Active Women over 35… what now??

Women over age 35, how ya doin??

Are things you’ve always done still working for you? How’s your energy level? Body composition? Mental health?

Well, why? What’s happening? Hormonally, when you enter peri and post menopause, you’re experiencing a gradual decline in Estrogen and Progesterone (and Testosterone with age), these hormones are signaling molecules and affect everything from brain health, to mood, to fat gain and muscle loss. These hormones once helped with:

• Balancing blood sugar levels (glucose)

• Insulin sensitivity

• Managing and responding to Cortisol (stress)

• Maintaining bone density, and soft tissue health

• Maintaining muscle quality and building lean muscle tissue

• Sexual health and libido

When you start to notice symptoms, and even before then, you may need to adjust how you eat, train and manage stress! You cannot get away with the same things you did in your 20’s and 30’s, and do not bounce back the same! But what can you control? You want a metabolism that is not so stress-sensitive and insulin-resistant, you want a flexible metabolism!

• Balance of cortisol (catabolic stress hormone) and insulin (anabolic storage hormone). But chronic stress signals insulin all the time, and eventually become resistant to insulin altogether.

• When you eat a large amount of carbs (or sometimes protein or dairy), you signal insulin to “sweep up,” or shuttle either into the muscle, liver, or if you eat too much or have insulin resistance, you store as fat.

• This back and forth between cortisol and insulin creates a blood sugar roller coaster. Smooth out these spikes by adjusting your eating and training!

What helps us stay sensitive to insulin, and decrease chronic cortisol?

• Fasting. You need a time period where you are not eating, such as between dinner and breakfast the next morning. This can also look like fasting between meals without snacking. Too much fasting can cause more stress to the body, but the shorter breaks are healthy.

• Heavy weight training, especially in the 30-60 minute post-workout

• HIIT and SIT, plyo and jumping protocols- exercising at that higher end of

  intensity for short periods

• Eating protein or fiber with carbohydrates to help mitigate the insulin response

• Eat enough protein to maintain or gain muscle- the more muscle you have the

  more insulin sensitive you are!

• Put the focus on fiber!!

• Eat your carbs! Insulin shuts off the cortisol response, put your carbs around

  your training to improve insulin sensitivity and drive down exercise stress.

• Exercise on both ends of the spectrum! Go hard and go easy most of the time,

  stay out of the middle. The way we exercise can influence this biofeedback!

• Get your sleep! High quality sleep is huge for blood sugar regulation (insulin

  sensitivity)

How do you lower your stress, maximize your hormone response, stimulate your 35+ physiology and reap the body composition rewards?

5 ways to lower lifestyle stress:

1. Prioritize self-care, whatever this may look like to you, but let it also serve as stress management or relief. This can look like breathing breaks, meditation, walks in nature, exercise.

2. Surround yourself with healthy choices, keep your environment clear of temptations and triggers. And don’t stress too much about getting all of this *right! Just work on small changes at a time! 1% better...

3. Get outside in nature every day, early daylight is the best! Not only does natural daylight improve the mood, and relieve stress, but also helps regulate your internal clock and will help you sleep.

4. Socialize and find community, no matter how small, reach out to friends and family, volunteer, make that call, write that text, give give give.

5. Guard your sleep with your life! Establish a nighttime ritual, get up and wake at the same time each day, stop eating 3 hours before bed, watch that evening alcohol, do all the things to get that high quality sleep.

5 ways to maximize your nutrition game:

1. Eat your starchy carbs around your intense exercise, and less as you get farther away from your workout. Stick to mostly whole foods, avoid foods in packaging as much as possible, limit saturated fats, and sugars and sugary drinks, including moderate alcohol. With your body’s new struggle with insulin resistance and less stress resilience, we need to watch the added sugars, processed foods and toxins even more!

2. Keep meals and snacks savory, prioritizing fiber, healthy fats and protein first, to avoid blood sugar spikes! Spikes add to our chronic stress and inflammation, will cause low energy swings and more cravings.

3. Get plenty of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, brussels sprouts and cabbage to help metabolize the hormones you do have. Prioritize fiber and fibrous fruit and veggies to feed your gut microbiome to keep your hormone metabolism, mental health and overall health in check!

4. Prioritize lean protein and vegetarian protein sources, aiming for at least 100 grams or .7-1.0/g per/lb of bodyweight! Protein is necessary to rebuild and maintain our lean muscle mass, which we are losing at a faster rate!

5. Stop eating after dinner and don’t eat again until breakfast, and eat your meals around the same time each day. Keep breakfast large and dinner small, and avoid a lot of snacking.

5 ways you should be training:

1. 60% Resistance Training. Lift heavy weights! Build and maintain as much muscle as possible. Muscle keeps your metabolism healthy, improves glucose uptake (keeps us insulin sensitive!), builds bone density, improves body composition, protects you from injuries, and keeps you young!

2. 20% If you exercise every day, make sure you get your zone 2 aerobic base work in to increase your mitochondria, your body’s ability to use fat as fuel, and improve your body’s overall ability to handle stress! This type of exercise feels fairly easy, you can maintain a conversation (but not sing well!).

3. Jump, skip and throw! Jump and throw explosively, bounce quickly side to side, skip high, low and backwards! Land, change direction, react to stimulus. Exercise

on uneven ground, play a team sport. Improve brain health, glucose uptake, bone density, maintain power and muscle which you lose as you age!

4. 10% Get your HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and SIT (Spring Interval Training)! Move fast. Be explosive (power!), give max effort with plenty of recovery, and also give hard efforts with less recovery to get your heart rate up! Focus on quality over duration, keep intense exercise under 30 minutes. Improve glucose uptake, V02 max (a marker of longevity!), maintain power and muscle which you lose as you age!

5. 10% Maximize your general daily movement! Get up from your seat and walk, get outside in the daylight! Walk to the mailbox, take the stairs, dance in your kitchen, take a tai chi class, do yoga! NEAT (Non Exercise Activity) matters WAY more at this age than when we were younger!