Navigating Menopause: The Flipping 50 Approach

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way.

Hi everyone, welcome to today's show on the Holistic Dentistry Podcast. I am so excited to talk today to Deborah Atkinson, my dear friend that we met at the Mindshare Mastermind. I've known you now for a few years, and thank you so much for joining us to talk about women's health and especially hormone-centric fitness.

Thank you so much for having me.

I want to tell everyone a little bit about you, Deborah. You've been a fitness expert now for 41 years, so you have a lot of experience. I always, when I look at you, you're amazingly fit. It's like the muscle tone. I wish I had those arms. We're going to work on that. You've helped over 275,000 women Flip Their Second Half. You're a bestselling author of You Still Got It, Girl: The After 50 Fitness Formula for Women and Hot, Not Bothered. You also host your own podcast, the Flipping 50 Show, since 2014, and it's been the AARP top podcast for 50+ in 2018. I know how much work all of this is to create this education for everyone. So congratulations, and you're still going strong, spreading the news about how important exercise is. You are a certified strength and conditioning coach, medical exercise specialist, and prior senior lecturer in kinesiology at ISU. I would love to talk about that because kinesiology, I feel like it's, it's an important part of tuning into our body. You did a TEDx talk, Everything Women in Menopause Learned About Exercise May Be a Lie. Deborah, you are also the creator of the first and only exclusively made-for-menopause fitness membership in the world and the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist course. And business training for fitness and health coaches. I know we have some health coaches listening to our show, and we're going to put the links of all of this in the show notes so people can learn more about you and how you can help them. So with that, I want to know how you got here. Like you said, your fitness, uh, it says 41 years. I can't believe it.

Yeah, so true. Um, by accident, if you want to know the truth. I actually grew up, I was hauling around pencils and sketch pads since I was in first grade, and I thought I would be a graphic design major. And so 2 years into that career, I had actually just, just before college started walking. And by the time I left for college that summer, or the end of that summer, I was jogging. And So I was slowly beginning to start this self-initiated, you know, no coaches, no sports, but my own personal fitness endeavor. And 2 years into this graphic design major, this is back in the early '80s, I realized that all graphic designers smoked and drank and stayed up all night to do their projects. And I'm like, I don't belong here anymore.

I don't.

And, you know, although art is still a passion, you know, I stuck one foot in physical education, left one foot in art, and by the end of the semester, I kind of knew. I had some really great instructors. I think that, that really cinched it for me. But I wanted to make people feel the way I had for the first time after participating in physical education and fitness. In a way that it was self-selected. And, you know, I was just better. I was a better student. I was, I was probably a better, better child to my parents. I was a better friend. I was better at everything. And I felt like my, you know, the colors were brighter. Just everything was better because of fitness. It elevated. And I wanted to give everybody the opportunity to experience that. And You know, at that time, and unfortunately today still, the statistics weren't very good. Not very many people were exercising on a regular basis, and I felt like rather than criticize other instructors, I should step up to the plate and, and do it myself. So that's really why I started, to help people feel better and play better roles in their lives.

So then how did you move into the Flipping 50? I love that name, by the way. Great name. Did something happen to you?

No. Life has a funny sense of humor. So something didn't happen to me until I decided I was going to do that. So the honest truth is I had spent about 30 years in the fitness industry and I was always I was always a teacher at heart. And so I also began teaching in kinesiology. So I was teaching students who then wanted to be trainers and fitness instructors and, and gym owners. And so I began to do more of that while at the same time still training, teaching the consumer myself. And of course, I am what I call a barely boomer, 1964, the tail end of boomers. So many of the clients that I had through the years were baby boomers. And of course, we all know what happened as they started going through menopause. They started saying, well, heck no, we're not okay with this. We're not going to settle. And yet my doctor's not listening to me. And so it kind of all came to be true at the same time. But I honestly left all of the jobs that I had at the university and in private business in order to help save the really good trainers and health coaches and fitness instructors who were leaving the industry because they would go out on their internships and realize, I have to sell. I don't want to sell. I don't want to market myself. I don't want to sell. But then they would say, I can't make a living doing this. And for whatever reason, I wasn't raised by entrepreneurs or salespeople, but it's always been easy for me to to express the need to get started by, "This is the only way I can help you if you get started." It wasn't a pushy, salesy, sleazy instance for me. It was putting my hand on my mom's arm or imagining I was talking to my sister saying, "This is the best advice I can give you. This will help you." And, you know, it's not easy for most trainers and coaches to do Yeah. Teach them so that when I was at the university teaching, so many of my students would come back 2 years after graduating, and these are the 4.0 students, the 3.8 students, the bright ones, and they'd come back and say, would you write me another letter of recommendation? I'm going to get a real job because I can't make a living doing this. And I thought, this is wrong. You know, we're ending up with a whole industry of people who just market and really can't help, and we're losing the good ones. So I wanted to do something about that. That's why I left. 5 minutes after, I realized, oh my gosh, I can't just start teaching marketing and sales without, without starting my own business or doing it so that I can say, here's what's working right now. Here's, here's what's happening and how we reach people with integrity and honesty and transparency. So it feels good to you and to them. So I started and I was like, I've got to pick, I've got to pick a niche, which what we call, right, a narrow slice. And it was the baby boomer women that I've been working with for years, not knowing at the time I was doing research and So I started working with them, and that side of my business just took off because no one in 2013 was talking about menopause fitness and the difference and the nuance. So that's really how Flipping 50 was born.

I love it. So, um, now you're certifying health coaches as well, so you really can help them sustain that business that they couldn't sustain before.

Exactly. It's kind of coming full circle. So we, we really developed this framework and then realized, you know, I'm only one voice. And to some women, my voice is like fingernails on a chalkboard. None of us is going to serve all women all the time. So we need a lot of voices. So training trainers and health coaches to have the same kind of success. So number one, they can have a lifestyle and really know they can do this and make a living. But also be found by the people who look for them. Every day I get asked, do you— have you certified a trainer in Kansas City? Is there one in Indiana? Where can I find one? And so it's time. Women are asking, where can I find a trainer who knows this stuff that you know?

So let's talk about the stuff that you know. So it's an online platform to help women with exercise. So tell us a little bit about that and how is it different than other platforms?

You know, probably I can teach best. And the way it's different is we approach it in 4 ways. So when— if you were in front of me and you were saying, I need help, I need, I need a program, there are 4 areas that we look at. And it's not just you know, every woman in menopause here, here you go, here's the blueprint. Because it is only a blueprint, it's only a framework, but we've all got nuances. So, you know, look at your thumb. We each have a unique thumbprint, and every woman's journey through menopause is different. So not only do we have to say it's not gonna be exactly the same for you as your best friend, not even your sister with DNA very much like you, but it's also gonna be affected by your exercise experience, So we look at 4 things. Those 4 things are number 1, are you premenopause, peri, or postmenopause? Because there's a different frequency and volume of exercise that we can start with to say, here's what we know works based on the science and the research, at least in the past, because we also have a lot of optimistic hope for what is true, because many times What we've studied collectively, we have studied in science, is inactive populations. So if you and I are very active, we're lifting weights, we're already way ahead. We should expect greater results than anyone else has ever had. We should be the most energetic people in the room. We should not be tired all the time. We should be who everybody wants to be when we walk in. But yeah, there is a framework for starting. And then we want to look at what's your most recent exercise experience? So you could be experienced, you've worked out for years, but maybe in the last 3 to 6 months you haven't done anything. We treat you still like we're a newbie. We need to onboard you a little slower because we're not as resilient. Our ligaments, our tendons, joints are not as resilient as when we were 20. So we onboard a little slower so we don't get hurt. And we teach you how to do the same so that as you age, You're getting fit, not hurt. You're getting better, not tired. And then there's what's your key priority and goal? Sometimes, and very often, a woman will have recently gotten, you have osteopenia or you have osteoporosis. They've just heard that from a doctor reading their DEXA. And so that might be their priority. But for other women, it's, I have this sudden and uncontrollable weight gain and I can't lose it no matter what I do. It's It may be fatigue, crushing fatigue. There are many things, but we want to know what are those biggest priorities that, that someone's got. And then the fourth category is what are your obstacles or limiters, which might be arthritis, but it might also just be time. I don't have time. So we look at those and then, you know, we take that Venn diagram and that little tiny circle in the middle where the overlap of all of them comes, that is where we start. And there are two things to remember. We want to start at the right place, and then we want to progress at the right pace. And they're determined by those four things collectively for you alone.

I love that. I mean, it makes total sense because you're right. Some women are entering their 50s, never have exercised before, and now you cannot just go to the gym and get a trainer and like hit it hard. Because they're going to get hurt. And one of the things you touched upon, like almost every woman can identify with, nothing I used to work— that used to work for me works anymore.

Yeah.

And yeah. And why is that? Because I see it on myself, right? It used to be so easy for me to go back to the gym and I'd be like fit in no time. But now it's just harder and harder for me to have to really stay on top of it.

Yeah, well, you know, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense that you don't have the hormones that you had when that worked. You had, you had this, this team on the field, and now we have a different team. We've made all kinds of substitutes, and you're trying to play the same strategy in the same zone defense with a different team, and we have to just change the strategy. The important thing to remember is we can win. We can win again, but it will be— it will look very different. And I think for most women, the hardest part is it is not intuitive. And sometimes stepping backward is the fastest way to accelerate. And we often are not very good at it. The one fitness component that most women suck at— and I know that's not a very, you know, It's a good term, I like it. We suck at recovery. We are terrible at recovery. We are pushers, we'll push through. You can count on me, we'll get it done. And women do, we get it done, but we often get it done at our own cost. And pretty soon if we don't listen when the toddler is tapping you on the shoulder, pretty soon it starts to get aggravated, right? And you will have to take a break at some point. And if we can just stop that soon and take all of the things that we don't like happening right now— we're tired, we wake up in the morning and we're no longer morning people, we're groggy and we didn't even have the fun, but we have the hangover, or we, we have weight we can't take off, or belly fat, maybe not weight gain, but it's relocated to this other place. It never was there before. Brain fog. We've got all these things. And if we can look at them as This is just a clue. This is just data. We don't wanna go right for that thing. What we wanna do is ask, why is that happening? What's making it happen? And let's look at it. Cuz underlying all of that is the hormone-centric fitness that we wanna look at. So if your body is already going through changes, switching up your hormones, We know exercise also influences hormones. Hormones influence exercise. So we can't maybe manipulate the fact that we're going to go through menopause, but we can change the exercise so that it more positively enhances those changes.

It makes total sense. So, um, is there any data showing that women who exercise can enter menopause later on?

Not really enter menopause later on, because I think more of that is related to genetics. But women who exercise, and generally I think as the intensity goes up, this is even better, will have fewer symptoms and/or they will be less intense. They'll be milder. If you're going to have hot flashes, they're not going to be so bad. The more intensely a woman has exercised, doing high-intensity interval training, maybe doing weightlifting, And the intensity there is not necessarily heavy, by the way. So just, you can do light, moderate, or heavy weight as long as you reach muscular fatigue. That's the level of intensity, is from the effort that you're getting. Women who exercise with adequate intensity tend to have reduced hot flashes, night sweats, and other symptoms. And some women, in fact, will report to me, so we, We have a large social media community. So this is very loose, you know, I don't know them very well. We haven't monitored them front to back, like, like if they were in a program. But many will say, I'm, you know, I'm 58, or I'm blah, blah, blah, and I didn't even bother me. I've exercised my whole life. And they may have gotten lucky and done the right thing and also picked their parents really well because genetics does play a little part of it. You could do everything right and still have inherited a poor vasomotor control from your mom. And, you know, that you can't get past.

What mistakes women make when weight just won't budge? And what can we do instead?

So the mistakes we make often are doing more. Of what doesn't work. So, you know, I think we call that insanity in most circles. But, you know, what tends to happen is we have a certain schedule, a certain frequency or times that we're going for a walk or going to the gym or, or doing our exercise of choice. And if it's not working, we will often say, well, I'm going to, I'm going to do another day, or I'm going to extend it. Instead of doing an hour, I'm going to do an hour and 15 or an hour and a half. And we punish ourselves more instead of saying, wait a minute, logically, not emotionally, but logically, if it was working, I should be having some success. I should be getting some feedback. This is working. And that's the only case where we'd want to turn up the volume on something. So instead, we often should potentially go the other way. And a lot of women first need to maybe put it down. We call this a reset. So our— we do a 10-day Hot Nuts Butter Challenge for this reason. And most of us need a framework. We need somebody more than we need to push. We need somebody holding our hand. We need somebody to say, no, no, no, stay with me for a minute. Just, just sit down and rest for a minute. And it's not that we don't want you to do anything. We just want you to really step, step back and give yourself enough opportunity to listen to, are you really tired? And let's just kind of restore before we try and do more so that we can really fill that cup up so you are ready to push. And here's the thing, we don't, I don't want to baby anybody. I think every woman right here who's made it to midlife, turn around and look at all the shit— pardon me, I'm really, really making your show dirty here— look at all the things you've done in your life. I mean, you've done lots of hard things. We don't need chair aerobics. We don't need to, you know, only get in the water and do mild things. We can do hard things. But if you're already exhausted, right now is not the moment to do them. We need to rest, we need to restore. We might need to look at sleep. We might need to look at nutrition. Maybe you need some supplementation. Maybe you need to speak with a functional physician to, to level things out and then go further. But often taking a week or 10 days and stepping back, staying consistent, but doing a little bit less will help you get back in touch with what feels good. And what doesn't, so that we can be pushing the foot really on the accelerator when sometimes we think we are, but we're actually pushing the brake because your body is retaliating by saying, wait a minute, I'm already exhausted and you're throwing me further under the bus.

Yeah. Is that help that you offer through your, um, online portal? If somebody, let's say, needs help with hormones or looking at sleep and with that type of coaching?

Definitely. So, and of course, we're not physicians, so we're not diagnosing, we're not quote unquote treating, but we can look at— we don't need a lab test. If you've got one, we can help you say, okay, if you're low in testosterone and growth hormone or you're struggling and maybe you're estrogen dominant, we have an idea of what exercise you might be doing that's making that worse and not helpful. But if you tell me your signs and your symptoms, you know, we can say, if this, then that. Let's just switch things up a little, you know. And for everybody across the board, muscle is like your menopause magic. And it is, it is so helpful in helping to balance so many hormones. But the two, the two pivotal hormones are not even related to the sex hormones that we all think are so ultra important. Yes, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, those are gonna be very important to how you're feeling on a regular basis. But cortisol and insulin are the two that are really most integral in helping you feel better, faster, manage your weight and your sleep better. And exercise is really a critical part of both. Exercise can be a stressor. It's meant to be, but it should be calculated and balanced with the rest of the stress in your life. And insulin will improve the more muscle mass we have and the more often we move that muscle mass so that we can control your blood sugar naturally.

That's great. But, you know, can we build muscle? Let's say over 50, is it harder? Of course it's harder, but can we build it?

Absolutely. Here's the, here's the great news. So a recent study, very recent, looked at two groups of subjects. One group was older, and they were between 65 and 75 years old. The other group, they took 85-plus-year-olds and put them in that group. Now, granted, it was a small cohort. So I think overall there were 17 in one group, 12 in another. So we're talking really small. But I think we can all take some hope away from this. They did a 12-week strength training program with them. And then they looked at what happened. What happened with muscle mass and muscle strength? And, and of course, adherence, because that's a really important factor in are you going to get any results anyway. Adherence was wonderful. They were able to work fairly heavy, so no injuries, and in fact, that's something researchers are talking about that you do less overall volume. There's less wear and tear sometimes when you're going on the slightly heavier side. So, there is less fatigue. There's not as much time and energy that has to be spent there. So, there's something in that. But the 85+ group had more relative strength and muscle mass gain than even the 60+ group. To 75. Now, if we think about that, it's logical. So the 85+, you know, they may not have been lifting weights for maybe ever, or for probably, you know, 20 years, because they didn't grow up thinking aging is— this is something you continue to do. So they potentially more to gain, more strength to gain, because they had been weaker. But The, the real benchmark here is that we never thought— so we've always known you can gain strength at any age. We've seen it in like 90-somethings for, for 4 decades that I've been doing this. But what we thought is there is a point where you can continue to gain strength if you're lifting, but that we won't see muscle mass increase. But that wasn't true in this group. They gain muscle mass too. Yeah.

That's great. So there's hope. But you can exercise at any age, basically.

Absolutely. And we will, we will be the first generations that we're not going to put our cell phones down. And hopefully we won't put those weights down. We'll continue to do that. And we will live longer, stronger because of it.

Yeah, absolutely. So pretty much every exercise regimen that you have it's going to contain some kind of strength training. It's never just cardio. You wouldn't recommend somebody just doing an hour on a treadmill, for example.

Oh, gosh, no, that hurts me when you say that. No.

But there's people out there who do that.

Well, I—

at a time. There's people that do this.

But they'll be calling me next week. Yes, it's true. They do. And, you know, I favor strength over anything in it, in, in terms of, it's a greater priority. And that doesn't mean we have to do it more frequently, because when, when you're doing something for the right frequency and intensity, it doesn't mean more of it is better. It just means 2 or 3 times a week, we want to do total body, all major muscle groups. And we want to do a certain number of sets so we get enough stimulus for them. So we need rest and recovery for those muscles in between. And this is really a point I like to drive home. It is that the exercise creates the opportunity for fitness. The fitness occurs during the time between workouts. You have to rest, you have to fuel, you need to sleep. You should put down some stressors and pet dogs and kitties and listen to music and, and all the things that increase your oxytocin and feel-good hormones and decrease your stress because that helps. Improve your recovery. It helps you get stronger, get more endurance and stamina, and get the benefit from the exercise. So sometimes we over-exercise thinking the more I do, the faster I'll get fit. And the older we are, the opposite is true. Yes, stimulate, but also recover.

Like, what does that recovery look like? Like, one day break?

Good. 48-hour minimum has always been true. However, we have turned that into, we must do it every 48 hours. So we've, we've kind of convoluted that. But what we want to remember is that over 40, most of us will need more recovery than our younger selves. So I hesitate to say everybody across the board probably would do better with 72 hours. So instead of Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday and Thursday. And that might mean those are your only 2 days and you're not gonna do third. Or if you wanna rotate days, most of us still do really well in that 7-day week having consistently like Monday's my workout day and Thursday is my workout day. We will probably always operate that way, but you don't have to. You can rotate them. But even just you to you, you looking at, I used to go to classes every other day and it was great. I felt great. You may not feel as good and just want to lean into that and say, you know, maybe I'm going to try an extra day off and see. Is what you want to remind yourself of is it's not frequency if you're just kind of going through the motions when you're doing it. You want to be able to lift as heavy as you can compared to yourself, right? So looking at, you know, the weight you're lifting, you shouldn't be going down in weight, should be maintaining or going up in your weight, getting stronger. And if you're not, you're probably not recovering as much, or you get more injured, you're getting more sore, you're not sleeping as well, your appetite starts to change. So with exercise, ideally we're stimulating a good appetite, but not cravings. And, and there is overtraining or there's under-recovery. And we often confuse the two. So you can work hard. Over 40, over 50, over 60, 70, you can work hard, but we're going to take a little bit more recovery time. And so we're not necessarily overtraining, but many of us might be under-recovering. Just put a day in there.

Yeah, I like it. I learned a lot from you because now, you know, I'm turning 50 in less than a month. So, so, you know, I woke up this morning and I worked out 48 hours ago and, you know, this morning and I'm like, I'm so tired. My muscles were hurting. I'm like, I just don't feel like working out because I usually work out every 48 hours, but I think Thank you so much because now I know I need more recovery. That's great. And here's the thing.

I think sometimes women, especially those of us who are driven and probably more often than not, those of us who like exercise, it's a hard thing not to do that regularly because it's been a part of our behavior or maybe even our identity for a long time. But you're not settling and saying, well, I can't do as much as I used to. You're actually going to get more fit. If you need that day of recovery, your workouts will be higher quality and you will potentially be in better shape than if you try to simply exercise more often. So instead of the workout, maybe a walk, you know, and continuing to facilitate that. So you're still doing some good, just not breaking down.

Yes, makes sense. Speaking of breaking down, I want to talk about building. So how much protein do you recommend for women over 50 to take in?

Oh, here's where we get emotional. Yes. So as a general rule, I will say it's easiest just to relay it this way, but about 1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. And the next question is usually, how do I calculate my ideal body weight? And I, I would say let's just not be so scientific. Where was that weight when you felt really good? And I don't mean that where you felt obsessed about you have to count every calorie, or you were afraid you were going to gain a pound if you went out to eat. It just— you naturally felt good and energetic. And it may change a little because if you have more muscle mass, you will potentially weigh more even to be the same size and comfort that you were. So use that as a ballpark. But I also want to throw this out, and this is from Dr. Donald Layman and our good friend Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who is, um, he is her mentor, and the two of them really have teamed up so well, um, since. But in his research, what he found is that we almost all need at least 100 grams of protein just for metabolic health, just not to lose our muscle, not to lose that insulin sensitivity, in order for our heart health not put ourselves at risk for frailty and for falls. Metabolic health, that we're not talking fitness, we're not talking extremes of any kind. We just all need that. Many women on average are getting somewhere between 40 and 60 grams of protein a day and wondering, why am I tired? Why am I gaining weight? And it will help considerably with satiety, with your energy level. I've noticed in working with groups over the last decade and a half, so many of the early ones I did in person. And, you know, I would have women the very first week start to increase their protein, and it was a strength training program. My expectation was this was going to help them gain lean muscle mass by the end. And they would come back in the first week and say, I can't believe how much better I feel. And I never expected it. I never expected that outcome, but the energy level change was enough to, to have them hooked. It was like, I will do this all the time.

Oh, nice. Yeah. I noticed actually for myself, I increased the amount of protein. I don't think I'm getting 100, but now I think I can stop my protein. I started feeling better once I have my protein.

Yeah, yeah.

What about creatine? Are you a fan of creatine?

I definitely am. Yep. So, you know, as a strength and conditioning coach and a personal trainer, it's funny, but back in the '90s, this is when like all of my friends would come to me with their high school or junior high, middle school sons who were in football and say, can he really take this? Is this safe? You know, that's when we started asking, not for ourselves, but we were asking, they were wanting it. And, you know, so I didn't even start taking it probably until, you know, 5, 6 years ago on a regular basis. But definitely, I've had much better results personally with creatine HCL as opposed to creatine mono, not just for myself, but also for clients who tend to maybe get bloated when they're taking mono. The HCL doesn't. Seem to cause as many issues for them. And I think now the benefit is not just your muscle and your bone, and we know it's good for brain health, but now we're hearing much more specifics on how it may help with sleep deprivation. If you have to focus and find your words, you know, the next day, that increasing it from the amount, which is about 5 grams a day, and that you want to take for muscle, that increasing it to between 10 and 20— and this is not my area, but hearing that, and I think just knowing that's safe. So studies are coming out saying that's safe. I think it can maybe make women feel a little bit more comfortable with— it's, it's perfectly safe and harmless to take 3 or 5, which is really much more correlated with how much for muscle.

Yeah, that's great because, um, I started taking it recently as well, and a lot of women still don't know about it unless you are a bodybuilder or something. So the study on creatine is really incredible, like, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

Yeah.

Um, if you could lay out the perfect framework for every stage of a woman's life, what would that look like?

Yeah, such a great question. So I now have a daughter, right, a daughter-in-law. And so I'm thinking a lot about this where she's concerned. So she is right at, you know, 30. And this is where one of the things that I would recommend for women between 20s and 30s is get them into a gym. I recommend that they start lifting weights when they already have this really great body confidence. You know, they're already self-assured. And, and I'm seeing more and more of it happen when I go to the gym. It's— there are young girls and they're in the weight room and it's so great to see that happening. They're not just in the cardio or group fitness or, or the yoga or, you know, barre classes. They're actually lifting weights and it's fantastic. We want that to happen when they've got confidence because right now there are a lot of women who are 55, 58 realizing they need it. And, and wouldn't it have been so much better that they started in their 20s and have been doing it all along? But there's a little window still left where muscle peaks at 25. So we've probably got a little time where we can still be banking more muscle if we start in the 20s. And bone density peaks at about 30. So you want— we want to be lifting weights, we want to be causing impact, doing jumping, playing sports, all kinds of activity. To, to put everything in the bank because as we age, then things will start to withdraw if we didn't do anything about it. But a woman who starts lifting at 20 is far less likely to stop during her life. She's not going to start when she's pregnant and then working. And so if we can get started sooner, the better. For, for those women who are 30-ish, Right now, when bone density peaks, I would say— so for my daughter-in-law is pregnant, so I didn't catch her soon enough, but she's getting the gift of a DEXA scan because we know what her peak bone density is now. She'll be able to monitor that and know and not have to wait till she's 60 or 65 when she's already lost it, but doesn't have any idea That's just compared to a norm. Let's compare her to her. And let's, you know, is it not too late? Let's start. And she can start lifting now and have that on paper. Most of us need to see it. You know, I can improve this, or, you know, she's probably going to be able to better improve it at 30 than if she waits to 50. So we're going to get that started. And, and 50 in her recovery from baby, right? We want to start working on strength again. So a woman between 30 and 40, she's got 10 years, probably, maybe not all of that before she's in perimenopause. The more fit a woman is going into perimenopause— again, we talked about intensity earlier— the better her ride is. She's going to maintain muscle, she'll maintain bone. And as estrogen starts to leave the building, it gets easier to lose, and there can be— doesn't have to be, but there can be an accelerated loss of muscle and bone. And again, all the science we have so far is done on a collection of a lot of people in the population who were inactive. So it can be disheartening to hear, but it's, it's not that every woman is going to lose that much. Those of us that are active and conscious of protein intake from here on out, we'll lose less of that. And osteoporosis doesn't have to happen. Sarcopenia or significant muscle loss doesn't have to happen.

Yeah, I agree with you. And it's good to know that we can be proactive and do something about it.

Yeah.

I wish, you know, I knew this information as well when I was in my 20s and I had a baseline hormone DEXA scan for everything. So we know how things change, but Hopefully in the near future, that's going to become the standard of care.

And here's the question that you and I would have to ask ourselves: would we have listened?

Right? That's true. Um, so you are doing a 10-day challenge. Tell us a little bit about that and how people enroll in that.

It is what I'd call a perfect start or a restart. We all know how that goes. Or a reset. If you're doing something right now and you are not getting the results that you really feel you deserve, you're doing the work, you're making the changes, but it's not coming. You should, again, be the most energetic person in the room. The 10-Day Challenge is really all about helping you. This is not an and, it's an or. Put that down for a minute. Let's just do a reset. And what I'm going to do is whisper in your ear every day during this 10-day challenge. So I give you a little audio before you do the workout. It's a workout or a work-in, and they're about 20 minutes on average. So they're not long, but you do stay consistent with strength training with a little agility and HIIT work. We'll incorporate a lot of yoga and resetting, some core exercise. So you'll be moving, but most importantly, you'll connect what you're doing to how is this having a positive impact on your hormones? Why does time of day you do it matter for positive effect? So by the end of those 10 days, whether you continue on your own, you resume that program that didn't work, but now have better decision-making skills about maybe I don't want to do it today because I'm a little sore as I'm waking up, or time of day I was trying to do that is not not optimal for me getting my optimal sleep and for fat burning. You'll know better how to do that. That is my promise and guarantee to you. And if you decide to take another step, the 10-day challenge is $69. Total transparency, but we will give you that back in credit if you decide to take a next step.

Awesome. Very exciting. Thank you for offering that. We're going to post that link in the show notes. And where can our listeners find you on social media?

Social media everywhere, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. We're at Flipping 50 TV, Flipping 5-0 TV.

Amazing, Deborah. Thank you so much. I learned a lot from this episode. Thank you for keeping women all over the world healthy and fit. And basically, we want to have optimum years ahead, and that's what it's about, optimum lifestyle and, you know, feeling great as we age.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. You look fantastic, by the way.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Feeling great here at 50 and going strong. And everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you like this episode, please share it with your loved ones and especially the women in your life. And look down in the show notes and join the 10-day challenge so you can stay fit for life. Until next time, everyone, keep smiling.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @DrSandaMoldovan. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and remember, your Your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.