RE-RUN - Understanding Insulin Resistance: Expert Insights with Dr. Stacy Sims

0:00Hey, it's Hailey. If you're a woman in midlife who has done everything right and those stubborn pounds won't move, stay with me for a minute. You cut your calories, you've added more cardio, you try harder than anyone around you, and the scale just sat there while your energy crashed and the weight crept back on. In midlife, your hormones, sleep, muscle, and your bones all change the math. I want you to be the woman who knows exactly what her body needs now and can make a fat loss phase work for her lifestyle. Fat Loss Happens Education is seven weeks of evidence-based guidance from registered nutritionists, menopause doctors, and exercise physiologists with me right there alongside you.

0:43You learn how protein, training, hormones, and recovery work together in midlife and how to hold on to your results long after the course ends. We start the live course in September. To get first access in August, go to hayleyhappensfitness.com forward slash fatlosshappenseducation or grab the link in the show notes. Now, back to the show. Today on The Body Pod, we are rerunning one of our most popular episodes from last season with Dr. Stacey Sims. Stacey is not only my business partner, but a dear friend. And in this short episode, we cover insulin resistance and how it really creeps up in perimenopause.

1:28So enjoy this short session with Dr. Stacey Sims. Hi, everyone. My name is Haley. And this is Laura. And welcome to The Body Pod.

1:43Hi, everyone. Welcome back. We are so excited. I'm so excited. I have Dr. Stacey Sims. I'm actually sitting in New Zealand with her right now. And we decided to answer some questions that have come up since we did our Instagram live a couple of weeks ago. So Stacey, are you ready? Yes, let's go. All right. So a question that a few of you asked had to do with insulin resistance. And if this is a peri post menopause symptom, we do see insulin resistance coming up in perimenopause. So this can contribute to some of that abdominal adiposity, some of the visceral fat gain. So what we need to be very mindful of is making sure that we are doing our high intensity work because that does help with metabolic control as well as the type of carbohydrate we're eating.

2:35So if we're talking about changing and having more fruit and veg, make sure they're very fibrous for our gut, but also to help moderate and modulate that insulin resistance. Okay. So it really comes down to diet and exercise. Yeah. Like everything else. Exactly. And the other thing is I know that I always harp about strength training and the more metabolically active tissue we have by building that lean mass, the better it helps with our insulin and our glucose control. Because as we are training and we are teaching our skeletal muscle to be active by lifting and doing high intensity work, it's also telling the muscle that we don't need insulin to pull that blood sugar in.

3:15So then we are able to rely less on insulin to have better blood glucose control. So this is another reason why we're always harping on that high intensity sprint interval for metabolic control, as well as that strength training to get more metabolically active tissue to help with blood glucose control. Okay. So anyone that is aging, say entering that perimenopause phase somewhere in the late thirties, 40s, whenever they're hitting that, do you recommend, and when you're recommending that carbohydrate, we know that plays a role, you're not saying to eliminate carbohydrate or go very low carb because of the insulin resistance.

3:57Not at all. I'm saying instead of eating more refined, simple carbohydrates, which we tend to gravitate towards, especially in the States, We don't want to go with ultra processed foods. Least processed, the better. So we're looking at bananas, pears, peaches, carrots, apples, potatoes, rice, spelt, any ancient grains, anything that has fiber with carbohydrate. It's great. Women need carbohydrate. You need it to fuel your brain. You need to fuel your muscles, help avoid getting into a low energy situation because when we have low carbohydrate intake, it can be perceived as low energy availability.

4:37So it's not the elimination of carbohydrate. It's not dropping it to a low point. It's being very mindful of the kinds of carbohydrates you're eating. And you do have the opportunity, if you are someone who loves more simple carbohydrates, to have that before and after training. Because before training, your blood glucose comes up. You use that during training. Then after, you have an acute window of recovery where glucose is uptaken into the muscle without the use of insulin. Okay. Okay. So we're still fueling for the demands of training. We're just being smart with our carbohydrates. And is this something that people, that women will figure out or find out if they're insulin sensitive by a blood test or can it be, they just don't feel great.

5:21Does it have to be diagnosed with a blood test? It doesn't, but you'll find that you might be putting on a little extra body fat. If you're eating more carb than, you know, you're eating a pasta meal or something, and you've always been doing that. And then all of a sudden you're like, why am I putting more weight on? I don't understand that. Then it's like, let's change to pulse pasta instead of wheat pasta. So you're just putting more protein fiber in with that carbohydrate. And then you'll, you'll notice that, oh, okay, I'm feeling better. I'm not as bloated. I'm not holding on to as much. weight is coming off a little bit easier.

5:58So you'll start seeing signs and symptoms. If you're really worried and you have a family history of diabetes or you had preeclampsia or anything like that, any complications during pregnancy, then yeah, you might want to get a fasting blood glucose. Okay. And if women, so we talked a little bit about strength training. We both talk about this a lot. For women that are postmenopausal and they're hearing the message about strength training, but they're still a little bit timid, fearing injury, there's still a way that they can work around that strength training without this fear. There's more than one method to the heavy lifting.

6:39Yeah. So I want people to realize that we're not talking about a training block. We're talking about a lifestyle change. We're looking for the eye of resistance training the rest of our lives. So we want to encompass a lot of mobility work, some functional movement work. So we're looking at how do I squat? What are my sticking points? How are my knees, my hips, my ankles, flexibility there? You're working on mobility through that range of motion before you add load. If you're someone who is compromised in their squat position, instead of trying to do a deep squat, you're squatting to a box or you're squatting to a box with a plate on it.

7:16So you're within your own range of motion, you're developing strength, but as you're getting stronger in that range of motion, you also are able to increase your range of motion. So we want to make sure that you move well before you add load. And when we say lifting heavy, it's all relative. So if you don't have a history in strength training, you know, I can go in and start trying to squat 60 kilos or, you know, 150 pounds, you are going to go in and start with maybe some dumbbells. Maybe you start with a 20 pound bar instead of a 45 pound bar. So it's all within your own individual capabilities with the eye of being able to add load as your mobility gets better as your ligaments and your muscles and tendons all get stronger.

8:00It's not the eye of going in, I got to do this right now, get injured and then you stop. Yeah. Okay. And this question always gets brought up too. I feel like we'll answer it again. For someone that is doing maybe Pilates, which has multiple benefits and what we should be focusing on when we're doing Pilates is all of those major benefits. But say like the cardio classes where they're using a jump board, is that considered, like, could that be considered plyometrics or heavy lifting or is there a difference? When we look at the jump board in Pilates, it's not typical plyometrics because of what we're after with true plyometrics is the rebound effect from the ground.

8:42So you're getting that fast explosiveness as well as that absorption through the bone and the muscle so that you're getting more than just the power part of the plyometrics. metrometrics. We're looking for bone mineral density increases. We're looking for the tendon and the ligaments to respond to it in kind. If someone has really bad joints and they're afraid of some of those power moves, then maybe starting with a jump board because it's already in their Pilates class is one way to start to feel what it's like to jump off something. But I'd rather people go with the eye of doing a very low depth jump.

9:20So they're understanding what it feels like to step off something, do a proper landing with soft knees absorbing through the muscles and not necessarily the joints and then building up. Because there's so many more benefits to doing true plyometric work rather than something that is a jump board. And I don't want people who do Pilates to hate me. I'm not a hater on it. I'm just saying like, when we're talking about plyometric and the explosiveness, it's better to get really comfortable doing real plyometric like the depth jumps or the box jumps or jumping lunges, or even things like jumping rope.

9:57You want that explosive kind of movement for bone mineral density, as well as the power. Okay. So really to sum things up, when we talk about this phase of life that we're entering into our late thirties, our early forties, whatever we want to, whether we're in perimenopause, we're not there yet, we're getting into menopause, the lifestyle, everything that you just touched on is a lifestyle approach. It's not just for this time period while you're transitioning into menopause or right when you hit menopause. This is what we need to look forward to with the nutrition, with the carbohydrate intake, as well as the fitness of heavy lifting and going that route for the rest of our life.

10:42This doesn't change. Right. I get a lot of questions of when do I know I should start, you know, veering towards the peri and postmenopausal type of training, or I'm postmenopausal. How does this apply to me? So when I'm talking about the sprint interval training and the resistance training and taking care of our gut and the right kind of carbohydrate, I really want people who are women who are in their early forties to kind of start transitioning that way. And then definitely in your late forties, you are definitely perimenopausal. So you want to incorporate more of that, that external stress to cause those adaptations.

11:20If you're postmenopausal, it's not too late to start. Like we want you to say, oh, okay, these are the things that are applicable for my body now. I don't have estrogen progesterone. I need to find an external stress that's going to cause these adaptations the way that my body used to respond to when I had estrogen progesterone. I'm really concerned about the quality of my muscle. I'm concerned about my bone mineral density. so 150 minutes of modern intensity activity is not right for my body when i'm postmenopausal if i'm already moving great but i need to look at doing some sprint and will work i need to look at doing resistance training into heavy lifting but it takes time i want to look at my ability because i don't want to get injured so all of this is with the eye to how i'm going to be 90 plus and still be independently living.

12:08And we see that as you get older, you may need smaller volume. So small doses of, of intensity and resistance training in a regular time period. So we're looking at, you know, five to six days a week of 10 to 20 minutes every day, rather than three times a week of a big session, you need smaller doses just because the body needs that reminder of what we're doing. Yes. And I love how you said that it's never too late. So there's a lot of women on here that have been endurance athletes and they just might need to add in more of that heavy strength training and shift from a lot of that low intensity work.

12:48But there's also women that I think we're both very passionate about. It is never too late to start. Even if you have walked your whole life and that's it, there is a place for everyone with strength training, with plyometrics, with mobility, and with this nutrition changes. Absolutely. My husband sent me a link from the national news, radio news, equivalent of NPR. They're interviewing this guy that started resistance training when he was 76. Now he's 96 and he's way stronger independently living. And then we look at someone like Train With Joan on, you know, she started lifting and taking care of herself with high intensity work when she's in her mid sixties and now she's 70 something and it's stronger and more robust now than she was earlier.

13:34So it's never too late to start. I love that. Well, thank you so much, Stacy. This has been such a fascinating quick little podcast to answer some episodes. So we look forward to having you on again. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and sharing the body pod with your friends. Until next time. Thank you.