Speaker 1: 0:00

I mean my general thought at this point, because I've done all the diets myself too, and my general thought is number one can you as an individual live that way, whatever that way is, for longer than two years? Let's say, can you do it for the rest of your life? Because if you can't, it's not for you. I don't care if it gives you some performance boost, if you feel like you're sacrificing all the time to do it. The other thing is, I don't think there's really any evidence that says Keto's gives you any advantage in this realm. So why even do it, if most people want those carbs and want to eat them and they're part of our diet and they're you know what I mean? It kind of opens up your food options, because Keto is a restrictive diet. If you want to think of it, it cuts things out, whereas what I'm advocating is embrace everything and then find what works for you. Welcome to the Whits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, philip Pate, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Whits and Weights community. Welcome to another bonus episode of the Whits and Weights podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:24

This conversation is from my appearance on Karen Martell's podcast, the Hormone Solution. Karen invited me on her podcast to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities that women over 40 face when it comes to everything nutrition, fitness, hormonal health, you name it. We covered a lot of relevant topics like common diet myths and personalized strategies to help women maintain energy, muscle mass, metabolic health as they age. You'll learn the importance of body recomposition and you'll get some practical advice on optimizing workout routines to maximize results while minimizing time spent in the gym. You'll hear about the role of macros in women's health post 40, the flaws in the eat less, move more mantra and the benefits of strength training for managing insulin resistance. We also discussed the importance of nutrient timing, electrolyte balance and tracking progress using metrics beyond just the scale. We talked about some amazing clients who combine proper nutrition with lifting weights and how this holistic approach can improve your health dramatically in midlife. All right, a lot in there, so enjoy my conversation with Karen Martell.

Speaker 2: 2:42

Ladies, I have a treat for you today. I have brought back my friend Philip Pape to come back for a second appearance on the podcast, because the first one was so fantastic. So welcome back, my friend.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Thanks, karen, I'm delighted, it's really an honor to be back for the second time.

Speaker 2: 3:00

Yeah, I'm going to link to our first one in the show notes so you guys can hear all about Phil and what he does. Basically, you are a high-performance nutrition coach, physique engineer and you're the host of the Whits and Weights Top 25 Nutrition Podcast, which is how we found each other actually wasn't, it was through podcasting.

Speaker 1: 3:19

It is, and you encouraged me way back then to put out more episodes than I did. I took you up on it and also it's been successful.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Yeah, you had reached out to advertise on my podcast, your podcast. And then you were like wow, I like your podcast, can you come on my podcast? I'm like yeah, come on mine. Exactly.

Speaker 1: 3:37

No, and here we are no doubt.

Speaker 2: 3:39

And here we are for a second time. That's awesome. So today I've really wanted to jump into some of the myths around physique and weightlifting. And there's so much out there, they'll like so much. Even for me it gets so overwhelming. It's like, okay, who's right, who's wrong? I have a lot of questions. Let's just put it that way you are going to clear these up for me, and we're going to talk about something that you're passionate about right now, which is low energy availability which I think is very interesting.

Speaker 2: 4:19

So does that mean, like, because so many women are suffering with low energy?

Speaker 1: 4:23

It's exactly what it means. This is just when you're not eating enough to support everything your body needs to do, and one of those is hormones. As you know, hormones are activity, all of that. Many women are living in a perpetual state of not having enough energy coming in and not realizing that that leads to all the plateaus of their experiencing right? Because as your body shuts functions down, as your thyroid starts to downregulate, your metabolic rate comes down, your reproductive hormones start to shut down. I mean, the extreme cases of this are what we know as reds relative energy deficiency in sport. This affects female athletes who lose their period, their menstrual cycle, including body builders. Right, hopefully it doesn't come to that. But as that happens, your body compensates and a lot of women don't realize that trying to exercise more and eat less exacerbates that problem. It just is a vicious, vicious cycle. So that's what we mean by low energy availability.

Speaker 2: 5:21

And yet that is what is like, burned in our brains, like, even though there's so much information. I have talked countless hours about the fact that calorie in and calorie out is a false concept. There's some realities to it that you know. Of course, you over consume, you're going to start storing that energy as fat. There is truth to it, but there's so much myth to it as well. And yet women still hold on to that.

Speaker 2: 5:50

Even my brain will go there still to this day, when I know better and I have to tell myself no, like, eating less is actually probably not going to help you to lose weight. And when I had gained weight when I hit menopause a lot of weight I would go through that in my head. I would have to like, resist going down that road of calorie restriction and working out harder, because that is just so. Like everywhere you turn, that's still what we're hearing is you got to watch what you put in your mouth and then you got to work out and burn those calories. So how is it that we can like if that's what women are doing and they're eating less and they're working out harder? Does that ever work?

Speaker 1: 6:39

Yeah, so there's this concept. It's called energy flux, and I know it's something we wanted to talk about at some point. But it's this sweet spot of eating more to move more, right, which is counterintuitive from what we've been taught. We've been taught to eat less and move more, which leads to the compensation that I was talking about with the low energy. But eating more to move more and it often just first starts from bringing up the calories in the form of whatever you're missing, right? A lot of women are low on protein. Some women may find that an increase in carbs is going to be helpful as well, but you're just low across the board and so you're in this persistent conservation, this low metabolic rate, and that's what leads to the plateaus.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Now you mentioned hormones and getting older. The problem is exacerbated for people getting older, and especially women getting older, and the reason is as we age, we're losing muscle mass, and I firmly believe that muscle is the antidote to obesity, more than food is, and we can get into why that is. But if we're losing muscle mass or metabolic rate goes down, and when you go into perimenopause and the hormonal balance has started to kick in, it further downregulate your metabolism. So you're stacking all of these things on top of each other and you feel that you need to eat less and less to compensate and never actually took, say, two months to just try eating a bunch more food and seeing what happens. Not to say that we want to be over-consuming. You know highly processed foods and just going crazy. There's a method to it that we can get into, but yeah, that's super important.

Speaker 2: 8:11

Yeah, I've had people come on the show like Kate Deering, josh and his wife. It'll come to me, but anyways, they are really into the whole pro-metabolic eating and that is that you eat to rev up your metabolism, and I feel like it got really misinterpreted when I interviewed these people. There was another guy too that I had a great conversation with. I'm going to forget his name too. So I've had a few people come talk about it.

Speaker 2: 8:47

I'm almost at 300 episodes, so I'm allowed to forget people's names. But it's funny because after I aired those, you know about six months, I would say even sometimes a year afterwards I would have people then come to me and say I listened to that interview. I started to follow that person and I started to apply this pro-metabolic eating and I got super fat or gained weight, and so they all kind of came back saying that did not work because it was, you know, saying basically eat so that your metabolism would come up, and some of it was like not the best of foods either. Some of the recommendations, Like I've heard, like eat lots of honey and like you know, like actual sugar and so you can rev up your metabolism, because if you don't eat your metabolism goes down and if you do eat metabolism goes up. But, like you're saying, there's a sweet spot. So how do we find that sweet spot?

Speaker 1: 9:50

I'm shaking my head inside it. I don't not to disparage anybody you've had on the show, but I know I've heard it?

Speaker 2: 9:54

Jay Feldman. That's who it was. I know I would remember Jay.

Speaker 1: 9:57

Feldman, so you just said they gained a lot of weight. Well, energy balance is always there, Like the law of conservation of energy that you know calories and calories out is actually still there?

Speaker 1: 10:09

Yes, it's still there.

Speaker 1: 10:11

So what and I think we talked about this on the last time I was on I mean, just tracking your food for like three weeks and seeing how many calories you actually burn by maintaining your weight will tell you what that number is.

Speaker 1: 10:23

The problem is, karen, if you're under eating right now, that's where you need to be comfortable trying to over consume just a bit and push that over time. But we're not talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of calories, right? If I have a new client come in and I have her start tracking the first three weeks, I say don't change what you eat, I just want to know how your body is responding Then when we see, okay, you probably burn 2300 calories a day, let's eat just on the top side of that, barely like maybe 2350, right, maybe 2400. And what inevitably happens is then the metabolism starts to recover, recover, recover, and the metabolism goes up and the amount of food you eat goes up each week until it hits the limit. And if that's the limit where you're talking about, where I think these people are going beyond, where they start to gain weight and then gain body fat, and we don't want that, we just want to get to that, that flat line of perfect energy balance.

Speaker 2: 11:18

Yeah, I feel like I proved myself that calorie and calorie out is a broken model, because I spent 10 years and I stayed at the same weight 128 pounds. It did not move ever and I never once in 10 years counted the calories. And so there'd be days I would be in a flux, there'd probably be days that I would be under, nor like I never paid attention, and it wasn't like I was a super strict eater. I would still eat the ice cream sometimes, but I had found the paleo-based diet, which was my diet for me and my body. It worked best for me, and I just found that I never had to count calories again from that day forward. So I feel like I just proved to myself that, yeah, if you can, you eat to satisfy and you eat the right foods, typically you don't have to watch that calorie intake. As long as you're paying attention to those cues I think that your body gives you.

Speaker 1: 12:23

Yeah, I would love to address this because tracking calories isn't going to change what you eat, right, it's information, in other words, like counting calories, like a lot of people do make the link between counting calories and getting some result. But it's just information and a lot of people have no idea how much they're eating, or even what they're eating or what's in what they're eating. And so to get an idea of protein and carbs and meal timing and everything, it helps to track for that reason alone, even if you're not going to use it as a tool for gaining, losing, maintaining Now, maintaining is sort of the, I'll say, the easiest of the three scenarios, right, because your body has a window that it can stay in and you can eat a little more some days, a little less some days, and kind of feel your hunger signals. And if you're eating mostly whole foods that satiate you, like you said, that satisfy you and they're things that you enjoy, so psychologically you're good, you can maintain your weight indefinitely that way.

Speaker 1: 13:16

I've had clients come to me who had been doing that for years and they were good there. But then they said you know what? But I want to lose about 20 pounds of body fat or I want to start gaining muscle and that's where you got to be a little more precise to make that happen in the timeframe you want, at the rate you want, without excess body fat gain or excess weight loss. Where it becomes, starts to lose muscle. So I think it's a tool for a certain job and not everybody needs it, depending on your goal.

Speaker 2: 13:43

In your practice? Are you seeing a lot of women coming from that background of food restriction, calorie counting, low carb fasting, keto, and when they start to reverse diet and start putting those calories back in, are you seeing that they are prone to weight gain when they start to put the calories back in?

Speaker 1: 14:07

Yes and no. So yes, that almost all my clients have had restrictive dieting practices in the past, because that is the norm in society. It's like going a diet and even keto, which I did for years. I did paleo, everything else. Those diets can definitely work for people if they like the foods, if you can stick with it. That's, those are the principles. But for a lot of people they were simply lacking things that they liked in their diet and so it was unsustainable. So with me, you mentioned reverse diet, something I use. It's called recovery diet, where by tracking your food for a few weeks and knowing where your metabolism is, we can eat to your metabolism. We don't have to slowly increase, kind of randomly, like might happen in a reverse diet, and then we're not over consuming, so they don't gain weight just because they increased their calories or their carbs, because we're not in a calorie surplus. So I think, maybe where the misconception is, a lot of people will reverse and they'll actually overshoot. They'll overshoot their actual maintenance calories and that's where they'll start to gain weight.

Speaker 2: 15:08

Yeah, definitely. Now, coming off of that, a lot of women think that carbs are the enemy. So let's talk about that, because I run into this all the time and I have to talk women off the fricking ledge to say, hey, some carbs are okay, like we need these. What's your stance on? Should we be low carb, should we be moderate high, or is there a place for higher carbs?

Speaker 1: 15:41

Yeah, I think there's a place for all of them. That's the thing is that there are camps right, there are camps that shout at each other, the high carb camps, the low carb camps and they're both right and they're both wrong. And what's missing from the conversation is context. Right, because if you take a sedentary person which is a lot of people, unfortunately, and hopefully those listening to your podcast know the value of being active you take a sedentary person who is eating a lot of carbs, there's a good chance they are also over consuming, they're also in a calorie surplus this is the majority of North Americans and so they're gaining weight. They're primarily consuming carbs. They also have low protein and so guess what happens? They store it as fat and they become insulin resistant. Right, and we know that's a big problem when it comes to metabolic disease and obesity, and it isn't so. But if you take somebody who's strength training and building muscle mass, it's a completely different situation Because, first of all, muscle is a sink for glucose.

Speaker 1: 16:40

The more muscle mass you have, the more insulin sensitive you are and the easier you can handle carbs. In fact, the more you might need the carbs, because carbs give you a ready source of glucose gets converted to glycogen, stored in your muscles and now you're good to go for your straight training sessions. That then lets you lift a few more reps and not feel exhausted during your training. It also lets you recover and you're less sore and you can sleep more. And on and on.

Speaker 1: 17:03

And you see where I'm going. Where just that little tweak of 100 grams more carbs? Where a woman might have been eating, say, 80 grams of carbs a day, now she's at 200, all of a sudden. A lot of these issues resolve themselves, including hormonal imbalances, because some hormones are sensitive to the carbon taking the energy intake. Now, that's not to say you can't be in ketosis and using fat as energy. That's not to say you can't have a lot of protein and low carbs, and now your body will convert protein into glycogen. There's a lot of ways, karen, to do this, and at the end of the day, what I'm going to ask somebody to do is try it out. Try it out for like three or four weeks and document how you feel and how you recover, and if it aligns, great. If you have digestive issues and you can't sleep, maybe that's not for you.

Speaker 2: 17:50

What do you feel works the best for the masses?

Speaker 1: 17:53

Okay, you're going to peg me in.

Speaker 2: 17:56

I am.

Speaker 1: 17:57

I think what I'll call moderate to higher carb approach is like plan A for the masses Really, especially for women over 40. Yeah, especially just from what I've seen anecdotally and also what I think the evidence supports. If you are strength training and maybe strength training isn't the masses, I don't know, but that's my population, that I want, that's your population.

Speaker 2: 18:16

Yeah, so if you are lifting weights on the regular properly, then you're seeing that women seem to do metabolically as well as hormonally and feel their best when they are at a moderate to a higher carbon take.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Yes, it's probably the number one like testimonial quote I could grab from all my client check-ins is oh, I'm so surprised I could be eating all these carbs now. It feels great and I'm loving what I can eat. And we're not talking pizza and donuts, right, we're talking rice and potatoes and fruits. I'm a big fan of fruit. I mean fruit's a quick and easy snack, full of nutrients, full of electrolytes, and it tastes great. I mean, what's wrong with that?

Speaker 2: 19:01

Yes, and do you not find, though, that the majority of older women population, over the age of 40, we tend to be insulin resistant? We're very prone to insulin resistance because we're losing these vital hormones that help us to be insulin sensitive. So somebody's coming to you with that like just slight insulin resistance, which many women are. Do you recommend like okay, let's not jump to that 200 grams of carbs right away. Let's start first with putting some muscle on, because you need that muscle in order to process the blood sugar.

Speaker 1: 19:42

I mean yes and no, and I know what you're getting at right.

Speaker 1: 19:44

Because, if you don't have the practice of the training and if you don't have the muscle mass built up, are you really utilizing the carbs effectively? But it comes on quickly. If you start training, within that week you're going to start utilizing carbs much more effectively than you ever did before. And so I again, I'm okay jumping the carbs to a reasonable level right off the bat. So that could be 200 grams, which isn't that much, to be honest. I mean, I have women eating 350, 400. And I know it sounds crazy, but at the end of the day, the proof is in the biofeedback.

Speaker 1: 20:26

So how's your training, how's your performance? Recovery, sleep, hunger, all of that stuff and is this sustainable? Like, if you just don't like to eat all these carbs, or if you feel bloated or whatever, then you don't have to. The other thing is, when we're dieting, when we're in a fat loss phase, men or women, you're going to be on lower carbs anyway, because the protein needs to be pretty high in relative terms and so all that's left is fats and carbs. Well, you need to be at a minimum level of fat for hormones and just cellular health and whatnot. It gets you around 100 grams of carbs, like for men and for women it's probably under 100 once you're in a dieting phase. So you're going to be in different phases depending on what your goal is.

Speaker 2: 21:05

So someone coming to you, the first phase would be let's actually eat for pro metabolism, like boost the metabolism, eat a regular amount of calories that your body needs, start lifting and then eventually then you're going to say now we want to get some fat off and then we shift things.

Speaker 1: 21:30

Yeah, and potentially depends on how much you have to lose. So let's say you feel and I always say feel, because body size, body image and all that is very personal. There's a health-related excess body weight that you can have, but then there's a wide range of it's. Just how do you feel? How do you look in the mirror? What do you want to be?

Speaker 1: 21:50

And if you're like 10, 20 pounds overweight and it's not that much and you start lifting, I want you to get body recomposition for the first two months, meaning you're going to gain fat and lose muscle at the same time. No change on the scale. But we track your circumference measurements, like your waist. We track how you feel and everything. And guess what happens? Your waist size starts to go down, you start to fill in in all the right places for guys that's the arms, for women it's the butt and the legs and whatever and you're like this is actually working pretty well. Do I want to cut my calories and go into a dieting phase? Or I just want to keep riding this train, eating food, eating a lot of food that I like, working out, feeling great and getting the physique I want, like that's the holy grail. Now you can only ride that out for like three or four months, after which point you have to decide am I staying, am I going down, am I going up?

Speaker 2: 22:43

And then we start cutting, we go into it Again it depends on how much you have to look.

Speaker 2: 22:48

Okay, and do you see that working Like where you? Because I feel like it would, because most women what they do is they cut their calories and they work out and they're doing the same workout. They're eating the same foods, the same amount of calories every single day for years on end and their body doesn't change. And they're like why is it not changing? And so I feel like if you were to come at it from this angle of let's completely shift this and we're actually going to eat more calories, put more muscle on, eat more protein, et cetera, and then we're going to just completely change things up, reduce those carbs, reduce the calories and the body, because it's something, it's different. It's not easy and right it hasn't had that homeostasis anymore that it will shift. The body composition will shift.

Speaker 1: 23:45

Yeah, I think you the keyword there was muscle. It was. I mentioned earlier that I think muscle is more important than the food environment for obesity. Like we know, there's a whole bunch of factors behind obesity and the obesogenic environment, but what's the most, what's the thing that we have the most control over that we can change in a short period of time that counteracts the metabolic effects of obesity? It's muscle, and what I mean by that I want to be clear.

Speaker 1: 24:11

So people listening know how amazing this is is if you have an extra five or 10 pounds of muscle, which a woman can build within a year or so, you can carry a lot more weight and not have worse blood markers and lipids and things like that, all the metabolic factors.

Speaker 1: 24:27

And we know this from when you look at the extremes like sumo wrestlers right, if you're going to sumo wrestler, they are huge, right, they carry a lot of body fat, but they also have a massive amount of muscle and yet their blood markers are in relatively normal range. Yeah, that's crazy. And I've had clients like especially like big male clients, because you know, most women that I work with aren't coming in with like a ton of muscle, but like a male client that has a ton of muscle that have been training for 30 years and he's 50 pounds overweight and I asked him what his blood you know lipids are and they're fine and you're like how, why that is? It's because muscle is protective, it's a glucose sink, it helps with insulin and so building that, like you said, if you've been kind of at the same weight for all these years and you've had trouble, it's probably because you're energy deficient and just going back into an energy neutral or surplus to build muscle is going to make a huge difference to all of this.

Speaker 2: 25:15

Okay and we can't. Like is it pretty hard to have growth in our muscle without proper amounts of carbohydrates? Like, because I'm just thinking of like the old kind of bodybuilding mentality where they like carb load and they eat so much food and they are in the bulking phase because they're trying to put that muscle on. Is it really necessary to eat that much of a surplus to build the muscle?

Speaker 1: 25:49

So I think you're asking two questions One is the surplus and one is carbs, specifically, right, yeah, yeah, so you don't have to eat in a surplus to build muscle past the beginning phase. But in the beginning phase, like the first three to six months, you can easily build muscle and lose fat at the same time. So weight on the scale stays the same. You have more muscle, you have less fat, your waist size goes down, you feel leaner, you look leaner, better physique weight on the scale didn't change. Right, it's a great place to be.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Once you get to like the latent, novice or intermediate training age we'll call it, which is maybe a year, right, not that far out, then you have to be in a surplus to build muscle.

Speaker 1: 26:27

I would say for women you'd want to be in less of a surplus than for a man of even of the same size, just because you can't build the muscle as quickly.

Speaker 1: 26:36

But 0.25% of your body weight a week is probably a good upper range at that level of training.

Speaker 1: 26:43

So if you took your body weight let's say you weigh, I don't know, I got to do math. Now a quarter percent of your weight a week, whatever that comes out to, usually comes out to like one to two pounds a month for a female wanting to gain muscle, and if you go for like six to nine months, which is the length I would recommend you're talking putting on nine to 12 pounds. It may sound like a lot, but half of that is muscle Like. So now you're adding four or five, six pounds of muscle and now you can spend about eight weeks, maybe 12 weeks at most, in a dieting phase to cut off the fat you put on, which isn't that big of a deal, and you're going to do it from higher calories because you're burning more calories. Now you have more muscle and you're going to get it in and out and be over with and then you go back to maintenance or back to gaining for like nine months of the year.

Speaker 2: 27:29

That's why I want people to get to so it is important to put on a little bit of fat with the muscle by eating in a surplus.

Speaker 1: 27:40

Or you can do a lean gain and it's just going to take a lot longer to build the same muscle and you could minimize that fat gain, but it would take like two years to put on the same amount of muscle.

Speaker 2: 27:50

So it's kind of a time thing right.

Speaker 1: 27:53

Yeah, you could, you could. You could even sit at maintenance and do the body recompens. It just gets slower and slower over time. You know it's. You'll always put on a little bit of tissue if you have at least neutral energy.

Speaker 2: 28:06

Right? Yeah, because that's really hard to wrap the head around. It is for a woman. Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1: 28:15

And I do with all the time with clients, because it's 90 percent of what I do is psychology.

Speaker 2: 28:18

It's not yeah, yeah, yeah, I totally.

Speaker 1: 28:21

Psychology of like, even women who have been successful and gone through multiple phases with me, they still they're still doubts, they're still limiting beliefs that we have to manage and that's why having a good coach to help you can be, can be a nice sounding board. But the other question you asked was about carbs. So they did a study of bodybuilders in a surplus. So bodybuilders eating a lot of food to gain muscle and one group was eating a keto style diet and the other kind of what we'll call a standard diet, where their protein was equated. So same amount of protein, probably 0.8 or one gram per pound of protein. The fat and the fat and carbs were switched. So the keto style is a lot of fat and the other side was a lot of carbs. They found that the higher carb group could put on five times as much muscle.

Speaker 2: 29:05

What Really yes.

Speaker 1: 29:07

They gained the same amount of weight because they're in the same surplus, but the higher carb group gained more of that as muscle. Oh, okay, the keto group still gained muscle, but it was just slower, and the main reason for that is likely a couple of things. One is the lack of energy and glycogen in your body when you strength train, so that you can't get enough reps. You can't get as much effective reps and train as hard, so now you're not stressing your body as much to push the muscle growth. The other might be that carbs spare protein. So I don't know if you've heard of the anti-catabolic effects of carbs where, if you don't have enough carbs coming in, your body needs the glucose for your training. It's going to convert protein into that, which it can do.

Speaker 1: 29:54

But, now you're sacrificing the protein and now your body doesn't have that to build the muscle.

Speaker 2: 29:59

To build the muscle because it's me. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Got it. I'm not going to go into the same phase. I'm all for carbs, for most people.

Speaker 2: 30:07

Yes, I'm sure that some keto fanatic could tell you a research study that was done that showed that they put on whatever there's research to back every diet up.

Speaker 2: 30:18

But I will say anecdotally that I hear often on podcasts from male bodybuilders, trainers, even just people that are just super fitness enthusiasts saying that they tried to go keto and it worked for a while and then it just like they completely stalled out. They didn't feel well, they were super tired, their testosterone dropped because they weren't eating carbs and most of them will say I couldn't maintain it. I could not maintain keto. There are some that have the guy that does the keto savage podcast. He's a huge dude.

Speaker 1: 31:06

My general thought at this point, because I've done all the diets myself too. My general thought is number one can you as an individual live that way, whatever that way is, for longer than two years? Let's say, can you do it for the rest of your life? Because if you can't, it's not for you. I don't care if it gives you some performance boost, if you feel like you're sacrificing all the time to do it. The other thing is, I don't think there's really any evidence that says keto gives you any advantage in this realm. Why even do it, if most people want those carbs and want to eat them, and they're part of our diet and they're you know what I mean? It opens up your food options, because keto is a restrictive diet. If you want to think of it. It cuts things out, Whereas what I'm advocating is embrace everything and then find what works for you.

Speaker 2: 31:53

Yeah, that's how I do it too. That's the approach. Yeah, because some people do really well on low carb. I've seen people flourish on carnivore. I've seen people flourish on veganism, for sure, I've had Wade Lighthart, and he's a vegan and he's won many natural bodybuilding contests.

Speaker 1: 32:10

I mean, I have a vegan protein guide for vegans, because, again, yeah, it's fine.

Speaker 2: 32:15

Yeah, if it works for you, I do think that there is something where you find that balance that can work for the masses, which is finding that good amount of protein, fat and carbs. I just told a lady last week who comes from a background of superfood restriction. She was fasting like crazy, fasting every single day, eating two meals a day for years on end. She hadn't lost a single pound doing it. I told her okay, for the next couple of months, I want you to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and I want each meal to have carbs, protein and a little bit of fat. She's like whoa really. She was like blown away that. I even said that she's like well, that's different.

Speaker 1: 33:12

She was so excited. Yeah, exactly, really, I can do that.

Speaker 2: 33:19

I was like how is this restriction serving you? It wasn't at all, and yet she was still doing it.

Speaker 1: 33:25

No, I mean if you feel guilty when you eat at any point, something's off. If you feel overly hungry on a regular basis and you're not trying to diet on purpose, something's off. If you feel like you are not eating things you enjoy, something's off. Those three things satiety, enjoyment and guilt free are really good indicators for anyone listening that your diet is not for you and there is a way that you can have all those things and have your goals, meet your goals.

Speaker 2: 33:55

Yeah, I agree. The myth of when to eat the carbs is that I mean, maybe it's not a myth, sorry. You should have carbs within an hour of working out. You shouldn't eat carbs before you work out. You should be so that you can access your fat stores when you're working out. What's the truth?

Speaker 1: 34:19

I mean meal timing in general is a rabbit hole that people go down before they've solved the fundamental aspects of just energy protein. Just get those things, please, because you can't be consistent there. Let's not talk meal timing. The one thing I think is a little bit important is when you're going to strength train. For most people, plan A would be not to strain fasted, but for some people that does work for them, again, it depends on who you are and depends on what works, and you've got to experiment, in which case it's very simple Just have some carbs at some point before you work out.

Speaker 1: 34:54

That can be two hours before you work out with a slower digesting form of carbs like oatmeal, or it could be half an hour before you work out with a banana. I think you'll notice a difference versus not. You'll notice you'll get extra reps. You won't feel as drained. Some people will tell me halfway through their workout they just feel like they're dragging. Just have a banana, have a banana. Okay, I got through it just fine. Now it could be that difference for you. Other than that, the rest of the day doesn't really matter. Just get the minimums that you need. What about protein timing? That's another one that's controversial. Even my thinking has evolved on it to where it looks like the evidence says twice is way better than once twice a day getting proteins, way better than once three times a little bit better than that. And then it's just diminishing returns Because a lot of people say, well, you have to have four or five feedings a day, you have to spread out the muscle protein synthesis and have your casing before bed so it goes off at night.

Speaker 1: 35:54

All that no number one get enough protein. That's like 95% of the equation. The other 5% is get eat it two or three times at least. That's it. If you're in a fat loss phase, you're not going to be eating that much. You might even be intermittent fasting. Don't feel bad that you can only eat twice, but you're going to have to get all your protein in those two meals which can be challenging.

Speaker 1: 36:15

Similarly, if you're gaining and you're like, oh, I can't eat that much, you might have to eat six times Again. Spread out your protein. That's my feeling on it today.

Speaker 2: 36:23

What about how much protein in one meal? Is there a cutoff where it's like now your body's not going to process that properly and it's not going to build muscle anymore because you've overate the protein? Is there?

Speaker 1: 36:39

That's kind of a myth. You can't really have too much. There's definitely a minimum. That triggers muscle protein synthesis, but because it stays in your bloodstream and gets metabolized for so many hours it comes back to. Are you just getting enough throughout the day? If you are, it just keeps going throughout the week and you're fine. If you got 90 or 100 grams of protein in one meal and then the other 40 you need in another meal, it's going to work. Maybe it's 95% optimal and not 99% optimal.

Speaker 2: 37:12

I think we talked about this last time, but I'm going to ask it again, because I always want to hear from people is what is the requirement for protein for a woman who is lifting weights at least three times a week?

Speaker 1: 37:25

we'll say per day, I would say about 0.8 grams per pound is achievable for most people. Then if you want to push it, one gram per pound and that's your target weight Is your target weight. That's the target weight.

Speaker 2: 37:39

Yes, I think that's very important to hear. If you weigh 180 pounds, but your ideal weight for you is 120 or 130, then that's what you should be marking that up against. Okay, all thingsviacom. If you don't meet that requirement, you'll have a much harder time putting the muscle on correct.

Speaker 1: 38:11

You'll have a harder time putting muscle on, and even worse is when you're in a dieting phase, you will lose muscle.

Speaker 2: 38:18

Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:19

Okay, now the training stimulus, and this is another thing. My thinking has evolved more on as I've studied it. The training stimulus is by far the most important element here. So if you're not training, the protein almost doesn't matter that much. In other words, you're not getting very good benefit because you're not training. So even if you eat a lot of protein, yeah, you might hold on to a little more muscle than if you didn't, but you're still going to lose a bunch of muscle over time. You have to be strength training and then, conversely, if you're training but a little bit shy on protein, it's not going to hurt you that much, believe it or not.

Speaker 2: 38:57

Yeah, that's what I assumed because of just what my own experience has been, but I don't know what the research shows or what someone like you who's really into this stuff and seeing it every day and working with it every day, if that's what you were finding too. And so that's why I was kind of asking, because there's definitely days where I'm not getting in enough protein, and I know it because I have a hard time eating that much protein. But yeah, I don't see it. My body, being the muscle, is not getting sacrificed, it's like a curve.

Speaker 1: 39:28

It's like a curve. You know what I mean. It's like if you have only 0.5 grams per pound and you're training, your body's still going to use those nutrients for your muscle tissue, but it's going to be 80% as effective as if you did. It's not 0%.

Speaker 2: 39:43

Right, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I wanted to know. Okay, perfect, and how quickly do you see the pounds go up from just muscle? And I was asking my assistant this year that she's a personal trainer, and I was like I've put on a pound, which I know that this is not a big deal, but this is I'm just curious. I'm like I put on a pound in the last month, but I also in the last month, increased my testosterone and increased my weightlifting a lot, and so now I'm like, okay, so is that pound of? And I've been eating more because I'm working out more and it was Halloween, so maybe I wasn't eating that great, but for a few days.

Speaker 1: 40:31

You're asking how do you know how much of that is muscle?

Speaker 2: 40:34

Yes, and so I was like is that, is it possible for a woman to put on a pound of muscle in one month?

Speaker 1: 40:43

A pound of muscle. Yeah, that's definitely possible. In one month, a pound of muscle. Now I mean, I see it. Yeah, that's the thing is, are you seeing it for Zeke? I don't know if you take measurements.

Speaker 2: 40:55

I did it and I should have yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:57

If you do like weekly measurements. So for women I would say your thighs, your biceps, your waist, maybe your chest and your neck, like those are the basics. I mean you could do more than that. If your waist is holding steady as you gain weight, that's a sign that you're gaining muscle and not fat. Or if it's not going up as fast as you know, like if it just goes up a tiny bit, which, yeah, now one pound is kind of in the noise. It's hard to like if you were my client and it was one pound, it's kind of in the noise. It's hard to tell one way or the other. But if you're like, hey, I feel great looking in the mirror, I feel stronger, I'm tighter, all that, maybe you not only gained one pound of muscle, maybe you gained two and lost a pound of fat.

Speaker 2: 41:38

Yeah, yeah, that's what I wondered. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:41

Yeah. So it's like you have to have all the data points, you have to have the biofeedback, you have document and journal this stuff.

Speaker 2: 41:46

I'm a big fan of data, as you know, I am not I'm so bad with data, it's like I don't have to the time. I'm like, oh my God. I had an aura ring for a month and I sent it back because I was like, no, I can't do this, let's do stress ball. I can't do the data thing.

Speaker 1: 41:58

Well yeah, and I've had clients like that, karen, and honestly I try to make it as easy on you as possible. Where it's like I'm the one analyzing all the data, you're just kind of plopping stuff somewhere for me to get.

Speaker 2: 42:08

Right, right, hopefully it's not so hard if you had a coach. Point taken.

Speaker 1: 42:15

Yes, I mean we're coaches right, so we always got to give the props to where it's due.

Speaker 2: 42:20

I was using the Me360 app, which I thought was really great. Do you know about that one?

Speaker 1: 42:26

That sounds familiar, but I don't know.

Speaker 2: 42:27

It just gives you like a 3D picture of your body and then it tells you the measurements by taking the picture. So is that?

Speaker 1: 42:36

the.

Speaker 2: 42:36

Amazon one Instant.

Speaker 1: 42:38

I don't know.

Speaker 2: 42:38

Is it from?

Speaker 1: 42:39

Amazon or is it a different?

Speaker 2: 42:40

It just got in on iTunes and then so it's spelled like. Me360, spelled out.

Speaker 1: 42:48

I wondered if more of those would come out because, like almost a year ago, a fellow coach of mine. He said he was using the Amazon, their device, their wearable, and they had an app that came with it that did that.

Speaker 2: 42:59

Oh, I see.

Speaker 1: 43:00

Okay, no, no, that's not it. No, yeah, okay, but something, yeah, like that.

Speaker 2: 43:03

So it was just an easy, because it takes this nice 3D picture and then you can take a picture once a week and then you can compare the pictures, your 3D pictures, just in how much fat you've lost, and gives you a fat percentage and measurements, and I'm going to check that out.

Speaker 1: 43:18

I'm going to check that out.

Speaker 2: 43:19

Yeah yeah, nice and easy for somebody that doesn't want to be measuring all the time and doing all the data stuff.

Speaker 1: 43:26

It's all right there, it doesn't take that long, no, I know?

Speaker 2: 43:29

Well, it doesn't for somebody like myself.

Speaker 1: 43:32

But yeah, it's like any habit, right? You just got to do it for a few, a while, and then it starts to become old hat.

Speaker 2: 43:37

Yeah. So let's talk about the time that's needed to change a woman's physique. So, actually in midlife, when we know that there's hormonal shifts happening, there's metabolic slowdown happening, and this is the time where I really push, push, push women to start lifting, if they're not already, because it's one of the number one forms of exercise to help you not to gain that menopausal weight. And it's definitely what shifted my weight. For me, when I gained a bunch of weight at menopause, I knew not to change the diet, even though I was like, oh, I should watch what I eat and count my calories. I was like, nope, nope, that's not going to work. And I knew it wouldn't work.

Speaker 2: 44:22

And so I got my hormones in place and then I completely changed how I was working out and I started to lift a lot heavier and a lot more regular and tracked protein and increased protein, and I got off 10 pounds by doing that, which was pretty and believable for somebody like myself who has a very hard time losing weight. So how much do we have to spend? Like, how long do we have to spend in the gym? Because I think a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to, like, it's so much of a time commitment, but everybody's got their excuses so I know I had mine. I'm always. It was tough for me to work out.

Speaker 1: 44:59

Yeah, I want to address two things. First, I'm going to challenge, like the self-limiting beliefs, because I know you said like someone who has a hard time losing weight, and I would challenge that because you proved your own self wrong, right, like you proved that you could. And so anyone listening I'm sure you talked about this as well the psychology of it is like embrace the identity of who you actually are, not who you think you are, and everyone listening is an athlete, like I'm just going to put it out there. You're all athletes. And what do athletes do? They want to improve. They train, they fuel their performance, they eat enough, they sleep enough, they keep their stress low, like all those things. I just wanted to address that real quick Because, thank you, I appreciate that you were discouraged about it.

Speaker 1: 45:37

The time in the gym a beginner lifter can lift out three days a week. I'm fumbling over my words. Karen Can work out three days a week for like 30 to 45 minutes and have as effective a result as they can imagine for their strength and physique to start. So it doesn't have to be a lot. In fact, most women are doing too much, really, like I think a lot of women are just well, you're right.

Speaker 2: 46:02

What's too much?

Speaker 1: 46:03

Well, you're either sedentary which is a problem, right, because then we need to get you active but a lot of women are coming in there like, yeah, I do spin and I do, you know, I go play well, not basketball, I'm thinking of a guy client but I go do spin and I run, you know, and I do yoga and then, and I do Pilates and I try to go to the gym five days a week. You know, I'll hear stuff like this it's like let's just stop. Are you okay stopping all of that? Like, do you love any of that? Because, if not, we're just going to stop it all. We're going to go three times a week and you're going to walk more. That's it. It sounds boring and simple, but guess what's going to happen? You're going to take all this stress off your body and that alone, let alone the lifting, is going to start to help with fat loss and with body composition and everything else. So that's. Your answer is like do less, not more. Three days a week, you know, 45 minutes or so.

Speaker 2: 46:51

And in that, if you're working out just three times a week, how like? How were you working out then Like?

Speaker 1: 47:00

really pushing in, yeah, I know, what's the best way to frame it? So, because I always get into arguments or controversies about this, like I think barbells are the best tool for the job, I just I'm just going to say I think barbells are the best tool for the job and you can start anywhere. You can start bodyweight bands, dumbbells, barbells. I have training programs that I've given for all of those and, like during the pandemic, people don't have access to stuff. So you had to make do, but you're going to run into a limit with dumbbells and they're going to become unwieldy and all this other stuff. I'd rather you find a gym that has a power rack and a barbell or have a home gym. Those are the two like best options. If not there's, we got to get into other details. And then you want to do the compound lifts right. You want to squat, deadlift, press, press, keep the reps low and train hard. And the reason I like low reps for a beginner beginners don't know how to work, how to train hard. Let's just be honest. They don't know what it feels like to train hard. I've had a lot of women I work with. They did the three times eight to 12, three by eight to 12 type workouts and I'll ask for a video and I'll see them hit 12 reps and they stop Like, why'd you stop? Well, three to eight, to 12. Okay, and that's the root of the issue is that you're not actually training hard, you're just doing the 12 reps where in rally you could have probably gotten six more. So you need to go heavier, right, but. But 12 reps mentally can be very hard to train heavy when you're newer, whereas five reps, psychologically you kind of balance it all out. It five doesn't sound like that much, right, but you also have to go heavy enough, so you can't get six. So the way I like to do that is say, let's just start somewhere on day one and it might be easy. Day two, you know, the next session, we're just going with five pounds. Next session, go up five pounds Next.

Speaker 1: 48:46

Eventually, karen, you do get to a point where, like, oh, now I know what hard's. Like, yeah, you know, and you can't escape because it's five reps. I'm asking you to do exactly five reps, no more, no less. But you're doing it heavier this time. And you get to a point where, like, can I really do this? And I'm like you can do it. You get three reps in. You're like oh, I don't think I could do the fourth rep, and I'll just take that big breath brace, get the fourth rep, you did it. Oh, I can't do a fifth rep, no way, come on, do it. You got it. And you'll surprise yourself how often you can do what you didn't think you could. And then you start to get this confidence you've never had before. You get this new mental resilience. So that's my approach for beginners. Then, after you've been doing it for three or six months, you could do all the fun stuff. You could do all the bodybuilding and the four day splits upper, lower machines, blah, blah, blah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 49:32

I since we spoke the first time I kind of got that burned in my brain the five heavy reps. And so for me, who's got, like you know, I get, maybe it's like eight, I don't know. I don't think I've ADD or anything but pretendencies maybe for it, but a lot of the time because I'm like geared up to like just get through the workout and got to go back to work sort of thing, and hurry, hurry, hurry. Doing five reps makes it so much more doable for me.

Speaker 2: 50:06

Like it's easy then, because it's fast, it's like, yep, just got to get through five. And then and you know that, if it's, if you're not struggling to get through five, that it's not heavy enough. So, if I can get to eight, oh, that's not one. You know, I hear your voice and it's like no, go down to five. It's worked so well for me, I loved it. And I've heard from people that actually listened to that interview and said the same thing that they were like wow, five reps, okay, I can do that, you know that's all.

Speaker 1: 50:38

You're right, it's true, Like it's. It's the opposite of what you think. You think, oh, barbells and heavy, you know, but then you find like it's way less stressful way to train. It's grit. It requires grit, like to get those reps, but it doesn't require all the psychological strain of the time and all the reps. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it becomes fun, I think.

Speaker 2: 50:57

I think so too, like it's more fun and I can kind of whip through it faster, and I feel like it's even more effective than doing the get to 12 reps. And yeah, because if you have that number you do tend to never lift heavy enough, I don't think.

Speaker 1: 51:14

Yeah, it's true, and once you've learned how to lift heavy from the fives now, you can apply that feeling more effectively to the eight to 12. Yes, because I mean the way I train now. I have it all in there, right, and I have all the stuff in there, but it took a while to get to where you know what heavy training feels like. You know, I don't know if we talked about it the last time I was on, but there is something called the effective reps theory and you know there's two different camps. One says it's actually not a thing and the other is like gung-ho about it.

Speaker 1: 51:43

But the principle, I think, makes sense, and that is whatever reps you're doing, whether it's five, 15 or even 30 reps, there are certain reps toward the end that are the effective reps, the ones that really fatigue your muscle and cause that stress that tells your body hormonally hey, you need to build more tissue next time, right. And some people will argue that the first reps are junk volume Probably heard that term before where, like, if you do eight to 12, the first six or seven like feel kind of easy, they're not doing anything for you. But some people, some science says that actually all of it has some beneficial effect. So my point is if you're leaving it on the table, if you're doing eight to 12 in the gym and it's always easy you never get to those effective reps. That's the point.

Speaker 1: 52:28

And then, you'll just never grow, you'll never be able to increase the weight and you're just wasting time in the gym, Right?

Speaker 2: 52:33

So, basically, if you're doing whether you're doing five reps or you're doing 12, if you're not getting to the place of like struggling to get out those last couple of reps, it's not going to be effective, whether you do five or you do 12.

Speaker 1: 52:48

Yeah, that's the principle.

Speaker 2: 52:50

Okay, what does this do to women Like, how can it help them hormonally to lift weights?

Speaker 1: 52:58

Oh, it's, it's. It can be incredible, and it's. I've been surprised by clients to see them in many cases coming off their hormone treatments. And I know, I know you talk a lot about hormones.

Speaker 1: 53:10

Oh, don't do that I know, I'm sorry, but I mean my philosophy is like they compliment each other, right? Yeah, or hormone treatment compliments lifestyle, and if you do both, you could at least discover for you what you need, like you may need less or more treatment, you know your lifestyle may need this or that, but I have had women who were actually on the younger side, like late 20s, who had been on various hormone treatments.

Speaker 1: 53:35

Oh yeah, Not not, not, not for, like perimenopause. Yeah, because, like, maybe they were on Adderall as a kid or something weird like that, and it kind of got them out of that to the point where they could just stop all their medication. The older, the older my female clients are, when they get into their fifties, the more it's likely they need to have some form of hormone replacement, anyway, but sometimes they can reduce the dosage or sometimes, when they were struggling even with hormone replacement, now the lifestyle change is what they needed to normalize.

Speaker 2: 54:04

See that lots yeah.

Speaker 1: 54:05

You know, so it's, it's awesome. Now I've also had women who continue to hit like this plateau, even when everything is quote unquote, perfect. And you know, it frustrated me when I came across these cases. But then I discovered that sometimes you need to find a creative way to configure the way that you diet and the way that you train to manage the stress on your body. What I mean by that is some women are overly responsive with their metabolism and so when they go into a diet their body adapts quickly to that diet and so they hit plateaus very quickly, and the only way to overcome that would be to keep restricting, which we don't want. So then you're like well, there's, what do I do? Because now I come back to energy neutral, but now I'm not losing weight, blah, blah, blah. First, make sure you're training right, properly. Right, Because sometimes I've had clients where they just weren't doing what I said and then I'm like, okay, that that explains you.

Speaker 1: 54:56

You're not training heavy enough. And once they start training heavy enough, the the metabolism starts to kind of shape up. But in other cases I've had clients, for example, who are better off very aggressively dieting for a very short time, for like three weeks or four weeks at a very aggressive weight rate which requires more discipline. But then their body, they kind of get ahead of the adaptation and they cause like three, four or five pounds of fat loss in those three weeks and then they're done. Then they come out of it Okay so what does that like when you're saying aggressive can you share what that looks like Sure?

Speaker 1: 55:33

sure what that looks like, and this is supported by the evidence. Dr Bill Campbell out of University of South Florida I don't know if you know him- yeah, I do.

Speaker 1: 55:41

Yeah, he. He studied this with with men and women who are trained. Different age levels found that if you keep your diet to like two to three weeks even if it's very aggressive we're talking like a 40, 45% deficit from your maintenance calories that you can still preserve muscle mass because you're keeping it short, because at the end of the day, that's what we care about. I don't want you to just lose weight. I know a lot of women listening are like I just want to lose weight, but I want you to lose just fat. I don't want you to lose any muscle. So the key with these short dieting phases and I did one myself just to see what it felt like is to diet for four days, refeed for a day, so you bring all your carbs back up so that your calories equal your maintenance for one day. They need diet for four days and then refeed for a day and then die for four days. So it ends up being like 14 calendar days and like so I'm 180, I'm 100, I was 185 pound male. For me that meant five pounds of fat loss. So if you're like 140 pound female, that might be four pounds of fat loss in just two weeks of mostly fat. So that's pretty cool, right. But it means that if you burn I don't know if you burn 2000 calories, or let's say you burn 1800 calories right, you're going to be eating like 900 calories, which normally I would say is a little dangerous or more like the Optavia territory, right, yeah, but because you're doing it in a controlled fashion, you have the refeed days and you're strength training and keeping the protein really high.

Speaker 1: 57:09

I don't consider that a crash diet. I think it's a very controlled protocol if you do it the right way. Yeah, so that's for one of my clients. We did that, we. We it worked for her, you know what I mean. Like it was the one thing that could work because she could get ahead of that metabolic change and then come back out to maintenance and then after a few months we'll do it again, yeah, yeah, and that that way she can kind of deal with her. You know her specific hormone situation was just tough.

Speaker 2: 57:34

Yeah, I have a program like that actually in my group coaching program and it, but it doesn't come till months into the program because I want everybody to get metabolically healthy first before doing something like that. But it's very similar. I called the burn fat fast program and so it's high protein, low fat, low carb and you set yeah, you go three or four days and then you go up in the calories and then you drop back down, go another couple days. Yeah, very similar.

Speaker 2: 58:02

It's not fun Like no, it's not fun, it's a bit tough, but it's short.

Speaker 1: 58:06

It's really short. You know, and I did a challenge as well with it and people like the biggest revelation people had was how much they could learn about their limits and learn how to manage hunger. Like when you're at that extreme and trying to do it the right way, you become an expert in like what are the homo satiating foods right? How do I add volume to all my meals when you're at your extreme so that now when you do kind of normal diets in the future, they're easy, they're actually relatively easy.

Speaker 2: 58:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So and so, hormonally we kind of didn't, we kind of skipped over that, but but hormonally it's going to help women. I think, like you said, it can help them to process their hormones better, like if they're on HRT and they're in menopause or perimenopause. I find the women that lift weights and walk very specifically walking it's like their body will take on the hormones better and it's maybe it's a circulation thing, maybe it's because it's being utilized to help build muscle. Like we know, estrogen and testosterone really help with protein synthesis and building muscle. But I definitely see that it's this really important layer to the HRT journey and helping their hormones.

Speaker 1: 59:30

I think so. I think, yeah, you're right. I think it's the, the better nutrient partitioning and the efficiency, like better glucose metabolism, for example.

Speaker 2: 59:37

Yeah, that causes increased insulin sensitivity yeah. And left insensitivity.

Speaker 1: 59:42

Yeah, and of course then thyroid reproductive hormone cortisol, all of it cascades in the right way, the upward spiral kind of way that you want.

Speaker 2: 59:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 59:51

Yeah, and then there's bone density and all these other things. Everything's interrelated. We know that it's all interrelated.

Speaker 2: 59:56

Yeah, what's your take on fasting for women and menopause and intermittent fasting?

Speaker 1: 1:00:03

My take on fasting is it's a tool for. It's a tool for what am I trying to say? It's a tool for sustainability. Particularly when you're in a calorie deficit, so like if you don't have a lot of calories to play with, it can be helpful to manage hunger. Yeah, I think the jury's out, or I think the evidence doesn't show any difference between the ability to lose fat whether you're fasting or not, if the calories are equated. It's just that intermittent fasting often helps people get to the calories that they need. And if you're not tracking like you said earlier, if you don't want to be tracking your calories, it could be a slightly more intuitive or natural way to make you not eat as much, because you just feel more full with less calories.

Speaker 2: 1:00:46

Yeah, I want to talk about some real-world success stories, one of them being a shared client, which I'm going to say her name because she was on your podcast, correct?

Speaker 1: 1:01:03

Dependent. Yeah sure, Say the name Carol.

Speaker 2: 1:01:05

I won't say her last name, but Carol. Yeah, so we have this mutual client. She had come to me. She was in part of my package program where we really go deep on the hormones. She worked with me for six months. We got her hormones dialed in and she was still struggling with the weight and months later I hadn't heard from her. And then, months later, she messages me and says I actually ended up working with Phillip Pape. I heard him on your podcast. I joined his program, I started working with him and I think she'd lost 10 pounds of fat and then put on all this. I was like, oh my god, that is crazy. Carol, I'm like good for you. So that just goes to show because she was somebody that was doing everything right. She had the hormones dialed in and just none of that was moving the needle until she got into the weightlifting.

Speaker 1: 1:02:12

Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, it was a combination of weightlifting and embracing the foods that she loved in a way that still worked, and I think that's huge is just being able to feel at home with yourself and aligned with your goals, aligned with your body, and not trying to go to these extremes. Yeah, she was an interesting one. Yeah, you're right, we talked about it all in our podcast, but I felt like she was doing a lot right already when she came to me, and so that sometimes is a more difficult client to work with. Yes, because you're like, okay, but they still have an insecurity about it, right, some lack of confidence in something, and so this is where I can really help and be there for her. So, yeah, that was a lot of fun, for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:02:59

Maybe you should send me that link and I'll put it in the show now so people can listen to it.

Speaker 1: 1:03:03

Yeah, I'll take a note to do that for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:03:06

Yeah, because I think people should go and listen to that. What are some other success stories, especially like the hormonal health and weight loss?

Speaker 1: 1:03:17

Yeah, let's see. I definitely have had clients who are either taking like DHEA, testosterone, progesterone, estrogen. I mean the success stories are kind of, across the board, pretty similar in that the increase in energy and the lack of energy reduction and low energy availability was, I think, the key to unlock all of this. So, for those listening like it's not magic, it's really that it's getting enough energy and not depriving yourself. But yeah, there was always some interesting side effects, karen, like the sleep.

Speaker 1: 1:03:58

A lot of women come to me with busy lifestyles.

Speaker 1: 1:04:00

They have kids that they're taking care of, maybe they're taking care of their husbands too and they're, you know, holding on the job and the business and everything else, and it's hard to even get enough hours of sleep, let alone good quality sleep.

Speaker 1: 1:04:12

And when you start to regulate these other things and you start to lift, something about your body like changes the way it needs energy, the way it needs sleep, the way it recovers, and you would think you would be more tired, right, like by all this heavy lifting, but in the contrary, your body somehow sleeps more deeply. It like, I don't know, just sucks you into that deep sleep because it's trying to build and you're giving it what it needs and you're like acting like this athlete and your sleep quality improves, right, and then guess what happens there. So again, for women listening, when you don't get enough sleep or sleep quality, you store more fat in the abdomen. And for the same amount of fat storage, you're going to store more in the abdomen. When you get enough sleep or high quality sleep, it gets distributed more evenly and that can affect your hormones because, as you know, abdominal fat is a danger zone and it's tied into estrogen and all this other stuff. So, yeah, that's. I mean I could go on.

Speaker 2: 1:05:05

I guess you know, but yeah, but that's good, and because the message here is eat. But really because we're hearing from so many people not to eat, and it's like, oh, ladies, were really? Some people are really destroying their systems because of some of the advice that's being put out there. You know, like I just read recently from somebody that wrote a book about fasting and all the stuff and it said in there eat less than 50 grams of protein a day and eat once to twice a day.

Speaker 1: 1:05:40

That's a new thing. Oh man, that's going to be the next debunking we're going to have to deal with is the low protein. I don't get it Like, for longevity is easy what they say, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:05:49

Which is wrong? That's not true.

Speaker 1: 1:05:51

Yeah, no, and well, I shouldn't say I hardly talk bad about people, but if you look at the people doing this and you wonder if they're even healthy, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:06:04

Well, I had on my podcast the two gentlemen that wrote the book Eat Like the Animals and they were fascinating and they did a study on I think this is about two years ago on menopausal women and the need for protein increase Like the increase. It increases. It increases with age. It increases with age and they proved that in their research and I think that that is so true. We really do and I've seen just that hack alone, just increasing your protein and lifting weights too, of course, but how much that changes a woman's physique and metabolism when they just start eating more.

Speaker 2: 1:06:49

And they're eating and they're prioritizing that protein.

Speaker 1: 1:06:51

Yeah, and we know protein is so filling too that when you jack it up like that, when you go from 50 grams to 150 grams, I've gotten complaints like I can't even eat enough as much as you're telling me you know, in the past it was like I overeat. Now it's like I can't eat enough.

Speaker 2: 1:07:07

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:07:08

But it's a good problem to have because we can deal with that.

Speaker 2: 1:07:10

Yeah, we just did a protein challenge in my group and that was so many of the women reported afterwards. I can't believe how satiated I was and how much I didn't want. Carbohydrates and sugar, like their sweet tooth, went down. Yes, their energy went up. They felt more satiated. They were eating better quality food Because, as the guys that wrote the book, eat like the animals if you're not meeting your protein intake that your body requires, your body will try to overeat carbs and fats to try to reach that protein intake through those foods.

Speaker 1: 1:07:48

True, yeah, yeah, that's a fair point.

Speaker 2: 1:07:50

Yeah, so you will always overeat those foods, but try and overeat meat.

Speaker 1: 1:07:55

No, you can't.

Speaker 2: 1:07:55

It can't.

Speaker 1: 1:07:56

And when you shop for food in the grocery store, it's hard to get a lot of processed food. When you have to have a lot of protein, yeah Right, like you're like, okay, I need protein. So there's dairy, there's animal products, there's maybe lentils and legumes, there's grains, but that's it. If you go to all the package section, you might find protein bars and even whey protein. I don't consider it processed food really. I mean, I'm okay with people putting whey protein in their diet because some of them need it. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:08:23

Yeah, what is your favorite protein powder?

Speaker 1: 1:08:27

Just whey protein.

Speaker 2: 1:08:28

You mean like a brand, no, just the type Like whey protein, whey protein.

Speaker 1: 1:08:33

Whey. You know it's all the amino acids. It's complete, easily digestible. It doesn't bother most people, bothers some. If you have a dairy intolerance or whey intolerance, I would go with either like a vegan protein. So pee and rice blend, because then you get the full amino acids. You don't like those. First form makes a pretty good one. It's called vegan, it tastes pretty good, I don't have to drink them, but I've tried it. And then the third option is beef isolate. Again, if you're not vegan but you also can't handle whey for whatever reason, beef isolate protein.

Speaker 2: 1:09:03

So that's the one I take. Yeah, okay, I like that one. I find it easiest on my digestion and inflammation. And yeah, easy, just yeah, I can digest it really, really easily. The pee protein, I cannot. And I've also read that pee protein has high amounts of heavy metals.

Speaker 1: 1:09:21

You've got to be aware of all that stuff. I mean it depends on how important that is to be right. Like even whey protein. If you get the cheaper stuff with the flavorings, it's going to have a lot of additives.

Speaker 1: 1:09:30

It's going to have, like the artificial flavors yeah, it's going to have the sucralose, sucralose and again, I'm the kind of nutrition coach it's like if no more than 10 or 20% of your diet has that stuff, you're probably fine, it's not that bad and things like aspartame getting overblown with the WHO report. You'd have to drink 20 cans of diet soda every day for years to approach any level of toxicity, if you even approached it. So there's fear mongering, a lot of fear mongering, and a lot of people aren't just getting their protein. Karen, just get your protein Right. And how do you get, like quote unquote low quality whey to get your protein versus whatever else you were eating? Probably?

Speaker 2: 1:10:09

Yes, yes, the alternative, the alternative is likely worse. So, yeah, whatever you got to do, I like that, okay. So what do you have going on to offer people Like? You got group, you got one on one.

Speaker 1: 1:10:22

Yeah, I primarily work one on one. I do have a lot of challenges that I run where it's a lot of fun on my Facebook group where people get in a group kind of thing and those are free, but I primarily work one on one with folks.

Speaker 2: 1:10:36

And what's the Facebook group called?

Speaker 1: 1:10:38

Whitson weights. Everything's Whitson weights, easy to find.

Speaker 2: 1:10:42

And your podcast. Your podcast is doing really well. That's probably because you had me on it.

Speaker 1: 1:10:47

It is. I saw a big bump after I met you.

Speaker 2: 1:10:51

Well, I appreciate you and I appreciate all your information and allowing me to pick your brain and ask you all these million questions about working out, because I'm so into it right now.

Speaker 1: 1:11:02

They're such good questions.

Speaker 2: 1:11:03

So much since. I started lifting heavy and I lost a lot of the fat. I lost the rest of the fat through peptide use but for the first time in my life I actually can see all this muscle that I'm putting on and it's so gratifying and it just propels me forward to keep going and I'm like I want to just really dial this in and see what my body can do. I'm going to be turning 48 next year, and so it's like I want to look my best at 50.

Speaker 1: 1:11:32

I was going to say you're turning 35,. Karen, honestly no no I mean seriously, no, that's great. I love to hear that stuff and I'm sure you're listening to the questions you're asking. They're probably like Karen, you need to ask this and you know you're going to ask it, and so I agree.

Speaker 2: 1:11:46

Okay. Well, thank you again for coming back and I look forward to a third episode down the road, maybe next year. Hey, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 1:11:54

We'll make it a series. Thanks, Karen. Awesome. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.