Enhancing Gut Health to Enhance Weight Loss & Muscle Strength

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. How does a nice cup of coffee sound to you first thing in the morning? Or maybe second thing after that tall glass of pure filtered water? I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns, the questions, and hope to inspire you so you expect in demand better quality services and information made for women just like you. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset so you can have the energy and vitality that you want, need, and deserve in the second and better half. Oh, and today's episode is a big one. All right, yes, we are the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause fitness membership host in the world, and there are a lot of things related to whether or not you feel like exercising, have the energy to exercise, and get the results that you wanted. And one big one is gut health. I think there's no getting around it. There's no ignoring it. It doesn't matter which way you come from. You're feeling constipated, gassy, bloated, or have diarrhea. Guess how motivated you are to exercise, right? And on the flip side, if you're exercising and it's actually turning your gut into a nightmare, that happens most frequently if you're over-exercising, by the way, and overstressing yourself. Could mean long-distance endurance exercise, which is probably more notorious for wreaking havoc in athletes' or active exercisers' guts. However, it could be just the combination of what you happen to be doing right now with the level of stress from other sources in your life that can wreak havoc. So I'm going to talk a little bit about this and how enhancing gut health can enhance weight loss if that's a goal, or gains in muscle and muscle strength, because that most likely is a goal for all of us. Enhancing gut health may be the least sexy part of improving your body composition. After all, there are no Lululemons that take care of that, no flexing in front of a mirror, and there's got to be some consciousness about it. Most of all, for many of us, there has to be an understanding of why and how. And one last thing. You don't have to have a bellyache, belly bloat, or diarrhea to tell you that you have a gut issue in order to have one. I know I just gave you the gift that keeps on giving. So if you were thinking, I might listen to this, but it really doesn't apply to me, hopefully you made it this far, 3 minutes in and still giving you the lowdown. But you don't have to have an episode, yeah, and something going wrong. It may be just you're not getting the results that you feel like you deserve, or your energy isn't, you isn't a 10 out of a 10, and you deserve it to be. The gut microbiome— that is, I'm going to use that term frequently today, but that's kind of the collective term given to the environment, like the house within your house, where there's good and there's bad bacteria. The gut microbiome is influenced by sex hormones— hello, menopause— and also changes with aging. So even guys will have this change, but we, right, we can Gape, either one of them. Dang. So declines in estradiol and progesterone may lead to permeability of the gut barrier. That permeability is what usually is called in lay terms leaky gut. It means that what used to be like sealed, signed, sealed, delivered, no water's getting in here, no way. Now there are little leaks, you know, just like in your roof when it gets a certain age. Or has gone— undergone certain stressors. So that permeability of the gut barrier can allow microbial translocation to reoccur. That's a mouthful too, so let me break this down step by step by step. That means that you've got a bad balance between good and bad gut microbiome, that gut bacteria and that there's relocation— translocation, meaning things that are supposed to be in the gut are getting through the gut, maybe in too big of particles. You're not breaking down the foods that you're eating, and then it's getting into the bloodstream, and that's all not a good place for things to be that are too big. Menopause and/or low estrogens are associated with reduced gut microbiome diversity. And like everywhere else in our lives in the world today, we want diversity and it's a positive thing. So too, it's true for the gut. I'm going to say this because I know so many women fall into this. When you go to the grocery store, if you forget the list but you're like, I don't care, I'll just get the same things I usually get anyway, right? If all you're buying is carrots and broccoli and cauliflower over and over and over again, doesn't matter what time of year it is, but you're still buying the same vegetables, you got to break out of that. Because you want diversity. And the diversity that comes from instead having green beans and asparagus one week as the primary vegetables that you're rotating into your meals, you're getting better gut diversity, meaning the bacteria as well as the fiber and the nutrients. And we want that for optimal health, not the same thing over and over again, because it's impossible to modify the gut microbiome through specific— I'm sorry, I'm going to say that again, because because it is possible— I read too quickly— it is possible to modify the gut microbiome through specific prebiotic, probiotic, or antibiotic drugs. The gut microbiome can play a big part in perimenopause and postmenopause health. And when we say a big part, it could go either way. So there is no on the fence here. It's either working for you or it's working against you. If you, for instance, are taking antibiotics, or you have been, had been in the past, or you took oral birth control— I did for long periods of time— we tend to be the women who have more issues with gut microbiome. And once you're off, you want to make sure, what am I doing to help myself? So I can't even remember when I went off. It's probably been about 8 years maybe. 8, 7 or 8 years since I went off. But in that time, I've also been much more conscious of prebiotics, both in food, and probiotics in supplements as well. So think about what are you doing to take care of your gut? What signs and symptoms do you have that your gut's in good shape versus not? So enhancing your gut health improves insulin sensitivity. So think about insulin sensitivity. We generally associate insulin and insulin problems with diabetes, but a lot of midlife women are told, you have prediabetes. It's kind of a slap in the face to those who've been very conscious and health conscious and eating and drinking the right things. And I don't eat a lot of sugar and I take care of myself. Why is this happening to me? Well, It's your hormones. I know it's like that's such a blanket statement, but we want to dig a little deeper in that and look at what else can we do. What are we in control of? Stubborn menopausal fat is often related to insulin resistance, and insulin resistance means, just as a review, and I know I tell this quite often, I know that you— I'm probably preaching to the choir and you're already seeking and taking in more information from books and from experts in terms of their speaking or their podcasts or blogs as well. But just to review that, when we talk about insulin and what it should be doing is when we have different spikes in our blood sugar levels, like post-meal or you're having a sugary snack, your blood sugar elevates and your body says, hey, that's not good for us, let's get that blood sugar level back down, because that's where inflammation occurs. And so insulin comes in to bring it back down and to take that blood sugar out of the bloodstream where it's going to do damage. And it stores that blood sugar in— first in liver and in muscle. That's the two depositories, the two bank accounts. And when the liver is full and the muscle is full, then it may go to storage, right? And you know where that goes, right? So that is your fat stores, all right? And this is really an important thing to consider. This is part of the reason why we— it's so important for you to be moving on a regular basis, because as you move, you move the muscle mass that you do have, and it uses more blood sugar, right? And the more you lift weights and create lean muscle mass, you're creating a bigger bank account. Like, yep, 'Go ahead, pour more in here, it's okay, because I'm going to store it in here where it's really safe, and, and I'll use it for energy when I'm exercising so that I can get stronger and have a faster metabolism and age better.' That all works for you. But when you have insulin resistance, it takes more and more and more insulin to bring that blood sugar back down because your body is not sensing the same level of insulin that it used to. So if you have ever studied or, or been around addicts, right? I mean, it's the same concept. You used to have one glass of alcohol, and now that doesn't do it anymore. Now you need two. Or used to have one cup of coffee and it would be like, woo! And now it's, no, I can have two, I can have three. And, you know, and I need that buzz. Or, you know, we're talking cocaine or whatever it might be, right? You need— there's an escalation of it. You need more to create the same kind of result. And the same is true with insulin resistance. That's kind of what's going on. So can we turn that around? Yes, and it takes some concerted effort. But having that and being at this status can occur not because you've done something wrong, but because of hormonal changes. And then it may be that you want to look at how do I do more things right. So your body will respond to different food and drinks based on your gut microbiome. Meaning if you have poor gut health right now, you have, say, an overgrowth of bad and an undergrowth of good bacteria, your body, your blood sugar may be spiked more by certain food or drinks than it would be if you had good bacteria. So what does that mean? Well, some of us who, you know, have put on belly fat, redistributed fat from other places in the body, or put on fat overall, and especially also belly fat, This is related to insulin resistance, but you may not have put together that this just isn't about choosing sugary foods or not sugary foods. It's also about the health of your gut. And if you had more diversity there, potentially you would not be responding the same way. You'd be responding better. Say you have poor gut microbiome. Certain foods spike your blood sugar. For me right now, you may have seen in June, I was wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor, and it was coffee. Coffee. I'm leaving a pregnant pause because it's made me so sad. And whether it was coffee or matcha— so a lot of you know that a couple years ago I actually gave up coffee completely, thinking for my gut it would be just so much better if I just did matcha. It'd be a little bit lower in caffeine and matcha is not, not caffeinated. And so it can have a positive effect on your fat-burning ability whether or not you exercise, but it, it's amplified if you're doing high-intensity interval training. So I love that. But I also love— it's kind of a great focus and chill. It's a little different feeling than doing coffee. And I like Four Sigmatic, so I will put that in the show notes. When I do coffee, that's what I do. And I like Peak Tea Matcha because it's quadruple screened, and that is one of those things that could have heavy metals in it, could have mold in it, may not actually be what it says it is unless it's gone through rigorous screening. So it costs a little bit more, tastes a little bit better, and we know it's clean. And so you don't want to be contributing to, you know, having something good, taking something good, and realizing it's actually not good at all if you just buy buy something off the shelf. So important things there. But coming back to that, let's say you've got poor gut microbiome. Certain foods will spike your blood sugar, like coffee for me. If you focus on your gut microbiome over the next few months and then test the same thing again, in my case, maybe I would just say, all right, I am not going to have coffee That's really a hard statement. It's a lie, so I'm not going to say it, but maybe I go back to having matcha and just having 2 mugs, cut myself off. Nope, never, not nothing else in the day. Because every once in a while I will have maybe a couple mugs of coffee in the morning and be done. But then in the afternoon I might have a matcha just— and it's almost more based on what kind of work I'm going to be doing. I am sitting down to do some writing or programming where it's a lot of thought. That's when it's habit. I like that warm drink, and even in the summer it doesn't matter. But that's why I do it. It's not necessarily that I'm crashing and I need a pick-me-up. So if I improve my gut microbiome over the next few months— and I'll talk about how, right— then I test that same drink, or in your case it might be a different food, it may result in far lower blood sugar levels because of the gut. Some say you can enhance the gut microbiome in a matter of days, days. So imagine what you could do over months. And I'm actually a— I don't know about you, but an immediate gratification girl, I'll say it. So the idea that we can improve it in probably a few days, if somebody put that out there, I think probably— I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you and I both— maybe not, but I— we probably would do better having a focus for 14 days and say, I'm gonna do this improve my gut challenge for 14 days, and then test a food again. And if you happen to be wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor— and I'm gonna be sharing a new one, by the way, in it— and it may be that I'm putting it out live now by the time this episode airs, but I'm testing a new one and I like the way it works. The— there is a membership fee for a year, and that gives you access to the platform and your results. But then each month that you may want to do the testing, you order sensors, and that's a unique expense right then. So it's not an every-month drain on your bank account, it's calculated. You do pay that annual fee, but you'll pay that once, and it's kind of like joining the country club, I suppose., and then you can pay your greens fees. Um, like this month I might— I'm, I'm going to do it. I'm going to put that sensor on right now, and then I would probably do it again, say, in October or 3 or 4 months from now, and then I would do it again in maybe January. Great month to do it, right? And so periodically you would do that and have a— have another little bit of an expense, but you're not having to shell it all out at once. Number 1, you get to control the total expenditure over the course of a a month. But here's the real advantage, is that if you do it, use my link, you can share it with me. You can choose to share your results and allow me to have access so that I can look at how are you doing and what would I suggest, and we can do a group program. So within our membership, I'm gonna offer this on an ongoing basis, and that means we will always have a group in there. Who is curious and asking specifically about microbiome, healing the gut health, their blood sugar levels, how to improve them. And for other people, we may do a paid-for program because obviously I can't just donate my time. But think about that. So if you're already in our membership, go you, because this is coming down the pike. So excited for, for everyone in this possibility. So, you know, looking at the way your gut responds to different foods. I mean, you and I are not going to respond the same to the same foods or drinks. Um, you may have no obvious indication of poor gut health unless it's reached a significant level. You won't have constipation or diarrhea or gas or bloating. Those are the obvious telltale signs. I mean, we know, ah yeah, got a problem. But if we don't, it's just kind of under the radar. You may be gaining a little bit of weight, your waistband may be a little more tight. But haven't we experienced that as women throughout our lives? I mean, a little bit of this or a little bit of that. Maybe we didn't actually think what could be going on under the hood that led me to that. So wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor can reveal some of those issues. And that's an interesting perspective on why to do it. Most of the time we're focused on And we want to look at not increasing the blood sugar levels because that's going to contribute to cortisol and insulin depositing belly fat. And that, that is one of the biggest reasons we're doing it for that immediate gratification, for prevention, of course, of disease, including diabetes. But there are other diseases, many that are fed by sugar. And so by high levels of blood sugar, we are putting ourselves at risk for heart disease, cancer, strokes. And numerous other things. How do you improve your gut health? That's the key, right? So even without using a blood glucose monitor, what if you just were like, I'm all in, I want to improve my gut health? So ironically, I think, ironically anyway, longer periods of fasting can actually help. So how— I think it's kind of like interesting, how interesting it is that not eating food helps the diversity of your gut microbiome in the same way I started this episode saying eat different foods, different vegetables, increase your diversity of the things going in, right? Both help. Dr. Mindy Peltz uses fasting with her patients who've undergone use of antibiotics over a period of time, oral birth control, and those who have SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And the key in these fasts to help the bio specifically is that they're 24-hour or more fasts, and the benefit comes in how you choose to break the fast. What is it that you eat next? Introducing bone broth first kind of coats the stomach with that collagen. Some healthy fat— Dr. Mindy shares she likes to have a bowl of olives those polyphenol fats, and then finally, uh, cooked vegetables because they're easier to digest, by the way, and protein to help reset the gut. Her book, by the way, is Fast Like a Girl, published by Hay House. It was out in 2023. I've been trying to get on the podcast. So far we've had her scheduled, she's canceled twice, and That's just the busy life of a physician who's just recently written a book, but we'll get that done. If you have good gut health, your liver and your microbiome communicate via your portal vein, and that helps your body switch from fat burning when you're in a fasted state, or switch to fat burning. But if you are missing certain gut microbiome, you don't have those that you need, your liver may never get the signal to switch over to fat burning. So even though we all have the potential for that to happen, it's just nobody's walking into that room turning the light on, and that's really due to poor gut health. So you can— if you have good gut health, your liver and your microbiome are going to communicate, right? But if you don't, you know, that's missing. You can do a stool test to get a true picture of which bacteria are high in your gut and which are low, so you know better how to balance them. If you have bad bacteria that's in an overgrowth state, taking some things like grapefruit seed extract for a period of time, whether it's 30 days or 90 days, is often recommended. And, um then taking a probiotic that has high levels of those things that you are low in to bring them back up. So, and sometimes, you know, we don't just want to take a probiotic at— that says take one a day, you know, you actually need more because we're dug in a hole and fill it up. So there have been times when I've taken I'm taking 2 of these for 30 days, and then we're gonna see how things are going and see how I'm doing. So you can do that either by feel, by testing blood sugar response with a monitor, or you may want to do another stool test to see how am I doing now. And in a couple of cases where I've been under a doctor's supervision, you know, I've done a stool test to realize, oh, you know, my biome is off, so I'm going to you know, feed the good bacteria and kill those bad ones. But we never did a post-test. It was just, how are you doing now? And, and it was by feel. It was like, you know, I'm tolerating foods that I couldn't while I was struggling with this poor biome. But you may also want to— I'd like the idea of post-testing for— I mean, wouldn't you like the one, the final exam, like did I really get here? Is it really there? But you may also be somebody who says, no, it's just if I feel better, I have good energy, I'm gonna guess everything is just fine. You can do a stool test yourself. You can self-direct, meaning you order self-directed labs. You just go in and do it. I'll put a link to yourlabwork.com/Flipping50. You can use a code to get $25 off your first test. But it comes back in a very user-friendly way of looking at, you know, you're at a +1, it should be at +4, you're low here. It will tell you, and then you can go and find a probiotic that has that strain. And all good probiotics have a number in the back of them, you know, when they're listed in the ingredients list. And if they don't, they're not actually active in helping your, your gut. So that's an important distinction. Okay, signs your gut health is off. I mean, do we need to really go through this? But without getting too graphic, in my experience, when your gut microbiome is off, you'll be more susceptible to food poisoning or to the toxic effects of something like kale. And I know that may be like the first time you've heard that, but kale is also known as an anti-nutrient. There are things in plants that that protect the plants when they're out in nature from getting picked. Or, um, you know, it's like thistles on a cacti, and that's there for a reason. But kale is looked at as the superfood because of all the nutrients, but it's also got a lot of things that are going to be negative in terms of absorption. Not ideal for a lot of people, or maybe you can have it occasionally, but it's actually not not all that healthy anytime you have it, then maybe it won't destroy you if you have good health. You know, I, um, so in both these cases, I found out I really had an issue. I had leftover salmon. It was 2 days old. It was like a Friday night I had it, and I, um, it might have been Thursday night, I don't know, but it had been cooked on a Tuesday, 2 days earlier. I mean, 48 hours we're talking, a little bit less than that. And I just got violently ill like 4 hours later. And then for the next 6 or 7 hours, I mean, I was lying on the bathroom floor. It was awful. And, you know, during that same 2-week period, it was just a couple weeks prior, I had been noticing— I have a favorite kale Brussels sprout salad I make. It was practically running right through me. I was like, I was like, what is going on, right? So I had had a stool test prior to being away where I ate this leftover salmon, but I hadn't gotten the results back. Had I, I might have known, oh, I got to be careful with the things I'm eating, because eating 2-day leftover salmon, for me, I mean, that, that ordinarily I don't think is all that long, you know, 3 or 4 days You know, being a single woman who cooks in batches, you know, that probably 4 days I wouldn't have ever thought about before. But, you know, my gut was more susceptible, so it's going to be more touchy. And, and if somebody was going to get sick from it, I was in that case. And that doesn't mean that's permanent, right? So if coffee, for instance, elevates blood sugar today, you may be able to repair your gut with things like more diverse foods. Number 1, we talked about don't eat the same vegetables over and over again. Fermented foods like yogurt, and it doesn't have to be dairy if you— like, I haven't had dairy since the early— my early 30s. I'll have occasional aged cheese, and usually it's cheese is the thing I have on something. And I will use ghee when I'm making certain things, especially scallops. But otherwise, you can also get those live cultures, fermented foods, in almond especially coconut yogurt. Sauerkraut and kombucha also fall under that fermented foods list. Bone broth, different types of fiber. So adding things like psyllium husk, flaxseed, chia seeds, different fiber types, not just in vegetables, but those kinds of things also will be beneficial. Probiotics, you actually may want to take them. And I mentioned earlier, you know, you wouldn't take just what somebody would take on a daily basis if you are below where you needed to be. L-glutamine is a good heal and seal the gut supplement. It comes in a powdered form. I think you can also find it in a capsule form, but powdered form is tasteless. You can just add it to— you can add it to a glass of water if you wanted to, or to a smoothie. You'll never know it's there, but so, so good for you. And then prebiotic-rich protein powders. So there are some protein powders— Flipping 50 is not one of them. So in the P-Protein and then the Paleo Protein, both their minimal ingredients that we know exactly what they are, 5 or fewer ingredients. I don't put a lot of probiotics or greens or vitamins in it for the reason that if you're already taking vitamins, it's gonna compete with you, what you're competing. Not everybody can take the same kinds of greens. Some people can't have grass, wheatgrass. Some people can't have certain greens, and so I just minimize ingredients there. But there are protein powders on the shelves that are prebiotic-rich. So if you want to get it all in one swoop, you could just— you kind of want to read and make sure you don't have any allergens to the things that they're putting there. So your gut health and blood sugar— some will say black coffee is okay if you're fasting, right? Like if you're doing a fasted blood test or you're doing intermittent fasting. However, based on what I just said, that may not be the case, right? If it spikes your blood sugar and you're wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor, it's actually the caffeine. It's not you doctoring the coffee. So Each of us has to test ourselves to find out if that's true. So fasting, if fasting is your goal, you're trying not to elevate blood sugars and stay in ketosis, then you would not want to have it. And likewise, I would suggest if that's you, I wouldn't, and I don't ever test this. Like, if I'm supposed to go have a fasted blood test I don't have coffee. I don't have, you know, coffee and stevia thinking, well, it's no calories, so surely I can do that. I may have a little herbal tea, like no caffeine in it, just a warm mug in the morning, or just a warm mug of water, and that's it before a test. It's because you don't want to risk anything interferes with you actually having fasted numbers. Some really savvy marketers will call their brand of stevia Oh, it's keto-friendly, but it isn't for everyone. Anything with a sweet taste as soon as it touches your tongue can raise blood sugar levels. So the only way to know for sure is test yourself and then consider whether reducing your stress and introducing gut-friendly foods and a little bit more diversity in your overall daily diet, and then try testing again. And see what you found. So good luck with this, but I really want to kind of drill this home that this could be one of the things interfering with you getting optimal results or feeling just your optimal energetic self. So if there's anything interfering here— gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation— those are the easy ones. There may not be. So how regular are you?, how predictable. And if you're under a great deal of stress, just know your gut microbiome also does suffer. And I know we're sometimes in this perfect storm of life where we also think we are coping really well when your gut microbiome might tell another story. Just be open to that and tune in to the ways that you can test. So blood can continuous blood glucose monitors, your gut biome, your health stool tests. Those are all just tools that you could take a look at to improve your fitness level and your energy level as well. Hope that's been helpful. You can find today's show notes at flipping50.com/guthealth. And what are you waiting for? Let's start. Flipping 50 today.