Midlife Fitness, Fat Loss Myths & the Science of Training for Women with Alyssa Olenick, PhD

23:56I can push a little bit harder, but then the different blocks can use different testings to like help you demonstrate the things that you've been working on the past few weeks. So a strength block might end in like a heavy three rep max or something like that, or a five rep max. You don't always have to go super low and heavy. And a more moderate high rep block might be an AMRAP, as many reps as possible. So you can see how many more reps you can do to see like how much can you actually do beyond what you're doing as like kind of a midpoint check. You could do pull-ups to failure. You could do pull-ups for weight.

24:26You could do whatever that looks like. Like there's so many different fun ways to do this. But I think also like rotating the goals of what you're doing maybe every three months or so also is a way to keep it interesting. It's a way to keep it fun. It's also a way to train multiple characteristics across a year. So maybe you're doing a little bit more power in a certain training space and cycle. And that is very high demand. It's very high fatiguing. There's a lot of central nervous stimulation that's coming from that. So maybe you're pulling back some of the high volume lifting during that time.

24:56So you can focus more on that and be able to do that. But that doesn't mean that you're getting weaker during that cycle. That doesn't mean you're losing muscle during that cycle. It just means you're developing or refining or improving a characteristic that maybe you don't have or you hadn't developed in a while, so to speak. So I really like, you know, mixing those in across the year. And then one thing that I like to do in my programming, and I recommend, especially to women where muscle mass is something that we need to develop or we want to develop or we're losing as we age, is I call it a little bit of hypertrophy all of the time.

25:26I think there's a lot of benefit to doing a true hypertrophy season for women who have no muscle, have never really done that. For sure. Especially before you jump into like a strength block or a power block. Like you're going to, it's not like that's a prerequisite to lifting heavy or moving fast, but you're going to be so much more capable if you have more tissue that can contribute to that strength or to that power. You're just going to feel better. You're going to move better. For people who really care about body composition stuff, you're going to look better because that tone or the physique that you're looking for is often muscle mass.

25:58So I really love, like, especially if you're coming out of the beginner stage, like maybe spend a little bit of time just actually working on building some muscle. But then I like to call like a little bit of hypertrophy all the time. So in some way or another, you're sprinkling that in and you're training somewhere and your accessories or you're complimenting stuff and kind of always having like a little bit of that. So you're always doing like enough that you're kind of stimulating or stressing or developing muscle all of the time, right? Your strength worth contributes, but the volume usually isn't as high.

26:27So it doesn't have that volume component to it, but also you're not losing muscle when you're doing strength work. It's not like, I think there's this idea that I'm either building muscle or I'm building strength. And there's a lot of overlap there, but I really like this idea of like sprinkling it in a little bit all of the time. So it's always kind of in there. And then using your gym time for those big bread and butter compound sets or the earlier parts of your workout to change like the focus and the emphasis from block to block, or even you can have a block that's focused on just developing your squat or just developing like your upper body strength, like where you can have blocks and training cycles that are focused on weaknesses that you have or areas that you need to develop more.

27:06Because again, it's hard to do everything all of the time, right? Kind of thing. And you usually only have so much time in a week to fit it all in and so much recoverability of your body, right? That you can handle. So it's okay to like turn the dials on what you're doing so that your hundred percent is just distributed between things differently. Assuming that like the base bones of your programming still has like the major movement patterns, you're still, you know, hitting everything, all that stuff in some way or another. So that wasn't a super direct answer because there's not like this perfect map of training cycles.

27:39So that wasn't, that was not as direct as I thought it was going to be, but think about 12 weeks at a time. Yeah. You're keeping your main compound movements pretty similar across that entire 12-week phase. Maybe you're changing your programming on the fourth, fifth, or sixth week once, twice, or three times at most. I wouldn't change your programming every single week. I know some people like a little bit more variety. I would still keep the main bread and butter of your workout pretty consistent across that training cycle. Accessories can change a little bit to keep interest there or based off like, hey, we're going to work on this because we lacked that in the first block, et cetera, et cetera.

28:13Um, and then thinking about changing the reps, the sets or the intensity based off the goals. So if it's more hypertrophy focused, you know, you're probably going to work somewhere more in that eight to 15 rep range. That's kind of a wide range classic. You're going to get a lot of hypertrophy stimulus there. Quote unquote. Yes. It can work at higher ends. Yes. It can work at lower ends, but I find that this middle zone is really helpful for, you know, strength can be scary to lift heavy enough, but then once you get into high reps, it's really easy to lie of yourself about how close you are to failure.

28:44So even though we tell women like up to 30 reps works for hypertrophy and muscle growth, it does, but it's not fun to go to 30 reps. Like you got to get bored before you actually hit what's hard enough. So it's easier to go to like what's hard enough in that eight to 15 range. And then wanting all of your sets, especially in like a more hypertrophy muscle growth block to really think about, they are all going to like maybe a seven, maybe closer to an eight, up to nine out of 10 effort. Or if you kept going, doing reps till you failed, you could only do one, two, three, maybe four at most reps.

29:19Your reps should be slowing down by the end of your set. So say you're doing a set of 10, that seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th rep should start to get a little slower. That's a good indication that you're lifting heavy enough. You should also have to like focus when you're actually doing it. Like it's not just going through the motions, but like that would be good for like that hypertrophy block, hypertrophy cycle, focusing on, you know, doing a little bit more moderate to higher rep ranges. And then you can have accessory works that are more isolating. Maybe you're working on your delts more to develop your shoulders during that time, or you're doing more of those bro work splits, lots of tempo, isolation, you know, things like that to complement it.

29:54And then you could have a strength focus block where maybe your compound sets are somewhere in that one to six rep range, give or take. I know a lot of women are really uncomfortable with one, two or three reps, and that's totally fine. You can never lift there in your entire life and be totally fine. It can be, it's a strength is a skill as much as it is a training adaptation and it's totally okay. You're going to still get a ton of strength benefits if you do like four, five, six reps and strength can be gained even at eight reps, 10 reps, 12 reps, whatever that looks like. It's just lifting heavier.

30:24And so typically, um, you're not going to do a ton of sets here. You're going to maybe do two, three, or four sets of these exercises from, for when we're thinking about like what was practical for most women, some person who's had an Olympic or powerlifting background is going to, you can be do five, six sets. Most people aren't doing that. You're going to be fine with two, three, or four sets, depending on where you're at here. And you're focusing on going as heavy as you can within those reps or those workouts. You're going to be thinking about working at like an 80, 85, 90 % of your maximal strength effort there.

30:56So again, seven, eight, or nine out of 10 effort there for that, it's going to be a little different than hypertrophy in the sense like the goal of hypertrophy is really to get your muscle closer to failure, to get that tension and stimulus that it needs for the growth. With strength, it's kind of a skill. So there's also this adaptation of your neuromuscular system, being able to go in and like contract more muscles. You're more powerful. So thinking about moving more weight across the weeks and lifting weight that's heavy enough that challenges you, but you can like kind of keep it consistent across the whole workout.

31:27We don't want to go do 150 pounds for our first set of squats and then not be able to match that. And you have to go down to like 80 on the second set, right? Like we want to be able to like match that effort. So we're gaining that skill and that strength and that ability for our body to produce more force. And then every week you might be adding a little bit of weight or maybe you're going to be able to do an extra rep. Strength is a little less sexy sometimes as hypertrophy because sometimes it can take a few weeks of being stuck and then you kind of break through because you're rising to the capacity of your body.

31:55You can't force your strength to to match where you want it to be, so to speak. So it's like your ceiling rises and then you can increase to it rather than people try to like force their ceiling with what they're doing. That's where that progressive overload comes from, that classic progressive overload that people talk about. And then if you're doing something like power training, that might be more of your classic jumping, hopping, skipping. Maybe you're lifting weights faster. So instead of doing squats for, you know, three by three or doing them for like three by 10 for more hypertrophy, you're doing maybe three by five, but they're really fast, as fast as you can do them.

32:32Or you're doing some sort of like dumbbell power clean or, you know, something that's more power generating and force generating. And maybe that's the bread and butter of workouts. The biggest thing with strength and power is that a lot of women come from like boot camp group fitness, burn, burn, burn type worlds. And it's that those exercises and the sets that you're doing, you should really feel like you need two, three, four, five minutes of rest between them. Now, a lot of people are short on time, so you don't need to rest five minutes if you don't have that, but you really do need that total rest time to be able to go back and produce the same amount of work or force that you just did in between them.

33:11So even like once, I think I see this a lot with people once they start doing like jumping or plyo or parametrics or stuff, they're like, well, that wasn't hard. So like I can just like 30 second rest and I'll do it again. I'm like, no, your body is, your, your central nervous system is fatigued. You just don't feel it. Right. But in order to get the most power, the most force, the most like productive use of that session, you need to rest in, in between those, um, so to speak. And you can still like, even if you have like a power focus block, you can still have strength work or hypertrophy work or just true classic lifting mixed in with that.

33:42But you might just spend a little bit more time in the beginning of your sessions, doing some of that stuff or having a day dedicated to it specifically or something like that. And so those are like more hopefully specific examples of people that like what those can look like. Um, and so you're lumping then like to, to, just to clarify, cause this is a question that I get all the time. So when you're saying strength, but power, Or you can do that by moving the weight faster or doing some of those plyometrics. That's in the same bucket. I kind of group together power, plyos, jumping all together because they're just moving something faster, moving your body faster.

34:24I think it makes it more accessible. The sports performance bros would hate that if I did that. But it simplifies it. When we're talking to gen pop people who only ever, because this is what I think the industry does. They give everyone bodybuilding and walking. They don't give them anything that moves them faster. Yeah, for sure. And that's fine. Bodybuilding is fine. Walking is fine. And again, my approach to training usually isn't your classic row split lifting approach. That can work too for the things I'm talking about if that's what you like to do and you can alternate through these things too.

34:54But I think that a lot of people are left out of doing things a little bit faster, right? Yeah, for sure. reactivity in the gym, speed or power is kind of left out of that equation. And I lump them together because I don't care the way that you do it. If your pelvic floor can't handle jumping, don't jump. That's fine. Move fast. If you can't, you know, don't want to Olympic weightlift like 99 % of people, okay. You can still do something with a barbell or a dumbbell that's moving it a little bit faster and is a little bit more accessible to you that isn't that, right? If you are afraid of box jumps, you don't have to box jump, but you can pongo hop.

35:34You can skip. I even made a video last week saying doing stomps. It's about like adding impact on your body or the reactivity of it kind of thing. And the reason I stress this a lot, I think there finally is starting to come around to this where it's like acceptable to say that women or people should be doing power plyo jumping something type training. For a while there, it was like I saw the narrative swing too far to like, just lift. It's fine. You get enough of what you need. And that is true. If you only ever lifted, you'd get so much of what you need for bone, for muscle, for health. But as we age, we see power declines faster than strength, right?

36:07And even potentially muscle, there's this secret loss of power that's kind of happening behind the scenes. And we might not notice it in our 40s or 50s, but as you age, it's going to catch up to you when you aren't reacting, when you trip or catch yourself or when you fall or things like that. And so I want people, if they're willing to enable, train that in some capacity in the gym because they're losing it, right? It's kind of like this silent thing. And I think there's now finally to see, seeing this conversation coming out about it. I saw a paper where they termed it power penia, like their sarcopenia, muscle loss, age-related power loss.

36:38And so, you know, I think there's this idea that these like things are more for athletes and young people. And it's not true. You see people all the time as they're aging, doing these things. We just saw even those master sprinters. I saw all those videos going viral all around the internet. That's, having speed, having power, being able to move fast, right? Like that, those people are probably able to, if they trip and fall, catch themselves or react or, you know what I mean? Like have that, you know, there's obviously balance and coordination, but like a lot of this stuff also trains that proprioception that you need in the, in the gym by again, multiple characteristics of training and it doesn't happen all the time.

37:15Cause then I always get the, well, what about balance? And what about, you know, coordination as you're aging? I'm like, yeah, that's amazing. let's do lateral movements it's all good to overhead like we are we'll still i really like for gen pop training regular people training women's training is like how can we build these things into what you're doing so you're kind of getting the most bang for your buck in one training program instead of having to have a million workout days with a million different sessions and a million different things because for most people they don't have they don't have that time so if you can put some hopping jippings jumping skipping the beginning of your workout then go do your lifts.

37:48I mean, if you're going to simplify this down to one, a way to train, it would be do your warmup, do some hopping, skipping, jumping, or power, whatever your entry point is there, what you can do, do some heavy compound stuff. That's anywhere from like three to 12 or 15 or whatever that looks like for you. Then do some accessory stuff that also oscillates between like six and 15 and call it a day. Like that would be the most simple way to get the most bang for your buck, kill all the birds with one stone. And it's in a single program. I think when I talk about power training or jumping or plyometrics, whatever term you want to use for it, people are like, when do I have the time for that?

38:23I was like, that fits in your strength program. You put it on your strength day. Yeah. So I don't want it to seem like I'm making things way more complicated for people than it needs to be. It doesn't need to be advanced. It doesn't need to be advanced. I like having something that has people. And again, if you're only doing the lifting. You're only doing the body building or the strength training or the lifting that you're willing to do. And that's what you're doing. You are getting most of the way there. That is great. Like I'm not trying to be just as absolutist as everyone else, but if you are willing, able can consider adding in some of this and it doesn't have to be, I think they see, you know, some of the stuff that I do or even more advanced people do.

39:04You don't have to be doing jumps down from a box to the floor, reacting up to get the benefit from this. You can do pogo hops, right? Like you can do, there's so many entry points that are lower level that are easier for you to do that you're still benefiting from it. And especially in the conversation with women is that, you know, especially midlife women, the trials that are showing really good benefit for like bone density usually combine strength or muscle building activities. So lifting, um, and some sort of jumping or landing type activities. Right. So I like the combination of both. Does that mean that If you never do that, your bones are going to whittle away to nothing and you're going to have no muscle.

39:42No. But again, if you're willing, able, and capable, I like sprinkling that into it. So to sum up to our original question is that don't be afraid to change your program or follow a program that evolves across the year that trains multiple characteristics of training because it will make you more well-rounded. It will touch on all of these things in some capacity in one way or another without you feeling overwhelmed that you have to do it all the time perfectly. I think social media does a really bad job at making women feel like they have to do everything all the time at once in their training program.

40:11And they're already like, I don't even know what to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then also like you can change goals and say, Hey, I'm going to spend the next three months working on like getting my pull up. Right. And that could be the main goal of your training cycle that you're doing. And that's a great goal. Like think about training cycles, not just as like strength, hypertrophy, power, like that's very classic, but you can also think about like, hey, I'm going to spend this training cycle really working on improving my deadlift or getting a pull up or working on pushups. And that's the main goal of that training cycle.

40:41And I really, really, really like the idea for women to set specific, like measurable goals that are not about their body because it's you, because one indirectly, your body's going to benefit from the strength and muscle that you gain from pursuing some sort of specific objective goal, right? That fitness is also going to benefit you regardless of if your body changes or not. in the process of doing it. It also is going to make you feel so empowered in your body. And it's also going to force you to follow like the structure training principles of lifting that a lot of women find boring, but in a way that's challenging and fun.

41:16And then you're like, oh, I did it. Or I got closer. I did more reps. And then something clicks in you. And that's where, you know, if you're on the one side of the coin, we're like, I don't understand why all these muscle mommies love lifting. I don't get it. It's so boring. I don't like it. Like try doing it, not just as a means to an end, but set a challenge, set a goal, do something objective. And like you could have a whole cycle of your training dedicated to specifically like that goal. Or in every program you do for the next six months, you include a specific exercise that you're trying to get better at.

41:45There's no rule that you have to change your exercises every so often kind of thing. And that can make it fun too. Cause even like something that a lot of guys do that I don't think women realize they're allowed to do. I try to do this in some of my programming too, is like, it doesn't have to just be your main compound sets, like your squat, your deadlift, your bench, or your pull-up, your push-up, whatever that looks like. Like pick an accessory work that you want to get better at. Yeah. Pistol squat, like something fun. Yeah. And you can make it, even that could be your warmup for the day or your challenge or like make, you know, you're allowed to build things in that are skill-based or fun.

42:15Like I, a few years ago, hurt, I was injured. And so I just said, okay, I can't really do lower body stuff. So I'm going to spend time working on handstand push-ups and handstand holds. and that was just fun, right? It was a fun objective and thing to work on and move in my body. That's might feel unrealistic to a lot of people. It doesn't have to be that. Um, but like you're allowed to have fun in these goals that you're setting. It just doesn't have to be so like, I think the internet, we're trying to give women the right approach to training, but I think sometimes it gets so literal that they forget that it's allowed to be like enjoyable or setting objective and specific goals can be fun.

42:46It just doesn't have to be like, if I don't lift, my bones will break and I'll die. Right? Like, you know, not doomed if you can't do it one specific way. Yes, exactly. So hopefully that kind of got to the point there eventually. Yes. I love it. Well, if we move on to cardio, because that gets a lot of airtime as well with the different zones, but I loved a post that you just did recently on heart rate and zone two for women and women that are newer to heart rate training, or even just having a good aerobic base? How important is an aerobic base? When would you use a heart rate monitor? And what are the benefits of all of the zones?

43:28What does that look like in a training program? Yeah. So I'll start this out with, I feel like I have become known as the zone two girl and that's the zones girl, which is so funny because I feel like I'm just always trying to like clarify the madness of social media, but you do not need to be obsessed with zones. Like it's so funny, even my own clients, I'm all the time. I'm like, it's not that serious. Take your watch. You're not ready for it yet. It's okay. So if you're listening to this, you know, and you want to use zones and heart rate, absolutely go for it. I will teach you the science of why it matters and how to do that correctly.

44:01But if you're just starting out and that feels like the most overwhelming thing in the world, people who are new to cardio, new to running, new to endurance training, you're not going to be able to stay in zone two unless you walk. You're just not, or you move really slowly. So the reality is you just don't have the underlying physiology you need to stay in that for the activity that you're trying to do yet. That doesn't mean you don't have a zone two, you do, right? But it's going to be really hard to do that. What I encourage you to do instead is that if you're new to cardio, you want to have this base, an aerobic base, a cardio base.

44:35And that is built with zone two. It's also built with zone three, four, and five. There is not like one zone that only does like one magical thing in our bodies. They all work, right? For many people, especially if you're short on time, zone three is perfectly fine, a little bit more challenging, and it's not going to, you know, kill you. And you're probably going to end up finding that your heart rate's in that for like easier work stuff because you don't have the ability to stay in zone two yet. And like, that's okay. You're not going to die. Nothing bad's going to happen. You're not going to instantly get fat.

45:08Like there's all these weird narratives that come from every zone. I've heard every zone, zone two, three, and five, I think four gets like, not like let go. Like no one talks about zone four ever. And it's like two, three, and five are all making us fat, spiking our cardio, cortisol. They're going to kill us. They're bad for women. They're also all simultaneously what women should be doing, the secret to health and longevity. Like it's just, it's all over the place, right? So all zones have a purpose. All zones contribute to your aerobic base. when you're new to cardio and just starting and training out, zones that are truly higher, those high intensity intervals, those higher zones, those higher intensities, they might feel a little intolerable.

45:45It doesn't mean you can't do them, especially if you do them on like a bike or something that's like more controlled where your movement is controlled to your output and it's not skill-based like a rower or running. It doesn't mean you can't do them, but you might have a hard time handling a lot of it or a lot of it in a week, like so frequent times across the week. So I usually encourage beginners to start with like what is quote unquote zone two to three, whether that's walking, walking at a faster pace, uphill hiking, uphill running, maybe slow jogging, cycling, swimming, whatever that looks like at like a four to six out of 10 effort.

46:18Because right now your heart rate and your effort are probably going to be a little bit mismatched because you just don't have that because a lower heart rate is an adaptation to cardiovascular training. Regardless of even if zones are out of the equation, the reason we use heart rate in general is because if you were to go to an exercise lab and do a vo2 max test, which is like a maximal exercise cardio test. It's not fun. No, the more intense you go. And the oxygen you consume, it's a reflection of your underlying, like your mitochondria, your metabolic systems, your metabolism, it's like what's going on inside your body.

46:51And your heart rate will increase pretty linearly with the effort of what you're It is Ryan Seacrest here. There was a recent social media trend, which consisted of flying on a plane with no music, no movies, no entertainment. But a better trend would be going to Chumbacasino.com. It's like having a mini social casino in your pocket. Chumbacasino has over 100 online casino-style games, all absolutely free. It's the most fun you can have online and on a plane. So grab your free welcome bonus now at Chumbacasino.com. Sponsored by Chumbacasino. No purchase necessary. VGW group void. We're prohibited by law.

47:2321 plus. Terms and conditions apply. We're doing in that test, which essentially all Zones is doing or they're indirectly marking different places your physiology are on your spectrum of fitness. But people with a lower fitness status, the place of which their zones happen are at a lower or earlier, right? So somebody who's my, we'll use my mom as an example, just in me. So it's no one's offended by my fake avatars. My mom doesn't do any cardio. She just walks a good bit. Yeah, mine too. My mom started to go and start doing fitness. She would hit her zone two threshold pretty soon, pretty quick, pretty instantaneously.

48:00Me, who just got done with the training cycle where I was running nine to 11 hours a week, can go a real long time before I hit that threshold, right? So it's a reflection of fitness adaptation. And so I think a lot of people I see, they have this like, I'm a moral failure because my heart rate can't stay low. And no, you just have to develop cardiovascular fitness and give it time. So I usually tell people, if you're new to cardio training, right? Like you have never really done a lot of formal cardio or maybe you did a long time ago, but you haven't in a while. You've lost a lot of fitness. Like even, you know, lower levels still get your heart rate up.

48:35Don't worry about the heart rate. Worry about doing it. Worrying about like actually doing it and getting it in. If your heart rate is like a bajillion and it feels really hard and not sustainable, pull back so it feels easier, right? Like you can still So you're not hating life. Yeah, like you can still go easy for you relatively, but you don't need to obsess about that. The only time that I would tell a beginner to like really care about their heart rate is if they're maybe doing something where they're not doing it hard enough to get their heart rate up enough for like enough of a physiological stress.

49:07Like a lot of people will just do like passive casual walks where their heart rate's like 40 % of max. And that's probably not stressful enough to be a cardiovascular adaptation. But once you get to 50, 60, 70, it is, right? So like, that's the time where I'm like, well, just make sure it's not too low or too easy. But again, if that's what's getting you started, like that's fine. But then as you start to gain fitness, you start to adapt. Maybe you get a little bit more serious. This is where the zones conversation can happen because really at the end of the day, the less you do, the less zones matter.

49:36The less cardio you do in a week, the less zones matter because you're not doing enough of it for it to really matter from like a stress strain physiology perspective. It just matters that you're doing it. Right. And usually my threshold for that is like, let's at least get to the exercise guidelines first. If you're not doing like 150 minutes of moderate and, or you can trade it off for 70 minutes of vigorous activity a week. So moderate is probably going to be like your zone two to three training. Vigorous is going to be like three, four, five. Um, there's kind of an overlap. And honestly, moderate's probably zone one to zone two.

50:08If I'm being honest by ACSM standards, it's actually pretty low. So basically 50 to 70 % of your heart rate max is like moderate and then 70 and above is, so that's zone three, four, and five, is considered vigorous by the exercise guidelines. If you're not getting in, again, 150 minutes of the moderate or 75 minutes of the vigorous, it doesn't matter what you're doing. It just matters that you're doing it. That's where the biggest magnitude of health benefits come from, the lowest decreases in risk of mortality, disease, all that stuff. It continues to increase to another stepping point of like 300 minutes per week.

50:41And usually for most people I find, again, most of the zones data comes from elite athletes doing like 15, 20, 25, 30 hours a week. I'm still though, I still find that people in that transition phase from like getting close to 300 or up to 500 minutes per week, which is like around five to 10 hours a week of like training. That's where zones are going to start to become more helpful because the more you do, the more of it, it's going to have to be easy. So that's where this whole zones conversation comes from is because yes, zone two is great, but the reason zone two is great is not because it's super magical on its own for developing an aerobic base or, you know, fitness or cardiovascular.

51:20It's that you can only do so much hard cardio in a week and recover from it and tolerate it. But zone two lets you do more endurance or more cardio so you can gain more fitness and it's more recoverable, right? So as you start to do more in the week, whether that's more days or more minutes or more hours of cardio, you can't say you're only doing all of it hard. You're not going to be able to keep adding hard, hard, hard, hard, hard throughout the rest of your week. You're going to have to make maybe only one or two of those days strategically hard. And by hard, I mean like zone four, zone five intervals, the really high, hard, intense stuff.

51:57And then the rest of it to do more is going to have to be easy. So that way your hard days can stay truly hard. They can actually be hard. You can really hit those intervals. And then you're getting more total cardio from doing the easy stuff. And then in true endurance training, this is called polarized or pyramid while training, where you're intentionally separating the days that are very truly easy and the most of them are easy because of that. And then you have an intentional sprinkling of like 10 to 30 % of your training being like intentionally hard. Those ratios are all going to depend on you.

52:29Everyone's like 80, 20, this and that. It can really vary on the person, what you control or what you're doing. I'm a big fan of everybody doing a little bit of hard cardio. I like doing at least a little bit of it If once you you know, you're entry you're a beginner you have some baseline I like having at least like one day a week. That's a little bit harder But then you can fill in basically the rest of your week with like endless amounts of zone one to zone two theoretically And be fine Of course the more you do you might have a hard time adapting to it But like that's why people can do tons and tons of endurance training in a week but most people listening to this are not those people, right?

53:04Most of them aren't doing what I'm even doing. They're doing maybe one, two, three hours of cardio in a week. And they're like, how do I maximize this? It doesn't matter what zone I'm doing it in. So first start with the easy to moderate stuff to ease in, build your base. And how long would you say that that would take? If you're trying to build your base, someone that's new, is that weeks? Is that months? long time. Aerobic adaptations are so painfully slow. They take so long. It's frustrating, right? Like building muscle. Yeah. It is very similar, but you don't really see it in the same way that you do.

53:39In lifting, you get newbie gains. So you get that little bit of reward with it. With endurance, you get to feel like crap. Until you don't. Until you don't. And that's about it. And so to give you guys context listening to this, you're not just like a thing. People think of your cardio as just your heart beating, right? But you're developing your literal engines of your muscles. Cardio is not, your adaptation to cardio isn't just your heart and your lungs, it's also your muscles, right? So inside of your muscles, you're increasing the number of mitochondria, the density of them, the number of capillaries, which are the little tiny blood vessels that bring blood and oxygen to your body so your body can use that oxygen in those mitochondria.

54:17As those mitochondria get more in size and more in number, they get better at using oxygen, which means that you get better at pulling it from your blood, using it and being able to produce more energy and metabolize more and be fitter. And those are all these little tiny microscopic cellular adaptations that are happening. And they take months and months and months and then years to develop, right? So it's not like you have to wait years to have any adaptation, but like you can keep progressing and progressing and progressing those. And so I usually tell people, if you are new to cardio, other than not like using zones as a buffer of like going too, too hard or like too, too easy.

54:55You know, think of your cardio as easy, medium, hard. I wouldn't obsess over zones for at least six to 12 months. Sometimes it takes my clients 15 months to get their heart rate to like stay in a zone two. And a lot of, for a lot of people, the staying in a zone two heart rate thing, you either need to cross, go to a type of cardio that's like easier. So like for a lot of my clients, they're runners. You have to go on a bike or a rower or something where you can slow down enough and you don't have as much of like that total body strain on it, or sometimes it just requires doing more, right? So then my second caveat to that is like, if you're not doing more than two hours of cardio in a week, I wouldn't obsess too, too much about your heart rates being in like the perfect zones.

55:38Again, thinking about your days as like easier cardio days, medium cardio days, or hard cardio days. And for most people, you're going to have like your easy, moderate in the same kind of day. and then your truly hard, hard sessions, right? Where you're going all out kind of thing. And that's just because the volume is what makes those adaptations that makes that easier for it to happen. But look at trends of your heart rate dropping across workouts over time rather than obsessing about like in the moment, like looking at your watch obsessively because that's just gonna spike your heart rate even more, right, while you're doing it.

56:08So if you're not, if you haven't been doing cardio consistently for like six months, a year, a year and a half, just give it time. And then two, sometimes it takes doing more to see that really, really shift. Because again, cardio is like lifting. Volume drives a lot of the adaptations. And a lot of people don't have the time to do the volumes needed. Now, this is where high intensity though can play a role because high intensity training does give a lot of the similar overlapping benefits as the easy training. But you get more of a big stress or stimulus on your system. It develops the same things that we talked about before.

56:48It improves a lot of those things, but you do it with a lot less time and there's more stress per dose. So it's like more super concentrated. Now you can't do a ton of it, right? Like I don't want people to be like, well, then I'm just going to do like seven days a week of high intensity interval training. No, because then it's all going to become moderate. It's not if it's going to actually stay truly high, but that's where, you know, it's not just, you don't just get better at zone two by doing zone two. You'd get better at aerobic fitness across the board by doing a variety of zones that train your physiology in different ways and stress it different ways.

57:18And all of that benefits the adaptations that make your heart rate lower at the same relative effort or pace or output over time. So it will still benefit that. And if you don't have as much time, like, you know, you've built the base, you've done easy to moderate stuff, you're, you know, you're not the beginner anymore, you want to get a little bit more specific, add in the hard day, see how you tolerate. And then maybe you add in a second hard day if you tolerate that. I don't really think that more than two hard days is necessary for most people. You know what I mean? I really don't. With the time and the training and life stress kind of thing, but you will see benefits from that.

57:56And like, even I give the example of, I know I'm very extreme, so you don't have to think my fitness goals need to be yours. But the year I trained for my hundred miler, I just basically did zone two the entire year. I did a little bit of high and hard intense stuff early in the year, but because I came off an injury, you know, that I finally healed. I was too cautious to do a bunch of volume and the intensity altogether. And you don't need to be, I wasn't trying to be fast at a hundred miles. I was trying to finish a hundred miles. And it was funny though, because as soon as I finished that, I started to go last year, I spent a lot more time doing harder, faster stuff.

58:29So I did less volume, but I did like more of my training sessions really hard. And I gained so much fitness so fast. Because when I had the aerobic base, but then I gave the intensity on top of that. And I think a lot of people, they jump in right to the intensity. And it's really hard to do that on top of like no foundation. So I like to have a little bit of that there. But if you have some of that, then when you add the hard stuff to it, it's like lightning fuel for your fitness. And they combine together to really like maximize that, so to speak. So and that's that's the best part is if you take that and you're getting fit that way in those zones, that also translates into the weights room where you can recover faster between sets.

59:13You can lift more, you can move more muscle mass. Like all of that kind of goes hand in hand, which is why I'm assuming you have that triad is that it's all important. And it's where do you fit that in in a week? And if we shift the conversation that now to metabolism and body composition, which I love that we're getting the message. And again, I grew up in the eighties, nineties era where it was thin as in, we're on the cardio. This is where all of these women, all of us, women that are in this age bracket kind of fit in. So I love that we're not always focusing on let's get thinner, let's lose weight.

59:56However, the majority of women that come to me at this phase of life are like, cool, but I also have a little bit of weight that I need to lose that I haven't put on over the years. I'm not happy with it. Let's talk about what that looks like. Um, and another big question that comes up when we're talking about metabolism is does our metabolism slow down at what age does it slow down? Is it menopause related or is it age related? And then second part of that, which will come later, is how quickly would you go into or can you go into low energy availability? Because that's a big topic too. And it comes with some women not even wanting to be in a deficit for a day or two because they're terrified of low energy availability.

1:00:46But then you have women that have been dieting for their entire life. Yes. A lot. It is a lot. And I think that, again, menopause comes with all these other side effects, symptoms, and things that are happening. But I had a great conversation with somebody the other day, and it's a really good point on how much of this is being exacerbated by this lifestyle of restricting, under-eating, working against your body, not being on the same side with your body, depleting your body for years. Now, don't get me wrong. There's women who are very, very high fitness oriented and still struggle with this.

1:01:17That's not to dismiss this. but I wonder how much of this is like perimenopause and menopause become like gasoline to the fire of that, so to speak. And so, yeah, I mean, to the conversation we just had, if you guys are coming from the world of you've only been doing cardio, well, then the strength conversation is probably a little bit more important for you, right? Kind of thing. And you might be like, okay, yeah, Alyssa, I do compulsive cardio, right? And so the solution for you, and I'm leading metabolism with this, is to pull back, right? I'm a cardio queen. I'm all about cardio. We just talked about me being an ultramarathon runner.

1:01:49And if you're not listening to this on a video or you've never seen me, I'm a muscle hamster too. Like it's so funny because everyone knows me as like this cardio queen and this like endurance junkie. And I'm like, actually just like, you're right in the middle. I mean, you do a lot of it. Yeah. I'm such a ball of muscle and so pro lifting. So, um, I, you know, the reason I lead with that is because muscle is such an important organ of metabolism. It is such an important organ of metabolism. And for so many women, I think that, you know, they don't recognize that they started losing muscle a decade before they realized they're losing muscle.

1:02:24Right. Yeah. So like, if you're listening to this in your thirties, like me, girlfriends, this all applies to you too, as well, your twenties. Yes. As well, because you're really peaking in your bone building and your muscle building and your twenties, right. Teens to twenties. And if you don't keep lifting to maintain it starting in your 30s, you start to lose muscle like 3 % to 8 % per decade. And men lose it pretty similar. Then menopause itself doesn't appear to specifically and explicitly cause muscle loss independent of age at this time. There might be some changes in muscle quality and power that's coming out that I think is really exciting because I think it explains some of women's perceptual experience versus the true tissue loss, quote unquote.

1:03:06But if you've already been losing muscle for a decade or you never really trained to build it. Or for a lot of women, they go, they spent their thirties having babies and going through cycles of just depleting their body for their children and all this stuff. It's just all valid. I'm not saying this to dismiss any of this. Then they knock on the door of their forties and their fifties and they're like, oh shit. I'm in trouble. Yes. And so muscle plays a massive role in our, it's like up to 70 % of your energy expenditure across the day in general is just like keeping you alive. And a muscle is driving a lot of that.

1:03:40Now the caveat there is that weirdly enough, gaining more muscle tissue doesn't like massively increase your metabolic rate. It's like something like nine to 13 calories a day per kilogram. But like the baseline skeletal muscle organ contributes a lot to our like daily energy needs of just like keeping us alive, so to speak. It's really important. So I say this because it appears that at the time, everyone put your pitchfork down, we'll give our caveats in a second, that a lot of the loss or declines in metabolism or metabolic rate that we see in women in peri-post-menopause 40s to 50s, largely like there's a few different studies where they either look cross-sectional.

1:04:21So like three different groups of women that are all different ages and compare them. They'll follow women for like five years through the menopause transition. There's one study where they compared like mothers to their daughters. So there's like kind of some genetic like comparison there. And when you can, you do sometimes see a lower metabolic rate, but then often when you control for muscle mass or activity levels, that seems to be the thing that's contributing to the gap of what we see versus what we expect or the changes that occurred, right? So typically it's either, you know, participants who have more muscle or maintained more muscle that's more associated with maintaining that metabolic rate or participants who have a drop in metabolism or metabolic rate.

1:05:06It seems to be associated by like lower daily activity. Now, women hate this answer. They say, I don't believe the science. I hate it because in my experience, I've changed absolutely nothing and everything changed, right? So there is some interesting data too that came, some of this coming from my postdoc lab, not that that's end all be all, but just data that I'm very familiar with, is that they did these studies where they will ovarian suppress premenopausal women and basically like short-term bring them down to postmenopausal levels just to study as like a mimicking model of menopause. It's not the same as like naturally going through a transition, but it's a pretty blunt and aggressive like switch of hormones for five months.

1:05:43And in some of their studies, they found that this was also found in like rodent models and they did it in humans, that these mice or women will spontaneously move their activity less when estrogen is suppressed, but when it's added back, that is restored. So they're kind of like naturally moving more across the day kind of thing. So that sounds like a horrible study that who signed up for that? I know. I know. Bless their hearts. Yes. There's a lot. Yeah. So, you know, there could be, there is a potential influence here of like hormones are dropping and you're indirectly not being aware of the fact that you are spontaneously moving less across the day.

1:06:19Cause a lot of people don't realize that you're Everyone talks about neat as like going for walks or walking from your car to the grocery store. Neat is not this pre-planned extra movement baked into today. Neat is me fidgeting in this chair right now or me like not being able to sit down or me like choosing not to go do the laundry because you're kind of spent from your five hour run. Yes. Yes. So like neat is a lot of that contribution, that non-exercise activity expenditure that we have each day is kind of like, you're not aware of it. You're not aware that you're doing it right kind of thing.

1:06:51my husband jokes that me and my dog my tiny golden stay lean or thin or whatever word you want to use because we can't sit down right like he jokes that like we're two in the same and that's why because my new Pyrenees eats just as much as my golden and she can't lose weight right they're on the same exact diet but my Pyrenees now needs to go on a special kibble because she can't lose the weight that she needs to lose right versus my golden and me and my husband keep joking because that's us in dog form right like I'm eating as much as this grown man kind of thing and but part of that is just like this you know we you you potentially are decreasing your movement without being aware of it and again not just these ovarian suppression trials we see it also in women they put accelerometers on them when they're also testing metabolism they see this like change in daily weekly activity at least in the study period of time um and you know again that might not be true for you but it's also giving an easy answer of like well maybe i can just be more aware of like quote unquote hitting steps, right?

1:07:50Like I know like that feels so dismissive to a lot of women's experience in peri and postmenopause, but like it's at least a controllable outcome of something that I can objectively tell you that might influence some of it. Mixed with if you've been losing muscle for a decade before you're even there and then you get the gasoline of the fire of you know, okay, now I'm sleeping poorly. Poor sleep changes appetite, cravings, food, satiety. okay, that also makes you move less. You're less inclined to exercise. You're less inclined to move more. That's one compounding factor that's making this all worse.

1:08:23And maybe you're having a harder time than recovering. Estrogen being down, potentially, you know, we're seeing a lot of reports of women more and more. We need more answers of this in science of like joint, tendon, ligament, fatigue, recovery issues, right? With training and not feeling good. So you're not, you're not recovering session to session. Oh, there, that's also impacting, you know, muscle development, recoverability, movement across the day. And then symptom burden across, you know, across all this. There's a lot of factors going into why you might not be building or developing or maintaining muscle or activity, but those seem to be two big contributors to it.

1:08:55And then obviously like lifting is the best solution for that. That's why earlier when we talked about lifting, I'm like, if you don't really have a good baseline of muscle, spend kind of like I talked about spending like six, 12, 15 months, really just working on developing your cardiovascular fitness, have an all in phase of like, if you didn't have your muscle mommy phase where you got like super hard in the, like in like aggressive about your training, you should do it because a lot of people who are like really thin, really muscular, it seems like no matter what they do, it's because they had that phase, that period of time, like that maybe one, two, three year period where they went like really hard in lifting.

1:09:30Right. Like I did that in my twenties and I, I reap the benefits still from having that density and time that I did that kind of thing. And it doesn't mean that you're too late if you didn't do that in your 20s. You can do that at 45. You can do that at 50. You can do that at 60. You can still develop and build muscle at all these aids. But have your period of time of going all in and really, really focusing on that because that kind of gives you an advantage of having that baseline with everything else you do moving forward. And again, that's at least what we're seeing in the data on metabolic rate.

1:10:01The biggest trial ever done on humans is they took all of the samples from all of the doubly labeled water labs in the country. I worked at a doubly labeled water lab, one of them at my postdoc here in Colorado. And essentially you swallow isotopes for a week and then they collect the pee and then they measure your energy metabolism essentially by analyzing the isotopes in people's urine. But it's one of the most accurate forms of energy metabolism because it's literally in your body and it's the turnover of these isotopes essentially tells you how much your metabolic rate is burning. And you can like indirectly calculate it.

1:10:37I'm kind of like trying to really water down the science here. So if you're a metabolism scientist, I'm trying for people's sake to - But it's super expensive too, right? It's super expensive. But in these studies, they all have this big coalition of all these scientists and they have like this big master data of it. And so basically they downloaded all of this data from this huge data set. So any doubly labeled water study that was like going on since they started this group, they took all the data and they put it together. So there was like thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the study.

1:11:08I actually was just setting in something yesterday and now I can't remember the top of my head of how many it was, but it was like over, maybe it was over a hundred thousand, maybe a couple hundred thousand, maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Anyway, huge study. And they basically graphed energy expenditure all the way from infants to people that are elderly. Because you do some babies. They literally have moms squeeze the diaper out into a little tube. Oh my God. Yeah, they do this with babies. They do these studies with babies. And you can see this massive increase in energy expenditure when people are kids, teens, when you're younger, because it's just very energy costly.

1:11:40You're growing, you're developing, all that stuff. But then around the 20s, it starts to stabilize. And it really doesn't change much until the 60s. And then it starts to like, once you get into your mid to late 60s, into your 70s, it starts to drop off, right? That's this massive human trial. There doesn't appear to be - related more than menopause related. Yeah. And, and that was in my next point that I wanted to get to with this is that one of the hardest things about metabolism or menopause research is that aging and menopause happen together like a Venn diagram. And so many of the things that happen with menopause also happen with aging.

1:12:18That's why they do those studies that I was talking about earlier where they ovarian suppress pre-menopausal women because it removes the age factors. So you can see what's a hormonal factor versus like, if you do the same thing in older women, you can kind of tease out that a little bit in the age versus like hormones question. It's not exactly the same, but it's really, you can't, you can't tease out what's menopause versus being 50, right? Like perfectly in a study because you can't, you can't undo the age component, right? And so there's, it's really, really hard. And so a lot of the things that happen during menopause are things that happen naturally with age and or also happen to men.

1:12:56Sometimes they happen to men like a little later, right? Like men do eventually have like gonadal failure, so to speak. Like eventually like you get old enough, you're not, you know, having, you know, erections as frequently or testosterone might be lowering. It's not like they don't, they are completely, you know, they go through the immune for man and they're living their life like a prepubescent boy for their entire life. Like, no, that's not, that's not the reality, but women go through this like transition phase of it. Right. And some studies show faster muscle loss, you know, some studies show no change of muscle with this, but you know, same thing with metabolic rate.

1:13:31We see this, but usually when you control for other factors, there's other things like at play that are contributing to this. And that's a good example of my and also, right. Yeah. Kind of thing. And so when we then though, look, cause women hear this and they go, okay, well, like, I don't believe this because you're saying nothing's changing, but everything has changed for me. But there are data that show changes in body composition and that is pretty well established. So like I made a post recently saying like metabolic rate really doesn't change. And we're like, well, my body changed. I was like, those are two different conversations, but to people, calories and body composition are the same conversation because it's calories in calories out has been shoved down our throats since the day you opened Instagram for the first time ever on fitness Instagram.

1:14:09And so, you know, we do have shifts in the way your body stores fat. So typically premenopausal women store more weight in their glutes, their hips, their lower body. And then when you transition through peri into postmenopause, you have this shifting of that then to your central abdomen. So even if your body weight didn't change, like say your body weight stayed the same, you would store more of that weight in your midsection. So whether that's central adiposity, meaning like the minnow belly, you know, in that kind of terminology that you see. Or we hear people talking a lot about changes and increases in visceral adipose tissue.

1:14:47And that's the fat that's around your organs. That does increase with menopause. And that is the fat that is more risky, right? Even if you don't like that little bit of belly fat, you can pinch around your lower midsection. It's usually not metabolically as risky to have that as the tissue that is around your organs. And that's what is of more concern. So again, there's two conversations, like I want to change my body, but also metabolic health here as well with women. And we can get more into that in a second, but you do have this shifting of central fat. So if you're gaining weight in your stomach, you're not making that up.

1:15:20That is well-established. The SWAN studies, you know, really, really established that. That was a really great series of studies done at menopausal women that has a lot of great data that came out of it. That's established. They Also, you know, women on average tend to gain. I always mess up the kilos versus pound conversion. So I'm going to just put the asterisk here that this might not be exact. It's something like five to 10 pounds is reported on average. Through the menopause transition? Or five to 10 kilos. Yeah, through the menopause transition. Whether we know exactly what's causing it.

1:15:51I think that's the question of frustration for women is like, well, what's causing that and how do I fix it, right? That is reported. Like that weight gain that you're experiencing isn't something that scientists are saying isn't happening. I think a lot of women think that is the conversation being had, and it's not. We do see changes in central storage. We also do see that women report on average when you track them that there are these increases in body weight. Now, is that every woman? No. Are there women who are more extreme than that? Yes. Are there women who sometimes lose weight? Yes. There's always going to be the spectrum of people, but on average women, it's something like five to 10 kilos or pounds.

1:16:27That's a bigger range if you convert it, depending on which one it is. I can never figure, remember what unit it is. Um, but the point is that weight gain is reported, seen, established. It's not something that you're, you're making up. Um, but the bigger question I think right now in all of this, that women are really frustrated with is like, okay, then what's, what do I do about it? Right. And I think that's where they're feeling kind of gaslit online by a lot of people who are saying, well, like it's not your metabolism. You're just lying to yourself, just track harder. And I think there's two conversations at hand.

1:16:58I think there is two some truth to the fact that we have science that shows that people overestimate their activity and underestimate how much they eat. That is established. That is true. That is seen. That is noted. And I know that that sucks to be told that, but like, it is also something that we as humans are just really bad at quantifying. I also think there's the conversation of, and this isn't me pointing fingers at women, is that they're trying really hard in the gym, but trying hard and doing things that are effective are not always the same thing. So you're like, oh, I'm working really hard, but I'm not gaining that muscle or doing, you know what I mean?

1:17:34Or like getting the results that I want. So maybe you are trying hard and putting a lot of effort forth and that is true, but maybe it's not structured in a way that's getting you the most results of what you're actually trying to get during that time. You know, mixed with, there's a lot of potential indirect, this is the nuance here, indirect factors coming in. So there's some data that suggests that menopause shifts the way that you, um, you're like the, basically like what you have food preferences for or crave or drive to eat versus like satiety and all these other factors. So there's some stuff that suggests that potentially like if you're not eating enough protein, you might start eating more to indirectly bring in that protein.

1:18:16Essentially it's like protein seeking, so to speak. It's called a protein leverage theory. So that way, like if you're not getting what you need from your diet, you might indirectly be eating more to try to obtain it from whatever foods you're getting. You might also start eating more hyperpalatable foods, things that are more rewarding, more enjoyable, but that also is compounded by the fact that like I mentioned earlier, if you're sleeping really poorly, you also want to eat high calorie, hyperpalatable kind of foods. And so there is potentially a lifestyle mechanism of like you're indirectly eating in a way that is more hypocaloric and not realizing that you're doing it.

1:18:49But I do think there's something else possibly going on for women who really, truly, they're like, they're lifting the weights. They're doing their best to sleep. They're doing their best to support their body. And they're still finding that they're gaining weight. They don't feel like themselves, all these things. And that's real and valid, right? Like I wish I could come in here as a scientist and say like, here's the magic solution because even for a lot of women, like medical hormone therapy or hormone replacement therapy, Now it's called medical hormone therapy for those listening, but you might know by HRT, you know, it's sold as this magic pin set up for the solution, but we actually don't see weight loss necessarily with it.

1:19:25We don't actually see more muscle gain with it. That's why like the conversation of like, oh, is it hormones is really messy because when you add the hormones back, it doesn't fix the problem. You made some really important points here with the fact that there are so many things being thrown at us. There's a lot going on at this time of life. If you have any parting words for women that are just a couple of bullet points to focus on that are not overwhelming, what would they be? Yeah. So I would say first and foremost, find a good training plan. Just find a good training plan. I think for so many women, you're going to cut through so much BS for yourself.

1:20:04If you don't try to DIY spin your wheels yourself, just get a coach or a program or an app or whatever it is. you got two people right here who can't help you, but there's plenty of others out there. Get a good training plan that will challenge you and remove the thinking for you, right? Part of this is you're exhausted thinking that. Second, think about where you can support your lifestyle that supports you, even if your body composition doesn't change overnight. So improving the quality of your nutrition and or supporting your sleep, even if it is interrupted from hormone fluctuations and changes, where can you do to make your life better supported with that, including asking for help or support from your spouse, your kids, people around you, right?

1:20:48And thinking about, again, improving diet quality, not restricting and going back into this yo-yo dieting cycle, I really encourage women to take a break from that dieting mindset. Just it seems really hard when you're saying, oh, weight gain is coming. but also but I think that for so many of you you will see so many more results if you actually just spend some time just eating normally and eating in a healthy way and not trying to restrict or do the under eat overeat cycle just give yourself some time there I think that that will give you some of the most surprising benefits do two to three days of string training per week do one hard cardio day and then as much other activity cardio that you possibly want to fit into your life and adjust that to your life.

1:21:31You can adjust those numbers or scale those by whatever we talked about earlier, by type of workout, goal, preference, all of the things. And then at the end of the day, don't be afraid to advocate for yourself with your doctors, medical professionals, asking for help or support that you need and making sure people listen to you and you feel heard and you're getting the help that you actually need if you feel like you need additional support beyond what you're doing in your lifestyle and your training. and in the gym. And then most of all, like give yourself some grace. I think that we - So important.

1:22:06So many women in their midlife I see are just like so mean to themselves and angry about all of this, but like changes happen and some of them are going to happen regardless, right? Age happens. But a lot of things we talked about can slow the rate of that or improve the experience of that or the outcome of that. But, you know, don't forget to also like think about what these choices are doing that allow you to like live a life on your terms and live a better life and enjoy your life and like have the fitness and the health to do the things that you want to do too or have fun with it. It doesn't just have to be like this doom and gloom narrative of like it's all downhill kind of thing.

1:22:46Easier said than done, right? Like there's a lot of very frustrating things that are happening at this point in time. So many good things too. But there's also like, it's a great opportunity to choose your health and choose yourself and choose you in the process and, or also do that alongside advocating for your health and your fitness along the way. Yes. I love it. Thank you, Alyssa. And thank you for the work that you're doing. I'm excited to see what comes up in the ranks over the next decade or so with not only the research, but to kind of see where you're going as you're leading this, this generation that's coming up into the peri and post-menopausal phase of life and what conversations we're having then.

1:23:29So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and sharing the BodyPod with your friends.

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