The Dr Louise Newson Podcast - 134 - Advice from James Smith for exercise and nutrition in the perimenopause and menopause

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Popular online personal trainer, James Smith, admits he only read Dr Louise Newson’s most recent book to check out the literary competition when their new books were released back-to-back. He bought a copy and read it on holiday and while he may have got some funny looks for his poolside choice of reading, James discovered many new insights about the perimenopause and menopause that he knew would really help his female clients in their quest to reach fitness and weight loss goals. Louise and James discuss the common pitfalls many people go through when trying to exercise, perhaps out of obligation or to lose some of that midlife spread around the middle, and they warn against the plethora of misinformation on the internet about nutrition and training. James’s 3 exercise tips for you:  Ask yourself ‘how much do you want to train on a daily basis out of 10?’ If your answer is below a 5, don’t train but ask yourself ‘why?’ and tackle those things first, whether it be stress, lack of sleep or nutrition. Understand why you’re not motivated and fix that first.   If you want to lose fat and/or manage your calorie intake, figure out your daily allowance and x7 for the week. You can overconsume on the weekend if you wish, but then divide what’s left by 5 for the days in the week and you’ll be surprised by how low it is. You will get a clear picture of how much you’re overeating on the weekend and it may make you think again about patterns of over-restricting then binging.   Pick any exercise that you like and find rewarding, there isn’t a hierarchy of the ‘best’ ones, you have to enjoy it and want to do it.   For help with a personalised exercise programme and meal plans, check out James’ website at www.jamessmithacademy.com James’ bestselling books, ‘Not a Diet Book’ and ‘Not a Life Coach’ are published by Harper Collins.

Hello, I'm Dr Louise Newsome and welcome to my podcast. I'm a GP and menopause specialist and I run the Newsome Health Menopause and wellbeing centre here in Stratford-Bron-Avon. I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity and the Menopause support app called Balance. On the podcast, I will be joined each week by an exciting guest to help provide evidence-based information and advice about both the perimenopause and the menopause. So today I'm very excited and delighted to introduce to you James Smith, who I met recently when I recorded a podcast for his series, actually, which was a real honour.

And we had the most amazing response from it, both on my social media and his social media. And so James would explain more about who he is and what he does. And so we thought in the new year, new start and all that, that we would talk a bit more today about the importance of exercise as something that we all should be considering actually. So welcome, James, today. Thank you very much for having me. So before we get started, James, for those of you, I'm sure most people will know who you are, but some might not. Do you mind just talking a bit about who you are and how you've got to who you are,

really, if that's okay? So I'm an English personal trainer. I grew up in Barkshire, and for years on end I'd just administered personal training sessions with very much general populations, just normal men and women that had normal jobs in a normal part of the UK. And I accrued probably close to 5,000 hours of personal training in that time. And when I was training people, I would always keep in mind the questions they would ask me. And at the end of the day, I would turn that into a social media post. And I thought that if the people that are paying me have that question, the people that could be paying me probably want that question.

And that kind of took off and went a little bit crazy in the last few years to the point that I now work online and I turned my face-to-face service into an online academy to be more accessible, similarly to what you've done with the app where you're working with people, you're helping people, and you're being stretched so thin, you're like, hold on, I need to create something that I can serve more people simultaneously. And I don't try and work with athletes. I don't try and work with elite level physique. competitors. I very much love my population of normal people and they're who I've served for the

amount of time since. Yeah, which is great, isn't it? So what sort of questions were you getting that you were surprised with then from the start? So there'd be the general nutrition ones like, what is a macronutrient? Do I need to worry about calories? Is when I eat a problem? Should I be eating breakfast? And these were all, you know, great questions. And then later in my career, I was stumped and I always prided myself on knowing the answer to questions. And someone would say, does my menstrual cycle affect my training? And I'd be like, whoa, the PT qualifications we do in six weeks. You know, we're in like a gym in Reading where they're like, don't step over the barbells, don't be inappropriate with your client. We were even teaching how to

massage someone's calf on a vibrating plate. We didn't learn important intricacies of the menstrual cycle or menopause or any of these things. So it kind of would enable me to go on little journeys of not even doing official courses a lot of the time. I'd listen to podcasts and find people, that were authoritative in the field. And instead of going, I know, I'd say this is what this person has said. This is what this person said. And I'd often put that forward into social media as well just to show people my findings. It's really interesting, isn't it?

Because I, like you, started dabbling with my Instagram and one of my children just said, well, just put a post out every day. And a lot of it was comments that people told me in the clinical questions that they asked. And I think when you're in anything for a long period of time, you think everyone knows the same as you. you forget really that actually we've all started somewhere and you forget that it's the basics that are lost. And I think now with the social media and the internet's great, but it's a double edge sword because there's too much noise, too much information. And then none of it's really

personalized either. So just because somebody's saying something and also you don't actually know what's true out there either, do you? Now, and I've even seen trends at the moment of people on social media platforms like TikTok, reeling off a minute of infactual information to then at the very end go, if you believe that, then that was all wrong. Follow me to find out what's right. And I was thinking, hold on. Someone with a short attention spans, just listen to you, very convincingly prove that insulin is the cause of obesity and that people just need to manage their carbohydrates. There's a lot of rubbish on the internet. And again, the way the algorithms work, sometimes things that aren't true will spread faster than things that are true.

Oh, absolutely. And also bad news sales stories, doesn't it? So it's really important for some media platforms that they have misinformation because they're more likely to get an audience, which is really scary, actually. So just to put these into context, really, the reason that we connected was that you posted a picture on your story, didn't you, on your holiday? Just explain what the picture was, Dave. I'll tell people the honest truth.

When I was releasing my book, we were looking at who I was going to be competing with. And your book was the week for Smash Sunday Times, number one. And I was like, we sat back there. We're in this camp of, oh, God, we're in trouble here. Like, Menopause book. Wow. We know this is a subject to contention. I openly have admitted for years that I wasn't an expert on it.

And I was very fortunate the week after to come in behind you. And I was like, I need to buy this book. And at one point, I'll say this. Honestly, I was like, this is the enemy. I need to find out what the enemy is. Or did your book. On the same week, I was worried it might knock me off. And it came in the post and I literally had to flick through it and I was like, well, this is a perfectly concise, informative book about something I need to learn. So I took it on holiday with me to Dubai.

And I got some interesting looks and a few people around Paul, you and Kim spoke to me to say how nice it was. I also was wearing Speedos at the time. So you got a guy with a mustache and Speedos in Dubai. I've read the book on the airport. Yeah, weird. So before the book, you didn't know much about the menopause and now I'm delighted if anyone listening has heard the podcast with James, I'm sure you'll be very impressed with the stats that you're quoting and the information that you've retained from the book. So it was quite an eye-opener to you, was it? Yeah, do you know, before I read the book, I was still in a stance of pro-HRT and I'd say to people, I think this is the best thing for you. I'm not qualified to tell you this. You need to delve further.

And just having that stance, I actually, before the book, thought there was a heightened chance of developing breast cancer. And I still believed some of the old stigmas, but I still stood by the fact that I thought that someone assisted with hormones would then be in better control of alleviating the chances of these things happening. So I was saying, you know, even if there is an increased chance of this, same way that I still think that testosterone and men can potentially have an increased chance in things going wrong, but it could also open a complete pathway to so many things then going right. And I think that's so important, isn't it? Because there's risks in anything we do. you know, we get in a car, we cross the road, certain things that we eat or lifestyles that we might

have are risks, but we do it for the beneficial effects, don't we? Every time we cross the road, we don't think goodness may I might get run over and that will be the end because we want to get to the other side. And I think with any hormones, it's almost been, I don't quite know why, and you say testosterone as well and estrogen and progesterone, there's been this thing how dangerous they are. We don't have any danger associated with other hormones such as insulin, or thyroxin. And I don't know quite why this has happened, but it's become a real disaster zone. And it's really important also when we think about the menopause, as you know, is not just think about the hormones to control symptoms. It's actually how hormones can improve our future

health, which you know is so important. But it's also a lot of people quite openly tell me off, really, for medicalising the menopause and saying, well, all you're doing is saying HRT. And actually I'm not doing that because whether a woman takes HRT or not, she still has to look at her future health. So there's no point me taking HRT and eating McDonald's for breakfast. I don't do that, by the way, and not doing any exercise or not looking after my sleep or not even looking after my headspace. It's really important to do everything, isn't it? Yeah, I think that every component of health, including mental health, I always see it as a table that's propped up by many legs to make sure that. that we're not neglecting any of them because you only need to lose a few of them to lose the

integrity of the entire table. And I always preach that to people. I'm saying, look, you need to make sure that every component doesn't have to be the best. It just has to be the best possible for you. Alcohol, for instance, so many people are not putting that in me, pointing at your HRT. Yeah, oh, do you drink? Oh, yeah, four times a week. Do you smoke? Oh, only would have had a drink. Yeah, absolutely. People are complaining about substances and hormones that exist within the body where we have actual roles for them and glands that produce them. Yet they turn a blind diet to negative behaviours such as alcohol. And I drink, again, with the risks.

We know that alcohol isn't particularly good for us, but we know that it's a social lubricant that will help us in situations. So, yeah, it's quite frustrating that people are still so afraid of bettering their situation using things like women. It is interesting. I mean, I would say I'm active rather than super fit. So I probably haven't got that sporty gene. And I used to hate running and cross-country at school.

And in the 80s, when I was at medical school, it was step aerobics. And I used to go and think, oh, I really don't enjoy this and do swimming. But then I'd have to wash my hair. And it was the right fath to just get back to lectures. And I've sort of dabbled with various exercises. And then as I've, the last, I think 18 years, actually, because it was when my oldest daughter was young, I went to my first shanga yoga class. and I looked at all these physicians people were in and I thought, no way, how can they do this?

This isn't possible. But I've chipped away and now, as you know, I really enjoy Estanga Yoga and it ticks a lot of boxes for me. But when I was perimenopausal five years ago, I just didn't want to do any exercise. I had no motivation. I had no energy. I had no stamina. I could actually physically see my muscles going in front of me. And my joints were really stiff and my muscles were sore.

And for any of you who do yoga, if you do a really good practice, it flows really well and you've got this wonderful energy going on. And it just is the most amazing thing to do. But all my practice, I felt like a stiff, rusty old thing. And I just thought, I'm not doing this. This is awful. And you can see quickly how my body shape would have deteriorated. My mental state would have got worse. And I would have become quite stale with my practice because you have to keep practicing regularly with any sport, don't you?

But I just thought, goodness me, it doesn't take long to reverse then it was 13 years of, you know, trying quite hard with my practice. So I can see how quickly you can become out of shape and forget about exercise. But that's really awful, isn't it, to just neglect exercise completely from your life. Yeah, I always say to people, use it or lose it. And even with mobility, I think yoga is a brilliant thing. It's got definitely a time and a place where I always think about a door. if you've got a door that never fully closes and never fully opens, you'll accrued dust in the areas it doesn't go. And that's my crude analogy of mobility. If we don't take joints through range

of motion, there's no requirement for them to be able to be mobile through that. And, you know, when I wait train, even on days that I'm really fatigued, I just think of it as putting a joint through a full range of motion. I'm just on mode. I think about just moving because otherwise my knee isn't going to come that close to my chest unless I'm doing squats or I'm using a leg press. And I think that women definitely enjoy yoga probably a bit more than men for some behind it. I think the mindfulness, the nice music, the social circle. I think it lacks that kind of macho feeling that men get from the gym. But ultimately, we're not doing dissimilar things.

Taking an hour out of your day. And I think that now, as the world progresses, 20 years from now, having an hour that you're not on your phone could be. Oh, it's huge, isn't it? Yeah. For so many practices, people are like, yeah, I feel great after I train. And it's not just the exercise. it's not just mindfulness, it's an hour they've had disconnected from a virtual world.

Yeah, which is really important because I think a lot more of us are doing exercise remotely. I've always enjoyed yoga because I can flick my mat out whether I'm in a hotel room or whether I'm on my own. I don't have to go to the gym. I don't do it as a social thing. I'm not a very social person because I work too hard, but I'm in control of it. I don't have to think, oh, there's a certain class at a certain time or whatever. But I think being in control of your exercise is really important. As we get older, it's really crucially important because of diseases such as osteoporosis, heart disease, even dementia, we can reduce our risk by exercise, can't we? I always add to that sarcopenia.

Absolutely. I always have to sell something to someone. I can't just have something that's going to save someone's life or make them feel better or have more sex than they're older. I literally am a salesman being like, your muscles will deteriorate, your bone health. And I have to sell a solution to them. And it's interesting you say you like training at home. I think the world is split into two groups, half of which that like doing what you're doing,

staying at home, doing their own thing. Me, I have a really nice place I live, but I go to a crammed cafe to do work because I need to go somewhere to get something done. And when I go in that cafe and I open my laptop and I have a coffee, I'm there to do something. Then I close my laptop. I have to go to the gym so I know that when I'm in the gym. So for some people, it's sacred being at home. For some people it's sacred to the gym, I couldn't imagine anything worse than training at home.

This is where I nap. I can't nap the same place that I exercise. No, it's very interesting. And actually, I'm very lucky because I have the best of both worlds. So I have a yoga studio in my clinic. And so on a Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock, everyone knows, forget going hold of me because James Critchlow, who's the most amazing yoga teacher, who's now in his 60s, I don't think he'll mind me saying. He's one of the sort of real yoga gurus. He comes and teaches three of us. So we have a little bit of a social time. One of them is my best friend. And so it's really lovely having that. And it's a very different practice to practicing on my own because actually, just listening to James's voice for five minutes is good enough, even if I didn't do any yoga. You know, he's very calm, he's very polite. He's just a wonderful person to be around. So I couldn't do it all on my own, if you see what I mean. And to have a balance is great. And to have people who believe in you and can help you become motivated. And see it as not just a chore, because I think so many people, don't they?

They think exercise is something to be endured. I've got a lot of friends who tell me, I just exercise so I don't have to put on weight. or I can eat what I like as long as I exercise. And that's a shame because I think that means they're not really enjoying the exercise that they're doing. I think that if someone's extrinsically motivated, they're often doing it to avoid bad things happening. And that's a terrible way to motivate someone.

When people are motivated by earning money or avoiding something bad happening, they're not motivated the right way. And I think one of the key components to yoga is the fact you can progress. And everything has to have an element of progression in it. And people doing poses that they once couldn't do. do something they can go home and be like, I could do Warrior 3. Warrior 3 or Warrior 2, whichever one is. And the same goes with weight training.

A lot of people think that when people are going to the gym, that it's just about, you know, oh, yeah, big squats, big deadlifts, dropping weights. But for instance, with some of my older clientele, people, I would say we need somewhere to begin. And when I look at weight training and people often see squat, push, pull, and maybe picking something up from the floor. They're four very simple movements. And someone will come to me and go, James, I'm really weak.

I'm so weak. And I go, no, no, it doesn't matter. You have a start point. And for a client who's 50, let's say, she's just come in, never trained before. I'm not going to give her a weight. I'm going to find a plyometric box that's 12 inches off the floor. I'm going to see if she can sit down on it and stand up 10 times. If she can do that, and at the end, she goes, oh, yeah, that was pretty tough.

You know, we are resistance training in a gym. And if you were to leave me alone for three months and come back, she'd be doing the same thing, but maybe holding a small weight in front of her, maybe doing it with a split stance, one leg in front of the other. And similar to how people progress in yoga. My clients would progress in the gym, getting stronger.

Someone on the outside, they go, she's only holding a six kilogram puff of ball to her chest. But we've progressed so far from that original 10 standing up and sitting down. And they're the things that really motivate people to continue an endeavour,

not to come in and go, I just don't want to have a heart attack. Those people will never stay around. No, and that is so important. And one of the motivations that I have for, exercise is also looking at people who haven't exercised. When you're a teenager, you can do anything. You don't need to exercise. Do you really? If you don't want to, you'll still look good and you'll have to do exactly what you want. And then when you hit around the menopause or middle life,

you could sort of get away with it. Maybe your body shape will change. But then I see women in their 70s and 80s and they can't use a zimmafrane. They can't get out of the baths. They can't stand up from sitting down. And these are the women generally who haven't been exercising the last 30, 40 years. And they're the people that I think, I don't want to be like that. I enjoy my bath. I want to be able to get out of it without asking my husband to pull me out. It sounds bad to say this because the person we're talking about is my mum and dad. And I'm a personal trainer. I'm probably one of the most popular or well-known personal trainers in the whole bloody country. My mum and dad have never been to the gym. Really? I see my mum pick up a slipper and I'm like, mum,

you're back. It's sad in the respect that they don't want to learn. And they won't listen to me with what it is, but I'll be there when they're too old and stuck in the bath. And I'm like, I bloody told you that you should have picked things up. But that's one of the things I now sell to people. I say, look, I joke around my dad. I said, look, the day that I can't go to the toilet on my own, finish me, take me to swiss me get rid of me. And my dad says, only if you let me go the same way. And I'll say to people as well, it's like, look, one day in your life, you're not going to be have to go to toilet on your own. Wouldn't it be nice to push that back as far as we can? And again, it's semi-crued, semi-crasse, but at the same time, it's a reality that protect our movement,

our ability to pick things up, move well. And it is the active people who have had positive habits of remaining strong their entire lives. They're the ones that have less issues when they're older. Yeah. It's so important. And also it's looking at which areas of our bodies we're exercising as well. So I've seen lots of people who have been really fit, far fitted than me, especially with running, cycling less so, but certainly a lot of runners and also people that go to the gym and do weights a lot. But then certainly the women, they come in and their pelvic floor is terrible. You ask them to cough or sneeze, there's no way they can do that. Or they're getting back pain. And it's because they haven't been protecting their core. They haven't been doing pelvic floor

exercises. And I mean, that's the same for men as well, isn't it, James? It's not just for women. Yeah, and again, this postnatal realm that we're in so many of the issues that women can face can be symptomless. And then one day, they just won't be able to perform a certain exercise. And people need to be protective of this. And not just even protective, first of all, aware of it. And one thing that I'd stress to people is it's never too late. Like I've had clients come in before 40s, 50s, 60s. And like I say, there's a start point for everyone.

And there's so much equipment in the gym, suspension straps, stacking up. Like, most of my clients would never even go to the weights room. And when I said before about squat, push and pull, I've got boxes they can sit on. I stack up boxes. So many, especially women, will come to me and say, I can't do a push up. I say, well, you can't do one on the ground. But if I get 36 inches of plyometric boxes, which is about their waist height and I get them to do it at an angle, suddenly I can get them to do 10. And their progression is then making that stack of boxes smaller.

When I get them to do rows on a suspension trainer where they're pulling themselves in towards the straps, there's going to be a foot position where they can do 10. and over time their feet, you're going to get closer to the anchor point. And for so many people, we're not trying to intimidate people and say, put that weight on your back and squat. It's about getting people moving, doing step-ups, whatever it is, and challenging people. So you'll probably know more about this than myself. But the way someone feels about themselves when they exercise, it's more of a respectful thing. When they do get offered some food, they don't want, oh, I just train this morning.

I started the day with a positive yoga session or weight session. I'm going to say no to this. or the other respect, people might say, oh, this cake flying around at the office. Yeah, I trained really hard this morning and I'm going to have that cake. But I'm not going to let it ruin my day and I'm not going to write it off until Monday because I've earned that. And I actually tweeted yesterday going, isn't it so much better when you can respond to someone saying, I've been to the gym when they ask you what you've been up to?

I was like, it's just, you know, I went to the gym. Don't worry about it. It didn't do much, but I went to the gym. It is. And I think you're right there because it's respecting yourself as well. And I think there's so much in life people do for other people because it's expected of them. And then they're made to feel bad because they haven't done it or said something or whatever. But I think it's about internal respect is really important.

And feeling good about yourself because there's so many, we've all done it, we've eaten something. We've thought, oh, I shouldn't do that. And then maybe not wanted to admit to others. But actually, I don't really care what other people think about me or my habits or my exercise. It's about what I feel about me. and am I the best version of myself? And I know that sounds a bit cheesy, but I think as we get older,

we're in complete control of what we do, aren't we? Like, you're in control whether you exercise at home or go to your cafe or not. No one's telling you to do that. You're doing it because that's making you do the better job, if you see what I mean. And it's so important that we find what's right for us, isn't it? Such simple habits.

Like so many times I've asked my clients as well, I'm like, do you make your bed in the morning? Yeah, I'm like, yeah, because it's a respect thing. You're like, okay, I want to get into a nice bed when I finish the day. It's a chore in the morning. You get the payback in the evening with the training. And I actually, if I need to get really firm with a client, I'll say to them like, look,

you're going to suffer one way or the other. You can do your suffering now, one hour a day with me, or you can suffer when you're older. And I'll say to them, I look them in the eyes and I'll be like, human beings underestimate the chances of bad things happening to them. And then they're like, oh, okay, I get it. I'm like, do your suffering today. Get in the gym, work hard, come out. And another rule, if anyone's listening, get my PTA hat on, I call it the four set rule.

I say, listen, days you don't want to train or you're not feeling up for it, just go in and do four sets of the exercise. If you do those four sets all at home and you still don't want to do it, go home. But by the time you've gone and done the four sets, you're like, I'm feeling a bit better about this. And like you say, it's a respecting. Yeah, my father always used to say the hardest part of any job is starting it. And that's the same with exercise. You can always fiddle around thinking, oh, I just have temer. minutes flicking through Instagram. If you do 10 minutes exercise, it leads to 20. But even if you only do 10,

that's an hour and 10 minutes a day, isn't it? In a week, that's still better than nothing. And so I think anything has got to be good. But we haven't really spoken about the types of exercise. And I'm really passionate about women and men deciding their exercise for them, because I think if you enjoy it, then you're more likely to do it. But there has been quite a trend for the sort of high intensity workouts, which I think do have a role, but I do see a lot of women doing them. And firstly, they don't really enjoy them. It seems to be messing up with their knees, but also those women who do want to change their body shape

and maybe become more toned and lose some of their middle-aged spread that often occurs during the perimenopause and menopause. They find that hard. And I'd be really keen, James, to hear your thoughts about these types of exercises. Unfortunately, hit training is the easiest thing to sell, because everyone has access to hit training. You don't need to go to a gym where most people either don't want to go, live too far away, don't want to be tied into a 12-month contract.

The exercise is not gender-specific, whereas if you were to promote something that does a lot of bum training, people think it's women, arm training, they think it's men. Hit training has been mass marketable. And also with hit training, you can give everyone the same exercise, charge everyone the same amount of money, give everyone the same diet. And I completely agree. I personally don't enjoy it. I personally think it's too much impact

for people to recover from. The reason that you do box jumps in the gym, they put boxes there, is to reduce the amount of impact. An athlete is supposed to jump on top of it and step down. So people are, hold on. So we don't want athletes jumping.

We're like, no, no, no. We want to limit the amount of impact at all we give anyone. So seeing people jump around and then the answer to the question we asked before about needing to progress for a lot of these people, the only way they're going to progress

is more flexion, more jumping, more impact. And, you know, as someone progresses, that's not a good correlation to offset injuries. And the frequency in which they're doing it is often daily. And not to mention stressed individuals where if someone's stressed, people can't believe this when I say to them, I'm like, okay, you want to get a bit more toned. And I have to say to them, toning is not a thing. We have muscle.

It's either used or it's not. We have fat. You either have too much of it or not enough of it or you're in a sweet spot, a range. The Joan, look, we need to maybe reduce your intake of calories a bit. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. And this is an analogy, which, again, you might pick a hole in. Imagine you go into your bathroom and there's a massive leak. There's water all over the floor.

You're like, oh my God, what's going on here? When addressing fat loss in clients, that is plugging the leak. That is the main priority. Your training modality is what you would use to clean the floor. So many people are trying to clean the floor without plug at the leak first. I'm wondering why they're doing hours of hit, jumping around, not seeing any positive change. when really they should have gone in, plug the leak, address their calories, and then pick the quality that they enjoy.

Pick a modality that feels right to them. Pick a modality that they can do for a long time, because they might be cleaning this mess up for quite a while. And so many people haven't really come into this argument looking at it that way. And for some highly stressed individuals, we give them a protein target. We give them a slight reduction in calories. We give them two workouts a week.

And you see results. Yeah, it's very interesting. I've had a lot of women I've spoken to have reduced their exercise and done better. And I think it's like anything, isn't it? I think it's about reflecting, refining, looking at the bigger picture, nothing should be taken in isolation. And actually at the beginning when I was saying HRT shouldn't be taken in isolation, but exercise shouldn't be taken in isolation either.

Or diet. You know, I see so many women who tell me that they put on weight. And I understand that because of the metabolic changes that occur without horse. hormones. But then when I go through what they're eating, they're starving themselves. Or they're having like a low calorie, something ridiculous, ready made low calorie bar or something with all these unnatural sugars in, which are worse than actually having sugar themselves. Because the body doesn't know what to do, it just makes fat from it. But then actually the calories they're having are just nothing. But their whole body is just changing. And then when they do try and eat,

of course they're going to put on weight, aren't they? There's also a really big issue that people have been fixated on weight and so many manipulations. Again, I've made weight for jih Tzu competitions. I very rarely manipulate my calories that much. I manipulate sodium, my salt, I manipulate my water, I manipulate my vegetables. I drop my fibre three days out from a competition so that I have less food in me. And people don't realize the amount of weight fluctuations are having a day and often so many females. And again, this is from experience working with people.

often women attack a diet very aggressively. They drop their food intake. They drop their carbohydrate intake. They even stop eating salty foods. They see a drastic reduction on the scale. It motivates them to double up on their training. They end up training too much on too few calories, creating too much stress. They then don't recover from that because they're not creating an environment to recover from it.

They crash out, they burn. They blame themselves, not their regime. They burn themselves. And then they go again. And the biggest alarm bells for this is people use my calorie calculator online. they go, my calories seem a bit high. I go, no, no, no, this is 1,800 calories. This looks high because you've been restricting yourself on a thousand calories a day

and binging at weekends. But if I was to take what they were to eat at the weekend and reduce it from a net amount of calories for the week, suddenly things start to add up. And the fact that someone, an active female in their 30s or 40s, thinks 1,800 calories is too high is where the alarm bells go off. Yeah. No, there's so much to learn, isn't there?

and I think there's so much, like we said before, misunderstanding as well. And I think people take what they want you from isolation rather than putting it all together. And then I think with the missing hormones as well, it's a real car crash for a lot of people. So I'm very grateful, James, for your time, it's been brilliant. And I hope one day you'll come back and talk more because I'd love to talk a bit more about hormones, both in men and women. But we've done a big podcast on James's platforms about menopause. So today I really wanted to concentrate on exercise, and it's been great having you to listen to your words of wisdom.

So thanks over so much today, James. No, thank you for having me. And I'm sure I'll be back on with whatever topics jump up. If anything comes up in the news about anything that you're like, oh, do you know what, James would be the right person to speak to? I'd love to jump back on. Brilliant. And just before we end, this is that I'm just throwing this out.

I didn't tell you at the beginning. I always ask for three take-home tips. So if I could ask you for three things that are menopause, or perimenopausal woman should be thinking about if they're not very used to exercising, what are the three tips you would give them? You should, if you were to ask yourself how much you want to train on a daily basis out of 10, if that score is below five, don't train and try and identify why you feel that way, whether it's stress, lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and focus on those things.

Because often forcing a workout when you're not motivated puts you in a net worse position. So my number one tip would be if you're not feeling, six, seven, eight out of ten, motivate to go to the gym and stand why and fix that. Sometimes I'm going to lay in the next morning. It would be much more productive to your overall longevity of enjoying training than some people have these cliche stuff with that. Do you only bad workout? It's a workout you miss.

So that's number one. Number two, if you are looking to lose fat or use a certain amount of calories, I do have a calculator on my website, but if you figure that out, times it by seven and give yourself an amount of calories for the week. and if you really want to have some fun, start tracking that on a Friday. And if you overconsume on the weekend, that's completely fine. And when you get to Monday, you divide the remainder of calories by five days. And it might alarm you to how low your calorie amount is for the rest of the week.

And that should be a good indication of how much you are overeating essentially at the weekend, but also the requirement to create a deficit. And that gives people a lot of clarity on their weekend habits. And rather than just disregarding the weekend and keeping it at the back of their mind, they go, do you know what? Rather than wine, let's have a gin and slim line. Rather than having pizza, maybe I'll have a burger and let my husband eat the chips or whatever it is. There are little swaps and hacks that can help. That's number two.

And number three is to pick an exercise that you like. It has to be rewarding in your own way. And there is no objectivity to what is the best exercise. And even if someone does bring you the statistic of a certain exercise burning more calories than others, we cannot create a hierarchy of exercise based on the amount of calories burn. human beings are not hamsters that run on wheels to earn the next meal. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant tips. So thanks ever so much, James.

That's been absolutely wonderful. So thank you. Cheers, thanks having me. For more information about the perimenopause and menopause, please visit my website, balance hyphen menopause.com, or you can download the free balance app, which is available to download from the app store or from Google Play.