Running vs Walking for Fast Fat Loss in Menopause

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I'm Debra Atkinson, and 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 know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the 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.

It's not just you, but it's 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 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 science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve.

Welcome back to the Flipping 50 Podcast. This is Debra Atkinson. I am diving deep into a topic that's on everybody's mind. In fact, very recently I first released a YouTube video on the same topic. You may want to check that out, but stay with me right now. And it's running versus walking because For a lot of reasons, for a lot of women, we still have this anchor tied to us that if we're running, somehow we're more virtuous, we're more athletic. And surely I think in the back of our minds, what we mean or think is that we will be leaner, more athletic looking, more juicy potentially than if we're walking. So if you think you're settling for walking versus running, Let's talk. It's all in this episode coming up today. Now, I know what you might be thinking. Just tell me which one burns more fat. But here's the thing. The answer, if somebody says, does running burn more fat than walking, or walking burn more fat? My answer is yes. Yes, it has to be yes. I wrote about this in You Still Got It, Girl back in 2015 or probably '14 when I was writing the book. But I had been teaching about this semester after semester, classroom after classroom, for over 15 years prior to that, and lecturing internationally to train instructors and personal trainers on how to be better at their job and to make better decisions for their clients. So the truth is, yes, they both burn fat. It's how and how fast, and it's not what calories do for you. It's what the calories do to your hormones. And that's true if we're talking about food. So calories that you eat— let's say we have 500 calories of chocolate cake with deep fudgy frosting. I'm a frosting girl, by the way. Or 500 calories of salmon. Now that would be a big chunk of salmon, but you get the idea. 500 versus 500. Tell me that those calories are going to have the same impact on your hormones, and I would have to say, sister, girlfriend, that's a lie. No, it's not. So if we spike your blood sugar, and the chocolate cake is going to do that, we are going to have a, a huge increase of insulin surging through your system because it's coming in to do the job, the cleanup that it's supposed to, because basically the basement just flooded. You got a lot of blood sugar in there and we got to get it out, or we're going to do permanent damage. Now the truth is, that water got in there, you did some damage, right? We all know that. It's true, the blood sugar goes up and it goes right back down. We've still got some inflammation there. It would be better not to have had that major spike in the first place. Those of us who— that are healthy probably are going to have blood sugar spikes because we are going to have a birthday or a wedding, or we're going to have a little stress or a sleepless night or an argument. It is going to spike our blood sugar once in a while, and if we can recover from that, we're going to be fine. So it is the 80/20 rule, maybe it's the 90/10 rule, but if most of the time we're doing pretty well, we're going to do pretty well in the long run. So I want you to bear with me for a moment. Let's talk about fat burning fundamentals. So if you need a beverage or you need to sip on your CamelBak because you're out for a hike, fantastic, be all over that. Let's go. So let's start with the basics. When we talk about fat burning during exercise, we need to understand two key concepts, maybe more. The percent of fat used for fuel during any given exercise is based on the intensity and the total calories burned. So I know I said it's not all about calories. It is about what those calories do to your hormones. And that's where we need to factor in both things. And then that other little ancillary, oh, by the way, how are you feeling? Don't forget that one. There's something that might surprise you. So let's say you're at rest.

I am.

I'm sitting down behind a microphone. And yes, man, I wish I had a standing desk. I need to work on that. I would love to be standing right now 'cause we often will do a batch of podcasts after one after the other, say on Friday afternoons or Thursday afternoons when we do our podcast interviews, but I'm not. So at rest sitting, I'm burning about 85% fat for fuel. Go me. However, you know, I'm, it's a fat-burning machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here's where it gets interesting and a little depressing. During low-energy exercise like sitting, right? Or like walking, let's say you go at a self-selected pace, you burn a higher percent of fat for fuel. I'm gonna say that again: a high percent of fat to fuel the caloric burn energy expenditure that you're doing, but you're burning calories at a much slower rate overall than if you were doing a high-intensity exercise like running. Or sprinting. So understand that. And it could be on a bike. You could be going slowly, leisurely around your neighborhood. You're burning a high percent of fat for fuel. If you are, say, on your road bike or triathlon bike and you're working on going as fast and as hard as you can and racing with a friend, you're not burning as high a percent of fat for fuel. But what is happening is your you're burning fat at a faster rate, you're burning calories at a faster rate. So during low-intensity exercise like walking or slow biking, you burn a higher percent of fat for fuel, but you're burning calories at a very slow rate overall. So it's like having a very efficient car sipping fuel slowly, as opposed to stop, start, stop, start, go hard, slow stop when you drive through town, you soak up all that gas because it's not efficient. So during high-intensity exercise like running, but even more so sprinting, you burn a low percent of fat for fuel. Your body actually can't go into fat stores. It's just got too much going on. It's like, we've got to focus on getting the oxygen to the working muscles, so we're going to minimize any extra work. So it's like when you have a freezer, the extra freezer in the garage or the basement, and you're trying to get your kids to go get something out of the freezer or that extra refrigerator, they don't want to do it. It's like work. Like, don't we have enough here in the refrigerator right here in the kitchen? Because, you know, taking all those extra steps, you know, right? But it's the same idea for your body. You just want it to be more efficient. But actually, your body will down. It'll preserve energy to get it where it's the highest priority, where you need it right now. So low percent of fat for fuel because it prefers carbs because they're easily accessible. You are storing them in your muscle for— in what's called glycogen, ready for use. It's just like, boom, here you go, here you go, here you go, until it's no longer there. But you are torching calories at a much faster rate. So that's important. Let me say that again. That's like a sports car— might not be as fuel efficient, but it covers a lot more ground really quickly. So that was low-intensity exercise— burn high percent of fat for fuel but burn calories at a very slow rate. High-intensity exercise— burn a lower percent of fat for fuel but you are torching, torching calories much faster. So if you were sitting, say, in an algebra class, on either side of the equation, then let's say you're in the front of the room, not in the back, in the D-row room like I was sometimes, right? But on each side of this equation, you could say, okay, if I'm burning them slowly, high percent of fat, or I'm burning fast, low percent of fat, we might have two more equal numbers. Do you see what I'm getting at? So it's interesting. You want to take a look at what actually is happening. But wait, the plot thickens. This is where the story gets interesting. It's called EPOC, E-P-O-C, and it stands for excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. So excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, EPOC. This kind of afterburn, if you want to think of it that way. It's another way, probably easier to understand and more clear. I like to call it your metabolic afterburn, right? So it's just like, this is happening, and it's like the two-for-one, like a really good two-for-one special. This is the energy your body continues to burn after the workout is over, and it only happens with high-intensity exercise. So high-intensity exercise creates this significant epoch effect, the afterburn. Your body keeps burning calories for hours after you finish the workout because what it's doing is it's got to restore— it used so much oxygen. Because think about that, when you're breathing more frequently and rapidly during high-intensity exercise, you could barely talk, couldn't have a conversation because you're breathing in and out so quickly. As you're consuming more oxygen, that means your body has to restore the oxygen levels to repair tissues and return to its normal state. So it's like your metabolism stays revved up long after you've stopped moving. That happens in two cases: really high-intensity exercise like high-intensity interval training— it's built into the name there, that was a dead giveaway— or otherwise known as sprint training. And I'm not gonna go down the rabbit hole of right now influencers making you feel like those are two distinct things. Here's the bottom line. Get breathless in less than 30 seconds is one and the same thing. That's all you need to know. Get breathless in less than 30 seconds. Let's not complicate it with alphabet soup of names, okay? That's nuts. Make it easy. So when you are doing high-intensity exercise like that, and/or resistance training. Now it's got to be a significant— you reached muscle fatigue in each of the sets you were doing— kind of resistance training. This can't just be, you know, it was easy and it was a toning class. And, you know, it has to have been significant. You reached overload, meaning not that you did 100 little teeny tiny repetitions, an isometric exercise. I think you know what I mean. You actually picked up weights that felt heavy after a point, and that could be at 25 repetitions. So more repetitions and lower weight, or it could be heavier weight and fewer repetitions. Both work to support this intensity, but it is that it is intense. You needed to put it down. That's what makes the difference between the EPOC low-intensity exercise like going for a walk, produces minimal EPOC. You're kind of— you're done with that exercise and you're done burning calories. And it's, what have you done for me lately? And this is why cardio exercise gets us nowhere. Now, yes, it does. It conditions our cardiovascular muscle, the heart, yes, and the lungs, which are two of the most important things to keep you alive. This is true. That we actually don't really fare well in midlife and beyond with much of this moderate, quote unquote, exercise. We do so much better. The benefits are so much greater when we do lower exercise like walking and we do higher intensity exercise, higher than this moderate, like interval training. We get so much more benefit from it. And it's not to say No, never, never do moderate exercise. But for a lot of the women that I've worked with, and we're talking over 4 decades and we're talking to isolating— I was only working with midlife women since 2013. The majority of women who are staying in that middle moderate zone, going for the runs that are 45 and 60 minutes, are the ones most tired. Most fat, storing body fat, resistant to weight loss, and not doing well metabolically, struggling with symptoms of menopause. So if you're in there, just all you should say to yourself is, what do I have to lose? If this is what I'm doing and it's not been working for me, I don't have anything to lose by trying it another way just for 3 weeks. See how you feel and see if you don't already feel potentially like you're dropping some inflammation. If you're interested, I've got something for you. You may want to try, um, it's a 10-day challenge. I'll tell you just a little bit more about it in a minute, but let's talk about this. So this is where high-intensity exercise starts to look really appealing for fat loss, right? So even though we burn a low percent of fat for fuel we're burning calories at such a higher rate that a high, high rate of a low number can still be a really big number. And then if we're adding to that the fact that for hours like 24 to 48, we have an elevated energy expenditure, our metabolism is still raised, we're burning calories at a faster rate, we're not quite back down to our resting burn rate. After high intensity. So we've got a lot of high energy expenditure time when we do high intensity exercise. You're not just burning calories during the workout, you also get to add that metabolic boost that you get for hours, if not days. So let's talk sprints versus steady state running, because this is where I think in the conversation of running versus walking, it's not as black and white. So it depends. If we were just talking about this moderate kind of quote unquote, go out the door, go for a run, you and I, maybe if we're very much alike, we loved that. I did for years, decades. In fact, I would, you know, go out and I looked forward to Saturdays or Sunday mornings, run with my girlfriend, run with my husband for a while, And then because young kids, you know, and things, horses, he had to do chores, things changed. And so it became either ran solo, but I looked forward to those runs that I could go a little bit longer. I didn't have the pressure of, you know, getting somewhere. So it might be a 3 or 4 mile run and then on the weekend might be a 6 or 7 mile run. And that was just plain fun. For me. There was a point where that wasn't really working for me anymore. So it was supposed to be the mental stress reliever, but it wasn't actually helping me achieve optimal body composition, especially when I started getting into more and more endurance training, longer and longer. So let's talk about sprints. This is something that can be a complete game changer. So sprints sprinting versus steady-state running. And this is where I have found I can still date my running. I just can't get married to it. I can't— as much as I want to mentally be a runner again, intuitively I think my body just shuts down. It doesn't want to. It tells me. And it's not that it hurts, it's not my knees, it's just kind of like, I've done this for so long, I've done marathons, I've done triathlons, it's like, I know I can do that, I don't have anything to prove, why would I do that? You know, it just seems to be telling me that. And I was like, no, but you're a runner, and it just doesn't really— I don't think it's ever going to come back. I could be wrong, I'm, I'm keeping the door open. But when we compare running at a slow to a moderate pace versus doing sprint intervals, the sprint work wins hands down for fat loss. And here's why. Sprint intervals create a massive EPOC, that afterburn effect, much greater than steady-state cardio ever will. And your body works harder to recover from those intense bursts, burning calories long after you're done. But I want to explain something too. Sprint intervals are incredibly effective at burning both total fat, your total body fat, and visceral belly fat for postmenopausal women. Yeah, isn't that a great two-for-one? That stubborn fat around the midsection that seems impossible to budge in menopause—sprint work does target it specifically. However, one caveat: this doesn't work for every woman in menopause every time, and part of this is because of this. If you're already stressed, like your stress bucket is full, you're maybe not sleeping at night, maybe you're cutting calories way too much, you're clinging to your caffeine, could never give that up because you rely on it. I— speaking right now, I'm staring into an empty cup of coffee cup. I did not need that, and my cortisol and belly fat would have been better off for not having had that cup this afternoon. Didn't eat it. So if you, you too are on that bandwagon, we could start a support group. I'm totally down for that. And that's not a bad idea, by the way. Um, but what you need to know is sprint intervals— yes, research proves they do that, but the subjects were, you know, probably rested. They were apparently healthy. They weren't struggling with adrenal insufficiency or adrenal fatigue, tired all the time status. If you're there, applying HIIT would be not a good thing. It would take you in the opposite direction. It'd be like you've got the stomach flu and I'm gonna feed you kale and salmon. Yummy. And you're gonna be like, I can't even look at that. And that should be our response to HIIT when we're already tired. Even though you may be holding on to weight because you're dealing with this problem with adrenal fatigue, and it's— we keep pushing, but the answer is not pushing through. So just want you to know it'll be waiting for you when you feel better, but we've got to fix that problem first. The beauty of sprints when you do feel good is that you can get incredible results in much less time. A 15 to 20 minute sprint session, and I'm talking warm-up to cool down, girl— can be more effective for fat loss than an hour of steady-state jogging. For busy women in menopause, the efficiency factor is huge, but it's also huge for brain fog. So if you find it really hard to focus, find your words, for instance, you know, at any given time— I'm recording a podcast right now, and if I were struggling to find my words, it'd be problematic. When you do high-intensity interval training, as I often will try and do that, like the morning before I'm going to do a podcast and turns on BDNF. BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, is released in your brain that actually helps with cognitive function, focus, concentration, problem solving, finding your words. And your keys, your keys will benefit too. But, um, so you get the idea. That is a really important distinction. So if you want the belly fat burn, definitely that's going to help as well. So that is the beauty of sprints, but you're not going to get that kind of a reaction or response in steady-state running. For those of you that really love it, like, like I did, I, I, you know, haven't really fallen back in love with it, and, um I don't know that I will, but if you want to get that, you know, it's kind of like junk miles. You're not getting a huge benefit for your VO2, your cardiovascular capacity related to longevity, by the way. You're not getting a great service to your cortisol levels because they will actually go down better with walking, and you don't tap into them and inspire them when you do HIIT because it's so short. You don't have that surge of high cortisol because you don't need so much energy. It's like you sneak it in there before your body realizes that you did it, and then you're resting completely before you do it again. So I want you to realize that it's, it's a much bigger benefit for you. But I want to talk about this cortisol connection because it matters so much. So what we really might want to be asking is, which is better? We've now talked about 3 things. Right? We've talked about running kind of moderate pace. We've talked about running sprints. And if it's not running sprints, by the way, for you, it's sprinting on a bike or an elliptical, or you're doing knee repeaters in your living room, that same thing. So just take it for the kind of sprinting that me, that I can do. That's how you should be hearing it. And then we're talking walking, just going for a nice easy cruise and walk in By the way, if ankles, knees, or, or hips dictate you can't walk, what is that for you? Do you get on your bike or elliptical or the NuStep instead? Then, then substitute that. But I want you to understand, we're really talking intensity. Running would be moderate. Sprinting, high-intensity interval training, obviously high-intensity movement. And the walking is low. Intensity below a threshold. So if we look at those three and the cortisol connection, that's where things get really important for women in menopause, because just by punching that ticket and being in menopause, our cortisol response has gone up because estrogen comes down, cortisol does go up. It's not that you've done anything wrong, but now what we do need to do is say, oh, oh, oh, okay. The way I used to respond to things, the things I used to do may not sit the same. They may not hit the same with us because I have an increased cortisol response to anything. So, so I need to be aware of that. High-intensity exercise does create a greater rise in cortisol compared to low-intense exercise. But before you panic, it's not necessarily bad because Cortisol is called the energy hormone as well as stress hormone, by the way. When we release cortisol, your brain is basically sending a signal, hey, she's tapping in, she needs energy, she's gonna run really fast, she's gonna— or bike really fast, elliptical really fast. And it releases blood sugar when we have that high cortisol surge so that the blood sugar fuels the burst of exercise that we're doing. It's not a bad thing that it elevates beyond it. The cortisol response is actually normal. It's necessary. It's how your body releases blood sugar to be used as fuel and creates energy for exercise. Time of day might be a problem, but I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. High-intensity exercise early in the day is better than late, by the way. Low-intensity exercise like walking creates little rise in cortisol in In fact, comfortable walking or dancing, yoga, tai chi actually reduce cortisol levels. Yeah, so they have a very positive influence on cortisol levels. There was a study I quoted, and I can't tell you the journal right now, but this was years ago, looking at people who walked, and if they were walking, say, in New York and they were walking on city sidewalks versus walking maybe in Central Park and walking in green space, forest space, versus walking like in it on a treadmill in a basement, like a low-hanging ceiling in a basement. Which one do you think was the baddest on cortisol? It was walking in green, in forest nature. But by the way, your brain could be tricked a little bit if you are looking at pictures on a television. Maybe you're listening to music you love and you're looking at pictures on your screen of outdoors in nature. You could trick your brain a little bit like that. So if it's 20 below in a northern climate in the winter, or hello, today where it's 118 in Phoenix, you know, indoors is pretty appealing actually, and that's from an outside girl. But you can trick yourself. So in terms of reducing cortisol, walking in green and outdoors is probably going to trump just walking on city sidewalks. There was still a benefit, but inside on the treadmill, overall the fitness benefits are still there and there's improvement of cortisol. It just got better and better depending on where they were. So keep that in mind. All right, so it can feel amazing, right, to reduce cortisol. And most of the time people will come back and report, I feel better, more resilient, and often more creative as well. So here's where we have to pay attention. The problem isn't the acute cortisol rise from exercise itself. The problem is chronic elevated cortisol combined with high-intensity exercise when your system is already overloaded. So it's again, we've got this bucket, and when you reach the tipping point, it's like there— it cannot hold any more, it's going to overflow. And so we can't silo. Even those of us that love exercise and we think, oh, that's how I deal with my stress, you may need a different kind. Maybe you need yoga, just stretching. Maybe you need some other thing or way to get it in order to benefit right now. So if your stress bucket's already overflowing from work, relationships, poor sleep, hormone changes, adding high-intensity exercise might be just the thing that makes it spill over. When cortisol is chronically elevated, it can sabotage your adrenal function and ultimately affect your thyroid. So it's particularly relevant during menopause when our hormone systems, they're already in flux and you're just already a little sensitive. Okay, if you need some help with this, the 10-Day Hot Not Bothered Challenge— yep, we like to laugh at ourselves here a little bit— so it's open for enrollment. If at least you're hitting this in the right time, right now as we're releasing, it's opening up for a live and will be there the 1st through the 10th of the month doing it. But as soon as you get in, you get access to the kickoff success onboarding call, and then get access to what we call the green room, where you will get videos helping you choose your weights, make sure that you're ready, that you are already working on mobility, which we hear repeatedly These stretches feel so good, I want to repeat them every day. And so know that that's coming. And after the 10 days, if you choose to participate, it is— there's a fee associated, but you get that back if you decide to take a next step with us to the eligible next step we tell you about in the breakthrough session. And I promise you, if you're on a journey, it's just what you're going to want. So I'll put a link in the show notes for that. Do you have a question for a podcast?

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Let's talk about the real, real running versus walking debate. And here's what I want to challenge the traditional running versus walking kind of argument, you know, in that mental argument we play in the back of our heads. I think I know a lot of women say, you know, I'm walking, but I think somewhere we still deep inside feel like running somehow is more virtuous. Or if we don't run anymore and we were a runner, we kind of— we mourn that. Maybe I'm alone, but tell me if I'm not. So maybe it's less about the percentage of fat burned for fuel and more about not burning yourself out. That can be the most important thought. Let me give you a practical example of my own experience. So walking at a 5.0 pace, that is not comfortable for me. Like, that is, that is moving it on purpose. And if I'm doing that outside, I really have to force myself to do it. So, you know, when you and I do think something like that on a treadmill, the belt is doing some of the work. So we have to acknowledge that. And I know there are non-motorized treadmills and those Those are awesome, but sometimes not the safest for everyone to participate in, especially if you're gonna get on there and you're walking for, say, 30 minutes or so. Might not be ideal. But when I'm doing that, it's an effort. You know, my shins are burning because I'm pulling my toe up faster. By the way, you don't get shin splints from walking faster. You get soreness in the muscle in the front of your leg because because it's not used to pulling your toe up that quickly on repeat that dramatically. So I'm breathing hard, you know, I'm going to work. But if I jogged, say at 5.8, generally you're— if you feel like you want to run at 5.0, you wouldn't really be running. It'd be like, I'm just trying to catch up, take a couple quick steps, catch up again. And if you were really gonna run, you're probably gonna skip a few paces, right? So jogging at 5.8, that's actually quite a slow run. It's not a 10-minute mile, right? So I can slog along for miles like that, but it's likely I am landing on my knee. I'm spending more time on it. When you go quicker running, you roll right through. You don't spend a lot of time or impact on any one spot on your knee. So it's much easier on it. But either walking or running fast are much better for the knees than I would say running slow. So the other thing to consider is that's not enough impact, even though there's 4 times your body weight when you're landing. If you're leaving the ground like when you're running versus when you're walking, it's not enough for a lot of bone density benefit. Because once you've adapted to that running, if you do it regularly, you're not getting more benefit by going further. So there's a crucial point every time you run, meaning both feet leave the ground, you add 4 times your body weight to— or an impact, yes, to your knees. Ironically, this is not enough to be bone density positive, while jumping and purposeful impact, like you dropping off that kitchen chair to the floor, you know, on your feet, by the way, uh, that's definitely impact on the bone. And I'm not recommending you do that right out of the gate, but just running repetitively is not more bone density benefit. And in fact, runners who run and do endurance work can become lean enough that that actually becomes problematic. They actually are too lean now. They have lower body mass less pulling on their bone, less force in every landing and pose and action they do. So we find smaller, petite, frailer people generally have less bone density than, say, someone who is more overweight or even obese. We don't hear often about somebody who's obese having low bone density unless they've been on some kind of medication that prohibited bone growth over time. So when you are jumping purposefully, yes, you do have bone benefit, but not so much running. So a challenging walk might actually give you better results than an easy jog. So if you're thinking again, more virtuous because you're jogging somehow, really walking fast would be far more beneficial. So less wear and tear on your joints, on your insides, and you're not burning more fat. You may be in in fact just inspiring more cortisol, which is more inspiring to fat storage. So what could your body be telling you? It brings me to a crucial point that I see ignored too often, and that is chronic cortisol elevation is more likely linked to inadequate recovery. It's not necessarily that you're working too hard or that your workouts are too hard. But it means most often for women in midlife that we're really lousy at recovery. Yeah, because we're used to pushing through. Yes, you— I see you out there. And, and we think, well, I'm gonna do it every day, I'm gonna do something every day. And we think again, that's virtuous. It's not. So never would I, if I were programming for somebody to train for a marathon, for the training. We create 90-day plans for every retreat we run. We create a 90-day plan so somebody is starting and they arrive at the retreat ready to do the work. When we trained people for prep for the Grand Canyon, we gave them what to do. Now, whether they did it or not, that's up to them, but you will people need to have that preparation. But never, never do we say, okay, every day until the Grand Canyon you're going to do this. That's not how training goes. Training has days when you do the work, and training has days when you recover from the work so you actually get fit. Fitness happens in the days between while you're recovering. That's an important distinction. For the people in the back, one more time: exercise creates the opportunity for fitness. Fitness occurs in the time between strenuous workouts when you recover. So if a part of recovery is beyond the time between workouts and includes adequate nutrition and hydration and adequate sleep, then if you're not doing those, you will sacrifice your fitness level and in fact could go backwards. So if you're on a chronically low-carb or low-calorie or low-protein diet, you may experience prolonged cortisol elevations regardless of your exercise choice or of what was your fitness level. You probably are going to slip backwards. Your performance will be hurt. And even though you don't think of yourself potentially as an athlete, you will find it takes you longer to walk the same distance, or your heart rate is higher at the same exertion level. And those are signs that you are not recovered. Those are signs when your Fitbit, your Oura Ring, your Garmin, something is going to tell you your recovery score, your heart rate variability is not very good, not very good. And sometimes we don't know this. So I assumed that a plus score in terms of recovery was good on my Garmin. And in fact, it is certainly better than a zero or minus one, minus whatever. I think I've only seen minus one. But one day I had been forced to rest because I was extremely busy with some other things, getting ready to pack and to travel. Had a really good night's sleep, and then I was at a conference and across the street from the ocean. And whenever that happens, Debra does not go to the hotel gym. Debra goes to the beach. So I'm there, I plug in my Garmin to go for a little walk, see how far do I go. Had to go based on time, but I was curious. And I looked down and it tells me I'm at a +6 for recovery readiness for exercise. I'm like, oh my God, I've never seen that number before. So sometimes you don't know what you don't know. You don't know how good you could feel because you're forcing yourself to go just because the day on the calendar says this is the workout today. Sometimes you should ignore that, potentially, if you're not feeling really good or not feeling like you're getting the progress. You may need recovery. So again, I will send you to the link in today's show notes for the 10-Day Hot No Bother Challenge, and that's only for those of you that that what you're doing is not working and you're ready to say, stop that, I'm gonna do this. It's not an and, it's an or. You're ready to change what you're doing because you're not getting results. Just to make it clear who that's for, it's not a layer of I'll do that too. No, you overachievers may be the ones who need it most, but if you won't put down what you're doing, it won't work for you. Okay, so So if you are again chronically low calorie, low carb, you're probably going to have chronic elevation. You're not going to recover from the chronic lack of fuel. The, the compensation by releasing more cortisol is what your body will do to break down fat, muscle, and even bone tissue for energy. Now, not in that order, it's probably going to break down more muscle than you want, and even bone. So if you are under stress or duress, that's what your body does to you. It burns the very thing that you're trying to maintain and get more of for a bigger metabolism. Chronic cortisol is more likely under these conditions. Listen carefully: doing too much too soon. So occasional overreaching training. If you've trained for it, say, and you are training for a marathon, you may have a run this week that this is longer than I've ever been, longer than I've done, and maybe it's 2 miles more than I did last week. That's an overreach on purpose. But never would they then say, okay, the next week we're doing 2 more than you've ever done. There'd be a week where you back down a little bit. So overreaching planned and then recovery planned, that's normal. But if you are just doing overreach, overreach, overreach, always pushing. That's too much too soon. Under-eating before, during, or after your exercise. Now, if you have a short exercise session, we don't expect you to eat during, but if you're doing a longer extended workout, we do. Even if it's a hike, I will have a lot of people say, I don't usually eat during my hike. We're just going for like 90 minutes or so. Anything after probably an hour, you should have some fuel with you, especially if you do it repeatedly or you go into the hike not fed and/or you're guilty of not eating enough usually. So, you know, just because you think, well, I don't need it, I'm fine, you probably do need it and your metabolism will thank you for it by burning more calories, better energy expenditure. If you have a lack of rest time between your workouts for repair, If you have inadequate sleep combined with high exercise demands, that's a signal. And by the way, if your inadequate sleep starts because of, or during a period of time where you're doing a lot of exercise, that's a sign that you're overtraining. Your sleep should improve if you're in a sweet spot for exercise and you can stand to have it improve. Your sleep will be deeper. You may or may not sleep longer depending on what your needs were. If you were suffering, you need it, you might. And last, probably, but not, um, all extensive or inclusive, is being in a planned diet or in a fasting state. Number one, I don't advocate that for midlife women for a long period of time who are active. We to help our bodies recover from exercise and to decrease and offset that cortisol level. If you find you've been eating less and less and you're still struggling, potentially those calories actually needed to go the opposite direction. You may need more. Make more of it protein and see how you do. So here's the thing, lower intensity workouts may work better temporarily simply because you're not eating enough. As a rule, that would be what I'd suggest for most midlife women, and is true. You're not sleeping enough, or you're not managing your overall stress load very well, you know. And potentially that's no fault of yours, it's just coping skills need a little work, they need a tune-up. The biggest problem that I see as somebody who's coached midlife women for over 40 years is that we're not collectively eating enough. The majority of us, we're going too lower on carbohydrates, making statements like, my body loves this, when it's giving you signs that you're exhausted, holding on to weight, or falling— or failing, sorry, to gain muscle. So no, it, it doesn't love it. So I, I think that going low carb or keto— you don't have to call it that, but that's really close to what it is. It gives you this feeling because you're basically living in dehydration, so you lose water weight. And if your body is sensitive, and in midlife can be, you may gain more water weight when you eat more carbohydrates. For every 1 part carb, we store 3 parts body water, so it makes sense. You can shed water weight pretty easily. If you say, I'm not gonna eat carbs for the next couple of days, or keep them very, very low, you will suddenly see more tone and definition. That might be something you want to do to get ready in a special dress for a weekend, but long-term, it's not a good health solution for a midlife woman. Getting a handle on why is it I'm not moving water through my body— part of that is changes in hormones, but we can do things to help our lymphatic system and circulatory system and potentially your liver as well by eating just a little bit better or differently really is the key, not less. Okay, so let's make the right choice. Yours, mine, probably different. So how you decide between running and walking or between steady state and sprint work— first, honestly assess your current stress load. How's your sleep? How are you eating? Are you eating enough, especially enough carbohydrate? How are your energy levels throughout the day? Are you seeing the results you want to from the current approach that you're doing? And if you're well rested, you're well fed, you're managing stress effectively, higher intensity work including sprints can be incredibly effective for fat loss. If you are stressed, you're underfueled or sleep deprived, walking or other low intensity activities might be your better bet right now. And that's not settling for less, by the way. That's just being smart about what's working and working with your body instead of against it. So here's some practical takeaways from this episode, and I'm gonna throw one new idea out at you before we close, so be ready for it. For sprint work, you start with just 1 or 2 sessions a week, but it's really smart to start with 1 for the first couple of weeks. See how you feel, let your body adapt. It is more stress on the body. That could be 15 to 30 seconds all-out efforts, but really no more than that. I know many women will say I didn't quite get breathless at 30. Try something else then, or try harder, but you need to by 30. So if you're going longer than that, let's— it's not a sprint. Let's Take then as much time as needed for recovery. Don't set a parameter on it. What do you need to let your heart rate come back down till you can close your mouth and breathe through your nose? That gives you maximum fat-burning benefit with still minimal time effort. For steady-state work, if you want to go for that run, if you choose to do so, make sure that it's at an intensity that's appropriate appropriately challenging that you can sustain. So if you choose to walk, don't be afraid to make that challenging. You can incorporate hills or just speed work, and all of that resistance can increase the demand. And resistance, by the way, is the hill, that is the incline. We're not suggesting that you carry weights and you do something with weights to make it intense. No, no, no. For recovery, always prioritize adequate sleep, the rest time, and the nutrition. If you're not getting that, you're not going to recover, and it's probably the biggest problem or challenge for most midlife women. Your results happen during the recovery, not just during the workout. So listen to your body's feedback. If you're consistently tired, holding on to weight despite doing everything right, feeling burnout, might be time to dial down the intensity, focus on recovery, join the 10-Day Hot Nuts Bothered Challenge. But I also want to tell you this, this is all about running versus walking, so we're talking about the cardiovascular component. But to anyone listening who is not resistance training in midlife, so many times I brought up along the way here that blood sugar control is really important, and where core cortisol is concerned, blood sugar control comes into the conversation. If cortisol is elevated, blood sugar is elevated, insulin goes up, then we're in fat storage. We can't burn fat and store fat. So that's like— they're very intertwined. What's going to help you control your blood sugar most is resistance training. So even though you might be on a reset Maybe for a week you take completely off of weights if you've been somebody just overcharging, overworking, overdoing. Joints achy, muscles not feeling good. Okay, leave it alone. But the first thing that comes back is that strength training. So even in the 10-Day Hot No Bother Challenge, over the course of that, I think you lift weights 4 times. So it is important. And even when you're going to cut back or you have a thyroid issue like Hashimoto's It's super helpful to support your adrenals, your cortisol levels, and blood sugar levels to be lifting weights. We just don't go do a 90-minute workout. We just work out in short, effective ways and in ways that can save time but still increase our energy expenditure. So much talk right now about you need to lift heavy. Women need to lift heavy. And it almost is turning women off, I, I believe, who aren't started yet, who feel like, well, I can't lift heavy because I've got arthritis, or I've got this injury, or I just had surgery, or I'm just recovering from something, or I'm tired all the time, or it goes on and on and on. And we are, we are 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. I know some of you are pushing 80, and we're glad that you're here. Stay, because you're giving us a role model. But what we have to consider is we've had life experience on this body here, right? So give yourself a break. We don't just retire because, oh well, I have a shoulder injury once when I was 34, and so not the same. Yeah, so we're just gonna deal with it. We're just gonna still use this it. The rest of you is great. This is still good. We're just going to figure out how, and maybe there's a way to get that back. But we do need to lift weights for blood sugar control and support. I'm a huge advocate of twice weekly. The difference between 2 versus 3 times weekly is negligible, so there's insignificant difference between the benefits of 2 to 3 times. And that's true whether we're talking bone density or we're talking muscle mass, metabolism, strength. So do 2, and later if you decide, I do have time, I have energy, gosh, I really like the way I feel when I do this, I'm gonna try 3. Maybe you'll need it, maybe you want it, maybe you won't. Post-menopause, you may find that the third time a week is needed we do seem to need more volume based on research. And I say we collectively, we need more volume. And that doesn't mean another day a week necessarily, but it can. And it may be a better idea because we need, say, another set. So maybe we need 4 sets, not 3. We need 5 sets, not 4. And if we start climbing that up and we're doing total body, we will be adding time. So there's a point where maybe you do or don't have an hour, hour and 15 twice a day— a week. Or maybe you want to say, okay, I can do that one time a week, and the other two times I'm going to split my upper and lower body. So now I've got three days a week where I'm doing some strength training volume supporting my blood sugar, and I'm able to get more sets for the muscle groups without spending tons of time at either one session, any of those sessions. So there are options. We walk you through those. We've got programs for it. But right now, think about where you are. Both running and walking can be effective for fat loss, but the devil is in the details. What do you need right now? Are you feeling really great? Energy is good, I'm sleeping good, appetite is good, I have no cravings, libido is pretty good. HIIT would be something I would give a try. If that's not how I would describe myself right now— libido is not that great, I, you know, I'm struggling, I'm tired a lot of the time, I'm actually resorting to the caffeine a little too often— and then for you, I'd say let's, let's walk, try to get in more steps, up the step count. Maybe that means you're walking for 30 minutes once a day, and other times the rest of the day you're just on your feet trying to get in steps. So you're, you're bumping up your levels. I'm not going to give you a number. I know that arbitrary 10K a day, remember, that's just because it rhymes. That's the only reason. Okay, now think about what you have been getting. If you get 6, maybe you should aim for, can I get closer to 7 in this next week every day? And if you're at 7 Can you bump that to closer to 8 every day? Those steps can make a big difference. It can be a big needle mover for a lot of women. And remember, that's a way to get more activity without elevating your cortisol level and potentially having a better impact or influence on it. Let me tell you what that does when you decrease cortisol. Remember, we have less blood sugar, we have less insulin, we have less fat storage. What you do by decreasing cortisol is open the door and say, "Hello, fat loss, come on in." And that is really what we want. So your exercise program, remember, should energize you and not exhaust you. It should work with your lifestyle, not against it. And it should leave you feeling strong, capable, not depleted, not overwhelmed, and not like you have to recover on the couch. Couch compensation is the enemy of progress in menopause. Let's not go there. So that is a wrap for today's episode. If this resonated with you, would you do me a favor? Would you share this with at least one friend? Or if you're seeing this in a post, if you would tag two friends and tell them, hey, I listened to this podcast and I think you might like it. It's the best way for us to spread the word about menopause fitness science, what we call behind the scenes hormone-centric fitness. So all decisions are based on hormones. And yes, ideally muscle is the goal, but in order to get the muscle and the bone and the brain health we all want, we really have to look at how does the exercise influence the hormones. As well as how those hormones influence exercise and maybe aren't doing that same job anymore. So we need to tweak the exercise to help ourselves with a little more balance. I hope that was helpful. Until next time, keep moving in a way that serves your body and right now in the moment that you're in. No comparison theory, not comparing you to younger you or you 6 months ago. Or you not in stress to you in stress, or you to anyone else, but just getting what you need right now. Once more, in the show notes, the 10-day Hot Not Bothered. We're open. Love to see you if you need some support.

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