The Body Reset: How Women Should Eat & Exercise for Health, Fat Loss, & Energy

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:00:19):

We'll take running shoes or a bicycle. All they do is they make it a little bit smaller, maybe put some pink on it and say it's a woman's product. We experience things differently as women than men do, but that's not ever really explained. When we look at the trends of the fasted training, don't eat, it's all male data. If you look at most women who make a point to get up, do some training, go exercise, and after four weeks of following the same kind of training program as their male partner, their male partner has gotten leaner, fitter, better focused, all of the things that you want out of fitness and the woman's like, how come I'm fatter and tired? We have gotten into a societal idea that we all live in the same kind of temperature. We have automatic garage door openers. We have created this environment where we don't move, and if we're talking about how do we just make one small change to improve our mental health, that's exercise.

Mel Robbins (00:01:18):

Hey, it's your friend Mel. Welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am absolutely thrilled that you're here. I am on such a, I don't even know what to say it. I feel so excited about what we're talking about today. It is going to be liberating. It's such an honor to spend time with you, to be together with you, but especially when we're going to have a conversation that is going to light you on fire and make you feel both mad and empowered. Let's fricking go and if you're a new listener, I want to take a moment and just welcome you. Welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast, family and boy, have you picked a winner of a conversation to listen to because you made the time to listen to this particular episode. Here's what I already know about you. You're the type of person who values your health.

(00:02:00):

You want the facts, you want the science, you want results, and that's what you deserve. And if someone sent this to you, that's really cool. It's because they care about you and they want you to have the science and the facts and the correct information so that you can take better care of yourself too. I cannot wait for you and I to learn from Dr. Stacy Sims today. Now, Dr. Sims is a globally recognized expert in women's health, exercise physiology and nutrition science. She has a PhD in exercise physiology and nutrition science. She's on the faculty at Stanford teaching about lifestyle medicine and at Auckland University of Technology teaching sports medicine. She's a renowned researcher and is directed research programs at Stanford, Auckland University of Technology and the University of Y Catto, and she has published, check this out, 107 peer-reviewed research papers, which in normal person speak is a ton. Her research has revolutionized how women,

(00:03:05):

Women approach fitness, especially during menopause and hormone changes. She's the author of two groundbreaking books, roar and the Next Level, she also has a daughter and just like me, is in her mid fifties juggling a big career, a marriage, motherhood and hormone changes. She has so much to teach you today and we are going to go straight for the bro science. We are going to tell you the mistakes and the lies that you've been told. We're going to tell you the truth based on the research about what works for women and what doesn't. We're going to teach you why the things that you've been doing have been backfiring. It's because you have been exercising like a dude and it is time for you to exercise like a woman. I am so fired up for you to be here. I am fired up to learn with you and I'm fired up for all of the women and the young women in your life that you're going to share this with. So please help me welcome Dr. Stacy Sims to the Mel Robbins podcast, Dr. Stacy Sims, I am so thrilled that you are here in our Boston Studios. I've been waiting a long time to be able to sit down, meet you, and learn from you. I'm just thrilled that you're here.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:04:13):

Oh, thanks for having me. I'm excited. Awesome. You have a lots of fun

Mel Robbins (00:04:16):

And we have a lot to dig into. And so here's where I want to start. Could you speak directly to the person that's listening, and this is somebody who doesn't have a lot of time, but they made the time to be here to learn from you.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:04:31):

Okay.

Mel Robbins (00:04:32):

What could that person expect might change about their life or feel different if they take everything to heart that you're about to teach us and share with us today and they use it in their own life? I

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:04:45):

Find there's two big things that often happen. One, most women become more empowered and have better body positivity, and two, they have a sense of separation from the stress and their own selves, so they're able to take that step back from the stress of everything that's happening. It's kind of like that pause moment because when you are taking care of your body, then it feeds back into a lot of positive metrics. So the big thing that I love is watching women go through an evolution to go from being not so confident in themselves to having such empowerment to be able to stand up and say, I own this space and I'm taking it.

Mel Robbins (00:05:28):

One thing that strikes me about you already is that you actually exude that,

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:05:37):

Oh, thanks.

Mel Robbins (00:05:38):

Now you have a level of presence and power in your body, and it's not just because you are in incredibly great shape in terms of muscle definition, but it's actually something that's noticeable. And so I think this goes beyond that sense of separation of stress. Like what I experience in just sitting here with you is that you're actually embodied in the present and in your body, and a lot of times when we're stressed out, especially as caregivers and the amount of stuff that we do, we're up in our heads and disconnected from our body. And so I'm excited to really learn from you because I want to feel more like the centered confidence and calmness that you just seem to move through a space with.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:06:31):

I'm good with the facade. Just kidding. Thanks. Yeah, it does come from a lot of pushback I've had in my life. So it's like being put into a pretty male dominant situation. You have to find your feet and how do you move through that space? And I've found it through exercise strength, all the stuff

Mel Robbins (00:06:53):

That we're going to talk about. Amazing. So you have such an incredible background, and I'm actually going to read it because it's quite a bit, I've talked about this when I was introducing you, but you have a PhD in exercise physiology. You're a researcher, you're a former professional athlete, you now train professional athletes. You're an expert in exercise physiology. You have a long list of other specialties like cardiovascular disease prevention, thermo regulation, women's health. You are a pioneering researcher that participates in her own studies, and you have this incredible mantra, Dr. Sims, women are not small men.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:07:35):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:07:36):

What does that mean?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:07:38):

Yeah. I laugh when people say women are not small men because when we hear it we're like, oh yeah, that's right. But it started from when I was teaching at Stanford and wanted to wake some of the undergrads up after lunch and the afternoon sleepies come in and I was teaching about sex differences in training or high performance. So I would start it with women are not small men, and people are like, well, of course not women aren't small men. But what I mean by that is everything from what happens in utero until we die is different for women than men. When we talk about women are not small men and we see all the guidelines that are out there for exercise, all the guidelines out there for mental health, for the connections, the sociocultural pressures, we experience things differently as women than men do, but that's not ever really explained. So when we say women are not small men, it makes people take that pause and ask, well, what do you mean by that? What topic? So today, what I mean by women are not small men is we're going to dive into exercise, especially how what we do should change as we move through our lives.

Mel Robbins (00:08:47):

What does that motto women or not small men mean in practice?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:08:54):

I think when we look right now at what's being portrayed in social media, fitness trends, the medical trends,

(00:09:03):

All of that data is really drawn from men and just generalized to women, which is a huge disservice. So I want women, especially you as a listener on this podcast to take a pause whenever you see a new trend come up or someone pushing something to just go, well, where did this originate? How does it appropriate for me as a woman in my phase of life? And when you take that pause, you begin to have an objection to some of the things that are pushed on you and an objective view of how you should approach things to make it beneficial for you.

Mel Robbins (00:09:38):

I am so glad that we're starting here because I am constantly shocked at the things that I think I should be doing and the things that I hear a lot of male health experts talking about, or a lot of the bro science or a lot of the kind of bro experts and the fitness trends that are very dude oriented. No offense to the guys, I'm just saying that it often has felt like to me as I've learned more and more like, oh my God, wait a minute. We've just kind of treated women and our health almost like if you're golfing, there's the tea that's further back for the guys and there's the tea that's a little bit closer for the women and we're just going to treat everybody the same, but shrink it a little bit

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:10:24):

Shrinking pink is what we called it in the industry, shrinking pink, shrinking pink. So we'll take running shoes or a bicycle. All they do is they make it a little bit smaller, maybe put some pink on it and say it's a woman's product. It's so true. I know. And it's like, wait, that's not really appropriate. You'll see in my book there's some pink and that's an outage to shrink in pink because that's what people think is honoring women by making it a little bit smaller and let's bring it up with some color and we're going to call it a woman's product, and that is not appropriate.

Mel Robbins (00:10:57):

Well, the other thing that I think has been really fascinating, we're going to get into this, is just that a lot of the research has only been done on men, and there hasn't been research on how certain things have an impact on women and our hormones and our body structure and our composition, which is, as you've already said, fundamentally different than that of somebody who's male. And so I'm excited for you to take a step by step by step and help us kind of tee up all the assumptions that we've all just kind of come to assume that work for men but don't work for women and what we need to know and need to be doing to actually work with our bodies and take better care of ourselves. 

Mel Robbins (00:11:43):

So what's the most common mistake that women make by following male-centric fitness advice?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:11:51):

They don't get any results and they end up what we call tired but wired. I mean, if you look at most women who make a point to get up, do some training, go exercise, and it happens so often after four weeks of following the same kind of training program as their male partner, their male partner has gotten leaner, fitter, better cognition, focus, all of the things that you want out of fitness. And the woman's like, how come I'm fatter and tired and I don't have any increase in my fitness like my partner does? And I see it all the time, and I'm always explaining, well, one, your partner might get up and go fasted training. Women's bodies don't respond well to fasted training. What's facet training?

Mel Robbins (00:12:33):

I don't even know what the heck this is. What

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:12:35):

Facet training. Fasted training means you're not having any food before you go do exercise.

Mel Robbins (00:12:40):

So that's what I would always do. I would always literally, I'm going to eat after because my husband would eat after and then we would, my mouth is on the floor. You can see this on YouTube, but as you're listening, I'm processing this because I'm thinking how often I've been pissed off at Chris, my husband, because we will take on some challenge together. I'm like, this is not fair. How is it that this is actually making you lose weight and I feel like I'm puffier and fluffier and tired and pissed off and I'm following the same steps. I'm doing the intermittent fasting. I'm not eating beforehand. I'm slamming the thing after I'm doing that, and I'm like, what the hell is going on? And this is because he's male and I'm female.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:13:22):

Exactly. And it comes really to the brain. So when we start looking just at first thing, you get up and our responses are different where women's brains will start going, okay, where's the food to come in to help bring my stress hormones down and get me started for the day?

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And men, by the nature of being X, y, their brain's like, eh, okay, I'm going to supply some amino acids and some blood sugar and let's get on with the day. Then we'll find some food. That's fine. But women's brain, specifically what we call the hypothalamus that is really sensitive to blood sugar and food coming in. So if you get up and you start your exercise without any food, the hypothalamus is like, wait a second. This is a stress to the body that I need to really try to figure out. But if I don't have food to counter the fuel that the muscles are needing from a contraction, I need to find a way to supply that fuel. So it goes into a little bit of a tizzy. And one of the first things that starts to get broken down is your muscle mass, because muscle is a pretty active tissue. And the hypothalamus is like, well, I don't know if I'm going to be able to supply the food that this muscle needs if I don't have any food coming in. So it's a very small amount of food that a woman needs first thing in the morning to then go be successful in her training. And even if you're going for a walk, a lot of women will get up and go for a walk on the auspice, are

Mel Robbins (00:14:53):

You with me? Are you in my house with me? Maybe Stacy. I'm sitting here thinking to myself, I think a lifetime of messaging about thin is preferable and that I want to maximize calories burned. So I'm going to get up and I'm going to have a cup of coffee because I'm tired, and now I'm going to wire myself. And then I back in the day would be going for a run or going to some sort of fitness class. I'm old enough to have been doing step aerobics and everything else there with you, but let's go. And I've just carried that over. And I also then tell myself a story that I'm going to get a cramp or I'm going to want to throw up in my mouth if I'm doing something too much and I've had too much to eat. And so this is a complete different change for me,

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:15:47):

And it's one that's going to be really super beneficial.

Mel Robbins (00:15:50):

So every woman listening and every woman in your life, if you're listening and you're male, needs to know that one of the biggest mistakes that we're making by following male-centric fitness advice we need as women biologically and physiologically speaking, to actually have something to eat first thing when we get up.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:16:12):

Yes, yes. And when we start looking at it, I did a competition a couple of weekends ago just for fun, and I had so many women come up and go, the first thing that you did to change my life was to tell me to eat beforehand and now my training's better, my outcomes are better, I have more energy. And I'm like, well, of course, because your brain is like, I can handle this stress. So if you are supplying fuel to the empty tank, of course you're going to go far. If you think about trying to drive a car and rev it up and get it on the highway to at speed with it on E, it's not going to get very far. So I tried to explain to women, if you're going to get up and even if you're going for a walk, you want to maximize what you're doing. You want your metabolism to fire on all cylinders. You want to get some aerobic fitness through that, you need to supply just a little bit of fuel. And it doesn't mean a full meal. It could be the protein coffee, it could be a couple of tablespoons of yogurt, a half a banana. It's not a lot, but it's enough to bring your blood sugar up until your brain,

Mel Robbins (00:17:17):

Yeah,

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:17:18):

I've got this. I've got

Mel Robbins (00:17:19):

This. So the first change already, small change, but critical one for our biology and physiology is you need to eat something before you move or exercise in the morning.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:17:30):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:17:31):

And to also, I think the bigger thing here for me is that I'm starting to realize I have been so brainwashed about the fact that you need to be thin, that it's a paradigm shift to actually think, well, wait a minute. I need to learn how to work with my body and my natural wiring to make it work for me and to actually optimize the way that my body's designed as a woman.

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So they've gotten out of that mentality, but they'll see other women at the gym who are on the elliptical or treadmill or outrunning and they look really lean and they're like, well, I don't understand. I kind of want to look like that, but I know that I need to be doing strength training. So I'm confused. The women that are 40 plus who are doing the cardio, because for the most part, they're going to be what we call skinny fat. So that means that they're not going to have a lot of quality muscle. There's going to be a lot of fatty tissue within the muscle, and their bones are going to be like chalk. Because if we are doing all of that cardio work and we're not looking at how our bodies are aging and what we need, we need the food before the training, we need to put in some strength training, then we're going to continuously be breaking down the tissue that we want to keep to age well. So when we're talking about that mentality of, well, what do I do? It's like these small steps of, yeah, let's have some food before. Let's look at how we are dosing or exercise, what kinds of intensities. Let's bring in some strength training because all of those are going to feed forward to having our lean mass, having really strong bones, having really good neuroplasticity. So that means how your brain changes in a positive way. So as we age, we don't get dementia. So these are all the things that I would rather women focus on than the drive from the nineties to be Kate Moss thin, because on the outside that drive to be super thin is killing us on the inside.

Mel Robbins (00:19:53):

Wow. You mentioned protein coffee.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:19:55):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:19:56):

Can you explain what that is and how that might satisfy the first takeaway, which is eat before you move in the morning?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:20:02):

Yeah. So a lot of women don't have an appetite first thing in the morning. I'm one of those, but I know that I need fuel. So I'm very much an espresso addict. I love it. And one of the simple things that I do is I make a double espresso at night and I mix some protein powder into my almond milk or whatever milk you want, and then I put the hot coffee in there and I put it in the fridge overnight, and then it's my go-to first thing in the morning where then I'm getting my 30 grams of protein, I'm getting my caffeine. It tastes like a latte, I'm good to go. And so that's a first hit. It's a first eating opportunity to bring in some of that protein that we need. And if you're going to go do any kind of exercise, knowing that exercise mutes your appetite, then it also helps with that recovery part because you're going to have those amino acids circulating. Your brain's going to say, Hey, yeah, okay, I've got stuff to rebuild tissue. So it's a really good way of being able to have what you need without feeling over full and still enjoying some of the good things of life, like coffee.

Mel Robbins (00:21:07):

Well, you've changed my life already. Yay. Because I've got two takeaways. The first one is, and I still want to stay on it, so I actually understand why eating first thing before I move my body and having fuel first thing in the morning is actually super important. And I want to unpack that a little bit more, but I want to hover on the protein coffee because I'm drinking it right now. You made me one in our studios here in Boston. This is going to change my life and here's why. I have struggled forever since I've learned, and a lot of us are learning as women that focusing on more protein and especially getting protein first thing in the morning is super important. And I'm always struggling with, how the hell am I going to get 30 grams of protein first thing in the morning without choking down 10 egg whites?

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And what do I do if I'm on the go? And what do I do if I'm tired of eggs and what do I do if I don't have a blender near me and my stuff? And so you literally took a scoop of protein, shoved it in milk, put in espresso, stirred it up and put on ice. It tastes like a fricking milkshake. And what I love about this is that A, I can make it the night before B, it's 30 grams of protein in a cup, which C means I could even take this on the walk with me. I could take this in the car if I'm dropping my kids off somewhere, I could make this on the road. This is such an incredible tip. So thank you for that.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:22:34):

You're welcome.

Mel Robbins (00:22:35):

And what I want to do though, Dr. Sims is you mentioned that when women wake up, our brains are different than the guys and our stress levels are higher, and it is important to understand that and to give yourself a little bit of fuel. What happens in your body if you do start eating breakfast in the morning? Because a lot of women skip it. A lot of women are now intermittent fasting. A lot of people are waiting until noon. A lot of people don't want to eat before they exercise because they don't want cramps or they actually want to maximize calorie burn. But what is the benefit to a woman in particular first thing in the morning if you give yourself fuel?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:23:18):

There's a few things to unpack there. Okay, so first we look at eating opportunities because there's so many women who are one, trying to lose weight or two already in the fitness space and following some of the trends that don't eat enough.

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So If you aren't eating enough, you're not going to actually change your body composition. So we look at eating opportunities first thing in the morning, 30 grams of protein, boom. That's an eating opportunity that you're really feeling overly full, but it's such a great benefit to the body and you're ahead of the game by having 30 grams of protein. We also look at some of the newer research that's coming out about our circadian rhythms or how our body goes through 24 hour cycle, and for people who break their fast by around 8:00 AM and then they don't eat after 6:00 PM have all of these great metabolic outcomes that you would expect from intermittent fasting. But we see that people who hold a fast till noon or after don't get any of that benefit. So if we look, well, why is that? We have to understand that a half an hour after a woman wakes up, we have a spike in cortisol. That's our stress hormone. If we don't have food to tell the brain to drop that, then we stay in this heightened stress state. What cortisol is responsible for is that fight or flight, but also providing fuel for being able to fight or flight. So the first thing that goes is we start chewing into our lean mass, which is bone and muscle and a signal to keep our body fat, especially as we start to get older.

Mel Robbins (00:24:56):

Wait a minute. So not eating and not eating because you think it's going to help you lose weight? Actually counterproductive is counterproductive because it's signaling your body to stay in fight or flight, which makes your body hold onto fat.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:25:09):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:25:10):

Are you kidding me?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:25:11):

No. I mean, when we look at the trends of the fasted training, don't eat, it's all on male data, and the difference between men and women in this situation is again, it comes down to the brain. So a man can get by with the fasted training because when we're looking at getting up and holding a fast or going training without food for a man's body, it stimulates the little molecular structures in the muscles to use more fat because their muscle structure and the types of fibers that they have are different than women's. So men have what we call more glycolytic or fibers that use glucose and not as many oxidative or the fibers that use fat as a fuel. Women, we are born with more of those oxidative fat burning fibers. So when we go and we don't provide fuel, the body's like, I'm going to store fat because I'm going to need it, because that's the preferred fuel for your muscles.

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So men's bodies will start to adapt to be able to use more fat, which is why you see fasting and holding a fast working so well in men. But for women, it doesn't do the same because we have different feedback mechanisms from the brain. We have different muscle requirements because of different morphology we call our different muscle fiber types. So this is where we start looking at all the stuff that we've been trained to do over the decades and how counterproductive and harmful it can be for women who are trying to improve body composition and bone.

Mel Robbins (00:26:48):

Wow. Now, does eating first thing in the morning, because you mentioned the circadian rhythm for a woman also help you sleep better at night?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:26:55):

Absolutely. How come? Because if we're looking at decreasing or overall stress response, so that cortisol bringing the cortisol down over the course of time, you're going to have a lower baseline of that cortisol. If you have a lower baseline of cortisol, then your body can get into what we call parasympathetic. So that's what you need to sleep. If you have this high elevation of cortisol all the time where always sympathetically wired, so we can't get into deep reparative sleep. So you see a lot of awakenings. The other thing that happens when women front load their food, so we have a lot of our calories in the day, which we should. Then when we go to sleep, we aren't waking up with hypoglycemias. That means we're not waking up with low blood sugar because a lot of women who undereat or hold a fast and they aren't eating enough, their awakenings at night is due to low blood sugar.

Mel Robbins (00:27:49):

I thought it was because I had to pee. It's also because of the low blood sugar doctor said, where the hell have you been? I needed you in my life decades ago.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:27:58):

I needed me then too. It's taken me this long to be able to acquire all the knowledge and the research. So now I'm hoping that we can hit all of the listeners and so that they will learn what we should have known

Mel Robbins (00:28:11):

Decades ago. This is so eye-opening. Like already you have highlighted so many differences between men and women just in the morning, just in the stress levels, just in the fuel that we need in the morning in the muscle composition, all of it. And it also is very illuminating because it makes a lot of sense then as to why the programs that work for Chris and seem to work like magic actually leave me frustrated and tired. So what would be the ideal breakfast for anyone? And let's just talk about the person who just wants to move more. They want to take better care of their body, they want to understand how their body works so that you're getting better results and you're feeling better in your life. 

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:29:06):

Yeah, I will say that it's a hard one because people have different food preferences. How about an avatar? What's an avatar? A makeup person. Okay, A makeup person. Makeup person. So we'll say there's a woman who is plant-based but not vegetarian. So she has a preference for plants. Three kids super busy, wakes up has been waking up tired, but wired didn't sleep well, is like, okay, I need to make this change never hungry in the morning. So we can split her breakfast. It could be overnight oats, which is chia seeds, oatmeal, some milk or oat milk to soak it.

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Then when she gets up, she's like, I'm going to split that in half. The first half. I'm going to add some berries and maybe another tablespoon of Greek yogurt because then I'm going to get some proteins, carbohydrates, some fiber, and it's going to calm me down. It's going to tell my brain ready to go. Okay. Then you either are going out for your walk, maybe you're going to do some home strength training. Maybe you're meeting a friend for a session. Maybe you're taking 15 minutes of just breath work to bring yourself down, especially if you're the avatar of three kids in a busy life. Just taking that moment to put yourself first.

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And then when you get back, maybe it's an hour, hour and a half later, you have the second half, the second half of those overnight oats with a few more tablespoons of Greek yogurt and some nuts and berries because then you're getting the protein carbohydrate. So you've actually split your breakfast, but you've given your body the benefit of food on different eating opportunities without being over full. But at the end you end up with 30 grams of protein over the course of a couple of hours. So it's easy. You can mix it up, do it the night before. You know that I'm not that hungry, but if I have a little bit, and then over the course of a couple of weeks, you're going to find that you're going to wake up going, yeah, I need some food. And this is kind of a reset of your circadian rhythm. Your body is starting to fall in line. Your hypothalamus is understanding your appetite, hormones are starting to work properly. And when all of that feeds forward, then you're going to start to see changes in body composition because you're having better sleep. Because we can't change anything if our sleep is perturbed. So the more we focus on how are we going to work with our body's natural rhythms and the way that our hormones work, the more it feeds into better parasympathetic drive for better sleep.

Mel Robbins (00:31:32):

I have just so screwed this up. I literally wake up, I delay the coffee, I exercise on an empty stomach. I then have my coffee, which I'm then drinking on an empty stomach, which means I've now maximized stressing myself out, and then I'm slamming something that has 30 45 grams of protein after I work out. And so what have you done if you are the kind of person I am that you've bought into all the BS and you've basically been starving yourself in the morning, and even if you get out for a walk, how are you kind of actually not only getting the benefit but you're making it worse? What's happening in the person's body when you do not feed yourself first thing in the morning as a woman?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:32:18):

Yeah. I always bring it down to what are we doing when we want to exercise? We're looking for better blood glucose control. We're looking for better bone. We're looking for better muscle. If you're not eating, then you are not going to get better at any of that stuff because the body, again is like, I need fuel for the stress that's occurring, and I need fuel for the exercise.

Mel Robbins (00:32:42):

So if you've been brainwashed like I am and you're exercising because you are trying to lose weight or you're trying to look thin, what is happening? If I continue to go down that route where I don't eat before I exercise and I'm basically starving myself and I'm going for my walk and I'm delaying food,

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:33:03):

You lose muscle. And then the other thing, when we look at women who are late thirties, early forties onwards, we get a signal to put on more visceral fat. So that's a deep belly fat that metabolically active that can be dangerous. So I'll see women who are doing the same pursuit and really proud of the fact that they're intermittent fasting. They're not breaking their fast till noon. They've had their coffee to hold them through. And you do a dexa. And

Mel Robbins (00:33:30):

What's

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:33:31):

A DEXA is when you go and you get a complete body scan. So it looks at your muscle, it looks at fat, where fat's put, it looks at how dense your bones are.

(00:33:41):

We see there are DEXA results on the outside. They look healthy. But on the inside it's a bit of a scary story. Where we see low bone density, we see an increase of fat accumulating in the belly area, which means that it's more what we call metabolically active. So you see a change in your cholesterol, so you have more of the bad cholesterol that's elevated, you have more inflammatory markers, which is a predisposition for diabetes. We see insulin resistance. So I know that there are listeners and maybe you're thinking about, well, I've been doing this forever and I don't have any bad blood markers. What's going on? I didn't say that it necessarily comes out. That's the worst case scenario. But when we look at what's happening on the inside, I don't want your bones to be like chalk, and I don't want you not to have muscle to be able to get up and run after your grandkids or carry your groceries into your house.

(00:34:38):

So if we just make that small change by having some food first thing and then carrying on with your day, you're going to get the impetus to build muscle. You're going to get the impetus to keep your bone and you're going to be able to reduce the signaling for that deep belly fat. And it's all those health. I understand it. I've been there. I grew up in that same 1980s, 1990s, and I still get it in my head sometimes. Well, is this the right thing? And I've done the research, I've been in the lab, I've implemented it. So it is really difficult to get your head around, but you have to look at the long term. It's like where do you want to be in five years, 10 years, 15 years from now?

Mel Robbins (00:35:19):

Well, and I also think it's just like if you actually are working out not only to take care of yourself, but because you do want to change the composition of your body. You do want to be a little leaner. You do want to be stronger. That focusing on the actual science, and this is a complete turnaround for me, that you need to actually eat more in order to lose

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:35:43):

Exactly.

Mel Robbins (00:35:43):

Which is the exact opposite of the brainwashing that all women and girls have received for their entire life. And so it's so helpful to hear you talk about the science and it makes so much sense because I think we've all had that experience in our life where I am trying and this isn't working. And the first mistake that I've been making for now 56 years, I'm understanding, is literally not eating before I exercise. And one thing I wanted to ask is, 

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:36:36):

There are lots of things on this, and I wish that Ruby was in this room. Then I could say, well, let's look at your morphology. So your body type. So there are some women who have a better predisposition for building muscle. We call those mesomorphic. And then we have other women who struggle really hard to put muscle mass on, and they tend to be a little bit, and that is more of our endomorphic. And then we have in the middle of the ectomorphic that are the super skinny Cape moss. And most of the time people are a mix of that. So when we look at those different muscle types and you're looking at doing all the work and not getting any benefit, I want to see what kind of training you're doing. Because if we are looking at when you're eating and how you're complimenting your exercise, then we can make gains. And every woman's a little bit different. My sister, she isn't so into athletics and stuff that I am, we grew up in the same household, but I was always out building tree forts and she was in reading books, but over the past year, she's really put herself into getting stronger and strength training body compositions changing. Her grip strength is stronger. And she's like, I never really thought that lifting weights would help me change my body composition. I was like, why have you not thought of that? If you're lifting under load, you build muscle. She's like, but then that's weight on the scale. And I was always afraid of the weight on the scale, not the outcome of looking better.

Mel Robbins (00:38:07):

And then we also, because we've been so gaslit to think that it's about being so thin and that's desirable that you hear build muscle and you're like, but I don't want to bulk up. I'm actually trying to lean down. And what you're saying is, no, no, no. This is actually putting on your own Spanx with your muscles. It tightens you up.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:38:27):

Right. And I will say I sit here and I know people always comment about my arms. It takes a lot of work to get

Mel Robbins (00:38:35):

Arms like that, I would think.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:38:36):

Yeah. But the other thing is, I

Mel Robbins (00:38:38):

Mean, they're amazing arms.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:38:39):

Thanks.

Mel Robbins (00:38:40):

I am wearing a long sleeve shirt for a reason. If I had your arms, I'd be wearing a tank top too.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:38:47):

I would love it if all of this would go lower body. I have tried for years to get really strong hamstrings and really strong glutes. They're strong, but they're not bulky. It's just mesomorphic up here, ectomorphic down. So it's the difference in the combination. But I went through a time where I was really upset with effect that I had more muscle when I was bike racing. I tried really, really hard to lose it, but I couldn't because my body's like, no, this is how you are born. So women who are like, I'm really trying to build muscle. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get bulky if you don't have a genetic predisposition for putting muscle on really, really easily. It's really hard to get bulky. And for most women who are trying to put muscle on not eating or doing lots of cardio work, you're not going to put muscle on. It's really hard to get bulky. So

Mel Robbins (00:39:46):

What do you want everyone to know about exercise as opposed to diet?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:39:52):

So when we look at all the diet trends that are out there, we see the plant-based, the carnivorous, the keto, the intermittent fasting, all of the things they are born out of a want for better health, body composition, better gut, all of those things. But if you exercise, then you get all of those things.

Mel Robbins (00:40:15):

Wait a minute, say that again.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:40:16):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:40:16):

Okay. So hold on a second. So all of those diets are designed to try to create a health outcome through eating.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:40:26):

Yes.

Mel Robbins (00:40:27):

But if you exercise, the exercise provides the health outcome.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:40:33):

Yes. Because we look at exercise as a stress. We have gotten into a societal idea that we all live in the same kind of temperature. We have automatic garage door openers, we have the internet, we have our computers, even driverless cars. So we have created this environment where we don't move the outcome of having an environment where we don't move and we don't have a lot of green space or opportunities to even walk places, is now we have this obesity epidemic. And even if you're not facing obesity, you're facing some overweightness and you're being bombarded by all these diet styles. If we were just to put a pause on the diet style and just take a step back and say, you know what, if I go back to eating normally, which means that I'm eating breakfast, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, lunch, dinner, and I'm not eating snacks after dinner, and I'm kind of paying attention to kind of food that I'm eating. So it's nutrient dense. It's not all these ultra things. There's no protein. It says protein on it.

Mel Robbins (00:41:36):

You know what I

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:41:36):

Call this? Dr. Sims?

Mel Robbins (00:41:38):

The

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:41:38):

Grandparent diet? Yes. Okay. Basically how your grandparents lived. Right, exactly. And then you put in some exercise because exercise is a stress. The body's very adaptable to stress. So if we're looking at doing a longer, harder walk up a hill, after a couple of weeks of doing that, it's going to be easy because your body's adapted to that stress.

Mel Robbins (00:42:01):

Oh,

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:42:02):

We call it getting fitter, but actually your body has adapted all of its mechanisms to that stress. So if we're looking at how do I get a better, okay, hold on a second. So I just

Mel Robbins (00:42:13):

Had this epiphany.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:42:14):

Okay,

Mel Robbins (00:42:15):

I can't believe how many bombs you're dropping today. I've never thought about exercise that way because I've focused on you have to exercise to get in better shape. What you're saying is exercise is intentionally moving and stressing your body in a way that it needs and is designed to do. And in response to the stress, your body gets stronger at being able to manage stress.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:42:45):

Exactly.

Mel Robbins (00:42:46):

Oh my God.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:42:47):

It's a stress resilience.

Mel Robbins (00:42:48):

And the reason why we're so flabby and everything else is because sitting around and not moving and not stressing our bodies in the way that we need to.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:42:55):

And

Mel Robbins (00:42:56):

That only makes us more stressed out

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:42:58):

Because we look at stress, mental health, all of the things that are really plaguing everyone. And the part of it is lack of community, lack of empathy, all of these things that breed depression, mental health, and the fact that we aren't moving our bodies. There's so much research out there that says if you go for a walk, you are reducing stress. If you go for a walk and you actually go to a green space, so that's to a park and you're in nature, it induces an incredible parasympathetic response, which means that you reduce stress. But because we are so ingrained to doing all the things all the time inside sitting and not actually getting outside, having the fresh air, having that connection with being outside and moving our bodies, we are by design now a global of very stressed out, unempathetic, depressed people. And if we're talking about how do we just make one small change to improve our mental health, that's exercise.

(00:44:04):

I'm not necessarily here as an exercise physiologist to tell you, the listener, to go out and go for a long hard walk because you want better body composition. I'm here as an exercise physiologist to explain what exercise is. It is an incredible positive stress on the body that creates changes from central nervous system down to the smallest little thing in your cell to improve your overall stress, resilience and metabolism, meaning how your body handles food, how your brain reacts to stress, how your brain perceives an environment. And just the moving part really does help bring center and bring yourself back to you.

Mel Robbins (00:44:51):

I believe it. And I want to see if I can just use an example to try to really paint the picture of what you're teaching us right now, which is an entirely different way to think about the importance of movement and exercise, strength training, whatever it is that you're going to do when you go for a walk. And let's say you go for a walk and you were mentioning you go for a walk and there's a hill in your neighborhood, and when you have to go up the hill, we've all experienced this, you get shortness of breath, you got to be using your legs a little bit more to go up the incline, make it a little winded, a little sweaty, even if you got a dog on a leash, pulling you up the hill like you're going. And that is you by exercising your body, putting yourself in a stressful situation because it's requiring your body to exert effort and to move against that incline. And it's designed to do that. And if you keep doing that over time, what you're actually doing in addition to all the positive things that happen is you're training your body on how to be strong in situations that are stressful.

(00:46:08):

So the more that you walk and the more that you build muscle, and the more that you take the advice that you're about to give us about what we should specifically be doing as women, fast forward six months from now, if you keep doing that and you're sitting in a stressful meeting at work, the impact of that outside stress on you is going to be way less because you and your life have been strengthening your body by going to the gym and going for a walk so that your body can actually be in stressful situations and not get hijacked.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:46:41):

Exactly. So the whole flight or fight response that people talk about with cortisol, we're flighting. We're teaching our body that flight by exercising, and your body's like, this is a stress. I need to understand it, overcome it, get stronger.

(00:46:55):

You could also think about it as the fight response too. If you're in the gym and you're building the muscle and you're ready to go coiled up, ready to go, your body's learning that stress. We're not an algorithm. We adapt to so many different things. So if we put our body into an uncomfortable or a challenged situation, it doesn't like it. So it learns how to overcome that and get stronger in the process. So as you're explaining, it's like yes, it's all about stress, resilience. If we're resilient to stress in a meeting, our immune system is also really resilient to stuff that's going around. And we're also resilient enough to maintain a focus. If we're getting ready to lose it and our kid goes off, we're not going to break down and start yelling at our partner or our kid because we have this stress resilience. We're able to take that pause.

Mel Robbins (00:47:47):

It makes so much sense. And you've talked a lot about strength training. 

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:47:56):

Yeah, I wish I had known about strength training way back when I was introduced to it when I was 16, because my friend's brother was a bodybuilder, and I was like, oh, okay, I'll go because Michelle, you're going, I'll go with you.

(00:48:10):

But I didn't really realize what that meant. So when we talk about the science of strength training right now, we know that with age, we lose muscle really quickly start to lose it when we hit 30. And it's really important because one, it's an active tissue, so it helps maintain so many different systems in our body. Not only that, but we think about strength training and how it puts leverage on the bone to improve bone. But the big thing really is when we think about cognitive decline. So we see that there's a sex difference as we get older in Alzheimer's, dementia, cognitive decline, and it has to do with brain, brain metabolism. So that's the fuel that your brain uses and what we call neuroplasticity or how your brain adapts and creates neural pathways.

(00:49:01):

If we're strength training, then yeah, we're taking care of our bone and our muscle, but it's creating signals to the brain to increase its ability to be really plastic. So it's like, yeah, okay, I need to have a new pathway. Let's develop that pathway. And so it's always changing. It's like Sudoku, right? You're mentally working on that. But strength training does the same thing, but it also improves overall metabolism. So now your brain is very flexible and it's like, okay, well I need glucose, but then I can use lactate. So when you start doing all of these things, it reduces your chances of developing cognitive issues. So for women, I'm always like, yeah, strength training is great because we're building all these things, we're changing our body composition, but for the longterm, we want to have a good body and a good mind. So we're doing these things and creating more pathways and developing existing pathways and making the brain very responsive and able to be flexible. Then we're going to have a really good sound mind when we're all doing Zimmer frame races, when we're a hundred,

Mel Robbins (00:50:10):

What are Zimmer frame races?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:50:11):

Those frames that old women have to use in or old men?

Mel Robbins (00:50:15):

I've never seen those. I dunno what you're talking about

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:50:17):

In the nursing homes. You haven't seen the silver walkers.

Mel Robbins (00:50:20):

Oh yes. I thought that was a game you were talking about. I have a feeling you're not going to be using a walker. I have feeling you're going to be the one teaching us all how to lift weights when we're 90 years old in the nursing home together.

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:50:30):

Well, no, I'll be using a Zimmer frame. I'll be doing the races with everyone else. I can't say that my joints are all that great.

Mel Robbins (00:50:39):

So what is the biology behind building muscle and how is it different for men versus women? What do women need to know?

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:50:47):

Women are what we call more fatigue resistant. So as I was describing earlier, the differences in the muscle fiber types. So women have more of those fat burning, we call endurant fibers. So that means that you can do lots of work and then you recover relatively quickly. So when we're looking at sets and reps and things like that, women don't need as much recovery time between your sets and reps to be able to have the same kind of training stress. Now break that down

Mel Robbins (00:51:19):

Please, because I don't know anything that you just talked about. I was looking sets, reps,

Dr. Stacy Sims (00:51:23):

All stuff.

Mel Robbins (00:51:23):

Okay, what are we doing?