What Every Woman Over 50 Needs To Know About Weight Loss and Anti Aging

If you are trying to lose weight and you can't, you think you've tried all the things and they're not working, if you are thinking it's your metabolism, we're going to clear up a whole lot of things in this episode. And I have a returning guest who is one of our favorites and probably one of the most downloaded podcast guests of all times. So stay tuned. Don't go away. If you want to burn off fat, there are a few things that you have to know. Very possibly, there are a few things that you need to unlearn. In this episode, you're going to hear my guest and I answer, "Are keto and fasting good for midlife weight loss?" And look, I don't contest it if right now, say, you're doing it and it's working for you. I don't think we fix it if it's not broken. But I think we have to be looking at the right thing to be sure it's not broken, even if just temporarily, it's giving you a little elation and feeling of, oh, I've got this. You want to make sure. We are today going to unpack the science of weight loss, specifically fat loss, and Stu's recipe for success with his clients. So yes, you guessed it, Stu Schaefer is back in the house. We look at the difference between metabolism and fat burning and make sure you're running toward the right goal. And last, the secret sauce in this episode is mindset. Isn't it always? Just how much or little does it have to do with your ability to reach your goals? We'll dive into that too. Collectively, you've got over 6 decades of experience on this podcast. Listen in and listen up, and then let's start getting a fat burning mindset. My guest is Stu Schaefer. He is a 20-year award-winning— that was a slur, by the way. I did not really say she, and I suppose we could cut this out, but I'm not going to. Let me rewind. Stu Schaefer is a 20-year award-winning celebrity weight loss coach. He specializes in helping people to put their body back into the thermogenic state so they burn fat 24/7 and lose weight like they did in their 20s. Stu struggled with anorexia in his teens, and when he overcame his eating disorder, he recognized he wanted to help people create their perfect body in a healthy, sensible way. Since then, Stu has helped thousands of people, and a lot of them menopausal women. And you'll hear me ask why and dispel any myth that you too might have while listening about A male trainer? How do they get it? So he's helped thousands transform their body and empower them to create massive success in their life. So let's all agree on this before we dive in: it's not just about the weight, it's about who you become when you're at the weight that you feel healthiest at. And I think by listening You're going to, number one, get in a great walk or great workout, but you're going to learn a lot and/or it will cue something in you that says, "Yes, I can." All right. As promised, buckle your seatbelts, everybody. Stu Schaefer is back in the house. Stu, how are you?

Woo-hoo! I'm good. How are you?

I'm good. I'm equally cold, but I don't have the view. So what's up with that? Yeah.

Well, you know, cold is okay as long as it's sunny, but then, you know, if it's cold and gloomy, that's no good.

This is very, very true. Very true. And there are a lot of women who are thinking about the topic we're talking about as gloomy. So how is that for a segue? I think pretty eloquent, don't you? If I compliment myself. That's the gloomy topic. You know, it's always weight loss. And, you know, it's midlife weight loss that a lot of deserving women are wondering, "What am I doing wrong?" You know, and if we were looking at the rule book, they're not, you know, but somehow they may have gotten the wrong rule book or still looking at the old one. And that's what I'm hoping that we can uncover today. So first of all, Let's answer the question that I get asked so often, or if you do a simple scroll on any social media channel, you're going to get this question: Why is it harder to lose weight as we get older, particularly for women who hit midlife? And we all know we're avoiding that word, M-word, menopause.

Yeah. So the rules change, okay? The body changes, the rules change. And this is why a lot of things will seem like, hey, I haven't done anything different and now I can't lose weight or now I'm gaining weight or what used to work doesn't work anymore, you know, or actually some of the things that are touted as being effective and good actually hurt your body. Like in my opinion, like low carb and intermittent fasting when you hit menopause in midlife can actually hurt you. I've seen it so many times.

Yeah, spoiler alert, we're going to talk about that later, so shh, don't give it all away. But you know what I feel, what I was thinking while you were talking is it would be like, tell me you're in menopause without telling me you're in menopause. Like, that's exactly what a woman would say. It's almost a handbook. Like, if you were gonna go do a role play in audition for a movie role, These are the things that you would say if you want to just come and see us and we'll tell you, you'll get the role. But okay, so everybody wants to know, how do they change? How do I now win the game?

Okay, first of all, let me just address an elephant in the room. Yes, I'm a man. I've clearly not personally experiencing menopause, but I've been working with women over 50 for 25 years. And so, what I'm about to say is all based on actual in-field, practical, proven, effective techniques. It's not theory, okay? Now, I wanna dispel that because it's very easy to go online and then it's like, "Oh, well, this person says this," and, "Oh, there's a new study that says this." And unless you're actually working with people over many, many years, it's very difficult to know what's right and what's wrong for women in menopause. Because they don't usually study women in menopause, okay? And you and I have spoken at great length. Another myth that we wanna get out of the way here, your metabolism does not slow down automatically as you get older. They've now done all those studies, so it really depends on a lot of factors. But here are the big changes in menopause or midlife, perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause. Everyone thinks, it's like a requirement that you're going to have brain fog, that you're going to gain weight, that your hormones are going to decline quickly, that you're going to have hot flashes, night sweats, all these things. Those are not requirements. Those are literally symptoms of an unhealthy individual. And so what happens is most women are not doing things correctly. It's not necessarily that they're unhealthy per se, They're not doing things correctly. And when they hit menopause, the big change is that their ovaries shut down, which have up until this point been the main converters and producers of hormones. But your adrenal glands can take over that job as long as you create an environment for them to be able to fulfill that. Well, the problem is if you're overexercising, not eating correctly, you have too much stress, you're counting calories, restricting calories, things like that. Now you're gonna overstress those poor adrenal glands and they can't do double duty. They gotta produce the stress hormones first and then if they have enough bandwidth, the sex hormones. And so this is why women that are super exercisers or they're really counting calories or you do the low carb or, you know, you're— you're stressed to the max and we all are, okay, but women who have families and a husband, they got a— husband's like an extra kid, you know what I mean? They've got to do all this double duty and then it's like, wham, then their hormones plummet all of a sudden. And then, doctors will say, "Well, yeah, it's menopause. It's just how it is and we'll just put you on hormone replacement therapy." And, there's a better way if you eat correctly, eat not just healthy, but correctly, and you exercise correctly, and you balance the two, you can oftentimes reverse these issues or avoid them altogether. And boom, boom, boom, you can still burn fat and burn fat and burn fat and burn fat, especially belly fat.

Love it. I want to back you way up for a minute just to— the elephant in the room. I mean, I like elephants, so I want to chat about that just a minute. Was it hard? And I know the reason, potentially— I— you can tell me otherwise— that you as a trainer originally started working with females is midlife women, we put our hand up. And when something isn't working, women more than men, or faster maybe than men, will ask for help. Like, we're not going to look around at a gas station and, and say, how do I get there? We're going to go ask or get a map and get help. And so we do. And that's how you potentially— but I want to ask, did you run into, you know, some challenge or with clients at first saying, "Hey, you don't have any idea." And how did you overcome that? Because you really have established yourself as a midlife female weight loss expert. And, you know, I, I want to call everybody's attention to that because it's nothing to sneeze at, because I do think that it takes a certain individual to earn that status and to have a track record doing it.

Well, yeah, so first of all, um, I don't want to come across as arrogant, but, uh, I am very good and because I've been doing it for so long, I know that some of these subtle differences, and I'll give you an example and then I'll explain how I actually figured this out because it's a very interesting story. Women's bodies in menopause and midlife are very sensitive. That's one of the other differences. You become so sensitive that your tolerance to certain things goes very low, okay? So, all, you know, when you're in your 20s, you can get away with a lot. And as everyone gets older, men and women, but it affects women more. As everyone gets older, your body becomes less resilient to certain stresses. Okay? And that's another change. But I have a client right now named Grace. When Grace came to me, she said, "Stu, I can't— I don't think my body is capable of losing weight. I've tried for over 10 years. The most I've ever lost was 5 pounds, and it'll come right back on in a day." She's now been with me, I think, going on 5 or 6 months, and she's lost 50 pounds. 50, 5-0. And she goes, "Stu, I just have to say, I just don't know. I couldn't have done it without you. I was refusing to take the GLP-1s and the medications and stuff like that." And she's, "All my friends that did, they're terrible, they're sick." and they're gaining the weight back and I'm good, I'm fine. And, but here's one of my points of the subtleties. She had the big snowstorm and so she couldn't get new groceries and she went, her weight went up 2 pounds in a week, 2 pounds, 2. And she's like, "What happened?" I said, "What?" I was looking at what she was eating. I said, "You ate a couple things differently. You had these vegetables you haven't been having." And she said, oh my gosh, you're right, because I couldn't get to the store. We've been snowed in. Those veggies that she ate caused an inflammatory response in her body, caused her weight to go up 2 pounds. Now, the inflammatory response, if you're a woman and you feel like you're doing everything right, I will tell you, 80 to 90% of my clients are inflamed and they don't realize it. And the reason that's important is because if you're inflamed, and it could be from eating vegetables, if you're inflamed, it's going to short circuit the fat burning process because it's going to crank your cortisol up, your gut is not going to digest properly, and it's going to keep you out of balance. This will also affect your hormones. And so you've got to address that, and it's an invisible crazy, I would never have believed it thing. Well, I just know this from doing this for 25 years and seeing it over and over again. And by the way, how I got into it, well, the club that I worked at initially 25 years ago was a nice upscale fitness club. And it just so happened that the demographic of that club was women over 40. They had a nickname for the club. In the community, they called it the Cougar Den.

Great.

Okay, so that's just how I, you know, cut my teeth and I just thought everybody was like that. Now, it is true, when I was first training and first working with women, I was doing the standard stuff. I would look at their food, I would reduce the calories, I would increase the exercise, and I would do it by the book. And this was even before macros, but it doesn't matter. And my clients would lose weight, but they would be miserable. They would have cravings, low energy. A lot of times if they— they— it was unrealistic to sustain. And as soon as they started trying to eat normal again or they reduced their exercise, they would gain the weight back faster. You know, it was terrible. And then one particular woman sought out my help. Name was Ashley, and she was the woman that said, "Stu, I've tried everything. I can't lose weight. I've seen your clients. They all seem to be losing weight. You must know what you're doing." I thought I did, obviously, but she was the one that none of the stuff worked for. And I tried, we tried everything. And she was crying. You know, she goes, for a whole month, she didn't even lose a single pound in a month. And she needed to lose about 50 pounds. And so, what had happened is she would lose some weight, then gain back more, then lose some weight, then gain back even more. And so, I just— so, I told her, I said, "We'll figure this out. I'll work with you for free until we figure this out. I'm not a quitter." And I'll tell you, she hung in there. I mean, months and months, and we were trying different things. And I was researching and reading all the journals, all the books. You go to the library, the Dewey Decimal System, I was looking at everything. And finally, I found this blurb in one of the journals and it's like if you blinked, you would have missed it. And it was about something called Repressed Metabolic Syndrome, RMS. It's like a fancy Yale-Harvard term. And what it meant or what it was was you could inadvertently switch your body over into this this state where when you ate— when you eat the food, the body puts it right into the fat cells. It doesn't use it correctly. The body's not supposed to do that. It's supposed to put it in your muscles, your liver, your organs, your heart, your brain, you know, your cells. It doesn't do that. Okay. It puts it right into the fat cells instead. And then when you exercise, because your muscles aren't getting that fuel, the nutrients, it, you end up burning off muscle when you exercise. You can't really tap into the fat as the fuel. So what happens is, as soon as you flip this, what essentially what happens is the wrong hormones and enzymes are being produced. Well, now when you eat, you store fat, when you exercise, you burn muscle, when you burn muscle, you slow down your metabolism even further. And so the most logical thing women do when they can't lose weight is they think I need to eat less and exercise more. And it makes it worse and worse and worse, okay?

Right.

Well, then later on midlife—

That's back to the adrenals getting super stressed, yeah.

Exactly, exactly. And this is why so many women are confused. So many women are eating healthy, exercising, they're again, going by the book, but that book is antiquated and it doesn't even apply to you, okay?

Yeah. Insightful. And I want everybody to kind of get the circle here is like our immediate response, even though intellectually you could be— you're out there going for a walk right now, or you're lifting weights, because that's what I really hope you're doing, and you're multitasking while you're listening to this, and you're thinking, yes, this makes total sense. But when you get to a moment where Oh, I've got this goal and I want to look a little bit better. I want to slim down. Or you put on a couple of pounds and you want to take it back off. Your gut reaction will be that intuitive hit will be, oh no, follow that advice that I've gotten for 30 or 40 years that says, you know, eat less, exercise more. But what you're doing is like burning your engine out, and that's your adrenals. And that's—

here's what's really wild—

intolerable.

Yeah, the adrenals burn, the high cortisol causes gut issues, which cause more inflammation. Okay, so a lot of it.

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Now, here's the wild part. I went back to Ashley after I figured that out and I said, "Okay." I explained to her exactly what I explained to you. And she said, "Okay, so what do we do to fix it?" I said, "You're going to have to eat more and we're going to have to exercise less." And she looked at me and just freaked out. Two heads, right?

You have two heads.

Yeah, she goes, "Are you kidding me? If I do that, of course I'm going to gain weight." And I said, "No, no." I said, "Trust me." But I also said, "We'll monitor. If you gain weight, we'll stop it right away." So, she reluctantly agreed. In 3 months, she lost about 36 pounds.

Amazing.

Now here's the other wild part. I thought, well, geez, if it worked for her, who was like, I can't lose any weight, I go, how would it work for my other clients who are already losing weight? So I started switching it with them. Well, what happened? They now— they started losing weight faster and easier than ever. No more cravings, no more low energy. Their energy was through the roof, they felt amazing, and it was now a lifestyle that they could sustain. And if they ended up splurging or they missed exercise, they didn't automatically gain weight because they had cranked up their body and got the right hormones and enzymes flowing. So now their body was just burning fat very easily.

So great. And tucked in there, you talked about something I don't wanna skip over. Because I think a lot of women are probably grateful that you're here and that we're having this conversation. And they have looked at and been really tempted by GLPs. And, you know, when we're releasing this at our Super Bowl this year, you know, I mean, we are going to have an iconic sports a woman representing sports and athleticism, having shared GLPs. Now, she's not necessarily promoting it. She's promoting load and health. And yet, anybody watching that might hear it, watch it, and interpret it as, "She's telling us to do it." And so it's a dangerous situation. But there's a lot of people right here who suddenly feel like, It's very accessible, like I can get my hands on it now, so it must be safe. And it's a quick fix. And if they're struggling, I think that's— we want, we want to get help and we want to get out of the pain that we're in. Talk to me a little bit about in these last couple of years with the— you know, it's not new, but it's newer, I think, in mainstream for a lot of people and their awareness of it. How has that How have people come to you with their awareness of GLPs, on the fence about do this or do that?

Yeah.

What's that been like?

I've had a lot of clients who I— who came to me after they did the GLP-1, because what most people don't realize— and I watched the Oprah Winfrey special, by the way, okay? The owners, the, the presidents or whatever of the two pharmaceutical companies did confirm that you have to take it forever. What doctors don't tell you is once you stop a GLP-1, usually within a month or two, you will gain all the weight back that you lost. And for the next year, you will be extremely insulin resistant, and it's very likely you'll gain even more weight. And the reason is because you're messing with your body's hormones. Glucagon-like peptide 1 is what GLP-1 stands for. And so it, it does a couple things in the body. It, it cranks up the GLP-1 hormone, and it slows your digestion down significantly. And so, and there's also, there is an actual hormone called glucagon which you can trigger by eating certain foods in the right combinations, which is a catalyst for certain enzymes to be released that help you burn fat. Well, when you start putting something in the body that's artificial, or you're, you're putting something in from exterior, outside, the effect is always the same. Your body stops making it itself on the inside. This is the same with something like testosterone for men, you know, or hormones.

Thyroid.

Or steroids. So when someone stops the GLP-1, now their body is not making all that stuff for a while, and this is why the swing happens. And that's what people don't know. While you're taking it, there's also a tremendous number of side effects. And it's unfortunate that big companies are trying to promote it and it's now in a pill form. And that's only because there's a lot of money to be made. This is, you know, not long ago, ephedra was the same kind of a thing. You know, people were popping ephedra and then they made it illegal because people were dying from it, you know? So there's always something. There's always something. And it's just because there's money to be made.

Absolutely, absolutely. So let's talk about your secret sauce. So how much can you share if we hold you down, pin you to the cross, and all of that? You know, for, for easy— and I think that's where you have everybody— is easy because it's, that's an adaptation right there. I think most women assume it has to be hard and the harder they work, the better the results they're going to get. So that's the—

that's the—

counter that.

That's—

yeah, yeah, yeah.

So think of it this way. Everything— the secret sauce. So I will explain everything, but here's what you have to understand. It still is going to have to be individualized because how can it not be? It depends on your height. Your weight, your body fat percentage, how have you been eating, what's your family history, some of the genetic factors, uh, do you have any food sensitivities, do you have a thyroid issue, do you have a gut issue. You know, all of these factors come into play big time. So you really need someone that actually understands the body. And quite honestly, this is why calories don't work. This is why low carb doesn't work. This is why macros don't work. They're too generic. They're way too generic and they don't even address what's actually happening. If you're taking notes, you want to write this down. You've got to focus on creating the right chemical reactions in the body. Now, you have thousands of chemical reactions happening every second. Hormones, enzymes, you name it. Everything in the body. It's not that less is better. It's not that more is better. Everything in the body has a sweet spot. Blood pressure, too high, bad. Too low is also bad. Blood sugar, cholesterol, cortisol, everything. There's always a sweet spot. And that's how you need to think of it. When you eat correctly, and here's the difference now, you could be eating healthy, organic, whole foods, all sorts of good stuff, but not correctly. And you're still causing the wrong chemical reactions in your body. If you do it wrong, what happens is of the food that you eat, a good portion of it gets stored as fat. Then you have to burn that fat off before you can tap into your body fat to get— storage.

Yeah.

And that's why it feels hard. But when you eat correctly, the body will take all of the food that you put in your body and it'll use it, and it'll use it correctly. It'll send it to the muscles and the liver and your brain and your cells and your other organs, and that food will be used. None of it will be stored. But now, see, you can just easily tap into your body fat that you're trying to burn off. This is why you don't have to restrict calories at this point, nor should you. And this is why when you do it like this, now you're not gonna have cravings, and you're gonna nourish the body so that it can do what it's designed to do, which is heal itself and balance itself, and this also includes hormones. This is why if you're having menopause symptoms, that's not normal. It's just— now, we just assume it's normal. Those symptoms aren't normal. You shouldn't be having those symptoms. If you nourish the body correctly and you're doing the right type of activity, those symptoms will go away. They'll just disappear.

Love that. Absolutely love it. So talk about just a bit of how do you help a woman interpret— so she's got cravings for sugar or salt, how do you explain to her what that might be? Or a couple of quick solutions like, let's test this for this week.

Any type of craving stems from some sort of a vitamin deficiency. Well, I'll take that back. There's a couple reasons for cravings. There's a physiological reason, there's an emotional reason, and there's a mental reason. Okay, so a mental reason is like you're bored, you're watching TV, you see a commercial for— and it's got a food that looks delicious, and it's kind of this mental trigger. Emotional would be some sort of an emotion, like we all have emotional triggers. There's emotional eating. You can flatten those pieces out very easily. Physiologically, there's one root cause, and that's a vitamin or mineral deficiency, or your blood sugar drops too low. Okay? When your blood sugar drops too low, your body is always going to have sugar cravings because it's a survival mechanism. And this is no— this is the easiest way to see this is kids. They have a They consume sugar, they have a sugar high, then they have the sugar crash because their body releases all this insulin. It brings the blood sugar down so low, and then they're like a zombie and they're just looking for sugar. Okay, so if a woman's craving something, uh, first we look at, are you eating enough? Because that's usually the problem. I've never had a client in 20 years who is eating too much. So the first question is, are you eating enough? Okay, assuming they're eating enough, my next question is, are you combining the right foods at each meal? Because if you're not, that will cause extremely unstable blood sugar, which will cause— may, may cause an insulin spike, which will cause sugar cravings. Now, if it's something like salt cravings, that's usually, uh, could be deficient in sodium, could be deficient in potassium, magnesium, something like that. I'll tell you, if you're— the easiest thing to do if you're having salt cravings, go eat a pickle. It's got a great balance, not a sweet pickle, a dill pickle. It's like the easiest thing. It's got salt. The brine is very good for electrolytes. It's very healthy and balanced. And most of the time that'll fix it and that's all you really needed. But sometimes women do need a multivitamin because they might be missing some of the key vitamins or minerals in some of the foods these days. So that might also be a possibility.

Yeah, so great. And I think a lot of women struggle with this one. And the immediate place we go to is, "Oh, I don't have discipline," or, "I'm not motivated," or, "I need more willpower in order to muscle through that," as if it's expected instead of getting curious about it and saying, "Wait a minute, what is that trying to tell me?" Yeah.

You know, I think one of the reasons my clients are so successful, because I get a lot of the clients that say, when I ask them, what do you think you need in order to succeed? And they say more discipline, more willpower, more motivation, this and that. And in over the last couple of decades, I've worked with, you know, thousands and thousands of people, that's never what it is, okay? That's only the case if you're doing the old diets that are unhealthy. Whenever I work with someone, my job is to find their sweet spot. Okay, let me explain what a person's sweet spot is. It's 3 things. Number 1, you're getting the results. This most of the time includes fat loss, but it also includes energy, good digestion, better sleep, etc. Okay. Number 2, it should be something you actually like— the food, the exercise. Okay. And number 3, it should feel very natural and easy. The problem that people have, why they say, "I need more willpower," or, "Gosh, you know, it's just lack of discipline," they're doing something that's completely unnatural for them. It doesn't match up with their lifestyle. It doesn't match up with their preferences. It's probably not even healthy. Number 2, they don't even like it. It's like disgusting. It's like repulsive. They're like, "Oh, I'll do it if it allows me to lose weight." And then, it doesn't even get great results. So, when they don't see the scale move, they're done. It's like, I'm out. That's— I'm not going to do this. And that's the typical approach. That, in my opinion, is the wrong approach. You want to always be looking at how can I do this in a way that I actually enjoy it? It feels very easy for me, and it also gets the results. Now, when you do it right, you will— you should not be hungry. You should not have cravings because you're eating enough. And that's why I said most women that I've ever worked with are never eating too much. And so when I tell them how much they actually need to eat, they're like, are you kidding me? This is so much food, you know. And I had a client who was in her 60s, her name's Cheryl, and she had the same thing— symptoms like crazy, exhausted all the time, her legs felt heavy, she had the headache, the brain fog, the weight gain. And her doctor said, welcome to menopause. And she said, full. Yeah, I am not settling for that. In like the first week or two, she said, I'm back, I'm back. I used to be the Energizer Bunny, I had unlimited energy. She's, I'm back, I feel that again, Stu. So if that's all I get from working with you, it was well worth it. Well, she ended up losing 18 pounds of body fat as well. And she goes, geez, I didn't realize— she was doing the fasting and the low carb, which a lot of doctors are now recommending. And she was busy. She was a horticulturist in Florida. She was working in the heat. I said, are you kidding me? You got to eat way more. And she said, Stu, for once someone actually did what they said they were going to do. Everything you told me would happen happened. I'm happy as a clam. This is great. And she was in her 60s. Okay. And it's like, you know, had another client whose doctor said, I think you should do fasting. Literally, her name's Kaylee, and she couldn't eat. Anytime she would eat, her stomach would get upset. She'd have to go to the bathroom. She'd have diarrhea. Her and her husband called me and they said, we've worked with functional naturopaths for the last 7 years. They've tried this, they've tried that. Nothing has worked. We're at 4 months. Kaylie's lost over 30 pounds. But more importantly, she can eat. She's eating all day. She's eating a lot of food. And she said her husband is like, oh my God, you're healthy again. Your skin looks healthy. She couldn't even think. I mean, she wasn't allowed to drive because her brain fog was so bad. That's gone. I mean, she got her whole— pretty much her whole life back. And she said, I'm pissed off at the doctors because you did in just a couple of months And I spent 7 years with doctors trying to figure this out. And they kept telling her to eat less and less and less. And we just had to figure out a way to eat that just very specifically, not too much at once, but enough to get the right amount of nutrition. And we had to do it very delicately, obviously. But now she's pretty much— I said, "Kaylee, you're normal. You're eating like a normal person now." She goes, "I know, it's great." I mean, Unbelievable.

I love that. You know, I think not everybody will love that I'm bringing this up, but I think this bears talking about. Doctors don't get any nutrition or exercise. I mean, if I say any, there are 12% of medical schools require any nutrition, and it is like 2 hours or less. So I think we can say practically they get almost nothing. They don't get it. They don't get anything about exercise. So when— what they're resorting to is almost like pop and rumored myths that anybody else would follow because it is logical.

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, and even functional doctors who should know better, um, you know, 20 years ago functional medicine was was relatively new and cutting edge. So if someone was a functional doctor 20 years ago, they really had a much more well-rounded background. I think now it's become such a competitive niche that you have a lot of functional doctors who are not as well-rounded anymore. And it's, there's a big booming, supplement industry now, and that has also tainted the, the functional world. Obviously, I think functional medicine is slightly better than traditional, and I think naturopaths are great. I think sometimes they're quick to, to prescribe supplements, and sometimes they jump on some of these latest diet trends as well because they're humans too. And if you're looking at some of the research It can be easy to kind of be led down that path. The reason I don't is because I've been doing this for so long. When you've worked personally with thousands and thousands of people, you learn through trial and error what works and what doesn't. And you learn, okay, this works all the time, this works every time. And you start seeing how the body works and some of these subtleties. Now, obviously everyone's different and there's always some exceptions, but that's kind of what a coach does is finds the, the minute details that need adjusting per person, you know.

Agree. All right, so let's unpack this big one because I think this is such a big distinction that we need to make. We've kind of skimmed over it, we've talked about it, we use these terms, but a lot of people think, "I wanna change," or, "I wanna boost my metabolism." And we also will use the words, you know, "I want better fat burning. How do I?" We resort to the fat-burning exercise, we go all out with it. What is the difference between metabolism and fat-burning mechanisms? And how do we know which one we're running toward? That listener is like, Okay, well, yeah, tell me the answer to this one. Before we get started, this time of year, it is really even more important that we talk about the fact that hydration is important, but hydration isn't just about drinking water. Being optimally hydrated is about optimizing your body's fluid ratios. And this fluid balance depends on so many factors, including the intake and the excretion of electrolytes. But you don't need electrolytes just if you're working out or it's hot outside or you're a heavy sweater, though you may need more if those things are true for you. LMNT is one of my favorite ways to boost electrolytes and make drinking water in winter more attractive. And by the way, I add the chocolate element to warm water or unsweetened almond milk for a little guilt-free hot chocolate and take in my electrolytes that way. The current science points to consuming 4 to 6 grams of sodium, 3.5 to 5 grams of potassium, and 400 to 600 milligrams of magnesium per day from diet and supplements for optimal health outcomes. Those are really key electrolytes. All electrolytes are best consumed from whole foods, no contest. LMNT can help fill in the gaps that we've got in our diet. In alignment with that, LMNT has a science-backed ratio of 100 milligrams sodium, 200 potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. Now, I know what you're thinking. 100 grams of sodium? I can hear it even on this side. You're wondering, isn't sodium bad for you? But here's the deal. The government recommends consuming fewer than 2.3 grams per— of sodium per day, ostensibly for heart health. But in 2011, a Journal of the American Medical Association study found that optimal health outcomes occur at 4 to 6 grams per day. Yeah, so what happens is if we cut out salt, you're thinking that you're being virtuous by eliminating salt. Oh no, I never salt my food. Because I know you, I've eaten dinner with you, by the way. That actually can cause more harm than good. Many healthy people need more sodium, not less. Symptoms of low blood sodium levels, it's called hyponatremia, by the way, they include headaches, fatigue, muscle cramps, and confusion. And in severe cases, not to sound alarmist, brain damage, seizures, and death. But I want you to listen to that list again: headaches, fatigue, muscle cramps, confusion. In other words, brain fog. Does that sound similar to symptoms of menopause? I say yes. So it could be that you're passing off some of your symptoms for what really is just hydration. Look, everyone from U.S. Olympic athletes to health experts like me and women just like you who want optimal energy and balance for health are using it. You can get your own. Get a free 8-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com. /flipping50. Find your favorite Element flavor or share 'em with a friend. My favorites, by the way, Citrus Salt and Orange Salt. Real quick, a little trivia. Hands down, I know from our community, most women would gladly sleep separately from their partners before separately from their dogs. So if that's you, you're not alone. Look, I would do anything for Moses, But when it comes to dog food, it seems like you have to make a choice. Either fresh and healthy, maybe labor intensive, or you can have easy to store and serve, but never both. But you don't have to choose anymore, thanks to Sundays. Look, we all love the idea of feeding our dogs real fresh food, but the reality is that fresh dog food usually means taking up freezer space, time to thaw and prep, and then a lot of mess when you serve it. Get the good without the hassle with Sundays. It was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. What I love about Sundays, you just scoop and serve. No freezer, no thawing or prep, no mess, just nutrient-rich, clean food that fuels their happiest, healthiest days. So you get more of them to share together. Moses loves it. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to SundaysForDogs.com/Flipping50 and get 50% off your first order, or you can use code Flipping50 at checkout. That's 50% off your first order at SundaysForDogs.com/Flipping50. SundaysForDogs.com/Flipping50 or use code FLIPPING50 at checkout.

Okay, metabolism, if you were just to do the traditional definition, is how many calories do you burn in a day? That's kind of like, you know, basal metabolic rate or resting metabolic rate. So that's like how they measure it. And they would hook you up to all these sensors and look at your oxygen and nitrogen and all these things, and they could tell you. So essentially, think of metabolism, how much are you able to burn? And you can adjust it, you can, you can change it. This is controversial. Some people believe you can't, but I know you can, 'cause I see it all the time. Obviously, if you add muscle, that's gonna change it. Your eating will change it. The type of exercise will change it. Sleep can change it. Decreasing inflammation can change it. So that's how much are you burning per day. The fat-burning mechanism is what are you using when you burn? Are you using carbs, muscle, body fat, etc.? Okay. So ideally, in a perfect world, the best mixture would be increase your metabolism and activate the fat-burning mechanism. Now, what's the fat-burning mechanism? This is the right hormones and the right enzymes being released in the body, which cause the body to use your stored body fat as fuel and it causes your body to be able to put the food you eat into the areas you want it to go, like your muscles and liver and brain. Well, now you have energy, brain clarity. It's easier to build a little bit of muscle, which speeds up your metabolism. It's good for your thyroid. Healthy thyroid will keep your metabolism strong as well. Now your metabolism naturally speeds up and You get the right hormones and enzymes, and one enzyme in particular, which is called HSL, by the way, will specifically go into your fat cells and pull out the fatty acids. So now they come into your blood so you can use them as fuel. And that is the difference. So how does your metabolism drop? Cutting out carbs? Restricting calories, under-eating, chronically under-eating, lack of sleep, a lot of stress, over-exercise. Now, why would over-exercise hurt your metabolism? I thought exercise stimulated the metabolism. Well, we're back to the sweet spot concept. Too much exercise will do two things. It'll crank up your adrenaline and cortisol, and it'll put, it'll put you into too big of a calorie deficit, the body will panic. And there is such a thing as a starvation mode that the body can go into. Now, a lot of people don't think it exists because they can't explain it medically. I'll explain it medically right now. When your body thinks that it is starving and not getting enough food, it will simply downregulate its own metabolism and start releasing an enzyme that causes you to store fat. The enzyme is called LPL, and the reason it does this is the body is designed to survive. So it has a mechanism where it says, okay, we're not getting enough food, fuel, calories to sustain our living. So let's just slow down and we're going to release this enzyme. So whatever comes in, we can save it for later. and the only place the body can save stuff for later is in the fat cells. Okay, if it puts it in the muscles or liver, you're going to burn through it too quick. And so that's how it shifts, and that's why undereating or too much exercise or a combination of both can result in that problem.

And that is a shocker, but you articulated it so well. All right, I want to See if we can hit every listener, which is not easy, but so we're gonna stereotype a little bit to put you each in a category. But I'm guessing there are those women who, let's say, let's say that all of our listeners wanna lose weight, and that may not be true if you're listening. You actually may be listening because you wanna help somebody else lose weight, or you're nodding in affirmation that yes, this was true for me and I discovered this. The hard way. So be sure you share it with a friend if that's you. But there are women who are exercising and they want to do more because they love it. I could identify with that. Oh yeah, you know, it's— I gotta, I gotta hold myself back. And I've had a number of clients who are that way too. Yeah, there are women who are not exercising. They know they need to start. I will hesitate before I say want to start. They know they need to start. Okay. And then there's are those who are exercising but not necessarily in the ideal way to support their both fat burning and metabolism, maybe too much cardio, not enough muscle preservation and/or gaining. What are the different needs if we could say, okay, you're in one of these buckets, what, what's different about them?

Okay. I, I, I don't know if I'll answer the question, um, totally complete, but I'm going to give you the easiest way to look at it.

Okay.

I think the easiest way to look at it is based on a person's body fat percent, and then I'll talk about the people who have a screw loose like you and want to do all this extra.

With love, right? Said with love.

All right. The only time I run is if it's from the cops or a bear. Okay. No, I'm just kidding.

You do live in Colorado. That's a real thing. Right.

So, the easiest way to go to look at this is to look at your body fat percent. There's 3 categories, okay? If you're 30% body fat or higher would be category 1. If you're between about 20, maybe 22 to 30, that would be category 2. And then if you're below 22%, that would be category 3. Okay. Now the reason the— now body fat percent is not BMI. Body fat percent, you would have to get checked through either an InBody analysis, a DEXA scan, or the calipers. Okay. What it tells you is of your weight, what percentage of that is made up from body fat. So 30% means a third of your body weight is fat or higher. Now, that's categorized as— that, that would put you in the obese category. Okay. Now, the reason this is important is that will directly affect the body's preference for fuel and its ability to utilize carbohydrates mostly. Insulin resistance is another way of putting it. So if you're 30% or higher, to some degree you're going to be insulin resistant. Okay? Or you will eventually become insulin resistant. Now, this means the body is gonna have a very hard time using your fat as fuel. This is why when people will do like high-intense exercise at a high body fat, oftentimes they might get lightheaded or they don't have the stamina because the body burns through the— the glu— the glycogen or glucose relatively quickly. So these folks need lower intense initially until they can get their body fat down to a point where the body can utilize fat as fuel a little bit better. When you do low-intensity cardio, you're going to be burning more of the calories you do burn from fat. Now, there's a big debate. Well, yes, but you'll burn less and all this stuff. But sometimes at certain body fat percentages, you need to access that because that will actually help the body start producing the HSL enzyme, which then in turn will make it burn body fat easy— more easily. And that's why if you get then into the category of the, call it, 22 to 30% body fat, that's when you need the blend. You need to use an equal blend of the resistance weight training and the cardio, because this is like kind of the general— your body can use fat It's going to always try to use glycogen for high-intensity work and weight training. So you want— you need to supply your body with some of that, but it's a nice balance. When you get under 22% body fat, and maybe even under 20, but definitely, definitely under 20, but probably under 22, you're now lean enough where you could actually predominantly do weight training and cardio could be a lot less. and you would still be able to burn fat. And the reason is because at 22% or lower body fat, you have a lot of muscle on your body, have a lot of lean mass. That's going to cause your body to be very insulin sensitive. Your metabolism is going to be relatively high at that point. So this is how the focus can shift. You could probably do more high-intensity stuff. Now you still have to be careful that you don't overstress yourself. And to answer your other question, well, what about those crazies, I mean those people that, you know, love to exercise and want to do a lot more, that's fine. That just means you need to eat more, okay? Because there's always going to be a balance. We talked about the sweet spot. Exercise and food have to be in sync with one another. You know, the problem that most people have, one of the problems that most people have, they'll do an exercise program, but then it doesn't match up with their food, or they'll do a diet, but then it doesn't match up with their activity. So they get very limited results when the two match up. Up, you're going to get crazy good results. And so, once you have them matched up, then you might say, "Well, okay, I'm in the zone. I'm in the sweet spot. I wanna do more activity." Great, then the food just goes up accordingly. And that should keep your body pretty well balanced because now you're using the food to sustain the exercise. It's not gonna tap your adrenals quite so much. So, you can still manage the cortisol while doing a little bit more exercise.

Yeah, I love that explanation. So good. And I think, you know, a lot of women still need to hear us repeat that over and over again, that a lot of times that's exactly what it is. It's our— we started this way at the very beginning, if you remember. As we get older, we're not going to be as resilient. We're not going to recover. Our capacity for recovery isn't as great. When you lose estrogen through menopause, even more so, ladies, we get hit twice. Guys are Yeah, but we're going to feel it right away. Right. And, and the guys may feel it a little bit later, but it's probably going to take another decade for them, for your male partner. Yeah.

Maybe when they're 60, they start noticing.

Yeah, exactly. So love that. Okay, so one more thing I want to ask you, and it was— it's escaping me, but I wanted to tap into one thing that you said in there. And I don't know what it was, so I'm gonna lose my train of thought. It'll come back to me, one minute. But I want to ask you all of this. All of this comes back to one thing, because from the beginning, from word one, we were really knocking on the door of every listener's mindset. Like, we tackled every myth that she's ever believed. And it, it wasn't a myth. I mean, she thought probably she was getting factual information at one time, but then we take it in, it sits in here, it becomes a belief, and we kind of own it. And it's a little hard to shake those things out. So talk about mindset and the impact that that will have on First of all, how important is the belief that you can get where you want to go? How often do you see that?

All the time. Mindset is— let me— how do I explain it? Mindset is the bottleneck. It'll either prevent what you're doing from working, or it will make what you're doing work faster. Now, speaking of myths, this is how invasive myths are. Almost everyone would be able to repeat back that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Okay, I'll tell you the origin of that. In 1948, General Foods, a company called General Foods, had a surplus of Grape-Nuts.

God.

So they launched a massive advertising campaign which was, you need breakfast, it's the most important meal of the day. And it was such a huge advertising campaign that everyone just adopted that saying because they wanted people to buy Grape-Nuts to get rid of their surplus. That's where it came from. That is literally where it came from, an ad campaign. So if you sometimes trace some of these roots back, you'll realize how flimsy they are, which is unfortunate. Now, in terms of mindset, a lot of women, a lot of people in general, skip over this. But let me just explain the power of the mindset. Everybody at one point or another has had a nightmare. Well, what happens? You wake up from the nightmare, your heart rate's up, your blood pressure's up, your adrenaline is up, your cortisol is up. You might even be breathing hard or sweating. And nothing actually happened to you. It's an unconscious visualization, but it changes your entire physiology. You have to take that into consideration. We also know that stress can cause poor digestion. It's part of the sympathetic state of the body versus the parasympathetic state. So I've had my own clients who should have known better I had two in particular a couple years ago. They were doing everything right on paper. If you looked at their— what they were eating, their exercise, it was like perfect. They had such negative mindsets. They were very doubtful. They were very pessimistic. A lot of, uh, like anxiousness about, well, it's probably not going to work. Oh, I'm probably going to gain the weight back. And I said, look, I said, it's the mindset. You're, you're literally stopping your progress with this poor mindset. They didn't believe me. So I said, okay, don't change the exercise, don't change the food. Just do what I tell you to do with the mindset stuff for 30 days and let's see what happens. Now, I'll give them credit. They did it. I think they did it just to prove me wrong, but nevertheless, they did it. 30 days later, they come back to me and they go, Both of them, they weren't related, but both of them said, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. We lost all this weight in the last 30 days, way more than the first 30 days. Our energy's up, our heart rate variability is down. I stopped fighting with my spouse." You know, one of them got a new job, you know, all this stuff. "Oh my God, who would have thought?" I said, me. That's why I told you to do it, you know? And they're like, we will never go through life again underestimating the power of mindset. And you have to, you have to. Look, I have clients, all, almost all of my clients, I'm the guy that like is the last ditch effort for most women. These are the women that have tried to lose weight for 15 or 20 years and then we do it in 3 months, okay? So by that time, 15 years, 20 years, they're going, Stu, I don't even think I can. Like Grace, she said, I don't think my body's capable. And this is why I post all my case studies, because when you start seeing all these women who are normal, who dealt with all these challenges— autoimmune, thyroid, gut issues, food sensitivities, you name it— it raises the level of belief that maybe it is possible. You know, even if you just have that, oh, maybe it might be possible because I saw this case study or I saw that case study. That's all you need. But when we start going and you start seeing it, it's obviously a lot easier to believe. Yet I still have some clients that will lose 3, 4, 5 pounds and they go, yeah, but that's just water weight. And I go, stop it. You know, you just— you just discounted your— don't do that. You know, it's So, and they just literally can't believe that they're losing fat. So, they'll say, "Oh, it's just water weight. It'll probably just come right back on." No, no. Okay. And this again is the power of the mindset, you know?

So, love that.

Yeah.

And back to, I think somewhere tucked in there, I mentioned this, but I have a lot of clients who they bear down, they're like, "It's going to be hard, but I can do it." I'm like, What if it was easy? Like, what if we don't have to go there?

And I tell my clients, you know, they'll say, "You just tell me what to do and I can do it." And I said, "No, no, no, no, no, that's the wrong way of thinking." Yeah. Okay, it's a double-edged sword, right? What you wanna say is, "Stu, here's what I'd like to do and lose weight. How can we do that? Is it possible? How could we do that?" Now, I mean, obviously there's some boundaries, you know, if someone said, "Well, how can I eat pizza and drink beer all day and lose weight?" lose weight, I'd say, well, you know, I don't know if that's possible, but let's find like a common medium. But there's a lot is possible. You don't have to be hungry all the time.

Light beer, is that the answer?

Light beer, yeah. All right, um, okay, yes. But, um, you know, it's like, um, you don't have to be hungry, you don't have to have cravings, you don't have to be tired. You know, you can feel satisfied and full and energized and not have cravings and watch the weight just fall right off. This is what my clients do all the time, and they're always in disbelief. And that's good. That makes me happy. That makes me happy.

Okay, I know what my question was from earlier, and I wanted to ask because we were talking a little bit about, you know, there may be a need— so cardio, the umbrella cardio. Just, I would love for you to unpack it. So do you put everything under there? I mean, high intensity and, you know, simply walking at self-selected pace? Or when you say cardio, what is that to you?

Well, I'll tell you the way my clients do it. I don't do any high intensity interval training. My clients— that's where you and I differ. We agree on probably 99.9% of things except maybe that one thing. You have a couple of things.

Oh no, we like to fight. That's how we do it. I'm not—

my clients, their cardio is just walking. You know, it's just like go to the mailbox. That, that, that pace is what I would consider cardio. Now, most of them do weight training 2 or 3 times a week. That is a form of high-intensity interval training. I tell them that that is a high-intense exercise. It's burning sugar as its primary source of fuel. Your heart rate's going to be relatively high if you do it correctly. And so the reason I do the very gentle walking in between is so it's more of like an active recovery. So they're still getting a form of high-intense training, it's just not like HIIT as most people define it.

Good. Okay, perfect. And I, I didn't say that to argue with you, by the way. I, I just was asking for clarification for listeners.

Sure. No, I agree. No, I know.

I think it is a snowball effect. I think, you know, we can be talking about cardio and I think sometimes I've given a good session on that and educating and then somebody will say, "But where do we do the cardio?" And I'm like, "Excuse me? Wait a minute, what?

Was I the only one here?" I guess, look, technically any exercise is cardiovascular if your heart rate goes up.

It's true.

Technically, everything you're doing is cardio. The weight training would be a version of high-intense cardio because you're resting during sets, but you might as well be running, your heart rate might be that high. And walking is cardio. Things like that. So, I mean, I guess that's the standard definition that you and I are probably taught is cardiovascular is if you're using aerobics, if you're using fat primarily as fuel. So that would be just determined by the heart rate.

Sweet.

All right.

So I know I've got a ton more questions. Like we could probably go on for another hour, but I think for a listener who wants to follow up with you, you've piqued her curiosity. Where can she go? I know you do a masterclass, or used to, and I'm hoping that you still have something out there that's new and you can offer somebody. So tell us a little bit about where could, where could listeners go for a little extra homework?

Yeah, great question. So if you will go to stueschafer.com/debra, you can grab some free resources there. Say fat loss masterclass. See, I call it a fat loss, not a weight loss masterclass because we want to lose fat, not just weight. So, you grab a fat loss masterclass there, the menopause weight loss ebook, and a little bit of— a little fun little recipe guide, okay? And, that's at stueshafer.com/debra. And, that's all free. And, that's a great place to get started and explore some of these concepts. And, there's other great resources at the website too.

Beautiful. Awesome, everybody. Stu, it's always great to see you. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for putting up with my banter today.

My pleasure.

I gotta pick on you a little bit.

I know, wouldn't be the same without it.

I know, right? And the next time I come, we will do some cardio. We have to get to Manitou Springs and do those steps.

Steps. I'll watch.

Ah, nice.

Okay.

Listen, y'all, that's not going to happen. So you've heard it here. Okay. There will be pictures, I promise. All right. Thanks again, Stu.

Yep. Take care.