That super-intense, sweat-inducing workout you think you need to be doing to see results? Yeah, that’s not the best way to exercise in your midlife, says exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist Stacy Sims. She and Reshma dive into tons of practical tips and tricks for getting and staying healthy in midlife, including how to increase your fiber and protein intake, improving your sleep, and the importance of listening to your body. Plus, why Stacy doesn’t recommend fasting for women.

Follow Stacy @drstacysims on Instagram.

You can follow our host Reshma Saujani @reshmasaujani on Instagram.

Let us know how you’re doing in midlife! You can submit your story to be included in this show at speakpipe.com/midlife

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Stacy Sims, Reshma Saujani

Reshma Saujani  00:00

Welcome to “My So-Called Midlife, a podcast where we figure out how to stop just getting through it and start actually living it. I’m Reshma Saujani. I’ve been super honest with you on this podcast about how hard midlife has hit me in terms of my body. I try to eat well and stay active, but things just don’t work the way they did 10 years ago. I don’t look the way I did 10 years ago. I’ve got this persistent belly fat that I just can’t get rid of, I hate it. I have trouble sleeping, and I used to sleep like a log. There’s just so many things that have changed about my body that I’m just struggling to accept and understand. I thought, I was doing all the right things, then I came across Stacy Sims. She’s an exercise physiologist and a nutrition scientist who aims to revolutionize nutrition and performance for women. Let me tell you,she’s done exactly that for me. Stacy gave a viral TEDx talk about how women are not small men, and that includes how we age. Women age differently than men. In this episode, she’s going to give you tons of incredible practical advice for all you mid-lifers including best practices for aging, plus workout and nutrition tips for women over 40. You want to listen to this episode. It has literally changed so many things about my routine. So I work out – five to six times a week. I thought, I knew how I was working out to see the changes that I want to see, especially at this stage while I’m in the thick of perimenopause. I realized after talking to Stacy, I didn’t know everything. One of my favorite takeaways from this conversation was what Stacey had said about high intensity workouts. I was conditioned. We’re all conditioned to think that we got to feel smashed after workout, like – if I’m not walking out a sweaty, gross mess, I did something wrong. I didn’t work out hard enough. Turns out that’s wrong. That’s exactly the wrong kind of workout for women in midlife. So Stacy told me, I can still go to my Barry’s Bootcamp that I love, but I got to make some changes and adjust what I do there. So, I’m not completely drained and smashed when I walk out the door, that’s not the goal. Even more importantly, I learned different routines for when I wake up in the morning and I’m going to go work out. Instead of pre-scheduling all ofmy workouts. If I wake up one morning and I’m like, “Hmm, I’m tired”, it’s okay not to go to bootcamp. It’sokay not to go to the gym, because my body is telling me, “Hey, Reshma, maybe not today”, and I need to listen to her. See, I’m someone who has their entire life scheduled. I mean, I got my meetings, myworkouts, my kids stuff planned out for six to eight months. So, if I wake up in the morning and the calendar says “Bootcamp 9am”, I go to bootcamp. I don’t listen to my body. And let me tell you, the thought of listening to my body and ignoring my calendar, that feels like crazy talk. There’s no way I could do that. I’ve never done that for like 30 years of my life. But Stacy, she gave me some new goals, and I think she’s gonna do the same thing for you too. So, you’re really gonna get some to have this conversation. Enjoy.

 

Reshma Saujani  05:07

We start on this show by talking about how we feel about mid-life. So, I wanted to know what are the words you would use to define this period of your life?

 

Stacy Sims  05:22

Difficult?

 

Reshma Saujani  05:23

Tell me more.

 

Stacy Sims  05:26

I often have this conversation with friends because we’re at point where we should be old enough not to care about a lot (the small things), but we still do. We also aren’t aged enough for people to look at us as, “Oh, okay. You’re in the older category”. So, it’s like this big mish mosh of “Where do I fit? Do I fit with people who are in their 30s and 40s?” Or “Do I start looking for people who are at their end of their 50s and 60s?” It gets just really confusing from a managing standpoint, and then I’m the oldest mom so it’s like, “Okay, my friends are often 15 years younger than me”, because their daughters are the same age as mine, but I’m a later having a kid mom. There’s lots of confusion in the identity. It’s really difficult trying to navigate. It’s just interesting.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:24

How old are your kids?

 

Stacy Sims  06:25

I have one. She is 12.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:27

I got a 10 year old and a 5 year old – I’m turning 50 so I too, feel like an old mom.

 

Stacy Sims  06:33

Oh, you feel it? Yes, you’re right in it with me.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:36

Yeah, I’m right in it with you. So, you are one of the bad ass best experts in the world when it comes to women’s health and physical training. I wanted to know, how did you get involved in this work? How did this become your think?

 

Stacy Sims  06:53

I kind of fell into it. Like, if someone were to ask me “What my life plan is?”, I wouldn’t ever imagine I’d get to this point. I just have always been (even from a really young age), the person that asked “Why?”, and wanted to find out why. If it didn’t kind of fit into the moral ethos of being fair, then I’d want to know, “Why? Why is this happening?”. Throughout my academic and athletic career, I’ve always had these questions of, “Why is this happening? Why are we not seeing the results as women? Or why are you telling me to do this when I know that my body responds differently?” So, I’ve had that curiosity around it. I’m like, “Well, if I have these questions ‘Why’ and I have the opportunity to answer some of them, or dig into the research to see what’s there and what’s not”. Obviously, there are other people who don’t know that, because I have that innate opportunity by the nature of being involved in the certain bubbles that I am from an academic and a sports standpoint, that other women don’t have. So I’m like, “I want to know these answers, and then I want to share these answers. The more I shared, the more people wanted to know. The more people wanted to know, the more research questions came up. So, it just became this curiosity growing thing into the community.

 

Reshma Saujani  08:09

One of the things you also talk about, which I didn’t appreciate until I got older was that “Men and women just age differently”, right? Men age in a linear fashion and women have a definite shift in their 40s and in their 60s. Tell me more about that. Yeah.

 

Stacy Sims  08:28

When we’re looking at how women age, most of the research (if not all of it, does not take into account perimenopause into menopause, the whole transition), and we see every system of the body is affected. On the outside, you’re seeing skin and hair changes, right? And we’re also seeing body composition changes that look very apparent, which is why women are like, “Why am I putting on so much belly fat?”

 

Reshma Saujani  08:50

Yeah. I can remember from a time I turned 43 to 45, literally, a physical change in my body.

 

Stacy Sims  08:56

Yeah. We know this from anecdotal stories and all of us talking. Then when you go to present the research, it’s not done on active women. It’s done on sedentary women, the general pop. So, people are like, “Well, it’s just because they stopped moving so much because they’re getting older”. It’s like, “Well, actually no”. We see change in muscle quality. We see one of the first things that go is people’s power and their strength. So if you’re not feeling good, of course, you’re not going to move so much. But,if we are looking at how do we attenuate that by implementing certain strategies, like putting in strengthtraining so we don’t lose the muscle quality, or we’re looking at doing some impact so we are maintaining bone quality and we are reducing joint injury. If we’re looking at women in their 40s in through their mid 50s, and saying, “This 15 year span is a time where we really need to look at aging and perimenopause, and what are our strategies”. Then we’re setting ourselves up really well for 55, 60, 65, 70 where men don’t have to start worrying about that until they’re in their 60s, but when you start to argue that point.

 

Reshma Saujani  08:57

So, nothing changes in their body at all?

 

Stacy Sims  10:07

Not really, they’ll start to lose some muscle mass and some strength. They’ll start to put on some more visceral fat, especially if they’re drinking but not nearly at the rate of change that women have. So, when you present this to people who are in the aging research, like “Nah, it’s just age”. I was like, “But you can’t say that all of this happens in such a short period of time for women, and it’s just age related. There is that conversation that still needs to be had that aging for men is different than aging for women. If we want to age and not get old, we had to put these strategies earlier in women than we do inmen.

 

Reshma Saujani  10:44

I want to talk about what are some of those best practices? If you’re listening right now, and you’re like 38 39 or right before that, 45 year old cliff. How can you prep your body before menopause? What are the things that if you knew now or you did know then, like you would do?

 

Stacy Sims  10:45

I might have known it. But, I didn’t start implementing it until I got to the situation and I was like, “Oh okay, got it now.

 

Reshma Saujani  11:01

You’re like, “Here it is, belly fat”.

 

Stacy Sims  11:15

I think I always look at it as there’s four key things that women really need to be aware of. We think about our mindfulness and our ability to engage in socio-cultural constructs and understand what is a trend and what is not really a trend, and what is affecting us from a negative standpoint, and what is affecting us in a positive standpoint. So, we have a really good handle on who we are in our community and how we’re giving back because if we are always reactive – then we’re not ever able to have a mindfulness and be able to relax and I think this is a massive problem right now across all age groups.  But, it’s really particularly important for women who are in their late 30s, early 40s to get a handle on that, because we see changes in mood and anxiety issues that come with early perimenopause, like the onset of perimenopause. So, understanding that we need to put some mindfulness practice in and be able to remove ourselves from that day to day stigma that causes the comparison and causes the stress that we can’t do anything about. I often put guilt in that, like I’m guilty of having guilt, right?, I think we all are. It’s like guilt is an emotion that only breaks us down. So, we have to be able to take a removal step. If we’re able to put some of those mindfulness practices in, then it feeds forward into things like better sleep. We see that sleep is very, very important but it becomes very fleeting when we get into perimenopause especially later perimenopause. You don’t have to tell me, “Yeah, I know we’re waking upin the middle of the night, what my brain’s going around”. For doing things beforehand, maybe understanding mindfulness practices or some cognitive behavior therapy to retrain our brain how to sleep, which is very effective instead of taking sleep meds. Then, when we get into the situation where we are waking up and our brain is churning and we can’t get good sleep. We have the tools to put into practice early, and instead of waiting until we get to a point where we absolutely can’t sleep.

 

Reshma Saujani  13:22

Stacy, what is a mindfulness tactic that has worked for you or that you’ve seen people use?

 

Stacy Sims  13:28

There’s everything from breath work, and we see a lot of people are, “Let’s do box breathing. Let’s really take a step away meditation”. Some people are like, “I just need to go for a walk outside with no noise, no music, no traffic”. For me personally, it’s getting up before anyone else in the house and going outside, having a cup of coffee without any noise – no conversation, no voices, nothing like that. Just to be able to take that breath with no stimulation. So it’s really what works for you, but there are so many different ways of doing it.

 

Reshma Saujani  14:06

Yeah, one of the things that’s worked for me is also when I go to bed at night, I review the past day. Then it’s like, I’ve processed all the thoughts and all the things that have happened to me and I feel like I can go to sleep a little bit with my mind clear.

 

Stacy Sims  14:23

Yes. I’ve gotten into the habit of writing down the sticky points of the day. It used to work for me where I could just walk away. But now, I write the sticky points and then they stick with me. So when I go to bed, that notes are right in front of me. I have to say, “Okay, I have to visualize tearing up the note and lettingit fly away”. Otherwise, all those things are gonna be in my brain when I wake up in the middle of thenight. Things change, right? So, your strategies also change with the times. When we get into that aspect and we get into having a handle on sleep, we can review the other real important things – that’s physical activity and nutrition, they’re very polarizing.

 

Reshma Saujani  17:50

Both of those two can be polarizing from all the conversation in social media and challenging what we thought was the gold standard when reality, it’s been generalized from male bodies.

 

Reshma Saujani  20:52

I want to talk about culture because we talked about the role of science, but culture plays a big role too. So, we both grew up in the 80s and 90s, and remember it was all about cardio. I remember seeing  Olivia Newton-John with her step aerobics. So, I grew up doing cardio. I remember, I was always kind of culturally turned off of weights because there’s this fear of bulking up.

 

Stacy Sims  21:35

Rght.

 

Reshma Saujani  21:35

What do you think the consequences of that are now?

 

Stacy Sims  21:39

I see it in Dexus so much now, because I work with a company that one of the intakes is with DEXA. When I take on people, I want them to have a DEXA.

 

Reshma Saujani  21:44

What’s a DEXA? Sorry.

 

Stacy Sims  21:51

DEXA is a bone mineral density scan. It’s a total body like checking out bone density and body composition.

 

Reshma Saujani  21:58

Okay.

 

Stacy Sims  22:00

I’m seeing that in our age group, late 40s upward. There is a significant loss in bone mineral density, so that means that the bones aren’t strong, but also an increase in that visceral fat. That means, the fat hasshifted and it’s around the organs. On the outside, the women look super fit and thin – but on the inside, their bones are like chalk, and they have a high amount of metabolically active stored fat that is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. On the outside, this cardio culture has really pushed women into thinking they have to look a certain way. Kate Moss and all those supermodels, right?

 

Reshma Saujani  22:44

Yes, heroin chic. That’s right.

 

Stacy Sims  22:47

Yeah, now we have the ozempic craze that is reinvigorating the ballerina figure, the cheekbones and everything. It’s a problem.

 

Reshma Saujani  23:01

Resistance training helps with basically, bone density?

 

Stacy Sims  23:05

Everything.

 

Reshma Saujani  23:06

What exactly is resistance training? What type of workouts does it consist of?

 

Stacy Sims  23:14

The basic idea of resistance training is pushing and pulling a load that is against your body weight, because we don’t. I was at a conference, one of my friends was giving a keynote. He goes, “We are in a situation right now that is exactly what our bodies do not need”. We are sitting down in a comfortable environment so that means we’re not moving, we’re not challenging our body at all. It’s just there and the body’s like, “What’s going on?”. Then they’re nibbles for us to not hungry. So, we’re not in tune to our hunger then there’s people with water bottles all the time who are sipping who then don’t have the opportunity to understand what it means to be thirsty. That’s the situation we’re in all of the time, right? We sit in these comfortable environments and never have a challenge. So, part of that is resistance training – like when you get up from your chair to stand, that’s a little bit of resistance training. That’s a test, to sit. But, when you’re standing and you’re pushing up from your chair and you’re aiding yourself toget up, that’s reducing the load. If we are in our 50s, no big deal. We can get up. But when our 80s, if we have to push off the chair handles to get up, that’s a problem. When we talk about resistance training, it’s how are we challenging our body with some kind of load every day to just keep improving and keep telling the body, “Here’s a challenge, let’s overcome it”, because we have to do that especially when we are looking at how our society is now and how we are designing ourselves to be in a lazy environment.

 

Reshma Saujani  24:49

That’s right. Is there anything you would recommend for the people that are listening? If they are in a job where they’re sitting most of the day? To do some of that resistance training while they’re sitting in their seats at work.

 

Stacy Sims  25:02

Yeah, we look at isometric work. Isometric training has come back, and it’s really interesting when we’re seeing isometric hold. You’re in front of your computer and you find yourself slouching, it’s okay – let’s pull our shoulders back upright, pull our bellies in, maybe we squeeze our butt and we hold that. We try to hold that for a minute – maybe two minutes and then you relax. They can do single foot isometric holds. So, you’re pushing down on one foot, you’re activating all the way through the glute, the heel, through the calf. You can do these isometric holds that is a challenge to the body, and it also helps with blood flow. You’re not going to get the pulling. Of course, if you can get up and walk around because one posture isn’t good, standing up all day isn’t good, sitting down all day isn’t any good. So, you have the opportunity. If you stand up, you can do single leg stand on each side so you’re balancing. You’re using isometric holds. Don’t be afraid of not doing a typical concentric, eccentric. Think about a bicep curl up down. If you’re doing isometric holds throughout the day, that’s also beneficial.

 

Reshma Saujani  26:07

Got it. Okay. What type of workouts should women over the age of 40 focus on? I was thinking about you this morning, because I know you said, “I love a Berry’s Bootcamp in those classes where you go in”. You get your energy level up, I walk out and I’m drained, right? That’s what I’ve been doing since I was in my 20s. Today, I did an hour and a half tennis clinic, but I did it with a bunch of six year old. I felt like maybe that was right. You’re kind of not supposed to do those anymore, right? Those aren’t the best workouts for you at this age. Tell me more.

 

Stacy Sims  26:48

We’ve been conditioned to feel that we have to be smashed when we come out of a workout. We have to be a big, sweaty mess and completely drained. The fitness industry has kind of geared that, and we see that women in their early to mid 40s have a lot of buying power, but also at this point our bodies arechanging so much. So, the fitness industry has grabbed onto that and said, “Okay, these are the things we’re going to do, because we hear that some resistance training is great and some cardio is great. Let’scombine them. Let’s make this class. It’s going to make you burn and it gets smashed”. The reality of it is,it doesn’t really do much. It’s great for community and culture – having to show up and ownit, that’s fantastic. But we have to think about, what are we doing to our bodies when we go into this kind of intense, but not high enough intensity to invoke change – it’s definitely making us feel smashed. In the high performance world, we call that the gray zone where it’s too hard to be easy for any kind of recovery benefit or mental benefit. It’s way too easy to be hard to cause adaptations that we want. So, we try not to have our athletes stay in that gray zone, unless their race capacity has to be in that gray zone, for endurance. We look at that and we pull it into general population, especially when women whoare at this time in our lives where our bodies are highly stressed from hormonal perturbations, plus all the things that we have with being parents (either younger or teenagers), maybe we have older parents that are of a worry. We’re at a point in our career where things are highly stressful and we have an increase in our sympathetic drive so that’s tired but wired state. We try to go use exercise to kind of decompress and people are like, “Oh, it’s my stress release”, but that kind of exercise just adds to that sympathetic drive.

 

Reshma Saujani  28:47

What am I supposed to do then? What’s my workout?

 

Stacy Sims  28:50

If you love the Barry Bootcamps, you love the Orange Theories, and the F45 – you love these group workout classes. I always tell women, “Remember, you are paying to be there so you want that class to work for you, you have to make a decision”. You wake up. You go, “How do I feel today? I feel a bit flat. I don’t have much energy, but I’m going to go to this class because I always go and I see my friends”. So then, you just use that class as movement, right? You’re just going to move through it all. Get your heart rate up. Don’t really hit it too hard. Just use it for movement and community. But if you wake up, you go,”I feel like I’m on fire today. I want to go. I have all this angst and I want to get into this class”. On the interval parts, go hard, go super hard. Try to hit a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 but, then you want to recover. When they’re having the high reps, and you’re having all these high kicks, all these things that you’re supposed to be doing. It’s like, “Okay, I can hold that for a minute or two minutes, but then I’m gonna actually take a minute and just really bring my heart rate down”. The next time we have to go into another interval, I can hit it harder. So, you can make that class work for you.

 

Reshma Saujani  29:56

Stacy, I work out a lot. I wanna tell you what I typically do. I’ll do two days of working out with my trainer. We’re just doing weights – one day arms, one day legs. I’ll do one day of tennis. I’ll do one day of pilates, then I’ll do one day of some sort of cardio. What am I missing?

 

Stacy Sims  30:16

Mobility, balance, proprioception, and jump training, okay. Where do I find that? Well, you can work it in with your trainer because if you’re like, “Okay, I have a trainer and I need to really start working on mobility. So, I want to get in range of motion”, so this isn’t stretching. This is actually like using big resistance bands to kind of distract the joints to be able to get into better range of motion. You can use that into a warm up. If you’re going to do heavy squats, you want to get into the hip capsule and open it up. You want to get into the knee and you want to open it up so that you can get full range of motion and you’re not going to injure yourself – as well as, being able to stimulate the joint and joint capsule, so that you’re reducing the risk of the joint injuries that we see when we get into perimenopause. We look at proprioception. So, if you’re looking at squats, maybe instead of just doing our heavy squats, we’re doing some contrast training. This is heavy squat into some plyometric work. You’re taking some of that heavy movement and putting into the fast twitch, so that really stimulates proprioception. You have to work with your trainer on that. Jump training, this anybody can do. We look at it as low jumps, a couple of inches where you’re landing hard, flat footed, so you’re absorbing the impact in your bones, not how we’ve been taught through our muscles.

 

Reshma Saujani  31:45

That’s not bad for your knees, or is it?

 

Stacy Sims  31:47

It’s not. People are like, “Oh, I can’t do that because it hurts my knees. It’s a couple of inches of a jump”. We’re not saying jump off a high stair or do a box jump. We’re looking at absorbing that impact in our skeleton. Maybe it’s not two inches, maybe it’s just an inch. We don’t want to invoke pain, but we want tohave a really hard ground reactive force through the skeletal system so that we can maintain a stimulus for bone density.

 

Reshma Saujani  32:15

If someone’s listening right now and they’re like, “Okay, I’m not doing nothing”. Maybe I’m going to gym, jumping on elliptical. But, how does someone start and they’re just intimidated by it? What would you say?

 

Stacy Sims  32:28

I tell women that the bedrock of anything is strength training. So, if you have no history in strength training – and you’re intimidated to go to the gym and start strength training, then we can start at home.There are several different fantastic programs that you can get online that start with body weight and movement, so you’re learning how to move under some load. As you’re learning that, and you’re learning the range of motion, and then you’re learning what it means to add a load, that’s all resistance training.  Because, I’m on one end where I’m talking about lifting heavy and doing plyos, but I’ve been in this worldfor many years. It’s taken a very long time to learn properly how to do that without getting injured. So, if you’re someone who’s sitting on the couch and you’re like, “Oh, how do I get started?”. Don’t have the eye to going to the very extreme end of lifting heavy and plyo work. Let’s first start with, “How are we moving? How are we squatting? How are we putting a backpack with some canned goods in it to add a little bit of load?”, or maybe I am holding my squirmy little two year old in the front and doing some frontsquats, right? There’s ways of moving with a little bit of load, and as you get comfortable under load, that’s when you can start gravitating a little bit more to dumbbells and kettlebells, then you can get into barbell work. It is a journey.

 

Reshma Saujani  35:42

I want to talk about food and nutrition.

 

Stacy Sims  37:33

Yeah.

 

Reshma Saujani  37:34

What are the three things that you would want women in midlife to focus on when it comes to their nutrition?

 

Stacy Sims  37:40

Very first is circadian rhythm. I know that’s a weird thing to put in nutrition.

 

Reshma Saujani  37:46

Yeah. Tell me.

 

Stacy Sims  37:47

We look at a lot of the chronobiology work and we see that all of our cells have its own circadian rhythm so that’s our 24 and a half hour cycle, as well as whole body. The way that it can get reset isthrough light and dark and food intake. If we are delaying food, and our body has seen light but we haven’t had any food, there’s a misstep in our circadian rhythm. We start to have issues sleeping. Westart to have issues with our appetite hormones. We start to have issues with our normal hormone pulses – this includes our natural rise of cortisol and our drop cortisol, our testosterone, our estrogen. All of our hormones that are involved in endocrine system, have their own kind of daily pulse that we see in response. When it comes to nutrition, I really want women to understand you want to fuel during the dayfor the stress that your body’s encountering. That could be just normal life stress where you’relike, “Okay, I got to get up and have a busy day. I’ve got to get the kids out the door. I’ve got to get to these meetings. I’ve got to do this XYZ”. So, you want to fuel for that because your body’s using energy. If you’re adding training in as well, you want to fuel for the training, and you want to recover afterwards. I know that I’ve gotten slammed recently for talking about women shouldn’t fast, but there’s a rationale behind it because if we’re talking about fasting in general, what are we looking for? What are the nuances that people are so attached to fasting? It’s body composition change, and it’s for autophagy and longevity. Well, we see that exercise is a stronger stress for autophagy or stronger stimulus for autophagy. We see that exercise also is one of the keys to aging well. And when we talk about fasting for body composition change, the research shows that in women – if you do a training session fasted, you actually have a higher hunger and move less later in the day, because your body is stressed from no food. But, if you have a little bit of food beforehand, you can hit the intensities you need to and it feeds forward to more fat burning at rest. A better hold on your appetite hormones, and you actually have more energy to hit all of the nuances of movement throughout the day. So, that’s why I’m like circadian rhythm. We want to work and fuel appropriately for the stress. Now, how we fuel? That’s a whole other cultural kettle of fish.

 

Reshma Saujani  40:22

Do you want to try to get into it a little?

 

Stacy Sims  40:25

We can put parameters on it.

 

Reshma Saujani  40:28

Yeah.

 

Stacy Sims  40:29

As we get older, both men and women become more anabolically resistant. That means, we don’t respond as well to protein and resistance training. For women, we see that again in the perimenopausal into postmenopausal transition. For men, it’s a little bit older so women need to put a precedence on protein. We know that the research is looking with really good nitrogen studies and looking at actual tracing of amino acids that active women need at least point eight grams per pound of body weight – ideally one gram per pound of body weight. As we get older and into training blocks, looking at higher stress and the fact that our body needs more protein to induce lean mass, we’re looking more of that 1.1 gram per pound of body weight or around 2.2 grams per kilo. It doesn’t have to be one big whack. We can look at every eating opportunity we have adding a little protein. So people are like, “Whoa, I have t have 150 grams of protein a day. How do I get that in?” It’s not about having a big lumpof meat on your plate. It’s like, “Okay. What am I having for breakfast that has some protein in it? We have some chia. We have some oats. We have some yogurt. We have some nuts. We have some whole grain toast with all of that, all that has protein in it”. At lunch, we look at multi-colorful fruit and veg, then we have some lean protein. Dinner the same thing, we want to try to get about a palm and a half size, or a cup of different kind of legumes with that palm and a half size of lean protein. So, that gives you 35 to 40 grams at each meal then having about 15 grams at each snack. So, every eating opportunity have a little bit of protein. That is how we really try to increase the protein intake through women. The other thing that we want to do is take care of our gut microbiome. So, you’re reaching for colorful fruit and vegfibrous foods at all your eating opportunities. So, if you’re thinking about, “What am I going to eat?”, just keep those two things in your head, fiber and protein. Then that kind of follows with not having exclusivity to your diet. Gives you more flexibility in the food choices that you have to fit in with where you are with your family or the culture within which you are circulating.

 

Reshma Saujani  42:59

This was a game changer for me, Stacy because I listened to one of your podcasts. What I would dois I’dwake up in the morning – I’d have some water, a cup of coffee, and I hit the gym, I’d be exhausted. And I know, you’re like, “Oh, god”. We’ve all done it.

 

Stacy Sims  43:14

We’ve all done it.

 

Reshma Saujani  43:15

I know, but I think a lot of people listening to the show probably do it, right? Again, going back to culture,be on an empty stomach, you’ll burn more calories, right? Literally, I feel like that’s what I was told. So what I did, what you said to do, “Put a little protein powder in my coffee in the morning before I go to the gym”. Then the other thing that you said, which I think is really important for everybody who’s listening, is to eat within 45 minutes after you finish your workout.

 

Stacy Sims  43:43

Yeah.

 

Reshma Saujani  43:43

Right? That’s really important to build that lean mass. Why is that important for women?

 

Stacy Sims  43:47

Yeah, it’s more nuanced than just protein intake and muscle protein synthesis. Because if we’re looking inthat siloed approach, you have up to four hours for really instigating and still have the signal for it. But for women, we have to look at how fast we return to baseline – meaning our blood sugar comes back down, and that’s within 45 to 60 minutes. So, we’re losing the opportunity to refuel our liver and our muscle. We also have to think about the hypothalamus, which is the central region in our brain that’s responsible for understanding our circadian rhythm, temperature control, hormonal control. If it doesn’t get food after a big stress of exercise, it’s like “Oh, wait a second. I need some nutrition and there isn’t any. Are we in a famine situation? I better start conserving”. So for women, it’s more than just muscle protein synthesis. It’s also the signals from the hypothalamus to regulating all the other systems in the body. If we give it a little bit of food, not only are we protecting our endocrine system including our immunity and our thyroid – all of the things that come with being healthy, but we’re also able to build the muscle and signal to the body that we’re not in a famine state which is how we get body composition change.

 

Reshma Saujani  45:08

Got it. I want to ask you. Is it true that your metabolism goes down the older you get or is that another lie?

 

Stacy Sims  45:16

There’s mixed evidence in that. So, we see part of the downturn is because people don’t move as much. They’re talking about how your metabolism turns down, but that’s because we’re losing lean mass and lean mass is both bone and muscle. So, we’re having a downturn in the amount of energy that our body needs, because we’re losing more and more high energetic tissue. When we’re looking from like a resting metabolic state, it is the same thing – we’re losing lean mass. When we’re looking at thyroid and thyroid function, we start to have a little bit of a downturn so people associate that with the downturn in metabolism. But if we’re taking care of ourselves, and we are keeping lean mass or building lean mass, that’s bone and muscle. We’re not having perturbation in our thyroid because we are eating when we need to, we don’t see as much of an impact. We can say that it’s an aging factor, but it’s not a definitive factor.

 

Reshma Saujani  46:13

Yeah, it can be counter balanced. So, what’s your final advice? I’m turning 50 this year and my goal is tobe the strongest I’ve ever been – to feel like the best, to have my body just be. I’m not gonna lie, it’s hard I’ll give you an example, I started this year and I said, “All right, I’m gonna do pilates”, and I started doing pilates. The combination of having a new puppy and my baby sleeping on my arm, then doing a new workout. Before I knew it, my back was out and my entire right side of my body felt […]. Everytime I feel when you’re older, our bodies punish us a little bit.

 

Stacy Sims  46:55

Yes.

 

Reshma Saujani  46:56

You’re smiling. You know what I’m talking about, right? Then I feel like it’s useless. Like, it’s not gonna happen. Give me some hope.

 

Stacy Sims  47:06

No, there is hope. But, we have to allow ourselves a bit of a fudge factor like, I joke around. I’m like, “Yeah, I’m 51. So, that means that I spend more time mobilizing and warming up, but I feel like I’m alwaysfighting off an injury. Right now, I have a torn hamstring and a torn meniscus. Why? Because I thought it was going to be strong enough to do a competition when I hadn’t actually been training that well for it. Ten years ago could have gotten away with it. Now? No. So, you have to give yourself permission to kindof assess how you are in the day. Today I woke up and I was like, “Just eally need to get rid of this energy”. But then I started moving like, “Oh my god, I can’t do any high intensity. I’m just gonna go do some strength. That’s great”. You have to give yourself that kind of permission to know that there are days where, “Yeah, you can push hard”, but there are days where you really have to listen. Whereas 10 years ago, you could have pushed through it. Can’t do that now. Know that when you start looking at doing something new, stop before it’s painful. Our generation has been conditioned to no pain, no gain. Let’s push. But when we’re at this point, when our bodies are on the cusp of not being as resilient as we want it to be. It’s better to stop before you hit that line of “I’m exhausted”, or stop before you hit that lineof pain. Not all the time, but for the most part, give yourself permission to not really push as hard as you would have 10 years ago, then you can be consistent – because being consistent is really key for any kindof progress. If we push too hard, we get injured then we’re out. And it takes a long time to recover from an injury, so that our consistency is down. It’s being consistent. How are we going to be consistent? By listening to what our bodies are telling us.

 

Reshma Saujani  48:38

I love that. Because I’ll be honest, I don’t listen to my body. I’m like, “It’s on my calendar. I’m supposed to go to the gym and work out today”. I think what you’re saying is so important and so profound, I think something that we deserve.

 

Stacy Sims  49:05

Yeah, exactly. Even if it is on your calendar, I block in wellness meetings so I can go to the gym see friends get a workout. But if I front up and like, “I’m really tired” like today, I’m like, “I just can’t do this workout that we had planned to do. I’m just gonna do strength training”. And my friends are like, “Great, I’ll do some strength training then I’ll finish with this part. You can join us in this high intensity or not”. Wehad our moments together where we’re like, “Yeah, okay. We’re pushing the strength training”. Then theywent off and did the finisher of high intensity. I’m like, “I’m not, I can’t do it”. But, that wellness meeting stayed on the calendar. I went, I showed up and I did what my body needed to do. If you know that you have to go to the gym on that day, you go. You go to the gym and go on a scale of 1 to 10. Physically today, I’m about a three. Mentally, I might be a two. Let’s warm up and see if any of those change. If they don’t change, then you modify your workout to work how your body wants you to do on that day.

 

Reshma Saujani  50:00

You have a solo dance party by yourself.

 

Stacy Sims  50:01

That’s right.

 

Reshma Saujani  50:02

I love that and you moved. Because you moved, it’s a win. It’s a win, and take the win.

 

Stacy Sims  50:11

Yeah.

 

Reshma Saujani  50:11

This was so great. Thank you so muc, Stacy.

 

Stacy Sims  50:14

You’re welcome.

 

Reshma Saujani  50:20

Thank you so much Stacy for joining us today. Check her out at Dr. Stacy Sims on Instagram for more tips, recipes and motivation – she’s my new obsession. One last thing, thank you for listening to My So-Called Midlife. If you haven’t yet, now’s a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You’re gonna get bonus content like Brooke Shields talking about her experience with postpartum depression. Just hit the subscribe button on apple podcast, or for all other podcast apps. Head to lemonadepremium.com to subscribe. That’s lemonadepremium.com. Thanks and we’ll be back next week. I’m your host, Reshma Saujani. Our associate producer is Isaura Aceves. Our senior producer is Kryssy Pease. This series is sound designed by Ivan Kurayev. Ivan also composed our theme music and performed it with Ryan Jewell and Karen Waltuck. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neel. Special thanks to our development team, Hoja Lopez, Jamela Zarha Williams and Alex McOwen. Executive Producers include me, Reshma Saujani, Stephanie Wittles Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Series consulting and production support from Katie Cordova. Help others find our show by leaving a rating and writing a review. Let us know how you’re doing in midlife. You can submit your story to be included in this show at speakpipe.com/midlife. Follow my Soul Club Midlife, wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on amazon music with your prime membership. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week. Bye.