How I Change Exercise for Adrenal Fatigue (women over 40)

This episode of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way with Debra Atkinson is brought to you by Alloy Health. Quick heads up before we dive in. Enrollment for the Flipping 50: The Stronger Way is open all month long, and you can still save $100 on annual membership. That's a total savings of $379 compared to paying monthly. Inside, you'll find 12-week strength training programs, plus dozens of yoga, Pilates, mobility, balance, stability, core, corrective exercise, agility, power, and recovery, all designed specifically for women in midlife and beyond, all evidence-based and waiting for you no matter what life is throwing at you in this moment. This isn't just about longevity for someday later. It's about feeling stronger, moving better, and having more energy today. The link is waiting for you in the show notes. I'd love to welcome you inside. All right. In a recent episode, I talked about fat burning over 40, what I would do if I wanted to burn fat over 40 or 50, or as it might be today, over 60. But I also teased this. The podcast that I hinted at at the very beginning, because if you are a woman who's struggling with adrenal insufficiency, you— every rule in that last podcast didn't apply to you. So this one is for you. You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down, you're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12 right here on this podcast and, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week, you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get. Answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger. If you've attempted all the fat-burning, the weight-loss tricks while struggling with energy due to cortisol issues, it's potentially time to change exercise for adrenal fatigue, otherwise known as adrenal insufficiency. Having seen thousands of women come through our Flipping 50 programs and conducting or supervising thousands, hundreds of thousands of sessions by my personal training staff for decades, this is a common occurrence. And if you're looking for support, yes, you can exercise, but the things that you think will help you lose weight or fat will potentially backfire on you. It would be no different than taking a medication or a dose of it that was Customized, but for somebody else. So this is how I would change exercise for women in our community, or working one-on-one with, who have adrenal insufficiency. That is a much more widely accepted term, by the way. Adrenal fatigue is the one we use, we default to it. It's, it's really a lay term. The real medical term is HPA access dysfunction. You'll find that if you look it up, you won't find so much, say, stated as adrenal fatigue, but it's there. Just know, and if you feel it, you really don't care what the label is. So it doesn't— by the way, if you've got adrenal fatigue, it doesn't mean that they follow all the advice given. By the way, we are stubborn. Can we just agree on that? We're optimistic, like, this won't happen to me, I'll be different. Uh-huh. Hard work has always worked, but eventually your body will make you pay attention if you don't choose to at first, and that's a much longer road back. So who gets to the point that they need to change exercise for adrenal fatigue? How does this even happen? Because if we're backing ourselves into that hole, You know, we tended to cause it. So maybe it's the job that has to change or the way you're doing it. In reality, if you wrote a job description for yourself, would anybody take that job at the same rate of pay with the hours you put in? It's a really great question to ask whether you work for somebody else or probably most specifically if you work for yourself. If you struggle with adrenal fatigue or adrenal insufficiency, you you have low cortisol, and it can be low at certain times of the day when it's supposed to be high, like first thing in the morning when it should be at its highest for the day, or really lower than norm in the afternoon. It does come down, by the way. But let's say we see the picture of the perfect bell curve, and none of us are actually perfect, by the way, Sad to say, but if you're way below that low in the afternoon, you know, I have been asked before and I've never forgotten it because it's usually that they plant a seed when they ask something like this. And somebody said to me, do you feel like, do you take a nap in the afternoon? Like, do you feel like this putting your head down on the desk? And I'm like, no. And like, do you have coffee in the afternoon? I'm like, no. I'm like, 2 cups in the morning, yes, but I'm done by 10:00 AM. That's it. And I remember distinctly they're like, okay, well, your labs indicate that you might be like crashing in the afternoon. I'm like, really? Huh. So it also depends on you. You might say you ride a little higher, you ride a little bit lower. And if you truly feel good, the only way to really know is that really affecting you is potentially a blood glucose monitor. So let's say you've done a cortisol test by— I've done a Dutch test before and I've done a saliva test always to back up either a Dutch test, a wet urine test, or a blood test that might have shown my cortisol was a little bit off. So cortisol— or I'm sorry, saliva showing up, you get first thing in the morning, you get noon and dinner, and then 10 PM. But I'm never awake by then, so I do it right before I go to bed. But you get 4 ideal times per day when you get to see the snapshot of what literally happened. Now it's only on that day, but if that was a typical day, it's going to be fairly realistic. I like that as a backup. It's not that expensive, probably worth the, I don't know, $100 investment to find out where are you. Because sometimes you and I, even though you're told these are the things that I would do if I were you, we won't do them unless we see it in real time. We see it again, potentially. So that is really sometimes the benefit of taking a test, doing it, having somebody really see it on paper can be valuable, even though you already knew the stuff that somebody told you, this is what you should do, because maybe you could just turn it around by doing those things. But a lot of times we resist, we resist the very changes that will fix us. So realize that it could also be you're just borderline low all day long, or you're flatlining, essentially. You just don't have anything. There's nothing there. Cortisol is both the stress and the energy hormone. So I want to remind you, if your cortisol is low, you may think, oh, that's great. Like when they tell you your blood pressure is really low or your heart rate is really low. I mean, sometimes we cheer about that thinking, ha, yep, yep, yep, yep, that's me. But it's not always good. Either one of those isn't good, really. Too low a blood pressure, if you know you have that, you get up quickly, you're dizzy, right? It's not always good depending on the combination of circumstances that you're dealing with. So we need some cortisol. We want it. We want the phone to ring or the alarm to go off or you to hear the fire drill and for you to jump and get a little adrenaline going and act the way you need to. We want those things when you're ready to go and exercise, when you need to respond to something, you need to step into your power. Sometimes we need those things to give a speech and to have it mean something, to have some voice and conviction behind it, right? But low levels are a concern when you're really at a low level when it should be high or around the clock. They're not just something to push through, although you and I do that. We can. Sometimes we've had to, right? We were the moms. We make it all happen. We had the cape on. Nobody saw it, but it was there the whole time, right? So here's how to tell if you're in need of a change in exercise for adrenal fatigue. One, you're struggling to get out of bed or get going in the morning no matter how long you've been in bed. Even if you slept, you don't wake up feeling rested. You rely on caffeine to get you started. Generally, you're probably relying on caffeine or you've resorted to a 5-Hour Energy as an adult grown-ass woman who knows better than that. You might wake okay and then crash mid-morning, like, you know, say 10:00 AM, you're like, uh, okay, done, done and done. You have a sluggish appetite in the morning. You really don't get going. Your appetite doesn't get going until maybe 11 or so. You could fall asleep at dinnertime and prefer that maybe to eating. Like you just like to go home and crawl into bed. But then if you stay up, you might get a second wind. So after around 7 and around 9, now you're actually, oh, Let's watch a movie. And you stay up a little bit too late and you do it all over again. So many of these things describe you. And again, with this one, you may not be tired because you're waking up at night. You actually may be kind of out because you're exhausted. So when we feel good, cortisol goes up with exercise, but it often goes down lower than when we began. And that helps us feel good, stable energy and resilient the rest of the day. When we exercise longer, like we're doing really chronic cardio beyond 45 or an hour, or we're doing it harder or more often, or let's say all of both, we don't have the same response to exercise as if we had done the right dose for ourselves. And here's the challenging part. As I say this, Your question may be, well, how much is too much? How much is too often? How, how long is chronic and too long? The line tends to be around 45 to 60 in the research. But if you're in great condition and used to that, an hour may not be quite enough, but it's close to that point where cortisol starts to accumulate and it's in a negative way because it doesn't have that corresponding drop again after exercise, which is really what we're looking for if we're defaulting for exercise as our stress release. So the dose changes with our immunity and our overall stress load, meaning if you're already stressed, like emotionally, financially, career-wise, kids, all the things, you don't have as much wiggle room, you don't have as much latitude. So your exercise dose may need to change, come down, be shorter. Maybe you can do it intensely, but shorter is probably better. And maybe lower intensity. Maybe instead of weight training, you, you do yoga, so it's weight-bearing, you get a little resistance exercise, but differently than if you were overtaxing yourself, that's an indication of how you might change. So what we call this is the allostatic load, meaning it comes from life, relationships, careers, exercise, dieting, sleep, or lack thereof. It, it's all the things like adding up and it's like, like too much, too much, right? The same exercise is not gonna work. And for a lot of you listening, That's the only indicator that you had when you crossed into perimenopause and it became, okay, my hormones are changing enough. I'm feeling that, like my exercise isn't working anymore. Potentially, that's what you were experiencing. The stressor came from the hormonal change, maybe not externally. Maybe you love your life, you love your job, you love your spouse, you love your house, you love, love, love, love. But your hormones are changing at a rate and a pace that you can't keep up with. And in addition to all the other things you're doing and love and thriving within your life ordinarily, that change made them feel like too much. So realize that not all of us are going to say, oh yeah, I saw that coming. I knew. I'm just dealing with— I'm caregiving. And we're not all going to have that. We are sometimes just going to be like, ah, just hormonal changes really got the best of us. And unfortunately, we don't know which ticket we drew, right? We didn't get the golden ticket. It doesn't designate itself. So we just don't know. But that allostatic load includes all the things that you might be dealing with, including the hormonal changes we can't quite see under the put. We could only feel them. So from thinking about the car needing a tune-up, or always rushing and feeling late, never having enough time, to arguments with loved ones and excess hours of work without a break, too little food, trying to maintain the same workout schedule— all of it. Can we talk about menopause symptoms for a minute? In our community, it's everything. 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Head to myalloy.com and use the code FLIPPING50 and tell them all about your symptoms, and you'll get a fully customized treatment plan and unlimited messaging with your doctor. Plus, you get $20 off your first order today. Head to myalloy.com and use code FLIPPING50. To get $20 off your first order. So here's how I change exercise strategy. If I knew, okay, I've got a client who's dealing with this, and this could also be somebody dealing with long COVID or under a great deal of stress and really busy right now. We remove most everything and we take a little reset. So even if you're, you're trying to do all the things, I'm going to say great compliance. Now let's stop for a moment. Let's take a break because it's not working and we're not going to push through this continuing to do what's not working. We have to remove it. And you may not be able to remove your job, your spouse, your kids, your dog, your house, all the other things. And you can't necessarily control your hormonal status. So we're gonna have to remove the things that we do have control over. So I remove the exercise, and let's say, okay, let's focus on catching up with rest and recovery and sleep. So we remove almost everything, we take a little reset, walking stays, but most everything else goes. Walking longer goes, we keep frequent shorter duration walks. That would be, if we can, positioning them after meals. You go for a walk, maybe first thing in the morning if we can get you out in the sunlight. If not walking, just sitting in it would be fine. But if we could have you walk after meals for 10 minutes, that'll help stabilize blood sugar. Normally, if somebody has an adrenal issue, they have a blood sugar issue. Cortisol and adrenals are directly tied to your blood sugar. It's going up and down, and those huge spikes, huge drops really make us feel lousy, and that really makes us struggle through the day. And if we struggle through the day, we're going to struggle through the night not getting the rest that we need. So we want to look at it that way. Frequent shorter duration can stay, but long walking goes. So just want to repeat that. Mind-body exercise if it's enjoyable. Now, if I say I want you to do mind-body exercise and you don't even like yoga, like you hate yoga, I would never make you do that. But if you enjoy it, it's, uh, probably a really great thing to do. But I'm not gonna say go to an hour-long hot yoga class or a 90-minute hot yoga class. I'm not gonna say that because for adrenal fatigue, that would not be the ideal. It's not at all what we want you to do. So, It's if it's pleasurable for you. Meanwhile, we freed up some time, so we're not doing long walks, we're not doing HIIT, we're not doing resistance training. Not yet. Be prepared. It's coming back first. But meanwhile, with that extra time, we focus on extra sleep, regular bedtime and wake time. However, sleeping in here when you have adrenal fatigue is okay. When you are apparently healthy, I vote that we have a wake-up time that is consistently the same. So much that when I travel, I see my wake-up time consistently the same. So I was just in Pacific time, so I'm in Central, right? So Central time is right now 2 hours ahead. So at, you know, 4:30, I was waking up because for me that was 6:30. I was like, I'm not usually in bed at that point, right, anymore. I have a dog, number one, who's usually poking his wet nose and saying, hello, did you forget about me? But I'm also just awake because I sleep actually with my shades up and open. Something about it, I like creating a cave, but I wear an eye mask and I like the natural sunlight. So first thing, when I take that mask off, I, you know, at quarter to 5 anymore, it's light in my room, and I enjoy waking up that way. But regular bedtime, regular wake time is for when you're apparently healthy. What I want you to do, if you're tired and you know it, don't fight it. Don't say, oh, I'm going to try to stay up a little longer so I, you know, don't wake up in the middle of the night. I want you to go to bed when you're tired so that you don't stay up and get that second wind. And if you can sleep in, like your job allows that, your schedule allows that, between 6 and 8 in the morning can be a reset time for the adrenals. So I can't point you to any literature or quote it right here, but I do know from previous books that I've read about resetting and adrenals and insufficiency, that this is an actual thing. So sleeping in can be helpful. I don't know about you, I can't even think about the last time that I slept in till 8. I think I was probably sick. And so there's that. But if you can, get the eye mask on, keep it, keep it cool, dark, and quiet. Do the best you can because that actually may support support you, even though you may feel a little groggy doing that. So you also want to focus on a little extra nourishment. So look at your carbohydrate and your protein both. And, you know, we're all pounding in you, eat more protein, make sure you have adequate protein. Yes, no argument there. That's not changing. However, it's also really important that you realize a lot of women are getting in trouble because they're going low carb. Thinking carbs are the devil. They are not. I hope you didn't just turn into this episode right there because that's a bad quote. But carbs are actually needed. They help you create serotonin. Serotonin is our feel-good hormone, helps you decrease and balance your cortisol level. So it doesn't make cortisol go away, but it balances out because now we've got a happier hormone coming in. That's important. And carbohydrates are also good for gut diversity. And if you're suffering from adrenal fatigue, you are also probably feeling a little depressed and down. So we need that serotonin. We can use that boost right here. Carbohydrates will help with that. But a lot of women are just running low on energy. They're not giving themselves enough to fuel. So we need carbohydrates, and you may feel better just by reintroducing them. So think about that. We want to cut down on caffeine. If it crept up to get you through the day, it's time to just call it what it is. If you have a cup of coffee in the morning, or even 2 cups of coffee in the morning, or maybe you're having matcha— you're having— that's caffeinated, by the way. In most cases you can have decaf, but I don't know about you, but I'm like, why would you— why would you do that? Um, And if you're a non-caffeinated, this is not even addressing you, but I would make sure that if you're having coffee or something caffeinated in the afternoon, that you call it what it is and realize you're struggling and you need a pick-me-up because you can't get it somewhere else. So instead, we're going to cut that out and we're going to figure out what is the root cause of the problem, not make it worse by adding caffeine to it. Bring in electrolytes along with water for hydration, because that often is the problem. We're craving something and it's because we're dehydrated and we need not just the water, but we need the water with electrolytes to get it into our cells, not just to drink a lot of water and then flush it right back out of our system. Eliminate fasting, right? So that's kind of a funny sentence right there. So we're used to thinking elimination diet. Only thing I want you to eliminate here is fasting, except maybe a nice overnight fast. And that might not be true for you. I might ask you to have a bedtime snack if I find that you're waking up— if you had adrenal fatigue and you're waking up at 2 or 3 in the morning, because that can be a sign that your cortisol actually is rising because your blood sugar is dropping and your body is so wise that it's trying to wake you up. To say, hey, alarm's going off here, you have low blood sugar, too low, it's not healthy, it's not good. So having a snack, like a protein snack, and we're talking not a lot, we're just talking maybe 8 almonds before you go to bed, or maybe you want a spoonful of almond butter, um, or, uh, like a protein shake. So it's a little bit of liquid, but the point is not having a protein meal necessarily, it's just having something something in you that is higher in protein, lower in carbs. Our goal is not to spike your blood sugar level, but to give you something that sates you and stabilizes your blood sugar as you go to bed. Okay, so I'll come back to that. Those things have helped me and other members of our community, um, and there are certain herbs that also can be helpful. Maca is one that I go to When I was really first struggling with adrenal fatigue, so I had hit menopause, major hormonal changes happening that year, but I had a lot of other things going on and I was exercising significantly in ways that would have told any of you, "You're crazy. Why are you doing that?" Because I was training for an Ironman and I had had, knock on wood, good luck prior to that. And I was okay doing it, really loved it, and I couldn't get by with it. My bucket had tipped over from all the things, just like I mentioned. I couldn't overcome it. And so I saw it out, I saw it through. I was already there when I started having really negative symptoms. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this knowing I'm making it worse. And things that helped me once I had been done with training but wasn't recovering on my own, I started taking something called Cortisol Manager. I got that off of Amazon, and I also started taking Maca Paws from Feminessence. You'll find that at flooping50.com/resources if you're just on the website. You can find the tab that says My Favorites, Debra's Favorites, and you'll see it there. There's one if you're in perimenopause and one in postmenopause. You're going to look at the difference and say, well, that's just half of the other one. It's not actually that easy. It's a different strain and type of maca. So realize that if you go to the store, you go to the grocery store in the health food market or area in your grocery store. You and I can buy maca off the shelf. That's what I did for a while while I was training in my early 30s for my first marathons. I started taking maca then for endurance and recovery, and I was getting it off the shelf in the grocery store, putting it in my smoothies, and did not realize until much later there's like 11 strains of maca. And you don't know which ones you're getting. And some of them are actually going to help you and others are more like filler. So you want— Feminessence product is clinical grade maca. So they've gone to the lengths to go and get and screen the right ones. That's what's in, and it's different. What's in the perimenopause dose versus postmenopause dose are different. So, um, you would take the one according to it. And they, by the way, have an 1-800 number so you can call an advisory board of physicians and ask, based on your symptoms, how would I take this? So just so that you know, you don't have to follow the box and do a paint-by-number. You can actually consult with them and say, what do you think I should start with and what would I change if that didn't work? What would I do? You'll get some input. So I think that's a really great resource personally. So maca is one, and some also have done well in our community with ashwagandha. I personally didn't do great with that. I also was careful not to take it too late because it can rev you up at times when you don't wanna be revved up. So taking it later in the day could result in you feeling like, oh, wide awake here at this time. I'm actually trying to be winding down, which is not good. For others, just focusing on eating regular meals and snacks with protein and reintroducing carbohydrates if they decrease them dramatically could help. No extra herbs. So I would always start, start with the basics. Remove the extra exercise, focus on good sleep and rest, and with your diet and nutrition, food First, change those things. Once your energy is better, we introduce strength training in short, focused sessions. So it's not that we— okay, go for longer walks now. No, I would keep the short walks intermittently throughout the day, and I would add resistance training. And because we're going to do it in maybe 10 or 15 minutes at most, to start, you could potentially do it 3 times a week because we're not gonna go so hard that you have to really do a lot of days of recovery in between. And yet we'll do enough to help you stabilize blood sugar because again, that is one of the biggest challenges with somebody with adrenal fatigue. It's why you're so tired. Your blood sugar's going up and down and up and down. We're trying to stabilize it with regular meals to stabilize blood sugar and regular movement and exercise in combination. And I would call movement the walking. I would call it exercise, the resistance training. Other movement might be the yoga. So once your energy is better, we introduce that strength training, 3 or 4 exercises in 3 to 4 sets. So you would start the first week in 3 exercises. And I would always say a leg exercise that's a hinge, like a squat or a deadlift. And a push and a pull. So you're gonna do a, maybe a chest press, and you're gonna do some kind of a rowing exercise. 3 exercises, 3 times. Do your warmup and your cool down, and you're probably done in 15, 20 minutes max. See how you feel. Do that again for a couple of weeks, every couple of days. Give yourself rest and recovery, then try it again. You should feel better, not worse. Energy's better, not stiff, not sore, not exhausted, potentially sleeping better, because even just 10 minutes of movement, your self-selected pace, can help us sleep better. Then maybe the next week you add a fourth exercise. Then maybe the next week or two you add a fourth set. So now you're doing 4 exercises and rotating them and doing them 4 times each. So you've got a little bit more volume. Now we're probably finding that, okay, I'm back. I'm back online, rebooting, doing batch better. All of those things can compound to help you feel far better. Now, this is not to say that you may need a little help from somebody else. You may need to see your physician, ideally a functional medicine physician who can get to the bottom of it. They may wanna look at your vitamin D levels, your vitamin B levels, your iron ferritin levels, because those are some of the key things that we might go to if you're feeling fatigued and, and it's pursuant even though you've backed out of things that cause fatigue. So you want to watch when you start back to the strength training slightly longer for any signs of your energy dropping after workouts, and you want to back off immediately because if you were going It's getting better, it's getting better, and then you kind of hit, oh no, too much. You know, another rest day in between, or back off of a set. So you're just going down a little bit and see, was that my sweet spot back there? And then I overdid it. So you're looking for maybe you just advanced at the rate your body isn't ready for yet. Fat burning for women with adrenal fatigue is about doing these short, regular workouts and movement and small, regular meals. Both of those tactics from the exercise and the nutrition side support blood sugar, which helps put cortisol and insulin back in their place. And that's the secret to stable energy and to better sleep by being appropriately tired, not exhausted and wired. Gradually walks and workouts can continue to expand, but keep watching the results. If there's any hint of feeling lower energy after exercise, feeling like you're not recovering, which can be soreness or achy or reduced strength in your sessions, it's potentially too much too soon. Just back off, listen to it, watch it, adjust. So what supplements do I recommend for sleep? Or do I? Well, a couple of things. So anything that is non-pharmaceutical, um, I'm all for first, right? So food first. By the way, inviting carbohydrates to dinner can help you create serotonin. Not only is it your happy hormone, but it helps you to relax, chill out, be ready for sleep and drifting off to it. So that's one. Also making sure that you're looking at magnesium. So many of us are deficient in magnesium, like 80%. So it's a 2 tolerance micronutrient. If you're uncomfortable with that, we can link to a podcast episode I did with a woman named Marilyn Dean who, as she talked about magnesium, was probably one of the best discussions about magnesium that I've heard before, and I'd been sharing that for probably 8 years within our programs. It's one of the first things that I recommend. I've been using magnesium with dinner and before bed for 15 years and swear by it. And I, like, if I'm about to travel, I'm like, do I have enough? You know, because especially when I travel, crossing time zones, that changes things. You're gonna be maybe presenting or on stage, or you're just going to a conference and you need to fire on all cylinders to get something out of of it. You want good sleep, and potentially you want regularity. So depending on what magnesium you take, you may get some support in that area. Maybe when you travel you want a different kind of magnesium than when you're at home, and that's not an issue. So for women I've worked with, all of those across the board have been parts of our conversation. Where are you now? What are you doing? And a lot of times a woman, I will tell her, here's what I want you to do so that you can test how much you need, and she'll do it, but she'll be like Well, here's how much I'm taking. And I'm like, um, have you followed the protocol? Because I'm adding up the days between our last talking and, and today, and that math does not math. Like, you would be up to this amount. And so a lot of women put the lid on it. They're like, I was afraid to take that. I'm like, your body will tell you. So unless we're taking oxide, which acts like Ex-Lax, we don't want that, not in any way, shape, or form in your supplement. And citrate— so if you were taking straight citrate, that also is probably going to create loose stools when you get up to a certain level. So I prefer like a full spectrum and/or a dance between different forms of magnesium. I have found that taking full spectrum covers all the bases, helps me sleep really well, be really regular, muscles feel great, metabolism is great. You're still getting the support with getting calcium into your bone that you're consuming. All things good. This is exactly what you want to happen. So you are going to want to look at magnesium for sleep. I will share, uh, the magnesium that I'm taking. You can get 15% off with my code, so we'll share that for you. A snack at bedtime I mentioned earlier might be beneficial if I know that somebody is crashing. I really do like at least a 12-hour fast, like dinner to breakfast, the, you know, we're not eating anything. And tend to think most of my clients sleep better on an empty stomach the longer it's been since that last meal. But there are times when, say I'm traveling, I go to a conference and you have a conference dinner, you eat a little bit later, or I do, than I eat at home. And then your day starts a little earlier. And if I get up and I'm going to have tea or coffee, I'm going to have something in it. Not— I'm not pristine and doing black. So I have calories and I'm not getting a 12-hour overnight fast. But for short periods of time, that's fine. That works just fine. And we function really well, you know, those 5, 10, or 15-hour days of the year because we do something different the other 350, and normally we're doing something optimal for ourselves. The other thing that you might try if you need a little bit more support before pharmaceutical or an over-the-counter is CBD. So we have had many members in our community struggle with sleep, and doing the magnesium, doing the sweet potato, doing the chilling out in a bedtime routine didn't get them where they needed to go. CBD sleep gels from Blue Sky CBD actually have been very helpful. I have been known to take CBD not to sleep, but if I have a migraine, then I will take it to sleep, or I will take the Max Relief gels because of the pain. That I need to relieve so that I can get to sleep. So either sleep gels or the Max Relief can be beneficial depending on what it is keeping you up. But when, when I say CBD, I know a lot of women go, I don't want that hangover. We're not, we're not talking about brownies from your 80s or 90s. Okay. So this is really non-hangover. You're not going to feel anything like you've taken too much. It doesn't linger. So just so that you know, can be game-changing. Some of you may have heard the story from Laura from our community who really struggled, like sleep change hit her hard in midlife. And I know a lot more are out there. It's why, it's why they actually picked her to tell her story. She had heard me talk about CBD and Blue Sky on a podcast. Nothing was working. She tried it and she wrote to them and said, this has changed my life. And they said, can we feature you? And so that's how it happens. One girlfriend right here talking to others, telling them what works and why. So there is that if you need it. We'll put the links to those in the show notes so that you can get it. But I want you to understand that that the biggest challenge for women who have adrenal fatigue is that it is really hard to do what I'm recommending when you have adrenal fatigue, because the very reason you got it is you push through. You, you just, you don't wave the white flag. So give yourself the grace that you would a daughter another child, a sister, somebody who's working for you, or anybody else. And let yourself back off and choose to do it as, as an experiment, at least for 2 weeks. See how you feel. You've got to apply all of these things. And I know it may seem so counterintuitive if you're gaining weight, gaining belly fat, and I'm suggesting to you don't exercise as much and do eat more, particularly carbs. It probably sounds like, are you a lunatic, Debra? What is the matter with you? So I will claim it. And the answer is no. But this is exactly why it gets really hard and it gets harder if you don't listen. You will soon be forced to take that rest. And it will take a longer time and more support to get you out of that hole. So stop now while you can, take a reset. You know, throughout your life, if you look back, it's why we have 5 days on and we have a weekend. It's why we have a semester and then we have spring break in the middle of it. It's why we have a long semester and then we have a summer break. It's important that we built in these vacations. Somebody intelligent thought of that, not out of the blue. They knew that the brain and the body both needed that recharge, that refresh, in order to come back and make more progress. We have to step backward first in order to get it. So I hope that's been really helpful. If you or a friend or a daughter struggle with fatigue on a regular basis, and yet you're exercising. It's not anything that you're doing wrong, potentially, but it is a sign that if, if any of those things fit you— and I will really briefly recap them one more time— you struggle to get going in the morning. No, no matter how long you've been in bed, you don't feel rested. You rely on caffeine to get you started. You might wake okay, no problem, and then crash in the mid-morning and potentially again in the afternoon. You have a sluggish appetite in the morning, really nothing until maybe mid or late morning, if that. You have ever resorted to 5-Hour Energy even though you know better, but maybe for you it's just coffee in the afternoon. You could fall asleep at dinnertime or instead of dinner. You get a second wind. If you stay up past 9, you're like, okay, let's go, and then unfortunately do it all over again. So if any of those fit— and it doesn't have to be all of them— but if you could take a nap after exercise, whether that's going for a walk, doing your weight training, doing HIIT, or anything else, if you could take a nap, you don't feel rejuvenated You feel crashed. All of those are signs. So I hope this has been helpful, and if not, put it in your pocket, be ready to share it with somebody else, and maybe just share it out of good faith and say, hey, I just heard this, this isn't me right now, but maybe I've been there. Or if this is you and you're tired of pushing— to all my female heroes, we weren't wearing the cape out there, this might be helpful. Thanks so much for being here, for listening. And what are you waiting for? Let's start Flipping 50 together. The information shared on Flipping 50: The Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified health care provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcomes resulting from information presented on this podcast. If today's episode reminded you that it's time to put yourself back on your own priority list, don't wait. Join me inside Flipping 50: The Stronger Way and save $100 on your annual membership. You'll get year-round access to progressive strength training programs, mobility, yoga, Pilates, balance, corrective exercise, and so much more, all created specifically for women who want to stay strong, active, and independent for decades to come. You can join monthly if you prefer, but the annual membership gives you the biggest savings, $379 savings compared to paying month by month. The link is in the show notes. Come train with me. Your strongest years don't have to be behind you. They can absolutely be the ones you're living right now.