MIssey and Bethanie expertly swing kettlebells in the 5:30pm class.
Female Hormones and Body Composition
All this week I am exploring how much to eat to support our training. By far, the most common question I get during our New Year check-ins is, "How much should I eat?" Most of us have a goal to control our body composition so that we maximize our lean mass and keep our body fat percentage below a specific level.
Many, many of us have a weight loss goal. I understand and respect our desire to have a healthy weight. I also want to stress that it might be more important to track our lean mass rather than our body weight. Our body is amazing and the skin, muscle, bones, organs and body fat all play a vitally important role in our homeostasis. Lean mass influences our metabolism and body fat influences our endocrine system, aka hormones. This is why body fat percentages above 30% for men and women younger than 50 are a concern. Body fat is hormonally active and the more we have of it the more it impacts our insulin, cortisol, and other hormone regulation. Drop it below 30% and you reduce the risk of most metabolic diseases. Lean mass, notably, muscle, is metabolically active. The more we have the better we are able to stave off many diseases of aging (osteoporosis and sarcopenia, and to some extent diabetes and metabolic X syndrome.) You can ameliorate many of the health risks of high body weight by have more lean mass and lower body fat. That's why your body composition (lean mass and body fat) matter much more than your body weight. Remember, I can calculate your lean mass at your check-in or you can get it tested on campus. For us women, our hormones, during puberty, reproductive years, and the menopause transition can give us all kinds of challenges. This is especially true if we are athletes, which all of you at the gym are:) That's why I'm sharing this excellent and short podcast from Wild Health featuring Dr. Carla DiGirolamo the lead instructor of my Menopause continuing education course that I just finished. She provides an excellent synopsis of how our hormones impact body composition through all the phases of our hormonal journey. No matter where you are in your life, puberty, reproductive years, our menopause transition you will definitely learn something from Dr. DiGirolamo. Click on the link below to listen or go here. ​ In this episode, Dr. Mike Stone and Dr. Carla DiGirolamo, board-certified Reproductive Endocrinologists who specialize in all aspects of fertility care, will be discussing a topic that is of utmost importance to many women - weight management and its relationship to female hormones.
If you want to get a personalized nutrition plan or help with your performance goals, book a New Year Check-in with me. I'm only scheduling Check-ins for one more week, so take advantage today!
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 Most "New Year" fad diets, detoxes, and resets will not support recovery from the heavy days we do once a week at the gym. Eat to PerformAccording to this blog by Dr. Stacy Sims, "A 2022 study of more than 200 female endurance athletes published in Frontiers in Sport and Active Living reported that 65 percent were at risk of low energy availability (LEA), 23 percent were at risk of exercise addiction, and 21 percent had disordered eating behavior." Let's take a moment and read that last statistic again, "21 percent of female athletes had disordered eating." We're not talking about a diagnosable and treatable eating disorder, we're talking about things like skipping meals, obsessing over "clean" eating, or cutting out an entire category of food because it's "bad." FOOD IS AMORAL. Food just is. Food does not have a moral compass. However, at this time of year especially, we are bombarded with messages that we need to detox, cleanse, restrict, and reset our eating habits. These messages are dressed up as healthy. In reality, these messages are strongly in the category of disordered eating. To help me wade through all the silly "New Year New You" bullshit messages bombarding us this year, I enrolled in a Fuel for Performance online continuing education course. This course is helps Coaches like me see through all the crazy messages and get clear on how I can help all of my active athletes (read: you) eat to support our performance goals. Here is little snippet from my lesson today: As an active woman, it’s very important to be able to make the distinction between a fad challenge and what type of nutrition you need to support your goals. So what is the difference between disordered eating and an eating disorder? Here's a handy comparative guide. Disordered Eating Examples
I have fallen prey to some and I used to promote one at the gym. As Maya Angelou once said, "when you know better, do better." Fad Challenges that flirt with disordered eating include Whole30, Master Cleanse, juice cleanses, detox teas, and resets that include drinking or eating a proprietary product. The reason these fads, challenges, detoxes, and resets are troublesome is that most of them eliminate entire categories of food, e.g. meat, grains, certain vegetables, or entire macronutrient categories, protein, carbohydrates, fats, without consideration or your unique needs, medical condition or goals. I want us all to smash PRs, do the hard races and routes, lift all the heavy things, and accomplish everything we set out to do. What we eat needs to FUEL our efforts. It needs to match the goals. If you would like some help identifying your goals and developing a fueling plan to help you achieve those goals, be sure to book a New Year Check-in with me. Together we will develop a plan to help you be the badass athlete you were born to be.  Marianne and Debbie with their limited edition 2024 Committed Club gift. Have you wondered why we give stickers for milestones like 25 and 50 classes or this year's limited edition make-up bag for making the 2024 Committed Club? It's because everyone REALLY does love getting a gold star and those milestones worthy of praise.  2024 Committed Club members earned fun gifts. Many people believe that those of us who stick with an exercise program or a specific nutrition program must somehow have some magic well of motivation from which we can draw. The truth is that those of us who stick with a healthy lifestyle practice have learned (conscious or otherwise) how to celebrate our wins. Motivation ONLY comes after a win. It rarely precedes it. A win can be as simple as an acknowledgement (like big X on a calendar) of a the first day of a new habit. It doesn't really matter what you're counting down or trying to change, think about how satisfying those big Xs look. With each X you get feel more motivated to stay the course. Our stickers and 100 class socks, 250 class shirts, 500 class mugs, 750 class water bottles, 1000 class sweat pants, and 2024 Committed Club bag do the same thing. They're an acknowledgment of your success. Our workout tracking app, Beyond the Whiteboard, does the same thing. Every time you open the app you get a quick snapshot of your week, month and lifetime of fitness. Have you looked at your BTWB Year in Fitness yet? It gives you an overview of your 2024 training days and PRs. According to BTWB "Training days with a lightning bolt mean you set at least one PR for that day-but keep in mind, you might see more PRs listed than lightning bolts, since some days you crushed multiple PRs." We have started a BTWB Year in Review board at the gym. Be sure to share your stats with us! Here's my year in review.  Schedule a New Year Check In with me and we will take a look at your BTWB Year in Fitness. Let's celebrate those wins!
 Marianne and Holly do half kneeling windmill presses in the 9am class.  Holly demonstrates a more advanced version of the press. This movement is your skill work today. It's a Festivus Miracle!Kramer declares two miracles in the Festivus episode of Seinfeld. Of course neither are true miracles and both are funny! "Jeremy did 50 burpees without dropping the F bomb even once!" is more along the lines of a Festivus miracle we can understand. Or "Matt did five rounds of deadlifts without using all the chalk. It's a Festivus miracle!" Stuff like that we can all relate to. So what's your Festivus miracle? Let us know in the comments and on social media with the hashtag #festivuswod any Festivus miracles you observe!  |
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