Better Strength and Metabolism in Midlife Through More Rest and Recovery

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Build muscle mass. That is the Reader's Digest condensed version of this show. So if 2 out of 3 of those words triggered you, namely build and mass, you probably should stay tuned. Listening to this episode will give you better strength and metabolism in midlife. That's a big, bold promise, right? But I think you'll agree that this is not a nuts and bolts of the number of sets and repetitions that you need. It's a look at what's missing and why we can't ignore emotions when we're talking about strategy for exercise. In this episode, you'll hear why maintaining and building muscle is non-negotiable, how your metabolism can be your best friend, but the shock may be how you get there. If you feel like your body's working against you or you're worried about how to build strength and stay fit as you age, just know the hacks for muscle and metabolism in midlife are right here within this episode. My guest today, Ben Brown, owns Body Systems, a health coaching company that works with clients virtually all over the world with its Pure Science Proven Results coaching process. This proprietary process is a paradigm shift from restrictive behaviors to health freedom by leveraging the science of real-world data, the psychology of behavior change and the art of coaching. It is the convergence of health goals, lifestyle, and sustain success. Ben holds two master's degrees, one from Arizona State University in exercise and wellness with an emphasis in strength and conditioning, and the other from University of Bridgeport in clinical nutrition. Most importantly, Ben is a husband and father to three young children who provide the daily love, motivation, and humility he uses as a driving force to continue to learn and grow as a man, mentor, and a coach. I think you're going to love this. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman, and it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve. Ben Brown, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

We should tell everybody we could actually be doing this in person, right? But it just never really works out conveniently to do so.

Next one.

Right. And maybe we should dangle this carrot in front of them. This will probably release when it's starting to get warm in other parts of the country, but we might just add it's 70 degrees here and sunny in Arizona while it might be below zero somewhere else if you are listening as we were doing it live.

Beautiful day.

Just to rub it in. Tell me a little bit about your background. And when you went away to college, did you know you were going to be, you know, looking at fitness and health and wellness as a career, or did that evolve?

You know, I didn't know. I mean, I think for those of us that are in health and fitness, it seems to me that it's always something that kind of comes naturally. From a myriad of ways. And for me, it came naturally. It was part of— listen, I grew up in the '80s. As a young man, this was Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Like, who didn't want to— you know, what boy didn't want to be like those guys? And so that definitely had an influence on me in terms of wanting to look good, you know, wanting to be strong, and kind of the, you know, what it meant to be a man, if you will. And I was always into sports, and it was actually through some injuries and through some health issues that I had that kind of further reinforced my interest in health and fitness and nutrition. And so I blew out my knee my junior year of high school, the first scrimmage of the year for football, tore my ACL. So I had to have reconstructive surgeries. This is like '96. The process is so unbelievable nowadays, but I was immobilized for, you know, at least 3 months and it was a, 6-month at least recovery. And, and so kind of, I was really enamored with the rehab process there. And that kind of got me thinking about, okay, I could be a physical therapist. I'm really enjoying this stuff. And then I had a lot of stomach issues growing up as well, which conventional medicine couldn't seem to figure out. I was on all the antacid medications. I had an endoscopy where they put the camera down your throat to look at the lining of your stomach tissue. And the doctors were like, yeah, it's super inflamed. We don't really know. You know, what's going on? At no point are they asking me, what are you eating? What are you drinking? What's your lifestyle look like? You know, and being a 16-year-old kid eating garbage, I came to realize later on after talking with my parents, like, I had been on antibiotics from 6 months old over and over and over again for recurring ear infections. And right, and, and so that had completely wiped out my healthy gut bacteria, and I had to kind of figure that out on my own through studying functional medicine. And so this was really this ever-evolving process of, I'm interested in health and fitness. For college, it was like the easiest, easiest route to get through college being— I played rugby for University of Arizona. So being an athlete, figuring out, okay, how can I maintain the highest GPA possible so I can still play? Because my coach was an incredible mentor of mine, but he also was adamant, like, you will have a high GPA if you are going to play on this team, which I'm incredibly grateful for. And then once I got out of college, was like, okay, I love health and fitness for myself. I'm— it's, it's natural for me. I'm good at helping other people. And so I went— I came up to ASU here in Phoenix for graduate school and started studying exercise and wellness and sport performance, and it's just kind of evolved from there.

So cool. So let's talk about specifically, so our audience members, women in midlife, and tell me, tell me about your work. And number one, I want to come back to a couple of the things that we talked about in your bio. So if that ran by you, you're listening, you know, I think a couple of things that you really want to pick out about Ben is Yeah, science, real-world data, but psychology of behavior change and the art of coaching. These are two things that, you know, a lot of personal trainers, I think, overlook the importance of, potentially until you're actually working with somebody. You realize that your motivation as a trainer and the passion that you have and the investment you have in identity of, I'm somebody who works out every day— a lot of people are just trying to hit that minimum and get on a regular habit of— they have a mindset or an identity that is like, I'm not somebody who does that on a regular basis. And that's really a bulk of what we do. No doubt you learned something about yourself and what happens to an athlete who has something taken away that is like a part of your identity that probably made you better. At what you do today than had you not had that experience. So that said, you know, a lot of women who are listening also feel a little bit like they've had something taken away because menopause changed the rules for them, maybe caused them to gain weight that's then causing them to feel more pressure on their knees or their hips, or they've lost estrogen and suddenly have more frequent injuries than they ever used to have. So talk a little bit about how you're applying that and what we know to be true. Women need lean muscle mass, but they've got some obstacles in getting it.

Yeah, most definitely. And I appreciate kind of how you bring up with health and fitness professionals as far as, you know, this is something that we identify with and we enjoy going to the gym, and it's likely always been something that's been part of our identity. Whereas for probably the vast majority of people listening, it's like, yeah, I'll go to the gym, and, and it's not necessarily something that I enjoy, at least not yet. But it's not so much about going to the gym to like break PRs and just because I love it. It's like, I just don't want to feel so terrible. I don't want to be as fat. I want to be more confident, right? And so on and so forth. This whole ideology around strength training is so important. I'm sure you talk about it all of the time on your show, but as far as menopause goes, you know, I think one of the really big considerations is how can I start to be more physically active and how can I start to improve lean muscle tissue before I'm into the crux of menopause? And regardless of which way it is, It's like, I want to get as strong as possible and support as much lean muscle tissue as possible at any point along the way, because it becomes such a limiting factor, right? As women get older. And so it's looking at kind of what can I do consistently to bridge that gap to say, hey, how can I support as much and build and support as much lean muscle tissue going into menopause and then maintain that as I go through those hormonal changes? That's something that you have complete control over, and it's something that's going to make a significant difference in your quality of life throughout that process, as well as in your later years. That becomes a lot harder, right, Debra? It becomes a lot harder as you go through menopause with the changes in estrogen and progesterone to build, if not maintain, that lean muscle tissue.

Yeah.

So one of the conversations that we have with a lot of our clients, with a lot of women, is really around getting them comfortable with the strength training process in whatever capacity that looks like for them. And it really is the kind of combination of like the science and psychology of, of helping them understand, because you can't just speak logic. It's like, it is logical, women understand this, right? But it's very emotional too. There's so many discomforts involved of like, well, I have to go to a gym, do you? And I have to start training with these weights and machines and things that I'm very, very uncomfortable with, coupled with the fact that like, look at like the '80s and '90s and what exercise looked like relative today. And it's, it's just this paradigm shift for so many people, right? And so there's a lot of potential obstacles at play. And this is where it's really just kind of identifying, well, what can you realistically commit to? And then let's start to build some habits around that.

Yeah, so I love that. So many things in there that are so great. I, number one, I think If you're, say, a confident woman in some area of your life, but you haven't been exercising, all of a sudden you feel like a fish out of water. You're not comfortable, you're not confident. And, you know, it's hard to be good at something you've really never done before. And we don't, we don't cut ourselves that grace. We don't. We assume we should be good at it right away. And like, I should be able to figure this out myself. I think we often do that to ourselves. Whether it's exercise or something else. Let's talk about this lean muscle mass. And, and I think in part, Ben, tell me if I'm wrong, but I think we still have to sell this to women. You know, we're not back in the '80s where we had to convince people they need to exercise, but we have to convince women, I think, that they do want to build lean muscle mass. And there are two words in that sentence that really may trigger a woman. One is build and the other is mass, for sure. And it's like, oh no, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. So let's tell women, how does muscle mass help them during menopause?

Yeah, and, and so that's a, it's a great point, but let's talk about how muscle mass helps women, because from a logical standpoint, it's like, all right, you help me understand why this is important. And then of course, we can talk about the nuances of like the language and semantics and everything. But it's like, okay, well, you want to have more energy, you want to lose body fat by virtue of having better, more stable blood sugar levels, right? We want to be able to think more clearly. We want to have healthier digestion. We want to be stronger. We want to have longer and better quality of life, right? There's so many— so one of the big things that I think is important, Debra, for the listeners to acknowledge is muscle is the largest organ of your body, is one of the largest organs of your body, to the degree that it's this very hormonally active tissue. And so by virtue of building more lean muscle tissue— and this isn't like, this isn't like I'm getting huge, I'm laying down all of this muscle tissue, which I think so many people are scared of, so many women are scared of like, oh, I don't want to get big, I don't want to get bulky. Okay, we all can appreciate that, but physiologically, that's just not what happens. Or else you'd have all of these guys that spend so much time in the gym walking around absolutely ginormous. And the reality is, it's actually very challenging to lay down new muscle tissue, especially as we get older, right? To the degree that we have to be very diligent about our nutrition, our rest, our recovery, our stress levels, our digestive health, and and so on and so forth. And so when we talk about building new muscle tissue, for one, a lot of it is like, hey, let's just maintain what we have. And hopefully we've been physically active up to a certain point of our life to the degree that like, okay, let's maintain what we have. And then beyond that is support as much tissue as we can. Again, because that lean tissue is going to be very metabolically positive, it's going to give us energy, it's going to help us burn more calories at rest. It's going to help us have more stable blood sugar levels, right? So you can eat more food, so you can feel better, so you can walk taller, so your clothes can fit better, so you can have more confidence. Really, the list goes on and on.

Okay, so I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a minute.

Please.

So here's, here's what I want to tell you, and here's why I bring this up, because one of you listening will inevitably have this conversation potentially with another professional that you might be working with. And I've had a woman come back and say, you know, gaining a pound of lean muscle really only increases my metabolism by like 17 calories a day, so this is a waste of my time, she said. And I was like, first I had to sit down, and then I was like, okay, what would you say to that? And, and I'll tell you what I said.

I'd say from a research standpoint, that's actually true.

Yeah, right.

But that's not even a, a myopic point of, of the rest of the benefits of the lean muscle tissue. So if you're putting all of your eggs in that basket, fine, then make that claim. But again, from a, a pound of lean muscle tissue, well, okay, but if we've lost a pound of body fat, right, and so your weight is the same but you have one more pound of muscle and you have one less pound of body fat, well, you're still burning more calories at rest, you still have better blood sugar regulation, you still are stronger, you still have more energy, and you're still taking up less space for the same weight, which I think is important. And I don't want to— you know, we've all seen the image of like the muscle, yeah, body, and the fat, you know, globule, and it's like the muscle is much smaller per its same weight. Okay, cool. Like legitimately you're taking up less space. So I think that's incentive enough.

Yeah, yeah, I totally love your answer, and that is so true. I think you're like, you're getting into here the microscopic view isn't the important thing. I think having more energy, so what you want to do because you have more energy is you're spontaneously moving more, and every time you do move more Throughout the day, you're moving more muscle mass, even if it's just that one more pound of muscle mass. And so it's expending more energy or calories— not to get caught up in calories in, calories out, but it is over the course of the day what you burn and expire. It's not just what you're doing while you exercise, it's what does that do for you in the rest of your life. That is so much more important. And let's not forget, I mean, Ben and I aren't here to say we want you go work out and we want you to focus on burning X amount of calories in an hour. We're here to say, let's get you stronger, more energetic, more ready for life. So you're, you're playing more and loving it more. Yeah.

You know, and that's the whole idea is listen, it's not about trying to prove yourself right or wrong. It's just understanding that we have to shift the mindset around the way in which we think about health and fitness and body composition, especially as we age, because the things that we're doing right now, what conventional wisdom is saying, and so much of the dialogue and dogmatic approaches on social media are adding to the confusion and conflicting information, which makes it much more challenging. And our whole objective is it's not just about putting on muscle mass, but it's like you said from the beginning, it's the identity of who you become through that process, right? To the degree that you are more physically active just at all hours of the day. Right. And by doing that, you're making better decisions with your food choices. You have more energy because you're eating better quality food. You can manage your hunger and your energy levels and your satiety levels more effectively. You're likely sleeping better because you're probably not drinking as much alcohol, which is going to help you manage manage your hormones better. And through all of that, you're thereby burning more body fat, you're maintaining more lean muscle tissue. And it's this really progressive feed-forward cycle of that's what it looks like to thrive as we get older. And that's what it looks like, by the way, to support your metabolism through this process, as opposed to right? The conventional wisdom around just eat less, just exercise more, just do more cardio, or just keep beating yourself up in these, you know, group-based HIIT classes. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you for that. And we won't throw any businesses under the bus today, although I have been known for doing that. So I want to, want to ask you a little bit about So we're talking about the weight loss part of things, and I want to get into injury, but I don't want to get into injury yet until we talk about rest and recovery and the importance for women in midlife. Because I think that if we could say we're talking about menopause, like, out loud in 2024 and beyond, like we never have before, which is great, we're talking about a lot of things out loud. But we're talking about what they can do. We're talking about how hard they can lift and— or how heavy they can lift, how hard they can work. I think we're missing rest and recovery, and we're kind of telling people, midlife women, to go, go, go, go, go. Talk to me about rest and recovery and what you see as your work with midlife women, and when metabolism is something that they're really wanting to fire back up again, what What mistakes are women making?

Yeah, I mean, it's who, who doesn't feel like they need to go, go, go all of the time, and especially hard-charging women, right, who are midlife. And now we're getting, you know, they're getting these hormonal changes, and they're in a period where perhaps they've been able to force their way through their early stages of life and maintain some semblance of lean you know, body composition and been able to kind of quote unquote eat what they want to a degree, but now it's really starting to push back regardless of whether they have or haven't. It doesn't really matter because it's the go, go, go attitude that invariably is going to cause someone to get stuck. Right. And this is, has so much to do with our nervous system. It has so much to do with the balance between what we call our parasympathetic nervous system and our sympathetic nervous system. And you can imagine in this day and age, right? We are sitting here, we're in front of the computer screen. We're on our devices. We have our kids in the background or our dogs in the background. We have the delivery guys coming, the yard guys are outside. We're on the road driving. We have financial stressors. We have emotional stressors. We have digestive system stressors. By the way, when we exercise, that's a stressor.

Right, right.

But it can be a very positive stressor, which our body needs to adapt. The point is that stress is stress is stress, and stress is part of our sympathetic nervous system. And the only way we can optimize our metabolism is to manage that autonomic nervous system, is to find a balance between our parasympathetic, our rest and digest and relax system. That's our parasympathetic versus our sympathetic is our fight or flight response. That's proverbial run from the tiger, right? And that's what's activated all of the time and what so many women feel like they have to be going, they have to be doing, they have to be taking care of everyone else's stuff, their kids, their spouse, their work, right? Their community, all of those things. They feel this overwhelming responsibility to be taking care of all of that stuff. Often above and beyond their own personal needs. And even when they do their own personal stuff, it's sort of this, you know, hyper-fixed, like, I have 30 minutes to crank out my workout in between, you know, while the whatever, while something's in the crock pot or before the kids' soccer appointment. And again, sympathetic overload. So with all of that said, we have to find— and part of the way that we work with clients in these conversations that we have are understanding if you did nothing else but found more ways to actually chill out and go more parasympathetic, then that in and of itself would actually, from a hormonal standpoint, would actually be able to calm your nervous system, would actually be able to stabilize your blood sugar levels. It'd probably be able to stabilize your hunger and your cravings, your mood, your appetite. It would help elevate your fat-burning ability, help you sleep better, probably get you relying less on feeling like you need certain things like alcohol or sweets or something to chill out and wind down at the end of the day. And so this is where having a sleep routine, managing your alcohol intake, when you are training, making sure that we're giving ourselves long enough rest periods, actually having dedicated whether it's meditation or guided breathing exercises throughout the day, whether you're starting your day, you're ending your day, you're building it into midday, depending on the, the person. These are pivotal. And these, for me, Debra, this was, this took probably the longest to acknowledge that it was legitimately something that was keeping people stuck. Right.

Yeah, I remember when we first started training fitness professionals, I remember we'd finish a 90-minute, 2-hour masterclass with them and I said, look, here's the Reader's Digest condensed version. If there's one thing that you do to help your clients more than anything, help them deal with stress, help them identify what their stressors are because they don't see them all. They don't quite understand that some they cannot see. Oh yeah. And they don't think that exercise goes into that bucket. So they don't realize that this is an allostatic load, that all of them are bricks in your backpack and you're going uphill and, and, and there's no difference. And so to, to all of the health and fitness professionals we know you're listening to, which is great, but this is the one thing that you can do. And I think the clarifying point for, for those of you listening here and you're thinking for yourself, and for those of you that are health coaches or professionals, is sometimes removing the obstacle is the fastest way to get what you want. It's not necessarily burning more, doing more and more work. It's actually stop the burning out, right? Yeah.

Yeah, it's a work smarter, not harder.

Yeah, so, so very true. I want to ask you about this, and you know, when a woman is going through midlife and suddenly— and this is typical for many, not for all, but weight gain feels to some out of control, and it feels out of control mostly because then when she tries to remove it, she's resistant to it. And often then it ends up in her belly. So it's changing her physique, it's changing the reflection in the mirror, or when she goes into that closet, the clothes that she loves no longer fit the way that she loves them to fit. And we make— when we're in that moment, it's very emotional, so we make emotional decisions about what we're gonna do. So describe in that instance what might be likely for a woman to do in reaction to what's going on for her, where assessing data might give her a different meaning. And if you're here listening, hopefully you're not standing in the closet or in front of a mirror. It's not an emotional moment, so you might be able to absorb this better than when you're in one of those.

Totally. Yeah. I think it's so important to be objective about things. And this is one of the things that, you know, we appreciate from science and research and that, you know, was, is part of my underpinnings in academia through two master's degrees, one in exercise and wellness, the other one in clinical nutrition is like, we have to, you know, use data to our advantage. We can use it to our advantage to the degree that, especially in health and fitness and weight, when so much emotion is involved. And so this is very simply like, listen, understanding, well, what can we be objective about? We can be objective about scale weight, obviously, and certainly we can be emotional about it as well. We can be objective about our calorie intake in terms of tracking our foods. We can be objective about how our clothes are fitting and taking circumference measurements. We can be objective about, you know, how much water we're drinking. And, and so the way that we work with people is trying to be as objective as possible so that we can leverage data to make informed decisions. Because we're all going to be emotional about things. And for me to tell you not to be emotional about the changes that you see on the scale, I don't think is fair, right? Or for me to tell you not to be emotional about something. However, it is my job to help educate you and help you understand that simply because the scale is changing doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting fatter, right? Could be from a number of different things, right? And so this is where we look at, okay, well, how are your behaviors changing? Are you sleeping as much? Are you eating more sugar? Are you simply eating more calories? Are you drinking more alcohol because you're upset? And again, it's this vicious cycle of like, well, I'm seeing the scale weight go up. So, I'm discouraged. So, I'm soothing myself with food and alcohol, which ends up adding more calories, which is contributing to the scale going up, and so on and so forth. And so, right, regardless of what is happening hormonally, we have to make sure we're doing our diligence around leveraging data to make informed decisions. And simply saying, okay, I'm being objective. I see that the scale is changing. Why? Why could it be changing? How are we managing our calories? Are our body composition changing? You know, numbers changing, what's happening in terms of volume of exercise and output, terms of steps, terms of sleep hours, and on, so that then we know which lever to pull.

So good, so good. I'm gonna guess that you spend a lot of time with women who have been around the block, who might have tried other ways of getting to the answer but not succeeded before, and they end up with you, and you've got a very different approach. Am I right?

Yeah. I mean, what woman in their 40s, 50s, and 60s hasn't tried a myriad of approaches? Unfortunately— and for— I say fortunately, you know, for at least the women that I have the opportunity to work with, because it has hopefully given them this, just this level of experience and wisdom and knowledge that if we can actually use that to our advantage, we can help make more sense of the process that we use.

So good. I want to ask you this right now, because inevitably somebody listening is injured. Maybe it is a chronic plantar fasciitis. By the way, if you're listening and that's you, that is meant to be healed. If you're dealing with this 2 years later, do not accept that. Okay. But you're dealing with that, or maybe it's frozen shoulder, maybe it's hip bursitis, it's something else. Let's say she's looking at that and she feels robbed. I mean, truly you feel robbed because you were probably just getting into a role and just starting exercise again. And the words that I hear too frequently are, Every time I get started, I get injured again. Why or how could an injury be a great opportunity for somebody listening?

You know, it's funny, I'm smiling as you were talking about the injuries because they're so prevalent, unfortunately. And again, fortunately, it's like it all depends on how we're looking at these things. And I'm smiling because I just see it as such an opportunity. And the way that we think about things to the degree that the beautiful thing about strength training is we always have an opportunity to work on something. Right? If your shoulder's bothering you, well, we can work on, certainly work on the lower body. We can work on core. We can work on cardio. But we can also use this as an opportunity to look at, okay, well, why could that be happening? You know, and where are the muscle imbalances that occur and Where can we strength train in a way that's going to be able to hopefully help you avoid pain and kind of strengthen the muscle involved? And while I'm not a physical therapist, I think the thought process of, of helping women push back against the, the common language of if it hurts, don't do it. Well, listen, the reality is we are all going to experience pain and do experience pain often on a daily basis in some way, shape, or form. Right? And so for doctors, for therapists, for whomever to say, if it hurts, don't do it, in my opinion, it's flat out wrong because there's things that we're gonna— like, your back hurts, but your kid's on the floor crying. Like, so you're— so don't pick them up? Like, it's ridiculous, right? And so my point in all of this is simply saying, use pain as an opportunity to kind of dig deeper into What, where can we kind of, and how can we work around and build around that to the degree that as that improves, we kind of find new ranges of motion, we find ways to work around it, we get stronger in other areas, and it gives us the opportunity to, you know, stay, stay active.

I love that. Love that so much. And I think so important that we've tapped in today to everybody. We've tapped in not to the— you didn't hear us once say X amount of sets, X amount of repetitions, X amount of days, how many minutes, how many seconds do you do in your interval. It was about something far more important though, and I think that is ignoring the data, and I think also ignoring your emotions. They're going to be a big part of whether you do or you don't, or whether you've been able to start or you've been able to stick with it. And if all of us just gave you data, we probably wouldn't help you actually, right, overcome— pardon me for saying this, but overcome yourself. And I have to overcome myself every day. Ben does the same with himself every day. But I think that that's for all of us. That is probably our biggest obstacle, but we need that and we do need the data. We need them both. And we come back full circle, I think, Ben, to where we started in that, in your bio, which by the way, I want all of you to understand how bios get written. You know, a lot of times a bio is written by my guest, you know, or by somebody on his team. And so this is, I think very eloquent of speaking to, you know, what Ben does and how important he realizes how you think is important to the process of making the actions to change. The psychology of behavior change, the art of coaching that change is really the foundation for helping you get that change and sustain it. Ben, you're going to have a lot of people I think, want to come and find out how you work, where to learn more about what it is you do, where's the best place for them to follow you?

Yeah, our website is— and I'm sure you're gonna have the links— but it's bodysystems.com. And they can follow us on social media at Body Systems Coaching. And then I have a podcast as well, which, Debra, I'd love to have you on, but the podcast is called the Smart Nutrition Made Simple Show. And so any one of those, I would welcome the follow.

Fantastic. Okay. Yes. And so we've got several links for social, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and we've got the podcast link as well as Ben's website. So come on over to the show notes. You'll find that at flipping50.com/better-strength-and-metabolism-in-midlife. And what are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today. Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes. And I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly what what you want to listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra important topics we've identified as our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife women. So go and listen. Right now. Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you would love to ask, or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers? My community coach Debra Atkinson and I provide answers daily inside of this group. But it's also where I go when I occasionally say, okay, open call for podcast questions or tell your story. Would you like to be a guest? So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their health, strengthening their mindset, and looking forward to every new year, join the Flipping 50 Insider group that's flipping 5-0. Insiders on Facebook.