Exercise Timing Improves Exercise Benefits in Menopause

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If you look at this title, you might just think this is about whether you're on HRT or not, and you would be true. The efficacy of your fitness and nutrition lifestyle changes will be better on HRT than without it. But this is not about HRT. This is about the type and the timing of your exercise. So tune in. Don't miss it. 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 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 behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve. The timing of your exercise either hurts or it improves exercise benefits in menopause. If we think about it like that, it is definitely do this, don't do that. Because if you just think, oh, it doesn't really matter that much, that a little of this, a little of that, or you're kind of using that old adage, well, something is better than nothing in menopause, that actually could go wrong for you because we just have less latitude. We can't just do anything and have it feel good. And some of you listening right now, you're experiencing that. And I apologize. You may be working with a trainer and you can't figure it out. And what we tend to do is say, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? Please don't. It's not you. Potentially right now, you have to know, even if you're working with a trainer, you're going to classes, you're doing all the exercise, you've added more, that the fitness industry has had it wrong. That basic certifications for trainers don't tell them anything about working with women in any stage of hormonal phase that they're in in their lives. Number one, We don't look at the difference really between men and between women, not in a basic certification. We don't even look at it in a 4-year degree, right? So I have not been teaching at a university level. I did teach for 15 years. I have been out of it for going on 11 years now, but speak very regularly to prior colleagues, and there's just nothing there. And part of the reason is we're obligated in a university setting, or I should say we were obligated if I'm talking about myself teaching in the Department of Kinesiology in past tense, because there are so many classes prerequisite. You have to go through things in a certain order. Otherwise, many of you know, if you were a student yourself or if you are paying college tuition, you get those things out of order or you have a little indecision, you're going to stay another semester or have to take a summer course or really be overloaded every semester. So stress, stress, and financial obligations increase dramatically. So when, you know, a student goes to university, there's a promise we'll get them out on time. That said, there's not room for all of it. There's so much content to go through and over that a basic certification and even a 4-year degree is not enough to dive deep. It is enough— here are the words used to prepare people like me who write exam questions for national certifications— these questions should simply state that this individual has the basic knowledge ready to enter the field, not that they're an expert in every area working with every possible client. And realistically, I think when we think about this, that makes sense. They couldn't possibly know reading one textbook, right? There's one chapter on physiology. That's not physiology for a 15-year-old girl who wants to play volleyball for high school and then maybe for college. That's not including an older adult who has osteoarthritis and has osteoporosis. It couldn't possibly.. So realize first of all that you know that, but if this is new to you, stay with me. If you're not sure about how do I work on the type and the timing of exercise so that I can optimize the exercise benefits that I get in menopause, stay with me and realize that optimization is one thing you may be getting. You're fine. You're getting some results. You're seeing some change, but could it be better? And would you, if you learn something new in 5 or 10 years, be sorry that you hadn't learned it before that? So if you're watching us on video, I'm getting bombed by a dog tail. He's very cute. I know, but don't let him steal the show. So if this is like a review for you, or if you are a trainer or health coach and you're unsure of how to relate these things to your clients, stay with me too. This is a great refresher or for some trainers, it'll be the first time that you've ever heard this. So many of the people who go through our Flipping 50 Menopause Specialist training, 90% of them had never heard some of this before. It's the best time to exercise is the time you'll do it, right? Not so much. There's difference. If you are a trainer or a health pro, don't miss the She Means Fitness Business podcast and be sure if you're not getting results for your midlife clients or beyond, those clients beyond menopause, that you're aware of our sponsor for this show is the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. So since 2018, we've been providing the course and the CECs, and now this is not just a course, this is business. You can learn more at the link that I'll put directly into the podcast. Questions that we're going to get to in this episode: why type and timing of exercise matters more in menopause, the normal curve of hormones during the day so that we can talk about what happens if you exercise at the wrong time of day, or even the right exercise wrong time of day specifically, and how exercise impacts your hormones. Some examples of how exercise timing change has supported symptoms of menopause an anecdotal state. I'll share with you what's happened for some of my private clients and some of those who are going through programs and the first steps that you might want to try if you are a little hesitant because you're somewhat addicted and you don't want to let go of that exercise. And I get it, I, I get it better than you know. So let's first review hormones related to exercise, and this is in menopause or any other stage. But there has to be a heightened awareness in menopause because of the downward shift, the decline of the production of these hormones that happens due to menopause. Yes, for women more so than to men, but also simply as a part of aging. And so it requires that we— okay, we've got to pivot. We can't do what we used to do and have that be enough. We actually have to do more, but not necessarily right away. It depends on how you feel. So let's go through this. So cortisol, we have to talk about that one first. It's at its highest level at about 8:00 AM and lowest at 2:00 AM. If you are apparently healthy, you're feeling good. Now, this isn't true for everybody. So if you don't wake up naturally in the morning with the best brain function and you've got energy, and if the alarm didn't go off, you would wake up on your own. You're not going to sleep until, you know, 10:30 or noon. That's cortisol is optimizing your morning energy. It's just a part of it would naturally wake you up. And if you do get up, by the way, a few times earlier, just to an alarm, by the third or fourth day, you will start waking up naturally at that time of day. It just happens and it will happen. You'll see it potentially on vacation, right? You've shifted time zones, but all of a sudden, like, you're waking up naturally in the time zone, you know, which in your personal at-home zone is probably way off of that. So realize that cortisol does work on your side if it's functioning optimally. During times of stress, whether it's chronic or acute, your cortisol levels spike. So I want you to realize this: exercise causes a spike in cortisol because it uses energy, and cortisol is also energy. It's not just a negative stressor hormone, but stress, remember, can be positive or negative. So that boost of energy, or adrenaline we often call it, that we get when we just have to sprint to catch our plane— oh my God, the gate is changing, we're going to miss our vacation— you can suddenly run fast, right? Even though if you don't do interval training unless otherwise a bear is chasing you, says a good friend of mine. So hello friend, I know you're listening. So there's that, that's acute cortisol, right? You catch the plane, you sit down, you're good to go. You know you're headed for the beach. Chronic stress is when somebody in your family, maybe an older adult in your family falls or they get ill. And somebody needs to be the caregiver. And whether you are the caregiver or you are an out-of-state observer, it's stressful, right? Let's just all agree that it's different kinds of stress for different reasons, but that's chronic because it's gonna last for days, weeks, months potentially, and you know it. So cortisol and how it responds, insulin levels will increase also, and we need insulin. Insulin does its job. If blood sugar rises and it comes up, by the way, in response to cortisol, even if you've eaten nothing. So let's say we're in a relationship, we have an argument, your cortisol is going to go up. If you had a continuous blood glucose monitor on, we would probably see that both of our— let's just be fair— both of our blood sugar levels would rise. If that happens, our natural body kind of status is for insulin to uptake as well, or increase, to bring that blood sugar back down. So it will pull that blood sugar out of your bloodstream, it'll take it to the storage banks that it has, which are two things: your muscle and your liver. And if those banks are full, like you don't have much muscle or it's already full because you've eaten plenty or you don't move those muscles. So they're still full and they don't need any more glycogen stores. It'll go to the liver. Well, our livers do a lot of work filtering out toxins, screening everything that we consume. And much of the time our livers are kind of overloading. And so there's not a lot of storage left in there either. So both those are full. Guess where that excess blood sugar gets stored? In fat, in fat cells. And it either takes baby fat cells and makes them bigger, it creates more fat cells, and those guys get fatter until that all happens again. And generally in menopause, your fat cells will relocate. So where you used to maybe carry your fat, maybe more evenly distributed, for women, they often carry their fat kind of around hips, pelvis, thighs. Some of that belly fat tends to get redeposited instead in the belly. And I think I gave that one away— the fat storage that is stored to make babies gets stored in literally your belly, in a place where it's not as healthy for you. That's called the visceral belly fat. Not ideal. So we've talked cortisol, right, related to blood sugar stressors and insulin. And the two of those are called belly fat bullies because they do tend to do that relocation and deposit it there. Not just muffin top where you pinch an inch and it's irritating as you know what, but internally, that visceral around the internal organs, Santa Claus belly. By late afternoon, your cortisol levels start to come down. So remember, 8 AM, they're at their peak. They really kind of come down in the afternoon, and that's where we get that edgy kind of hangry feeling because we don't have as much energy. I mean, can you agree that if you wanted to take a nap during the afternoon, or you could, you know, you'd put your head down on the desk, like at around 2 o'clock is kind of a low, you know, you eat lunch and the sun's coming through the window and, you know, if you have the opportunity, it could happen, right? So that is in part due to cortisol levels coming down. We don't have the energy that we experience. So I'm going to put this as a suppose. Suppose you exercise late in the day, but intensely. Your body needs the energy that it would have gotten from cortisol, so it's going to convert from another hormone. It's pretty cool how the body can do that. Like, I don't have this because sometimes I wish my gas tank would do that. I don't know why I do that, but I get like squeaking by. And, you know, I'm like, I wish I had another fuel tank I could push, you know, because I don't want to take the time to stop. It's irritating. But go figure, you got to do that, and you've got to have that energy coming from somewhere. Your body has the ability to convert another hormone into cortisol to provide that energy in the evening. So a couple hours before bed, after dinner, progesterone levels rise to help facilitate that chill relaxation, the feelings that help us get to sleep and then have a really good high-quality night's sleep. During our sleep cycles, we release testosterone and growth hormone during our deep sleep cycles. So sleep is really critical if we're not getting it. Our cortisol is probably turned up and on, and that can be going wrong for some women. And then you wake up feeling like you're hungover, but you had none of the fun that should have created that. So where can things go wrong with exercise? If you're not, number one, getting into deep cycles of sleep, testosterone and growth hormone aren't there to create muscle growth, repair, and basically support the effort that you've made with exercise. Of any kind. And if you have to have that late day exercise, you think you need to do high intensity exercise because you missed it. Your body has converted what would have instead made progesterone into cortisol. It's a hormone called pregnenolone and it swings both ways. So pregnenolone can be there, change and make progesterone or it's gonna convert for you into cortisol. But then when you need progesterone, you already wrote checks on that account and there's nothing there. So you may not sleep well, get to sleep, or stay asleep, or sleep as deeply. Your tracker may just tell you, you know, it wasn't a great night for you, you know, in terms of numbers. So that's a quick review. Kind of talked cortisol, talked insulin, talked about progesterone and the need for it. Talked about testosterone and growth hormone, and there are others that act on exercise and that act on, or your exercise acts on. Of course, there's also estrogen, which plays a big part in muscle growth or stimulus for women in midlife. But right here, we don't necessarily need to talk about that. So why doing intense exercise early? I'm giving it away, spoiler alert, improves your exercise benefits in menopause. So we just explained to you what happens if you do late-day intense exercise. No, it's not the same if you do yoga or you decide, I'm going to go outside and go for a walk, 20, 30 minutes. Maybe it's a 45-minute walk for you, but it's just at your pace. You enjoy it, you're walking, it's fine, it's fun. Maybe you catch up with your spouse or a friend, or you're taking your dog. Your body doesn't have to use or tap into cortisol to do that, and you're exercising below the threshold where cortisol begins to come up. So you don't need it, and you're not creating it or increasing it if you keep the duration and the intensity low. In fact, you're helping yourself stabilize that cortisol level, your stress levels, and your blood sugar level by doing it. So that you don't interpret this— this is not a suggestion for doing intense exercise. Every day. I'm a big believer, yeah, you need to do movement or exercise every day. However, we should have days when this is a really tough day, this is a slightly lighter day. I might get breathless a couple times today, but I'm going to do that for 15 to 30 seconds each, so no more than 2 minutes at a time. That's great for your VO2, it's great for probably fast-twitch agility kinds of movement. And there is a reason to do that. But you also should just have some days where you're moving, and that's walking, that's gardening, that's going golfing, whether you ride in the cart or you walk, which I'd prefer. So let's talk about this. Intense exercise late at night might interfere with your exercise benefits in menopause. Doing intense early will improve your exercise benefits. The two keys in the conversation on high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, are number one, cortisol released during exercise and cortisol after exercise. So there's no contest when you're working really high and hard, you are going to have a little upshoot in your cortisol. But if you're doing something for an interval that lasts 15 to 30 seconds, then it comes down and you're recovering completely between. Completely meaning you can close your mouth and you are nasal-only breathing. Your stress level is pretty low. You're pretty chill. Wouldn't you agree if that's where you are? So it's important that you understand, yes, it's gonna come up, but it's also coming down. We're just kind of boom, boom, boom, boom, using it, and then we're done. 4 to 6 times, no more than, you know, 2 to 3 minutes of high-intensity work during an entire 15 or 20-minute session. Not a big deal. As far as cortisol elevation, you're going to leave that session and you're going to feel good. You're going to feel juiced. You're going to feel alert, ready to go, problem solve, take on the world, good mood, neurotransmitters firing. All of that is great. Probably feel a little bit lighter than when we all used to slog through 45, 60-minute jogging sessions or even going to say, a fitness class, right? So let's review this. What does cortisol do? So cortisol is responsible for physiological changes such as the quick breakdown of fats and carbohydrates and a rise in blood sugar for immediate energy, and repressing the immune system to focus on your energy, whatever you're doing at the moment. The blood sugar elevation that you see on your continuous blood glucose monitor, if you were wearing one, By the way, it's normal. It's not a bad thing because if you were in the middle of a HIIT session, hopefully you're not looking down at your phone and your app to see what's my blood sugar doing anyway. You're looking after, 'cause it's still gonna be there, right? You will see, oh my goodness, that spiked. It, it's okay because it's supposed to. What's happening is your cortisol went up, your blood sugar then went up, your blood sugar's being released so that it can be used up up as you do the exercise. That is what should happen. So you're okay. Likewise, you're doing a, a hard strength training workout. If you didn't see any rise or elevation of blood sugar level, it would be strange. We want that released and let out so that we deplete the bank, so that the next time you eat, you've got room to put it there as opposed to in your belly. Makes sense. Okay, so the quality of your recovery is what's important, because if you don't recover and you just are going hard and hard and hard, pretty soon that's not going to work for you anymore. So in menopause, particularly perimenopause, often before a woman knows she is in menopause, at least that's been the status so far. But now that we're talking about it so much more, and hopefully we're talking about it to our 30-somethings so that they're prepared and thinking, I need to start strength training right now. And, you know, then, you know, when I'm 40, I've already got more muscle, I'm going to control my blood sugar better, I'm probably not going to be— or I'm going to be a lot less at risk for depositing belly fat and experiencing that. You're also, by the way, going to be a lot less at risk for hot flashes, night sweats, because those who are more fit going in and who exercise more intensely— it's got to be intense, it's not just mild— tend to have fewer hot flashes and night sweats. And, you know, some of that is genetic. We can't change it all, but something to think about before you get there, because if you start experiencing hot flashes, night sweats, one of the last things you want to do is get hotter again by doing high-intensity interval training, right? So you've really gotta take a look at that. So some stressors can be not just the exercise, the same stressors in your life are those emotional arguments, financial issues, the car issues, whatever it might be. But additionally, some of the keys to your recovery are hard to get in midlife or can be sleep. Because of changing hormones, for many women, sleep can be a little elusive. You've gotta be a little more diligent to know what's my hygiene, what are my boundaries, like what do I do and don't do before bed and in the morning. Downtime for, say, meditation. Maybe that's not your jam, but something else should be. Maybe just breath slowing exercises. That could be yoga. That could be for you Pilates, it might be walking for you, and then foam rolling or massage. Those could also be parts of your recovery and supporting the reduction of tension and the enhancement of movement, helping it feel better. And then decades of conditioning work against us, and I mean mental conditioning here, right? So getting adequate nutrition and hydration You know, we have not had great support in doing that. So if we still operate with an eat less, exercise more attitude or dogma, we generally don't have enough fuel for the exercise, let alone for the recovery so that we're ready for the next one. And hydration could be impeded by our low sodium intake cuz we've been told for decades, you know, low sodium, avoid your sodium. So many of us grew up with messaging about low salt, low sodium being the goal, and we've taken it so far that we're not actually hydrating by drinking water alone. We're at risk for hyponatremia, which is actually overwatering down our system and leaking the micronutrients that we're consuming in good food out of our body. We need that hydration actually not to just go through you So you're in the bathroom more, but we need it to stop and go into each and every cell. And no, that doesn't mean you're going to get puffy or retain water. You're holding on to it. Yes, but it's going to the right place, the muscle, which is where we need it. One big mistake that women make with high-intensity interval training is doing too much of it, because here's us, we tend to think, oh my gosh, HIIT is it, right? HIIT is the thing that is helping visceral belly fat. So I need more of that to get rid of that. But not if you feel terrible. And there is a place where Goldilocks rules, right? So not too much, not too little, but you need the sweet spot. And when you and you alone— so compare you to you, not you to your best friend, not you to your sister, even if it's a twin, I don't care. You have to look at you in perimenopause compared to, say, you in postmenopause. Could need two very different exercise prescriptions. You pre-menopause, you in your 20s or 30s, compared to you in perimenopause, which is generally 40s to 50s, that's roughly. And then post-menopause, sometime after 50, but for a lot of women it doesn't happen until later 50s, so it's even after 60 that you really start looking at you need something different now because we need more stimulus. So it's actually, we've got to get rid of some of our drinking, avoiding sodium, and/or substituting sugary substances. You know the brands I'm talking about, right? So we don't want those. One big mistake. So with HIIT, again, a little is good, more is better. That's big. And we humans often assume feeling good after exercise is wrong. Am I wrong about that? Like if you finish feeling too good, You think it wasn't enough. We deal with this all the time. So we host 3 times a year. We open the doors to a Blissmas 12-day challenge and to Hot Not Bothered, a 10-day challenge. And that one opens twice a year. And inevitably it is meant to, and we call it a start, a restart, or a reset because what you're doing isn't working. You feel like doo-doo and you're doing all the things, it's like, okay, let's put the brakes on. Let's do a little reset for your cortisol levels, your inflammation, and your adrenals. And you have to do less in order to get better results and kind of fill your cup back up and get a sense of, do I feel better? Am I feeling more well-rested? Am I actually able to tune in now to Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I tired? When you can't, if there's so much noise going on, you're just pushing through with exercise and then probably refueling with something maybe sweet or a little caffeine, and you're letting that sneak in there more and more because you don't have your own stable energy throughout the day. And don't you think if we are adults and we're eating whole foods and we're exercising as we should, We should feel good. But we weren't taught that. We weren't taught that's what should be happening. We were taught it should feel punishing. You should wring yourself out as you're finishing that workout. Pain is weakness leaving the body, right? You know how the memes go. You have to flush some of that down the toilet where it belongs. You know what that makes it. So while you can do HIIT and strength training, And you can do them even on the same day. I don't recommend it if you can do exercise daily or spread it out. So you might do strength training twice weekly. Some people, some women can get by with 3 times a week, but you've got to recover. And if you're not, you're breaking down your muscle and you're not recovering. And then we're stressing your adrenals and the muscle didn't repair. So you can't build muscle if it hasn't repaired from the last one. But it's not just muscle and bone that needs stimulus. It is your adrenals and your endocrine system. That's your hormone system that needs recovery. And we're neglecting that big time. So pay attention to how you feel, because your body is not going to let you neglect that for too long before you're getting injured more frequently, or you're suffering from illness. Like if there's something going around, you catch it. Not everybody, but you do. There's a cold, you get it. There's a flu, you get it. COVID comes around, you get it. And all of those things, and especially if you find you can't kick it, your immune system is really already depleted. And it's just showing you that this is the case. You're overexercising and/or undereating, maybe doing both. So one thing you have to watch out for. Some workouts should be hard, but others though should be kind of under that threshold where cortisol elevates and stays that way. So if we do mid-level or higher exercise, and often when we start at mid-level, quote unquote, moderate exercise, there's a cardiac drift. And that means we start with our heart rate where it should be,. And then as we keep going, the heart rate keeps climbing, but mentally we've got neurotransmitters now going on and we feel good. So I'm just going to keep going because I feel good, because I can. I'm going to go a little longer because I feel good. Not a good decision. Decide before in advance what's the workout, do the workout, stick to the workout, and then use the intellect that the data your body's giving it. What's happening to your body composition? Is it optimal or are you starting to store fat or feel fluffy or have brain fog, not sleep as well, no libido? All those things kind of suggest you're not on the right track here. So important to look at those. What happens with HIIT for men and women both, that there's a psychological effect from HIIT that differs from those long, slow walks or that middle kind of chronic cardio that we learned in the '70s and '80s. Studies using HIIT, high-intensity interval training, and high-intensity weight training, meaning going heavy, show that it's not only safe, but researchers also discuss subjects when these are, say, postmenopausal subjects, their feelings about the exercise and their adherence to it, because dropout rate is a thing we watch for in studies. How many people dropped out versus finished, and did they drop out because they got hurt or just drop out because of life interrupted? But what happens is subjects who participate in high-intensity interval training often report they like it and the adherence rate is greater than for moderate kinds of exercise. And the reason is it's like a drug, like you get a fix and it's boom, you're thinking sharper. But that doesn't just last for, okay, you do it and now it lasts. But if you become a person person who regularly does it over time, you're just thinking sharper all the time. You've got all these electrical outlets in your brain and what you're doing as you exercise in a good way, in the ideal optimal way, is you're plugging some of those cords back in. So you're firing on all cylinders, your memory is better. And that's an important thing when it's like, where did I put the keys? Where's the phone? Oh, it's in my hand. Why did I come into this room? Or why did I drive here? How did I get here? Those things are really key for a woman who might be dealing with brain fog. So you also want to keep in mind you don't want to do the same workout that you would do when life is smooth sailing when you're in midlife menopause chaos or going through big major life stressors. In addition to midlife chaos, we want to change it because it's a controllable variable, whereas the menopause hormonal changes less controllable. And, you know, your caregiving situation, for instance, for a loved one, not necessarily easy to control during perimenopause. The roller coaster of hormones can mean high-intensity interval training is not even ideal for you at all. Some women can do it, but keep it very short, maybe 1 or 2 sessions a week. And yet help that boost of not gaining weight. And the most important thing for you, if you're in perimenopause, that 40 to 50 on average, is do your strength training because the loss of muscle mass— and I, I repeat myself regularly saying this because we can't repeat it too much until you're repeating it— I'm not saying it enough. You can lose up to 27% of your muscle mass. In perimenopause, from early stage to late stage. If you're not strength training, if you're not eating high protein, if you're not sleeping, dealing with your stress, you need all those little pieces there. But when you're in post-menopause, your hormones have stabilized a little bit. Not only can you tolerate more, but you probably need more because we need a boost of fast-twitch muscle fiber. And you get that in fast reaction kind of work that you will do when you're doing high-intensity interval training, most likely. Now there's less reaction skill and agility if you're say on an elliptical or on a bike, there's only one pathway for you to go. But if you're on the ground and you're doing lateral jumping or you are, you know, doing jumping jacks and moving side to side, crisscrossing your legs, or you're boxing and somebody's calling out the moves and you're responding to them or hitting their mitt and they're moving at, doing agility ladder, work. Those kinds of things are really valuable to getting movement in all directions, reaction skills that we need to avoid falling later. For now, it's just helping us have more fun, maybe win at pickleball, right? And so you can use your pickleball as training, but probably it's better if you do your training and then go to the pickleball court and nail it. So you could be the pickleball queen in, wherever you are, fill in the blank. So post-menopause, that hormone roller coaster has generally calmed down so you can increase the HIIT again and you may be able to increase it to up to 4 short sessions a week. You do still wanna watch. We need recovery because anything that's causing muscle tearing or more likely to needs a little recovery. But you could do strength on Monday, you could do HIIT, high-intensity interval training on Tuesday, strength again on Thursday, High-intensity interval training on Friday. And if you vary your interval training, maybe you do it one day in the pool, in the water, one day on a bike, one day on your rowing machine or elliptical. It's not always gotta be high impact. It could be, but if you vary it, you're gonna be able to tolerate more days a week as well. And you're working your body in a slightly different way. The first steps that you might wanna take So if I've given you at the beginning the emphasis on time of day, putting your intense early so that while your cortisol levels are naturally elevated, you exercise then because you're using some of that energy. And will your cortisol go higher than it was? It will slightly, but it will also come down because that's what it's doing at that time of day. It's just going to follow the curve. Whereas if you've had that high in the day and now we're at 4:30 in the afternoon and you're going home from work, stopping at the gym to do a boot camp, you don't have that cortisol there anymore, but your body's gonna take something and convert it. You're gonna get all revved up and potentially that's going to get in the way and interrupt higher quality sleep that we really need as we age. To remember, keep the cortisol down, lift up your testosterone and growth hormone levels so that you get the better result of lean muscle mass. So there are two things to keep in mind. Intensity comes from duration also. So if you think, well, I'm just gonna go for really long walks then of lower intensity because that's easy, You know, if you are going for long walks of say 2 hours or more and 2 and 3 or 4-hour hikes, length or duration also now can be an expression of intensity. And your body will tell you if you come back from something and you feel more tired instead of energized the rest of the day. I don't mean relaxed, I mean literally tired. You could lay down and take a nap or you do and need to. Your adrenals are telling you, oh no, that was too much for me. And it could be because you didn't fuel ahead of time, you didn't fuel during, or you're not gonna fuel after to make up for the other two, by the way. So you should feel good. And this is an important thing. If you're fighting back and thinking, oh, but I wanna do that intense exercise and I wanna do it late in the day, it's hard for me to flip it. I want you to think about trying this. Let's say your belly fat isn't bulging— budging— it is bulging, by the way. It's not budging, and in fact, it seems to get worse. You're feeling soft, you know. Let's use the analogy of some of the science that's shared by the Glucose Goddess, and I'll link to an episode that we did. It's even on our YouTube channel with Glucose Goddess. She shares primary research done by others, but she's great at kind of disseminating it and making it clear. And that is, say you have a plate of food, you're making your food choices, but if you change nothing about the food choices except for the sequence you ate them in and you ate your carbohydrates last, you can change the impact of that meal on your blood glucose levels by 75%, meaning it could be better if you save carbs for last. So similarly, let's say find it hard to give your exercise habits or give them up and you are already doing a lot, but you don't wanna do less. Okay, I got you. So meet me here, change it so that you exercise intensely in the morning only and you're moving anything that you do later in the day. It's more movement like going for a walk or it's yoga or maybe it's Pilates for you., but it's light exercise. So we use this mantra, it's intense early and light late, super important. So again, just to remind you, intensity comes from duration too. So hiking 2 or more hours might also spike your blood sugar levels. Lack of fuel before, during, or after exercise, if it is of the longer kind, will also increase the negative impact on your cortisol levels. And so even lack of fuel could spike your blood sugar. And there you have it. So keys to improve your exercise benefits in menopause. I have 3 for you. Time your intense exercise early in the day. Even low to moderate intensity exercise can become intense if the cardiac drift is prolonged enough to elevate your cortisol level, and that cortisol or blood sugar remains elevated. Or last but not least, if the habits before, during, and after don't facilitate a quick recovery with the right fuel and rest. So not just your fuel, but your sleep. How rested are you before you begin exercise? Some days it's probably better to say, yes, I'm gonna move, but today I'm not doing HIIT 'cause I didn't sleep well last night. Because not sleeping will also elevate cortisol and blood sugar levels, even if you haven't eaten anything. So important to think about all of the variables. If that was helpful, we'll have a couple more resources for you in the show notes. For those of you who are health coaches or fitness trainers. And for some of you whom this is new, come over and watch or listen to the She Means Fitness Business podcast, and we'll have a couple links for you in the show notes as well. What are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 today. Thank you for listening. 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