Cortisol and Cardio for Women Over 40: What Your Heart Needs Now

Happy Heart Health Month, everybody. All right, so if you're listening to this in real time, it is Heart Health Month. And to a lot of people, a lot of women, I will get done talking to an audience, I'll give a presentation, and they'll say, wait, where do we do the cardio? And I was like, were you not listening? I talked about this. But for that reason, I'm doing an entire series. We've been doing a masterclass series. If you missed the first set this month, there's still room. We're opening some seats later this month in the month of February. So come to it. If you get lucky enough and you're coming to the links, you may get a replay later. But I clarify, what is the best cardio for heart health? Is cardio the best exercise for heart health? Where do you get results? And what is the continuum of heart health and the return on investment for your time in terms of getting the best cardio benefit? Reducing the risk of heart disease. And for postmenopausal women, it is still the number one killer. This is your episode if you want to learn about that. If you're not concerned about heart health right now because you're that young, right? And you're not yet thinking about that. If you're interested in weight loss, fat loss, you want to tune in because the healthier your heart the more likely that you don't have a weight loss or body composition problem. Are you in? Okay, I want you to buckle your seatbelt because I'm going to go through a lot of science right here, and we're going to try to keep this to a good walk. Not a short walk, not a long walk, but a good walk. Okay, so here it is. Why, why do your cardio needs count? So number one, Cardio isn't just one thing. It's really an umbrella of different intensities. So we could say— I would anyway, I'm going to argue for this— that cardio is anything off the couch where your heart is beating harder than it would be at rest. So, you know, in a way I could say this is probably more cardio than if I were sitting here quietly by myself. Actually, it is, because between you and me, I had a coffee before this. Shh, shh. Okay. So cardio isn't just one thing. It's a continuum. But when we say continuum, it's a continuum of stress on your heart. If we don't stress the heart, it doesn't have to work harder during the exercise. Therefore, it doesn't have to compensate or supercompensate and get better at its job so that it's ready for that next time. That's really what fitness is. We started stressing it. And so walking at a certain pace got you breathless before, but now it might take you to jog before you get breathless because you're in better condition. Not that jogging is better than walking, by the way. Cardio at one point was synonymous with aerobic. That's a little misleading. And generally we include in this umbrella I'm giving you today aerobic and anaerobic. And that means without oxygen. Means we're working so hard we can't sustain it. That would be your interval training. You get breathless in 30 seconds, you get breathless in a minute. It's not aerobic, meaning there can't be this constant flow of we can create enough oxygen flow to keep the exercise going in a rhythmic way. If you get good at jogging or running, you can make that an aerobic activity. If you're not, you're out of shape right now, you're deconditioned, You could not sustain a run most likely and have that be aerobic because it wouldn't be a repetitive rhythmic thing that you can do for, you know, a long period of time and sustain it. That's where we want to get. We get to a point called steady state where you can continue to do the thing and do it easily and well until you decide to stop. Going for a walk is probably like that self-selected pace. If you and I went for a walk, one of us might be faster than the other, and it might not be aerobic for both of us. So just food for thought. The right intensity depends on what you want. Choosing the right intensity might depend on, do you want blood sugar control? Do you really need that support with blood sugar and insulin to maybe look at belly fat and visceral, specifically belly fat? Do you need and want cardiovascular fitness? Are you really looking at my longevity really needs a tune-up because my cardiovascular fitness isn't good? VO2 max is what we call that. It's the measure of volume, V, for O2, oxygen, that you can consume, your volume of oxygen capacity within a minute time period is how it's expressed. We test that in a lab. You're breathing in and out of hoses. Oxygen that's pure. Your expiration is your CO2. We know how much oxygen you used. That tells us two things are happening. Your heart was able to pump a certain amount of blood and oxygen and get it to working muscles. And two, the muscles and the cells were able to extract it to use it. You have to get good at both. So there's more vascularity. You have more arteries, veins that are holding and bringing the blood back and forth. So Oxygenated blood goes out, gets extracted, deoxygenated blood travels back. That's the efficiency of the heart when that happens really easily, right? You're gonna get good at that if your cardiovascular system is fit. For women in menopause, the question is not, is cardio bad? Or, or how much should I do? The real question is the dose that you're doing right now, is that appropriate for your physiology and for the life stressors that you're in right now. So we're gonna go through continuum of cardiovascular activity. Now, there won't be a quiz at the end, but I want you to consider this. Your life is the quiz. How good is your fitness level? Is it showing up? And if I do this really well, I will have 15 minutes at the end for a brisk walk with my four-legged friend who desperately needs one. So here we go. Are we ready? This will be like interval training. Number 1, we start with easy walking and we would call that zone 1 if we were getting relative. It's great for blood sugar control, but easy walking and it's easy at an easy pace. It's nose breathing. You could sing. It's pretty comfortable. You're getting steps in. It's muscles contracting. It all adds up. It's very easily done. And this is just movement. It's kind of the accumulation of your steps throughout the day. It can happen in 10 minutes after meals. It can happen in you're walking the floor in retail work that you might be doing. It can happen in a big house, up and down the stairs, in and back to different rooms. There are so many ways that it could occur, including go for a walk, right? Though you don't have to. If we want to really get blood sugar control, insulin resistance is a problem, or you're pre-diabetic, menopausal weight gain is often related to that, and sleep support. Yeah, well, we're gonna get that if we lower our evening glucose levels, we'll sleep better. If you're walking after meals about 10 minutes, within about 30 minutes, after a meal. I'm gonna say that again. You walk for about 10 minutes within 30 minutes post-meal, that is when your blood sugar would spike. But if you go for that walk, your muscles are sucking it up, the blood sugar, to use as exercise fuel, and then they're kind of open to the bank depository for the storage of other glucose in the form of glycogen, so it's ready for your next workout. Level 2, we're gonna go for an intentional brisk walk. We're gonna do it kind of at steady state, so we're still in control. This is still aerobic base. Now it's zone 2. I don't love the term zone 2 because as an exercise physiologist, as a marathon triathlon coach, there are different models. There's a 3-zone, a 4-zone, a 5-zone, a 7-zone model. Zone 2 means something different in each of those. So let's define what it feels like. You're breathing nose and mouth. You can talk here, but you cannot sing. You know you're exercising. It's okay. This is a little more difficult, right? What are we going to get from it? We're going to get mitochondrial density. Remember, you've heard that in the last 5 years as much as you've heard metabolism. But mitochondrial production, they're energy central. It's where your ATP is derived from. ATP happens with every contraction, every burst of energy, every time you want to get out of a chair and when you exercise, certainly, but it fuels your life, not just for those of us who exercise regularly. It's helpful for fat oxidization. So when you do zone 2 work, we're laying this base and your body is using fat more. More at a higher percentage than when you go at higher activity levels like HIIT or sprint interval training. Now, don't confuse that to mean you burn calories at a faster rate because you don't. And burning faster calories at a faster rate can be beneficial even though you burn a small percentage of fat. You still, in the long run, may burn more fat with high-intensity or sprint interval training than you do with walking at a lower level. Both are beneficial for different reasons. Not going to go into that now. We've got previous episodes that do. Before we get started, at this time of year, it is really even more important that we talk about the fact that hydration is important. But hydration isn't just about drinking water. Being optimally hydrated is about optimizing your body's fluid ratios. And this fluid balance depends on so many factors, including the intake and the excretion of electrolytes. But you don't need electrolytes just if you're working out or it's hot outside or you're a heavy sweater, though you may need more if those things are true for you. LMNT is one of my favorite ways to boost electrolytes and make drinking water in winter more attractive. And by the way, I add the chocolate LMNT to warm water or unsweetened almond milk for a little guilt-free hot chocolate and take in my electrolytes that way. The current science points to consuming 4 to 6 grams of sodium, 3.5 to 5 grams of potassium, and 400 to 600 milligrams of magnesium per day from diet and supplements for optimal health outcomes. Those are really key electrolytes. All electrolytes are best consumed from whole foods, no contest. Elements can help fill in the gaps that we felt in our diet. In alignment with that, Element has a science-backed ratio of 100 milligrams sodium, 200 potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. Now I know what you're thinking. 100 grams of sodium? I can hear it even on this side. You're wondering, isn't sodium bad for you? But here's the deal. The government recommends consuming fewer than 2.3 grams per— of sodium per day. Austin sensibly for heart health. But in 2011, a Journal of American Medical Association study found that optimal health outcomes occur at 4 to 6 grams per day. Yeah, so what happens is if we cut out salt, you're thinking that you're being virtuous by eliminating salt. Oh no, I never salt my food, because I know you, I've eaten dinner with you, by the way. That actually can cause more harm than good. Many healthy people need more sodium, not less. Symptoms of low blood sodium levels— it's called hyponatremia, by the way— they include headaches, fatigue, muscle cramps, and confusion. And in severe cases, not to sound alarmist, brain damage, seizures, and death. But I want you to listen to that list again. Headaches, fatigue, muscle cramps, confusion— in other words, brain fog. Does that sound similar to symptoms of menopause? I say yes. So it could be that you're passing off some of your symptoms for what really is just hydration. Look, everyone from U.S. Olympic athletes to health experts like me and women just like you who want optimal energy and balance for health are using it. You can get your own. Get a free 8-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com/flipping50. Find your favorite Element flavor or share 'em with a friend. My favorites, by the way, Citrus Salt and Orange Salt. But when you're working at this level, you will improve your VO2 max. Gradually. So you're getting a little bit more than at zone 1. That's not really going to increase your VO2 max, but it's going to lay a base, getting your joints and ligaments ready for more. Still, we're doing that a little bit more now. We're going to get probably more sleep and mood benefit here. It also plays really nicely with strength training. It's a great balance. Walking and strength training— do not underestimate the power of those two together. This is the intensity that you can repeat, and repetition consistency really does matter. Now insert here intermittent bursts of vigorous intensity. Now that's not zone 2. What's vigorous? It's a little more out of breath, right? So of about 3 minutes in studies showed comparable results derived from longer cardio sessions. So go figure, you now no longer have a get-out-of-jail card saying, "I'm so busy, I don't have time to exercise." That is not an excuse for fitness anymore. And it's— you can say, "I can easily maintain. I may be traveling, but I'm going to have to sprint from the security to my gate, probably going to be about 3 minutes, wouldn't you say?" Sometimes longer. Have you been in Dallas or Chicago, right? It can be challenging, but you can get those kinds of move briskly up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs. Doesn't take a lot. And 3 minutes happened in the study. So let's all agree that if you only did 2 and a half minutes, would it still probably benefit you? Probably so. And if you did it a little longer, would that be okay too? Yes. But it doesn't have to be a lot. You probably don't have to get sweaty in that time. Now we all have a different sweat peak, I know, but your energy level's probably going to be boosted. So just this week, the situation that you're in, you're at a conference, you're traveling, you are caregiving, these are easy things to fit in. You can gain or maintain your fitness level with relatively little time commitment and without a gym, without changing your clothes, in fact. So number 3, if we talk levels. So we have this zone 1, we have zone 2, We have kind of this intermittent vigorous burst, you know, in about 3 minutes. Tempo training. This is called threshold. And this is really something that for me, talking becomes difficult. If you move here, I've called this in a 5-zone model, zone 3, no benefits zone for women in midlife specifically. So the only people that really, even in all genders, all ages, do well and need this are people who are training for marathons, half marathons specifically. So it's, it's a little higher than just long and slow running, which you need to do for a marathon, and it's not interval training, but it is right smack in the middle where you don't get the benefits of the fast VO2 that I'm going to talk about next— spoiler alert— and you don't get just the base. What you get is a pretty big dose of cortisol that you just have to watch out for. And now I know we've said this before, but I want to say it because it's all over the internet that cortisol is a bad thing. It's not. But I want you to realize that when I hear someone say cortisol is not bad, it doesn't matter, you can do anything you want to, you can do high-intensity interval training and that's fine, cortisol is going to elevate. Cortisol's not a problem. But when I hear people say that, who were like, cortisol's not even an issue, stop talking about it, the people who are doing it are premenopause or perimenopause women who have not yet experienced when it can become a problem, even if you thought previously it couldn't. And I'm just going to say that at 61, And at 42 years of working with midlife women, for most of them and myself, it does become a problem. There is a point where doing long sessions of cardio in that zone 3 backfire, backfire, leave you with inflammation, leave you potentially with a weight gain, not from fat, It's definitely not muscle, but it was inflammation. That's not a good thing. So said with respect, and I too, I want to tell you, until probably my early 50s, even having seen it in other women, I don't know that I was as empathetic until 56. I saw it in myself that immediately while I was training for an iron distance triathlon, and under a great deal of stress. And right there, pivotal hormonal changes because I hit menopause that year. It was just all too much. So my tolerance for things that increase stress— cortisol— was like lower. I, I had it coming from all different sources. The hormones changing is one, the extra physical training is two. The exposure to toxins and mold, the having to move suddenly. And, and many of you listening have been in a perfect storm, and not my things, but your own, in addition to hormonal changes, in addition to trying to do the logical thing we've been taught— exercise more and eat less, right? So it's not so logical. I hope you caught the sarcasm in that. It's what we've defaulted to. But let's start changing the vocabulary now so hopefully our daughters and daughter-in-laws don't have to go down this slippery slope. All right, so let me visit again for you tempo threshold. Really not something you want to do for sustained periods of time. Now, if you did this for 20 or 25 minutes, you probably would be okay. If you do this for 45 to 60 minutes, there is that point, or longer, that is where there is a cumulative impact of cortisol where your body isn't going to be as good at clearing it out afterward. You know the reason many of us exercise? To mitigate our stress levels. So if you are elevating your cortisol level and your stress for too long, it won't be good. Here's the difference. You could do high-intensity interval training. We go up, and we come down. We go up and we come down. So the session may be 20 or 25 minutes long, but the time spent in that high intensity where kick in that cortisol, kick in that cortisol, it's very short. That's the difference. And the response your body makes is also very different. So you can improve your VO2 max with that tempo or threshold training. Runners are very used to hearing tempo training, but if if it's new to you, just know it is more demanding on recovery than your zone 2 is, but is often confused as zone 2 because there's just a creep. You start out thinking, I'm going to do zone 2, and then you creep. We call it cardiac drift, and it's a thing. Your heart rate just begins to drift up as you fatigue. You become more dehydrated, your blood or plasma gets thicker. So even though your heart is beating, it has to push harder because it's like mud and sludge. It's not as fluid as it was. All of those things make it harder. So the cardiac output is under more load, the lactic clearance is not as good. So it's a sustainable pace, however, it's harder. You've got to have all the good music in your play playlist. Like, I have a playlist I've saved for these moments. I don't, I don't do that kind of training anymore, but when I did, I had favorites for that reason. I need to hear all the good things so that it would keep me paced at a certain level. So it often becomes what I call the gray zone. Like, you're in this murky, muddy water where you're exercising and you think, oh, I'm doing a good thing and I'm burning calories. And by the way, that's not the goal so much, but it doesn't have a clear purpose. So if it is something that, you know, I'm training for a long-distance event like a half marathon and it's worth it to me to do this, okay. But realize that you may pay for it if there's an inflammatory effect on your body and you might want to look at mixing up your training time so you don't have to do a lot of that and you spend more time in highs and lows instead. Before we get started, at this time of year, it is really even more important that we talk about the fact that hydration is important, but hydration isn't just about drinking water. Being optimally hydrated is about optimizing your body's fluid ratios. And this fluid balance depends on so many factors, including the intake and the excretion of electrolytes. But you don't need electrolytes just if you're working out or it's hot outside or you're a heavy sweater, though you may need more if those things are true for you. LMNT is one of my favorite ways to boost electrolytes and make drinking water in winter more attractive. And by the way, I add the chocolate element to warm water or unsweetened almond milk for a little guilt-free hot chocolate and take in my electrolytes that way. The current science points to consuming 4 to 6 grams of sodium, 3.5 to 5 grams of potassium, and 400 to 600 milligrams of magnesium per day from diet and supplements for optimal health outcomes. Those are really key electrolytes. All electrolytes are best consumed from whole foods, no contest. Element can help fill in the gaps that we've got in our diet. In alignment with that, Element has a science-backed ratio of 100 milligrams sodium, 200 potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. Now I know what you're thinking, 100 grams of sodium? I can hear it even on this side. You're wondering, isn't sodium bad for you? But here's the deal. The government recommends consuming fewer than 2.3 grams per— of sodium per day, ostensibly for heart health. But in 2011, a Journal of American Medical Association study found that optimal health outcomes occur at 4 to 6 grams per day. Yeah, so what happens is if we cut out salt, you're thinking that you're being virtuous by eliminating salt. Oh no, I never salt my food. Because I know you, I've eaten dinner with you, by the way. That actually can cause more harm than good. Many healthy people need more sodium, not less. Symptoms of low blood sodium levels, it's called hyponatremia, by the way, they include headaches, fatigue, muscle cramps, and confusion. And in severe cases, not to sound alarmist, brain damage, seizures, and death. But I want you to listen to that list again: headaches, fatigue, muscle cramps, confusion. In other words, brain fog. Does that sound similar to symptoms of menopause? I say yes. So it could be that you're passing off some of your symptoms for what really is just hydration. Look, everyone from U.S. Olympic athletes to health experts like me and women just like you who want optimal energy and balance for health are using it. You can get your own— get a free 8-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com. Www.flipping50.com. Find your favorite Element flavor or share them with a friend. My favorites, by the way, Citrus Salt and Orange Salt. Let's go on. Level 4, HIIT. This one's more common, more familiar. It's a definite efficient VO2 max builder. Now, VO2 max, remember, is the number one benchmark of your longevity. That together with your lower body strength, your quadriceps, your glutes. But this is hard intervals between about 1 and 4 minutes long. It's not all out, but it's, it's getting there. If you can do it for a full minute, it's not all out. Definitely it's not like I see the finish line and sprinting, right? So, but this is where you're a ways back and everybody says it's around the corner. That's a lie. Okay, repeated efforts with recovery. So generally it's one-to-one. So if there's a 1-minute hard interval, a lot of times then in studies there's a 1-minute recovery. If it's a 4-minute interval, there's a 4-minute recovery. So really making sure you're totally recovered. And this is different than what we— kind of the birth of interval training, if you will. Do you remember Tabata? Still out there, but it's not a really smart thing to do unless maybe you're on an exercise bike where you're safe, you can't be injured. Because if you're doing that 8 rounds of 20 seconds hard and 10 seconds to recover, you're really not recovered. And then the sloppier you get with any movement that you might be doing, the more risk of injury you're going to have. And the effort you have at those end, they feel hard, but you're not working at the same level that you were when you started. It's not that your form is not as good. So I think that's where we have to watch out. I much prefer rest completely, fully, all you need, and that's a better interval because now you're working at your capacity. So science says that HIIT reliably improves VO2 max, get it, twice as fast as more steady state. So what do I mean by that? So twofold, I think we both want to know. In less time. So your workout time for the week, for the day, if you're going to do a slower steady state, it's 40-45 minutes with warm-up, cool-down, and doing. And if you're doing HIIT, it's 20-25 minutes with warm-up, cool-down, and the intervals. So that, but also if we were talking a period of weeks, within about 5 to 6 weeks, you're going to see a significant change in your VO2 max if you're doing high-intensity interval training. 2 or 3 times a week if you tolerate, with slower steady state, it's probably going to take you 8 to 21 weeks according to the research and science. So females specifically, VO2 max improvements in women with high-intensity interval training, absolutely. The response for you is going to vary by where's your baseline when you're starting to do this. The more fit you are, the less progress you're going to make, all right? Your recovery capacity though will determine how quickly you make progress. So that might mean if you're not sleeping well, you're in a period of time where you have insomnia, you're under a great deal of stress at work or from other reason, concern about a family member or yourself, that will impede, interrupt, disrupt your ability to recover. That's going to mean you might not actually do as well with HIIT. I had a woman recently say she tried what we're going to talk about next, sprint interval training, and she tried it for 3 weeks and she gained 16 pounds. She was like, "What happened? What's going on?" And, you know, we have to say that potentially this could have been she didn't have the capacity to recover. So we're doing lots of tearing down, we're breaking down, we're stressing her body. Maybe she had other stressors coming from elsewhere in her life, not the right time for her to do sprint. Would it be good for her if the timing was different? Potentially, yes. Could she— can she come back to it later when we figure out what's— where are the other sources of stress that maybe we can control them better or get out of this moment of situational life stress she's in and then come back to it? It may work again. It's not that it won't work never. It's just right now for this moment and this perfect blend of hormonal stressors, life stressors, sleep, lifestyle, diet, all the things, it's not the perfect combination for the exercise that she needs now. So realize that you can not only not get results that we're talking about that were derived in studies, But you may get the opposite of desired effects if we're not paying attention to the signs and the symptoms. They hint at everything. We've built an entire business with the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist of training health coaches and trainers how to read symptoms and adjust programs before they go south, before they go bad, to continue getting people good results without Having them go through the, "This didn't work," and having to then back out of that. So let's talk about the cortisol reality. Cortisol rises acutely when you do high-intensity interval training, but then it comes back down while you're in complete recovery. So it doesn't stay up. This is the way cortisol is meant to work for us. Little burst of energy, I need it, I got to do something. And I even, I have to give a speech at work, stress, but then the stressor's over. I have to do final exams and then the stress is over. And we work fairly well with sprints, whether they're short 30 seconds or they're life sprints. Finals are a week, right? I don't know about you, but I try to put all my together so I could go home soon. That's me. Don't know about you. You might've tried to study a little bit more, but I don't though. So HIIT interval training, it's like medicine. A dose matters. How much, how often, how hard, and what do you do in between to help yourself get better? Level 5 is sprint interval training. So this one is high return but high cost. There's going to be more damage. So sprint interval is true all-out effort, 20 to 30 seconds each time, no more than that or it's not all out. This is where you do— you imagine the finish line, you're sprinting toward it. Strong, strong stimulus, rapid mitochondrial enzyme changes. So you're going to boost your mitochondria. VO2 max improvements report in short time frames, like with 40% less time. So if we back up one step, HIIT increases the VO2 max benefit 2 times as fast. But sprint interval training does it twice as fast in 40% less time. We're talking 5 minutes of intense exercise a week. We can do that, right? There's a significant change, 4 to 19% improvement. And here's why and how the difference of that. So if you're already in great shape and you add sprint interval training, you're probably not going to get 19% change. But you might get 4. Maybe you'll get something in the range of that. If you are just beginning, you're fairly deconditioned, you're just beginning, but you've got a base. So don't start high-intensity sprint interval training without having a base. You have the most progress to make. You're the one who may make 19% improvement in your VO2 max within a fairly short area of time. So we've already got to have some kind of a base— be sleeping well, be, you know, giving yourself adequate fuel and recovery, low life stress. Just because it works in a study doesn't mean it's working for you. So how would you start and progress this? So progression means you start very slowly with just a little bit, you test it, you do once maybe for 2 weeks and see how that goes. How well do you recover? Then maybe you'll add a second time. Then maybe you'll add a third time, but maybe you won't, 'cause you're getting great results with it. So those things also matter. Then let's talk about cortisol and menopause just for a moment. Even just stepping into menopause, cortisol can be elevated during that time. So I want you to realize that we're looking for maybe that tempo or threshold training not working really well in menopause because we're already stressed, remember? So just think about what worked for you when— you may not get back to the fitness level you had. You could have that or better, just not from doing the same thing you used to do. So it's going to take a change, and your signs and symptoms tell us everything. So I want to talk about resistance training for a moment. Because it's not the first place people go, but they should. So we talked about VO2 max. We talked about the heart being the most important muscle we've got, but your body muscles throughout really need to be considered. And we've got to think the more vascularity we have is responsible or leans into the amount of muscle that we have. So if you've seen, ever seen a triathlete, a marathon runner they have vascularity. They can see it. Now, you may not love that when you see all those veins in bodybuilders, but just even a runner can have a little bit more of that definition. And what you're seeing is there's a greater ability to deliver blood and carrying oxygen to those working muscles, and probably greater ability to extract it at that muscular level so it can go to work for you. So more muscle, better mitochondria, better VO2 max. And then we move it in cardiovascular activity, we'll get even better results. What we know is that from resistance training alone, there's a 13% increase in cardiovascular, um, fitness from VO2 perspective. So 13% increase in VO2. Just from doing that. We combine an exercise program in a week, not in the same session, but we do resistance training a couple days a week and we do cardiovascular nature work that might be HIIT, walking, or both. Ideally, I'd love to see that. Larger improvements in VO2 max, about 21% within 12 to 24 weeks. So I'm going to challenge you, if you want to take advantage I'm offering an ultimate assessment. It's a 90-day session that you can join me for, or a 90-minute session. 90 days would be really long. It's a 90-minute session where I'll meet with you and we'll unpack all of this using the HALO method that I use. And we've framed really for 15 years in Flipping 50, and we've coined the term, and now we've systematically taught it to trainers and health coaches and physicians so that they can better help their patients when they're in an office instead of saying, well, you should exercise, you should lift, but not knowing what to tell them specifically. We've included your hormonal phase, your, your activity age, your exercise age limitations, and the outcome you want. What's most important to you right now in figuring out what should we do and focus on? I'll meet with you. And if you do it right now and don't miss this, you can also get this with a free month month of the Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app access. That's a value of $69. I don't do very many of these anymore because it's 90 minutes of my time. I don't have a lot of those blocks in my life anymore. We're booming, but I miss working with people one-on-one. I love doing this. So to the limited number of people that can fit on my calendar, I am opening this up for the month of February, and we will combine the 1-month access to the app as a complimentary benefit after we meet. You have that option. So you will be able to do that. You'll get the code as we meet so that I can also give you the introduction to the app and the contents that you would focus on based on your assessment. All right. So that is it. You'll find all the juicy benefits in the show notes today. So if you have questions, please, please, please let me know it. And I am so grateful that you are here and you're a listener. If you're getting value from this, please don't hesitate, share this with a friend or two. Let's all flip 50 together.