When my own body started rewriting the rules during perimenopause, weight management turned into a bewildering quest. I soon realized that the conventional arsenal of restrictive diets and punishing workouts was failing me.
Join us as I open up about my personal struggles and breakthroughs in finding a sustainable, healthy lifestyle that resonates with the changes of midlife. Alongside the wisdom of health coach and fitness trainer Kirstie Wilson, we delve into the unseen emotional, mental, and spiritual battles that accompany this journey, promising a message of hope and actionable strategies for women who are navigating these transformative years.
As we embrace our 'Third Act', the narrative shifts to celebrating health and vibrancy in our post-menopausal decades. This episode isn't just about weight loss; it's an ode to thriving.
We address the essential pillars of fat loss, from nourishment to rest, and unravel the significance of accountability, community, and a resilient mindset. Discover how connecting with your core values and identifying a profound 'why' can arm you against the hurdles of aging.
We offer insights into mindful eating, the art of self-discovery, and the joy of aligning with a lifestyle that’s not about shedding pounds, but about reveling in a vibrant, thriving existence. Kirstie Wilson joins me in sharing these insights, ensuring you leave with not just knowledge, but also the inspiration to make lasting changes.
As promised, a gift from me to you!
You can learn more about Kirsti Wilson. She has a long standing podcast called What Well Women Want! She has been coaching women for years- to learn more check out her website.
Thank you for your time and interest in this podcast! I invite you to leave a heartfelt review on whichever podcast platform you listen to. It does so much to bring exposure to the podcast and helps lift others up!
To leave a review, helping us spread the contents of this podcast- click on this link! Thank you!
Connect with me!
Website: In the Rising Podcast Website
Email: Bettina@intherising.com
In the Rising Pinterest:
In the Rising Facebook
Check out the Website: Fit after Breast Cancer
When my own body started rewriting the rules during perimenopause, weight management turned into a bewildering quest. I soon realized that the conventional arsenal of restrictive diets and punishing workouts was failing me.
Join us as I open up about my personal struggles and breakthroughs in finding a sustainable, healthy lifestyle that resonates with the changes of midlife. Alongside the wisdom of health coach and fitness trainer Kirstie Wilson, we delve into the unseen emotional, mental, and spiritual battles that accompany this journey, promising a message of hope and actionable strategies for women who are navigating these transformative years.
As we embrace our 'Third Act', the narrative shifts to celebrating health and vibrancy in our post-menopausal decades. This episode isn't just about weight loss; it's an ode to thriving.
We address the essential pillars of fat loss, from nourishment to rest, and unravel the significance of accountability, community, and a resilient mindset. Discover how connecting with your core values and identifying a profound 'why' can arm you against the hurdles of aging.
We offer insights into mindful eating, the art of self-discovery, and the joy of aligning with a lifestyle that’s not about shedding pounds, but about reveling in a vibrant, thriving existence. Kirstie Wilson joins me in sharing these insights, ensuring you leave with not just knowledge, but also the inspiration to make lasting changes.
As promised, a gift from me to you!
You can learn more about Kirsti Wilson. She has a long standing podcast called What Well Women Want! She has been coaching women for years- to learn more check out her website.
Thank you for your time and interest in this podcast! I invite you to leave a heartfelt review on whichever podcast platform you listen to. It does so much to bring exposure to the podcast and helps lift others up!
To leave a review, helping us spread the contents of this podcast- click on this link! Thank you!
Connect with me!
Website: In the Rising Podcast Website
Email: Bettina@intherising.com
In the Rising Pinterest:
In the Rising Facebook
Check out the Website: Fit after Breast Cancer
Hello and welcome to In the Rising a health and wellness podcast for those going through and those supporting those going through cancer. My name is Bettina Brown and I'm board certified in physical therapy, wound care and lymphedema, and you know, for me, cancer is very personal. It's affected my friends, my immediate and my not so immediate family, and therefore I created this podcast and fit after breast cancercom to address the multiple dimensions of our lives during and after recovery. Hello and welcome to In the Rising podcast 2024. I am so excited to be in the fourth year of this program and I am really thankful for all of the new listeners and grateful for everyone that stuck through it year after year.
Speaker 1:Well, recently I interviewed Helen Murray Finley, who was talking about menopause, and when I pulled the statistics for all of 2023, this was one of the top downloaded podcasts for In the Rising, and I was going through my files and I realized I had also spoken to Kirstie Wilson, a health coach and fitness trainer, who I talked to years ago about menopause and weight gain and weight loss and stress, and I feel, right after the new year, right after the holidays, that might be a really great time for a topic like this. I have a little gift for you at the end, so stay tuned, kirstie. You and I are female podcasters. We are women that are really interested in helping others and other women focus on health and what you call here vibrant, thriving life, and how important that is. Share a little bit with me how you got to a place in life where this is your focus, where this is something that you're not only passionate about but really create a life around.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, I'd love to, and it's really one of those. Where it's my mess is now my message, as I like to say. So I was always one of those lucky women and I now realize how blessed I was, but never really gained weight. I was one of those women that could go on vacation and drink the fruity rum drinks and eat what I wanted and maybe gain a couple of pounds and come home and be back to normal in two or three days, never thought anything of it.
Speaker 2:I remember Paul's hit, which I didn't even know what that was, didn't know it was coming. I was 46. And the first sign of it for me was sudden weight gain and I gained 30 pounds. So I did what everybody does, right. I cut my calories and I went on a really restrictive diet and up to my workouts and I was doing crazy workouts. You know, tons and tons of cardio. I added in hits, I added in strength training and I was probably at about a net 900 calories a day and not losing weight at all.
Speaker 2:So I have a background in public health. Before I moved to Florida, because I'm from the UK originally, I worked in public health and data analysis and research and so on. So I thought you know what. I should be able to figure this out. It shouldn't be that complicated and you know, the interweb is so full of conflicting, confusing misinformation, right, keto, atkins, low carb, high carb, low high, high high.
Speaker 2:I am so confused so I went off and did my own research and figured out what worked for me, right, and I realized that these crazy heavy workouts and these intense workouts that we feel like we have to do because it burns calories, right, is just not the way to do it. And so I'm figuring that out and now keeping the weight off because I'm 52, going on 53 now and keeping it off, but still loving food. I still eat a lot. You ask any of my girlfriends, I eat a lot of food, right, and I love food and I'm not scared of it. I don't have any weird emotional issues with food. I don't stress it, I don't emotionally. I enjoy my food, I eat plenty of it and I stick to the weight right, whatever I do, I'm just going. There's so many women out there struggling with this and having not just the physical struggle but the emotional, mental and spiritual struggle with it too, and it doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to and so just want to get that out there and help other women find a way to eat that works for them, there's not a stress anymore and helps them lose the weight. But I'm not focused on weight loss per se. I want women to think about it more in let me find a healthful way to live that will just automatically lead to me gaining a healthy way, or getting to a healthy way. As opposed to that, to my tunnel vision Let me lose weight, because then what happens is the crash, fat diets and the low nutrition that leads to malnutrition.
Speaker 1:Effectively, yes, yes, that makes sense. It sure does, and a lot of people. As a physical therapist that's my background I learned some about nutrition, but obviously nothing really. And as a perimenopausal woman to where my eyebrows have lifted in the last few years. So I'm like what I have done my entire life and I have a physical job. Where is this coming from? Like, what is that, you know? Like where is this coming from? The frustration? Also an embarrassment.
Speaker 1:How do you work in the healthcare field and you're? You know you're carrying more than you should and also with the health risk of, for example, I carry a breast cancer gene. I have a genetics background. I know it doesn't necessarily mean anything, but the more weight we have, the more it means something. So it is a true like health issue and I'm seeing this and hearing this. So I personally am in the mess, but I also hear your message as well. You are also, you know, your certified personal trainer and also certified health coach. Share a little bit how that process helped you find an answer for yourself. That is also helping other women find an answer for themselves.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. So. The personal trainer was kind of a prerequisite for the health coach. I went with the mindset of I want to become a health coach and I'm glad I did the physical thing, the personal training thing, first, because it's such a grounding for the health coach. But it also made me understand the role of muscles and flexibility in terms of stability for women are age because, again, I'm not just focused on the weight loss, it's, it's what I help women achieve, but in a overall health approach. Right.
Speaker 2:So when we get to this age and our hormones change you know this, being a medical practitioner yourself right? So we lose muscle mass and that increases failure dramatically. Once we go through paramedic pause, we're losing three to 10% of our muscle mass every decade. So that impacts weight loss because calories are burned in the muscles, right, so if you've less muscle you're not burning as much. But all that hormonal change also means that our metabolisms are slowing down, with increased stress and physical changes like ligaments. You know this. Right, ligaments and tendons just start to get less flexible because of the decline in estrogen and testosterone and all that. Right.
Speaker 2:And it's just so much more important to think about being gentler on our bodies but making sure that we are doing the appropriate level. So, a moderate exercise every day, a brisk walk right, it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. Some amounts of flexibility, a range of motion training right. So we want to be getting those stretches in. We want to be making sure that our core is stable and our big muscles of our legs have good strength, because we don't want to fall, we don't want to get injured. You know this just as well, right? So we want to be doing a bit of strength training because we want to keep those muscles strong. Now again, we don't want to be trying to be on a Schwarzenegger here. That's not the look we're going for. It's pretty much physically impossible for women, right, because we don't have that level of testosterone. But we do want to be keeping those muscles strong. We should be strength training two to three times a week.
Speaker 1:Yes, and the more research I'm doing, the more I'm realizing that the cardio is important and that is where our brain goes, almost like the old time aerobics. But the strength training becomes more important as we are getting older and again, we don't have to do two hours a day that you actually have nothing left to give after that, unless you are. That is your job, is your profession to be that kind of athlete. But the strength training was kind of a surprise for me. Even though I'm a physical therapist. This is not my area of how important that really is For bone health obviously as well, but for muscle health as we are going through different phases of hormones changes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, and the strong. Well, to me, the important thing is that you'll see this, I'm sure, in physical therapy, especially working with women this age. We all know that lady in maybe her 60s, maybe early 70s who had that fall and broke her hip and was just never quite the same, right, I don't want that for us. If we start doing some strength training in our 50s two or three times a week with medium weights and just keep that strength, we're not going to have those balls and if we do, we're going to recover a lot better. We're not going to have the breaks as much, yeah, and then the calories are burned in muscles. So we keep our metabolism a little bit better if we keep our strength up. And it's spiritually good for us If you see that you've got like a good physique, toned arms, toned legs. I mean again, it doesn't have to be about vanity, but there is a spiritual thing there and an emotional thing.
Speaker 1:We, I think, like you also touched upon an earlier, christy is stress. You're working with clients. Do you feel that they are aware of their stress levels or not even they're just been stressed for so long that they don't realize those are stressors anymore.
Speaker 2:Isn't that the way we live in the 21st century? Unfortunately, I actually give them two stress assessments. I have them go online to some standard some good, well studied, you know good methodology studies and have them do them. And every single one of the women I work with are surprised at their stress level. And, yeah, it's important.
Speaker 2:I, when I work with clients, I have what I call my five pillows and it's nutrition is the biggest part of weight loss and healthfulness, right, but also activity and the exercise that we're talking about hydration, and then stress and sleep management. Now, I understand sleep can be difficult when there's hot flashes and that kind of thing going on and they're done. That I get it. But we know so much more about sleep and its impact on us. When we don't get quality, restorative sleep and again, so much of this is tied together, right, you're getting good nutrition and you got health is good and you're managing your stress and you're getting some activity, you'll get better sleep. It's this whole like Venn diagram of how it all fits together. Yeah, I mean I cover with my ladies when I work with them all five of those put what I call the pillows.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and. And to just know that that is also important because we try to multitask, do so many things especially you know it sounds horrible there was a time that we didn't have to take care of a generation above us, right, because of just. But with our life expectancy, you are doing a lot for being the children for many women, being the daughters and children of someone that they're taking care of, being the mothers and grandparents of others, that's a lot of stress and it's a lot of expectation. Right, this is my family or this is my mother, but I'm literally seeing our clients in their 90s and their children are retired and they physically can't just go home and take care of them like they used to. You know it. Just that adds a stressor. And that they're taking care of the grandkids. These are all things that we take for granted, but they affect us.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you've ever listened to anything by him. I've been nerding out a little bit on Peter Peter Atiyah lately, oh yeah, yeah, and I was listening to a podcast that he did the other day where he I mean he's very into longevity, right, and he was working back on kind of the basic activities that we all need to be doing in our 90s and working back how we need to be building strength in our 50s to still be able to do them in our 90s. So he was doing things like being a grandparent and a child running towards you and, of course, children don't stop right, toddlers don't stop. When they hit you they're gonna run into you. So you've got to be able to bend and pick them up. And it was a really interesting podcast because he was talking about if that child is 30 pounds and you want to be able to do that at 90, in your 50s, you kind of need to be able to do a goblet squat, which is the basic same move right Of like 60 or 70 pounds, because you're going to have that muscle loss. No matter, even if you're strength training, you're still gonna lose some of it. And I was going to walk and listening to the podcast while I was walking I was like that's really interesting and that's a lot to comprehend. But again, that's where we need to be starting to think about it.
Speaker 2:I talked to ladies. I mean, I call it thriving in your third act, right, because the average age of death for women in the US right now is 81. Most of us are officially menopausal at 51. That's 30 years post menopause for most of us. With all that estrogen, all that testosterone and progesterone that's declined and the impact that that has on our body, on our metabolism, our gut health, our bones, our muscles, that's a lot of work we need to do to keep up our bodies in good health and in good condition If we're gonna make it to 80 with a quality of life where we are thriving, vibrant and confident and able to do things.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and it really does take some decision and figuring out what your values are, because it's not having to change everything and throw everything at your pantry. I could not do that. I did it once. I actually did it like five times, and I do like a nice piece of chocolate once in a while with my evening tea, but it is just as soulful and as important for my ritual and peace as eating the healthy salad. Those are all things together, everything in moderation, including moderation, but you all yeah, you have your own podcast and I would love for you to share more about that.
Speaker 2:It was something I started and I probably shouldn't admit this. It was a really random thing. One morning I had a call with a client and she was really frustrated because she wasn't getting anywhere and I just literally went on and kind of rambled and ranted a little bit. But again I have a message and I want to get it out that this doesn't have to be stressful and hard work. It can be fun. It's about going into this with curiosity, I feel. There's no one size fits all diet. There's no off the shelf thing. There is an optimal way of eating, I believe, for women our age, but it's about taking that and then figuring out how it fits you. So that's just what I talk about on my podcast, but I do cover the fat pillars. So I do talk about the nutrition, the activity, the hydration, the stress and sleep management. But I also consider that there's three foundations under that, which are accountability, community so I also have a Facebook group to help women with the community and the accountability.
Speaker 2:But mindset, you mentioned having a why and knowing your values. If you don't know why you're trying to achieve the weight loss and it's a deep, a really deep reason, like I say, a why that makes you cry. If you don't have that reason, you're really not going to achieve it. We know so much more. You talk about high performers and the habits that they have, and you read any of the books Dean Graziosi or any of those kind of guys, right? Tony Robbins, brendan Brichard, they've all done studies on super high performers. They all have a really core value and a deep why as to what it is they're trying to achieve and what their mission is.
Speaker 2:I think that's the same with weight loss. If you don't know what that is and you don't do that mindset, work first when the obstacles come along, and they will. That's the thing. Right, those struggles, those challenges, those obstacles, those setbacks, they're going to happen. And if you can't go, hang on. What is the reason I'm trying to do this? You're going to struggle and you're probably going to cave in a little bit to some of those struggles. But and again, that's okay as well Just at the time, achieve the best you can eat, the best you can do with your stress. Most of the time, as you say, moderation, including moderation. So that's kind of where I go with this and that's just the things I talk about on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and into to. Dean Graziosi is actually who I heard this from, because you know, I do. I'm a certified life coach and we get these things of 50 different values. What are your top 10? I put it down to top five and but I also liked how Dean Graziosi said this, that if you, for example, say I want to lose weight, what is the why under that? Well, I would like to fit well in my genes. Why do you want to fit well in your genes? Because, and as you continue, usually when you get to the fifth or sixth or seventh, why you actually get to the real reason.
Speaker 1:It's not just this global I want to lose weight, maybe all the way down to well, I really. It's not even about my genes, it's just because I've seen my mother or my sister struggle with weight gain and now is not able to get in and out of the car. I've seen my brother struggle with knee pain, had me replacements, it got infected and then he was at, you know, in a nursing home. A lot of times it's not just I want to lose weight. We all know how to do that. We all know how to move. There has to be something that sets a fire underneath us that even if there is a week where things kind of go that obstacle, those hits are coming, that's guaranteed that we're able to go back to that deep fire in our why. That makes us cry for sure.
Speaker 2:Yep, absolutely, why that makes you cry, I think, is so important. It's one of the first things I work with ladies on. Like I really want you to do some deep work, go journal and spend like a whole week, sit down three or four times with this, because you've probably never done this before and it's hard. You've really got to get deep in there and I think many of us have lost the ability to do that. It's like we've lost the ability to connect with our food. We've lost the ability to eat mindfully because we're all again the stress of 21st century.
Speaker 2:We grab and go, we stop at the gas station, we pick something up on the way home you know we don't cook at home anymore, so it all fits together the same thing, right? And we've forgotten. How do you, especially as women, take care of ourselves and think about what we want and what it is that's driving us and why we want to do that? And that kind of goes back to what you said about we're mothers, we're daughters, we're friends, we're colleagues. Right, we are not very good at giving up obligations that don't serve us anymore, Right, we take things on, but we never let things go.
Speaker 2:We just keep piling things on because it's thinking I mean, there's a biology there as well. Right, we're meant to nurture, we're meant to be moms, we're meant to be all that, but we are really bad at letting things go and we don't give ourselves permission to do it, and I think there's a lot of messaging around that that we need to start talking about as we get into this age, because, you know, we should be able to thrive and we should be able to do more of the things we want. We start to get a little bit more freedom, right, I mean a lot of us. Our careers are getting a little bit more to where we want them to be, and we've got more confidence in the workplace. If we're working, we might have an empty nest and we don't have small children to take care of. We have more adult children who don't demand our time, and hopefully, we're a little bit more financially secure and we can do some more of the things we want.
Speaker 2:And yet we still pile this stuff on and we never take care of ourselves and somehow, if we do, we feel guilty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's a core of it that sometimes we carry this extra responsibility. But it may also be we're carrying the extra weight of everything around us, not just the weight itself in our hips or stomach, but the actual weight in our emotional case, and that's where you're addressing that with your own services the other components, not just the physical part.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean, we know, you add all that on and you've got the physical weight, but the emotional weight as well, and all that extra stress, it's again. It's just that vicious cycle, with the stress leads to emotional stress and chronic stress, which leads to inflammation, leads to weight gain that doesn't go anywhere, and visceral fat, which is even. I mean, that's a whole other podcast for myself, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah so yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a whole food kind of whole food, holistic approach to living a healthy lifestyle and hopefully making weight loss a byproduct.
Speaker 1:There was a point in our conversation that made me take pause and I completely forgot, and that was bringing curiosity back into health. I think sometimes we look at our health journey whether it's going through cancer, whether it's weight loss, menopause looking at someone else's health and feel that it's just black and white you're healthy or you're not. But there can be a relationship with your health, not an authoritarian perspective. Either it's healthier, it's not. There's so many variables and variations and sometimes the stress and the sleeplessness is because of external factors. Sometimes we're putting the stress and therefore having sleepless nights on ourselves.
Speaker 1:So it is really important to look at what makes you you. Why are we doing what we're doing? What's the why that makes you cry? And so my special gift that I'm putting in a link below is really looking at our values. So many of us have values that we create or adopt from our family and move on into our adulthood and then we feel disconnected and it's because maybe those values actually belong to someone else or they're not the values that we have anymore. So I would invite you, so I am inviting you, so I am inviting you to download that. Look at your own values and bring the curiosity not just into your health, but into what you would like 2024 and forevermore, for the next year or the next six months, to look like. So, again, I thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Please leave it a five star review, and that helps us share this. Put this in the hands and ears of those that it will make a difference for, and until next time, let's keep building one another up.