what they should be doing and you talked about influencers and like social media and I think that’s important to talk about because I do
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think that the way you look is important right like I think people’s goals one of
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the biggest drivers for people when a workout is ultimately how do they look when they look at themselves in the mirror right and I think sometimes that
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in the name of Health and Longevity and like not being vain I think sometimes that gets lost when I think there is a
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certain level of importance there and that people should talk about that how can you know since we’re talking about
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women here how can women blend the two how can they prioritize and take care of their health in a way
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that they can still appreciate the way they look when they look in the mirror while also making sure it’s not you know
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in a way sacrificing their overall health yeah I always tell people to look
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forward 5 10 15 years like where do you want to be in five years with regards to how you’re moving how you’re living are
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you independent and then let’s put another 10 years onto that if you’re 40 what do you want to be doing when you’re
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50 how do you want to be moving do you want injury you do want to have you know better health are you independent and then when
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we’re in our 50s it’s like okay well how do you want to age do you want to be 80
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living independently without any bone issues and feeling really good and being able to do what you want to do or do you
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want to be an assisted care so it’s kind of a I try to marry the health and and
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performance sides together because if you in five years want to be moving really well we have to look and see what
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you’re doing now if you’re doing nothing but card iov vascular work and you’re not taking care of muscle Mobility
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you’re not looking at Tiss soft tissue you’re not looking at bone density then in five years you’re pretty much
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guaranteed if you’re in your 40s that you’re looking at soft tissue injury maybe a decrease in bone density and it
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doesn’t matter what you look like in 10 years it’s pretty much guaranteed that if you just stay this route and you’re
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not putting in strength training you’re not looking at Mobility you’re not looking at soft tissue quality then
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you’re going to be facing this whole issue of low muscle quality poor
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Mobility poor bone density and that’s going to directly affect what you look like as well so we take it step by step
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so do you think that based on what you said that building muscle is the biggest
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needle mover for women when it comes to overall Health and Longevity yeah across the board doesn’t matter what age it
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depends on how you periodize it or scope what you’re doing with regards to resistance training but we’re seeing new
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and really compelling data come out now that women are being put in the weight room and we’re looking at research on
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women in resistance training we’re seeing not only does it improve our muscle our muscle sceletal aspect with
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regards to muscle quality and bone density we’re also looking at neuroplasticity we’re looking at
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Improvement of bone density our agility our balance our proppr reception all of those things that make you a very
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capable independent human can be linked to how we’re doing resistance training
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and then when we look at the cardiovascular work that is another separate case we’re looking at what are
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we doing with regards to endurance what are we doing with regards to high intensity what are our goals because we
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see cardiovascular outcomes are also getting benefit from doing resistance training I’d love to dive into like some
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effective ways for people to lift weights because there’s so many
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different ways now that people are looking at on the Internet or like in real life there’s exercise classes
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there’s things like pelaton that include some weights in their programs now
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there’s different things to do with the gym there’s machines there’s free weights there’s lifting heavy there’s
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you know lifting to get tone like all these things we’ve heard what does the science actually say regarding the most
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effective way for women to train to build muscle so I’ll put off the bat it’s
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really really difficult for women to get bulky and I think that’s one of the stepping fears for doing anything
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outside of lightweights because when we’re looking at how women build muscle It’s a
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combination of estrogen and central nervous system and estrogen is a driver
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for lean mass development as well as how strong a muscle contraction is and how fast it actually contracts it’s not like
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testosterone where you have an impetus for massive anabolic responses to build and become bulky so when we’re looking
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at resistance training I always tell women any kind of load is great so if
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you’re going to go from doing nothing to body weight that’s a step in the right direction if you’re going from body
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weight to some lighter dumbbell work y that’s a step in the right direction but we’re always looking to challenge so if
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you’re in your 20s and 30s you can get away with trying a lot of different things but when you start getting into
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your late 30s early 40s onwards we have to be a bit more specific specific where we’re not looking at working to failure
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because that’s more of a metabolic stress we’re looking at lifting heavier loads to work on Power and strength
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because we lose that rapidly when we start having a flux in our hormones so when I’m working with women and trying
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to get them to understand that there’s a whole bunch of different things we can do if we want to look at working on
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Power and Agility we need to do things like contrast training we need to do some plyo work maybe a pyramid scheme
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and periodize that way but when we get into our late 30s early 40s we have to
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really look at power-based training and it’s scary for women because like wait I’ve not been in the weight room I don’t
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know how to do compound movements what if I I’ve never done anything before how do I work my way into that like we phase
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you in right we look at how you move we do a lot of Mobility make sure you’re not going to get injured and then we
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start adding load we’re looking at how are we improving our over Al physique yes but also that physiological response
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for longevity you know some people will say you know just in the training phases
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right of training you know the body differently that it can be better to train for hypertrophy initially to build
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some foundational muscle before doing things like lifting heavy weights and doing more like strength Focus do you
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think that you know somebody who hasn’t been doing a lot of resistance training should start on something like machines
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some light dumbbells and stuff to build some muscle before doing things like these compound movements and explosive
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movements like you’re talking about yeah absolutely and it’s not about building the hypertrophy like muscle tissue
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itself it’s that neural pathway that we want and when you first start lifting be
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machines or dumbbells or free weights you get that neural pathway and that’s what we’re after we’re after those motor
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patterns once you have really good motor patterns and some strength then you can start making it more compound and more
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complex yeah I mean something like Planet Fitness it’s amazing because it’s
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opened the doors to resistance training to so many people who never otherwise would have stepped into a gym but for
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people who are beyond the machines it’s like I don’t want to go there I want to find something that’s different so there
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is that that open door for so many people when we’re looking at can I use machines can I use dumbbells yeah
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absolutely but we want to really look at how we move move and we go sit to stand
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what’s a great move for sit to stand it’s not using a machine it’s like doing a back barbell back squat or we’re doing
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a front squat something to that effect and so what would you say are the like once somebody builds Baseline level of
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neural adaptation like you’re talking about what are the top exercises you
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think people should focus on yeah I think it varies I always like to look at it as
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if you have three days a week in the gym we do a squat focus on one day we do a
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push pull overhead motion another day and then the third day we’re doing all posterior chain work and you can vary
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the exercises within those but it’s all in planer movement and are we doing some
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plyo work in a squat Focus are we doing some unip planer work on when we’re
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doing our posterior chain so there’s like I said there’s lots of different exercises that you can do but we look at
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it as those are the three I guess ideal areas and motions that you want to work
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on if somebody’s going to the gym three days a week like what should their time
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in the gym look like let’s just say somebody only has like 45 minutes to an hour like how should they break that down when they get in there well how old
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are we I let’s just say somebody who’s like 35 to 45 okay so if we have a 35 to
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45 year old woman who’s going into the gym and say it’s a squat focused day you
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go in and you do maybe a twom minute warmup of sorts to get your heart rate up and then you get into some Mobility
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exercises and so all up that might be maybe 10 minutes worth of work and then
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we go into something like a 5×5 or a pyramid scheme where you’re going
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108 4 42 and getting progressively heavier and it might be on the three or
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4 minute and then we finish off with maybe some dumbbell split
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squats and then some mobility and then you’re out of there so all up you’re in there maybe 40 45 minutes it doesn’t
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have to take a long time like I hear people I don’t have an hour and a half to go to the gym I’m not asking you to
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go for an hour and a half and in that session if you’re like wait I don’t even have 45 minutes do some Mobility do your
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squats and then get out of there and then you’re in and out and maybe 25 to 30 minutes you’ve been mentioning the
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word Mobility several times in the first you know few few minutes of our convers ation that often Falls by the wayside
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when people go to the gym especially if they’re busy and they don’t have a lot of time why do you think that people
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should prioritize Mobility when they’re going to the gym when we look at mobility and being able to LIF properly
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you want full range of motion we’re not talking about stretching we’re trying to get into the joint and the joint capsules themselves to be able to get
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Triple extension so that’s your ankles your knees your hips all working together to get into the depth of the
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squat without compromising how you’re moving and people will go and they won’t
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warm up properly they don’t do mobility and their form is off and that’s how we get injured so if you spend five minutes
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really making sure that you can get into all those corners of those joints and be able to move properly in that pattern
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that you’re going into to work then you are definitely reducing injury you’re
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also improving the technique that you’re working and you start to see better
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gains and feel better what would you say are maybe three or four of your favorite Mobility exercises that are pretty
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simple for people to do that if they want to start to implement these at the gym they can do so before going into a
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lifting session yeah banded hamstring stretch so it’s a thicker band that’s
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wrapped around the rig and it distracts your hip as you step forward to do a hamstring stretch you can do banded
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pigeon also taking a a kettle bell and sitting into a deep goblet squat and
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getting into each corner so you’re moving in each Corner those tend to open
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up the hips and the lower back and the hamstrings to get into really good posterior and squat movements when I
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asked you what people’s workout routine should look like in the gym you asked me what age are we talking about why did
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you ask me that and how should people’s workout programs change as they get
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older yeah so if we’re looking at women who are are 35 and younger well I should
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preface that like after you go through puberty so you’re 20 to 35 your body is
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really resilient and very adaptable so you can play around with sets reps
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periodization types of training that you’re doing if you have 40 minutes in the gym maybe you are doing super sets
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and compound movements and then finishing with some Sprint work but if you’re younger than 20 and going in
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through puberty we have to look at functional movement because motor patterns and everything need to be
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redeveloped with the biomechanical changes that occur in puberty and then when we get into Perry and
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postmenopause we have to be very specific because of the ratio of estrogen progesterone changing we need
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to find an external stress that’s going to create adaptive responses in the body
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the way those hormones used to support so this is why we look at the power based stuff because that becomes a
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central nervous system Drive rather than a peripheral or localized drive right and you know you talked also
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about the the fear of women getting bulky and I don’t remember if we covered this the last time or not but I think
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that you know has been debunked pretty clearly over the last I don’t know 10
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years probably but I think this the question still exists and people I just have seen people still talk about like
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oh I don’t want to lift weights because I don’t want to get bulky or I don’t want to do strength training I don’t
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want to deadlift I don’t want to do a bent over row Etc because I’m afraid that if I lift heavy you know I’m going
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to look like you know Arnold swordz and egg or something you know what I mean so from a hor from a hormone perspective
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talk about why that’s impossible so if we look at the anabolic responses of
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testosterone in men it’s not just testosterone it’s the combination of
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growth hormone and other feedback factors that make testosterone really
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stimulate muscle development when we look at women yes we have testosterone but it doesn’t work in the same way that
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it does in men in the fact that it doesn’t stimulate muscle and muscle growth estrogen does so when we’re look
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at estrogen it’s not as a potent anabolic agent as testosterone so when
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we’re looking at estrogen in women we see that there estrogen receptors that
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are in the muscle cell and skeletal muscle itself that is responsible for
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stimulating basil development also metabolism how much carbohydrate can
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come in fuel the muscle we also see that women have more slow twitch fibers than
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men so this means that they’re more endurant so they don’t have those fast twitch glycolytic bulky type fibers and
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the stimulation of our nervous system to women’s muscles we see that they’re a
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little bit slower in the nerve conduction as compared to men because of the more oxidated fibers so we look at
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all the combination of estrogen and the morphology of the muscle it’s really
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really difficult for women to get bulky now the caveat there is that a woman
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who’s never had muscle mass before will start lifting and in her eyes she might be getting bulky but to everyone else
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you can’t really see anything except for a little bit of muscle definition so that’s where we have to
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really caveat and say look you’re not getting bulky you’re getting stronger
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and we see muscle tone but that is not equating to bulk what do you tell somebody when they come to you and they
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are starting to gain muscle and they feel they’re getting bulky like how do you help them overcome that fear and
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then also kind of talk them off the ledge about the benefits of being strong
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as a woman yeah I always bring it back to strength and how they’re feeling like you came into the gym three months ago
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and you couldn’t even beninge press two 20b dumbbells now you’re up to 245 pound
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dumbbells and you’re super strong your posture is better you’re having more
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energy yes you do have some more muscle but that doesn’t mean that you know you’re blowing out of your clothes if
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someone is really concerned because they’re more mesomorphic and they can put muscle definition on easily and
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they’re saying well my clothes aren’t fitting more then we can modify the kind of training that they’re doing to become
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more metabolic so this is more of our upper reps more urant type work and
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that’s what women are used to and this starts to change instead of more power-based which makes people feel like
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they’re going to blow out of their shirts into more of that Pilates type
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stuff that we don’t necessarily really want to promote when we’re looking at older women but it does help with the
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mental effect of feeling like they’re going to blow out of their shirts right
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and you know one of the reasons that somebody may feel or look bulky is
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because they might frankly be eating too many calories so you know moving into
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talking about nutrition when somebody’s looking to build muscle like what’s a good framework to follow from a
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nutrition perspective to make sure that they’re not going to gain as much body fat when doing so this is a complex
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question so I bring it back to circadian rhythm and chronobiology so we talk
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about circadian rhythms and everyone thinks about it as a 24-hour clock but it’s not for women our circadian puls is
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a little bit shorter than men’s and in that we have hormone pulses and where I’m going with this is
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that when we look at circadium malalignment or a misstep in our
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circadian rhythm we see that that women end up having a change in their appetite
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hormones so they end up having more Cravings they end up having a preice for
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wanting more carbohydrate and they don’t feel full so when we talk about what
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changes our circadian rhythm it’s delaying food and not looking at daylight and then eating late so when I
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bring it to women saying look we want to build muscle and reduce body fat but specifically really reduce visceral fat
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we want to eat according to our circadian rhythm so that means for women because we have a higher cortisol Peak
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within a half an hour of waking up as compared to men we need to have a little bit of protein carbohydrate to dampen
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that Peak and to tell the hypothalamus that we have some nutrition ready to go and we’re good to go for the day and we
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want to eat protein at every meal hitting about 40 grams and we want to make sure that we are fueling for our
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training and recovering from our training and then we have dinner but we don’t have anything after dinner so
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might be using buzzwords of a 7 to 7 overnight fast which is a 12-hour fast
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but really we’re working with our circadian rhythm when we look at the research that shows by working with our
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circadian rhythm or eating according to how our body needs fuel we have less circadium Mal alignments we have less
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interruption in our appetite hormones we have less precedents for
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blood sugar regularities we have less of a stimulus for putting on body fat and then when women are like
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wait I need to lose some weight too it’s like okay well if we want to lose a little bit more body fat then we take
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maybe 150 calories away from the night meal and this is a small enough calorie
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deficit and it’s going to allow your body to digest better so that overnight it can get into all its reparation it
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needs to do so there isn’t a Magic Bullet to it it’s more about timing and
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we’re talking about the quality of food like I said I’m not a huge calorie and calories out person because four
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calories of carbs react differently in the body than four calories of protein so we have to be very mindful of the
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timing and the nutrition density of the food that we’re eating it’s interesting coming from like a science background
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that you’re not as you know excited or I guess dogmatic about the calories in
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calories out approach talk more in depth about why and some things for people to
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keep in mind as they’re eating food throughout the to day yeah so calories
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and the nutrition label of calories all stemmed from a research point of view of
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trying to really determine the energy that was associated with food and it’s a rough calculation
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so when we start looking at the non-mathematical aspect of food and
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energy of food it reacts differently in the body so like I said four calories of
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carbohydrate have a different response than four calories of protein those four calories of carbohydrate coming from a
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carrot is completely different from four calories of carbohydrate coming from carrot juice and people are like why it’s
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because the carrot has fiber carrot juice does not the fiber really helps to
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avoid any kind of blood sugar flux that happens when you get fruit sugars and
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yes carrots have higher amount of fructose in it and the fiber also helps with the gut microbiome the juice doesn’t so when we
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start getting into the nuances of calories in calories out that four grams
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or four calories from carbohydrate from the carrot is it juice or is it the whole carrot completely different
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responses in the body so when we start looking at how we should be eating I really want people to understand that we
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want to take care of our gut microbiome first so more fibery Foods more colorful
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fruit and veg and really good protein trying to not reach for I was in the states recently and saw protein
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fortified Pop-Tarts as like that completely misses the amk that’s not what we want to get our from our protein
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right sounds delicious though every once in a while it fits in the 20% rule but you know protein poptarts come on now I
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know I just think Ultra process Ultra process where is it coming from but yeah and as an expat I find it really
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interesting the two different Food Systems well like I’ve traveled to Europe I live in New Zealand I go back
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to the States on a regular basis and I go to the states and I walk into a grocery store and there’s Rose and Rose
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and Rose and Rose and Rose and Rose things that they say is food but can’t eat it I can eat the fruit and veg I can
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eat some of the other things but there’s so much packaging and sugar and
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additives and Ultra processed stuff that it’s no wonder people are confused so
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your rationale for focusing on quality you know versus the quantity of the food
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really revolves around like how people will feel after eating them well and also from a performance perspective and
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from a like a longevity perspective and how they impact you from a physiological
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level impact things like the gut microbiome Etc right y absolutely and then timing is important too to avoid
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the hypothalamus going hey I’m in a low energy State because if we exercise on
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an empty stomach as a one or we delay food intake post exercise as a woman or a man then the brain perceives you as
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being in a low energy State and the automatic response is downregulating all the systems in the body and that’s
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counterproductive so if I talk to a woman she’s like oh yeah I went to the gym I had coffee before and then I
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wasn’t hungry afterwards and I res rushing around and I didn’t have food until 11 or 12 I’m like why’d you go to
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the gym because you stayed in a breakdown State the whole time you didn’t have any impetus for building muscle so if you were to like lay out a
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few golden rules for nutrition other than focusing on quality instead of like
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calories and calories out what would you say for a woman who’s listening to this who wants to again build some muscle
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make sure she’s also improving her body compositions not gaining too much fat like what are a few rules you think
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everybody should follow really trying to focus on getting one gram of protein per pound of body weight and we want to
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distribute that evenly throughout the day so it’s not like having a big whack of protein in the morning and then kind
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of scuttling off throughout the rest of the day it’s really making sure that you’re getting 40ish grams at breakfast
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40ish grams at lunch and 40 or 50 grams at dinner also taking an eye that you want
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a lot of colorful fruit and veg as your carbohydrate and you can accent that with what we call the 20% rle so that’s
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where your protein Pop-Tart comes into play if you wanted it you know so it’s
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the protein and the fiber that become really important when we’re looking to fuel well and to build muscle and
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prevent that body fat from coming on and then what do you think about like the
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differ between different proteins like animal versus plant protein I know there’s been a lot of debate over that over the years I think that you know
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sometimes if people don’t like certain types of animal protein it becomes incredibly hard to get it from Plants
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unless they’re super strategic about it what is your advice on like the best sources of protein well when we look
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from like a rating perspective we see the egg white is at that 100 Mark whey
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protein isolate dairy products are above it and then we start to see PE prot isolet below it when we’re talking about
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animal versus plant I might get slam for this it doesn’t really matter right what we’re looking at is the quality of the
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protein so yes protein supplementation from powders is fine but you don’t want that to be your main stay if you’re
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looking at trying to get protein in as a vegan or someone who’s plant-based you want to make sure that you’re getting
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lots of different types of fruit and veg that also have protein in it so it can be your sprouted grain bread with peas
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green peas nuts seeds maybe you have a Tempe sandwich in the morning you’re
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having chia seeds and oats that have been soaked in some oat milk or almond milk and then you’re adding some nuts
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and some berries and stuff so it’s not about going for that big you know meat
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and Tube Edge it’s about looking at all the Spectrum and making sure that you’re
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getting protein from a whole bunch of different sources that fill up your plate you know going low carb carnivore
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keto Etc has become more popular over the last few years specifically like carnivore like eating like zero carbs
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like zero vegetables and just eating straight up meat talk about the dangers of that from a hormonal perspective for
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women oh my gosh I look at that and I think oh you’re poor gut because the gut microbiome so important right and we see
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that part of how hormones are regulated for women is through what we call a
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second pass so that means hormone metabolites are bound in the liver and
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then shot into the gut and then unconjugated or removed from sex hormone binding globulin by our gut bugs and
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then shot back out if we don’t have diversity or we have a very low amount
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of these gut bugs then we have hormone dysfunction we’re not optimizing our
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hormones when we start looking at other things that are gut microbiome does with regards to vitamin production the gut
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brain axis with regards to mood do serotonin we see 95% of our serotonin is
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made in the gut there’s lots of disruption that comes from neurotransmitters and hormones when
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we don’t take care of our gut microbiome so if we’re having no fiber or very limited fiber then we are reducing the
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diversity of the gut microbiome and the longitudinal aspect having a very low
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diversity is poor health and so what do you tell the person that’s like well I
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need to cut out all carbs so I can lose body fat I look at them and go well actually no women need carbs and you’re
29:58
not going to be able to lose body fat if you don’t have carbs because your body
30:04
is looking for carbohydrate in order to fuel mitochondria to be able to use free
30:11
fatty acids at rest and during exercise we also see that the carbs from fruit
30:16
and veg are very powerful anti-inflammatory antioxidative agents
30:21
and we start having a misstep in our estrogen we need those because estrogen is a powerful anti-inflammatory agent
30:27
and we need that in order for the liver to understand free fatty acids shouldn’t become visceral fat so we look at
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carbohydrate intake it’s not about the white breads it’s not about the simple carbs it’s about the kinds of foods that
30:41
you’re eating that provide the fiber for your gut and the other thing with
30:47
regards to body composition is we see in the four to five years before that one
30:52
point time menopause there’s a significant decrease in the gut microbiome diversity and this is
30:58
directly related to an increase in body fat and decrease in lean mass so we have
31:03
to be very cognant of taking care of that gut microbiome and the way we do that is with fiber and fiber comes from
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to drink element.com dgbs or click the link below for a free sample pack with
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any purchase now back to the show so I’ve heard you talk about in our conversation like circadian biology and
32:12
optimizing feeding windows and stuff and the topic of fasting has become highly
32:19
debated over the last several years specifically I think within you know how
32:24
women should fast compared to men how do you view Tim restricted feeding as it
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pertains to women how do you believe based on the research that women should do it effectively so that they’re not
32:40
crushing their hormones in a negative way or negatively impacting their health the bottom line is an overnight fast
32:47
which is using the buzzwords you have that 12h hour if you have a higher cancer risk than 13 to 14 hour overnight
32:54
fast so it could be 6:00 p.m to 8:00 a.m. but the really important thing is
33:00
that you are having some food within a half an hour of waking up because it’s important to Signal the hypothalamus
33:06
that is the control center for So Many metabolic processes that there is
33:11
nutrition coming in when we start looking at the research on intermittent fasting and comparing it to calorie
33:18
restriction they see that there’s no difference in weight loss between the
33:23
two is say some people find doing fasting is easy easier with regards to
33:29
restricting calories but the caveat there is when you look at the research they don’t account for the quality of
33:37
the food that’s in the eating window so when we’re looking at all these Warrior
33:42
or long fasting episodes and short eating Windows people are trying to get as many calories as they can in there
33:49
but they’re not paying attention to the Quality whereas if we look at Tim restricted eating which is that
33:55
overnight fast or you know having a set time where you’re not eating preferably
34:00
like I said overnight then the time that you are eating is focusing on the
34:06
quality so when you’re reading the literature there’s a difference between Tim restricted eating and fasting based
34:12
on what is happening in that eating window got it and then what about like
34:18
fasting around the menstrual cycle like I know you know you’ve talked about how
34:25
women can optimize their nutrition and their strength training around the timing of their cycle you know what is
34:32
your like updated position on that and how can people do it in a way that’s
34:38
going to improve the way they manage things one critical factor that I’ve
34:44
been noticing and why my thought process has changed a little bit is ovulation
34:49
we’re seeing a incredible upsurge of an ovulatory Cycles meaning you don’t have
34:56
ovulation and just the general population and in the athletic population it’s becoming a massive issue
35:03
if you don’t ovulate you don’t produce progesterone you don’t have an estrogen surge so if you don’t have that you have
35:08
a pretty stable hormone profile you will have a bleed with an anovulatory cycle
35:14
so you can’t really tell if you have an anovulatory cycle or not so when we start talking about fasting around the
35:20
menstrual cycle there’s no real Rhyme or Reason to it there’s no evidence to say
35:25
that you should be even if you are ovulating and when you think about it it’s the time leading up to ovulation the body’s
35:32
becoming very stress resilient so you need nutrition to be stress resilient to have a good immune system post ovulation
35:39
your body’s building tissue it’s all about building endometrial lining and it has an increase in the calorie and food
35:47
needs particularly carbohydrate and protein so neither one of those makes sense to be fasting around it we talk
35:54
about tracking menstrual cycle is becoming more of that individual basis it’s like you know your own patterns you
35:59
can see changes in bleed patterns you see changes in how you feel then you can change your training around that but we
36:06
don’t want people to blanket say I’m going to do this to this phase and then I’m going to take two weeks off it was
36:12
never our intent to say that it was we want to you know make sure that you’re
36:17
able to push when your body is stress resilient and we want you to be able to kind of bring it down or Del load a
36:24
little bit right before you have your period because your body is not very stress resilient at all so specifically
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what do you think are a few like minor shifts people can make around that time
36:36
that could also maybe be be implemented for the rest of the month so that it’s not something drastic where they’re
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doing it for a week or two and then going back to a completely different
36:48
routine afterwards it’s pretty boring but it’s the same thing it’s you know
36:53
you have you stop eating dinner two to three hours before bed and you fuel
37:00
during the day you fuel for what you are doing it’s not about holding food until
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noon and then having food it’s really listening to fueling when your body
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needs it and a lot of people say well I’m not hungry till 10 or 11 well you’ve been conditioned not to be that way
37:18
because you’ve spent this whole time like just drinking coffee and water and
37:23
then not having food until noon your body is conditioned to that but you can retach it you can learn hunger cues and
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we want to fuel during the day and not eat late and so we can have really good
37:35
recovery overnight and if you hold that across all Cycles all hormone profiles
37:41
all age groups it works on so many different molecular levels into the whole body and we see really good
37:48
longevity outcomes from that right I want to dive into cardio more when it
37:54
comes to you know women specifically like what do you think like from a
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blanket perspective are the most like effective forms of cardio for women and obviously
38:06
if if you think it’s different based on their age I mean I’d love for you to go into that as well yeah when we’re looking at the
38:15
younger age group like I said you can get away with a lot of things if you want to do two f45 classes back toback
38:23
go for it but when you start getting older you need to be very
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acutely aware of how to polarize so we want to do true high-intensity work or
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we want to do true Sprint interval work because we have to be able to capitalize
38:39
on these external stressors to now create adaptations I have a lot of endurance
38:46
athletes that’re like what what about wanting to do a three-day bike packing tour or maybe I have some gravel races
38:53
coming up or I’m training for a marathon or I’m training for 10K or an Ultra I’m not saying to completely Mark that
39:01
off I’m saying that the bread and butter what you should be doing as you get older is quality training not volume so
39:09
if you are training for an ultra it’s not the old school of running 20 hours a
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week it’s let’s look at how we are building strength how we’re doing some top end work and then we spend time on
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our feet every 10 to 15 days where we go out for two really long days at a time
39:28
so there’s ways of peppering in endurance but the Benchmark is doing that polarized training and strength
39:34
training when we’re younger like I said you can get away with a lot of stuff you can go for lots of endurance stuff you
39:40
can do lots of high intensity work you can play around with a whole bunch of different things but as you get older we
39:46
have to have that eye to how are we polarizing our training so that we get better blood glucose control so we get
39:51
better conversation between the skeletal muscle and the liver so that we don’t store visceral fat how do we have better
39:59
conversations to create epigenetic changes so that we maintain the quality of our muscle and the quality of our
40:05
bone because those are so key in being able to live independently as we get
40:11
older right and I know you’re not a fan of doing like things like fasted
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strength training but what about like if somebody wants to go for like a walk in the morning fasted do you think that
40:22
there’s benefit to that do you think there’s not a benefit like what are your thoughts from a mindfulness perspective
40:27
yeah people get out first thing in the morning in nature that’s great if they’re doing any kind of intensity then
40:34
it starts to create a disruption that causes catabolism that and the first thing to
40:41
go is lean mass and like I said it’s really hard for women to build mass really hard for women to keep it so if
40:47
you’re going to go do something that’s long and fasted that’s going to be counterproductive and stimulate the body
40:52
to break it down you just want to have a pause and a think about that right so you don’t think there’s benefits for
40:59
like fat loss if people are doing fasted cardio I mean I know that’s been kind of debunked I feel like over the last probably five years I’ve seen it there’s
41:05
been a lot of research against it but I mean I know that was like an old thing people used to do to burn fat yeah and
41:11
it comes down to women are already really efficient fat burners because we have those sex
41:16
differences from birth where women have more endurant oriented oxidated fibers
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we have better mitochondria better respiration we have better metabolic flexibility so all these things that
41:28
come up as go for fasted training go for a fasted walk for fat burning are all if
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you’re a guy if you’re a guy you want to become more like a woman sweet go do all your fast and stuff then you’ll become
41:39
very endurant and metabolically flexible like women but for women it doesn’t do the same gotcha from like a longevity
41:47
perspective I know like the biggest thing that you’ve been stressing or pushing in the conversation has been like strength training making sure you
41:52
have quality muscle as you age are there any other things you think are important important for women to focus on to make
41:59
sure that they’re living not just longer but a better quality of life as they get older yeah big thing that comes up is
42:06
joint and Joint issues we see a lot of inflammation soft tissue injuries joint
42:12
pain joint issues so this is where the mobilization and Mobility come into work
42:17
Kelly and Juliet star are good friends of mine and I love their uh ready State
42:22
and all their Mobility work that they do because it’s so critical for maintaining joint Integrity so when women start
42:29
getting into per menopause and having planner fascia issues frozen shoulder joint issues it’s all about taking care
42:36
of that soft tissue around the joint and that’s where Mobility comes into play so
42:41
really working on Mobility to maintain range of motion and reduce any kind of sticky point of soft tissues as you get
42:47
older things like sauna cold water exposure cryotherapy stuff like that has
42:54
become widely popular over recent years as well what are your thoughts on that as it relates to what we’re talking
43:00
about it’s like the icing right we want everyone to look at all their lifestyle
43:07
stuff but if you’re going to go down the route of using environmental stuff which is fantastic near and dear to me because
43:14
I’m an environmental physiologist we have to look at the difference sex differences and responses
43:20
so something like cryotherapy way too cold for women if we look cold water
43:25
immersion you want to be around 55 degrees Fahrenheit or 16 degrees Celsius
43:31
that’s cold enough for women to invoke all the metabolic and parasympathetic
43:37
responses because if you get into the really cold stuff it causes too much of vasoconstrictive response and then it’s
43:45
a threat to the body and you don’t get the same benefit if you look at the sauna everyone responds well to the
43:52
sauna everyone responds well to the heat we see cardiovascular adaptations we see hormone Chang we see better blood
43:58
glucose control so if you have to pick of course I’ll push people to the sauna but a lot of people like I don’t like to
44:03
heat and you’re still going to get all that parasympathetic responses too yeah there is some benefit in the cold as
44:09
long as it’s not too cold and there’s definitely benefit for sauna exposure and heat exposure so as
44:16
somebody who’s an environmental physiologist like what factors do you think play the biggest role in women
44:24
regarding their health aging Etc I think we live in a society that is too
44:29
comfortable we all have air conditioning we have heat we you know don’t want to
44:35
go out if it’s raining we never challenge ourselves I think the biggest thing that women can do is challenge
44:42
have a challenge every day so either it’s a mental challenge or it’s a physical challenge we’re looking at environmental challenges as well we have
44:49
to become comfortable with being uncomfortable because we live in a society that just makes everything so in
44:58
a box that the body is never challenged from a supplementation perspective what
45:04
are your thoughts on supplements for women what are some generally speaking
45:09
that you think are effective what are some that are being pushed that you think are ineffective if we look at the
45:16
performance side of supplementation there’s been some really fantastic reviews in audits that come out and show
45:24
that almost nothing in the supplement world has been tested or work on women really that’s interesting so nothing no
45:31
supplements so we look at protein protein powders yes for sure we look at
45:36
beta alanine yes that works too there’s good or good research for that we look
45:42
at creatine definitely from health and performance standpoint but then we look at something like nitrates nitrates it’s
45:50
a double-edged sword so we see that in younger women who are still in their reproductive years it actually decreases
45:57
performance decreases V and has a counter effect but for women who are postmenopausal it has benefit it causes
46:04
Vaso dilation and it actually does have a benefit and it has to do with estrogen
46:09
because estrogen is tied to the nitric oxide cycle that is responsible for
46:15
blood vessel and blood vessel control when we look at things like vitamin D vitamin D yes it works it works with a
46:23
timing effect where we want to have it after training to help reduce heepen so
46:28
that we can have optimal iron but then we start looking at all the other things
46:33
that are out there and there really isn’t very much robust research for women and very small amount of research
46:41
for men and so you think mostly it’s all overhyped except for protein creatine
46:46
beta alanine essentially everything else you think is just a waste of people’s money
46:52
yeah for the most part I mean it’s an individual caseby casee basis right so if you find something and it works for
46:58
you great the exception of course is adaptogens because that’s completely different category than General
47:04
supplements so yeah I mean I get questions all the time about all these things that come up for mitochondrial
47:10
health or for mobilizing fat and you look and it’s been done on rats but it hasn’t been done on people and so do you
47:17
think that a lot of because you you will hear people who take supplements like oh my gosh like I feel so much better after taking this or I noticed this is helping
47:24
me lose body fat do you think that’s generally speaking poso because a lot of times when people start taking a
47:29
supplement it’s because they’ve noticed something in themselves we like I don’t feel that great I might need some iron I
47:36
don’t feel that great maybe I need some XYZ so not only are they paying attention to how they feel but then they
47:41
start cleaning up their diet as well right and so when you start cleaning up your diet and supplementing you’re going
47:47
to feel better it doesn’t necessarily mean that the supplement is The X Factor it’s the combination of things that’s so
47:53
true anything else you think would be important to mention within the context of what we’re talking about regarding
48:00
Women’s Health and tips for them to optimize things like you know burning
48:06
body fat building muscle and living longer yeah one of the things that I was actually having a conversation with a
48:12
couple of colleagues this morning looking at dexas so people will go get a dexa scan right and they’ll go oh I have
48:18
really good body composition I have really good bone density but what I want women who are 35 Plus is not to pay
48:26
attention so much about body composition percent body fat is visceral fat or visceral fat depending on where you come
48:31
from because there’s been some recent medical cohorts where we have seen women who’ve come in with a long history of
48:37
endurance and so from a general practitioner point of view they’re generally healthy they look healthy they
48:44
exercise on a regular basis but then we get their Dexter results and their blood results and we see that yeah they might
48:49
be 20% body fat but their visceral fat is above 100 cubic centimeters which
48:56
means that they have an elevated risk factor for cardiovascular disease and we get their blood results and their L LDL
49:04
is elevated their total cholesterol is elevated and their A1C is elevated so
49:10
it’s not protective when we’re looking at the endurance exercise so if you are
49:16
a generally active woman who spends a lot of time doing endurance and you’re 35 Plus if you get a dexa find out that
49:24
visceral fat find out your blood work because it’s better to take action now than when you’re 45 or 50 and you’re
49:30
faced with lots of blood lipid issues and Insulin resistant issues and high
49:38
visceral fat right so do the same tips apply regarding like losing visceral fat
49:43
like strength training cleaning up your diet improving your overall health and wellness like lifestyle and stuff like
49:49
that yeah so we see the strongest impetus for losing visceral fat is resistance training and Sprint training
49:56
because what that does is it creates a conversation from myocin to the liver and then the liver is like hey these
50:03
free fatty acids now need to go into the muscle I don’t have to Esty them and store them as visceral fat so if you’re
50:09
looking for the biggest bang for your buck it’s you go in you do some heavy lifting finish with some Sprint intervals and get out it works for men
50:17
too but it’s really important for women well Dr Sims this has been amazing thank you so much for your time I think the
50:23
audience get a ton of value out of this awesome thanks for having me you got it thank you so much for watching if you
50:29
like this video I really think you’re going to like this video as well I’ll see you there