Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 134: 9 Fitness Marketing Myths that Target Women + The Truth

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

In this episode, coach Danny reviews nine of the most damaging and pervasive fitness myths that marketers use to target women and promote health misinformation.---Thanks For Listening!---Grab the new Female Physique Advanced HERE!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE!Want Coach Danny to Fix Your S*** (training, nutrition, lifestyle, etc) fill the form HERE for a chance to have your current approach reviewed live on the show. Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Hey, everybody, welcome into another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I am your host, Danny Matranga. In today's episode, we're going to take a look at nine pervasive fitness marketing myths that just don't go away. These are things that tend to be pushed by influencers, by personalities in the fitness space, or even just old wives tales that are stubborn. And we can't get to go away no matter how much literature or common sense we try to apply to kind of clear the air in these situations. Now, I specifically selected these nine things because I think they disproportionately target female lifters or women who are looking to improve their physique. Just generally speaking, women are exponentially

more exposed to misinformation on the internet. They're targeted much more so than men. I've experienced my fair share of fitness misinformation, but having trained mostly women over my career, I'd say about 65 to 70% of my clientele over the 10 years I've been doing this have been women. I've heard it all. I've had clients come to me with questions that just make my head want to pop off of my body and drive me absolutely bonkers. And this stuff doesn't show any signs of going away. So I'm hoping today's discussion, we can unpack some of this stuff, apply a little bit of nuance and common sense, and hopefully get a little bit closer to the truth. Now, before I do, just so I can pay the bills, I want to plug

one of my favorite sponsors, Legion Supplements. Now, you probably have been around long enough to have tried your fair share of nutritional supplements, and it feels like everybody these days is in the supplement space. It's not hard to get into, and it's not hard to create supplement products. In fact, the reason it's so attractive to so many marketers and fitness product enthusiasts are because there's a bunch of money to be made selling supplements, right? The average supplement is marked up six to 12 times before you're sold them from the actual cost of production to the cost of consumption. And we haven't even gotten into the actual integrity of the space because supplements aren't regulated by the FDA. It's's kind of up to the manufacturer just how transparent they want to be with their labeling. And it seems like every year there's a huge expose where they go into some type of GNC or

vitamin shop and sample 100 random products and find that there's like a 60% hit rate that these products are underdosed, full of shit that's not on the label, contain none of what's supposed to be in the product, etc. You get the point. It's pretty messy. And most companies don't even do the due diligence of telling you what's supposed to be in the product. They hide behind proprietary blends. And I hate that. That's why I decided when looking for a supplement company to partner with, to partner with Legion. Before we ever partnered together, I was taking the Pulse Stem Free Pre-Workout, the whey protein, the fish oil, the greens, and the multivitamins. I love their products and Legion does it right. All the products are 100% naturally flavored and sweetened,

no artificial sweeteners, which isn't a huge deal to me. I think artificial sweeteners tend to be fine, but if you're going to load up on something every day, you're going to take a protein, maybe a pre-workout, maybe a creatine, It might make sense to be mindful of your artificial sweetener intake. And to me, I think that's a really, really good idea to just be mindful of in the long run, even if we know short-term, most artificial sweeteners are fine in small dosages. But Legion makes a phenomenal product. Everything is transparently dosed. There's tons of information on the website for you to actually dive into and educate yourself. Everything has batch numbers. You can check and make sure where it was made, the amounts, and the dosages are legit. The product formulations

are top-notch, cutting-edge, at the very, very pinnacle of what I would describe the supplement space. My non-negotiable everyday supplements that I take from Legion are the Recharge Creatine. I absolutely love the strawberry lemonade flavor. I'm taking the Stimulant Free Pulse and the New Arctic Blast flavor, which takes a lot like the White Monster. I also really like the Stim Free Tropical Punch. Whey Protein, one of my go-tos. I'm boring. I like the chocolate. Then I take the Acai Berry Legion Greens. Those are my everyday supplement staples. I don't take a ton of stuff on top of that, but that's what I tend to recommend. And if you want to support the show, you can head over to legion.com, check out using the promo code Danny and save 20% on your first order and

earn two times points that you can use on future orders just like cash. So guys, without further ado, let's get into the nine fitness marketing myths that I think are particularly dubious. This is a new list that target women. The first of which is the notion that a workout, a singular workout, can meaningfully burn fat. And I think we need to be clear here. I'm not talking about what is often referred to as the fat burning zone. I'm not talking about what is often referred to as the fat-burning zone. And when you hear, you probably heard this before, the fat-burning zone, or hey, I need to bring my heart rate down to get into the fat-burning zone, or I need to bring my heart rate up to get into the fat-burning zone, or hey, my wearable says I'm burning fat.

So theoretically, there is an application for being in the fat-burning zone. And that would be where our body is preferentially metabolizing fatty acids over carbohydrate. That's usually low intensity aerobic work, where we use what's called our oxidative system to fuel ourselves using fatty acid. And that's not necessarily stored fatty acid. It can be fatty acid that's in our bloodstream, but it's important to acknowledge there's a big difference between a workout that is burning body fat and a workout that is using fat as fuel. There's a big, big difference. And one of the things that fitness marketers and influencers will do all the time is they will label movements, workouts, programs, et cetera, as fat burning. They'll say,

do this fat burning circuit or do this movement to tone this body part or to burn body fat. And truthfully, I think we're leaving a huge piece of the equation out here. And I know that this is generally done intentionally because remember, bullshit tends to sell pretty well. And that's one of the unfortunate kind of cruxes of our space is people want things fast and they want to know that what they're doing is working. is people want things fast and they want to know that what they're doing is working. And while exercise is a phenomenal tool for improving and even enhancing weight loss through caloric expenditure, no workout is going to meaningfully burn body fat. There is no such thing as a workout that is going to effectively burn substantial amounts of body fat compared to another workout. It's just not the case. The only reliable way to lose body fat is to be in a calorie deficit. To do this, you need to figure out your total daily energy expenditure. This is the number of calories you burn every day.

Not just your basal metabolic rate, which is what you burn at rest, but this includes things like your TEF, your thermic effect of feeding, your NEAT, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and your EAT, your exercise activity thermogenesis. your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and your eat, your exercise activity thermogenesis. So eating less than your total daily energy expenditure, which is the aggregate of all of the basal metabolic processes you run from working your kidneys, your brain, your liver, etc., to digesting and assimilating nutrients, to the exercises you do, to the movement you do that's not exercise-related. You need to eat less than the total number there. That's how you lose body fat. Going to the gym might help with that through virtue of, you know, burning more calories. But if you do a HIIT circuit, you do a heavy power lifting workout,

you do a conventional bodybuilding workout, you do a CrossFit workout, you do a basketball game, you're not going to burn any more or less fat in the long run, in my opinion, doing that. What you're going to do, even if you're in, like I said, that fat burning zone is preferentially metabolize that substrate. It's not just as simple as I'm in the fat burning zone. I'm literally tapping into my stored body fat. That is not how any of this works. Like in theory, if that were the case, if you ate a ketogenic diet, uh, and we're just constantly, constantly loading your body with dietary fatty acid. Um, and your body was body was just saying, I know we've got fatty acid circulating in the bloodstream because this person literally subsists on just eggs, bacon, coffee, butter coffee, you know, cheese, typical keto foods.

You wouldn't get, you know, you'd constantly be burning through your stored body fat. Well, these fat cells or this circulating fast fatty acid just, you know, accumulated in your bloodstream. And eventually you'd have, you know, hardening and thickening of the arteries, but that's not how this works. Our body will preferentially burn substrates that are available in the bloodstream. So for example, circulating blood sugar and circulating fatty acid is going to get used before stored glycogen and before stored body fat. And so the idea that a workout can be fat burning is let's say half baked. And it's something that we need to move away from. What you're better off doing in the gym isn't focusing on being in the fat burning zone. It isn't even focusing on burning

as many calories as possible. If your goals are body composition related, I think that, and I tell people this all the time, you're looking for somewhere between an 80-20 to a 70-30 split of anaerobic work, work that does not burn fat, work that's not in the fat burning zone. This is weights, this is resistance training. And the 20-30 end of that spectrum would be the aerobic work that is in that oxidative system. But you want to send those muscles the signal that it's important that we maintain you if we're in a deficit, that we build you for maintenance or in a surplus, right? We want to preserve muscle at all costs, especially if we are in a deficit. And absurd amounts of aerobic work done in the fat burning zone can have negative implications on our ability to save and maintain muscle while in deficit. So move away from the notion that workouts should be fat burning. Instead, focus on monitoring your nutritional intake and let your workouts be enjoyable. Let your workouts be things that bring you to the gym. And ideally, if your goal is body composition, let them be resistance-based in nature. Okay, second piece, and this is again, big time for women. And that's the notion that you need to eat very little or very small portions to be fit and have a nice physique, that you need to eat like a bird. Look, it's no secret. Women generally even if we were to equate for things like activity, just because of the increased, you know, muscle mass that's typical with men, you know, that less than men. So a woman's portion size, like if she were

looking to maintain her weight compared to a slightly larger man is always going to be smaller. Caloric needs tend to be smaller. But the idea that to be fit and to be thin, women need to eat less, less, less and eat small portions. I have found this to be particularly harmful. It's not uncommon for me to work with a woman and for her to say, okay, I'm in a calorie deficit or I want to be in a calorie deficit. I think, I think I do. I want to lose weight and I her to say, okay, I'm in a calorie deficit or I want to be in a calorie deficit. I think, I think I do. I want to lose weight. And I go, okay, well, I'm going to calculate your total daily energy expenditure. And let's just say hypothetically that number came out to 2000. And so I'm going to say, all right, well, we can put you in an intense deficit

of 1500 calories, 500 below your total daily energy expenditure. It's a 500 calorie deficit. Or maybe 1,750, a 250 calorie deficit, a little less intense. And it's not uncommon for those things to be met with. 1,500 calories, isn't that a lot? It's fucking not. It's really not a lot, to be honest. It's actually like poverty macros. It's terrifyingly small. And it's almost always going to be a deficit depending on the activity. If you're very, very sedentary, if you don't move much at all, if most of what you do on a day-to-day basis is like sitting behind a desk, then yeah, you might need to go lower than 1500. But for most women who are active, 1500 is very little calories and more than likely going to put you in a deficit.

But it never ceases to amaze me just how many clients are shocked by the notion that 1500 calories is a deficit. They feel like that is a lot of food. And that is because for a very, very long time, long before I ever got into the fitness space, long before podcasting, you know, we're talking decades, decades, decades of rhetoric around women needing to eat small portions to maintain their body size. And unfortunately, the more active you are, the less this is like, well, it's actually very fortunate. This isn't just plain, it's false. It's not true. You probably would need to eat

less than a man, sure. But you know, 1500 calories isn't a lot. And so one of these myths that just tends to persist is the incessant notion that women need to eat tiny portions. I have found that it is almost always better for females to eat in a smaller, more conservative calorie deficit and to choose a longer pathway for weight loss when possible. Just due to the various physiological implications on female physiology of an intense deficit. So for example, if you take a man and you say, okay, I'm going to crush you with a super big deficit, he'll probably see his libido dip. He'll probably see his performance dip. He'll probably be more irritable. Sure. But you give them enough calories, that stuff tends to come back.

Well, now on the flip side, do the same thing to a woman. You're going to see the same irritability. You're going to see the same performance dips, but you'll also see menstrual cycle dysfunction You can see things like hair and nail growth stop or even you know hair start to fall out And many women work out to look better and feel more confident. So crushing yourself with a massive deficit You know losing your hair losing the quality of your skin having no no workout quality, being irritable, losing your menstrual cycle. That's not something I'm after ever with clients. In fact, I get a lot of clients from other coaches who come to me with that exact problem. So I think the best thing you can do is acknowledge if you want to lose body fat, yeah, you do need to be in a deficit.

But that doesn't mean you need to eat 1,200 calories or fewer. That's hogwash. What you want to do, figure out that total daily energy expenditure and eat less than that. And I would say generally try to be conservative with that figure. If you want to try a 200 calories below TDEE, 200 calories below maintenance, I think that's a great place to start. And I would say more often than not, a conservative deficit that respects your physiology and respects your needs as a human being that isn't going to completely rip your menstrual cycle away. You might want to implement some diet breaks

more frequently. For example, if you're going to do a 500 calorie deficit, maybe every month you have a week where you eat at maintenance, or maybe every other week you have a two day period where you have a carbohydrate refeed. So you can kind of resensitize yourself to some things, top off some glycogen, get that mental break. I just think you need to be careful. And so getting away from the notion that being in a deficit all the time, an intense deficit or eating very little

is what's required of a woman to achieve a lean feminine physique. That's just a bunch of hogwash. You can certainly eat plenty of carbs. We'll get to more of the macros as we get through some of these myths too. But I think in general, we want conservative deficits. We don't want to eat, deliberately eat less than we need to because you can end up with some problems. Number three are women's

performance supplements. Now I'm not talking about things like vitamins or even probiotics. There are obviously some specific mineral differences between males and females when it comes to physiological needs. Iron, for example, is something that women tend to need a little bit more of than men. And then even when we talk about some, let's call them unique supplements like probiotics, there are some probiotic strains that are particularly beneficial to female physiology versus male physiology. So that's why I use the caveat performance supplements. I think when we talk about performance supplements, we're talking about things like creatine, pre-workout, maybe even things like protein powder that help with

increasing your total protein intake so you can improve your performance. There are a ton of products marketed to women like women's pre-workout or women's protein or women's creatine, that are completely bullshit. Almost all of these products are exponentially underdosed, meaning they don't include the actually effective dosages required to elicit an effect in humans. And I find that to be unbelievably dubious to say, let's just put less of what works in there and sell it to women because they're smaller and they'll think a smaller scoop is good. No, that is trash. That's unethical. And I think that that's garbage. I think that the supplement industry is going to

do whatever they can to make money. So informing people like yourselves who are consumers is probably a good idea. And Hey, look, you, this episode is not just for women. If you're a guy, you know, this is something that's probably going to be worth putting on your radar too, because you're going to get the flip end of this, which is supplements marketed to dudes. And so just pay attention to what you're looking at here. But in general, supplements, performance supplements marketed to women are usually underdosed and they're usually very overpriced. And then of course, there's some small packaging details that supplement companies spend a lot of money on making sure, hmm, is this

packaging appealing to women? And a lot of times it's patronizingly obvious. They're like, oh, let's just make it fucking pink and put the silhouette of a woman on there. Oh, that's as far as they go. But underdosing ingredients, pixie dusting ingredients, using proprietary blends, calling something women's creatine or women's protein or women's pre-workout, that's garbage. We got to get away from that. I find that that is basically a way for supplement companies to sell smaller serving sizes and include smaller dosages of the ingredients that cost them more money. And so this is a marketing myth and gimmick that's been around for a really long time. Things like multivitamins, things like probiotics that I

mentioned, there might be rationale behind taking one specifically formulated for your gender. Sure. However, with regards to performance supplements, I think that for the most part, you're going to be good no matter where you are on that spectrum. If you're getting the dosages that are clinically proven to work in the research, and again, there's not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to taking less if in fact the smaller dose still has an effect. But with a lot of these ingredients, you have to eclipse a certain dose to get the effect. So I think it's kind of shy. I think it's one of the more lame things that we see and I wish it would go away. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast.

And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Number four, obsessive utilization of terms like toned or slim thick by people who are genetically gifted and are genetically predisposed to those kinds of aesthetic or let's say appearances. I've talked about this before on the podcast. It made the list because I felt like it was important to bring it up again. But when we talk about the term toned, we are generally talking about a particular physique. A toned physique is usually

a slightly more feminine, athletic looking physique that's not excessively muscular. So when somebody says, I want to be toned, not necessarily muscular, I know what they're saying. I know what they're talking about. However, the action of toning a muscle is impossible. Muscle tone exists and muscle tonicity or muscle tone usually just refers to, hey, are your muscles, like, are you actually doing something? Like if you're sitting up straight, that would be high tone. If you're slouched over and you're not, you know, really contracting your muscles, that's like low tone. But the idea that a woman would go to the gym and do a woman's toning workout and her muscles would appear more toned and sleek than they would masculine and buff is completely phony baloney. What we generally see is muscles grow

and muscles shrink. That's it. And body fat either increases or reduces. And that's it. A toned physique is usually an athletic, muscular, prototypical female physique with low body fat. That's all toned means. Now on the flip side, I also see a lot of slim thick getting thrown around like, Hey, follow this workout to get slim thick. Now it's my understanding that slim thick refers to a female physique with muscular and muscular legs, a very trim waistline, and still some visible body fat around the thighs and glutes. And again, whether or not you appear toned, whether or not you appear slimmed thick, isn't really necessarily going to be influenced by your training program. It's probably more likely to be influenced by your nutrition and your genetics.

Let me unpack that a little bit. So if you take two people and you have them do the same training program, if one of them is more predisposed to have high amounts of body fat around the hips, thighs, and butt, and not a lot of body fat around the midsection, that person might appear more slim, thick. But if you have another person who is predisposed to be quite lean and generally not carry a lot of body fat, that person might look more toned, but much of that's dictated by nutritional status and genetics. You can't necessarily follow a quote unquote toning program or a quote unquote slim thick program and achieve the same physique as the person who is selling it to you. This is really prevalent amongst influencers who are female. And you look at the male side of this, I think a similar experience for a man might be like, okay, I'm going to follow this guy's

program. He's super jacked. He looks really ripped. Now he's not disclosing to me that he takes X anabolic steroid. He's not disclosing to me that he's using X amount of testosterone. I don't know. But I believe that what this person is selling to me that he's, you know, using X amount of testosterone. I don't know, but I believe that what this person is selling to me is their physique. And I'm going to buy that program because I want to achieve that physique. And that seems like a reasonable thing to assume. And I know this because I have fallen prey to it on the flip side with women, you'll find very athletic women who have phenomenal physiques, the women who have the quote unquote slim, thick physique, they will sell you the program that they do. And the kind of implication there, the implied

promises, if you do the program, you're going to look like me. And generally speaking, that's a bunch of bullshit. And I wish we would just get away from that. Okay. Number five is the notion that the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting are universally great across all genders. Now, I'm not going to blast intermittent fasting and I'm not going to blast keto. What instead I'm going to say is, going back to what we talked about with the menstrual cycle, female physiology is not the same as male physiology. In general, taking a bunch of food away from a woman, restricting her eating window, or telling her she can't eat any carbs has not ended well for many female trainees. I just don't think that the ketogenic diet is a particularly sound strategy, specifically because if you look at

the menstrual cycle, women actually burn carbohydrate and fat quite differently depending on where they're at in their cycle. If you're in that follicular phase where women tend to get phenomenal gains, you're a little bit more carbohydrate hungry. Your insulin sensitivity is a little better. You might do well with carbs there. If you're doing keto, you might not take advantage of a lot of that potential mechanistic underpinning of what's going on there. I also find that women don't do as well as men on low carbohydrate diets. This is from my own experience working with clients. I tend to find that you want to, if you can, expose female physiology to as many carbohydrates as possible if the goal is body composition or performance related. I mean, low carb diets and performance aren't my particular cup of tea and fasting is

fine. Like fasting is not going to hurt you. But I dislike the notion that all of these fad diets are not going to have any negative implications on female physiology. It's just a lumping in bullshit thing that the industry does where they're like, we can sell this diet to anybody. Even with like plant-based, I see a lot of women who show up and they're like, we can sell this diet to anybody. Even with like plant-based, I see a lot of women who show up and they're like, oh, I'm iron deficient. And I'm like, oh, that's strange. Why are you iron deficient? Oh, well, I'm plant-based. Okay. Well, you might want to supplement with iron if you're not getting enough in your diet. Oh, well, nobody told me that. Well, of course nobody told you that because women just tend to get treated like small men and it's a pain in the ass. So these fad diets, you need to take time to make additional layers of consideration.

You don't just get to pull them out of the box and do them. You do need to acknowledge that there are some unique physiological differences. And I think that the physiological differences between men and women are much more important when we're talking about lifestyle stuff and when we're talking about nutritional stuff than when we're talking about training. You take men, you take women, you can live heavy, you can live light, you can live close to failure, you can do supersets, you can do circuits, you can do boot camps, you can do whatever. And the responses tend to be great no matter what. Some people are better off doing certain stuff, sure. But nutritionally and lifestyle stuff, we need to respect the female physiology. And the notion that all of these fad

diets can just come right out of the box and you can just do them, I think it's doing a disservice to the greater narrative and greater discussion we need to have about the uniquity of the female physiology. Okay, number six is the notion that protein and meat is bad for you or that it's for men. I know so many women that stay away from things like chicken and red meat. And when I say, why don't you eat meat? They just say, oh, well, you know, I don't really like it. And I heard it's not very good for you. And a lot of women have been told that meat is kind of a masculine thing. You shouldn't eat it, that it's bad for you, that red meat causes all of these problems. And they just generally stay away from protein because they also think that protein is particularly

for men and that protein supplements are for men. I get multiple DMs a week. My boyfriend wants me to eat more protein. Is that okay? My boyfriend said I can't take a protein shake because it'll all get too muscular. All of this stuff is baloney. Truth be told, women generally stand to do better eating a higher protein diet if they're active than if they don't. The same is true of men. It doesn't really matter. If you're active, you want to get enough protein to recover. And meat is a really easy place to get protein from. If you're not eating meat for ethical reasons, I totally understand that. If you don't like the taste of meat, I totally understand that. If you don't like the texture or the way it interacts with

your digestive system, I totally understand that. But if you're staying away from it because of something some dumb ass dude told you about it turning you into a buff guy, that's silly. You can definitely get away with including plenty of animal protein in your diet. You still want to be mindful of your caloric intake. But meat can be very nutritious. There's lots of nutrient-dense cuts of red meat. Fish, particularly cold water fatty fish,

is loaded with healthy fats as well as protein. There's tons of great dairy proteins that are available. A lot of women stay away from dairy because they've heard that it can cause a bunch of problems with skin much of those are just old wives tales or just straight up myths so don't be afraid of protein the notion that protein is for men or that it's bad for women is silly for healthy adults who have functioning kidneys liver that works well and they're active I think you can eat animal protein and I think you can eat quite a bit of protein and be more than fine. If anything, it will help with your body composition. If your goal is to get leaner quite a bit. Number seven is the notion

that you're going to be happy when you achieve a certain weight. This is something that I have found is particularly persistent. I talked to a lot of women. I've talked to a lot of women over the years who have come to me and said, you know, this is the weight I want to be. Like, I want to be this weight. And they're very firm on that weight. This isn't uncommon with men, but it's less common with men. And I've always wondered, you know, where did this idea come from? That this is the weight you're supposed to be. And my guess is that at some point early on in this woman's life, in many women's life, they've been conditioned to believe that, like I spoke about earlier, smaller is better. And they're really happy with the weight that they were at when they had the body they had when they were in their late teens, early 20s.

They're like, that's the weight I want to get down to. And I think that chasing a weight is, one, impractical because weight is so transient. It can be affected by so many things from sodium to water, to stress, to elevation changes, you name it. But also if you're following a conventional fat loss program, you're probably going to be lifting weights. You might even be building muscle. So again, you have another thing that might impact weight and you might just end up be chasing a carrot.

You might just end up chasing a carrot on a stick. It's always going to be in front of you. It's going to be hard to nail that exact weight. And telling yourself, I'm only going to be happy when I hit this weight is the definition of destination happiness, which is something I try to tell my clients to avoid, which is telling yourself, I will be happy when, and then insert desired goal. And then insert desired goal. I think it's great to have goals. I think it's great to have ambition. But to tell yourself, like, I need to reach a certain weight to be fit. I need to reach a certain weight to be happy. This is something that is especially prevalent with my female clients.

And I want to be sure that they stay away from it as much as possible. I think that if you're working with somebody like a coach, you can work towards those weights, have some feedback about what is and isn't working. You can find other things to focus on and be positive. But a lot of women just kind of really zero in on this myopic idea of that is what I am chasing. And until I get there, I'm, I'm failing. And I just think that that leaves so

much on the table. There's so many things to focus on, focus on getting strong, focus on improving how you handle nutrition, focus on tightening up some things in your lifestyle. There's so many better things to focus on than weight. Weight is just one of a few metrics we can track to gauge your progress. Even if your goal is fat loss, the scale isn't the end-all be-all. So moving away from the notion that you will be happy when you achieve a certain weight or that the scale just has a lot of stock. Number eight is kind of this notion that hormonal disruption is the root cause for a lot of why women struggle.

And I'm not saying that female physiology doesn't matter. We talked about that ad nauseum. I hope you wouldn't glean that from this. Like you have to understand the role that the menstrual cycle plays, but, uh, you know, things like menopause, uh, things like estrogen, they, they tend to get just bagged on like, Oh, you cannot lose weight during menopause. That's actually number nine, but we'll talk about that in a second. You can't lose weight during menopause or estrogen is just so bad. It's not necessarily the case. We'll talk first about the hormone thing, but the idea that hormonal disruption or estrogen

are bad, hormonal disruption is bad, but I find that most people's weight loss problems aren't related to hormonal disruption and estrogen can actually be beneficial for your performance. If you want to learn more about that, go back and listen to the podcast episode I did with Lyle McDonald. We talked a ton about this stuff, but generally speaking, hormonal disruption isn't the issue. A lot of women are sold on hormone balancing supplements from scammy supplement producers. And they go, oh, take this. It will clear up your skin. Take this. It will balance your insulin. Take this. It will regulate your hormones. And people get the idea that their hormones are broken or disruptive and your hormones can be disrupted. They can be broken

and they can be out of alignment. And you probably are better off seeing somebody who's a specialist like an endocrinologist before you just throw some random over-the-counter quote-unquote hormone balancing bullshit that some influencer sells you at the problem. But truth is, you know, regardless of your hormonal status, I think that the notion that you're a prisoner to your hormones, particularly a prisoner to estrogen, is silly. And it's something that I wish women would move away from. And the last one I touched on a little bit already is the idea that you just become a fat blob once you hit menopause and that it's, you know, the end all be all. Once you hit menopause, you can't lose weight. It just, everything comes

grinding to a halt. And this is not particularly true. There's actually some new research that just came out. The lead researcher on this stuff is Ponser. The full text is actually in the journal Science. Ponser, Yamada, Sagayama, Ansley et al. published in August of 2021. So very, very new. It's not open access, but because it's such interesting research, there's a New York Times article on it. There's a Parade article on it. And sometimes for like the layman, it might be better to just read the scientific interpretation from a science communicator than to actually dive into the study. doesn't slow down that much before the age of 60. And most women are perimenopausal well before 60. They're either in menopause, out of menopause, or beginning menopause before 60. And then it only slows down slightly after the age of 60. If I'm not mistaken, it's by like 0.6% per year after the age of 60, which is nothing. That means every 10 years, your metabolism only slows down 10% or like 6%, 6, 7% after 60. It's almost completely stable from the age of 20 to 60. But what does tend to change particularly for women is family life, work life,

things change. People have kids, people have responsibilities, movement patterns change, activity patterns change. But, um, the notion that you are broken once you hit a certain age or that you have become kind of a lost cause and then it's just such an uphill battle, it's not even worth it. This research is particularly positive. It shines a light on that area. It gives us some hope. And there are definitely some hormonal things that happen when you hit menopause. And we want to make sure that we take all those things into consideration from how we adjust our lifestyle to maybe how we adjust some of the foods we select. But truth be told, you're still going to be privy to the same rules the rest of us are. You know, it comes down to being, if you want to lose fat, being in a calorie deficit. If you want

to build muscle, you might want to be in a small surplus and eat some protein. But truthfully, muscle. He might want to be in a small surplus and eat some protein. But truthfully, the notion that women are doomed to become a body composition nightmare after they hit menopause or after they hit 40, I hear that all the time. Oh, 40, it's all downhill from here. Not true. Let's try reframing that more positively. I think we can do a lot better. Okay, guys. So these are nine fitness marketing myths that I think specifically target women that are particularly dubious. Let's review them really quick. Number one is the notion that if you want to burn fat, you need to do a particular style of workout that burns body fat. That is absolute bogus. If you want to burn body fat, you need to be in a calorie deficit. No singular workout or single workout you do is going to

preferentially burn stored body fat. Stick to resistance training most of the time, sprinkle in cardio. Number two is the notion that women need to eat small servings, be on quote unquote poverty macros, eat small to be small. And I think that that's dangerous. I think that can lead to disordered eating and poor relationships with food and with fueling your body for performance. Your body is a lot more than just what it looks like. And being malnourished in the name of fitting into these societal norms is dangerous. Number three are women's performance supplements. I think most of those are hogwash.

You want to take supplements in the dosages that are proven to work from supplement manufacturers like Legion Athletics, for example, that make quality products. Don't buy from people who make products specifically for women, performance products specifically for women. I think you need to be very careful about that. Again, there are some supplements for women specifically for the female physiology that I think are great. But again, be very skeptical of performance

supplements marketed to women as being specifically for women. Just be skeptical. Number four, the utilization of terms like toned and slim thick. Number five, the notion that all fad diets out of the box are totally good to go, even though they don't take female physiology into account whatsoever. Number six is the notion that protein and meat are bad for you or those are for men. Number seven, the scale, chasing destination happiness with a target weight that tends to be very prevalent with women. Number eight, that hormone disruption is the root cause of all, let's call that stagnation and that hormone disruption is so prevalent with women and that you need to take all these supplements to balance it

out. Not necessarily. And I don't think that's something that you should just embark on on your own. I would strongly recommend getting a good endocrinologist in your corner, somebody that you can work with, somebody that you can trust. If you do suspect there might be some hormonal dysregulation. And lastly, is that menopause is kind of the end all be all. And once you hit it, you're doomed. This does not seem to be the case. Not only do we have new research that shows that's the case, but having worked with many women over the years,

I can tell you, you can do amazing things, whichever side of menopause you end up being on. So I hope you guys find this episode enjoyable and useful. One of the best things you can do to help me make the difference in the impact that I want to make in the fitness space and in the world is to share it, to leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes that helps other people find it. Please do me a favor. If you have not yet hit subscribe, please subscribe to this. If you listen on multiple streaming services, like sometimes you listen on iTunes or Spotify, subscribe on both. If you don't listen on one,

subscribe on both anyway, anything you do can help. Again, just to plug to pay the bills, if you are interested in working with me or my coaching team, you can head over to corecoachingmethod.com. We offer completely customized and tailored online coaching, in-person coaching local to Sonoma County, and even Zoom telehealth style coaching if you want the intimate one-on-one personal training environment from home, but you don't live in Sonoma County. So a full suite of everything from nutrition consultation services to full-blown online coaching. We have it all for you over at corecoachingmethod.com. Do check that out. Thanks so much for listening. Stay tuned for the next episode.