Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Best Exercise Practices For Menopausal Women – With Debbie Potts

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

// R E A D Y • S E T • R E S E T This episode is all about strength training and building muscle for menopausal women. Debbie Potts has been a competitive athlete for most of her life. She has been a top age-group triathlete and runner as well as a 15 Ironman finisher, 5 times Ironman Hawaii World Championship qualifier, and multiple Boston Marathon qualifiers. She coaches clients individually online metabolic efficiency, running, trail running, cycling, and triathlon events. You can check out her race results here! Plus, Debbie Potts is the host of 'The Low Carb Athlete Podcast', author, speaker, and coach. She trains the "WHOLE" you to burn fat, optimize health and improve athletic performance- while improving the aging process with "The WHOLESTIC Method" coaching program. In this podcast, we cover: Why women should incorporate more protein into their diets. Fitness tips for menopause: why you need to lift more weights. Debunking health myths: cardio training is not the way to go. How to optimize your food and exercise at every stage of your menstrual cycle. The surprising way menopausal women can stimulate mTOR.   // E P I S O D E   S P O N S O R S  Pre-Order a copy of The Menopause Reset book today and get the bonus ebook now, for FREE! Feel the impact of Organifi - use code PELZ for 15% off all products!    // R E S O U R C E S   M E N T I O N E D Free Ebook for your Wholistic Transformation Journey Tips to Improve Metabolic Efficiency for Improved Fat Loss Low Carb Athlete Podcast Life is not a race book Rushin Women's Syndrome Women are not Small men Heart & Soil Organ Supplements Debbie Potts Website Debbie Potts on Instagram The WHOLESTIC Method Coaching Group on Facebook   // F O L L O W Instagram | @dr.mindypelz & @theresetterpodcast Facebook | /drmindypelz & /theresetterpodcast Youtube | /drmindypelz   Please note the following medical disclaimer: By listening to this podcast you understand that this video is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. Always seek the guidance of your doctor with any questions you may have regarding your health or medical condition.  

And if you're trying to lose fat weight, let's work on some other solutions because what you're doing is not working. Isn't that definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again? Expecting different results. So I think women need to do little less cardio and then look at more strength training. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest, the greatest, thought leaders and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again.

My name is Dr. Mindy Pels and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. Hey guys, I am so excited to share with you that the menopause reset has been officially launched out into the world this week. So if you haven't ordered it, you can go find it at the menopause reset. book.com. And if you're not familiar with this book, this is truly my gift to you guys. I was asked several years back what I did to navigate my lifestyle through my menopause years. And there were five things that I discovered. I needed to change after 40 to keep my hormones in balance. And so many of you asked me questions, what are you doing? How are you fasting? How are you doing keto? How are you

varying your foods that I decided to put it into a book for you. So the menopause reset, it is officially out in the world, and I hope that it changes your life as much as the principles changed mine. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you an incredible conversation around fitness with personal health coach Debbie Potts. She is also the host of a great podcast called the low carb athlete, and she brings a tremendous amount of wisdom around exercise, especially as we age. So you guys have heard me say before how much I'm a fan of us changing our lifestyle after 40. And this is especially important for women, but men, we didn't leave you out of this conversation. And one of the things that we're discovering in our resetter community

is that your exercise is got to change after 40. women, when we move into our 40s, we're losing estrogen, we're losing progesterone, which makes us actually more susceptible to injury and makes it where we need to have more variation in how we exercise. So I brought Debbie on because I wanted to go to an expert who in the fitness industry, who is a menopausal woman, who is applying these principles to her own life, and really share with us what she's done as far as fitness is concerned and how she's adapted for her post 40 body. Let's just put it that way. I also wanted to have a discussion with her about the ketogenic diet and fitness. Where should we be going keto? Where shouldn't we be going keto? What kind of pre and post

workout meal do we need to have? How do we need to vary our exercise? And how can we time that all around hormones. So this was a conversation I've been wanting to bring to you guys for so long, and I finally found a great expert to have it with. If you haven't checked out our podcast, go check out the low carb athlete. And as always, I hope this is life changing and elevates your concept of what the human body was built to do and how we need to treat it differently as we age. So enjoy. Dive into fitness, because this is a question. I've been trying to answer are for women, and especially fitness and keto. So I've been on this quest this year to figure out what's the best eating style pre-workout,

during our workouts, post-workout, and what is right for women. And so I've interviewed two men on this subject. And I was like, okay, their answers were intriguing. One of them is Thomas Daylower, who I love, and he has a whole protocol around how he fast and then he does weight training and then he breaks his fast with protein and he you know i don't know if you know who thomas day lauer is but he he's got like he's a really fit guy but he's not a 50 year old woman and so um what give us your thoughts on let's start with fitness for women do women need to approach fitness different than men yes i you know i'm 49 somehow turning 50 this year and

November. Thank you. I, you know, I just, always a thing that people need to embrace the change of age and not blame the aging process is a big thing. But I think women need to realize that cardio isn't really the answer. And, you know, people aren't going to the gyms as much because of our world. But typically before COVID, people would spend 45 minutes, an hour, hour and a half on the elliptical and do the bike. I just, it just, It's a waste of time. It's just like go do some weights. You know, you look at, I used to say when I'd go to the gym before we moved and look

around at the body types of people lifting weights and not on the machines too. Look at the people on the weight strength training machines. Look at the people on the cardi machines. And then look at the people do more functional strength training and lifting free weights and cables and stuff like that. There's an obvious difference. Right. Which body type do you want?

I was like, okay, me and me, you're not doing the right thing. And I was going to this gym that I was, you know, worked out for years and there's, I don't know, so 20-something years I was going the same place. And I could see the same people's like, you're not getting any results. You look the same as you've had for years. Yeah. And you have weight to lose. I know, I just wanted to go up to people go, okay, can I help you? You know, let's make the most out of your workout.

And if you're trying to lose fat weight, let's work on some other solutions because what you're doing is not working. Isn't that definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again? Expecting different results. So I think women need to do little less cardio and then look at doing more strength training and not being afraid of doing five, eight, ten repetitions to muscle fatigue rather than doing 15, 20, 30 reps of something using a light band. So I think a lot of women, yes, they do weights, but do they get, are they building their muscle strength? and are they getting rid of that fear that I'm going to get big and bulky. My size, my butt will be too big.

So are you saying that women should focus more on muscle than they should on trying to speed up their metabolism through cardio? Well, how does cardio? It doesn't really speed up your metabolism. It burns calories right there, right? It doesn't. You burn, say, 400 calories or the way people work out, they probably burn 200 calories an hour. and then they go eat 500 calories. So I think if you're doing cardio, it's better to do, you know,

a big trainer by heart rate and coach people, endurance athletes, but also just people just generally trying to stay fit and healthy and improve the aging process is doing less duration and adding some intervals in there once or twice a week. So going high heart rate, going low, not going in the black hole, we call it. Like a hit training? Yeah. like hit training you can do it on the treadmill or if you don't like running you can do

elliptical or bike and just do some sprints and you know uh dr josh axe he's talked about for years doing the burst training and everyone you know hit training or tabata intervals there's all sorts of stuff but it's i find people don't do them right either because if you don't wear a heart rate monitor you don't know what it feels like to go really hard all out and then wait kind of a rest based recovery don't start the next interval until your heart rate's all the way back down So up all the way down, up, not just like start again. So there's different techniques, but I think doing that a little bit more often and then doing a longer workout once a week. If it's going for a long hike or a walk and getting out in nature, I like bike riding.

It's a great way to see more land and different places where you live and go explore running. Is it for everyone? But I find running and walking a great option. like I'll run four minutes and walk a minute instead of running nonstop. I'll do more like 30 second sprints towards the end of a run and add a little more intervals. So for women as we age, you asked a few minutes ago why the house should, why should women change or train differently? Well, look at what happens when we age. We lose muscle mass.

All this stuff gets lower. So why don't we work on improving that? Like Dr. Gabrielle Leon is a great, you know, information in her website about eating more protein. All right. If we lose muscle, why aren't we eating more protein and doing more strength training workout to build those muscles up? So it's like camera. I don't know why. It's kind of like eating.

We've been taught breakfast is the most important meal the day. Eat all day. You'll speed up your metabolism and hop on the treadmill and you'll lose weight. Like I feel like a lot of women haven't undone. that those old theories. I mean, we deal so much with helping people learn how to fast that I'm like, okay, I don't know if you know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day was a slogan that Kellogg's came up with to promote their corn flakes. And here we are in 2021, like people still believing it. So I think these habits are hard for people to give up because they've been

pounded in our head over and over and over again. Well, I think a lot of, you know, everything in health and fitness, if you get your news from the TV or magazines, you're getting the wrong information that they're influenced by whoever sponsored that show and put the commercials on there or the advertisement in the magazine. I mean, they really contradict themselves, so different pages in a magazine. So unless you listen to podcasts, I don't, read blogs. You don't really get the truth. So I don't know.

I absolutely agree. Like, if there's anything 2020 taught us is look at what. where your information comes from before you judge it as truth or not. Do you think that women need to do exercise differently according to their cycles? Like, do you think that the week before their period they need to do things different? Do menopausal women need to do things different around their workouts? Yes. And I love this information.

I was just trying to put it together. I did a blog, I think a couple years ago we did podcasts in my show about it. and training by your cycle. And that's what Dr. Stacey Sims talks about in her book, Roar, and some more information from there is really evolved from training and eating based on your menstrual cycle for women. So it's really fascinating information that when you're more carbs sensitive, if you're cycle to eat more carbs, and then you know, okay, I'm going to, you know,

I can't do carbs. So a really good time to have more longer-distance endurance type of workouts, it's two weeks before, you know, before you cycle starts and doing more lower carb. And then when your cycle is, you can have more carbs. And then time it that way when you're exercising and doing more strength training during the cycle. I just find it so interesting because your low hormone phase is when your cycle's on. And that's a good time to when your hormones are more like a man's hormones. And then you have your high hormone phase that you feel crazy and everything.

Things are kind of harder and you're more tired or your moves different. And that's when your workouts, especially the week before your period starts, should be a little lower intensity and doing some walks and gentle stuff and not forcing yourself to do a hard workout when you don't feel it and you feel crappy. So it's really listening to your body kind of, if we learn how to pay attention to your body, we wouldn't need research in a book on this. We just respect and honor what your body says. Oh, that's not going to happen today.

So let's just go for a walk instead of doing that scheduled run or hard bike ride and just trying to switch it up. So it's listening to your buy, I think is the biggest thing, but knowing that switch it up based on your cycle. Yeah, we are coming up with like a fasting circle to help women understand when they should fast, when they shouldn't fast, how they can lean into different styles of eating, when they should do keto, when they should do carnivore. and we've had my resitter community, we've got hundreds of thousands of people that fast together every every month. So we've been playing with these principles

to match a woman's cycle. It is so fascinating when you get a woman finding her groove with her cycle. She knows what to eat, when to fast. And I think the workout piece is a whole other level of understanding that if women just could honor that week before her cycle,

she could prevent injuries. her performance would go up. I mean, you could really geek out on this information. Yeah, that's funny because I was just working on that last week thinking, how can I put this together? But I'll just look at what you guys did because that's brilliant. I mean, that's what women should be doing, is eating and training based on their cycle and went to fast.

We just did this big key on fasting challenge they did in January 11th, and just how we had to really explain that women should do a five-day fast. and women should, I mean, look at things differently and just listen to body. And I would say less is more and more is not better. I think so much of us, when we are the ambitious driven, high performing individual, that we get that stuck and that mindset that more is better. And we feel like a failure. Oh, yeah.

Do something to the extreme, right? Like, I'm lazy, empathetic, I'm unworthy, and we just think poorly of ourselves because we're not doing what everyone else is doing or we're not exceeding and going exact amount of what we said we do. Yeah. Yeah. And it is such a hard, you know, mindset to unwind, isn't it? Like, it's, especially when you look at hormones, you're like, okay, so sitting on the couch today would hormonally be better for me than going in on an hour long run? Like, it just, it's a weird, it's weird, but once you hook into it, you start to see your injuries go away, your performance goes up, you're happier. I mean, it's, I think it's, it's, it's a weird, it's weird,

so important that we are all talking about this. And one thing that I've been thinking about, and I really was excited to bounce this off of you, is that as a 51-year-old woman, and congratulations on almost being 50, the 50s are way better than 40. Let me just tell you that. One thing that I've been thinking about is as my estrogen is going down, and if estrogen is more of a, like, lubricating, it helps lubricate neococococin. I'm sure it has a lubricating effect on joints. Do you think that some of the chronic pain issues that women have as they move through menopause could be due to declining estrogen?

And if you could take like a Dutch test and map, see that your protective estrogen was low, that you may shy away from some of the longer, like I love to run, some of the longer activities that are more jarring on the joints? Yeah, that's good. I mean, I would suggest putting that, I'd like to see the Dutch and then see someone's microbiome because I've been really digging into that rabbit hole of what's your microbiome?

Because I did a few podcasts with Quran of microbiome labs and my lab test, we went through it. And I didn't have any key to key acrimancia, which is key for metabolism. factors in my helping my fat burning metabolism and I didn't have any really detected on my labs. And so looking at, you know,

am I having some gut issues that are causing inflammation in my body, leaky gut? Because a lot of athletes, there's research I need to pull up the link that leaky gut can occur from exercise endurance athletes. And so if I'm having leaky gut, I'm going to have inflammation in my body and ship my joints.

But put that on top of low estrogen. Yeah, and that goes back to what we talked about earlier, that I think it's more important for women to spend more time doing some kettlebells and some free weights and not being afraid of playing with some heavier things. Or what I showed a funny, I thought was a funny video. We have this new big yard called the hilltop, and I was working out with sand.

We had to lay out on the ground, and so I was carrying these bags up the hill and up the stairs, thinking, hey, I don't need to buy any weight. just go find stuff in your backyard and do yard work. So you don't even know anything. Just go play in your yard. So I think strength training is functional strength training, working yoga, Pilates, I do as well,

and putting more stability and mobility around your joints. And I think hormones do impact it. But I think we need to look at, you know, what you're doing for exercise and movement throughout the day. Yeah. on that topic, I saw you're on your Instagram, you taking your bags of sand. And I was like, that's brilliant. One of my first, like, experiences with just how we can use our everyday life to improve our fitness was actually with Ben.

I was at a seminar where he came and taught there was about 30 of us functional docs that were in a room. And they were like, okay, so Ben's going to teach you or is going to lead a workout tomorrow morning. And I was like, oh, Ben Greenfield, this is going to be like kick ass. This is going to be a really hard workout. Okay, so it was an hour long, and you may already, you probably already know this, but the first, like, 15 minutes was Tai Chi. And then, like, the second 15, 20 minutes was yoga. And then, like, he spent, like, another 20 minutes doing sit down, stand up.

Like, so we literally sat down on the ground, stood back up. Sat down on the ground, stood back up. And his, and I was thinking my AAA, I love that, AAA brain was like, this is, this is lame. Like, this is the top fitness blogger. Why are you giving us a harder workout? And yet to this day, that sit down, stand up is my most favorite workout because he brought a really good point, which is as you age, if you can't sit down and get back up, what good

is, you know, a pretty bicep muscle? Like, you need to be able to sit down and stand back up. There needs to be a functional part to fitness. would you agree? Well, I'm laughing because I, as we talked to it before we start, I'm coaching for Ben Greenfield and I'm writing workouts for people. And it's funny because as a personal trainer just calculated my head since almost 50, I've been personal training after 30 years.

Wow. A lot of my clients have had for their 70s. And what is the hardest exercise for them to do? Is it transition when I say, oh, we're doing something on the floor? and they get up and they're like, oh my God, this is the hardest thing to get up, get down. And it's funny because that's what they think is the hardest thing. So why not to have an exercise to teach you functional strength to get up off the floor, to get off the toilet, to go up the stairs.

The other thing, one time I had a client that totally opened my eyes, she could not get off the floor or she couldn't get down on the floor. And she was only 70s, which to me is super young because I'm used to training people that are fit and healthy in their older years. and she started training with me. And she had a trainer three times a week. I'm like, what do you guys have been doing? She couldn't get up.

Like, isn't the number one goal to be able to get off the floor like that? Really little commercial help. You know, I'm stuck. I can't get up off the floor. And to me, that's what the hardest things. People get so stiff sitting and they can't do a lunge in place. They can't sit down or I've been learning how to garden and, you know,

squat down in that primal squatting position. So what Ben has taught over the years to us is what I've learned at conferences, at fitness conferences, is that primal squatting. Paul Check taught me that, you know, working on movements, pushing, pulling, lending, twisting, you know, squatting, these key movements that you look at ancestral health exercises as well as, you know, movement patterns. They're not their body weight base too. And then you can make it heavier by adding weights. but getting off the floor, rock and roll and then coming up to standing called Ninja Get Up is a very simple but most challenging exercise for people. And as we age, do you want to be able to be lying on the floor and stand back up without holding anything? Put your pants on without holding something.

You know, get in and out of the shower without having to fall over and be scared. These are definitely important pieces. Do you think that we have to fight for muscle? as we age? Well, that's why, you know, going to nutrition, I think we need to eat more protein and not be afraid. Like, Dr. Gabrielle Leon has one gram of protein per body weight. So if you're 130 pounds, she wants you to be eating 130 pounds a day.

And I think, you know, people go a little carb and going into keto that they don't do enough protein. I'm seeing a lot more blogs and information on that as carnivore kind of keeps growing. maybe people are more aware of that and that they need to eat more protein and especially women as we're going through these years of pre-imposed menopause that we need to do more strength training, build those muscles up and eat more protein and not be scared of it. Yeah, I saw a really cool study showing that protein cycling eating 20 to 30 grams. Have you seen this every two to three hours is the best way to stimulate mTOR.

when you're fasting, I know you know this, but for our audience, you stimulate autophagy often, but when you're eating, you can stimulate an mTOR. And one of the ways to simulate an mTOR efficiently to grow muscle is protein, like you're commenting and Dr. Gabriella Lyons comments. But if you do it in every two hours, you actually have a more efficient way of stimulating mTOR. And then I thought to myself, what if you combine to? that with a day of weight training?

Like, what if you go in and out? So what if you did, like, keto one day and maybe you did more of your nature hike like you were talking about? And then the next day, you do carnivore and you decide to get over, like, close to 140 grams of protein, but you do it in this protein cycling and you do weight training. And then maybe the next day you do hit training with keto again. Do you think going in and out of those different states with those different exercises would encourage your muscles to grow more efficiently and serve us better? So that's such a great point.

I think people should put that in perspective of everything, right? I mean, we talk about hormesis, hormetic stresses are on and off. I talk all the time about the Goldilocks effect, not too much, not too little, that right amount. And I think almost everything we need to cycle on off because. I just think I did Iron Man's for years. I did 15 Iron Man's in 12 years that I didn't lose any weight from Iron Man. I didn't really change and my body was so used to it. So it's muscle confusion in the athletic world.

Training clients is like mix it up. Like the for someone for our Ben Greenfield program for a whole year. And every month I did it differently. Like, you know, switch it up. Don't do this. People get stuck doing the same thing all the time. So I think that's what their workout. with their food.

I'm a big fan of, you know, what you're just saying, going high protein, then going low, going higher carbs on the weekends and go low, faster in the week and then don't worry about it on the weekends. I think it's all about sustainability and switching it up. You can go carnivore for a month and then just add it back in. So, yeah, I think it's boring, too. You know, I think it's just fun. Oh, it's so fun.

And once you find the groove with it, it's freedom because somebody can come up to you. you and be like the carnivore diet is amazing. And you can be like, okay, let me try it. And then somebody else can come up to you and be like, you should really go vegan. And then you could be like, okay, well, let me try that. Okay, then somebody else comes to you and says, you should go keto. Like all of these things have incredible benefit. And to women where our hormones are ebbing and flowing, we get to use all of them.

Don't you think? I know. That's so true. Think your hormones are always changing every month. So why would you eat the same every month? Why would you exercise the same every month? You know, why not try? I just love the saying of trying to thrive every day rather than survive the day and just live for the weekend.

And just you should feel your best every day. And my goal is to live my best life, my second half of my life. And being looking at my best when I turned 50, not, you know, thinking, oh, I wish I was 40. I want to look like amazing when I'm 50 and look better than I did at 40. So I think it's people settle for the blaming the age and they settle like, that's my new normal. That's how it is. You know, I'm not going to change. I'm getting older hormones or out of whack,

and they just don't try mixing it up and doing different things. Yeah. Do you think vegetarians are at an amino acid disadvantage? So funny, I didn't eat red meat until 2019. I stopped in high school and I barely ate meat. And I had, I went to Kito Khan, or before that was PaleoFX. And then I spoke on Jimmy Moore's low carb cruise with Dr. Barry and Maria Emmerich and all these people that are all just eating meat. And I'm like, God, I don't eat.

And then I go to, you know, Austin, Texas for Pala FX and Ketocon, all the same people I was hanging out with. And my body finally was like, I haven't eaten red meat since I was 12 or 13 years old. I'm going to eat it. And I gradually tried. And I don't eat a lot of different meats. I haven't gone there. And I don't eat organ meat that I know I should. But I just can't do it.

But I can eat steak, and I've introduced that in my dad. But the point is, I was so low, if you look at all the benefits, same way I should eat liver, but I can't get over that. But everything I'm deficient in is what's found in red meat. So being vegetarian, I think I was that way for years, and I think I ate a lot of more processed food back then, and I was trying to get protein from other sources, but it's just not the same. And, you know, I do aminos.

I like Keon has aminos that are powdered. I put those in my water and have those before and after workout. It was great. And I bought some creatine powder to add in there. And I had all this alkaline and all this stuff. Like, okay, if I would just eat meat. Yep. So, yeah.

I'm still not eating the sweetbreads and all the liver. Me neither. I've interviewed Dr. Paul Saladino on my podcast. couple times. I've talked to Ken. And I, you know, I so can appreciate what they're saying about carnivore and all the organs. And yet I can't get myself to do it. The last go around, I decided, though, I might be able to, the last time I talked to Paul actually two weeks ago, and he was talking about heart. And I thought, okay, I might be able to eat heart. So I looked it up on our local, like, crowd cow website where we get our meat from. And U.S. Wellness Meats has a lot of

have heart and I'm like okay I and my 18 year old sons that has become quite a chef and I'm like would you would you eat heart like if I brought it home would you cook it and we all agreed we would eat it but we haven't tried it yet so I'll keep you posted well there's recipes I know my friend Brad Kearns was trying something and they were someone else who was it um oh who's the wrote the author of the immunity, not immunity code, but immunity fix. Immunity fix, yeah. He was doing a blog about a month ago and he's like, if you just mix it up into your food. And I go, you don't understand.

He's trying to get me to have it to make some comment. Like, I'm just starting eating red meat. I'm not going to eating the heart mushed up and something to make. Oh, God. That's a big leaf. That's all the terrible day. It's only been a couple years. So, yeah, and that's why I think carnivore is great.

if you're eating the orgamy and you don't get bored of not eating other food because the other things taste good too. And maybe that's a good opportunity to cycle things in and out. But I was actually, a lot of my microbiome is low because I wasn't eating organi. I was trying to eat more protein the past year, but not eating the vegetables. And I was deficient in so many different things that I get from the fiber from vegetables because I'm not eating the small intestines of the animal. So I have the fiber in it, the prebiotics. So, yeah, that's why I think you always have to test and not guess and figure out what works for your body and what's your body doing, what's going on inside under the hood. Yeah, agreed, agreed.

And I haven't, again, thank God people are making the supplements for the Oregon meats because, you know, my adventurous spirit can only go so far there. What do you think for pre and post workouts? So we've, in our clinic, we have a biohacking center here in Silicon Valley. We've worked with a lot of Spartan racers, and we've worked on their nutrition trying to understand what's best pre-workout, post-workout. And, you know, we used to believe carbs loading was the thing you did before a big race. And now we got a lot of people proving keto is great before a big race. Tell us your thoughts on pre and post recovery for workouts. Well, I think it is, depends on the workout you're doing.

Are you fat adapted already? so you're metabolically flexible. I'm used to do more endurance events and I can just have coffee and some, you know, a little bit of heavy cream in there and maybe some collagen and be okay and then have some water with electrolytes

and I've been doing the key on aminos, as I said, I'll do that. If I'm going a longer workout, I would do, I've been doing VESPA, which is Peter Defti represents VESPA. It's like a part of the B and has different. things in it, but somehow helps me get my fat burning oxidation levels higher.

Post workout, I would, you know, I'm, I like to wait until I'm hungry to eat, but I would take some aminos afterwards. I like to have bone broth and try to do more real food. So I really like bone broth for people, get those amino acids, the glycine, or just, you know, I make a drink as like athletic greens or shade. in the summertime I was doing that a lot more after longer workouts. But I'm always experimenting because I'm always curious if I do fasted workouts, which I've done so long.

And if I go lift weights, I just do it fast because they'll go in the morning. And then I'd have some aminozer protein afterwards. But I think that you have to experiment. If you're going a little higher intensity, those people doing more of a crossfit or higher workout, maybe they need a little something with some fat and carbs in it. No, it was Liz's podcast,

this gal, forget her name. She's in Maui. She's like the world record 400 meter. She's a championship. She's a 40-something and she's talking about how she'll have a piece of steak before she does a track workout because the car is seen in it and it'll help buffer lactic acid.

So it's like, oh, that makes sense. But I don't digest meat very well. So take, you know, I'd have problems that she can digest it fine. And so I think, again, N equals one, depends on the workout, depends on the duration, the intensity. Are you fat adapted? Are you metabolically flexible? What heart rate are you going to be exercising at?

And, you know, can you perform better if you eat a little something? I felt like, you know, go back to thinking you're superwoman, your superhero, if you can do this workout without eating. We just think that was so great. Well, what if you'd actually perform better? What if you're actually causing more stress in your body if you are doing too much of a fasted workout? So that's what I'm always curious. Like, am I doing more harm or am I benefiting myself, but not anything? And I think we get too much coffee.

Some people, I know I did this in the past, I have way too much coffee in that bulletproof coffee where he added the MCT oil and heavy cream and put in the blender and butter. I would do that. waiting too much. Yeah, and then it kills your, it kills your appetite, so then you don't feel like eating. So to Dave Astry's point, like, awesome, it does help you fast longer, but is the goal always to fast longer? And I think that's such an important question to ask, because I, and I agree, I'm curious about that too. I like to work out in a fasted state. It feels weird to eat and then go work out, but is that what, you know, 51, is that what my hormones want? I, I haven't always answered that for myself.

But I think as women, we should ask these questions. What type of workouts are you doing fasted that you feel like you're curious if you need something to eat? Well, I do all my workouts in the morning, primarily because I like to follow my cortisol pattern. So knowing that my cortisol is going to spike a couple hours after I get up, that's when I go. It's also more convenient for me. I'm not very disciplined if I work out at the end of the day. It's just the way I am. So I do a combination of I'd love to run,

but I've decided that I run for my mental health, that I've, like, retrained myself. Like, if I need to, if I'm thinking about something or I need some dopamine or a good old-fashioned endorphin rush, I'll go for a half-hour run. I also, I just introduced a carol bike. Do you know what a carol bike is? Is that like an e-bike?

It's like an AI bike where it like does hit training. So it measures your, how hard you're cycling and it keeps adapting it. Oh, wow. But it goes up and down. Yeah, I learned about it from Dave Asprey. And Ben actually talks about it too. I've heard him talk about it.

So I'll throw that in a couple of days a week. I'll do some TRX and then I'll do some yoga. But yoga's the longest thing I do. Like, that's the longest workout Sunday mornings, hour and a half. Everything else are short little bursts. And part of it is because as I move through menopause, I just noticed that I was getting injured more and I had to adapt my workouts differently. And as I adapted differently, I noticed a different level of fitness.

The other thing I've worked on, I'm curious if you do this, is the whoop band. We've used the whoop band to like look at what our HRV is that day and say, hey, I didn't really recover that well last night. Maybe I should do a lighter workout. Have you thought, have you used that technique at all? Lee's rude, but when I first had my adrenal fatigue, air quotes, Renix is not technically supposed to call it that, but I did a Sweet Beat, Rhonda Collier, who's up near you, she helped me. I did a kind of a beta test program for them, and I did it every day for 30 days with their

Sweet Beat Life app, and I measured my heart rate, bear billy, which, you know, I appreciate those devices, because it is more work to put a monitor when you're just in bed to put on a chest strap and, you know, measure your HRV for five minutes, so I'm not consistent. I'd like to get, you know, oop or a ring or something like that. But I am a big believer in that, and I'd have clients, if you have some type of devices to train by your readiness score and really know if your body's rested and repaired. And I know even I have a Garmin watch and, you know, it will tell me recovery on there as well from based in the workout.

And if I was racing for an Ironman or half marathon or whatever, I would be more, you know, looking at it a little bit more to make sure I'm not overtraining and putting myself into a hole. But I think it is an important part to know as you're aging, we need definitely a big topic to go into is recovery and repair. It's like a paradigm shift. You know, those of us that have been working out for so long, it's so counter, it's against the intuition that we've had about working out for so long.

I was blessed a couple months ago to be on a panel that Dr. Zach Bush, do you know who Zach Bush is? Yes. Love the man. Yeah, so he brought about five of us on to talk about how to eat around your cycle was sort of the general. And his thing was really plant-based because that's a big part of what he loves. Anyways, on there was fitness trainer for Tom Brady.

And he, when we got to this concept that women should eat differently before their cycle, I asked the trainer, I was like, do you train? And he trains a lot of professional female athletes. And I said, do you train women differently the week before their cycle? And he's like, oh, yeah, absolutely. And I was like, oh, my God, how, why do you have, why aren't we talking about this? I know that, you know, Dr. Sims has and other people, but that is such a key piece. And recovery fits into that, I think, is that it's it possible, I can tell you with my woup band,

I don't recover as well the week before my cycle. Whereas with, and so then if I honor that and do yoga and walk, I find that my HRV actually improves. But it's so, it's just bizarreo because we do not. work with our health in these cyclical ways. Oh, tell me, is it keto? Is it Spartan training? Is it marathon running? Like, what is it?

And we just do it over and over again. I know. And it's so hard because I find, I think I would be coaching a lot more athletes because they struggle with all this and they should be aware of performance and longevity. But most people struggle with just unexplained weight gain, fatigue, digestion issues. But it's like, where are all the athletes there? They're just so, you know, they're just not open to realizing that you could do better. You can do less and get more results.

You can train by what your cycle is and figure out change your nutrition and your exercise and mix it up two weeks a month and go by that way. Instead, people just have a training schedule that's, you know, build, build, build, cut back down, build, build, build, it has nothing to do with their cycle. And that's what I love what Dr. Sim's starting. to bring out what you're doing what my friend Aaron Carson. She does strength training for professional athletes out of Boulder. And she created EC fit.

And they have a program she's working with now. Dr. Stacey Sam's creating a program for women strength training. Love it. So it is lifting weights, you know, not being afraid of that and stop doing all the cardio equipment. That's kind of a waste of time and spend more time doing that. I think yoga and Pilates stability, mobility drills. and doing some strength training.

Well, this was a huge delight. I appreciate it. This is like I said, this is like a conversation I've been like so thirsty to have about fitness and women. We, in our resetter community, we've been watching women fast and do it wrong and end up with really challenges to their hormones. And we've been teaching women how to fast for their hormones. And once I understood that, I was like, well, can't we apply everything to it?

And so I've been searching for a woman to talk about cycling your workouts to your cycle. And I think as women, we need to stand up and shout these messages out there because we have a lot of, and no offense to our male gurus, but we have a lot of male gurus out there in the health influencer world that have great information. But until you live in a woman's body and you go through the hormonal cycles that we all go through. It's hard to understand how drastically different many of these things have to be as a woman and how you really, women need to do n-of-one more than more than men do, don't you think? For sure. Yeah, that's, I think putting it all together and working on the, like I call it,

holistic method, but working on the whole person is so key and really, you know, testing or not gassing, and then working on your nutrition, your exercise, your movement, your sleep, and your stress and gut health, digestion, hydration, and my favorite is happiness. You know, are you guys. I saw that. And gratitude and playing and laughing, being silly. I think that just makes everything else better. This is the part is getting them to sleep.

So that's the key part. Yeah, you know, oxytocin's at the top of the hormonal hierarchy. So when you get lots of oxytocin, you balance cortisol. And when you balance cortisol, you balance insulin. And then when insulin's in check, your sex hormones have a chance. So I love that. I love that. Okay, I've got five questions for you.

These are my fun questions. Now that we've gotten past the science and all that, all the applicable stuff now, this is the fun part. And I promise these will go quick. I know I've taken a lot of your time. So, okay, you have a pretty amazing podcast. And how many episodes you've done like hundreds, right? Well, we started actually, I realized 10 years ago. It was fit fast.

fast. We talked about eating fat before everyone else did. We had metabolic efficiency. So it was fit fat fast and then it's changed to the low carb athlete over the year. So there's 400 and I think I just was launching the rest for the month, but 400 something, 410. Amazing. Okay, who was your most memorable person that you interviewed? Oh. And you can put it in last year if you can't, I mean, you've been doing it for 10 years. Yeah, there's so many good ones. you know what's i just interviewed um dr ben bickman was pretty amazing he was last year but dr zach bush i mean there's so many good ones just interviewing so great minds yeah they're just amazing listed to and dr kenberry we just did it one last

week and he just makes things so simple that he's fun to talk to but he's just you know the more just make it simple don't which is Dr. Eric Westman just interviewed. I'm not answering your question, but Dr. Wesman is really fun too because he and Amy Berger just wrote this new book and the carb confusion and he's really fun to talk to. And that's why the low carb crews is so fun because you get to hang out with all these people and get to be friends with them.

Oh, yeah. You're just with each other for a whole week and you're just sitting around all day. Oh, I love it. I know. I miss conferences. I'd like us to all to go back to the best part about those kind of conferences is like learning and then just sitting with great minds and getting to know people is incredible. So I don't have an answer.

I guess I said everyone. No, that's good. It's hard to pick one. Who are you dying to have on your podcast that you just love to have like a really great conversation with? Well, actually you. I haven't, we haven't taken to me yet.

I really wanted to, I love the topic of hormones and training and fueling based in your hormone cycle. I think just getting into that with you would be awesome to talk about the program you're working on. Kelsey Hess and I just, we did think on fasting and for women. And I think that's just such a huge topic, fasting, what to eat, low carb, high carb, carnivore and just match that with exercise. And put that all together.

Our program is amazing. So it's great info I want to have you on to do that. Yeah. Thank you. And we'll talk. I just putting the finishing touches on my fourth book and it's going to be a fasting book for women. I just put a book out on menopause.

And what I did, the five steps I did to manage my menopause symptoms that I'm sort of still in the middle of. Every time I clean up my diet, I seem to prolong the end of menopause. But we've created something called a fasting circle, which is really cool, where women can look at, okay, I'm day 10. I should probably do this kind of fast. I should eat this way. And my team and I, we spent so much time analyzing this over the last couple months. And it's pretty neat. We're pretty excited to reveal it.

So we can chat about that on your podcast. What mentor do you feel like had the greatest impact on your own personal health? On my health, well, it would be probably Todd Durkin is my fitness mentor, which leads our fitness mastermind, but he's just always about purpose, passion, and inspire and just define what moves your soul and what led me to going down this path when I had my issue of the party bus was at that retreat. And I just, he lives not too far from me now.

I said, you know, this all started at that retreat and talking about, you know, following what you're defining what your purpose is and what your legacy is. And it's nothing to do with my health, but just realizing this is, this story, share your story. This is how you impact others because they can relate to you. And that's kind of led me going down to be a practitioner because my people that are like me that go,

oh my gosh, that's happened to me. No one could help me. I'm in struggling. I can't get results. You know, I just, I don't, I know what it's like to be on that side and struggling for eight, 10 years trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I just want to get my body back and feel like my vibrant self and not struggle and I just feel like so many people are wasting years trying to get help so Todd is the one that kind of just always instilled to me for years being in our masculine group for 10 years that you know follow your define your purpose and follow your passion and your mission and always look at you know what your gravestone's going to be who's going to be at your your cement you know what's going to get your gravestone and what's going to be

written up in your obituary it's important okay last question question, if you had one message to the world that you could get into everybody's brain, what would that message be? I think this past year, what I've been trying to get the message out is to take ownership of your own health. Take care, love yourself enough to make those choices. Health is a choice. And everything we do is up to us.

There isn't a magic pill or magic shot that's going to make you healthy from inside out and thrive every day. It's a choice as we make and most of them are free. And it's our choice if we want to take that direction and really be the best version of yourself. I could not agree anymore. Well, this was super delightful. So, Debbie, thank you so much for taking your time on a windy day in your new environment. And this was, yeah, you answered so many questions for me and, of course, left my brain thinking about even more.

And just thank you for the great work you're doing in the world. How do people find you if they want to work with you or find your information? What's the best place to locate you? My website is Debbie Potts.net. And on Instagram, the low-carb athlete and Facebook the low-carb athlete. And the podcast, Low-carbathlet. Yeah. Beautiful.

Well, thank you. And I hope you don't get blown away. I was going to go upstairs to work in my glass house and the hilltop to work out. But I don't know if I can even get up there right now, blow away. That's great. though. It's called weather variation. We need to have it in California because there's too many sunny days. We have to find something to break it up a little bit. One week of the year, I'll have to deal with it. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Hey, resetters, I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews and those of you that have left me comments on iTunes. I just, greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you're enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I've learned in just interacting with so many people is that we've really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me, the Resetter podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life, about mindset in a way that we may not be getting

on social media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say, give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me. Because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it's impacting your life. So please let us know if there's anything we can do to make this podcast. more customized to you to make it better. We are now officially in season two, and we are working to bring you the best conversations

that health influencers have, that mindset changers can give, and to really deliver you something that you're not able to get anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say, my YouTube, from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you, and let's get healthy together. Thank you.