Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - How to Use Your Hormones to Optimize Training - With Miesha Tate

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Welcome to episode 164 with guest Miesha Tate! This episode is all about how to use your hormones to optimize training. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep164/.  My guest, Miesha Tate is an MMA powerhouse winning both the UFC Women's Bantamweight Championship & the StrikeForce Women's Bantamweight Championship. She has represented the USA taking a silver medal in the FILA World Grappling Championship. She grew up as a bit of a tomboy and still has an affinity for the outdoors. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

Women are so powerful. I think when we're not stifled, when we can really be allowed to flourish, I think we're, we are powerful beyond measure. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Have I got a lineup for you this season? Lots of deep thinkers, a lot of brilliant minds, all with one focus to move the needle forward on your mental and physical health.

So please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. And I want you believing in your body. I want you believing in your mind. I want you believing in your spirit. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you the one and only Misha Tate.

Now, I know a lot of you have been asking me, how do you work out according to your hormones? And so I wanted to bring Misha on to really show you what it would look like to take a woman's menstrual cycle and time her workouts according to the hormones that are coming in and out. Now, if you're not familiar with Misha, she is a former UFC and Strike Force fighter champion. Badass is what I would say. She puts on her Instagram that she's a woman warrior mom, which she is. And we talk about motherhood and what it's like to be a professional fighter and be a mom. So you're going to hear some really interesting discussions around that. She also happens to be a Celebrity Big Brother three winner, which we talked about that in this episode.

but most importantly, she is such a kind and compassionate human that is in this extreme sport of fighting, UFC fighting. And she was really broke a glass ceiling for women. And you'll hear that story in here as well. But when I look at her, I see a female body and I see a sport that can work against her hormones if she doesn't do it right. She has got a few more fights in her heading into retirement. You'll hear about that in this episode. But most importantly, I walk her through how to put strength training, how to put cardio,

where to put some of her pliometrics, when should she recover, and how to do that all in accordance with her menstrual cycle. So those of you that have an active cycle, you're going to learn a ton about where you put different forms of exercise in during your monthly menstrual cycle. menstrual cycle. If you're a menopausal woman, we talk, I have put in my two sense of what I've done with my menopausal body and timed different workouts to different hormones. And if you're a man, you're going to want to hear this as well because it's going to help you support the women in your lives. This was a very, very deep conversation on hormonal health matched to a professional

UFC fighter. And it was incredible. And what I probably have to, to say most of all is that what I love about Misha is her determination and her focus to be the best she can be in her sport, but also her determination and focus to be the healthiest she can be and the incredible mom that she is. She talks a lot about motherhood and balancing this crazy sport she's in mixed with her health, mixed with motherhood. It's a beautiful synergy of all the concepts that I teach here on this podcast. So I'm so excited to bring it to you. You're going to learn so much about how you can match your hormones to your workouts all through the eyes of Misha Tate. So enjoy. Okay, resetters, let's talk about hormones, collagen, and your

skin. So maybe you've heard me say this before, but one of the troubling parts of getting older, especially for women as they move through menopause, is that we start to lose collagen. For women, we will lose 30% of our collagen within the first five years of menopause. This means we're going to end up with more wrinkly skin, our joints are going to be stiffer, our skin's going to be drier. So I'm always looking for new collagen products to add into my daily routine. And Organify has once again done a new collagen product. amazing job putting together all the right nutrients with spectacular taste to give us the collagen

that we need. So it's a new product called glow. I have been using it for the last several weeks. I absolutely love what it's doing to my skin and I love how it tastes. What they did with this product that's so cool is not only does it have collagen powder in there, but they combined it with 13 superfoods that make that collagen more accessible to. your cells. Remember, it's not enough just to eat a food or drink a food. You've got to have it in right combination so the cells know how to use it. So the product is called glow. And if you guys want to check it out, remember, they always give you 20% off. And it's glow. Where you're going to go to is organify.com forward slash pelts. And I'll repeat that for you. It is

Organify, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I-O-C-S-P-E-L-Z. And you can get your 20% off, try glow. Now, I know you're going to ask me, should you do it in a fasted state or not? That you're going to have to test with your blood sugar. I've been putting it in a big container of water and drinking it all day long. It's not pulling me out of a fasted state. And again, I love the taste and I love what it's doing for my skin. So give it a try.

And as always, let me know how it works for you. So we're going to just dive right in. And I have to say, because my audience doesn't even know this, you now know this, is that this is our first ever mobile resetter podcast done in like the most amazing setting ever. It's beautiful. There's actually a sea lion. I don't know. I wish you all can see.

There's a sea lion sitting on a rock, which is amazing. So welcome. Thank you for being my first mobile resetter podcast guest. Oh, I love it. Yeah. Thanks for letting me pop the cherry. Okay, so I was starting to tell you that the, I am, well, you know, my background is as a competitive athlete. I played tennis in college.

And so I love the athletic brain. And I love women who like see a way where women can just kick ass, but they may not be welcome. And the first time I heard you speak, I literally was like 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning at one of the IHA conferences. and you told your whole story about how there were no women in the UFC fighting world, and you were the first one to shepherd women in. So you have to start with that because you broke a freaking glass ceiling for women, and it's so cool. Well, I really appreciate that.

In all fairness, it wasn't just me. It always takes two to tango, you know. So I think I have to give credit where credits do. It was Rhonda Rousey and I who had this huge rivalry, and we had this big fight, and it was instrumental. strike force for a world title. And it was the fight that changed Dana White's mind on women that we could not only be competitive, but we could sell fights and we could entertain. And we- Oh, yeah, because you have to sell tickets. Oh, yeah. And we fought hard. And I think he saw that

there was real substance there. Prior to that, he believed that the talent pool wasn't deep enough and that there would have been too many mismatches. And he was very adamant that women would never be a part of the UFC. And it's funny because I don't consider myself a cocky or arrogant person, but I am confident. And I remember. And I remember. I remember, yeah, I mean, I work hard, right? I think when you work hard for something, it's, it's your rightful ownership to be able to say, like, I'm confident about what I do. So I remember thinking that Dana had never seen me fight. And I knew if I could just show him the way that I thought that he would change his mind.

And that was years before, because I was hearing him for so many years. Damn, women will never be in the ocean. I was like, well, you haven't seen me fight yet. Because I know I have that warrior spirit. And I didn't win that fight. So it wasn't about the winning. It was just about showing up and being competitive and changing mindsets and perception. That's been my whole career.

But what happened in that fight that changed his mind? I think we just fought with such ferocity. We just really went out there and we fought hard. But not only that, there was a lot of skill. I think there was a lot of back and forth. And we had this rivalry. We really had some momentum, some following going in to this fight. People hadn't cared about it.

women's MMA to that degree yet. So I think it started to change some minds on maybe there's something here that could actually propel women forward in sport. And so from there, like after that, then women were allowed into the UF, is it a class? And excuse me for my lack of fighting

knowledge, but is it like a UFC? Yeah, so they brought in the Bantamweight division. It was the only division at the time. Okay. So I think earlier in my career, I would have probably been a 125er. but that was the only weight class that was available at the time. It was the only weight class in Strike Force,

and it was the only weight class that came over into the UFC. So it was just what it was. But they brought us over. They actually bought Strike Force, and it was a really nerve-wracking time for women because we were kind of assuming that that was the end for us. Strike Force was the UFC for us. It was the pinnacle.

It was the best we could get. Right. So when the UFC bought, we were kind of really nervous that we weren't going to have a job. Wow. Okay. So then when they opened it up to women, how many women went flooding in to, I mean, how many women are in the UFC in general? Yeah, you know, I would have to guess there's around 25 in each weight class and there's

three weight classes right now. So it just depended. It's probably around that 100-ish mark. Okay. I mean, 75, maybe right around in there. Right. But at that time, it was just a handful of us, 10, 12 of us. And I think they just continued building on that division.

And my mentality was if you build it, they will come. Yeah. You got to show women that there's an opportunity here. Yeah. So do you sell as many tickets as men do? Sometimes more. Yeah, I wondered. Yeah, absolutely.

I think women are some of the more enjoyable fights a lot of the times. People will adamantly say how much they love watching women fight because we just fight with a lot of heart. Yeah, a little more, a little more, a little more flowery, sort of compassionate vibe about you. Do women get injured more than men? I don't think so. I don't think that's fair to say.

I think in all fairness, men obviously hit harder. They've got testosterone on their side. Yeah. Yeah. You know, good and bad. I would never want to be a heavyweight male fighter because it's just like, okay, who's going to get knocked out? Every fight, could you imagine?

Right. You know, for me, yeah. Yeah. They have to go to knockout. For me, that's not something I really think about each fight. I don't think it's a high probability. Of course it can happen. I have been knocked out before.

I was going to say. You know, I don't think we get hurt more often than the men. Not in fights anyways. Perhaps in training, though. I do know that knee injuries and we train a lot with men. Oh, interesting. Still, so it's changing, though. Now I primarily train with.

women. I would say 90% of the time. But in the beginning of my career, there were no, it wasn't a, it wasn't a thing. It was a real treat to be able to train with a female. Oh, interesting. And we're going to dive into hormones, but you know, like, again, I want to, I'm, the conversation I've been dying to have with you is to like, walk through the menstrual cycle and be like, okay, do you know when estrogen comes in? Collagen goes up. And when collagen goes up, that you're going to be more injury proof. So you're actually going to have less, even if you got hit with the same punch when estrogen is in her glory compared to like in the front half of your cycle compared the back half of your cycle your body's actually going to take that same punch differently

based off the sex hormone that's showing up at that time that is so wild to me this is something I never knew my whole career yeah you know where were you 15 years ago I just stumbled upon this stuff trying to solve my own menopausal like situation and then when I started down understand hormones, I was like, wait a second, why aren't we doing this as women? Why aren't we looking at the characteristics of these hormones and then building everything around it? So the other thing I want to, we'll chat about is testosterone. So when you say men have more testosterone, you and I talked about this. Yeah, they get it every 15 minutes, but you get it in full glory at ovulation. So now we put you up against another female. If you're at ovulation, she's not. Your

punches technically could be stronger because of testosterone behind you compared to her. You're going to be at a testosterone imbalance. That is so interesting. Really a mind-blowing statistic and also something to just think about. Right. How, I mean, that's what we are. We're coursing hormones. Yeah. So how do we and I'm, I'm really curious about training. Yeah, we're going to go down that path. Yeah. Here's a funny thing again. I just thought about this right now. I've literally, I've been like, I've been like, I've got to get to Misha. We've got to talk about your hormones. We've got to talk about training.

But do you know where your competitors are in their cycle? Would there ever be a way for you to know? I don't feel like that's typically voluntary information, so I don't know how I would know. It would be kind of like trying to find out if they were injured or something like that. Yeah. But it would be a real interesting. I know this is a podcast that everybody can listen to it. And hopefully your competitors don't listen to it.

But it would be a really interesting competitive advantage. If you knew where you were in your cycle compared to where the woman you were fighting was, we could have some interesting conversations about what she might be either thriving at or not. Because again, if you had testosterone peaking, she didn't. That would be a really different power situation. If you had more estrogen and she had more progesterone, there's a personality that goes with this, depending on that, depending on where you are in your cycle. No, this is so interesting. And there's no way for me to know about the opponent, but what I can do and what I tend to do is just focus on being the best of myself.

Yeah, right. Like, I don't care what she's doing. Like, I can't care where she said. As long as I'm good, I'm solid. Like, that's all that really matters to me. So I do have that information as far as I go. So we'll go there. We'll go there. Yeah, good point. Okay. The other really interesting things. So I heard you speak at the IHA conference. And then I was fascinated. I was like, I'd be. I became a Misha fan. I was like, I'm gonna, this woman is badass. I love badass women. So I started following you and there was a scenario. You must have had a fight right after the conference. And there was a scenario you were nursing one of your children. And you had had like, you posted something on Instagram.

You had like a black eye. It was like swollen and you were nursing your child. And I, all I could think was that just took motherhood to a whole other freaking level. So how, how, I know you probably are just like, I'm a woman, I fight, that's my profession. When I get out of the ring, I nurse my baby. That's what I do. But tell me what goes through your mind when you step off the ring and then you step into motherhood and you're nursing your child. Do you think like, holy shit, I've got hormones surging through me.

I just did this extreme thing. And now I'm the soft loving mother. I'm so thankful for you for pointing out the hormones. because it wasn't something I was aware of. My whole career until just as of recent was based off of a male model. Everything that I did was just what the guys do and how the guys do it and almost trying to be like one of the guys so that I could fit in and have a place in this world of fighting. So I had no understanding of that.

Now in hindsight, I look back at it and say, you know, how much more powerful could I have been if I could have trained? And I'm at the tail end of my career. I think I've got maybe a year left. And I'm so happy with that. I'm happy with everything I've accomplished, you know, becoming a UFC world champion. I captured the dreams. It was on a five-year retirement when I had two kids and met my wonderful fiancé.

And then I just decided, you know what, I think I want to fight again. And so I came back and you're right, I was nursing my son. It was one year after having my second child that I fought. I got back into the octagon. I nursed him the day of my fight. Yep. And that fight I came out relatively unscathed, but I was still nursing him for my second fight in November,

about a year and a half. And that fight, I got a giant black eye. I got my first laceration of my career, had a cut under my eye. And it's funny because I was more nervous about how they were going to react than anything. Your kids. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And my children actually responded a lot better than the adults. Oh, interesting. Tell me how. Yeah. You know, well, my son was a year and a half and my daughter would have been three and a half at that point then. So my daughter had a lot of questions, but she wasn't alarmed by the face. And I mean, you thought, like my eye was swollen shut. And your eye was swollen shut and you're nursing your son. Right. And he was like, mommy, he was like looking at me and he was like, do your boobs still work? Ah, it's okay. Oh, he was fine. You know, so he's like, yeah, okay, well, this is fine. I don't know. don't really care what you look like. Your mom's still, right? Right. And Amaya was like, Mommy, does it hurt? And I said, no, honey, it doesn't hurt. It's just, I'm just healing.

It's okay. Yeah. And she questions about the fine. I said, Mommy likes to do that. You know, I have to break it down into her way that makes sense. And I let her be a part of changing the bandages and getting to be Dr. Maya and really, I'm trying to harness her empathy and just not being afraid of that whole process by me not being afraid of it. You know, just, showing her that it was okay and it was a normal part of the process. Do they watch your fights? They do. They're still learning and their attention span is that of a gnat, you know, so of course

they don't pay attention to the whole thing. But they cheer for me in their own ways and they're certainly supportive. And they don't mind that mom's getting beaten up in essence. They just, they see it differently probably. You know my, so I've had three fights since my children have been born. And my last fight, my daughter was. she just turned four and I didn't win and she said mommy I really wanted you to win and I said I know I really wanted to win too she's like but why didn't you win and I said well I tried my best and I just didn't win

you know sometimes we try our best and we just don't win such a good lesson opportunity right and it's like I tried my best and I got a laceration in that the same cut opened up again so I had a similar look about me. So they're evolving. As they get older, the questions become different. The reactions become different. My son was a bit more alarmed at this point. He definitely understood that,

ooh, this was an injury, and he was a bit taken back by it. So I had to calm him and say, it's okay. Mommy's okay. I like to do this. It's okay. But, you know, it's all, I'm sure it's going to be different for my next fight. You know, she's going to be five.

And my son will be almost three. So you'll have to see how they react. And I'm also thinking like we, so people in my podcast know this, I like to swear. And I used to always say to my kids like there's some words we just don't say outside the house in the house. You know, this is not acceptable for everybody. But, you know, if I throw an F bomb down here or there, like this is just we don't we don't go out into public and say this. Like I tried to say that. So I'm thinking like do your kids try to fight each other?

Do they mimic you? They wrestle. Yeah. Oh yeah. They wrestle with each other. Amaya is in wrestling and she loves it. And the thing is she doesn't even see that it's different. Right.

Oh, I'm sure. They don't even know. She's grown up with parents that are fighters. We go on the gym and we spar and we train. And I just try to relate to her like, we're playing. Yeah. That's what I like to do. I'm enjoying it.

There's nothing to be worried about. She's not like taking down kids at school. No, not yet. There might be a point, though. She's actually a very sweet girl. But I think she'll be one of those people that, if people assume her kindness is weakness, she'll be able to kick their ass. Oh, I want to fast forward like 20 years to see what she's like.

I know, pump the breaks because I'm sure it's coming really fast. I hear that this happens way too fast. It does happen really fast. But I mean, talk about strength and that, you know, I think that this is what really ties so well into hormones is that as women, we can be so strong and our hormones can be so, such an amazing example of how our strength can really shine. But we can also be so soft and we can be so emotional and we can be so empathetic. And it's a beautiful combination of strength and softness.

And I would think, you know, I have a daughter and a son as well. Same kind of combo or daughter first, son, second. I really can't wait to see what happens with your daughter because she's going to see both sides of that. She's going to see the ridiculous strength that a female body can do. But then she's going to feel the mother's love and the softness that you give her. And then your son on the other side of that, you know, it'll be really interesting to see his relationship to women because of your example as such a strong but yet nurturing woman. He's going to see that in women and he's going to search for strength in women. But then he's also going to be looking for that softness piece.

I think my son will be a real catch for a woman someday because he is going to understand what it means to support strong women. that there's nothing to be afraid of. I think a lot of men are intimidated by women going out and being strong and being a force to be reckoned with. Some men just can handle it. And that's fine, but I really appreciate the men that can who propel us forward, who just help us, who want us to have those voices and be strong. I'm very appreciative of my fiance and all the support that he gives me. So I want my son to have that example that, yeah, that's, that's, that's okay. We want to support our partners equally, and I want my daughter to be that woman. Yeah. Well, I can't wait to fast forward to that. One of the things that I've been saying

is that we've come, and you just spoke of this about how you trained like men, because that's what you've been taught. I think most of us, whether it's health care or we're athletes or we're in a job or biohacking, we were talking about this in the biohacking world, is that we have, as women, we have had to play in this masculine patriarchal system. And I think for so many years, we didn't even realize we were playing in a system that was so heavily focused on the masculine energy. And what we're seeing now is that women are kind of like waking up and we're having conversations like this and we're saying, well, where's the feminine in all of this?

And just that the sheer, I hope you have a picture of it somewhere, the sheer picture of you with a black eye post-fight nursing your baby, to me, is the perfect example of how we blend the feminine and the masculine. It's saying, I can do this because I'm a kick-ass woman, but I also can still be a nurturing, loving mother. And that is the direction I see women going. Women are so powerful. Crazy powerful. We really can do it all. And I think when we're not stifled, when we can really be allowed to flourish, I think, we are powerful beyond measure. Crazy.

And if you look at our hormones, we're actually built to be all everything. So, and you and I talked on Instagram about this, we talked about protein cycling and fasting and how do you actually build muscle while cut weight, which is really important for a fighter. Right. And we'll chat about that. I don't know. Did you, do you remember what tips I gave you? And did you apply any of them?

Yeah. I've broken my fast with protein after a workout. I'm just trying to get a boost in muscle. And I've taken a lot of those things into account. I focused a lot of my gut too. So a lot of times I will break it with probiotic drink. I mean, I'm definitely trying to implement these things because I've had my own issues with hormones and cutting weight and trying to move a weight class. And it's been a real stressor on my body.

So I'm really focused on healing myself from the inside out. I believe there's some really powerful tools here to help me do that. So I feel like I'm just getting my toes wet. But the testosterone, that's really interesting. Super interesting. So let's go through your cycle. So before I do that, just give me sort of a general idea of what your training schedule looks like.

It's a weekly schedule right now, correct? Like, give me an example of the different variations you do. I do strength and conditioning three times a week. And then I usually do a pro practice, which would be everything from grappling to sparring a few times a week. And as I build into my training camp, when I'm about eight weeks out from the fight, I will hit twice a day, just about every day, once on Saturdays. Sometimes they do half day on Wednesdays too, because I'm trying to also be more mindful, that more is not always more. Right. Right. So sometimes I'm listening to my body. I'm learning to

be my own CEO of my life, my training. At the end of the day, I'm the one who has to go into the oxygon. So I don't really feel like there should be somebody telling me you have to do this when it doesn't feel like I have it to give. So I'm trying to find that. What do your coaches say with that? It depends which one that you talk to. But I also encourage athletes to remember that you are the boss. It's so easy to forget that. Not only do we hire our coaches and pay care coaches, we do want their advice, but they don't rule us. We do have some say in this. Beautiful.

And it's the similar concept for me with women in birth. I really want to be a strong advocate. Someday I'd love to be a doula as well. I mean, have all these things because I want to empower women to take back their power and make the choices for themselves. Just because the doctor says, you're going to have a big baby. You need a cesarean. Not necessarily true.

They can't even actually measure the baby after, I think, month seven in the third. So what I'm trying to say, though, is there's been a lot of that where it's like we're just being told and we just think we have to do. But we also have intuition. We have things that our body tries to tell us. And when we continually manually override, I think it can be very detrimental. And I've felt that myself. So it depends which coach that you talk to. I have coach Sam Calavilla, who I love working with with Training Lab, who is very mindful of the work.

But I don't know if he knows as much about the cycle for women. He might. But the workload is still what it needs to be when my request was to move down a weight class. It's like we said we had a timeline. We had to do what we had to do. You know, sometimes to hit the mark, you don't get to do everything the right way. You've got to do it the way to get it done.

Right. Right. So I didn't feel like I had a lot of room for error or a lot of. of room to relax. Right. So that was a really hard training camp. This last one, I tried to move down a weight class. I did move down a weight class. How many, how much weight do you have to go down? So it's 10 pounds lighter than I normally compete at. Yeah. And you're like thick muscle. Mm-hmm. So I had to lose a lot of muscle. Because I was very lean, around 10, 9 or 10 percent at 135. Wow. And I went down to 125. So you were 9% body fat.

And then I went down. And I think I was around 8% at 125, which means I had to lose a lot. I just didn't have a lot of body fat to lose at that point. And, you know, I mean, women are supposed to be like for a healthy hormonal, like at 19, 20%. And he did tell me that for sure. He's like, you don't want to stay here. This is not healthy for you. And once it started to impede my cycle, I knew he was alarmed, but it was like, we have to stay the course.

though if this is still the objective. Yeah. And it was like that's still the objective. So we push through it, but I'm still paying the price. Yeah. Yeah. We accomplished the goal. We made the weight.

We did the weight class. Right. But I'm still paying the price. But it's not like, I can't imagine like, let's say you make the weight class, you do the fight, but it's not like two weeks later you pop from 8% up to 20%. I mean, you're probably, what do you think you are right now? Oh, probably around 19 or 20%. And so how long do you think it took you to pop?

I mean, to go from 19% to 8% on your hormones? Like, how long do you think it took you to get back up to a healthy body weight? I mean, at least a few months. Yeah. Yeah, two, three months. I mean, you'll put on, I put on some in just inflammation, not eating as clean, but to actually put the body fat back on to be a healthy woman again, it takes time. And I think that's why I'm still seeing some hormonal repercussions.

Yeah, do you have a regular cycle? It's not regular anymore. It used to be. How old are you? I'm 36. 36. Okay. So does it have any irregularity rhythm to it?

Like, is it every 60 days? Every. No, it's around that 28 day, but it can be four days later, two days early. So I'm usually still within a week. Yeah. But I think even have pushed sometimes like that. seven, eight days and it's slowly been starting to get better. Okay.

And then sometimes when it's like four or five days late, it's sometimes only two days long. Okay. And then as of recent, it was like two days early and it was like 10 days long. Right. And I was like, what is going on here? Like it's all over the place. So it is all over the place. It's all over the place.

Yeah. So here's what we do is we'll go through like a month, a monthly cycle and then you're going to have to take this back to your coach and see how you can work with that. Okay. Before I do that, one of the big things that I always, and I asked Danica this, Danica Patrick, one of the first questions I had for her when I first started to get to know her, I was like, okay, what did you do in a like six-hour car race when you had your period? Like, this is where we're at a bit of a disadvantage because, well, no, she was competing against men.

I know. So I was like, how did you, how did you have to take more bathroom breaks? You can't do that because it's going to affect your, your, your, your, your, race time. Depends. She just said she was on birth control. She had it all manipulated by birth control. Oh, that's scary too, though.

Which is scary as well. So she had like, you know, synthetically manipulated it, which made sense for what she had to do. Sometimes to hit the mark, we really pay a price on the back end. And I think it's important we can be more aware of that before we make that decision. Agreed. And we can do better at educating the younger girls that are, you know, going, following your footsteps and they're moving into that professional athlete status is like how do we we have

to first acknowledge. And I think this is really hard. And I can say that as I would consider myself a feminist strong woman is that I don't want to ever say like I can't do something. Right. But when you look at us hormonally, there are things that we need to do differently at different times of the month. And there is strength in acknowledging that.

Yeah. So I just think with athletes, we don't give you all enough. grace to say, gosh, that has to be hard given wherever you are in your hormonal cycle. So now you're fighting women. Never has that. Yeah. I mean, when we're on our cycle, I think it's to the point where men recognize that's something I don't fully understand and it makes sense.

She's a little more emotional right now. So maybe this will take it a little easier. Maybe they're starting to wrap their brains around that. Right. But I mean, when I started, it wouldn't even be something I would talk about. I'm like surrounded in a room of men. You think that that's the last thing that I'm going to talk about. Right.

I'm trying to fit in. Right. Not trying to stand out and be like, oh, my period, you know. It's like I had to pretend like it didn't exist. Yeah. And now the science, the research, the understanding, even the consideration that we're so different, it's starting to make ahead. Agreed. And I really think it's important.

Yeah. Yeah, there's so many studies that have been done on male models as well, like in almost everything. And, you know, I was talking to one of my trainers recently, and he was like, yeah, that's because men are easier to study. There's so much easier to study. More complicated. Yeah. Yeah. And in the science world, you know, to the researchers credit, you know, a lot of women have been crying like, why don't we have enough science on women?

Why don't we have enough science on women? And I think a lot of it is because we're so hard to study. You'd have to take women cycling at the same time, same age, and really put your efforts into categorizing women on different hormonal trajectories. But what we have to get out of is comparing, putting men and women lumped together in the same study. The most common one that I always point out is the intermittent fasting study that came out like a few months ago. And it said, oh, people can't lose weight with intermittent fasting. and it made all the headlines.

And it was like intermittent fasting isn't your weight loss tool. And I dove into the study. And it was a study of like a good sample size. It was like a thousand people. And it was everything from a 17-year-old man to a 65-year-old woman were lumped into that. And I'm like, you can't compare a 65-year-old woman to a 17-year-old man when it comes to weight loss. You can't compare us in anything. And then you lump us all together and you're like, oh, well, it didn't necessarily work.

It's because we didn't categorize them out. So I do think that's changing, but we are very difficult to study. Right. So, you know, I always throw that out there. I understand it. And I think if we could even get some general concepts, like what you're talking about, about how to train according to what hormones are present, and is it possible to be mindful about scheduling fights?

You know, is that something that I can even like? Do you get to determine when you, when you can tell them around about when I would like to fight? You can? Yeah. Oh, okay. I'm going to go down about. Great. Okay.

So I'm going to go down. This is going to be great. Yeah. I think this is going to be really powerful. Yeah. Like your opponent doesn't, doesn't determine it? Um, it's a little bit of combination of both. I'm fortunate that I've been with the company for a really long time and having been a former

world champion. I'm very blessed. Not everybody gets this opportunity, but usually I can hit up the matchmaker and say, Hey, I'd like to fight in May, towards the end of May or this time. You know what I mean? Okay. So, so we're going to get you to fight. during ovulation.

So, okay, so here we go, because that's when you got all the testosterone. This is going to be so fun. Okay, so let's go through your cycle. So day one to day 10, so day one is when you bleed. And to day 10, you're building estrogen. So two things, a couple things know about estrogen. Very forgiving of cortisol. So, you know, any stress, you can push your workout.

So if your coach is listening to this or if you take this back to whoever's the head person training you, like if you want to really improve. your fitness and push that workout till you're in complete exhaustion. Do it from about maybe wait till the second day of your period, maybe the third, but then from there until about day 10, go for it. That week, a little over a week, you're making estrogen, you should be, you should be pushing yourself. Okay.

The second thing to know is that you want to keep glucose down and you want to keep, you know, insulin down. So I assume you probably don't do low carb, ever. And I'm not, I don't think you should. But if you were to err on the side of like higher protein, more of nature's carbs, do you do like, do you, are your, where do you get your carbs from? A lot of it's sweet potatoes. Excellent. I love sweet potatoes. I mean, I, off camp, I'm not perfect. I'm not going to sit here and say like, I'm perfect. I'm not. But I generally try to be. mindful of getting cleaner sources of carbs. Fruits, sweet potatoes,

perfect. Vegetables are also a great source of carbs. I mean, I'll have oatmeal sometimes. Perfect. Those kinds of things. So what I, if I was designing a nutritional program, I would say from day one till day 10, you should do a plenty of meat,

variety of meats, because you're going to get different amino acid profiles and different types of, everything from chicken to turkey to fish to grass-fed beef. like you want a good variety. And then I would say you would definitely want to lean into more fruits. And I would go maybe to the more lower glycemic fruits. So I would do like the berries, the apples. I wouldn't necessarily do the tropical fruits.

I'd save that for the back half of your cycle. Okay. And then you could add in, you could do the sweet potatoes there. You could do the potatoes. You could do rice, like a wild rice or a forbidden rice. Kinawa is amazing. Yeah, that's another one I use. Yeah.

So, but when we live, look at things like bread, pastas, cakes, cookies, like all that, there's just, there's nothing there for us other than it is going to raise glucose. So you can really keep yourself lean, but power up your muscles in those first 10 days by choosing smart carbs that are nature carbs and massively powering up on protein. And for an athlete like you, you would want a protein load of about 1.6 grams of protein for every pound of body weight you are. And then you would want to be divvying it into your diet every two to three hours like we talked about when we did the Instagram live.

So it's like if we look at, like how much do you weigh? Now about 149. And what are you trying to get to? I will have to weigh in at 136 pounds. Okay. But I will not diet down. I naturally lean down to about 100. 143 pounds.

Okay. And then I cut from there, anywhere from 139 to 143. Okay. Yeah. So let's say just rounding out the numbers, like you need, you probably need about 200 grams of protein a day. And I would put that in that front part of your cycle. But the way I would divvy it up is I would divvy it up in like 50 gram chunks.

Okay. So you would do four meals of 50 grams. you would want that every couple of hours. Does that make sense? Yes. So how long would you say would be a good range to fast when I'm in a training camp? It would be harder to hit those longer fasts. What I did my last training camp, I went slightly ketogenic.

So a little less on the carbs, but I still need a pretty good amount of carbs. I think my protein intake was around 150 to 170 grams at the time. I was lighter. I was in the 130s. And the fats were around 80 and the carbs were whatever would make up the rest of 1900 calories. That's about what I was at every day. Okay. So numbers evade me.

I'd have to look it up. Yeah. So carbohydrate-wise in that, and again, we're going to break it through the cycle day one to day 10, you would probably keep your carbs a little bit lower. And for you, I would say, 7.000. 75 grams, maybe 100 grams, but you really, your macro to focus on in those first 10 is protein. Okay. And I'll show you, you're going to focus on carbs in the back half.

Right. You can focus on them a little bit in ovulation, but if we just look at it from front half of your cycle is that protein load. You can do longer fast to answer your question. And I would say for you, when you're actively training, we're looking at like 15 to 17-hour fasts. I'm not talking a 24-hour fast. I think you have to decide if you lose energy. Do you train in a fasted state? I often train in a fasted state.

But I have to pick the kinds of workouts that I do. So strength and conditioning in my pre-camp groundwork sort of area, I'll often hit that, no problem. Right. Fasted. But what ends up happening sometimes is if I hit a long fast window and then, I hit the strengthening conditioning in the morning, and then I've got to get enough in to feel okay for sparring or something live later. I'm also compiling two practices that then sometimes I would, I feel, feel it.

Like I feel weak. Okay. I feel a bit depleted, like not as explosive. Yep. So my last camp, I hit around a 13-hour fast pretty consecutively. Yeah. But this was before I knew anything about fasting for hormones, but I would hit between 12 and 13 hours. Yeah, which should be good. In general, should be good. Right. The closer you get to

fight day, you might, and I don't know what the space is between training camp and actual fight, but you might go up more to 15, 16, 17 hours if you can take it just to keep yourself lean. Right. So the other trick, and I don't know if you've tried this, is in your fasting window, putting amino acids in, like in a drink, just aminos. Because it's a form of protein. It's going to fuel the muscle, but it won't pull you out of a fasted state. Okay. So you could take, like, I would do like a pack of element with some protein or some aminos.

You could do your one that you love. I'd put it in a big jug of water and while you're in your fasted state training, just drinking it constantly. Okay. Because now you're giving a fuel source to those muscles, but you're keeping yourself in a fat burning state. So aminos, if you looked at the food label, do they have any? calories? They don't have any calories, but they do have protein in them. Yeah, that's perfect.

I think I was looking recently at glutamine because that's something I'm looking to just have in my diet more regularly, but it had per serving. It was like five calories. I'm like, I appreciate that will pull me out of a fast, so I'll wait until I'm in my eating window just to make sure that I don't mess that up. But it's good to know about the BCAs. Yeah. Have you put, have you ever put a continuous glucose monitor on? No, but I want to do that. Oh, let's do it. I want to do that. And then let's see what it does and we'll interpret the numbers. What is the one that you recommend. NutreSense is the one. Yeah. And we'll put it on and like I'll go through the whole cycle. We'll create a training program or a plan for you. You take it back to your coach. You guys work it out. And then let's

put a monitor on you and then let's watch what happens. Because what's really interesting is that what I'm seeing with a lot of professionals is that when they're doing their craft, they actually, their blood sugar drops because you're in a flow state. Right. And that blows me away because it makes no sense. And the person I've learned, I've tested this now with both Leanne and Danica, Leanne, we, every single time she goes on stage and she's dancing and singing, her blood sugar goes down. That makes no sense. Right, because you would think it would be being released because of the activity, but is it because it's being so quickly burned? No, because when you are in your flow state, your brain goes to a different place. It goes into a gamma brainwave,

and you are literally in the zone. And when you're in the zone, blood sugar, goes down. Regardless of the roof. Doesn't matter how much. So I'd be curious on you. Danica, we did the same thing. She was driving in her car one day and she had the monitor on and she sent me a message

and was like, oh my God, my blood sugar just went down. And I'm like, of course. You're in your car. You're driving. Like she was in her flow state. So it's really what would be so fascinating would be to look at blood sugar from where is it affected in you because you might be surprised. of the level of sophistication that your body has with fighting.

Right. So we could, if we go back to this theory that we take you at 15 hours, you're training, we've got you in aminos. We're trying to get you into ketosis. So you need that blood sugar down to get the ketones. The ketones are going to power you up when you're actually fighting. But we're also going to be helped by this situation that your body in when it's fighting loves that.

Right. And so, and this doesn't have to be like fight day. this can be just you're enjoying a workout in the arena. And now your blood sugar drops, we'd have to test all that. But it would be really interesting to see if that actually is putting you more into a state of ketosis than you think. I'm so interested. Right? Very intriguing.

Fascinating to me. So, but that's how you can get away with a different, like you're in a fasted state, but you need your muscles to perform. So we put aminos into a liquid water and you're just, drinking those to keep those muscles well nourished so that you can do what you need to do to train. But we're also allowing you to lean out so that you can hit what you want to to hit that weight. Right. I'm really curious then as I start to wrap my mind around this, that would this change day of Wayans or day of the fight? Wayans is a whole other element to my

sport. But let's just talk about the day of the fight. Would I be considering doing any kind, would fasting be beneficial at all that period? I mean, I don't fight until, but sometimes as, sometimes as early as three, but sometimes not as late as eight or nine, just depending on the fight card. I mean, is there an element to producing ketones the day of the fight? That could be beneficial. It could be beneficial, but what I would probably do is have you eat earlier in the day. Are you allowed, like, can you do exogenous ketones? You mean, like, drinking them? Yeah.

Yeah, they don't, like, test you for that one. I don't think that's ever considered. So what I would do is I'd actually have you protein load, like really high protein a couple of days before the fight. You can pair that with a little bit of fasting, maybe a little bit more because you've got to cut weight with weigh-ins a couple days before the fight. One day. One day.

So you'd have to, you could maybe do it up until the weigh-in day. and then on the fight day, we would do protein in the morning, and then we would keep you doing a ton of protein and then add in some exogenous ketones and see if that. We'd have to play with it in your training schedule. And then see if that now you've got the amino acids from the protein and you've got the ketones and your blood sugar is up. And now you've neurochemically got all the resources to kick butt.

That sounds amazing. But let's play with it. Yeah. Try it in my training camp. Yeah. So, okay, so just keep, just remember that day one to day 10, push your workouts, push more of the protein, a little more fasting depending on what you, what you can take. If you're finding that you're weak in your workouts, can we get you doing amino acids in that fasted state? And that goes all the way till day 10.

Okay. And then let's see what, what performance looks like. When you go into ovulation day 11 to day 15, now this is, this is key because this is, is where you've got testosterone comes surging in. So testosterone's at her highest. So you should be building muscle during that time. Right. So something that I've thought of a lot about is like when we look at a weekly training schedule for a woman, we're like, oh, you know, bison tries on Monday, cardio on Tuesday, you know, recovery on Wednesday, like long distance running on Thursday. No, why don't we just put in that ovulation window, why don't we do buys and tries one day,

you know, legs and butt the next day, abs the next day, we do all strength training using testosterone when she shows up. Right. Have you, have, I mean, I think your strength could go through the roof. It makes so much sense. Because you have testosterone.

Testosterone is at that time. You're not getting it any other time in a cycle. So it's an uphill battle to build the muscle. Bing, Bing, Bing. Right. That's it. So how do we take this? that time period and do heavy, heavy weights.

Right. Like make you as strong as we can. Now here's the trick. You also have estrogen at her peak. And what estrogen does is it tightens the ligament. And the ligament is where the tendon attaches to the bone. So it tightens the ligament and it makes the tendon really flexible. So when you lift the weights, you want to do slow, heavy weights.

You don't want to do a lot of plyometrics. don't want to do a lot of hit training, but you want to do heavy weights for the testosterone, and you want it to be slow so you don't injure yourself because of the estrogen. I've heard that on your cycle as a not a favorable time to do things that would, like knee injuries are more prone, hip injuries are more prone. Is that true because the things are more relaxed, right? So it might not be a good time to do active sparring, for example, or something box jumps or anything that's like really hard on the joints or potentially could, cause something to yeah during ovulation pliometrics that kind of jumping is that you're going to be

more prone to injury right but on fight day i'd be curious if um you know you you need flexibility that's part of the skill of the sport correct yeah i think to a degree flexibility is beneficial i wouldn't say it's like on the top priority oh okay but um if you're in a place where you're having to test your flexibility. You may have already messed up. Oh, really? Okay. Okay.

Yeah. So it would be, I mean, you can always backfill in with some collagen and make sure that you're like getting enough stability in there. And you have so much muscle

that it may not be as much of an issue. Right. So, but again, we'd have to test that. Yeah. But in training, and this is what I say for all women,

is that why are we not using testosterone to build muscle during ovulation? You're not getting it any other time. Instead of doing, doing cardio during that time, take that five-day ovulation window and power up on your strength training. How much testosterone are we getting in that one month, that period of the month? You know, so you say men get it every 15 minutes. Yeah. Are we getting it every 15 minutes for five days? Like how much are we actually getting? Yeah. So, you know, hormones in general pulse in.

Right. So they're never, it's not like a faucet you turn on. But I don't know what the frequency is. But you're getting it, like when we look at it on a map, it's coming in in those five days consistently. At what rate? I'm not sure. But it's probably, I'll go look it up for you. But I'm guessing it's probably, you know, every few minutes, it's just coming in as another pulse and then it relaxes. And then another pulse and then it relaxes. Okay.

Because what you're made to do during that time is procreate. So what your body is doing is it saying, okay, well, how about, you know, we make sure you have plenty of testosterone. and so your libido goes up so that you go and find a mate and we can reproduce. So it's got to come in very, very consistently. I would doubt that it comes in in the morning and then like later in the afternoon it comes in in again. I think it's like a low hose that might be like pulsing in pretty consistently throughout the day. So interesting.

Fascinating, right? Yeah. So we do cardio in the front in the first 10 days. Push it. You can do pliometrics. You can do all the speed work. Like really push those workouts. then we get into ovulation for five days you power up on all the all the muscle building i'm not saying

you can't do muscle building in the first half of the cycle right but the heaviest weights should be during that time okay now nutrition wise this is where you want to power up on all your probiotic prebiotic and polyphenol foods so this is going to be fruits and vegetables every like big green salads that you can find with a variety of vegetables in there a lot of nuts and seeds, hemp seeds are amazing, chia seeds are amazing, because you want to support your microbiome. All your fermented products, so all of your sour fruits, kefir. You could do tons of raw kefir at that time. Raw is the best.

But you really want to focus on the microbiome during that time. The liver is really important to break those hormones down. So if there was ever a time to avoid alcohol, that's the window to avoid alcohol because you need your liver to really be there to break these hormones down. Okay. So you would have a total, that five-day window would look a lot different diet-wise. And that's day 10 to 15. 10 to 15.

Okay. Like day 11 to 15. So day 1 to 10 and then 11, 11 to 15. Okay. So it's about a five-day period. So, and then zinc, like there would be nutrients. I would tell you, like you really want to power up on your zinc as you go into that ovulation because that helps with all the hormonal production.

Okay. Whereas there's another nutrient to power up at the end of the cycle. Okay. So you would come in strong like five days with a whole bunch of zinc to help make sure that you had enough resources to make the estrogen and testosterone. And zinc is something that's in the electrolytes. It can't. Some of them have it. Yeah, depending on which ones you can get.

Zinc rich foods are like, you know, oysters. I don't know if you're doing a lot of oysters. But that's like the most common one that people talk about. Maybe if they're cooked. I can't do their food. raw oysters, the oyster shooters. Okay. Well, we'll come up with a bunch of zinc rich

fins, but that's the one that, you know, everybody says, oh, it's an aphrodisiac. Well, all it's doing is raising testosterone because it's high in zinc, so that's why it's, you know, it is an aphrodisiac because it's helping you raise testosterone. Right. If you eat it during your ovulation window.

What if you were to try to raise testosterone naturally outside your testosterone window? Yeah, you will raise it to its natural capabilities. You're never going to are really testosterone. You know, it's one of the interesting things is PCOS is the most common hormonal disbalance or imbalance for women.

And it's high testosterone rates. And then women are like growing facial hair, their cycles stop. It is more of an abnormal situation. And that's a completely different discussion. But what we see in general with women is low testosterone. Right. So we want to maximize that during ovulation. That would be the best time.

but the other times you're not supposed to have a lot of it. Right. Which also, again. But if you're an athlete and you want to try to get the most that you can get naturally, right? You could probably try to incorporate some of those things a little more regularly. A little more regularly. Yeah, you could do it more regularly.

So have you done a hormonal hormone test? No, I wouldn't say specifically. I've had blood work done looking at certain things, but it wasn't, you know, it was more like if I was having a problem. Yeah. or obviously checking vitamin D levels, vitamin B, trying to be optimal in my nutrition, make sure those are on point.

And I do have hypothyroidism as a while. So checking for that. When I came off of Celebrity Big Brother, I was on that for a month, and it was extremely stressful. I was away from my kids for a whole month, like no contact. And it's just a house where you have to make friends

and then you have to like devour them basically. Oh God. It's terrible. It's very cutthroat. And it's like, I feel like a horrible person right now for trying to win this game. Right. It's like you're making me feel like a bad person. Yeah.

But it was so stressful for me that I just remember having all kinds of little issues come up. The hypothyroidism. My luteal phase stayed high. So I lost my cycle at that point. Yep. And I started having, yes, the stress on top of. trying to maintain the workout slows on top of trying to maintain the diet, which I couldn't even write things down to like measure my calories.

It was really hard. So the mental load and emotional load on top of everything else trying to maintain my my trainings in there was crazy. And that's when I noticed the cycle start to spin out of control. Well, so when cortisol goes up consistently, it makes you more insulin resistant. And when you're more insulin resistant, whether it doesn't matter what you're eating, because it'll just all of a sudden shut everything down. Right.

So it shuts down the insulin's ability to push glucose into the cells. And then when you're insulin resistant, it brings down your sex hormones. It shuts the whole hormonal system down. It makes so much sense. So now if you have bursts of cortisol, it won't shut the system down, but that was a month long. Yeah. Did you win? I did.

What? Well, you know, I am a competitor. I do like to do that. So, and a strategist. So I'm constantly trying to strategize inside that house. like how do I win at this game you know but um I did I did I won so it was worth it in the end but it's extremely stressful and uh not a recommendable experience yeah it sounds horrible people get so excited sometimes like how was it being on celebrity big brother and I was like I wish

I could say it was it was awesome you know I'm grateful for the experience yeah don't get me wrong but yeah it was not a recommendable experience that's very stressful that's crazy that's crazy so okay so in ovulation so you'll change to more of like a ton of lead you can still do still do the same protein but I really want you to focus in on more vegetables, more of the, like, I don't know if you like sourcrow, the keifers, like we've got to get those probiotic foods into you, more of the nuts and seeds because we got to get the prebiotic foods into you so that we can break all these hormones down. Okay.

And then we focus more on weight training, really heavy weights, but slow so we can use testosterone to build up your muscle during this little unique five-day window. Okay. Fasting wise, 13 hours is fine. For someone like you, I wouldn't go very far with fasting because when you come out of ovulation, now we got to dip in hormones again and there's another little four-day window. We can do a little longer fast. We can go a little lower carb.

So day 16 to day 19, let's elongate that fast. Let's put it to 15, somewhere between 15 and 17 hours. Let's go back very much to what I told you from day one to 10. Okay. Let's maximize protein. Let's eat the, like we can do fruits and vegetables, but protein is really what, like, I'd almost want you to overdo protein in that phase along with day one to day 10. Okay.

Whereas in the ovulation phase, I want you to overdo the vegetables and the fruit and all those prebiotic foods and nuts and the seeds so we can support the microbiome. So is that when progesterone would be present at this point? It's right about, it's almost there. Almost there. Okay. So we're phasing out of testosterone. being present and we're not quite to the point where progesterone has made her appearance. That's right.

So yeah, it's like a dip. Okay. So we can go and for someone like you wants to cut weight, we can go into a little longer fast. Okay. Workout wise, you can go back to your cardio. You can go back to more of your like overall, your body, you know, going into a hit, pliometric kind of phase. That would be, that would be great.

Because I assume you have to get endurance up a bit, a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So you can go back into all of that. Okay. Then when we hit day 19, now this, everything has to flip on its head.

So day 19, day 20, that should be. Take a vacation? Yeah. Pretty much that. Take bag, watch some Netflix. That's right. That should be your recovery. So, you know, what do you do for, what's a recovery day look like other than sitting

and watching Netflix? I wish. I never sit in, I don't even watch TV. So I joke about that. That would be, I have two kids. Right. It doesn't happen. But for me, a recovery day is a work day.

I literally go. I get in the hyperbaric chamber. I do red light. I will get physical therapy. I will get a massage. I'll schedule all these things. So I make sure I'm being mindful. I'll do my meditations.

I'll make sure that I'm getting those things on my breathwork. Whatever it is, ice bath sauna. Whatever it is. It's a full day. It's not like I just sit and relax. And maybe I should incorporate a little bit. For me, it's like, okay, if this is a rest day, it's a recovery day more so than just resting.

I'm out of the gym. I'm not slipping foot in the gym, but I am actively pursuing recovery. Okay, so that's an awesome routine, and it should be done pretty consistently from about day 20 until you bleed. So I'm not saying you don't work out, but I am saying that you don't want to push your workout during that time.

So you can, whatever workout is like you're, like let's say like a workout where you, you're like, yeah, that was a solid workout or a solid training day. And let's give it a number of like a nine. No, let's give it a number of like a seven. And a day where you're like, oh my God, that was the hardest training day is a 10. The 10 should be done on the first half of your cycle. And then we should have a little bit of like a six or a seven on that back half.

You don't want to be pushing the workout. That would not be the time to do something new and heavy and have your coach go, hey, today we're up in you so that we can get you in a more fit state. Right. It has to be more recovery. And then what I would do with your recovery days is I would probably do several of those in a row. You know, I don't know how often you go in in hyperbaric chamber, but I would go in every day from day 20 until do an hour, maybe hour and a half every day from day 20 until you bleed. Okay.

Because it's going to bring cortisol down. And so that's going to help you be able to recover and balance. balance. Whereas the rest of the cycle, you could pop in maybe once or twice a week, but the week before your cycle, let's power up on hyperbarics a little bit more so that we're putting your body in more of a parasympathetic state, which is what it naturally does already. Right. So. Do you think there's anything adverse to doing the hyperbarics at other points?

No, you can do it. No. But I think it becomes a powerful tool the week before your period. Because now, I called it the nurture phase in the book because I was like, I want people, I want women to understand to nurture themselves. Right. And when you say it's an all-day event, I hear nurturing in that. And that's what we've got to get you doing.

But you can do it any other time of the month. I'm not saying don't do that, but it needs to be the primary focus from day 20 until you bleed. Perfect. So if you and you don't push your workout to a new height. Right. It needs to stay at a comfortable level. Yeah. You just to lift weights.

I don't know if you do yoga, but you like yoga, Pilates, hiking. During that cycle, if you woke up one morning and you're like, I don't want to train, don't train. Yeah. That would be the time to say no. You know, as an athlete, we're so good at like pushing through the no. Right. Like you just train your mind to like not to just go, yeah, well, we're going to do it anyways. Right.

So totally fine to do that every other part of the cycle except starting at day 20 until you bleed. Okay. Because now you're working, really working against your hormones. Right. And then you do that until day. And then you're going to up your carbs. So we want to go into the sweet potatoes, like potatoes, squashes. We want the bananas.

We want the mangoes, the papayas, the pineapples, citrus fruits, like really go into those higher glycemic foods during that time because now you're supporting progesterone. So then once you bleed, now you bleed, you're getting your cycle back. You're bleeding. And, you know, the thing about blood that's, the menstrual cycle is so interesting is it's a bit of a detox. We're like, think about it. we're shedding the old. So any of like the lactic acid or stress hormones that you've accumulated along the training

schedule, you know, if you can get progesterone at her peak, you're going to have a really good shed of blood. And those first couple of days you're getting rid of the stuff that doesn't serve you as you move into the harder training period starting day, you know, two or three of your cycle. That's incredible. Does that make sense? So now we're like, now we're working with each hormone. We've got cardio set when, when at the beginning.

We've got testosterone now that we're working with powering up on your muscle. We come out of ovulation. We can go back to some cardio. And then now we're in that progesterone building and we're nurturing ourselves. We're doing a little more recovery. Okay. So this brings me to my next question. I think I understand that very well.

When would be the worst time to try to cut water weight? Because we diet and we try to get down in weight lane. But what people don't understand is the difference between losing weight and cutting weight. Cutting weight refers to the dehydration process. That's all just vanity weight. It's just to make a number on the scale. And then we go right back up to the number that we were before we started dehydrating. We stopped drinking water.

We got in a sauna until we made weight, essentially. So if I understand it right, progesterone is going to be a hormone that's going to want to hold water a little bit, right? Because it wants you to be in a nurture fear. Yeah, you got it. Okay. So like the worst time for you to fight and the worst time for you to cut weight would be from about day 20 until you bleed. So if you could schedule your fight,

don't like make sure it's not at that time. Okay. Because cutting weight's going to be harder. And you're also, so the other thing, think of, the interesting thing about these hormones is estrogen makes us very outgoing. Right. It almost, I mean, you could almost call it aggressive. You know, it makes us very like outward.

So you need aggression and outwardness in your sport. Whenever I'm too talking of, I blame it on the estrogen. It's like, it's the estrogen. I know. It's all over explaining. Sorry. No, no. Stop talking, Mindy.

Why are you talking? Why are you talking? But then progester makes us very inner. So you're going to have to fight against that inner to be able to just get in the ring. Right. So you're literally biologically going against what you were designed to do by doing a fight the week before your period. And you're going to make cutting weights so much more difficult. This is so powerful.

Crazy, right? This is crazy. Well, I know that a lot of females will start their period when they start cutting weight. And talking with you, it makes me theorize that potentially it's because they have had hormone dysregulation because of all the intense training and that's been eight, 10, 12 weeks of just go hard. with no mindfulness to the hormone cycle that we are on, or should be on. And then we get to Fight Week, which is like a delode week. So it's the first week that they probably are seeing a relaxation in the training. There's no more hard sparring.

There's no more hard lifting. It's all about peaking. So we bring the training way down. So is it potentially then that, progesterone's like, oh, okay, we're here, I can show up now. Absolutely. Because when cortisol goes down, progesterone can start to shine. So what you're doing in that week is the body's relaxing.

Right. Even though there's a big fight at the end of it, the body is like, finally it can relax. And so when cortisol goes down, progesterone takes that moment and builds and then, and then you actually will start. Right. So it makes so much sense because that would be about four to five days after progester maybe got to have a chance to become present. That's right.

That the weight cut and the fight actually comes. So then the bleed starts, even off cycle potentially. Even off cycle, because I bet a lot of fighters, female fighters, have their cycles messed up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I have a friend of mine who she couldn't stop bleeding. It was just so bad. And she was just so tired.

And I was like, get in the hyperbaric chamber is like the one thing that I could offer. Of course. At least get the recovery on point because I think she was just training herself into. such a hole. Right. Such a deficit. Right. You just think of like a deficit like a hole.

Like you're digging yourself into this hole. That's right. And maybe you take one day off, but you're not out of the hole. And then you go right back into digging and digging, digging, digging. And sometimes athletes just think they've just got to go hard all the time or they're not going to win or they're not doing enough. Yep. And I think it's coming to light that it's too much. That's exactly right.

And this is where, you know, like I feel like as women were so crazy. capable and we have to remember in in this ability to to do anything a man can we do have to mind progesterone we have to realize that when progesterone comes in the week before our periods or in in this scenario you're not really knowing when progesterone is coming in but she's using the moment that there's a relaxation moment to come in that there has to be a softness it's like an ebb and flow right like hormones have a dance to them and you know with men they're on a four-hour cycle. We're on a 28-day cycle. So we need a longer period of recovery or longer period of softness. And if we don't do that, now the hormones are completely off. They're

completely out of balance. And that's, it's hard because I'm sure you think about this as like, I'm a woman. I can do anything. Right. Except we also have to embrace when we're supposed to do nothing. And there is power, that is powerful to embrace when we're supposed to do nothing. Right. I think that's so powerful. I mean, we can do anything, but we also have to be mindful of everything. That's right. In a sense, you know, we have to be mindful.

My other question to you then is, how detrimental is it for athletes who are losing their cycles because of hormonal dysregulation? What's going on there? Sometimes I feel like it's kind of like, oh, this is great. I don't have a cycle. Because it's something we have to feel like we have to worry about or that it's a negative. Right. So anyways, just could you. So let's go back to the idea that the shedding of your uterine lining is a detox.

So you are literally like, so estrogen, let's use estrogen as example. During ovulation, estrogen builds. Now she's at her peak, but you've got to detoxify estrogen. So the liver and the gut, break her down and they get ready for her to get out of the system. And part of the way she gets out is through the shedding of the uterine lining. Right. Well, if you don't have that shedding, where's that? estrogen going to go. So it gets recirculated back into the body. Well, estrogen

breaks down into three different types of metabolites. One of them is helpful and two of them are harmful. So if those harmful metabolites are not shedding and getting out of your system, they're getting stored in your tissues. And where they'll get stored is typically in fat. So they're going to accumulate more fat or it'll somehow affect your brain or worse yet, go to your breasts. And now we've set you up for. long, you know, if you have a genetic predisposition to something like breast cancer, you're going to have a long-term chance or more of a possibility of getting that. Well, that's scary because a lot of athletes that are losing their periods are so lean.

So lean. They don't have a lot of body fat, so where is it going? Right. And when you say it's toxic, like in what way? Like, what are those two? Well, so any toxin will go into the cell and it can trigger any kind of genetic predisposition. I mean, cancer cells are basically rogue cells that toxin. took over and now they've turned them into this cancerous cell that starts to replicate

and it's a rogue cell so it can't it just starts to replicate and starts to replicate. So we are meant to shed and this is not just, this isn't just female athletes, this is birth control. This is like the IUD, you know, a lot of, like if you put a Marina IUD in, you are not going to have a cycle. And I'm not, I mean, that's a whole other interesting conversation that birth control is really messing up women's cycles. But we've got to have that shed. That shed is the way that we get out. Estrogen is the way we get toxins out. And if we're not shedding, it's just like if you're not having a bowel movement. You're getting toxins out through daily bowel movements. You're getting toxins out through your monthly menstrual cycle. So do women who are

postmenopausal have to worry about a buildup of toxins? Not as much. much because we don't have as much estrogen. Okay. There we go. See, the body balances. It balanced it out. Sometimes we think we're smarter than the body. I see this happen with athletes all the time and they try to work so uphill.

And I'm like, the body's smarter than you. It's actually right. We just have to learn how to read it. And that's what we've never as women been taught. I love having this conversation with women. It's like, how were you taught about your menstrual cycle? Who taught you? Your gym teacher didn't.

Your coach didn't? My mom kept me out on those sex ed days, so I would have to say my mom taught me about it. But, I mean, we didn't know what there was to learn. Right. Okay, so you start your period. Okay, it's going to happen every 28 days. That's about all you know. That's it.

That's it. I mean, so many women I've talked to say it was in PE, you know, in seventh grade that they said, hey, you're having a cycle now. So here's how you manage blood. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. And you can get pregnant.

But we weren't taught how to eat. and train and socialize and work with our ebbs and flows or our hormones like to the level of that we're having now. And to me, that's what we like, you know, you talked about what, you know, retirement is on the horizon for you. And I would think there's a desire to go back and help the younger women that are coming through the ranks. So one of the things that would be really cool is could you go back to those female, younger female athletes and teach them what we just talked about and show them how to fight and train and live in accordance with their hormones. Now we're taking on this message and we're passing it down and we're changing the next

generation so that they, A, I would think, if we see this in women in sports, that what we were able to accomplish, women were able to accomplish years ago till today, like look at Chris Everett compared to Serena Williams, like vastly different skill set because we've learned so much since the years of Chris Everett's training compared to Serena's. You can do the same thing with the women going into UFC fighting. I hope so. That is my goal. I want to continue to empower women on all levels. And I mentioned birth earlier. I mean, everything from being an elite female athlete to having the right to say how you want your birth experience to be, whatever it is, they just want women to feel like they have some choices. They have a lot of choices. They have all the choices. And they have some

answers so that they can make informed decisions. That was what I was missing in my career. I just didn't know these things. And in spite of, I feel like I became a champion because I feel like I gave myself no choice, but I couldn't hold it. And my body started to break down. I started to have all these issues. I developed this hypothyroidism. I didn't know. I was cutting weight even harder. I was dieting even harder. I was like, I'm eating nothing. I'm like a rabbit. I'm so weak. I still was not barely losing weight. I almost couldn't make weight sometimes, so I had no idea these things were going wrong. So it was a tough close to the first chapter.

And then I'm coming back into my second chapter, and I'm really enjoying the ride. I'm trying to learn as much as I can. But for me, it's about the future. It's about the young women who are coming up, who I know that I could share from my experiences and my mistakes. And I want my daughter to know these things. Exactly. I want her to have these answers. Exactly.

Oh, my gosh. I got chills. I got chills. I also have to say that I laughed when you said that you were something about being a doula. I was like, who wouldn't want Misha Tink to be a doula for them? I'd go and get plenty just to have you coach me through that experience. Like, there's no way you'd ever be like, I can't do this if Misha's next to you going, come on, girl. Let's do this.

I hope so, you know what I mean? I hope that I can empower women. I would love nothing more than to be a voice of strength for any woman who's going through that process. And in all assets, I mean, I have so many aspirations to help women. I want to start hosting retreats that empower women that have you involved, teach them about hyperbarics, about breathwork, about hormone cycle, about all these things so they can leave this comprehensive wellness get together with women supporting women, feeling good about how they can change their life moving forward. Yeah. Amen, sister. So I'm here for it. Yeah. No, and so I'm right there with

you because I think what we're seeing as a generation of adult women like you and me that are waking up to our hormones. But then we, as we learn, we have to turn around and teach others. And then we've got to really, like I love when you said teach your daughter. You know, we've got to go down to the younger generation and teach the younger generation. One of the things we do is women so well is connect. And we unify. And if we can take this hormonal knowledge like you and I talked about today, and we can show people, women, how to do it in every aspect of their life, now we are going to change women's health. Now we're going to end PCOS.

We're going to end the infertility. We're going to end the breast cancer and the ovarian cancer because every single one of those hormonal problems, the mental health and mood disorders, every single one of those situations has an imbalanced hormonal situation that was a woman not living in accordance with their hormones. It's like, end a story. That's how we change it. Right. And a voice like yours, and I really, you know, really, really feel strongly about this. I can stand up and teach it, but when Misha Tate, all these women, all these young girls that look up to you, when you stand up and you teach it and you say, this is what I did at the highest level of fitness or a professional

athlete that a woman can be, I took these tools and did it this way. Now you have amplified the message just because of who you are. Well, I appreciate it because I wouldn't be able to do without you. It's a synergy, right? And that's what I think we need more of. We need women supporting women giving that empowerment back to each other. So like I said, I'm here for it. I'm so grateful to have these conversations.

I'm really grateful to learn. And I hope to continue to inspire women worldwide to take back their power. Yeah, I can't wait to see what you do. I can't wait. So I'm cheering you on. I'll be there right alongside of you. So I'm here to support that mission in any way that I can. I appreciate that.

Like I said, it's, yeah, I mean, it's really a beautiful marriage of information with application and then turning around and teaching. That's really what we need to do. Absolutely. Before I finish up, I have to ask the final question that I ask everybody on the podcast. Every year we have a theme. And this year I decided that the theme needed to be self-love. And the reason for that is because I did want to have more conversations about how. women can really take better care of themselves. What is your practice of self-love if you have one?

And what do you think you're just the total bad asset? Well, my practice for self-love is mindfulness. I think that's so important. We do so many things every day. And sometimes we think we're doing it for ourselves. And our mind is somewhere else. It's like, I'm going to take a bath. But if you're thinking about your to-do list tomorrow, that bath didn't really count towards me time. It was spent, it was meant to. But if you're not mindful in that moment, what is your intention. So for me, mindful intention, setting my intentions, whether it's 10 minutes of mindful time with my children where I'm not multitasking, I put my phone in a drawer and it's like, we're just going to play. That is fulfilling to me. If I set my intention on my breathwork, we breathe over

2300 times a day. If I could take 10 of those breaths and say, you know what, I'm just going to be in the moment with myself and my thoughts for a second. I've set a mindful intention. So for me, that is self-love. And it can be as short as one breath. It can be short as 60 seconds. It can be as long as 10 minutes. You know, it's what I have to give in that moment, but it's that intention that I'm setting that this is for me. Love it. Even if it's for my children, and a lot of times that's for me. Me being there with my children enjoying their giggles and their laughs in that moment of them being cute toddlers. Yeah.

That's for me. So important. Yeah. I just want to say one thing on that. You know, my daughter's 23. And we've had a lot of conversations about, you know, what it was like to have me as her mother. And one of the things she said is, you know, you've worked so much. in my life. And I started to break it down for her. And I'm like, I really, you know, I was with you as

in your, in your preschool classroom. I did a lot of things. But what I realized is that I didn't do what you just said. Even when I was physically with her, I was often thinking about something else. And they sensed that. Yeah. And I, and I was able to apologize at 20. I was like, you're right. You're right, Bodie. Like, I was physically there many times, but not mentally. So what you just said was wisdom at its highest for a mother. Thank you so much. It's so important. Our children do definitely sense that. And it's hard because that's the expectation today.

That's right. That is that we've got to do all these things. Yeah. But I look at life sometimes. I'm like, what are these things? Right. What do we just create? What is this?

Why do I have to live to these standards? That's right. Why can't I just be in the moment with my children? That's right. Why not? Because that is actually the purpose of my life is not to provide for tomorrow, although yes, it's important to provide a future, but not at the cost of missing today.

So well, so. Right? So for me, learning that, I'm so grateful at this point because I catch myself doing it all the time. I'm not saying that I'm perfect at it. I'm certainly not. But I'm aware of when I'm doing that. And so I think that self-awareness is maybe I could say that would be my growing superpower is just becoming aware of when I'm losing my focus and when I'm not taking the mind. I'm going through the motion. I'm there, but I'm not really there. Right. I'm really there for my kids. I'm not

really there for myself. I'm taking 10 minutes. I'm in the bathroom on my phone. That is not restorative time to me. I have to be mindful with my intentions. Yeah. So I would say that. And then, you know, I just, I care a lot. I love people. You can sense that. And I want to make a change. Yeah. So that's, that's what I plan to do. And I will be powerful in that. I love it. Okay. Well, I'm right there with you. Where do people find you? I mean, outside of your badass Instagram, like, and come watch you at a fight. Where do people find you? I mean, well, my Instagram is just at Misha Tate right now. Um, maybe by the this podcast has launched, I will have a new branch. So I'm going to start. I have recently snagged Mama Misha as the Instagram handle. And I haven't developed it yet. It's MAA MMA Misha. It's a nickname that I had well

before I had kids because my house has always been a revolving door. I love helping up and coming fighters. I understand the struggle or people in general. I just have, it's part of what makes me feel good as a person, is Steve Back. So I think I'm going to work on really developing that and just diving more into the wellness side of things. So you could just find me online in either one of those. And I have a wellness center too. It doesn't ruin wellness in Las Vegas. Hyperbarics. Yes, hyperbarics. Red light, brain tap, neural check. Lots of different things. We're looking to be more comprehensive too. You know, I want to incorporate more breathwork. I think that's so important how we breathe for ourselves. You know, some mindful breaths can really make a big difference.

So I'm just looking to make change. I love it. And I'm really inspired. by you. Oh, you're amazing. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. Yay. Hi-five. Awesome. Awesome. So awesome. Thank you so so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.