Dr. Stacy Sims (00:00:00):
Why are we always telling people what to lose? We need to say, what do we gain when we put muscle on? How do we keep muscle? How do we build muscle? We need to eat. We need to take care of our bodies. We need to lift and we need to focus on building, not losing.

Cori Lefkowith (00:00:17):
If you're not ready to have your feathers ruffled a little bit with some argumentative fitness and diet topics, don't listen to today's episode because I am joined by Dr. Stacy Sims and we are talking about why calories in versus calories out are not all that matters. We're talking about how to age strong with some things that we often avoid as we get older. But Dr. Stacy Sims is not only an exercise physiologist, she's a leading researcher on this subject and she is all about how women are not small men and how much we actually have to adjust and adapt as we go through perimenopause and menopause to feel our most fabulous. But I don't know about you. I want to age strong. So if you are enjoying these episodes, if you want to see more fabulous guests like Dr. Stacy Sims, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're watching.

(00:01:04):
But now that you've subscribed and left a positive review, let's jump right into the interview. When you hear the word strong, how do you define that now and how has that definition changed over the years?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:01:16):
Oh, I think about it as a physical and a mental capacity, like how resilient you are to things that are thrown your way. So from a mental strength is being able to deal with all the little curve balls that happen in a day, but also physicality, being able to have that still that confidence and that uprightness to be able to wield all of the things that come with the curve balls. So from becoming strong, is that through resistance training? Sure. But from a lifetime strength perspective, it's having the ability to withstand anything that's thrown at you physically and mentally and to be able to be resilient through that. Most people learn from it and then keep growing. And then it's like some people don't. And then that's when you start to see the hunch and they're really beaten down over it.

Cori Lefkowith (00:02:08):
I think that's such an interesting way of describing strength because we can become beaten down if we don't just keep trying to overcome, but it can be hard to pick ourselves back up. And I know a lot of times when we do hit midlife, it's all of a sudden the rules feel like they've changed and our body is all of a sudden different. And so we're like ... I know, but we're like, oh no, what do I do now? And so there can be this feeling of, am I still strong?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:02:32):
Yeah. And a lot of people are defining, like when they come to me, they're defining strength just through the physicality where you're like, "What's wrong with me? I can't run the same speed as I used to. I can't get up the hill the same way I used to. I plateaued in my deadlift." And it's like, "Well, yes, but I also want to know mentally how resilient you are because we can't separate how you are thinking about things versus the physicality." I learned that early when I was doing my master's degree because I had a sports psychologist on my committee and he had an issue with rating of perceived exertion because he's like, "If you are asking someone how they feel on a scale of one to 10, that's biasing them." I was like, "What do you mean? We just have to know. How's your body feeling?" He goes, no, because then they're inherently influencing what their body can do.

(00:03:19):
Because if you bring it up and say, "Hey, you feel on a scale of one to 10, how do you feel halfway through a two hour ride with no water?" They're going to start thinking about everything that's gone wrong and instead of going, "I feel great," they're going to go, "Oh, I feel like a two and maybe I want to push a little bit harder and then all of a sudden they're up close to the 10." And so when we start talking about the physicality, you really do have to ask the person, "What are you thinking?" Because if you are resigned to the fact that you're mid-life and you can't go as fast as you used to and you can't do these deadlifts, then you're going to stall instead of going, "Okay, what do I need to change so that I can keep progressing?"

Cori Lefkowith (00:04:04):
You're basically telling yourself you're going to go backwards. I mean, it's like when you do a wall sit. If you start thinking about how much pain you're in, all of a sudden that minute gets exponentially longer. But I find if my brain is going about other things, all of a sudden the minute goes by a little bit faster at least, but you're dooming yourself with doubt almost.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:04:20):
Exactly. And I mean, coming from a high performance background, when you're racing and like bike racing or whatever, you can't stop. You have to be able to push and be able to come hard to mentalize. And I think that's a lot of the resilience as well. It's like when someone has never been able to put themselves in a hurt box or has never had that experience, they don't know like you can go somewhere else in your brain that allows your body to push through and become more resilient.

Cori Lefkowith (00:04:47):
But I think part of that's also learning to slow down to speed up because sometimes you have to slightly back off the gas in order to keep going, otherwise you burn yourself out, like you can't necessarily sprint the entire way. How do you go about helping someone even do that when they've been so used to pushing at one speed?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:05:05):
Yeah. I pull people back and say, "Okay, we are going to have three key sessions this week. And what I want you to do is I want you to go in fully fueled and rested and this is what that looks like. And I want you to push these intervals at this particular workload." And most of the time it's higher workload or it's a higher weight than what they're used to. And they go and going, "I can't do that. " I'm like, "Yes, you can. Let's see how far we can push." And then it's a full recovery, right? So they only have three sessions and they're used to doing six, seven sessions in a week and then they can feel the difference between what it means to actually push hard and have that recovery versus just kind of mediocre every day thinking that they're going hard.

(00:05:53):
It is a complete learning process. And another unfortunate way of learning is if you're injured and how you come back from injury, because most people want to get back really quickly and then they go backwards. So it's like, okay, so let's pretend you're injured and how we are going to build back up is what I want us to focus on. So it depends on the person's personality, like how are we going to switch what you're doing to get the mindset right versus let's just make you stop.

Cori Lefkowith (00:06:23):
There are a few things that you hit on there that I want to sort of go back through. And the first one being the less is more, right? Doing the three sessions a week. I know for a fact after watching a lot of your different stuff, you ask people to do a lot of things they think they shouldn't be doing at a specific age and insert the age here. So I want to go over that. But I also think you hit on something super key in that we so often think that we're going at 100% intensity because we're feeling maxed out in a workout, but we don't recognize that the 100% we're going at is actually only 60% of what we can give. So when we do back off, we get more out of it, but then we're able to do some of those things we think we shouldn't be able to do at a certain age.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:07:00):
Right. Yeah, exactly. So I was talking to a woman the other night and she's a swimmer and she was trying to implement like sprint stuff versus high intensity stuff. And she's like, "But I can do the same thing every day." I was like, "Then you are not doing it right." She's like, "Well, what do you mean? I feel like I'm going hard." I'm like, "If you can do the same thing every day." She goes, "No, I just think I'm really resilient." I was like, "No, you just are not pushing yourself to that hardest possible angle that you can in a sprint if you feel like you can do the same thing the next day." And she's like, "Oh." And it's one of those things. It's like, okay, what we want is we want full gas. And a lot of women haven't had the opportunity to do that.

(00:07:41):
They've never been pushed. They've always been in our age group looking at PEs in high school or elementary school. No one pushed the girls, right? They're always pushing the boys to do the pull-ups and the girls are doing the little arm hang, go, go, go. And then there was never, "Keep going, keep going. " I was like, "Oh, okay, you're done." And so we never really had that opportunity unless you got involved in sport. And if you got involved in sport, then that was just an inherent competitiveness that you found within yourself or fostered with other people. So when we're looking at general population, most women don't know what it means to go really hard, or they've been conditioned to think that they can't because it's dangerous. It's like, it's not dangerous. Our bodies are very malleable and they want to be stressed and to overcome that stress.

(00:08:29):
That's how we become resilient. So we get into this little box of we want to sit in a certain temperature in a room and we only want to go X amount in our heart rate and we don't want to do X, Y, Z. It's like, why do we have all these rules around it? Why can't we just push and see how we go?

Cori Lefkowith (00:08:46):
It's so true. And yet we also use the saying get uncomfortable, like embrace the discomfort, that's where growth happens, right? We have that mindset, but then we don't fully embrace it when it comes to some of our training. And we also start to think that the opposite of basic is advanced. We think because we've been doing this for a certain amount of time, we're beyond those basics, not realizing that the opposite of basic is really extreme and that the more advanced you are, so to speak, or experience, the more you should embrace those basics and be able to optimize them. Doing burpees for 30 seconds, I don't care who you are. If you max out on those burpees, they're going to feel hard. And the more advanced you are, the more you can take advantage of that time.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:09:28):
Yeah, exactly. I tell people it doesn't get easier. You just go faster. Like you have a certain amount of time. If you're fitter or more advanced, you just end up doing more going faster. So it doesn't matter. Yeah. And I think people are like, "Oh, okay. Well, I can do 10 burpees in a minute." And then they stick with that instead of going, "Let's try to go for 12 or 15 in a minute." Yep.

Cori Lefkowith (00:09:49):
It's always trying to do that a little bit more to maximize that intensity. And speaking of which, I do want to touch on some recommendations that you generally have for people that you find people push back against the hardest. What are those when they get to their certain old age, and I say that because old age, I've heard anywhere from like 25 to 90. So when they get to that age where they shouldn't do certain things, what are the things you find people pushing back against the most?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:10:15):
Probably everything I say. I'm like, I get pushed back on sprint intervals. I get pushed back on high intensity interval training. I get pushed back on heavy lifting. Yeah. The only thing I don't get pushed back on is mobility. I get pushed back on don't do so much zone two. Actually, there's no such thing as zone two for metabolic health. There's so many things because it's contra the dogma. And when people embrace it and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I feel so much better. Why did I not do this earlier?" It's like, yeah, it's not about volume, it's about the quality of what you're doing. And so let's look at what you are doing and why.

Cori Lefkowith (00:10:53):
So I think it's really key that we understand why that fear or that hesitation came about and what that dogma really is stemming from. Where do you think that fear really developed and why people started wholehearted believing it?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:11:07):
It's a social construct really. If we think about how women have been put in a box throughout history, like we've been told that we're delicate flowers, we have smaller brains and hearts than men, so we can't go as hard. We can't think as well. We don't have a seat at the table. Every industry, everything through history of time has always told women that they can't. And so when we look at fitness, it's like, okay, let's look at the history of fitness. In the 80s when all the aerobic stuff came out, it was geared towards women being skinny, right? And then we look at what was the fitness trends for men. And that was Arnold Schwarzenegger's heyday of bodybuilding and lifting weights. But women weren't supposed to do that because then that would put them in a different box of being strong and resilient. But instead, society wanted all women to be very petite and demure and skinny.

(00:11:57):
So basically controllable, right? And so when we start looking at why do women still think this way, it's this old constructs. And part of what I want to do, and I know that you do too, is empower women to break through those constructs and to say, "You know what? No, it's not about being tiny and not eating." And that's the other thing that really gets me is like, why are people so adamant about fasting? It's like there are ways to really improve metabolic health without starving yourself. So that could be another tangent, but it's all about putting women to small little box. And there's us and the group of us that are all like, no, we want to eat, we want to be empowered, we want to take up space, we want to challenge the dogma, we want to do the best for our brain health, we want to do the best for metabolic health.

(00:12:46):
And if we stick to the rules that have been dictated to us for so long, then we're going to see no improvement. And we are going to be part of that statistic of women who have Alzheimer's when we're 80 years old and nobody wants that.

Cori Lefkowith (00:13:00):
No, and it's interesting because I mean, I was even guilty of it, like defending the thing that basically kept me stuck, protecting the dogma of eat less to weigh less, like try and shrink. And it's funny too, because we are not seeing the results we want, yet we keep doing the thing that's not getting us the results we want and we're afraid to go the other way. And I think it's partly because we're comfortable being uncomfortable in that way and we like the familiar pain even though it's still painful. But off of that, I think we also value and prioritize what we believe in and understand the why behind. So I do want to dive into some of the things you recommend and why you recommend them because I think that understanding can help us understand how they might fit into our programming or at least dabble in them to test out.

(00:13:45):
So like going back to sprints specifically, I think there's a lot of confusion about what they are and even how they're different from like HIT training in general. So can we talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:13:55):
Yeah, sure. So SPRINT interval training is a subset of high intensity interval training and sprint interval is not necessarily running. It's about the intensity and the motivation behind the intensity. So when we look, it's 30 seconds or less as hard as you possibly can go. And there's lots of recovery between, because if you're thinking 30 or 20 seconds as hard as possible red line, it takes a long time to recover from that in order to do another one. So we're looking at two to three minutes recovery in between. And I tell women, look, when you first start, you might only do three and that's fine. That is a very strong stress your body's going to adapt to. What are those adaptations? Because it is such an inherently strong stress, every system of the body is activated. So it's like, okay, what do we need to do to overcome that stress?

(00:14:40):
We get neuroplasticity and an increase in some of the frontal lobe neural firings. Why? Because we need to be able to stimulate muscle fibers to contract really, really quickly. So it's an edge to brain health. We see that with that really high intensity work, we have a release of what we call myokines. So myokines are signals from the skeletal muscle to the rest of the body to be able to kind of withstand this really high intensity stress. And one of the things that myokines do is they kind of work with the liver and say, "You know what? We don't want you to convert those free fatty acids into visceral fat." We need those free fatty acids to be circulating so that we have a backup fuel, especially when we stop this kind of high intensity stuff. We also see an epigenetic change within the muscle itself that allows the muscle to be more effective at using and pulling in glucose.

(00:15:34):
So if we're thinking about all the high touch points, especially women who get into the middle age and are worried about brain health and metabolic health, the sprint interval is so much more impactful on all systems of the body than going and doing a 45, 60 minute walk or a run or a bootcamp, right? Because when we're looking at the intensity of those sprint intervals, it's creating such a strong signaling through all of the body that the body's like, "Okay, I need to be ready to do this again. So how am I going to become resilient to do this

Cori Lefkowith (00:16:09):
Again?" So one, if you do a sprint all out, I always say you should be craving the rest and it should never feel like enough. And trust me, when you sprint, that's exactly how it feels. Two, so what you're telling me is that if I sprint, I can spend less time and get better results so that excuse of, I don't have enough time is just not the case. And three, you can improve your mental health, your physical health, your strength, your body recomp all by doing sprints that take up less time.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:16:38):
Exactly, 100%. And it's a mind shift because we've always been told the fat burning is the 90 minutes. To get body composition, you have to burn lots of calories. And it's not about that. It's about the stress that goes on the body and the responses that come to overcome that stress. We see in the research that sprint interval training is so much more effective for cardiovascular health too, because everyone's like, "Oh, I need my zone two for my heart health and fat burning." It's like, no, you don't. The sprint interval stuff is really good for cardio and metabolic health. We see this in really sound literature in both men and women, but more importantly in women, because we tend to not have fast switch fibers and we need to preserve those and that's what happens with sprint. Why do we need to preserve fast twitch fibers?

(00:17:27):
Because we are born with less of them. And if we maintain them, then we also maintain power. We need power, we need strength, and we need to also be able to tap into those type two fibers for the metabolic control that then goes into brain health because we have a little bit of brain metabolic dysfunction when we start to get into the change of estrogen progesterone, doesn't use glucoses effectively. But if we are doing sprint work and we're producing some lactate, the lactate gets used by the brain. And it also feeds forward to more BDNF. And we also see that we get better brain metabolism, which then better for cognition and reduction in cognitive decline.

Cori Lefkowith (00:18:10):
It's keeping that power, as you said, too. And I think we don't recognize how much that even pays off in terms of our balance, our coordination, our agility, our ability to react in everyday life. So it's like we don't think about how much this is really building that mind, body connection that

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:18:25):
Improves

Cori Lefkowith (00:18:26):
Everything, including that strength because strength is efficiency of movement too. And so going into a little bit of that strength work, I know you're a huge advocate of really building that maximal strength, lifting heavy, working in that lower rep range. Can you talk a little bit about why?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:18:42):
Yes. So when we're looking at what is happening from a skeletal muscle standpoint with age in women specifically, women don't age in a linear fashion like men do. And we see there's a lot of hormonal issues or influences in the skeletal muscle, especially with estrogen. And one of the things that estrogen does is it keeps myosin one of the contractile proteins in check, meaning that it functions well. When we start having perturbations in estrogen, so up, down, or no estrogen, we get dysfunction in myocin. So what happens is we lose a very strong muscle contraction. We also lose a very fast muscle contraction. And when we see the first adaptations of the lower rep range, heavier loads, it is a central nervous system response that creates a change in myosin to make it step up without estrogen. The other thing about that lower rep range is, again, it's about the type two fibers.

(00:19:42):
And as I said, women are born with less, we lose them at a faster rate, so we need to do whatever we can to maintain them. And when we're looking at why, we see that power is such a strong indicator of mortality. So if we are able to maintain power and strength, then we are able to have a better health span. We see people who are like, "No, I don't want to lift heavy. I don't want to get bulky. I don't have a history." It's like, "Well, you know what? That whole let's do lots of reps. Yes, you're going to build muscle, but it's not the same kind of strength and power component as the low end rep range." We need to have a block of that in order to improve health span because we'll see all these things on social media that women don't need to lift heavy, you just need to lift.

(00:20:29):
It's like, no, there is a difference between strength, building strength and building muscle. If you do the low end rep range, you are also going to build muscle, but the focus is maintaining power and strength and some lean mass gain. If we are doing the hypertrophy type stuff or going to failure, you will build lean mass, no doubt about it, but it is not the high quality fast twitch stuff that women need to preserve and hold onto and try to build as much as possible.

Cori Lefkowith (00:21:00):
And it's recognizing too that then you have to fuel those gains. Not to mention talking about the sprint intervals and the lifting. We think about it so often as strength or cardio, but all of this is working your cardiovascular system too. And how you design your workouts can have a lot of different cardiovascular benefits. So we don't need to be so like it's this or this. There's kind of a lot of nuance to how you design to get a diversity of benefits.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:21:27):
Exactly. I get asked all the time, "Well, I heard that I shouldn't do sprints on the same day or in the same workout as I do heavy training because it'll interfere with it. " And it's like, depends on your goal. It's like, what is your goal? Is your goal to get really super fast? Then do that first. You're still going to get some benefit at the lower load. It's just not the same intensity as if you were to do it first. If your whole goal is to get really strong and fast twitch and power, then focus just on the lifting set and then do your sprints later. But people get confused or they want the absolutes. I have to do this and then that. No one wants to be in the gray area. No one wants to think for themselves. So like on podcasts and stuff when you're talking about, you are really like trying to give the overall picture, but you're not being able to put in the nuances.

(00:22:12):
So then people are like, "Oh, it's the absolute, you said this and this is what I have to do. " It's like, actually that's just one snippet in time. It's not the whole periodized program. It's not looking at lifestyle. It's not looking at when your kids are out of school and you don't have a lot of time. This is just optimizing and these are the ideas behind optimization, but that is not what you do on a daily basis.

Cori Lefkowith (00:22:33):
It's understanding the value of the ideals to shoot for or to design based on what you need. And then even off of that, how you're designing or the goals that you have will impact how you're fueling and how your fueling will impact the results you get from your training. So nothing works in isolation. And I

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:22:50):
Always

Cori Lefkowith (00:22:50):
Like to say my favorite answer is it depends because it really does.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:22:53):
It does. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's like, well, it depends on what. This is my parameter. I'm like, "Well, it depends. How do you feel today?" "Oh, what do you mean? Why can't I just get up and do this? "Well, if you feel like you're getting sick, then I don't want you doing high intensity work because then you will get sick, right? So there's all these things in there, people just ... Yeah, they're so under the influence of being told what to do instead of because of wearables and everybody going, " This is what you should be feeling. This is what you should be doing. "Instead of coming back to it, it's like, " Well, inherently, how do I feel and what's going to be best for my body today? In the long term, I need to do this today to feel X, Y, Z next week.

(00:23:32):
"

Cori Lefkowith (00:23:33):
And then sometimes it's owning, you know what? I'm going to do something today to stick in the routine, even if it's not ideal because that will keep me moving forward with more momentum and that's what I need today.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:23:43):
Exactly. Yeah.

Cori Lefkowith (00:23:46):
And with that, going back to mobility, which you said is much more readily accepted, I also think it's something that we don't prioritize enough early on and then we are blaming our age for all of our aches, pains, creaks, all that jazz when really it's poopy training practices potentially adding up. What types of mobility work do you recommend? How do you get someone to prioritize that when they're guilty of skipping their warmup and thinking they were getting away with it to get to the good stuff?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:24:12):
Yeah, I know. It's a hard one, isn't it? It's like programming in 10 minutes of mobility as the warmup and using resistance bands, showing the distraction, working on the small little muscles, it's like you find a lot of people can't even do just weighted external rotation. So you put that in and banded warmup to get all the muscles activated. And if people are like, " I don't want to do mobility. "It's activation so that you can get into better range of motion for the good stuff. So if you're putting it into the scope of performance and people are like, " Okay, I can do this. "But if you're like, " Today we're just going to do mobility and some breathwork. "Then people are like, " Yeah, no. "Because they're there to show up and do the good stuff. And so if you're like, " I'm just doing mobility today, "then a lot of times you don't get the buy-in.

(00:24:56):
But if you're like, " We're doing this particular warmup to get into the joints, to open them up, to get the joint capsule really fluid so that you can get deeper in your squat. "And people are like, " I got it. Let's do this.

Cori Lefkowith (00:25:08):
"Yeah, you'll be able to lift heavier, you'll be able to sprint faster. I know for me, activation work especially was eye-opening because I was doing power lifting and got injured and realized I didn't really actually feel my butt cheeks ever working. So the activation was like, " Oh goodness, this is why I wasn't able to even lift heavier than I was before or wasn't seeing the muscle gains that I wanted. "So when you do start to recognize the purpose and value it, you prioritize it a little bit more.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:25:33):
Yeah. One of the ways I got endurance athletes to understand that is I would make them do their version of a squat and then ride up a hill or run up a hill and they're like, " I can go so much better. "Why? It's like because you got your glutes firing. If you're sitting and then you go get on your bike or you go for a run and you haven't activated your glutes in any way, you're going to be hunched and you're going to get injured. So let's put in some heavy squat to box and then you're going to go ride uphill. One, it's going to get you stronger, but two, you're actually going to get the muscles involved that you need to get up that hill.

Cori Lefkowith (00:26:05):
It's going to make you more efficient.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:26:07):
Yes. And off

Cori Lefkowith (00:26:07):
Of that, how do you get endurance athletes who are hearing this, maybe going through menopause, feeling the changes, feeling like they have to lose their old identity in order to see better results or age well, how do you navigate that path for them? Because it doesn't have to be either or, but ...

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:26:26):
But one of the most powerful ways I've gotten women to change is I get them to have a DEXA because there's so many women who are like, " I don't have a lot of fat. I'm lean and I'm fit and I look great. "And it's like, let's look on the inside. We get a dexaback with their blood work. They often have a change in their blood lipids, which makes them have high LDL cholesterol, right? So you're looking at their blood work and it doesn't look that great. You look at the DEXA, their muscle quality isn't fantastic. So it's the beginning of sarcopenia, bone density is low and they have a high level visceral fat. And it's just because on the outside they look lean, they don't have a lot of subcutaneous fat, but the dangerous fat is accumulating. And when you look and you put it over and say," This is a clinical person who is sedentary and obese.

(00:27:17):
Let's look at your lab results and your DEXA. They're very similar. "So how are we going to make a change? We have to put in resistance training. We have to drop the volume. We want to improve our bone. We want to improve our muscle. We want to get rid of that visceral fat and you also want to get faster and fitter for your sport. These are the things that we have to put into play and most women are really resistant. It's like, okay, well, let's just put in one day and we're going to put in one day and we're going to drop the volume. And then they start sleeping better. They start feeling better. They start feeling stronger and they're like, " Oh, there's something here. "It's like when you're continuously doing that same modern intensely volume stuff, you never really change. Your body gets worse for the wear.

(00:28:02):
You end up with more soft tissue injuries, joint aches, and poor sleep. So let's address all of these things by switching it up. And when you just take one day and have the motivate and commit to one day of change, then that becomes two days and then it's three days. And then it's like, " Okay, I've got the buy-in now.

Cori Lefkowith (00:28:21):
"It's measuring success in multiple ways while meeting yourself where you are and recognizing that if you do some of those things now that you don't even want to do, you'll be able to do more of what you love because so often we just keep pushing and powering through and that is ultimately why we end up blaming our age, blaming our hormone levels when there's so much within our power to truly control and adjust.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:28:42):
Yeah. And one of the things that a lot of women don't realize is that with estrogen flux, and we talk about losing power and strength, we're also losing things like our foot muscle. We're losing our tendon compliance, so we're more predisposed to tendon injuries. We're losing the strength in all of our small stabilizing muscles. So if you are continuously going for whatever you normally do without addressing that, you are going to end up with significant issues down the line. So it's like when we're talking about the basics, right? It's like, yes, we want to look at foot strength. We want to look at how we are maneuvering from the knee down because that is absorbing ground reactive forces and the ground doesn't move, our body does. So if we're not strong enough to keep implementing the loads we're putting on the body because of these muscular changes, then we're going to see injury.

Cori Lefkowith (00:29:38):
It's recognizing that the gym is really that microcosm to learn to move well in everyday life and that by slowing down and embracing just not pushing harder or going for more sweat or more calorie burn, we can learn to move well so that we're aging better and we're seeing fewer things add up. And that will ultimately allow us to do a lot more in the gym, but we can't just see it as that push hard Hard place.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:30:01):
No. No, we can't. And I see women who go into more of a box type gem, right? And their first encounter is with a male coach and they'll go to a class and they'll have all the competitiveness of the younger women and the men. And so they think that's the norm. It's like, okay, well now if we're going into a box type gym and you're talking to a male coach, I want them to realize that when we get to midlife and beyond, it's not about the competitive sweat drive. It's about moving well and getting strong through that entire movement. So if you are going in and a coach can't address that for you, then you need to find someone else. And people have to remember that when you're going in, you're paying for that. I'm going to redirect them to you because you know everything that's going on, right?

(00:30:52):
Because so many people feel like, oh, there's a trainer and he's telling me what to do and he won't listen. It's like, you are paying him. He needs to listen to you. You have gone to these group fitness classes and you're not seeing results. Well, modify it. You don't want to disrupt the social part, but you are paying for that. And so many women feel like they've lost ownership over being able to say what they want because again, they're just following the fold and they're paying for access, but they don't realize that they're actually contributing to that same, sameness. Whereas if you go in and you're paying for it and you want to implement change, then that's going to help other women down the line.

Cori Lefkowith (00:31:31):
Everything has to be earned. And sometimes we have to regress, progress, which means ditching the ego a little bit. But it also comes back to valuing our workouts as more than just the calorie burn because I do think a lot of us look to make a change because we want to lose weight. There's been some sort of struggle or challenge or thing we're not happy with in life, maybe an injury. And so we're looking to make a change. And a lot of us come to, I think, fitness and especially dietary changes for weight loss purpose. Nothing wrong with that. We all want to look and feel our most fabulous, but we go to the train harder, eat less attitude, and that ultimately backfires, especially at this stage.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:32:08):
Yeah. I always like to pull in my friend Gabrielle Lyon's idea about this where she's like, why are we always telling people what to lose? We need to say, what do we gain when we put muscle on? How do we keep muscle? How do we build muscle? We need to eat. We need to take care of our bodies. We need to lift and we need to focus on building, not losing. Because if you are building that muscle and you are not focused on losing weight, then your body composition actually changes for the good. And then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, how did that happen? I feel fantastic and I look great. Because when we take it and we start focusing on what we want to lose, and this is where the new GLP-1 society is really frustrating. It's all about losing instead of looking at what that weight loss is.

(00:33:00):
They're losing and you're losing lean mass. It is so incredibly difficult as you get older to put muscle and bone on. Takes many, many, many, many months of concentrated effort to get that back. So if we're in just to lose weight and looking at weight on the scale instead of paying attention to body composition, then yes, you're going to fall into the calories in calories out feeling tired and depleted and hungry and depressed and not really seeing the gains that you want, except maybe some weight going down on the scale. So that's the other thing is like, I want every woman's mindset to shift to the way Gabrielle talks about what are we gaining in order to have a really good health span and to feel good and to look good. Let's put it back to the muscle-centric idea of let's lift and eat.

Cori Lefkowith (00:33:51):
It's so funny because I have a post about fat loss where it shows reccomp, but my weight h stayed the same and I've actually eaten more and trained harder. And I bring that up to people that most importantly is the energy and how I feel and how I perform while looking leaner because I actually went against all of the usual fat loss process. And I think it also stems from, because we've been so focused on the scale and that number, we also turn to calories in versus calories out. And I frankly believe that that alone is the biggest lie we've been fed because macros really matter for that recomp. And I know you're an advocate as well of that protein. So I would love to touch on like why it's so key.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:34:33):
Yeah. We got slammed last week when we put up a reel about calories in, calories out, how that's not appropriate. So people are like, "Of course it is. It's a mathematical equation. It's about energy in energy out. " I'm like, "Hold up. The whole body is not a mathematical algorithm." There are cellular processes that take more energy and there are cellular processes that don't. So if you're not eating enough to fuel for basic processes, then the high energy cellular processes are going to be turned down. What is that? That's immunity, that's thyroid, that's endocrine health. So if we start talking calories in, calories out for weight loss, it's not about that. That happens way down the track when your body's really in a hole. So when we are looking at what are we doing for recomp, we need to fuel so that the body has enough coming in to support all of those cellular energetic processes, as well as to build active, more active tissue that then allows your body to go, "Okay, here's some extra fat I don't need." And it's a really difficult concept for people to understand.

(00:35:37):
And I think a lot of it is driven because that earlier calorie in calorie out stuff came from male data. It came from when they were at the same time when they put the RDAs into play in World War II, they're looking, what's the minimal amount of calories that someone can ingest to maintain a more aquarium of health? And this is because there was a reduction of calories worldwide. And it is also before all of our ultra processed foods because people are like, "I only eat X amount of calories, but it's from protein bars and it's from protein pop tarts. And I'm getting my protein in. " It's like, no, that's not what we mean. No wonder you're not having any change because you're having all this ultra processed stuff. So let's go back to understanding what it means to be nourished rather than what it means to be overfed.

(00:36:24):
So when we start talking about we want to eat according to our circadian rhythm, we want to eat whole foods that have protein, that have fiber, that have all of our micronutrients. And in that, we can put the play of macros in of how important protein is as we get older because our body becomes less responsive to protein intake and resistance training. So we have to do it both of those more often. And we also have to look at carbohydrate because that got the demonization from the high carb, low fat diet and the snack wells from the 90s. So now we're looking at carbohydrate. It is essential. We know that women need more carbohydrate than men because we have an endocrine system that is more robust than men. We're more calorie, I guess I shouldn't say calorie, we're more nutrient dense sensitive than men, which is why we see a lot of perturbations occurring when we get too low versus men who can go even lower.

(00:37:21):
So it's all about let's eat according to our circadian rhythm. Let's make sure we're having adequate protein first so that we can build tissue that we need to. And we are supporting that with carbohydrate from fruit and veg and whole grains because it's the thing that our gut needs. And if we are taking care of our gut, then we are also taking care of our brain. And it's such a simple concept, but people just fight it so much.

Cori Lefkowith (00:37:47):
They do. And I think we've all had that little thing that we're slightly hesitant to give up and we don't even know why we're attached to it. But three things really off of that. A, I want to go back to at some point the recommended amounts because we take these things as this is the recommended, not realizing that the recommended is usually just not to be deficient, to not die. And we

(00:38:08):
Don't think about optimal, especially optimal as we get older. A, B, we start to demonize things and then we wonder why there's more thyroid issues going on, more issues in general. And then we don't ever take a look at, well, what diets are popular? Maybe this is partly why. And then off of that with the calories in versus calories out, I always like to think of it and I know very little about cars, but I know that if I have a car and I put in low grade fuel when it asks for higher grade fuel, I will damage the car long term. It's the same thing with the quality of the calories. It doesn't run the same. And so it's funny when we can't fully get away from just the calories in versus calories out because it is that difference in how we're fueling a high performance vehicle.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:38:55):
Right. So if we could change all the language in semantics in the fitness world, it would be about gain not loss and nutrient density, not calories, right? Those would be the two big things that I'd want all the semantics to change because if we think about it, then that would put everyone in a different mindset to actually get healthier. Because yeah, I always come back to the RDA too where people are like, "The RDA protein for women is 50 to 55 grams." And you realize it was based on poor nitrogen studies and it was done on sedentary older men who supposedly had the same body composition as younger women and it's the minimal amount that your body needs to prevent malnutrition. None of that applies to an active woman who's trying to maintain a more chorium of health and to build and reach her own potential.

(00:39:45):
It's like, so let's just not go there, please. Let's look at you as an individual, your age, what your activity is, and meet the needs of that particular person, not these arbitrary recommended daily allowances. That is for the least amount that you need when you're sitting on the couch doing nothing, watching Netflix.

Cori Lefkowith (00:40:04):
I always tell them, I'm like, "So you just want to survive? Don't you want to thrive? Isn't that what we're here to do, to optimize?"

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:40:11):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Cori Lefkowith (00:40:13):
And I know we always want to focus on whole natural foods as much as possible, but I do think that especially in this day and age in our busy life, in the fact that we aren't able to necessarily always get the diversity in that we want, that there are even needs that we can't fully easily meet with some dietary preferences, supplements can be beneficial. And I know one that is very popular right now and with good reason is creatine. Can we talk a little bit about creatine specifically?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:40:38):
Yeah. So creatine, I am so happy to see is making its way into general pop, right? Because it's such an important, I guess it's not, I don't know how to describe it's not a supplement per se. It's just a key part of the fueling of the body, right? So if we're thinking about how the body responds and how it breaks down energy, any fast energetic, so that first zero to 20 seconds requires creatine, just the way that the body fuels itself. So if we start looking at our brain, our heart, our gut, our skin, everything that has any kind of cell, then we know we need creatine. Our body's good, produces two to three grams in the liver a day, but we are now in a society that doesn't eat a lot of creatine containing foods. So when we start looking at supplementing with creatine, one, we see a better benefit for women because we have less stores than men anyway.

(00:41:35):
And we also are seeing so much research coming out about the health benefits. We're looking at mood, mood disorder, we're looking at sleep deprivation, shift workers, and it's not about the muscle performance, about general health. And it is the most studied supplement that has ever come out. So it's safe. If you're getting the pure ones, we're looking at Creopure, we're looking at creatine monohydrate. There was, I think it was ISSN posted a picture of the two presidents back in the early '90s on Fox News talking about creatine. And they're like, look how far we've come. I'm like, exactly, because it used to be the bodybuilding football type supplement, but now we're seeing 80 year old women using it because they're finding that it makes them feel better. It's like, yes, we should be looking and embracing it because it is so beneficial across all of the age span in particular times when our body is under extreme amount of stress when perimenopause, the body's under a lot of stress, another time pregnancy, when body's under a lot of stress, sleep deprivation, jet lag, all of these things and creatine supports that.

Cori Lefkowith (00:42:47):
It is interesting the shift in creatine where I'm seeing a lot more people embrace it now versus it used to be like, "Oh, I don't want to become the Hulk and that bodybuilder for using it. " But it is incredibly important as we see those hormonal shifts of perimenopause and menopause.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:43:01):
Yeah. And the other aspect about it, and this is just because I have my other screen open and there is a randomized control trial that came out and I was reading it last night. It's about resistance training and brain health. And they're looking at heavy and moderate loads. So heavy resistance training three times a week. Moderate was one time a week in the gym trained and then two at home sessions. And there was one group that had creatine and that was the moderate intensity. So then they were looking at actual brain aging because they had modeled to see what aspects of the brain age across from, it was from 31 to 80 year old. And they modeled that. And then the cohort was 62 to 70 year old men and women. And they found that the heavy lifting three times a week really improved the prefrontal cortex.

(00:43:52):
So those are all the neurons that are being activated for the muscle. And then the moderate intensity and the heavy intensity, so moderate intensity with creatine versus just the heavy intensity had whole brain changes to reduce brain aging. So for like, okay, I only lift one time a week and I'm using creatine, look at that, it reduces brain aging. So I was like, "That is a very powerful study and I want to push that out. "

Cori Lefkowith (00:44:18):
It also shows just how much there is nuance in everything and how one system doesn't work in isolation. And if you only have time for one training session, if you can optimize based on that and own that other aspects of your life can really contribute to the results that you see, you can make a lot of different things work for you and your needs.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:44:37):
Yeah, exactly. That is it. Yep. And it's interesting because we've all grown up with that you have to do something every day to be able to maintain a certain look or health status. It's like, no, we want to moderately dose different stressors throughout the week and that's how you're going to optimize.

Cori Lefkowith (00:44:59):
And off of this too, I know going back to talking about carbs specifically, because you mentioned not demonizing them, I think during, especially menopause, you see a lot of people saying, "Well, insulin sensitivity changes. This is why we store belly fat more, cut your carbs lower." How would you discuss this with somebody who maybe is starting to fear carbs a little bit because of the hormonal shifts?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:45:23):
Yeah. So another thing that people don't realize is that across the menstrual cycle, you also have insulin resistance changes, right? So in the higher hormone phase, we see more insulin resistance. And if we take it to that account, then body's used to going up and down, right? And if we're looking at absolute insulin resistance, this is where we really need to put exercise into play because one of the pages out of diabetes is that you have a meal, you go for a walk. Because if you go for a walk afterwards, then your body's able to metabolize some of that glucose without necessarily using insulin. So if we're trying to gain insulin control, that's one of the first things you can do. But if we're really trying to garner more metabolic control, this is where we look at high intensity and sprint work and fueling with carbohydrate.

(00:46:11):
Because if we are not ingesting carbohydrate, then we're not able to hit those intensities. If we can't hit those intensities, we're not going to get the epigenetic changes we need for metabolic control. So when we start talking about carbohydrate, it's like you want a morachorium of fruit and veg and whole grains for gut health. That's a given because we see such a significant change in gut microbiome diversity in the two to three years before that one point in time menopause. And unfortunately, because the body's more sympathetically driven, that change is more towards an obesogenic type phyla. So if we're eating more fruit and veg and whole grains, then we're able to create diversity and reduce that change. That's without exercise. When you start adding exercise in, that also increases gut microbiome diversity, depending on what kind you're doing. And if we are also looking at fueling for high intensity, yeah, it's carbohydrate.

(00:47:05):
You need it to hit high intensities, but that also feeds forward to better metabolic control and gut microbiome diversity. So when you start putting it in a whole picture, instead of categorizing in those absolutes, people start to go, "Oh, okay." And then I often finish with a bite of toast because I'm like, "I love carbs and here's my whole spreaded grain toast and it's really good. You want some? " And they're like, "What? I can eat toast?" It's like, yes, you can. You can, especially if you're training hard.

Cori Lefkowith (00:47:34):
We need to stop assigning moral value to food, which is a whole other subject.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:47:38):
Oh, I know.

Cori Lefkowith (00:47:39):
Even touching on that with gut health, I think it's such an important thing to bring up because we can see changes to our gut health. We experience bloating, different things like that during menopause, but we don't recognize how even improving our gut health can help with some of the other changes we're seeing from skin health to brain function to all these different things.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:47:57):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting as an expat living in New Zealand and the food system is completely different than what happens in the States. I go back to the states and everything there is like, I don't eat bread in the states, especially from the supermarket because it's so sweet. It's like putting cake in your toaster and Americans aren't like ... When you are in the states, you don't really realize that that's what's happened. And so there's so many things within it that contribute to this fear and this demonization. So when we start really pulling back and going, "Okay, let's look at the food system and where are we getting the food?" Because if we are looking at really good carbohydrate and looking at that gut microbiome diversity, then yes, we are improving everything across the board. Immunity comes first because if we're improving immunity, then we're able to fight off all the little things that start to kind of get under our resilience.

(00:48:57):
Then we start looking at more diversity to improve vitamin metabolism. And so we're able to use our micronutrients a lot better. How does that come into play? It improves bone density. We also see that not only are we improving bone density, but then we have the leverage of the muscle on the bone too. So again, it's like, yes, the diversity is so important because of all the things that occur with that diversity, it's not just my gut feels better and mine getting better BDNF production. It's every system of the body benefits from having a wide diversity in the gut microbiome.

Cori Lefkowith (00:49:35):
And it's so amazing how it really is that snowball effect or that build if you pull on one thread of what it can contribute to, or I guess a domino effect, so to speak. And I bring that up because I feel like when we talk about all these different things and all the opportunities and options to really optimize your body, we can get a little overwhelmed by all the options, especially when we're hearing even conflicting ideas out there. If there were to be one domino you would knock over that you feel like would knock over the most, what would you tell someone to start with? I mean- Sleep. Sleep? Let's talk about sleep then. So when you say sleep though, people go, "Well, I can't go to sleep longer because I have this thing and I have to get up at this time." So how do you navigate that?

(00:50:16):
And then I know it's more than just the amount we get too that's really

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:50:19):
Important

Cori Lefkowith (00:50:19):
To focus on.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:50:21):
Yeah. It's the sleep quality, right? And we grew up in the society of less sleep so you can get more done. It's like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Now we're seeing a shift into sleep preservation because the more that we're seeing the sleep research come out, the more important we know sleep is for all of the body. We don't really know the effects fully yet because we haven't had the opportunity to really dig into it. But one of the things that's really important to understand, especially as an active woman, is if you don't get adequate sleep, you're not going to find gains in the gym because sleep is so important for repair, but also metabolic control and inflammation. So if we're not getting enough sleep or we're not getting quality sleep, then we're not going to find what we want.

(00:51:12):
And a lot of times women get frustrated. And the other thing that we see when you have poor quality sleep is attention deficit during the day. Lots of people will say, oh, it's brain fog or kind of like a lapse in concentration, but it's when your brain is trying to do, it's cleansing during the day because it didn't have the opportunity at night. So I'm always like, the pillars are strength. And then we have exercise and nutrition that are kind of equal with community and nature. So sleep is the big pillar and then the other ones we kind of play and see personality wise, how we fit those in and change those. So when a woman's like, "I can't sleep, I'm perimenopause, or I have late meetings, or I have a kid that wakes me up." It's like, we need to look at sleep hygiene and the ways that we can maximize the sleep quality.

(00:52:03):
It's not about seven to nine hours. It's about being consistent, going to bed a consistent time, making sure that you're in a cool room, no screens, please, because people will sleep with phones in their room. It's like, no, outside the door. Ear plugs, especially if you have a partner, because their little movements and stuff at night will wake you up and you'll have lots of micro awakenings you don't even realize. And then you might look at using L-theanine and Apogenin to help really help activate parasympathetic. The other aspect about sleep that a lot of women are like, "Oh, I keep having lots of wake ups is because they're not eating enough." And that's the other thing. We see low energy availability or poor calorie intake throughout the day where they're eating lots in the morning and then a hole in the middle of the day and then lots at night, their body isn't able to process the energy at the times that it needs.

(00:52:55):
And if we're in a low energy state, then we'll have these hypoglycemic awakenings at night. So we'll have lots of micro awakenings. So it does come down to what are we doing in the day that's going to help preserve our sleep and our sleep quality. If we can maximize that as the very first thing, then we can start manipulating our exercise, our nutrition, and our time in nature and friends to really optimize our health and wellbeing.

Cori Lefkowith (00:53:21):
It is so interesting that we instantly go to those other things because they feel easier to control, but you're controlling something that ultimately is just going to make you expend a lot of effort to not see the results that you want. You've got to go to the root of the problem. And I think sometimes that means looking outside of the changes you've just made.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:53:40):
Yeah. Yeah, because I'll have people like, "Oh, okay, I'm going to start going to the gym." So they'll set their alarm for 4:30 when they're used to getting up at six, just so they can go to the gym, but they haven't backdated their nighttime. So they're actually cutting into a really good amount of sleep. So you're going there and you're a little bit sleep deprived and your body's like, "What's going on? " So you can't actually hit intensities as you want. Your cognitive and reactive times are a bit slower, so you're not going to be able to lift well, and it's really compromising what you're trying to do. So when they are always tired and they're implementing this new thing that is supposed to make them feel better and they don't, why do I bother? It's like, okay, well, we need to look at the very first thing and that is the sleep thing.

(00:54:24):
If we are going to the gym sleep deprived, then you're not going to put in the effort that you need to get that adaptive change because the body's going to be in a protective mechanism of, "I didn't get enough sleep. What's going on?

Cori Lefkowith (00:54:38):
" And we don't realize the impact that even has then on how we're fueling where because we're sleep deprived, it can be much harder to adjust our diet and make those changes even there.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:54:47):
Yeah. And we see a lot in women too who they get up at 4:30 and they go to the gym, they have a workout, they don't necessarily eat. It's part of the whole fasting thing. Then they might have breakfast afterwards, hopefully they do. And then about two or three in the afternoon, they're craving simple carbohydrates and then having what I call the wall lean where they're like, "Oh, I'm just so tired. I can't stand up." It's like, okay, well, so if we were to backdate it and go, you're going to get up, you're going to go to the gym, you go to bed earlier so you can get some good quality sleep. You have some fuel before you go to the gym because then that's going to tell your hypothalamus and your appetite hormones, boom, time to get up and work. So then in the afternoon, you don't have those simple carbohydrate cravings because you haven't had dysregulation of your appetite hormones.

(00:55:36):
You also incidentally move more, so then your body is moving more throughout the day, which all contributes to being able to sleep better. So it is, it's like the chicken and the egg, right? It's like, well, what comes first? Well, we kind of have to look at it in a barn view where let's try to manipulate everything in here to optimize everything that's in the barn.

Cori Lefkowith (00:56:02):
But it's also slightly freeing to look at how everything's connected because sometimes I think we just think we don't have the willpower to make the dietary changes or to push ourself to work out. And owning the other parts of our lifestyle that are contributing to the struggles can be very eye-opening, but also oddly alleviate some of the stress or strain because you can then adjust everything knowing that it isn't just you aren't able to work hard enough or you aren't disciplined enough.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:56:26):
Yeah. I think that's very freeing for women. One of the things I try to get people to do is ditch their wearables, especially the sleep wearables because the algorithms aren't correct for women. And a lot of times you'll wake up and you feel good and you look and it's like, you feel like shit, you shouldn't be doing stuff. It's like, okay, now mentally I don't feel well, so I shouldn't be doing this. So if we ditch the wearables and we start intuitively listening to how we feel, that gives a lot of freedom to women. And they're like, "Oh, I don't feel great today." And I have the permission not to go hard. And then all of a sudden they're like, "Why have I been pushing myself the whole time my entire life going contra to what my body is telling me to do? " And then other days where you feel a little bit flat, it's like, well, do you feel physically flat and mentally flat or just mentally flat and physically good?

(00:57:17):
So let's rate mental and physical because if you're like, "Oh, mentally I feel a bit low, but physically I feel good, let's go do a couple of heavy lifts and then that's going to wait mentally. That's going to really revive you and make you feel great." So there's lots of little tricks in there to understand, but the very first thing is understanding your own body and intuitively listening to, do I feel fatigued or do I feel wasted? Do I feel wasted from lack of sleep or do I feel wasted because I'm getting sick and too much stress? So these are all the things that women have to relearn because we've been conditioned and thrown into that box to say, "You have to do X, Y, Z. You have to look a certain way and you can only talk about these things and how you feel in this parameter." So that's why I'm like, "Let's put a lid on it, throw it away, and let's recreate how we feel and how we talk and how we have these conversations."

Cori Lefkowith (00:58:11):
It's recognizing the data that research gives us direction, but it doesn't actually dictate exactly what we need to do because we aren't living in a research study. And so we have to own what's going on in our body and even what we need to keep moving forward. Sometimes ideal, sometimes not as ideal.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:58:30):
Yeah. And I get pushback on that too. It's like, but so- and-so said, and these are these absolutes. And it's like we have to get rid of the absolutes. We have to look at the nuances. We have to look at the lived experiences too. Because if we were to take two 42-year-old women and they have similar body composition, but one has a really good training history and one doesn't, then they're going to do two different things. You're going to have two different journeys and you have to look at the stress that's in those two different journeys and people don't get that. It's like there are absolutes when you're talking about some generalized ideas, but the nuances are so important. And the nuance of understanding yourself and your body and how you respond to things is one of the most important things to do.

Cori Lefkowith (00:59:14):
Even the mindsets, because what tools you're comfortable implementing or you're willing to implement or the habits you're willing to stick with sometimes come back to how you've used in the past. Even tracking food for one person, it can be very freeing for another, it can be very restrictive. And part of that is not only how our mind might work if we're more data driven or less data driven, but also even how we've used in the past to either add back in foods or to cut our calories super low and be miserable and hangry all the time.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:59:41):
Right, right. And I mean, you understand triggers. It's like, okay, there are some women who have a history of disordered eating and we have no scales in the house because then they focus on what that says on the scale instead of the nutrient density that they need without actually understanding that if you get the nutrient density, then I'm Number on the scale doesn't matter because internally and externally you're sweet. So we understand those triggers and we work around those triggers too.

Cori Lefkowith (01:00:10):
And going off on the nuance, and you slightly touched on this with sleep, but I want to circle back to it because I think it's a myth that still is around, although hopefully dying a little bit quicker, but you can't eat after a certain time or you'll gain fat. And I think that's led to some sleep interruptions, but also this fear of eating too late at night and it not being utilized in the same way.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:00:33):
Yeah. So one of the, I guess the reasons why people were so freaking out about eating late and gaining fat is yes, what happens is you don't get a lot of parasympathetic sleep because your body's trying to digest instead of all the reparations. So if you're doing that on a continuous basis, you're going to have metabolic instability, meaning that you don't have a lot of glucose control, you have a little bit more insulin resistance, greater inflammation, that leads to fat gain. It's not how your body's storing food, it's the processes that are behind it. We also see that when you are having something right before bed, if it is higher protein and lower carb, it actually doesn't interfere with sleep so much. So those people who are like, "But I work out at 7:00 PM and I come home and then I shouldn't eat dinner because it's so close to bedtime." It's like, well, if we back it up and say, let's have a really good lunch and then maybe a little bit fuller meal about five o'clock and then you go and your trainings from 70 to 8:30, then you can come home and have your protein oriented stuff and sleep like a baby.

(01:01:36):
It's not about all the timing of it. It's about, yeah, okay, what are we having when?

Cori Lefkowith (01:01:42):
It is about addressing the fact that it's also your lifestyle. And if you need to eat at that time and you're more dealing with that wake up, sometimes you have to address that wake up first over worrying about the other things. And you can have that smaller protein meal.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:01:57):
It's true. Very true.

Cori Lefkowith (01:02:00):
Well, there have been so many good things that I could literally talk to you for a bazillion hours, but I want to dive into some of the not so rapid fire, rapid fire questions to hit you with, if you're okay with that.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:02:11):
Sure.

Cori Lefkowith (01:02:12):
All right. So the first one is about daily habits. My day isn't complete without ...

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:02:19):
Outside time. I need to be outside every day, just like a dog needs to be outside playing every day. Sometimes it's just the 10 minutes before my husband and daughter get up and is super quiet and I'm outside drinking coffee just for that nature time. Yeah, it kind of grounds me.

Cori Lefkowith (01:02:42):
It's the non-negotiable in the day.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:02:44):
It is. Absolutely.

Cori Lefkowith (01:02:46):
And speaking about dogs, when I was thinking about sleep when you said the partner and them not waking you up, I was like, "What do you do when the Bichons walk on your head in the middle of the night?" I know you could just not have them sleep on the bed, but they're so cute.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:02:58):
Yeah. It's okay. We have a ridge back and before we started putting me in cage asleep, he would come up in the middle of the night and he's tall enough that his head would be right on the bed and I wake up with his dog nose in the middle of the night and I was like, "Whoa." So yeah. A little too close. There you go. You could put your little pups in a cage too.

Cori Lefkowith (01:03:17):
I know. If it interrupts my sleep enough, I will do that, but for now what's the biggest myth you wish would disappear?

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:03:27):
Can we go back to the calories in calories out? We

Cori Lefkowith (01:03:29):
Can. We can hit on that one.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:03:32):
I think the biggest myth is what women are supposed to look like. We see these images all the time and it's so apparent even in like American sitcoms and American, and I'm saying that because I also get British TV and it's a little bit different, but the women in all the television shows are very thin. And even if they're older, they still have to be thin. But the men, they age and they don't have to be. So there's a direct sex difference in the imaging that we have and it perpetuates this women are supposed to be thin and demure in order to be attractive. And that is one of the biggest myths. And I really, really wanted to spell that because then it filters through so many different industries.

Cori Lefkowith (01:04:19):
It really is about pursuing the goals and the aesthetic and the feel that you want out of your life so that you can live your best life.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:04:27):
Yeah. And an example of that I have is I work in the building of our Olympic Rugby sevens women and they are gold medal athletes and they have to look and be a certain way to be successful in their sport. But then when they go to award ceremony and they put on a dress, their die hard fans don't like it and they get trolled about it. They're like, "You don't look like a woman." But then when they're on the rugby field, they're like, "Yeah, go hard." So there's this disconnect about what it means to be successful as an athlete in your job, in your sport, and what you're supposed to look like in a cocktail dress. And it's like that right there is the most telling contradiction where you're all supportive of this woman when she is in her job doing what she needs to be doing.

(01:05:17):
But when it comes to trying to implement and look what society wants her to be, it doesn't work for you. So this is the whole thing of like, we need to stop putting women in this box because if they are achieving at the highest level in their job, then that is what they are supposed to look like and how they are supposed to be.

Cori Lefkowith (01:05:38):
You even see that mindset in some of the athletes themselves. And I say that because on my college tennis team, so I played division one for Boston University and we did Olympic lifting. It was my first introduction to lifting and I freaking loved it. And so I'm like embracing it, doing whatever. And I realized some of my teammates weren't as into it. And I just figured, hey, they don't like the lifting, that's fine. They like the tennis, but they actually brought up that they didn't want to get too bulky. And I found this very interesting because I'm like, "I'm on scholarship. I'm here to play. I'm going to do whatever I need to do to play. Forget everything else." And I also liked the muscle, but I thought it was very interesting just how much that attitude even got into how they then wanted to train because of fear of what society would think of them when they weren't competing.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:06:25):
Yeah. Yes. And we see that. I mean, that's why we have such an incidence of relative energy deficiency in sport, low energy availability, not just in our Olympians and our elite athletes, but also in general recreational women, because it is this whole disconnect of what society thinks you're supposed to be versus how your body's responding to proper nutrition and exercise.

Cori Lefkowith (01:06:47):
Got to fuel those gains. I

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:06:49):
Know.

Cori Lefkowith (01:06:49):
And now what's the ... I was going to say, what's the hardest lesson you've learned?

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:06:56):
Oh, gosh. I've had so many across my life by pushing the dogma and asking why that I couldn't even tell you what the hardest one was. I think one of the most difficult times was transferring from being a high performing elite athlete into general pop and working with athletes and to help them succeed. It's that whole, was I quite done with my sport? Probably not, but knowing when to step out and how to make that transference is really difficult if you don't know how it can affect you. I think there are more mental skills coaches around to help athletes do that transition, but for me, it was really difficult.

Cori Lefkowith (01:07:43):
I think that's even a great point in terms of any identity shift because there's going to be constant identity shifts over our life where we're letting go of one phase to step into the next thing. And if we don't let go of what worked to get us to one place, we'll never succeed in getting to the next because it often is what made us successful, holds us back, right? So I think it's something that the more we own that anytime we're making a big lifestyle change, we're potentially losing a part of ourselves that was tied to how we defined ourselves.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:08:11):
Yeah. And often when you go to a cocktail party or a gathering and you're like, "So what do you do as the opening?" It's not like, who are you? It's, what do you do? And it depends on the context. Some people, "Oh, I'm a triathlete. I'm a runner," or, "I'm a VC." It's never like, "I'm a mom and I'm a woman and I'm this and I'm that. " It's all an identity associated with work or sport.

Cori Lefkowith (01:08:42):
It's very interesting transition and something we have to be very cognizant of in terms of our mindset around it. Otherwise, I think it can really hold us back and we can really struggle to embrace the new lifestyle that we have to lead.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:08:54):
Yeah.

Cori Lefkowith (01:08:56):
And then when you need to reset or recharge, what's your go- to ritual?

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:09:01):
Oh, I'm lucky enough that I live in a surf town, so the ocean is really close to my house. In the summer, the way I reset is I meet friends first thing in the morning. Some people call it shark eating time, but I like to say sunrise and go for a swim or a surf. It's like that connection of being in the water with the sun and everything that just really is grounding. And the other is a gravel ride. So used to race bikes, I don't get on the road anymore. It's too dangerous and I don't want to deal with people. So I get on my gravel bike and I just go wandering. And it's all about, I guess, if you contextualize it, being in nature and the way that I explain it to my husband and my daughter, because they don't quite get what I mean, like I need to be in the ocean or I need to be on my bike.

(01:09:53):
So I'm a huge drum and bass fan. So I play like the Chillsville where it's just really low key, not a lot of drops. I'm like, "This is me in the ocean, this is me on my bike." And then I play something really, really heavy with lots of drops and really grungy, grungy. I'm like, "This is my brain the rest of the time." So I need that in order to deal with that. And they're like, "I get it.

Cori Lefkowith (01:10:16):
" It's that complete disconnect. And living in Southern California, I love the beach too, so I totally get that.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:10:22):
Yeah, you get it. Yeah.

Cori Lefkowith (01:10:24):
And then what's one piece of advice you'd go back and tell your younger self?

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:10:30):
Oh, just ... Yeah, I've had this question before and I'm always like, would I try to intervene to change anything? Would I tell my younger self something that would change the course of what I'm doing? And I have come to realize that I wouldn't because all the lived experiences and all the really hard times have given me the intuition and the experiences to be able to do what I do now, both as a scientist, but also as a person who wants to give back to the world. I think the only thing I would tell my younger self is just to keep pushing and to be resilient because it does work out. And if you think it's not going to work out, it's because that's not the right direction.

Cori Lefkowith (01:11:16):
And you might just be a little too close thinking that outcome is the end when it's not anywhere near it.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:11:22):
No, exactly.

Cori Lefkowith (01:11:24):
And now I know everybody's going to want to follow you for more information, catch up, learn about the latest projects. Where can they find more from you?

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:11:33):
So we're on social media, Dr. Stacy Sims on Instagram and for old school people, Facebook. I'm also on LinkedIn, which is more the professional scope of stuff that we're doing. And then our website, drstacysims.com, and that has our ability to sign up for our biweekly newsletter. It talks about all the projects we're doing and has all of our online courses that are available too.

Cori Lefkowith (01:12:02):
And if people were to take away one message, one amazing snippet from today's discussion, what would you want it to be?

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:12:12):
Whatever you're doing in your life, I want you to sit up tall and take up space. I don't want women to shuffle on the side of the sidewalk because someone's walking towards them. I want them to be strong and resilient and to take up that space because if we take up that space and have that confidence, then it feeds forward to everything that we do.

Cori Lefkowith (01:12:33):
I feel like you would very much like my kiss your bicep when someone says something to you that you just want to make them feel extra awkward about.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:12:43):
Love that.

Cori Lefkowith (01:12:43):
My best comeback ever.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:12:45):
Love that.

Cori Lefkowith (01:12:47):
Well, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Stacy Sims (01:12:49):
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been great.

 

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.