When It's Not Calories In Calories Out, What Next?

It's not calories in, calories out. You knew that one, right? But we're going to dig deeper on this episode into, okay, then what is it? And there's a lot of what's next, actually. So it's not just what's next and it's your hormones. You've heard me say that, but there's a little bit more going on. My guest today is a special new guest friend, I believe, who has a real great insight from her own background. And sometimes we come to the wisdom younger in life because of what's happened to us, and that ends up being the gift that you get to give because of what you've lived and how you've come out on the other side. And I think that's true of my guest. Her name is Stephanie Crassweller. She's the founder of Vitality OET, host of the top 1% ranked metabolism and menopause podcast. She has a bachelor's and a master's in kinesiology and over a decade of clinical and coaching experience. She's helped thousands of women worldwide reclaim their health and energy and vitality. She has a very special gift, and I think you'll hear it, recognize it, and acknowledge it. So many things that if you are an OG, you've heard said here before, but but she'll say it again in a way that is really a story I think many of you can resonate with, but things that we don't even say out loud to ourselves. I think you're gonna like this one. Welcome to the show, Stephanie Kressweiler.

Thanks for having me.

Well, yes. All right. We love this topic. We love this story, and it's both one we like to dive into and one that frustrates many of our listeners. So, yes. Before we get into all the ways of how we're going to help them, I think it also always helps if they understand that you maybe have been in their shoes or maybe their belt or their pants size and you've struggled somehow. Tell us how you got here. And so we know your education. You had a bachelor's and a master's in kinesiology. So inevitably you were going to either teach or you were going to do an exercise or exercise and sport it was probably in your background or thinking in your future, did you know what you wanted to do?

Oh man, since I was a child, I always thought I was going to be a teacher. And then I got to university, you know, like I coached and I thought I was going to be a gym teacher. Kudos to you teachers out there, because I figured it out very quickly. I do not have the patience for that. So thank you for raising our children and doing a great job, um, because I couldn't do it the way you guys do it. It's, it's an insane job. Um, so big kudos to all the teachers out there, first and foremost. But then after my like first year university, I was like, well, this was my dream for my entire life. So now what am I going to do? And, you know, I was doing my kinesiology degree and I was like, oh, I do. I love physical fitness, I love sports. So I'm going to get a job as a trainer, get my certification right away. Did that as I was in school and everyone was fighting over who got to work with the athletes. And I was like, take them, take them all. Like for them to run a little faster or jump a little higher, I was like, eh, you know, it just didn't do it for me. It was just eh. So I got everybody else, which was who I loved. All the chronic disease, we're talking cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, cancer survivors, the whole gamut. I've worked with so much stuff and fell in love with that population because you got to see their health improve, their quality of life, but their confidence, like who they became as a person was so fulfilling. You got to know so much about them, and there was no pride, there was no ego. You had to push them to kind of get them to that place almost. And I, I loved it. I loved it so much. And so that was kind of where it started. And then I decided to do my master's. My supervisor was like, what's another 2 years of school? And I was like, sure, what the heck, why not, right? So I had my exercise therapy certification already, um, went into the whole nervous system side of research and cardiovascular stuff. So I was working with kids born with half a heart, so it was a lot of nervous system, fight or flight versus rest and digest versus blood pressure, like a whole bunch of things. Really enjoyed it. Again, more chronic disease stuff. Loved it, nerded out. But I was on a teaching scholarship. And so, I taught so much at the university level. And then, once I moved into my PhD, I was in an academic scholarship for research. And it took me about a month to be like, "Oh, I actually hate research and I don't like this. I like working with people." And so, made the decision to quit and that was the thing that I've like quit quit ever in my— and it was a very hard decision because there was a lot of like, what will people think? And so then I was like, okay, now we got to figure this out. Um, so I was working for the health region in chronic disease management, um, running all the exercise programs out of that for a few years. Then the wonderful COVID hit, and then I got stuck behind a desk pushing paper and things like that because they didn't know where to put me because you work with people. And then it was non-essential to exercise, which I don't agree with, but that's a whole other thing. And I was like, this is not what I, you know, was doing for school. Um, and so then I, at the same time, was taking my manual osteopathic therapy certification, got a job working as a manager at a gym coaching other coaches, and was always doing nutrition on the side of all of this because it was just fun. But I never knew that you could have a career out of it. I was like, this is just a hobby, fun, just part of the like training package, right? Um, and so then after working at the gym, the day after I wrote manual osteopathic therapy certification, I was fired. And it was because I stood up for my coaches because they were cutting their pay and all this other stuff and I didn't agree with it. And after I stood up for them, I'm like, "There is no way that they are keeping me after this." And I was right. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I was like, "Well, now I get to like pave my own path of what I really want to do." And so I opened my own studio, I had my own training clinic, I was working as a manual osteopathic therapist, exercise therapist, personal trainer, had massage therapists working under me, personal trainers. It was amazing. And then all of a sudden my nutrition stuff just started blowing up and because throughout this entire whole process, I've always worked with women, like 35 to 60. That was my jam. That's who I worked with. And the more and more I worked with people, the more I was like, system is not helping us. Let's be honest. The whole you go to school, they teach you eat less, move more, food pyramid. It's not working because ladies have tried that, right? And so I just kept digging deeper into metabolism and understanding that and then hormones and the whole perimenopause thing just kind of hit me in the face. And I was like, how, how is no one talking about this? About how this affects weight loss and fat loss and just who we are as people and how we function and we become the shell of ourself and we're pushing harder and our body fights back more and the whole thing that everyone's super frustrated with, right? And so, for myself, as I got deeper into this, 2 things kind of happened was, one, my hormones in my 20s, once I started getting tested and stuff, were postmenopausal. I had like little to no estrogen, little to no progesterone, my testosterone was in the toilet, my cortisol was through the roof, my androgens were super high, I was dealing with PCOS and had no freaking idea. But it all made sense based on my history, my stress growing up. I grew up in a household that wasn't the best environment. I had a very abusive dad, unfortunately, both physically, emotionally, mentally. All those things, and just, you know, live in a house where, you know, we didn't even have a showerhead. It was just like the hose hanging out of the wall. There was mold in our house. And so, just the stress of everything totally made sense as to where I got to where I was and working 60 hours a week and all the crazy things. And then, I lost my mom very suddenly out of nowhere. She had had cancer multiple, multiple years ago. It was almost a decade. And then she came into my office one day complaining of back pain, and I was like, sure. And I hadn't seen her for about 2 months because I had been traveling. Then she got sick with COVID She had been traveling before that. So it was about 2 months that I hadn't seen her. And she like had lost like 20 pounds in 2 weeks. She walked in, her like face was sunken in, her skin was gray. And I knew from the second she walked in that I was going to lose her. Like, I was like, there is no No way. And so I screened her for her back pain stuff and I'm like, I'm taking you to a merge. And my mom being the martyr that she is, like most of us is like, I don't want to bother anyone. I'll be fine. I'm like, no, like we're, we're done. And I think we're really good at advocating for other people. I think we're really crappy at advocating for ourselves. And so took her in and she was a person who was active her whole life. Um, and she went from like cycling. A couple of hours a day to not being able to walk up the stairs without getting winded in the past 6 months, got diagnosed with asthma. I said no, asked her to fight harder. And she was just, again, not wanting to be that person who, who causes a fuss with the doctors. Right. And so I told them I was not leaving until they scanned her chest because I knew that colon cancer, which she had had diagnosed 10 years prior and was in remission for all those years, if it spread, went to lung and liver. And they're like, well, it's so rare that that'll happen. I'm like, I don't care. So I did a bit of a scene where I was like, I'm not leaving until you check her out. And so they did. And her whole left lung was collapsed because she had a baseball-sized tumor on her left lung. They did the rest of the scans and it was everywhere in her brain, her bones, her liver. I lost her 3 weeks later. She was conscious for 2 of those weeks and it was crazy. And then this happened just before I really got into like deep into hormones. And then I started looking back at all the history and really understanding like Oh my gosh, like she was so stressed out from the way that we grew up with a husband who was not super supportive, was always dieting, always. Like she would have lunch that was like lettuce with tomato and salt. Like that was— oh, that was her lunch. Um, was always very active, was, you know, being the martyr, the perfectionist, never wanted to ask for help, would do it all, would like give you the shirt off of her back. Just the kind of person that we see women being all the time. And I look back and, you know, she had fibroids, and I'm like, there was probably some estrogen dominance there, which makes sense because stress is going to knock down your progesterone. Like, everything just started making sense, and I really started getting into the whole, you know, fat burning pathway versus muscle building pathway and storage pathway and how that works and why so many women can't get into that fat burning pathway. And Yes, obviously I'm learning it because we want to see fat loss in women. But the issue is, is that we abuse those pathways so much that then we can't get into that state. We can't clean up all those dead cells. They accumulate and it becomes the perfect breeding ground for cardiovascular disease, for diabetes, for certain cancers. We're super highly inflamed, but we keep pushing and pushing and pushing and we're not sleeping. We're getting up early to go work out. We're eating less, we're moving more, we're cutting our carbs, we're running on caffeine and processed protein bars. And just go, go, go, and saying yes to everyone else and being that person for everyone except ourselves, and we don't realize the discomfort that we have with like our bodies or trying to achieve all these things end up taking years off our life. Like, we're like, "I just want to lose 10 pounds now. I want to have this job now. I'm going to say yes to all the things." And so, our like temporary discomfort now that it sucks, I can acknowledge that when we're stuck and we're overweight because Can you imagine after I lost my mom, I dove into work because I didn't want to deal with that grief, right? And I went through this whole— hormones were at a point where I just could not ignore them anymore. I needed to take care of myself. But we don't realize that we trade our discomfort right now for years off of our life. What we do in our 30s, 40s, 50s dictates what 80 looks like. It dictates whether you know, you're going to be that grandma in a nursing home that your kids have to bribe to have your grandkids come visit you once every 2 months to play Uno, and you have to watch everything from a screen on Facebook, all the highlights, instead of being the grandma that gets to be at the soccer games, that gets asked to babysit, that gets to be active and do the things. And we don't realize how much we're trading. And this is where, you know, the, the whole fitness industry does drive me crazy sometimes because we just push so hard to eat less, move more, eat less, move more. And you don't realize the consequences of like, okay, I'm trying to get this person to lose this weight, but doing it the improper way time and time and time again, you are taking years off of women's life. So yes, all of this brought me to like help women with weight loss, but it's doing it the right way so you can be here long term. Because my mom never got to meet my kids. My mom never got to meet my husband, walk me down the aisle. It makes holidays hard because you don't expect to not have them there for all these things. And it's not just that you miss them, it's you're, you're missing the things that could have been, right? And so for me, I'm very passionate about let's make sure we do things the right way. So you're here for the long haul, because if I can help one person, you know, be here longer so their daughters don't have to go through what I went through, Like that makes everything for me. So that's a very long-winded story, but.

Yeah, there's a lot in there to be sure. So let's talk a little bit about the mechanics. So the audience knows, especially the OGs here, the eat less, move more dogma that I've talked about. We renamed that actually. So the tagline for "You Still Got It, Girl," the book I wrote in 2015, is the opposite. So it's eat more, exercise less. Yeah, but they still, um, you know, 40 years of conditioning, or 50 depending on how old the woman is, is not going to be erased by a single line in a single book they hear one time. And then when she goes to order at this, at the store or at the restaurant, she's going to be faced with the same thing. And default habit gravity is very heavy. So let's talk about why doesn't that combination work ever? And why is it worse for a woman over 40?

Oh yeah, so I always like to say, like, there's a whole metabolism aspect that I'm sure many people are very versed in, that if you eat low calorie for too long, your body adapts. That becomes your new maintenance, right? So obviously then when we eat more than that, we're going to gain weight. But we also get to a point where we cut our calories so low that it can result in weight gain. And so What I like to kind of—

you know what, hold on, let's say that again for the people in the back, okay? Because you just cruised right through that, and I want everybody to hear that. The reason that you may be gaining weight is what, Stephanie?

Because you're eating too little. And this is the way I like to think of, like, an analogy is like you have this stress bucket of how much stress you can tolerate, and eating low calorie is a stress on your body. Exercise is a stress on your body. There's— life is stressful, right? We have jobs, we have kids, we have lack of sleep, lack of support, all the things. There's so many things. From the moment we wake up, we are stressed out, right? Alarm goes off, we're checking our emails, having coffee on an empty stomach, we're fasting, we're not eating enough calories, we're cutting our carbs, we're working out like crazy, or waking up at 4 AM to do a HIIT class, which is probably not going to be beneficial for you. For most people, right, at this point, we are seeing your go, go, go, go, go. You're skipping your meals, you're rushing through your lunch, working through your lunch break, you're the taxi mom, you get home, a dog poops on the floor. Like, it's just— life is just a lot, but we add more stress. It's like, I want to lose weight, so you cut your calories, you cut your carbs, you're fast, you can do more exercise.

Okay, hold on a second. Yeah, yeah, I want to call everybody's attention to this too, because I think that a lot of women feel like you can silo this, but this is diet and this is exercise and all my stressors can kind of be individually isolated. And it's just not true. If you're an OG here, you know I love sleep and sleep is the ticket to you both feeling like working out in the morning and getting all the rewards from exercise that you deserve. So loving your sleep environment is so important. My bedding of choice when I moved and refreshed is Cozy Earth. I love the luxury feeling right here at home. There's more though, a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty. Funny how it used to be shoes and jewelry and now it's PJs and sheets. If you treasure a good night like I do, you'll want to head over to CozyEarth.com and use Flipping 50 for up to 20% off. If you get a post-purchase survey, by the way, tell them Flipping 50 sent you.

Well, and like, you don't have to acknowledge that you're stressed for your body to perceive stress. Every time you're on, it's a stress on your body. Like, my Oura Ring after this will be like, oh girl, you ran a marathon. Yeah, because I'm on, right? Like, there's a— my— there's a demand on my body, therefore that is a stress. That's kind of how it's classified. And you can't control what your body deems as stress. This has a lot to do with, like, your past history. Like, for me, with, like, my childhood and stuff. Yeah, it does not take much for my body to go, alarm bells, we're in danger! Even though I've done the therapy, even though I've done the work, I'm good, I love my life now. If I travel and I also try to work out the next day my body legitimately shuts down. I'm so inflamed, I'm up 2 pounds. It does not take much. And so, it's understanding what your body actually views as a stress, but most of us are just like, "Nah, that's not it." We're just like, "No, I'm fine. I'm used to it. I'm good." And it's like, "No, we're not." Okay, okay. Another—

we got to pause again. So, there are a lot of mic drops throughout here, y'all. So, I want you to pay attention to this. And there are so many of you who I know are very deserving of results. Because you're putting in the work. It is, it's if we could just make it for effort, you should get rewarded, but it's not gonna work that way. And I want you to hear what Stephanie just said about her bucket. She's probably very sensitive to her own stress level and her tipping point. Many of us are not because we haven't maybe had the childhood trauma and the awareness piece of actually working through that. That's hard work, by the way, that lifting that muscle.

Oh, it took a long time.

Yeah, right.

To figure it out.

But because she's aware of it, she can put together the fact that if she travels, 'cause travel is, you know, disoriented sleep, travel times, different kinds of food, different kinds of schedule, it's just a stressor for your body. It's a lot of work for it. And then you go to work out, which normally if you were fresh and at home, might be perfect, but your usual business-as-usual workout potentially is going to throw you over the edge. She's super aware of it, but many of you who may be experiencing that— I can't lose weight. In fact, no matter what I do, I'm more inflamed. If anything, I'm going the opposite direction. I just want you to take the clue. She's taken one for the team so you don't have to. Just, you know, kind of lean into that a little bit, even if this is just We're planting a seed so that if you hear it again, that'll be that one more time to get you across the finish line to maybe say, okay, I'll listen this time. Okay, sorry to interrupt.

No, no, it's all good. So what happens is like you have this stress bucket of what you can tolerate. Everyone's bucket will be a little bit different depending on, you know, lifestyle, genetics will be in there a little bit, past trauma, past dieting history, hormones massively impact this. And so what happens when the stress bucket overflows is that cortisol, that stress hormone we all hear about and demonize like crazy, goes up and like we need to have adequate amounts of cortisol, very important. But when it's too high for too long, that's where we start having these issues. And so what happens when that stress bucket overflows and cortisol goes up is we see hormone production goes down. We don't like that because we don't feel good. Also, body just doesn't function as well. Our blood sugar actually gets worse. And so this is like something I always like to remind people is you don't have to be eating carbs. You don't even have to be eating for your blood sugar to go up. We see this in our clients all the time with their CGM trackers where If they are stressed, body goes, ah, I need energy. Cortisol tells your liver, dump sugar into my bloodstream to provide me with energy. And then if this happens all the time, you become insulin resistant despite the fact that you don't even eat that many carbs. And so we see this all the time. So that happens. We become more insulin resistant, which already happens. Nostalgia goes down. Not super fun. Then we see inflammation goes up. Inflammation actually blocks that fat burning pathway, making fat loss even harder. We see our liver detoxification slows down. So now toxins accumulate a little bit more. We see inflammation goes up a little bit more. We also see digestion gets worse. So if you're someone whose bloating gets worse throughout the day, this is usually an inkling that we're probably a little stressed because if we're in that fight or flight state, blood goes away from our gut to our arms and legs to, you know, fight the bear, run away from the bear. Digestion slows down. And so now we get bloating that gets worse. We get gassy. Sometimes we get like acid reflux as well. We also see energy gets worse. We have more cravings because our blood sugar is erratic. If sleep gets worse, just one night's poor sleep makes us 25% more insulin resistant the next day. So that's not great either. It's harder to put on muscle mass. And so you can see how all these things are probably preventing you from being able to lose weight and actually causing weight gain. And so all of us start to panic because we're seeing this weight gain or we're struggling to see changes. And so we cut calories. You know what that does? It's like a fire hose gets turned on. You're just overflowing this poor bucket. We're not doing any favors. What we want to do is, A, can we make this bucket bigger? Can we slow down how much water goes into it and actually take some water out? So if you want to add that calorie deficit in, that stress, add that exercise in, it doesn't cause negative side effects. And for most of us, we are not patient enough to want to do that. And we're like, no, We're so primed that I must be busy, it must be hard, I must put in tons of effort to get results. That's what we've been told, right? You look everywhere, it's like, I'll sleep when I'm dead, got to be productive, like that whole hustle culture, which is crazy. It's not doing us any favors. And then our, our way that we relax is we sit on a couch having junk food, scrolling through our phones, just constantly getting blue light, more stimulus in our eyes, which keeps cortisol elevated, and we just continue to struggle. And so what we also need to acknowledge is in perimenopause and menopause, that bucket gets smaller. It's a lot easier for water, like the hose, to get turned up. And so for myself too, it's understanding what turns that hose on more. So for me, I can increase exercise quite a bit before my body views it as like an unmanageable stress. For me, if I drop calories below 1,600, it is like a fire hose turns on. I cannot be in a deficit for longer than 6 weeks because it's— my body starts— that stress response goes crazy. And so it's understanding everyone's a little bit different in terms of what's going to crank that hose on and what's been most effective to help, you know, take some water out of that bucket. But all of us are just like, follow this diet. It's all calories in, calories out all the time. And then with, with estrogen declining, she really exposes what's going on under the surface. It's like one of my favorite analogies. She is like mom of the house. So mom, like, you know, she's doing laundry, she's cooking, she's cleaning, she's feeding the dog, getting the lunches ready. You know, the fridge is stocked, all the things. Mom gets sick. And so now all of a sudden the house is a disaster. There's no food in the fridge, the sink is piling up with dishes, there is mildew in the dishwasher or the washing machine because clothes haven't been swapped over to the dryer because mom takes care of that too.

I know that guy, by the way.

It's like, is this mom's fault or is the household not working together? And so what happens is estrogen, we should be thanking her Because what she has actually done is she's been picking up the slack and kind of dealing with the abuse underneath the surface that we've been doing but getting away with, you know, the fasting, not getting enough protein, pushing really hard, keeping inflammation down, keeping blood sugar in check. Like, she is so important for so many parts of our body and how we function and how we feel that then when she leaves, she's like, okay, You cannot deny this anymore. This is what's been happening under the surface. This is what I've been trying to, like, you know, keep up with. This is your problem now, is basically what happens. And so we're forced to really reassess, was I doing the best things for my body? Probably not. And it's probably been a few decades. And so now we got to do some work. And can HRT help with some symptoms? Absolutely. But that lifestyle is still going on underneath the surface. And if we don't address that lifestyle, again, we're not addressing the root cause of what's going to cause that heart attack, what's going to cause the diabetes, what's going to cause, you know, the, the cancer, the whatever else, right? Like, we need to fully understand that, like, HRT can absolutely help us with symptoms and there are so many great benefits to it. But if we don't change you know, all the root cause type stuff of the stress and the sleep and working out the right way and actually fueling our bodies the right way, it's just— you're not going to fix it. It's, it's still happening under the surface. And so the moral of the story is your body's got to work as a team because estrogen's been— she's tired. She's, she's tired.

She's left the building is basically the deal. So, and, and what I want everybody to hear is that Yes, hormone therapy can actually be very supportive, but when you take it, if you are optimized all the other ways, it works so much better. It does not do the heavy lifting, pun intended and not. So we're not just talking about will it help you gain lean muscle— it actually won't. It may help you preserve losses. It is definitely much more closely tied to bone benefit and preventing loss of that. It's not going to help you gain bone, but it may help you not lose bone. But you still, again, do have to do the heavy lifting. But the key is making sure that you're optimized before. And all hormonal changes have done for you is make you aware of what really was never working. You just got away with it.

Yep. 100%.

Just a reminder. So even your, your 20-something daughter who you think, oh, She's fine, she looks great. Under the hood, she's headed for the same direction you are, right? And so you've got to, we have to talk. You know, this generation who are 50, 60, and 70 listeners, we need to be talking to those daughters, daughters-in-law, getting them bone scans when they're 30. I know I'm such a fun mother-in-law, but it's important. And they will be so glad they've done it because they're now not comparing themselves to some arbitrary, same sex, same gender, young, apparently healthy number. They're comparing themselves to themselves. And it's really important to know that we don't necessarily all reach peak. We're not making it there. There are 20-year-olds walking around because of so much screen time potentially and so many other toxins. So all of this is just so very relevant for a woman in menopause. But also it's before and during and long after that all of these things really apply. I want to talk about something because just by name everybody got here and they're probably thinking, all right, they're going to talk about metabolism or what I need to eat to boost my metabolism. I want to talk about the C word, the carbs.

It's my favorite word. Is it?

Okay, well, who knew? Okay, you know, and I think everybody is like, but, you know, I really love carbs. And then they feel guilty or can't feel like they can't say that out loud, potentially. And then there's the, but I feel so good when I eat keto. Or somebody, somebody listening inevitably has flirted with or is doing carnivore and in some virtuous path to that. Talk a little bit about carbohydrates and let's dispel this myth or, or maybe let's embrace it. I shouldn't give it away, but are carbs really the cause of weight gain or poor blood sugar?

So for us, when we're looking at improving clients' blood sugars, we have—

who's us? Who's us?

Our, our team, our, our coaching team. Okay. Um, so we've coached like over 1,000 women easily by now, if like— there's definitely more than that. And we like— A1C is a very common concern for women coming into our program. They're like, I haven't changed anything and my blood sugar is crap and I don't know what to do anymore. Um, and so this is what the fun part is. We have done keto with maybe 2 clients for like a 6-week period and then just added back carbs. Um, we've actually improved people's A1C by increasing their carbohydrate intake, by increasing their calorie intake. And the reason that we see this a lot is that, you know, A, if you're never exposing your body to it, like, then, you know, like, you know, you never give your kid candy, let's say, and then you give them candy and they're just like this crazy child and you're like, what is happening? Their body doesn't know what to do with it. Right. And so we're kind of the same way. But also what we have to acknowledge is that whole stress component I talked about where you're very highly stressed, we're not getting enough nutrition and we're not getting enough carbohydrates, calories, and body goes, oh, I need energy, dump sugar into your bloodstream. The best way that we can control our blood sugar and make sure our body is actually getting adequate energy so that we can control that, because stress is a lot harder to control, you know, than, than our food intake, it should be anyways, is having those carbohydrates that we have adequate energy throughout your day. We don't be snacking all day because then our blood sugar stays elevated all day. We want to see it come up slowly, maintain for a little bit, slowly comes down, and we want to see this nice slow up and down throughout the day. A lot of people, what happens is we wake up, we're super stressed, we are go, go, go, having coffee on an empty stomach, not having breakfast half the time. And so we're waking up in a very high stress state. And if we don't eat, cortisol goes up, dumps blood sugar into your bloodstream. And so then we're going to see that blood sugar go up. Whereas if you have breakfast, we'll probably see less of a high increase in your blood sugar. It maintains slowly, comes back down. We know during perimenopause and menopause, our blood sugar control isn't as good. And when we're looking at A1C, what that really tells you is, you know, how much, how much sugar has stuck to your cells in the last however long, right? It's like a 3 to 6 month period depending on the, on the test. And so when we're looking at this, yes, carbohydrates are obviously gonna influence that, but the real thing is, is how sticky are those cells? So how easy is it for sugar to attach to them? And obviously, the more exposure that we have to carbohydrates, the longer it stays in our bloodstream for, the more opportunity there is for the sugars to stick to our cells. So is the problem how much we're eating of carbohydrates or that our body isn't good at moving carbohydrates into cells and now they're getting stuck to the cells that show your A1C, right? And so a lot of the time is sugars in our bloodstream too long from stress, right? Highly processed foods, having carbohydrates on their own. Like if I'm going to have a donut, I'm gonna have it after a meal and probably go for a walk after, cuz having a balanced meal beforehand will stabilize those blood sugars. Going for a walk will help mobilize the sugars into my bloodstream. I'm not gonna have this crazy massive spike, whereas if I had a donut on its own, not gonna bode well for me, right? The more muscle mass that you have, the more parking spots you have for sugar to go into. So the more muscle you have, the more carbohydrates you can actually have, which is the best reason ever, cuz I love pasta. And so if I can, just make sure I maintain my muscle mass, build more muscle mass that my body has more places to use carbohydrates. Amazing, right? We know there are— we know carbs are going to help bring those stress levels down, your cortisol down. We actually encourage women in our program to have carbohydrates before bed, which people are like, I'm sorry, did you just say carbs? You want me to eat? And then also before bed, I'm definitely going to turn into a pumpkin. Like, there is no way that that's going to help. And what we see is if we're pairing a slow digesting carb, so a carb that has fiber in it And by the way, the only way you can get fiber is from carbohydrates. So that helps your gut microbiome. Prebiotics also come from carbohydrates. But what we see is having that higher fiber carbohydrate before bed paired with a fat or a protein, that's going to help, you know, blood sugars will come up a little bit, they'll stabilize and then come back down. That's good. So you're not going to experience blood sugar crashes throughout the night. But having that carbohydrate before bed helps bring cortisol down. When cortisol comes down, melatonin can be produced. Melatonin is your sleepy hormone. It's also a very powerful antioxidant, which will help with inflammation, which we know is an issue when estrogen declines, and is also going to help us be able to lose weight because inflammation blocks that fat burning pathway. And so what we're seeing is, you know, when women wake up at nighttime, we're seeing usually that blood sugar is dropping, and their cortisol increases, which wakes them up. That's what wakes you up in the morning is a higher cortisol level. Because sugars drop too low, body goes, oh, I need sugar. How do we get more sugar? Cortisol goes up, liver dumps sugar into your bloodstream. Now you're awake trying to solve world hunger at 3 AM in the morning. We're making a list of all the things you gotta do the next day, and then you're up for like 2 hours, and next thing you know, the alarm's going off. And so being strategic as to where you incorporate your carbohydrates is so important. They have so many good properties to it. Your fruits, your veggies, potatoes increase serotonin. Serotonin is your happy hormone. Potatoes can literally help improve your happiness. We want carbohydrates. And so this is just understanding how much is appropriate for you. How can we make sure your body is good at taking the sugars and putting it into the cells that need to use it? So this looks like, you know, mitochondrial health, having enough muscle, being active, that we are, you know, improving our insulin sensitivity by getting enough sleep the night before, walking throughout our day. So we're utilizing those sugars because if we're just sitting here all day, yeah, my body doesn't need much energy. Just by breaking up movement, 10 squats every 45 minutes to an hour— there's a study that just came out— improves insulin sensitivity. It's great. And so it doesn't have to be this crazy, huge, massive commitment. But understand that carbohydrates, they give you energy. They can help support your stress hormones. They can help you with sleep. All of those things will help your metabolism. They will help you feel your best. It's, it's crazy to me when we completely remove, you know, our, our food groups and people are like, well, I feel bloated when I have carbs. And it's like, well, are you, are you having like super highly processed carbs versus like potato, rice? Is it more like a donut? And chips. There's a very big difference between those things, right? But also, are you eating a normal serving size? Because when we deprive ourselves of them all the time— yeah, we have pasta, it's not like a regular cup of pasta, we're eating like the equivalent of 4 servings because we're so excited. And then, you know, we— of course we're going to feel bloated because 1 gram of carbs requires like 3 to 4 grams of water to digest. That has some weight to it. It's not fat. So it's understanding, you know, there's multiple factors here on how to improve our body's utilization of carbohydrates. Cutting carbs just isn't the answer. Like, we see it all the time. Like, I'm fasting, I'm cutting carbs, my blood sugar isn't getting better. Yeah, I know, because you're also super stressed and working out like crazy, and it's hard to build muscle mass that way. Like, there's just so many factors involved, and this is why I don't like when people are very hard in the sand of stuff, because the true answer to everything is it depends. Which sucks. I had a university professor who said that and I used to hate it because then in the exams you have to be like, "Well, it depends on this and this and this and this." And I'm like, "Yeah, he was right and that lesson served me well, as much as it pains me to say." Well, you know, I mean, the older you get, the more you realize it's true about everything. Everything, yeah.

There's no one answer. So truthfully, and I want to just summarize a little bit here for everybody. So this is very similar to the 1-2-3 formula we use. We start with very few carbs. At, at breakfast. So we set you up really well with a high protein and optimal insulin levels throughout the day, but we end with the most at dinner. And it's— yes, it's a shock to everybody's system, but it helps to release serotonin. Potatoes release serotonin. Serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine are your feel-good hormones. When those are up, cortisol can't be. They're like on a teeter-totter and they win. So if you put serotonin up or you have sex with somebody you like, okay, and you're holding hands, you're hugging, you're petting a dog, really hard to also have a lot of cortisol. You're, you're going to help yourself considerably. But the same happens if you have pasta and you love pasta, or you have a potato and you like potato. And it's, it's kind, but I'm so glad you came back to that. The problem isn't, you know, having the pasta or the potato. It's because we deprive ourselves of it, then when we have it, we really have it, right? Often it's just your body doesn't know what to do with it. We don't reintroduce it easily or slowly, and we don't take advantage of the simple things like the sequence of it in your meal. If you put it last, it's gonna have a very different impact than if you have it and put it first. So if So, so much good here. And the other thing I don't want to skip over, listeners, is, you know, the reason if you— we just happen to be meeting and talking today on a Thursday. If you wanted to be a little more lean in, in that dress on Saturday night, you could definitely go keto and you'd probably be there. And that'd be about long enough. And then you could have your pasta at dinner and get out of that dress whenever, right? But the thing is, long-term keto generally backfires. You could cycle in and out of it, but for our women, we are happier, we poop, and lots of good things happen when you're having those carbohydrates. So cycling them in and out makes sense. That 1 part carb to 3 parts water stored in your body is why you feel that immediate rush of, my body loves this. It does. But then that honeymoon period kind of gets over. And so really easy to walk around with less water, a little bit more dehydrated, and not feeling like you've got the energy. If your body hasn't become fat adapted, you're looking for where's that immediate energy that I used to have? I'm feeling flat. I don't quite have it. And the body could fat adapt, but some of us are not built that way. The, the DNA in us doesn't like it. I actually have a DNA that likes a little bit higher carb than I probably give it. So mentally, even knowing it intellectually, we can still wrestle with these things. And I just throw that out there so that, you know, you're, you're potentially never going to get it perfectly. You're always going to have to remind yourself, wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay, let's, you know, sometimes just because you have a thought does not mean is right, right? Yeah, so good. So there's so much that we've unpacked. I want to come back and kind of look at this one thing because I think this is really relevant for a lot of women, like in who we are. And you've had to deal with this in many different ways at many different times in your life, I'm, I'm sure, based on the, the history you've given us. But women kind of have an identity by the time they get to 40 or 50 or 60. And it meant, because everybody's journey through menopause is slightly different, you know, it could, it could slap you in the face at 40, 50, 60, or maybe not till 70. There are women who don't have hot flashes, and then all of a sudden they're in their late 60s and they do. And it's like, what? Like the gift that just keeps giving. But your identity sometimes is wrapped up in, well, I was a runner, or I was somebody who used to, you know, exercise all the time, or I was the fitness, you know, instructor, and I was always in front and I always looked good. Or it's, you know, I'm the mom everybody can depend on me. It's something. Talk a little bit about identity and how that might be a battle for us in making changes that would serve us well.

Oh man, this is a conversation we have all the time. Like, in our coaching program, we have like Monday mindset calls that we do every week, and it's this kind of conversation because this is the hardest part. Like, most women can follow a plan, right? Most people, if you give the education that like makes sense— the identity piece is like, it's really hard because We will always act in accordance to who we believe we are, right? Like if you think you're an impatient person, you will always act impatient. If you are a spontaneous person or you believe to be spontaneous, you act spontaneously versus someone who considers himself more risk-averse won't take risks, right? Like it's a subconscious thing that's happening. It's not like, okay, you analyze a situation. How does a person like me? Act in a situation like this. Like, it's just your body just goes, goes, goes, goes, goes. And so the identity piece is very hard because we act based on who we think we are. And there is a big aspect of grief that I think people need to acknowledge. And two things can be true at once. You can be, you know, potentially excited for this new chapter in your life. I think it can be a lot harder for some women because, you know, since we're little girls, a lot of us are like, like, one day I'm gonna get married and I'm gonna have kids, I'm gonna have this job, and then I'm gonna have grandkids. But there's like this whole period in between that we didn't really dream about. And then we're like, can I just flip this page? Like, let's just skip to being grandma, right? Like, you— it's this weird like limbo phase, and so much happens. And I think also this phase in your life, you, you learn so much more about yourself because is, you know, you become an empty nester and stuff, and you gotta rediscover what do you actually like, who are your true friends. Are you friends with them because of just proximity, or are you friends because you have the same values, you enjoy the same stuff? Because a lot of us, we almost become passive and become obsessed with everybody else as opposed to what we're doing for ourselves a lot of the time. And so there's this aspect sometimes that we can be excited of, you know, becoming an empty nester, having the house to ourselves, then there's the grief that goes along with it. And so the first thing I always say is like, we need to make some space for that grief because every woman's going to go through it, whether it's change in job, retirement, a move, right? Maybe divorce. A lot of people get divorced, right? 50%. Like, there's your kids moving out. Like, there's, there's so many things. Parents passing. There's so much that happens. That changes our identity or what we believe to be our identity because, you know, we tie ourselves to these roles other people gave us. We may not have even chosen them for ourselves, right? And it's just like how we were raised and kind of what was expected of us. And it's this whole new navigating thing. And so for myself, I'm a woman of faith, and so I found that very helpful. Um, it's newer, like a couple years. And so I found that very helpful for me to be like, I am who God created me to be, not, you know, what so-and-so says I am. Other people putting me in boxes, labeling me. And a lot of us, you know, we are so quick to accept the negative labels people put on us as opposed to the positive things. Like, how hard is it for a lot of us to take a compliment? We just like cannot fathom that it is true. But if someone says one mean thing to us and then we just cling on to that for the rest of our Like I can tell you so many things people said to me in high school, in university, exes that I've had that have just stayed there forever. And we cling onto them so hard. And it's like, what if we clinged on just as hard to the positive things people said about us? And that takes work. It takes a lot of practice. And so something that I did, it was out of a book called David Perceived He Was King. And it's a faith-based book, but it's all about identity. And one of the exercises in there was, you know, reach out to a handful of friends, some who know you very well and for a long time, and some who you are newer to your close friend group. And you ask them these different questions. So the first one is, what do you consider my 3 strongest strengths to be? Give me an example of like a story. And then what's been my biggest impact in your life? Completely changed how I felt about myself, um, and the way I viewed myself. Myself. I sent it to some coworkers. I sent it to people I've known since I was a kid, like my aunt and my uncle. I sent it to people that I've known and I would consider my best friends, but have known me for like 5 years versus like 10 years versus like 2 years. Um, and so, and it, it feels weird to ask. I'm like, hey, I'm like reading this book. It told me to do this exercise. I want to do it. And they're like, oh sure, that's fine. And it was like not a big deal instead of being like, tell me what you love about me. Cause that's kind of a weird thing to do, right? We're very uncomfortable with that. And I was very surprised by some things and not so much the others. So a lot— the thing that came up often, which I figured would be strength and resilience, because with my background and where I grew up and people who know what I've been through, I knew that was going to be something that came up. But there were other things that really surprised me. Like, I did not consider myself a risk-taker at all. I'm— I like my lists, I have pros and cons, plan things out. And my uncle was like, No, you're a risk taker. You have done things with like business and stuff that I— there's no way it made sense on paper. I'm like, you know what, you're right. And so when it comes to business, I am very okay now making bigger risks and taking chances and changes because I identify with that now because he gave me the example of it. I'm like, oh, I, I am that. That's amazing. I had a friend that told me I was patient. I'm like, I do not consider myself a patient person. And she's like, Steph, you will talk to people about the same stuff on the internet for like months and give them like the similar advice to try and like word it a different way until they make the changes and they, they do the things. That's so exciting. You are so patient. I'm like, oh my gosh, I am patient. And now lucky for my family, they get to experience this patience now because I act that way because I believe that I'm a patient person. And so it was very cool to see. Traits that have stuck between people who've known me for a long time and not as long. So there's like a consistent like characteristic that's kind of there. But it's very interesting to see the things that really resonated with people when I was younger versus, you know, newer characteristics that I might have, or the new person I've become that is more apparent in like people who know me for a shorter period of time because they don't cling on to who I was as much. So it was very cool to see how your identity and evolution kind of changed. And it was like the newer people that it really helped me kind of accept myself a little bit more, step into this new kind of like role that I'm in. And it was, it was really great. And I think that's the biggest part is we're always going to act based on who we think we are. This is where self-sabotage comes in, right? Whether you're going to maintain your habits or not when you're traveling or whatever it might be, the food choices you make when you're under peer pressure with friends. Like for me, I don't drink alcohol anymore because, you know, my mom passed away from colon cancer and we know it's not good for you. For me, that value for me makes that decision to not drink alcohol very, very easy. And so I'm just a person who doesn't drink alcohol easy. I act in accordance to that, right? But if we don't have that strong connection to it or that strong value, that strong purpose, it makes it very hard. And so a lot of the times, a lot of us just accept what other people have told us in the negative. So this exercise was very good for me to see the positive, because, you know, growing up being bullied and abused and things like that, it's very easy to hold on to— I'm not worthy, I'm not strong, I'm, you know, never going to achieve much— all those little things that you know, came up. One was like an excuse to say you have no common sense. You're book smart but no common sense. I actually have a lot of common sense, thank you. Um, but you know, for a long time that's what I thought. And so the identity part is the part that will dictate your long-term success. It's the part that's like painful too, right? Saying goodbye to who we used to be, the unknown of who we're becoming. It can be exciting But it can be scary, right? But I think acknowledging that having faith in something and being afraid of something, being anxious of something and being excited for something is the same thing. We're just choosing to believe the bad more than the good, right? Fear versus faith. I believe something bad is going to happen more than I believe something good is going to happen. When it comes to anxiety versus excitement, it's anticipation of the unknown. Are you anticipating the good or anticipating the bad? That dictates how you're going to view it, right? And so it's— it takes time to make those shifts and view things differently because a lot of us are just, you know, just so used to looking for the bad and being on defense all the time because we're expecting the worst all the time. And it makes it very hard to progress and grow and become the person you're supposed to be when we're living that way.

So true. So very true. And I got a good friend, and many times listeners have been here for a long time, you heard her. So Dr. Joan Rosenberg, you know, says and said this from her TEDx talk, you know, we get very used to thinking about ourselves the way we've always thought about ourselves. So that default, again, habit gravity— thoughts are a habit, and we repeat something like 90% of the ones we had yesterday. So unless you are trying really hard not to and catching yourself in it, it's really easy to go there. So surrounding yourself with books or people or information, even, even in the form of this podcast as you're walking, to start getting you aware. And even if you are, while you're listening, if you're walking, looking around you as opposed to looking down at your feet in the path and just starting to notice things. If you start as to notice things in your physical environment, it makes it easier to do about your thoughts and your actions and the things that you take for granted that are the habits that you do on a day-to-day basis. Stephanie, it's been such a pleasure. Where can listeners find you?

Yes, so we have a podcast called The Metabolism and Menopause Podcast. You can find me on socials at Stephanie Crassweller or on Instagram at Vitality OET. Stephanie.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for being a guest.

Thanks for having me.