Over 70 and Shredded: The Guide to Building Muscle at Any Age | Michelle & Joan MacDonald

I wanted to kill myself. The meeting disorder is like being in a relationship with the most abusive person you can imagine. You literally get up and you're afraid. You're afraid because your history is that within two hours you're going to be damaging yourself. You both are strong icons. If a woman is just getting into her 40s, what is the number one thing that you would tell her about drinking? You have to get clear around to why and understand that for most of us it's going to be a journey. If you don't put the effort in and consistency, I don't think you're going to get the results or you're not going to get them when you think you should. The single most important thing a woman in her 40s can do to transform her body is to be consistent. This is going to make us a little unpopular from the evidence that I have seen. There doesn't seem to be sex differences through or for training. There's no statistical difference between how a woman, the rate at which a woman gains muscle even in menopause. I know this is so hard to hear. I'm really glad to hear you say this. Michelle and Joan McDonald, welcome to the show. Well done. Well said. Thank you very much for having us. Thanks for having us. You both, from my perspective, are strong icons. You show the world what is possible as women who, shall I say, are over 40. Just keep going. I'm age positive. I love saying I'm one month away from being 55, which is literally true. And you're almost 80. Incredible. Which just seems like a farfetched thing. I don't feel like I'm 80. You have a long divinity in your side. Yeah, I do. I'm both sides, so it's good. Joan, nearing 80, you started training at around 70? Yeah, I was close to 71. Whereas many women, I would say in their 40s, are scared to train. Or are afraid because they don't think it's possible. And or they're still living under that old rubric that lifting weights, building muscle will make you manly and in boxy. That's still very pervasive. And I think we're seeing a return to that right now, which is very alarming. And I think it's really important that leaders, I've said this so many times, that female leaders make it fun, make it sexy, make it cool to be in shape. And then we support that with the evidence, which you're doing. Look at your lab markers. What tests should you be getting done? Like a Dexascan BMI, where you're looking at, are you thin, which might lead to frailty in 20 or 30 years educating people around that? Or are you having sufficient muscle? Are you doing things to support that muscle? And so being science-based, evidence-based, cool, having real people living and walking the talk, showing that it is great and fun to be in shape and you don't look manly. I mean, you hardly look like a guy. I hardly look like a guy. I'm still trying. Now, Michelle, you're trying to look like a guy. Yeah, I'm still trying to get jacked. Michelle, you both have various histories. So when did you start training? I've been in Al's my entire life. But I would say with weight, now that I know what I know is a CSCS, purposeful, intentional training, progressive overload, all of that, really started when I was 39 when I did my first competition. So it was like, oh, this is what you're supposed to do when you go to the gym. And why do I see that? Because in three months, my body looked like it had never looked before. And I've always been on the smaller side of things. So I'm sitting at, I weighed myself this morning. I'm doing a photo shoot on Monday with Paul Buschetta. I was 114.5 pounds. I'm at the end of a cut. I normally sit around 120 at 5'2". All the way back in 2010 when I started at 39, I was averaging 104.105 pounds. Wow, that's very light. 104. Huge difference. 104 pounds. 105 pounds at 5'2". Yeah. If a woman is just getting into her 40s, what is the number one thing, most important factor that you would tell her about training? Get a coach. I would agree with that. Yeah, I'm not going to. I'm not going to. If they want to transform their body. If they want to transform rapidly, as you know, as a physician, getting the right help can really accelerate that. Now then the question is, well, how can you tell who's legitimate? Who's legitimate or not? I always say, look for the outcomes that you want, similarities to where you currently are. Then make sure you can talk to them. Go online, DM them, talk to them to make sure that it's real. I know Joan's image has been appropriated. As you know, people think it's really easy to track down these things and get them to take it off their website or take it off their Instagram even. It is. It was like playing wakamol. You really do want to do your due diligence with socials and just track that the person in the image actually did the program. What would you say? Getting started, what would you say? How does a woman in her 40s get started? Or one that wants to transform? If you really want it, you get someone like Michelle in your corner and she doesn't take anything or give me any more leeway than she would anyone else. I had to toe the line. I was dragging my feet a lot of the times, but I knew that she could do it with others. So she could do it with somebody else that she doesn't even know. She should be able to do it for me. It's probably even more difficult to do it with a parent. She probably had a harder one on you than she would be on one of her clients. Would you say that if you were to pick, and again, everyone makes a psychotomy, is it diet? Is it exercise? It's everything. Everything can be. You've got your sleep, you've got your food, your protein. The macros are great because you've got the three things that build your body, which is the protein, the carbs and the fats. And they're in different portions for different people because your body is different. We're not all built the same and we don't all have the same needs. But that being the mindset, the meditation is really great. You want to be able to calm yourself and meditation. Why? Because you can't be living off your nerves all the time. You mean the five red bowls and Nelson's today's and no-go? But then you could maybe handle that, but the average person can't. And like I said, we're all built different. We are all going to have different outcomes. But you can normalize it, I guess, in a sense that you put the effort in, you'll get the results. If you don't put the effort in and consistency, I don't think you're going to get the results or you're not going to get them when you think you should. I like that. And if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're saying is the single most important thing a woman in her 40s can do to transform her body is to be consistent. Michelle, just curious. Yeah, I think I wish I could say that there's one thing because if you're doing something inconsistently but it's the wrong thing, then you're not going to go anywhere. And I think mom was trying to allude to that as well. There are a few pillars that you want to get ticked off. If we're talking about major transformation, that is sustainable long term. For most people that are getting started, that their ground zero is, oh my God, I am literally turning into what I thought 40 would be when I was 10, right? When you're 10, 40 is like, are you still alive? Right? Well, when you get 40, you're like, wait a minute, I still feel like me. But what happened to my body? Is that overnight? Like overnight, what happened to my body? Now, I know as a coach, nothing happens overnight, right? Because I track data all day for my clients. Like, oh, OK, like what's going on here? And I go and look at their macros or I see that cardio is missed or whatever, right? Wasn't tracking. What gets measured gets managed. And it's like, let's dial that back here. So for gals getting started, I think number one. If I was to say, what is the number one thing if I'm thinking of not just like losing 10 pounds now, but the long term, you have to get clear around your why and understand that for most of us, it's going to be a journey, right? Like, is your why originating in your true self or is it a why that you've appropriated from external factors? Because you've never really been trained on how to be thoughtful about your core values and who you are and is your life aligning with that? Your husband or your wife or whatever it is, your career, your geographic settlement. Know your why, shift it if necessary. And we're so lucky now that there's podcasts that you can tap into where people are, you know, really deep into it. And I thinking of like Ed Milet and Vrenna Bouchard and Shetty and I mean, there's some really top ones where you can tap into that. There's even apps for that for that now in communities. Figure out your why. Look at this not just as an aesthetic outcome. I think aesthetic hooks are great, especially for women because it gets us started and that's okay. Like use vanity, right? I want to look good. I want to fit into my like size two or size four. Like use vanity, have fun with that. No shame. But long term, to make sure you're making the right choices, this will help. Your health outcomes. What are your labs? What should your labs be now? What tests should you get done now like a dexascand to check your VMI? Looking at that. I'm going to be prioritizing now so that when I'm 70, if we future pace, I'm still healthy. So this is where you would have information where you're not just choosing, I want to be a size two, but I want my muscle mass to fat ratio to be here so that when I'm 80, my metabolic health is great. Right? I don't have type two diabetes. I don't have osteoporosis. Right? My cognitive function, cardiovascular health is great. If you listen every week and feel like we are in this together, which I believe that we are learning, growing and building strength, then I created a way for us to get connected even more closely. It's called Forever Strong Insider. A premium community for listeners who want to go deeper. You'll get ad-free episodes, which I know you'll love. Bonus Q&As where your questions shape the conversation. Behind the scene moments because let's face it, I'm hilarious for my daily life and written takeaways to keep at your fingertips. But more than that, you'll be supporting the show so that we can keep creating content that matters. If you've ever wanted it to feel part of the inner circle, this is your invitation. Join us at foreverstrong.supercast.com or through the link in the show notes. As you've become more mature, right? By the time you reach your 40s, you then have to reorient yourself as to the reason as to why. Because when you're in your 20s, the why, you could look at a push up and you would probably get biceps. I mean, your body's a lot more malleable, but it becomes in part less so, at least that's what I've seen in my clinical practice. But if they can orient themselves to a way of thinking about health, which is what you both have said, and then executing the next right thing, which in my mind would be, believe it or not, if I had to pick diet or training, I would pick training first. Obviously, you want both, but in my mind, if that woman wants to transform her body and she is in her 40s, she has to be doing some type of resistance training. I'm not going to disagree with you, and I'll tell you why. Because if we can get a woman focused on getting stronger than the things that you have to do, build muscle, train with intention, get recovery and eat to support muscle growth, it covers everything else. So I would agree with you. All leads to health. All leads to health. So you've been an athlete and a trainer for how long? I would say the trainer bit, like coaching, I would say I'm a coach before I would be a trainer. I started in my 30s. This always surprises people, but I was a yoga champion for Canada. I competed in yoga. I'm actually not surprised. I'm actually not surprised by that. People say, really, there's competitions in yoga? Absolutely. I'm surprised about the fact that you were a yoga champion because you're talking about mindfulness and obviously there's this bidirectional relationship between muscle and mindfulness. I'm not totally shocked by that. There you go. Usually people are totally surprised by that. No. But I did coach people. I coached advanced yoga. I coached teams to compete. So I first started and then as a yoga teacher as well, I noticed how much mindset played into things and whether or not somebody was genetically gifted definitely came secondary to their mindset. And I think Charles Glass, who's one of the greatest trainers out there, said that in an interview, like, what's most important in bodybuilding? Because he's coached a lot of chances. Is it genetics? Is it diet? Is it the progress? Like, is it mindset? Because people get into it and then when it gets hard, that's when you really see who you've got in front of you. And if you can accelerate putting them in that place of hard, then you can change things very quickly. Right? So if someone is risk adverse or doesn't tolerate doing hard things easily, if you put them in that place quickly, then I think that there's a better chance of moving them off the axis. And mom for sure exemplifies that grittiness. Right? Very gritty. And I think that's the secret to her success. And she has decent genetics. When I saw her triceps coming in and her delts coming in at year two, and it takes time, right? At first it was fat loss, right? And yes, there was muscle build, but I think it was year two, two and a half where it was like, oh my God. And I said, I always thought- This was at 71. This would be 72. 72, 72. Like, 72. 72, 72, yeah. Right? And it was when I took you shopping at Forever 21. And I go, why are you taking me here for these are for young kids? And like, nothing's gonna fit me because she's still that mindset that people do and they have massive weight loss. They still see themselves as being a size, I don't know, I think you're up to 16. Close to 16, between 14 and 16. Right? Weight your size. Your size. Okay. Yeah, just, holy. 0.2 pounds away from the 200 with a 39-inch waist, which has metabolic risks, as you know. But there she was in there and she put on this little strappy top. Green top. And it had great, what we call in bodybuilding, goon lighting because it's direct overhead lighting, not pretty for the face, but your muscles pop. And I said, Mom, stand there, put your feet here, put pressure hands against your thighs. And I took a shot and I posted it and I showed it to her and she was like, her jaw hit the ground. She's like, that's me. I'm like, yes, I didn't, you know, I had never seen my back before. And that's something that is a great shot. If you can get someone to take a picture of your back as you're training, it's a motivator. Like I couldn't believe how developed it was. And that's me. Your 70s, which this is a very important conversation for women to understand that you can build muscle and get stronger at any age and build visible muscle. It might take a little bit longer, but it is absolutely possible. And I would ask if you were to say your top three exercises, and these are very challenging questions, but here's why. The goal of this podcast in particular is how do we pave the way for women in their 40s and beyond who are interested? How do we provide them with an invitation to move from interested to action oriented? One thing is do not be afraid of the gym because no one else is really paying that much attention to you until you start doing really good things. Like when you start actually training and making a difference to yourself, like you can feel that you're getting a little stronger all the time. That's why the buddy system is great too. But I didn't have people paying attention to me until they could see my, they were looking at me from my back and that's, boy, you should see your back. How much, how well you're, you're developed in that thing. Yeah, so people are, people are encouraging, right? So don't be afraid. Yeah, they're encouraging, they're encouraging you at the gym and they are always surprised when an older person comes in and actually does something and not just, they're there to, they're not going to judge you. Yeah. They're just not going to judge you because they, they, they are admiring you. Was there a moment before you stepped into the gym? And it's, it's interesting because by this time you've already been, you know, a fitness professional in multiple domains. So was it there an ease to going to the gym where you feeling like maybe I had to talk myself into it. I went past that gym for almost a year and a half before I finally got up enough nerve to go in and ask questions. And I only saw one part of it. I did, there was a downstairs as well, but I'm sure it was more, more cardio. Yeah, it was mostly cardio. Was that filled with women? Yeah. I mean, it's true, right? We're seeing that chip now. There was men and women. I didn't know about the men part, like how that was going to go because you know, my generation, women were not really welcomed in a gym and therefore you avoided them. If you were the average person. Yeah. Was that something discussed? Was that a, is it a known thing? For example, women of your generation, would you guys talk and say, you know what, now we're, we're going to go for, I don't know, tea and toast. I play, I play, I would play some kind of sports. I wasn't a real big sporty person, but I, I thought I liked the idea of sports. I like to be able to participate. I like to be able to learn something. So I, I did several things. I played lob ball. Um, but this was in my late thirties, early forties that I was doing this stuff. I, I went bowling like that. Was an acceptable sport for a woman. Um, I tried lawn bowling. I loved it. And I did stained glass and I did a lot of things that I, that I've always wanted to do and never even tried it. But I was curious about a lot of stuff. And if you don't try, how are you going to know if you like it or not? How do you, how do you know it's going to work or not? You got to try. That's one of the things I would tell someone if wants to do anything, give it a try. I'm really intentional about what brands I bring into my home. And I've been using ranch basics. One of the sponsors of the show, this cleaning product, since I was pregnant with my first child. And listen, I've tried all different kinds, but this one I love and I feel safe around ranch basics, whether it's in my kitchen, my bathroom, laundry room, everything feels clean without that harsh chemical smell. And frankly, I think it's really important to have a safer cleaning supplies overall. And it comes in a concentrate. So just dive in a little bit for cleaning for countertops, floors. It is fragrance free. It is safe for kids and pets. I'm so grateful that they are going to be offering you 15% off and free shipping. With this starter kit, all you have to do is go to branch basics.com slash doctor lion. That's branch basics.com slash doctor lion. I think in my family, we were very sporty because my father, he was really into sports. My older brother was the king of the kids. He was a top athlete, usually the captain of the team, the pitcher, the center and hockey. So we're very, very sporty. So I think there was a big drive. Certainly I was really pushed by my father. He didn't push me, but as a young girl wanting to please daddy, I wanted to become a jock. And so that was my, I was a real convoy. And I think that rubbed off on you a little bit too. You would come to my games and you played law of all and whatnot. When you first started at the gym with me, you know, so, so I was heading to Mexico when I saw, it really hit me because I wasn't, I was only seeing mom a few times a year. It really hit me that mom's health was at stake and she was, was heaving and puffing coming up the stairs. Were you in Canada or were you? We were in Canada, but I was leaving for Mexico. It was in my husband and I made the move. I was actually back and I would come back again relatively quickly after that incident. Where mom told me she, her doctor was going to increase her blood pressure medication for a power lifting me. So, and then I took mom back to Mexico. But that moment when she, when I saw that how unhealthy she had become, she'd been overweight, but the extent really hit me. And there had also been several times when I noted that she seemed very depressed, like I would call her on the phone and it would just be like, Oh, nothing's here. Just really down. You know, it was strained between mom and dad. My dad's passed away, but it was strained. It wasn't like this beautiful retired life that they had been hoping for, which is another issue like a reality. Even gals in their 40s like, Oh, this isn't, this isn't, this isn't how I thought it was going to be. So there she was unhealthy. Her face was different. I mean, she was 200 pounds, right? So she's like 132 right now. And if you lifted 70 pounds, you know how heavy that weight is. I'm probably five, two and a half. I think you're five one now. No, I'm always going, Stand up straight. Your little marsupine's going to get crushed. So you were almost 200 pounds. Yeah. Yeah. And I did get up to 205 at one point. And this was in your, how old were you at that time? I was 70. Yeah. Because I didn't, I didn't start with you until I was almost 71. Yeah. And you felt that she had hit a low point. That for me was a low point. Mentally and physically, but you were well on your, Yeah. I didn't even know she was on blood pressure medication. And she was definitely hiding that. She says she wasn't, but I'm like, I'm an expert in my field. I pump out radical transformations in a ridiculously short period of time. And then we maintain those radical, we build on them. Right? Like this is your radical, and I always say to my gals, like your, your, your after picture is going to become, mark my words in a year. It's going to become here before. And I know right now you think that's impossible, but this is going to be before. So that's what I do. That's what I'm known for. And I was like, for me, it was also a realization. And you're right. It is challenging for family to help each other in this space. And I'm sure even for medicine, it might be the same. Like the knowledge is there, but people won't execute on it versus if they were paying somebody. But I like, I, I'm like, I have to, I have to do this. I literally called upon, like Tony Robbins would say, all the forces of nature, whether it's God, whether it's my expertise, whether it's my subconscious, my husband, who is a great regulator, he really calms people down. I said, give me the strength and power to help my mom. And I had my Friday night lights speech with her. I sat her down at the dinner table and I'm like, mom, we gotta, we gotta change now otherwise. You know, and probably two or three years, you're gonna end up in a nursing home. You could have a stroke. You could lose the function of your mind. You saw that happen with, with, with dad, how radically you decline when you start having these major health events. What did your father pass away from? Complications from a fall. So he'd become quite frail. He broke a sips three times and he fell down, going up the stairs, had a pooling of blood in the brain. He wasn't found for likely four hours. Mom was gone. And so that he was ended up in a, in a, in a facility for a three, I think two or three months and he declined rapidly after that. But it wasn't never himself. He was almost like he had dementia because the pooling of blood had affected his brain capacity. So I said to mom, like you're, and that was pre COVID. I mean, I see that all the time when COVID was happening. If mom had not been in shape, she was a perfect candidate because we know obesity increases the co-morbidity for death from COVID, as well as many other things that we're, are high respectors, like dying from a heart attack. So I told her, I'm like, I'm not going to be there in the nursing home wiping your bum because there's things that you can do now. And that's what a coach does. I think it's a difference between a coach and like a therapist. Like we actually are going to say those hard truths. And we're also going to use strategy to get out of it. Like this is the hard truth. In two to three years, it's, it's a nursing home. You might lose the function of your brain, strokes are serious. A lot of times you can't recover from them. And there's things that you can do now that will give you incredibly radical outcomes. And it'll solve for your life problems. Like you'll have energy. You'll be able to go on things independently. You'll be able to lift your suitcases up. And she, she went for it and I have a group. I said, I have a group. Oh my God, I can't believe I'm this way. I have a group. That's the other thing that I meant. I always mentioned when I talk about these radical transformations, it's a container, right? So when we're going to take someone through this transformation, we do it in a container with other people. And there are certain non-negotiables that you need to do to stay on the boat. And those non-negotiables come from experience where I see, it's all pattern recognition, right? If somebody does these things, their risk of failure is guaranteed. If they do these behaviors, their risk of massive success is guaranteed. So as the expert, I have to say, these are the non-negotiables. This is the behavior we would want to reward. And this is where you're going to find resistance. And the moment you find that resistance, you flag it. And I would say that probably your practice as a coach has changed over the years. I can only speak for myself as a physician. When you are new to medicine or probably new to coaching, you kind of are like, I got this. And then as you go through person after person, there ends up being this evolution of what becomes effective. And when you started, so you started roughly how old were you when you said you were mid-30s? With yoga. But when you started coaching people. Coaching would be in 2012. So I would be 42. And during that time when you started coaching, what were some of the things that you were doing then that you probably have now changed almost a little over? Oh, my dietary recommendations have changed considerably. What were they when you started? I found some old diets that I used to give out. Well, number one, how I did it was different as well. I always coached macros. But when I first was into bodybuilding, I was taught almost like a point system. It's like those Weight Watchers. Kind of, but more if Weight Watchers was bodybuilding. So certain carbohydrates would be in this bucket. So starches would be in this bucket. And then vegetables would be in this bucket. You'd have your super low calorie. Like this is basically free, like your iceberg lettuce and celery, cucumber. And you have that bucket. I did that all through college. Yeah, so. It's all macros. It was very low nutrient density. Yeah. Yeah, ours wasn't because we're trying to build muscle. So we're trying to, I call it, bodybuilds are great at manipulating mass. We can gain tissue. We can lose tissue. We can gain specific kinds of tissue. We can lose specific kinds of tissue. And we can do it on a deadline. And the protocol depends on what's in front of us, what you're willing to do, and the timeline. And it's like, we can do this, but this is what it will cost. So it started like that. And it evolved into macros, especially with using the app, My Macros, which I love, because I'm a chef and you can create your meals that both satisfy your macros, which should be tied to your health and physique outcomes with Amafoodie, with Seitidi, and enjoyment, right? So it doesn't have to be egg whites and a scoop of peanut butter. It could be. My first show, I did filet mignon with a red pan sauce. And some sauteed shirataki mushrooms. Thank you to BonCharge for sponsoring this episode of the show. And if you've been following me for a while, you know that I take light exposure seriously. Why? Because it impacts your sleep, your hormones, your mood, your ability to recover and focus. It doesn't just affect you, but it also affects your kids. And that's why I use BonCharge. They've created science-backed tools that help balance our modern industrialized lives from harsh indoor lighting to too much screen time. Their blue light blocking glasses are a nightly ritual for me and my kids' barrel mines. They help calm my nervous system, protect my circadian rhythm, especially if I just happen to look at my screen, which we all know that never happens. I also love their red light lamp. I turn them on as soon as it gets dark and I use the big panels 10 to 20 minutes each day. They are some of the best red light products I have ever used, low EMF on the market. And right now, BonCharge is having their holiday sale. So you can save a massive 25% off. Just head to boncharge.com and your 25% off code will automatically be added to your order. This sale will end on the 31st of December, 2025. So hurry and don't miss this chance to save on your favorite BonCharge products. When I started dieting, it was, you're gonna laugh. You might, you might not. Crystal Light. I don't even know if they still have Crystal Light. Yes, they do. Wait, are you ready for this? I don't think I've ever talked about this. I absolutely use it. Okay, I won't judge you. Crystal Light on frozen, somewhat thawed broccoli. Just go with me or this is called, I've never talked about this before. I'm gonna go, wait, wait, wait, I gotta share. Now, just because I like making you guys look sick. So frozen, you know, partially thawed broccoli-esque on a skillet with like lemon Crystal Light. There's probably a teenager listening to this going, that sounds amazing. Do not do this. I'm not recommending anyone do this. Don't do that. With, cause they didn't have all that. The stuff that they have now and the knowledge that we have now. We're so lucky. Boiled chicken. Boiled chicken, ninja creamies. Oh my God. Boiled chicken, oh, it's a boiled chicken girl. I would travel with. And like rubber boiled chicken. Oh yeah. I was like, is this a hockey, wait, I don't even have hockey. With, I would also do the white rice. So zero nutrient, does it work? Yeah, five or a little bit. Barely. And whatever nutrients were in that chicken. We're cooked out. Definitely cooked out. Except for the macro of protein. By the way, when you flash freeze, you blanch it. And you destroy a lot of the nutrients. And it could have been cauliflower. Maybe it was cauliflower with, or cauliflower rice with a tropical mix. I mean, it was my rendition. Of Hawaiian rice, disgusting. Very low nutrient density. And I was hungry all the time. And low satiety, low pleasure. And it leads to binge behavior, right? I? Or unsustainable. Yes. And I want to talk about eating disorders. You know, I want to touch on it. And just this eating obsession. When I, so I am not a foodie. I have become much more interested in food because we cook at home. But I've become much more interested in the nutrient density. Right. It's a beautiful language. Super important. My career. However, I'm not letting off the hook on this because I spend easily four years of my life super obsessed and focused on food. Hungry, very restricted. And you know, you might find me, you know, going off the deep end in my deep end might be weird for some people. You know, I love trail mix and I love to dried fruit. Whereas I know that in the past, you have struggled in a similar way. And I do want to get down to the nuts and bolts of, you know, the three best exercises for women. Because I'm going to, I want to test my knowledge. But before we do that, I do want to hear your experience. Because obviously you are someone who stays in great shape and that requires knowledge of nutrition and that requires consistency. But it probably has not always been as easy as it is now. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, it was so long ago, I am almost 55, but I was very, very, I was a very sick young girl. I was thinking of my waist to do this because now that I'm almost 55, when I look at a 16 year old or even a 20 year old, I'm like, oh my God, you're so perfect. Look at your skin. Do you know how beautiful you are? Or smart you are, or how much potential you have. I want to caveat that because we're more than just a pretty face. But it's just more that when you're young, when you're 16, there is so much else to be pouring your energy into besides self-immolation, self-flagellation. And that's what the eating disorder is. And especially for women, you are wasting so much energy that you could be pouring into developing your skills and your experiences. So, yeah, for me, it started off from sports. I was a 16 year old. I was in a small town, 16,000 people. We had a coach, but you know, the coaches that, the coaching that woman got, that girl's got at that level in Canada, they're not top coaches. Nutrition education has come a long time and probably mindset coaching. I mean, I don't know what's happening at school these days. But hopefully it's evolved. But there was no coaching around nutrition. So I wanted to be a, I wanted to make it to regionals. I was a track and field athlete. I was a hurdler and a high jumper. And it looked like the thin girls were faster. There's also some pressure going on behind the scenes, as there always is in high school, like being cool and what were the cool girls doing? And I had overheard a girl in our small circle of friends. She was a competitive figure skater. So figure skating, gymnastics and dancing. Those three are rife with eating disorders. And so she had told us, oh, I've discovered this thing. You can eat this and then you stick your finger down your throat and you don't have to, you know, don't have to pay for it. And at first when I heard it, I thought, wow, that's ridiculous. But then later on it stuck with me. I was in a vulnerable state. I had no coaching and when you're young, you know it all. And you don't talk to people and ask questions. Now we have social media, but that could be really dangerous now with these online groups where people are teaching each other how to be unhealthy basically. I just starved myself. I just would stop eating. The coach of me knows now colorically what I was doing. I was having Horlick's drinks. What's that? They're like a drink with milk and malt. And they're actually like, think of like a hot chocolate. So colorically maybe around plus the milk, like 250 calories, but I thought it was nothing. And I was still under eating for my size and my energy expenditure. And then I would have a cookie, right? And so that's, I tried fiber pills and that's how it started. And then it rapidly escalated. I went away to a camp. I worked in a camp for boys actually and it escalated there again. Just the pressures of the social changes that were happening, trying to navigate the politics of being a 16 year old. You were 17, 16 at the time. And just not having, there's no mentorship, no access back. Then it was really different. We don't have, like I said, access to these amazing podcasts and apps and whatnot. So that's, it just escalated very quickly. And I was caught in a cycle of like basically starving myself and I would be successful. I got all the way down to 88 pounds. And I can't, I'm like, I would have to travel off a leg to the 88 pounds now. I can't even imagine how I did it. But I was just lost and I was very functional. Bulimia is very easy to hide. You look like a normal weight usually, but it's a terrible battle inside. And so that was all the way until I was 30 when I found yoga and yoga really, and yoga became, why did I create the framework that I did when I started coaching? It was always heavily in mindset. It comes from yoga and my own journey, right? So understanding when your nervous system is not regulated, being skillful and having strategies in place before you get dysregulated, how to drive a wedge into triggered behavior, have pleasurable alternatives that can calm you down. Because usually when we're doing some kind of a soothing behavior, whether it's alcohol or some video game or something that's distracting you from achieving your goals or being who you are, you're trying to soothe, you're trying to calm down your nervous system, but you're doing it in a way that has long-term negative consequences. So I brought that into my coaching and I would always say, like, you know, you go to a butt-building event and you'd see girls bringing bags of candy and, you know, they would not even last from the morning show to the evening show. They'd get onto the evening show and they would have huge distention. They'd have alcohol backstage and you'd see people a week later in the gym and it looked like they'd never lift a barbell in their life. It was insane. I'd even see guys suffer from that. So making sure that my offer was always different from that, like, listen, I'm here for long-term health for you, right? We're gonna be very competitive on stage, but even leading up to an event, I'll start coaching mindset. All right, so what's working for you now? What is your why doing this and trying to create a long-term trajectory and coach the mindset? This episode is brought to you by Monocora. Not all carbs are created equal and somewhere along the line, we started treating them like the enemy, but when they're used intentionally, they can actually fuel performance and recovery. And that's why I use Manicora Honey every day. I think of it as somewhat of a functional carbohydrate. It's not just sugar. It's loaded with prebiotics and antioxidants that support digestion and immunity. People have been using honey for hundreds, if not thousands of years. My personal favorite with the family, I drizzle a little bit of delicious honey over some sliced apples and pears. It gives me a clean energy boost and my family loves it. What makes Manicora special is where it comes from. Bees that gather nectar from the Manicora tree in New Zealand create honey that is naturally rich in these bioactive compounds. In fact, it has up to three times more antioxidants and prebiotics than the standard honey. And now is the best time to try it. Manicora is running their biggest sale of the year from now through December 2nd. Head to Manicora.com slash Dr. Lion to get $150 off your first order with their Black Friday starter kit, which includes an 850 plus Manuka Honey jar, 35 Honey Travel Sticks, which I use all the time, a wooden spoon and a guidebook. That's Manicora.com slash Dr. Lion and save $150. So you suffered from anorexia bulimia, the combo? Yeah, bulimia is often both. You starve and then you binge and then you say you'll never do it again. And then- For almost roughly 15 years. It's like yoyo dining on steroids, right? 15 years. Yeah. 15 years. Well, in university, I tried to kill myself. So the first year I lived off campus. I lived with a gal who, I switched school to the last minute. Probably I drove my dad nuts. I was into McGill University. I was on the dorm, ready to rock and roll. And then I got it into my head in August. Again, the young people were so full of passion, but we make strategic mistakes. And then we have to learn from experience, but I switched school. So I didn't, I was too late to get a spot on campus. So I was off campus. I lived with a gal who had a graduate boyfriend. So she was gone. So I was all, bye. Myself in the basement. I mean, it was just a recipe for disaster. Because again, I was also young. So I was in accelerated learning, went to a special school for bright kids. And I was in university at 17. So I was young, socially awkward, already had an eating disorder, had no support for it. And I'm living off campus in a house by myself, where the ability to binge without repercussions, nobody could see, nobody could hear. And really, it's like being in a relationship with the most abusive person you can imagine. An eating disorder is like being in an incredibly abusive relationship with yourself. And when you think about the terror and the trauma of being in an abusive relationship with a partner, and you think of how traumatizing that can be, when it is in yourself, you literally, you get up and you're afraid. You're afraid because your history is that within two hours, you're going to be damaging yourself. And without being graphic, I would be bulimic seven times in a row. So within three hours, I would force feed three to 5,000 calories into myself. It was not pleasurable. It's literally like force feeding a foie gras duck. I would purge. I would say I would not do it again. I would do it again within 20 minutes. And it would happen so many times that I wanted to kill myself. So that was probably like one of the big moments where mom came and I called. I said, I think I'm gonna kill my, I think I've killed myself cause I swallowed like a bottle of Tylenol, which probably wouldn't have killed myself. It would have just completely destroyed my liver. But that's how bad it was. Then I became functional. So I didn't cure, right? But I came functional. So did you, did Joan, did you, I was not aware? Did she tell you? Does she? Yeah, she came, you came down. I came. Oh yeah, yeah, I came. Holy, yeah. And she knew I was ill because I was in therapy when I was at private school, right? So, but it, Yeah, I took you. You know, I don't want to say you can't help people that have disorder behavior, whether it's alcoholism, you know, but, you know, it's, They have to want it. The same as with, Do you think, and you've been coaching for a long time. Yeah, first of all, there's a lot of strength in that story. And I do think that a lot of young women go through that in some capacity. Maybe not as, I'm sure you, It's a spectrum. It happens on a spectrum. Yes. It happens a lot more than we think. Yes, yes, I agree. I think that story is really important because I am sure that a lot of women are suffering. Probably even more so now with these eating disorders. Again, I don't have statistics in front of me, but with the rise of social media, I think that I think actually we're seeing a rise with eating disorders in men. They're actually rising up now, but I don't know that in women that they've significantly increased. But when it comes to transforming your body, what I want to be clear is disordered eating takes place on a spectrum. And we don't want to over label eating disorder. I think Tony Robbins talks about this, right? Like everything, it's so much can be trained or changed when we frame it properly. And once we start labeling disorder on behaviors, it's almost like it's out of our control. And we always want to keep that control, but no when we need to get expert help. That's I think the biggest point we need to get. And be open. If a coach can take your money, and they say to you, listen, I don't feel comfortable taking your money. I really think you should take this money and put it towards therapy. Then take that positively, right? Don't run and try to find another coach to coach you because eating disorders, if left unchecked, can have really major repercussions. And the more you, the more times you do something, the more it's likely to become ingrained, right? And so you always want to think of that. It works to our benefit when we're repeating a great habit and it works to our detriment when we're repeating a bad habit and getting away with it until we're no longer. So I think with the eating disorder, just a lot of it is the frame, really communicating with the people that you need to that can help you check yourself before you wreck yourself. And then for me as a coach, it's really about coaching my client towards well, up-leveling their why, right? So let's start with the aesthetic. Like I said earlier, no shame in that, right? But let's start evolving that in talking about your health metrics, your longevity metrics. And then obviously I've got to provide the protocol that makes it achievable, matches where the person's skill and energetic levels are, and so on and so forth. So that's that journey. I think it's very easy to get into this and obsess about macros. I get in there and I coach coaches, I say, you've got to assess if this client needs to actually go on a treat meal and they are specifically not allowed to measure something. And then they've got to report. A treat meal? A treat meal, I call it a treat meal not a cheat meal or I'll call it a social meal. Go ahead and have a social meal, can't measure anything, and I want you to check in, how do you feel? Use this? How do you feel? How did it feel? It becomes easier for people to go out and have a social meal and not think about it if they are on a journey of body transformation. It depends on the individual. So I mean, people are on a spectrum and so some people it is easy and then other people, we have to give them those guardrails, they function better with it. Other people just don't need it, they don't want it, they don't need it physiologically, they don't want it emotionally and they're fine to have a high calorie day with very specific targets to hit. They're the real high bay athlete. I was just thinking myself, gosh, we've done it. They just want to win. I have a bunch of those patients in our practice. So it depends on, and people change, like right now where this person is being new, they might need to work on emotional regulation in chaos, right, not having to know and nail everything and then three months later, we've evolved and we're working on something else. So that's also that nuance of who do I have in front of me? Where are they on their journey? What am I coaching? And is this still in my lane, right, as a coach or now do we have to reach out externally to another expert? So I hope that kind of ties off that. For me, it's been incredible and I say to gals that are still struggling, I'm thinking about food too much and I think there is a place for certainly a bodybuilding. I might ruffle some feathers here, but for GLP ones, they're right, it's properly used in association with all the other things, obviously in bodybuilding, you're hitting that hypertrophy marker, but it's a tool. So, research-based use it. I totally agree with you. And we use GLP ones and those types of medications in our practice and we've been using them for- Cut the food noise. We've been using them easily 10 years. So not obviously, GLP ones got approved for weight management, but prior to that, there were other medications and we've used them in practice. Because sometimes- To be very appropriately used. Yes, the food noise is real and it could, whether it is a distraction for something else, it still impacts people so deeply that if you can remove that, it is like a breath of fresh air. And I do think, and thank you so much for tying that back, I do want people to hear that don't wait if they feel like they need help from a eating disorder perspective, if there is shame around it or if there's any of those things, there's a ton of resources. And again, it's a spectrum, which I think is really important. And we in our journey move through different pieces of it. So just being cognizant of that, being, staying agile, what you need, your needs and your experiences today should not and likely won't be your needs and experiences in a future environment. And then we always aspire to grow, have a growth mindset, I can't do this yet. This is, and don't shame, and please embrace pharmacological intervention where it's appropriate and where there's research and the safety protocols have been in place. Do you consider yourself now resolved or in commission? Okay. Oh yeah. So as you are coaching people, do you think the orientation towards health or towards nutrition, is there a way to do it without putting people into this kind of obsessive way? Because what I'm hearing says that the eating disorder was a coping mechanism. It wasn't directly related to the food. Exactly. But now as we think about the world of health and wellness and nutrition and the use of GLP-1s, do you think that as we start to reorient ourselves to nutrition, that it puts people at a higher risk? Or does it become a higher risk? Have you seen that? As women are trying to transform their body? It's a very complex issue. I'm glad you brought it up. As a coach, I would say, number one, I have to provide a strategy that somebody can't execute on. And I need to educate you on the pieces, the protocol that I'm asking you to do, whether it's educating you without clobbering you over the head, educating you around the why that we're choosing to focus on fiber or the why around, we're choosing to train this way or not train this way or why we're doing the cardiovascular piece for now, for where your body is now, and give them choices so that they can make an empowered choice. Well, if we don't wanna do this, then can you get blood work done so we make sure we're not getting deficiencies? So talking like that, giving them choices, creating space, I also have to be able to assess the fit of what it is that they're asking to achieve. With where they are in terms of their ability to regulate themselves. So before we turn the cameras on, we were talking about emotional and, maybe it wasn't emotional regulation, but it was more of a system regulation. Which is tied into emotions. Yes, and what you were talking about is really, if you cannot regulate your nervous system, then it's gonna become much more difficult to make the next best decision. Whether it is training or whether it is food, because we've all been in a very stressed state. Typically those decisions, if you cannot bring it down five notches, they're not gonna be good decisions. This all kind of brings things full circle that while we talk about training and we talk about nutrition, we also have to recognize that there is a discernment component. Because as a coach, that's outside my lane to coach you strategy around an eating disorder. But disordered eating takes place on a spectrum. And so I'm not going to be, I call it a lazy coach and say, well, I can't, there's nothing I can offer you because you can't control yourself around food. There's definitely education I can do there. There's strategies I can offer. But when it comes to an actual eating disorder, that's out of my lane. And there's that assessment that has to happen. And also great communication because that is a different place. And from my experience, if I look back and think if I had had great help, could I have shortened that window of time? And then what would great help look like? So could I have shortened that window of time of suffering? Gets us years back. Oh my gosh. I was not able to go out on a date without thinking about food and how I was going to go purge afterwards. Like I just wasn't present. And it was just such a waste of energy. I think women are fantastic. We're fabulous. We can change the world. We can create jobs for other people. We can shift legislation. We can have babies. Like there's so much that we can do. And we're really taking out a main, a major player that can contribute to society when a significant portion of the population is wasting their energy with this emulation. Like we just, it needs to stop. And that's what drives me changing the narrative. It's really changing the narrative. I say around aging for women, but it's really about what does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be strong? What is masculine? What is feminine? What can we do now as Gen Xers, to change the narrative for the gals that are coming up behind us? What are the gals that are in their tens and 15s and 16s right now? And it's an extremely important conversation. I look at my daughter, she's six, but I mean, she's watching, she's seeing just, again, we don't, she's not allowed on social media per se. She's also not allowed on electronics. I recently took the kids to the park and I decided that we should all do a pushup challenge. You know, I don't know if I'm a very popular parent, but anyway, I'm not. And, you know, out of all the kids, it was, I don't know, five boys and my daughter. Yeah, and did she? She was the one who wanted to do it. Oh, yeah. And the boys were like, I can't do that. So it's an interesting perspective because I hadn't really thought about it until now as we think, okay, well, what does strength look like? And if someone was starting on their journey, and let's say they've got a great coach and they're lucky enough to be coached by you and you collectively, do you pick, if you were to say, if I call my mom and we say, okay, we're gonna give her three exercises that we want her to do. That's difficult, right? But are there three exercises that you feel as a coach that everyone should be able to do? Three movements. Everybody should be able to do wall pushes, which is you're standing so far away from the wall, hands on it, like around this area. So your hands are towards your chest? Okay. Push butt. Push, push. Like as if you're doing a push-up, but you're doing it against the wall. Working with bands, they're fabulous. I've had to do different exercises with bands. You can, even a two pound barbell in your hand against. I love hearing you say that and I wanna talk to you about why. Love hearing you say that. Against, with a band in your hand as well, and you step on it and you lift it up. Like you do a bicep curl. A bicep curl. That should be easy for anyone. Okay, so we got two. You could hold on to the counter, like it's a sysit, but you can bend your knees, like squat down, try to keep your back as straight as you can and squat down as far as you can. And you keep doing that within a week, you're gonna change that. We probably say squat to sit in into a chair and get back up again. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I know that a lot of people, for older people, they have to hold onto both sides and rock until they get up. It's very difficult for a lot of people. Especially when they're in shape. And even if they're younger, like before they're 40, I know of girls that can't even do that. And it's happening earlier and earlier. I do not believe that sarcopenia, which is. Oh, it's happening so fast. That's right. Yeah. 2016 sarcopenia, which is a decreased muscle mass, functionality and strength, is considered a disease of the older population. I do not believe that to be true. I believe that there are going to be phenotypes of youth starting way earlier. Way earlier. Yeah. Decreased muscle mass of strength and function. Yeah. Michelle. Did you say what are the three things people should be able to do? Well, or what would you be able to do? So there are a handful of questions that we get from the audience. Yeah. And one of those is the three best exercises for a beginner. A woman in her 40s is starting. And again, I know that. Yeah. That's, I'm gonna give you a nuanced answer. I know in your years. I have a few answers. Do you want to tell me what you think? Yes. Tell me what you think. I think that everyone, but again, I mean, they're obviously, I need to be able to provide an answer. Just don't say everyone should be able to do 10 pushups because you'll die on the cross for that. But what I will say is that I'll provide an answer because I can give you a thought process to why. Yeah. Everyone should be able to carry. Hold something and carry. This functional movement. This would be, you know, a movement that I think that we do all the time that helps with activities of daily work. And stay independent. Yep. So be able to carry. Yes. You have to be able to do a carry. Now, if I were to pick my second best exercise, do I think that you have to do a pushup? You don't have to. It's my favorite exercise because it's just fun. Who doesn't love to do sets of pushups, but you should be able to push. It could be a wall push. It could be a pushup. But I do think that upper body strength, but I'm not tied to that answer of a pushup. If I had to pick a third exercise, what do people have to do? I do think from a value perspective, someone should be able to, and you guys, the coaches might all yell at me, but to put something overhead, you have to be able to, again, you know, I'm a trained geriatrician, which is, did you know that? Yeah, I know you are. Of course I do. So after seeing all of these people in nursing homes, we begin to think about, as they're going to physical therapy, what keeps them out of a nursing home? They have to be able to get up off the toilet. They have to be able to carry their stuff, and they have to be able to put stuff away. So my third exercise, again, you can pick it, but some kind of overhead activity, it doesn't have to be a heavily loaded one, but those would be my three. Yeah, I think those are brilliant. No, I want to hear your three. You know, if I'm talking from, yeah, I had Dr. Stuart Phillips on my podcast, Strongly By Design. I love Dr. Stu Phillips. He's fabulous. Won't come back on our show, I'm just kidding. Stu's a good buddy, I've known him for years. I love that. We had some tension because I'm a coach, and I specifically about changing the narrative for women, and I'm like, we can do more, right? So. I agree, and him and I disagree on these two. No, I'm not gonna say go for a walk. I'm not gonna say pick up the pen. Well, how is that gonna help with tattoo muscle fibers? Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna line with Stu. But Stu. You are being called to action here. But I do agree that at a minimum, right, two great purposeful, intentional, gotta add those caveats in, intentional strength training programs, and we can start low if we're talking about getting people started. So then it would be like, well, what should you be able to do? You should be able to get up from the floor unless you have a joint issue that prevents that from happening. But if you fall down, you wanna be able to independently get yourself up off the floor. So what's your exercise? Let's say they're in their 40s. So they're younger, would it still be a push up or some kind of push? For that piece, you're looking at core strength, and there'd be pushing involved, right? So you gotta push yourself to get onto your feet. There'd be knee mobility, so you'd have to train. This is sorry, but the truth is, to get up off the floor, you'd have to train all of those different pieces to get you up off the floor. Gotta give me three exercises. I gave you three, and I'll say overhead press. So now I've given you three, you have to give me three. Okay, well, to just be able to function and get up off the floor, you'd... Three best exercises, three beginner exercises for women. And we'll just say 40, 40s or 50s. I'm gonna caveat, and I'll probably get burned on the cross for this. I'm gonna say, what should a strong 40 year old? I love it. But they're a beginner. So what do you got for me? So this is what you can aspire to, and what you have to train for. So you have to do some kind of a squat or leg press movement. So they're the same movement? I was very curious about that. I don't know the answer to that. So you think a squat or leg press, this is good. So if you can put a barbell on your back, we have access to like a safety squat. And you don't have hip dysplasia or dorenia history. Yeah, we're talking about, like, if you could do this thing. These are real points for a 40 year old, by the way. A strong female, not an elite female, but a strong female squat. And you're in shape, right? Because we're not talking about total mass, but like more lean mass. Squat your body weight. That's gonna be a shock to some people. I've got a lot of pushback from that. A strong and strong female. If you can't do those things on a leg press, then I would say we're looking at, you know, including the sled for like eight reps. Okay, great call. For eight reps. You say sled? The sled, but when you're actually pushing, you know, hammer strength like 118, just the sled alone. But you should be able to leg press for eight to 12 reps, double your body weight. You're 120 pounds to 40. So the sled plus, I'm not gonna do that math, the sled plus, right? That's a strong average female. So periodize yourself to that goal. Should we have one more? There's two more, right? So that takes care of the lower body. The upper body, again, this is the pull piece, right? So you should be able to lift off the floor, a strong female, 1.5 your body weight. Pull off the floor. Pull off the floor. Would this be a deadlift? What kind of exercise are we looking for? If you don't have back issues and you could do a deadlift off the floor or a Romanian deadlift or like a belt squat machine, RDL, that would be pulling off the floor for eight reps. Now that's gonna seem like a lot of weight for some people, but I have so many clients that are actually able to do that after a certain period of time. So somebody that was 120 pounds, you know, you're looking at, sorry, I said 1.5. I take that back one and a quarter times for eight reps. So somebody that was like 100 pounds, they're gonna be able to lift 125 pounds. And this exercise would be the belt squat? You can do a belt squat, Romanian deadlift, right? Yeah. That's safe. That could be a deadlift or a barbell, Romanian deadlift. So those would be the options, if you don't have contraindications with your back and you might have that. And you might have coaching her. Yes, yeah, for sure. If you can't do that, then I would say, well, let's move to, because that's your whole posterior chain, and there's definitely a skill to that. And if you don't know what you're doing, I would definitely get some training to how to do that properly. If you have contraindications, then could you do a T-bar machine where your chest is supported? For that, you know, probably we're looking at half, you know, a third to half your body weight. So working yourself towards being able to that pulling motion with that's your back, your arms, your, and your, your lower back would be secured. So I would be very specific to that. Why that's important. Again, very functional. Your back is a woman, your back, the backside of your body, your back, your glutes, your hamstrings can really put a lot of mass on. And if we're talking about aging well, we want to have a decent amount of muscle mass. So where are you going to put that on? It's not probably not going to be your pecs. It's probably going to be the backside of your body. And we see that when we do the before and afters, the backside, we see all this muscle over the course of a year. And it's really exciting. It's easy to see, gets you, you know, hooked into your why, like, why am I doing all this stuff? It's working. When we think of the typical, if I think of baby boomers or older and I think of their posture, right? I'm not a baby. When I was terrible, yeah. Oh, they were losing strong back. You want to hit the 80s with really strong back, strong glutes. That's going to be how you're moving forward. And so that's your, your lower body. That's the pull piece either it's pulling, including your, your legs or it's pulling just the back only. And then there would have to be, I would want to have that push piece in there for sure. So making sure that you have a lead push or any kind of push. It could be a sled push. It could be, I'm not going to say probably three years ago, I would say everyone should be able to bench press. But with my clients majority being in their 50s and seeing the amount of shoulder and elbow and inflammation, inflammation issues, tendonitis cropping up, I'm like, Ah, you know what? I'm sadly, I've got to take that off the table. So making sure that you are training your, your pecs and your front delts. And I like functional movements like the sled push, if you have access to it. But if you have something like, like mom said, like an incline pushup and bringing that incline down, if you can do that push, I take overhead pushing off just because it's, I have so many. A lot of injuries, but a lot of clients make a really good point. How do we, you know, and I'm probably wrong on that. There, there has to be a way to be able to get stronger in that plane. Yeah. Usually, usually at the flat press or machine press, I'm getting really strong with that. So in the old days, I would have said with the bench press, you should be able to bench press like for eight reps, half your body weight, but we don't know where anyone came up with these numbers. Do we? Oh, I'm, I'm giving you those numbers as a coach, right? A strong female. And what I see my average client being able to achieve, no matter if she's never weight lifted before in a year or two, where we can get her to, that's what I'm seeing across the board. Like I'm seeing girls in their sixties being able to hip thrust 225 pounds. And I like the pushing piece because your triceps, your pecs, those are important, especially when we think of getting up off the floor. Can we talk about glutes? Oh, we always can talk about glutes. I love glutes because I don't have any and I would like to know for myself. This is true. I'm asking for a friend who's sitting in front of me who's sitting next to me. Oh, he is me. Are there certain exercises that are the best for building your glutes? You have great glutes. I like the frog one. Good. I do that one. Do you? Yes. Laying your legs down, face down. I get pushed back into that one. People are like, I feel so embarrassed at the gym. It is a goodie. Okay, wait. So this is not the frog pump. Is this where you're laying on your back? Oh, this is when you're laying on a bench on your face. I've done that. And you lift the barbell with have not arched your feet. Carlos is fired. Carlos, my trainer, he's fired up. I've never done that one. You can really feel it. I'd sit with Brett on this one. I mean, he he's just studied this so much. I usually make the barbell hip thrust or the glute machine hip thrust. In my most beginners, that will be the one lift. I really try to make sure that the coaches are putting that in. So we have a bunch of programs and the hip thrust will be in there. The only caveat would be somebody at home that didn't have access to that. We'll still do like a dumbbell hip thrust. But couldn't you use bands and tighten the bands on both sides of a bench and then use that? You can. But there's a journey that a woman in my experience, and I can only speak from my bubble, right? There's a journey that a woman goes through where and I think my mom's video that made it onto, it was like the Google, you know, you send it to us. We'll post that. Yeah, she was on like the Google. No, the YouTube and you put year wrap up and it was her hip thrusting 200 pounds for I think it was 12 reps. And as a coach, she had never barbell hip thrust before, but I saw her. I said, try this hip thrust and her movement patterns were great. And so I said, I said, let's let's work on this. And within I think a week or two, I was like, let's keep putting weight on, let's keep putting weight on. Well, yeah, you had you and had me where they're egging me on. We were all like, those are good friends, you know, but she didn't know the weight she was using. And when I said, hey, she's putting it on, I'm not seeing what it is. She was shocked. And so a lot of us, again, women were so we're so in green, green, that we're not strong. And, and we lack that confidence going into the gym. And there's so much empowerment when you put those big, big girl plates on the 45s, and you can walk into a gym and you can move that weight. And so that's part of that mindset journey that I like to coach. And it's a very safe movement. It's a very short range of motion. There's not a lot of skill involved, honestly. And if there's glute machines now all over the place in gym, so we can always do that. If I really feel I want to pull back on any skill aspects to that lift to be able to to be able to acclimatize being strong safely. And we know from research that is as effective as a squat and a squat has much more difficulty when it comes to skill and injury risks and injury risks. I still think I coach a lot of gals from zero to hero with it and it can be done. But there is more skill required from the coach, especially online. However, so glutes for me hip thrust love it. That would be my number one. Good. I love doing this. We I always have that in my program. So this is good to know. I guess I have to rehire my coach, my trainer. But you said something that I want to just pause on and that is moving safely and that exercise and training is a skill. So important. How do women in midlife take care and prevent injury are there ways in which easily? Okay, in the modern era, it's so easy. You've got a smartphone, videotape yourself. If you're in a fussy gym, you can either change gyms. There are stealth ways you can videotape yourself now with your watch, put the phone on, put a magnetic piece on it, go put it somewhere, be totally unobtrusive. I was just like Swiss gyms if you can't but you videotape yourself and why is that important because you can see right a lot of times on YouTube. I think Jeff Nipper is great. Yes, Jeff. Jeff, I'm going to the gym and I have bad form or I don't really know necessarily what I'm doing and I want to hire somebody not but let's say I'm traveling and I don't want to get injured. Okay. If I'm going in there, is there a way that I can that's what I was going to ask you machines or are there common mistakes that you see when women come to you that they do that put them at risk for injury? Yeah, absolutely. So number one, like use machines if in doubt you don't have time. You're already making 50 decisions on life. You can't go on YouTube and look at a shorts by Jeff Nipper on how to do a lateral raise, then go do a lateral raise machine. You're so locked in that you really can't screw around with your movements. Such a good advice. If you have the scope, you know, to hire somebody that is tried and true, for example, they have clients that are your avatar, they can literally tell you, oh my God, this was me five months ago, I've learned so much, right? So if I am a great coach, somebody's going to tell me and I pride in this, I've learned more from you in three months than I have with my trainer for the last 10 years. I'm like, then I done my job, right? So if you can hire somebody, if you're really proactive videos, but you can watch on YouTube video to yourself, how does it feel in general slower is better. So slow down the negative, introduce pauses, know where you are. If you are a beginner, so that means people are coming up to you and saying, wow, you are so good at your training. Are you a coach? Are you a trainer? If they're not doing that, and I get asked that all the time, then just slow down, slow down the negative, which is when you're lowering the weight, generally, right? Slow that piece down, because that allows you to lift less weight, but get yourself to approximating failure. That just means like, nobody should be talking to you, you can't talk to anybody during the last couple of reps, right? So slow down the negative, you can lift a lighter weight. So even if your form is a little bit off, it's probably not going to impact your joints negatively, but you're still able to push your muscles to where there's enough stress to drive the adaptation you're looking for. Progressive stimulus. Yeah, very, very important, right? And then how are you feeling, right? So if you're doing an exercise for your quads, like a squat, or even a hack squat, because of the machine, and you're feeling it in your back, that's a red flag, you should not be feeling it in your back. Something is going wrong, right? So either you have an issue that has to be dealt with medically that you didn't know about, and as we get older, there's, you know, and if you have been dieting your whole life, maybe you have osteopenia, osteoporosis, maybe there's a lot of women have issues around their lumbar spine when they hit menopause, just with age, not eating properly, not training properly, do you have disc generation issues? It's more common than we think, right? So that's not just your form, like maybe that's something that has to get investigated properly, hopefully you have an amenable doctor for that, or it's your form, right? And could you use a belt, right? So my gals that do tend to are more prone, especially gals that travel a lot and are sitting down or are working and sitting down and don't aren't able to stand up and work. There's some great, I love the, and I'm not sponsored by them, I love the Slimatum Pro Trainer, I've had to use it in the past. Oh my gosh, it's a really great training belt, you'll see it a lot in IBBMPC gals, bikini gals, but it actually is like a really decent amount of support, it's relatively comfortable, it has like a wide and has a tie piece, and then it has a Velcro piece, right? And the support through the obliques in the back is considerable, it's not like a belt that you're clunking on, you can wear it under something as well as over, it's just comfortable and functional. And so I would say, and I've told my clients that if they're feeling they're back, I say listen, for this week I want you to wear the Slimtum Pro Trainer just to be on the safe side, and then make sure you're doing some extra core work like a McGill sit-up, bird dogs, anti-rotational things like a payload press. Those are great exercises, let's touch on core. Are there number one, why should we do core? For your six pack, because your core, if you have ever hurt your back, your core is everything, it's so preventative and an important part of transferring power from your lower body to your upper body, it affects your posture for women as well. I would tie core into pelvic floor health, they're very knit together and that's one thing that we face as we age, whether or not you've had kids, incontinence and prolapse. So and none of those are fun or sound fun and they contribute a balance. Yes, so and when I say they're not the core exercises, but if you're a woman incontinence and pelvic floor issues, potentially see pelvic floor specialists, core exercises, are there a handful because you'd mention bird dog, Pavlo press, a McGill sit-up. Yeah, I think most CSCS's are going to say, especially with that avatar of the 40 plus female, where most of us aren't coming into our forearms trained on core strength, those are the basics, you're going to be wanting to do properly executed dead bugs and there are advancements in dead bugs, like dead bugs kill me when I pull my navel into the base of my spine and really keep my lower back down on the floor and I'm mindfully moving, I mean 30 reps and I am cooked, like cooked. I would also say have pride in cooking yourself, right, which is like getting to that lactate threshold burnout sooner rather than later. If you're somebody that's like, oh, I can do like 50 of them, you're probably not doing them intentionally. There's mind-muscle connection, there's opportunity there that you can take advantage of and so just staying super humble and trying to use the appropriate muscle more and usually it's going to be slower movements and really feeling the muscle as you're doing it versus the body is so efficient. If it's, if you tell it just, I want you to do this thing, you can figure out how to do that with minimal exertion and it does that quickly, like within a couple of weeks you're being efficient, you're doing more, but are you necessarily using that exercise for what it's supposed to be doing, which is targeting your core in a kind of multi-movement way. This is bringing this back to presence, which being present at training, right, which makes a ton of sense when, and dead bug, okay, right, and there are advanced dead bugs, so you can do the simple dead bug. If you're, wait, is that bird dog or dead bug? Sorry, bird dog. Thank you. Very good. Very good. You know, I put bird dog in our book, so it's a great one, but anyway, and you can do it like from plank, right, so your plank opposite legs, that is like, that gets the fascial sling, the cross-body fascial sling, which you'll find a lot of people find one side, they're like, oh, I can do it on one side, but on the other side they're- And do you have women in your programs and when you're coaching them, and just in general, do you recommend that they do those exercises every day? I don't think you have to do them every day. I think when you're learning them, it can be really smart to get more frequency, so several times a week, dosing them in three to five times a week, but small doses and learning the movement is key. And then once you've got it, like, I like three times a week, I know Haddy loves to program some core as a part of her pre-workout, she's really big on that, so whether it's like a payoff press, you can do kneeling payoff press, you can do a one-legged payoff press, you can advance all of these, you can do them with weight, with bands, so payoff press up some kind of a side plank, so you can go all the way up to a Copenhagen plank. Why side plank? Because you had mentioned anti-rotational movements. Can you talk to me about why that's important, why side plank's important, why I guess you could use a payoff press with rotation, and is there a reason- Which choppers, yeah. Which choppers that you want that kind of anti-rotation rotation movement. It's so important to transfering power from the lower body to the upper body, and so if you're an athlete, obviously that's so important, whether you're playing soccer or volleyball or whatever, you've got to be able to transfer that lower body power, but for functional movements, for just aging well, that's where you're going to reduce your fall risk, right? And you know, do you know Gunnar Peterson? I don't, should I know that person? He is amazing, he's like the OG. Gunnar Peterson, alright. Gunnar Peterson, Will Lincoln, hey Gunnar, you're due on the podcast too, no pressure, but he talked a lot about, he's like ever-other, you have to have rotation and anti-rotation movements in there. I'm like, why? He's like, I don't know, when you get up and you twist, you don't want to, I don't know, throw your back out. He's like, yeah, you know, that is a really good point. And there's so many different ones you can do that are fun, you can do like side, I like side plank to better, clam, nice plank that's so multifunctional, I wish it's a little bit more advanced, payoff presses done properly are great. I love doing single leg, like it's such a challenge and so the kidney, I don't think I've ever done a single leg. So what she's talking about is balance. And it means it solves your glutes, right? I don't have any glutes, that's probably why I don't do it. Yeah, the core is back. People think you're six-pack now, the core is going to be, when we think of like stabilizing for us, it's going to be your back, you're obviously your TBA, your central abs and your deep, sorry, your obliques. And then you also have the glute muscles are involved in that as well. So when I engage my core and I brace for a heavy lift, my glutes were involved, my back was involved. Like, squeeze your glutes, squeeze your glutes. I wanted to add that in too, because it's important and I do see anecdotally, I do see with my clients, engagement of their core and their glutes together. It's hard. When they're walking away from the camera, they're setting up their camera, they walk away, or they're walking to the equipment, that's when I see it. I'm like, they're just no core. How can you tell? Is it that they're, yeah, they're abdominal, because if someone is going to videotape, like we should do a challenge, which by the way, I don't know exactly when this comes out, but we have not announced it yet. General. I'm trying to see if I'm getting the, like, don't talk about it yet. Yeah. Am I? We applied and got a national holiday for November, which is going to be, this is probably confidential, but it's National Muscle Health Month. Oh my god, I totally love that. National Muscle Health Month for November. And the States. Great question. Texas. Texas is its own country. But it's national. I love that. So, and I don't know where this fell into this, but we were talking about glutes and, you know, as women are learning to train the importance of muscle. And moving well. And moving well. Because you could have muscle, like I said, but then. Oh, the glute. So how do you, so if someone sets up their camera, this is for National Muscle Health Month, because it's really should be National Glute Month, but it's not. It's globally a muscle health. If someone sets up their camera and they want to know if they are engaging their core in their glutes, should they be feeling their glute on each step? Could they see if they're not engaged? Visually, you'll be able to see it. So it's very easy to have your listening to this. And you're like, I want to see just video to set your camera up and just forget about it. You got to forget about it. Right? Because if you're thinking about it, then you're not going to get what's really happening. And see how you move. Your glutes are the biggest muscle in your body. They should be. And when you are propelling yourself forward, they are a big part of that. However, they should be. However, I see the vast majority of my clients and we videotape all my clients are we videotape. That's our kind of standard. Do they put you then put into a program or you just watch it visually? Like a program that analyzes angles and gate and no, we don't do that. I do think that is really great. But we literally they when you apply to work with us, we ask you to submit three videos so we can analyze and put you in the right docket and just kind of know, all right, this is what we're, what we have to trade. Have you ever wrote something back and be like, do we're not talking about those kind of videos? No, no, never did that. Although I have had gales because it's hard to get in. I've had had gales actually talking to videos and like, oh my god, I love you. That that grit that might says awesome. But so if you're walking away and you're, how do you know you're not engaging your glutes? Well, obviously you have to be wearing some kind of a tights where you could see, but you'll really see as you're moving that there's just for lack of a better word, like it's it's flaccid. If you're using the muscles, there'll be a contraction. And so what it should feel like is if a gal can do a Romanian deadlift, I would say, well, your glutes and hamstrings when you're walking should feel like the top third of Romanian deadlift. So think of how it feels during the top of a Romanian deadlift. Or if you can think if you're able to jump, right? So just how do you jump? Like that's how your glutes should feel. You can't jump with your glutes relaxed. You just that is one thing that I have not seen mastered. You actually happen like, you know, use them several times and they're just they're engaged, their tone, they're engaged. They should be. I'm so lucky I lived with my husband and you know, he's a six time champion. And I just I look at him. His glutes are never off. They're never off. They're always engaged. They're part of how he stands and moves and his abs as well. Do you think that's a male feral thing? Because I look at my husband and he's the same way. No, I don't. And the reason why is because with the opportunity of working with some high level athletes, including my poor friend, Hattie. So she stayed with us and she'd be like, do the dishes in her bikini. Same thing. Never, they're always they're part of how she stands, how you're stacking the rib cage over the the hips. If you're not using your glutes, you're going to be off. You're either going to be in severe anterior tilt with your abs not engaged, right? Because if you're in extension, you're not able to lock your abs in. And as I said, the core really is from your, you know, your, your front side, your lats all the way down and more back muscles in your glutes, or your in posterior tilt, which a lot that's probably easier. A lot of people are more, are they more posterior tilted? I see it both. Okay. Kind of evenly there. I see it both, but you'll be able to see it. Anyways, it's a fun exercise to do. And then can you train it? Yes, you can absolutely train that. If you become, if you train your RAS, your particular activating system, onto this idea that you can master that as a woman, you will master it. And if you look at there's so many female athletes, but particularly in bodybuilding, and it's why I do love bodybuilding because, and I see this from my clients, it opens the door that you are allowed at whatever age you are, 40, 50, 60, to really deep dive into how to run your rig. So your body's your rig, how to freaking run that rig. Here's the blueprint. Everything's a learnable skill. You can learn it and you're allowed to get crazy with this, like obsess over it, dive into it, because there are so many positive health outcomes. Again, you can do all the weightlifting you want to, but that doesn't mean you're not going to have Dowager's back. If the other one, it's called Dowager's back. If the other 24 hours of the day, the thumb for the back, okay, you're not engaging. Is there a standard amount of, and I know this is nuanced, so I'm going to be okay with this, but for a woman who is starting a resistance training program, should that be a minimum of two days a week? Should be three days a week? Again, I understand it depends on how the training program is done, but from your guys perspective, four days a week, three of weight training and one of yoga. And anyone says yoga is a sissy thing, doesn't know how to do yoga. It's not. It's it, you have to really train your body, your balance, your core, and I have very poor balance, but I'm working on it. I was in my undergraduate. We worked on some of the first postmenopausal women's studies. Nice. And the exercise. So there was a series of studies. It was postmenopausal women, and then it was a combination men and women. Might not be in that order. It's probably a combo of men and women first. The five days a week of resistance training was yoga. They use yoga as the resistance training component. I'm sorry, it wasn't five days a week. I think it was between two and three days a week, but the resistance piece was yoga for the beginner, which is interesting. I know that was really interesting. Do you feel that there is a sweet spot for women in their 40s as to? So yeah, again, the science says, the evidence says that two times a week is a great starting point of intentional training. And I think it's, you know, it's at the 150 minutes of hard exercise, and that's not just resistance training. That could be cardiovascular training, but 150 minutes a week, and then two resistance trainings a week. However, in my experience, I think, and this is the mindset piece, getting great outcomes that you can see and feel in three to four months, that's going to be probably one of the biggest hooks. And that doesn't mean you're training every day, but it means, you know, four times a week for 40 minutes, really purposeful training, and making sure that you're sticking to the same program for enough time that you're able to actually progress ability range of motion. Weight, right, is key. So not switching from exercise to exercise, but really progressing. So I do think, you know, and then you've got, you know, your food has to be and I do want to talk to you. I want to talk to you. Does it matter the age? So let's say you guys are both different generations. For Joan, you started with two, you start with four days a week, one of those days was yoga. Do you find that in like another generation, earlier generation would get the same type of benefit, but what you change is maybe the weight or, you know, how do we think about someone is listening to this? And they're not so glad you asked this question. How do we think about scaling? I have always trained the individual. So and I, and if there's one message I would want to impart the audience where I have had success with women, it's you train the individual, you don't train the age, you don't, you don't train, you train the individual. So mom's program only started to differ from say Wendy's program when they're, when she had a shoulder injury, right? And we had to, she fell off her bike, she probably already had arthritis in the shoulder, fell off her bike, and then that turned into a lot of inflammation, lesions, which ultimately required her to have a surgery. So taking those overhead presses out became key. So you look at the person that you have in front of you. If I think of somebody who's very obese, so where mom was when she was 200 pounds, I had to think of the weight on her lumbar spine from her TBA, her, from her, her, sorry, her transverse abdominal muscle having to hold on to all of that visceral fat, which is the truth, right? And the strain that would cause on her back. So I put her on the leg press, she's secure, she's locked in. It's very simple to execute. There's no strain on her back, we're going to train her leg strength. So I really think of the individual, don't get too cut up on your age, other than being sex formed. Sex, no, we know that there's no absolutely no difference. And I think Dr. Lauren, Collenzo, Senpai, I would agree with you. This is going to make us a little unpopular, but from the evidence that I have seen, there doesn't seem to be sex differences through or for training. It is a good foundational program that is individualized for that person is a good foundational program. Yeah, it's based on skill level, contrast indications based on like injury. There's no statistical difference between how a woman, the rate at which a woman gains muscle, even in menopause, I know this is so hard to hear. I'm really glad to hear you say this. You know, there's just not same thing with weight loss. There's no special menodiad. There's no special menotraining program. You can't adjust your program based on what you want to amplify. And male bodybuilders do this, too. You have a weak chest, you're going to have to, you know, rotate in more chest training frequency. So same thing, but the actual training program, progressive overload, sufficient volume, mechanical load, like it's the same. And there is so much grifting going on. So just being aware of that and just because something sounds sciency or somebody is an expert in something doesn't mean you're not being shilled. So that's difficult to navigate, but it's challenging. It's challenging, but there should be a red flag if somebody has special knowledge that major bodies aren't aligned with. Yeah, it's very challenging. But the good news is having good training programs and good nutrition, whether you're perimenopause, menopause, male, female, yes. Before we go to our strong seat questions, which will be in the supercaster section, which are going to be super fun, lots of supers, I want to touch on nutrition and I just want to understand your principles for body transformation. If we were to pick, let's say weight loss, how do you guys think about nutrition for weight loss? I think that one's pretty simple. So I mean, you have to be in a deficit that doesn't always have to be from food, it can be from managing your neat cardiovascular expenditure, but you have to be in a caloric deficit. So if we're talking about food specifically, number one, you can't play around with your protein. You want to have that, make sure you're prioritizing protein in your meals. I prefer to have people dose their protein out in all of their meals. So every meal is protein centric, it's great for satiety is a big one because satiety equates to adherence, right? You want to eat foods that don't digest immediately and leave you reaching for food, you know, in an hour. Otherwise, you're not going to maintain your caloric deficit and muscle mass, right? So we don't want to just lose weight. And this comes into the effective use of a TLP one, right? If we're just focused on the scale, then we put ourselves at risk of bone loss and muscle loss. We don't want to do that. We want to make sure we're getting our money's worth, right? We want to actually gain muscle, maximize bone mineral density, and have that favorable muscle to fat ratio. And you can do that. It's not that hard. So muscle, protein's got to be there. Preferably dose it throughout the day. I'm a big proponent. Keep it super easy. You know, I tell my clients, what's your ideal weight that is healthy to maintain for your size? Probably it's what you weighed in college or something like that. I totally agree. Super easy. And I just say like, hit a gram. Just hit a gram. So if you were 120 pounds on college, you're 160 pounds now, aim for 120 grams of protein, split that up in your four or five meals a day in your golden. And I think mom now, right? Like there's so many options for protein. It's not just chicken and salad. Yeah, it's easy when you have the protein powder. Such good protein powder. Without a doubt about the creamies. Oh, what's a creamy? It's like ice. It's like an ice cream, but it's you know, ninja. Yeah. Yeah, they have ice cream. Yes. So you basically your protein show. Yeah, I'm waiting to see if my neighbor can actually get that to work well, which he says it's amazing. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I gotta get it down to Sam Miguel. She's a ninja creamy. Oh, I love making them. And I just said let me go with whey protein. What do you make of it? I make it with whey protein. Okay, I'm gonna buy one today. Oh, they're insane. Okay, I'll let you know what is the one that we have. It's it's amazing. Literally, you freeze your your protein shake in these little containers, 24 hours, you run it through the machine, five minutes sold. It is so I mean, there's just there's no excuse other. They're so great. Yes, there is low calorie or calorie free seasonings, condiments. If if you're if you need to have that flavor profile, if that makes you happy, there's so many options now. There's just so much that you can do. There's big things that you can make now. There's bars available. I see things like fair life out there now is traveling and I needed protein and they I saw the fair life. I'm like, that's brilliant. I love seeing that we're seeing more protein options for mainstream people instead of all this protein empty foods that you're used to seeing. So and then fiber, you know, I got to talk about that. I tell my gals like aim for that 25 grams of fiber if we're doing a cut where I'm going to be honest, if we're bringing carbs down because you're you started with low calories, which is often the reality of older people, they're just not eating as much as they should be for their size. But we have to drive that fat loss. We might have to bring carbs down to a place where how are you going to hit 25 grams of fiber. So that's where we're supplementing it in with fiber. But ultimately, if you can, you want to be following a diet and being a deficit where you're able to hit that 25, 20 to 25 grams of quality fiber and you do that by eating a variety of produce and whole grains, if you can, if you can digest that or tubers, if you if you can digest that legumes, if you can, I love chickpeas and lentils, they're the two easier legumes to digest versus like a black bean. And eating the colors of the rainbow, which is easy, right. And so, you know, one week you're having tomatoes and greens, then the next week you rotate in some red peppers, then the next week you switch your greens from green beans to say broccoli or peas. So you just easily rotating it in. Keep it simple, right, if you're going to execute on this kind of restrictive than we previously thought. Yeah, talk to your girlfriends, join a group of people that can, oh, I've got this great recipe. It's four ingredients. I do have a low carb bread pudding, which is very perfect. Oh, that's almost like an oxymoron. Yeah, you can, you're welcome to come over. It is. And it's in your, well, I'm obsessed with it. So basically, we tried over the last two years all these different recipes. Yep. And, you know, this is one of my favorites. So what's the secret? You can share the secret? Does it have frozen powder in it? Well, well, it, you might not like the secret, I'm not going to tell you, but you can try it and then I'll tell you. Okay. It's amazing. Bread pudding, my house, apple bread pudding, my house tonight. I love apple. If you come later, you will meet some gremlins. Are those your, is that your children? Oh yeah, no, they were born gremlins. They just became my children. Okay. Michelle and Joan, I am so grateful and just delighted that we were able to sit down and have this conversation. You both are just incredible icons. Thank you so much. So honored to be here. Thank you. Oh my God. I hope we, we gave some action, we'll take away for the people listening and just, I've always been in awe of what you're doing. I think you really helped put protein and focusing on building muscle on the map. So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you so much.