Who's Really Fighting for You? How to Sort the Noise in Women's Fitness

Okay, heads up right out of the gate. I wanna give you this, this episode will land a little different. So we're not actually unpacking primary research today. We're not talking about the best protocol for bone density or gaining muscle loss or getting it back. None of that. Although we are talking about the researchers And they are not in the room, so we are talking about them. I suppose that could be likened to gossip. But what we're really doing is talking about social media wars, what's going on, and honestly, what's really going on. And this may be, depending on the length, a two-part series. So just be prepared. We'll do as much as we can in this one. And then what I'd love to do is to have you feel exactly what's coming. And that would be who's in the industry that you'd want to follow and for what specific content you would follow them and give you a little bit of the narrative of what's their, what's their stance, what do they believe in, and what will you get when you go to them. So that if you are looking for a specific piece of information, you know, there is always a certain researcher that I'll go through or to when I want something specific. And why wouldn't I give that to you as well? So I hope that you think of this podcast collectively, not just this episode, as a source of information and a filtered vetted way to look at it. But if I do that, just like anyone else would do that, it removes you from the actual studies. Now, in some ways that's welcome because I'm helping to make something that is scientific into practical application and terms. And I'm able to give you the side of things from not having been in the lab, doing the actual statistics and the breakdown, but actually the practical application of it for 42 years and the ability to say, "Yes, and the science is great, but unfortunately, every subject, every you, listener, is not like every subject in a controlled study." So the practical application of every scientific study is not necessarily going to fit, and it shouldn't leave you baffled or thinking you're doing something wrong. All right. Really long intro, but I wanted to give you a heads up on where we're going today and a little bit more on that in a minute before we jump in and literally talk about people who are not in the room. Politely and respectably. You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down, you're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50. The pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12, right here on this podcast, and, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week, you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger. Okay. First of all, I want you to know this. I probably sat down, did a draft, wrote this up, did some research, kind of organized this podcast episode and the content about a month ago, maybe even longer. And I've cooled off because I needed to. I cooled off since because there was just so much stuff coming out there that it was, it felt like it was inflammatory. It was inflated. And it was honestly felt like great researchers with a lot of credibility, respect coming at least from this source were playing into the algorithm more than to the helping of the consumer who is going to read it, watch it, hear it, depending on what kind of content it was. And that really, really bothered me. And then I have to remember that it's actually not necessarily a unique researcher doing their own posting. They've potentially got social media managers doing that as well. Pulling out the most inflammatory content to get the most eyeballs on it. And so social media is a game. And I think we all have to realize that, that you're going to come with your best game strategy, whether it's racquetball, pickleball, golf, or social media. And, and that in part is what you're seeing. And I think I had to cool down, step back from that because I was just feeling as if it's you, listener, and I will refer to you as a consumer, somebody who is trying to get information to make a better and informed decision, not to reuse the same words, but there I did, so that you can get better results, that you can solve a problem for yourself or prevent one in the future if you're being proactive. But here's the deal. I want to start today with something that happened on a coaching call recently, and this is kind of where it was born from, and it's happening all over. A woman said to me, I don't know whether to lift heavy or go lighter. I've heard both, and I've heard HIIT is gonna wreck my hormones. I've heard seed oils are killing me. I've heard I need to eat By my cycle, but I've also heard that that's made up. I don't know who to trust. That's end of quote. And honestly, I don't blame her because what she's doing is watching what I'm going to call the loudest shouting match in the history of women's fitness. And the thing that bothers me most is that almost everyone in that fight says that they are on her side, meaning you or me as a consumer wanting to do this also for myself, not just to disseminate information and practical application sources for you. And so today I wanna actually name what's happening, map the field, and more importantly, to give you a filter so that you can hear these voices and ask the right questions instead of just choosing a camp. And I'm going to give you a spoiler alert right now. This is what I call, because I grew up in this era of Reader's Digest condensed version, which is what my parents read. Spoiler alert is this, these people are really in the same camp. They don't differ that much in opinions. And I think in part what we are seeing is them playing the algorithm game. How can I get the most attention? How can I get the most eyeballs on me? How can I inspire and pique curiosity so that I can get news, press, and media? And so in the end, you know, we are all playing a game, but the cost potentially is yours. And so my hope is that at the end of this, at least you will have something that is background noise confusing to you at least understood a little bit better. It's not going to make it go away. In fact, I would anticipate in the, in the near future, it's probably going to get worse. But here we go. So here are the players and they're kind of these two camps. There are academic myth callers, like academics who are doing the actual research, and you will hear some of them say, Show me the data, right? Show me the data. And that is from my good friend and colleague, Dr. Stuart Phillips. I hope he considers himself my friend after this, and I hope that I can get him on a podcast before the summer is over and he's back in academics hot and heavy this fall. But that is probably almost as we speak happening. These are the researchers and the registered dietitians who are increasingly active on social media and on podcasts calling out what they describe as overcomplicated, fear-based, or unsupported claims in women's fitness. Now, that was almost a direct quote from someone, but I can't give you the actual individual. So they are Dr. Stuart Phillips. He is actually, I think, operating chair at McMaster University. And my biggest fear last year when I knew he was going to take that role was that, oh my goodness, no, Hopefully this doesn't mean you're doing less research because we, we need you there. We need you supervising grad students who are doing research to get the word out and get further down the road. He's a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Skeletal Muscle Health, over 200 original research papers published in the top 1% of cited researchers in nutrition and exercise science. He's the co-host right now, this is recent, of the Exercise Science Podcast with Dr. Martin Gibala. And Dr. Martin Gibala is somebody we have not had grace the airways of the Flipping 50 Podcast, but potentially should. So what I want you to know is that, you know, I think I introduced Dr. Phillips last year when I actually interviewed him within days of my first grandchild's birth, literally birthday, in the basement of my son's home where I was there to help bring that guy home. And I, so I will never forget that episode. But I believe I said, you know, if we're talking about aging, we're talking about muscle protein synthesis, Stuart Phillips' name is whispered in that room. He is that, you know, top 1%. So I just want you to know if you're thinking, "I need to know more about the need for protein, the amount of protein, timing of protein. I need to know how much it is different when I was 20 versus when I'm now 60." That's who you want to know. That's who you want in the room or in your corner. Dr. Martin Gabbala, as I just mentioned, is his basically partner in crime on a podcast. He's the Faculty of Science Research Chair in Integrative Exercise Physiology best known for his hit research and co-authoring The One Minute Workout. Phillips and Gabbala's shared platform explicitly describes their mission as separating hype from hard facts. So again, somebody who probably is going to come on and say, show me the data. And I get it. And all I can show them is, you know, the skeletons of previous women that I've worked with. And I say that jokingly, by the way. There are no skeletons in the closet, literally, or figuratively. Next up is Dr. Lauren Colenso-Simple, and you will hear her name in the same circuits that if Dr. Stuart Phillips has been on a podcast, Dr. Lauren Colenso-Simple, or CS, because that's a heck of a lot easier to say. She's a PhD in muscle physiology. She's studying women's exercise, muscle protein synthesis. She's co-owner of Mass Research Review, former personal trainer. Her own dissertation research measured muscle protein synthesis across menstrual cycle phases using stable, I— stable, sorry, isotope tracers and muscle biopsies. Some of the most rigorous female-specific work available. So if you're looking for, you know, female-specific work, much like Dr. Stacy Sims, Dr. Lauren Calesso. Simple is that person. She also, she titles herself essentially, think of the food babe, and I think something very familiar, and if it's not, you're probably gonna go look it up. Stay with me right now. She's very much like the exercise babe. She's calling BS where somebody may be saying, "You need to do this, you need to do that." She is coming back to it saying there's not enough proof, there's no science, or not enough science, and there is more science to say the opposite, that this is not proven. So she is like calling out, no, no, no, this is kind of BS right now. It's maybe still a theory. However, there isn't enough proof or hard science behind it, and that may well be. And not to, not to be disrespectful of Dr. Lauren Kalento-Simple, however, that may well be because some of the things are very difficult to test. You know, if we're looking at different nuances of a woman's cycle and cycle syncing, number one, that's one of the things she'll— she's shot holes in. However, you know, that is a very challenging thing for women to— for researchers to look at in a lab and control, because every woman's cycle is slightly different. And that would be challenging to set it up and say, can we get a large enough pool of women who are either similar enough, or we can look at them, you know? But every woman's cycle, again, so very different from week to week to week, from month to month, within a single female's body, no matter, not even talking about comparing them to each other. Next up in this camp is Dr. Abby Smith-Ryan. She's a professor at UNC. I wanna say she actually holds some kind of maybe temporary chair, assistant chair there as well. She's an exercise physiology and female body composition researcher. Frequently the "what does the data actually show" voice in research translation. So she is actually helping to do what I am, you know, and because she has been in the lab. And also, I think we cannot throw away the fact that because she is a female in her 40s beginning to, you know, even if she's not experiencing major changes. And I'll tell you, for me, it took till I was 56. To experience major changes. So we cannot say just because a woman's in her 40s she's experiencing change. However, I will say that Dr. Smith-Ryan was a collegiate athlete, and I am sure that when you are a collegiate athlete, you're participating at that level. As you age, being not just an avid exerciser or an avid fitness pursuer, there's a difference in your performance, you know, in a decade or two decades after that fact. It is a greater difference. I have no doubt about that. So things to consider there as well. But she's all about female muscle protein synthesis, maintaining muscle mass, and disseminating practical research or research into practical application. What does that look like? How do I make that better? Next up is Dr. Jessica, um, Nurek, and I'm probably slattering her name, but just in case, all of these will be in the show notes. She's also PhD in nutrition science. She's a registered dietitian. She's got 2 million plus Instagram followers. She's known for calling out maha adjacent health and misinformation. And seed oil fearmongering. She's calling it out, calling BS on that, totally disregards it. Now, I'm not going to interject or inject my personal opinion here. I don't think it's warranted. For those of you who are in our membership and want to ask me on a Monday night in a coaching call, go for it. Happy to share. But this is not the place I want to paint the picture here of what I'm seeing. The second camp, and these are not only practitioners, I want to, I want to be sure that that's said, but these that I'm about to mention are researchers turned entrepreneurs to a greater degree. Now, I don't know, Dr. Jessica, um, as the nutrition science registered dietitian with 2 million or more Instagram followers, that's That's a little bit of an entrepreneurial endeavor as well, potentially. But these that I'm about to mention are researchers and/or practitioners, like medical practitioners turned entrepreneurs, physicians and clinicians with real credentials and real audiences who have built brands around specific frameworks for women and who often make claims that extend further than research directly supports. Note those words. Dr. Stacy Sims is one exercise physiologist. She has positions at Stanford and Auckland University of Technology. She's a legitimate researcher. She's the author of Roar. Um, it's not her only book. Her foundational point that most exercise science was conducted on male subjects and that the finding were applied to women without any adjustment is valid and important. And where she draws criticism is the specificity of cycle syncing training protocols, that it goes beyond what the current random controlled trials base establishes. So she is probably someone who very much Lives where I live. Whether or not there's research to say this is a need, this is true, there are real human women walking around saying there's a need for this. This is true for these individuals. And it's not just one, it's not just two, there's a pool of them. That this will, this will be changed for, that they're experiencing complete frustration by trying to follow the research and the literature and the training that has worked for research based on men and some women. I would argue that in some cases, even research done on women in a controlled environment. And in research, you've got to control things, otherwise all we're doing is a survey. And that gets interesting but also dangerous to interpret it too closely as this is gospel, because when you do a survey, I mean, you and I are remembering, right? We're answering a survey to the best of our knowledge, but You know, have you ever filled out a true or false question or a quiz based on, I know the answer they want here. And I think it's human to think that we might go down that path once in a while without trying to. So realize that I think she lives in this place where she's probably seen it. She not only is doing the research, designing the studies and doing the research in the lab, But she is someone who's been a pro triathlete and competes and competitive, knowing a lot of women who are still competing and wanting her support and training. She sees what's happening and there's a gap there in the— here's the science we have, but here are the women showing up. They don't all function like the science does, neat, clean, and fitting into this little box. Next up, we have Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. She's an osteopathic physician, fellowship trained in nutritional science and geriatrics, founder of Muscle Centric Medicine. Her core thesis that skeletal muscle is the primary organ of metabolic health and longevity— you've heard that before, right? Muscle is the organ of longevity— is broadly supported. She has faced criticism for factual errors, a strong bias toward animal protein, and for sometimes presenting her protocols with more certainty than the evidence base warrants. Now I'm just giving you facts, right? She's faced criticism for these things. It's still the jury out, right? If you and I were the jury, we don't know exactly. You know, what was true and what wasn't true. I think where she has pointed out, if we look at calories and the calorie density of certain protein foods, when we know we're eating protein for the level of essential amino acids, you know, when she puts plants side by side with animal protein— she hasn't done this for a while— But it's very clear that if we want to eat the least amount of calories and get the most nutrient-dense source of protein, we're going to eat animal protein if that were the key to success. So that's Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Next is Alyssa Vitti. She's creator of the Flo Protocol and Flo app, a cycle-syncing originator. The directional claim— hormones affect how somebody, how women feel at certain different cycle phases— has biological plausibility. The specific 4-phase training prescriptions are far out ahead of the research, however, but it's very compelling. And if you listen to it, um, I've listened to podcast episodes, I've listened to her book on audio, And as a female, it's very difficult to argue. And it's not just talking about exercise and cycle syncing, but there are different things that we may be better or worse at at certain points in the month depending. Now you have to think about your own cycle, and if you're no longer cycling, you have to, you have to rely on your memory. Good luck on that one. But think about how severely changed were you from week to week. Some of us, you know, and if you lived in a household with a lot of women, probably even more interesting and relative for you to look and know. I grew up and I was the youngest of 4 children and the closest to me was a brother 6 years older. No females grew up in the same house with me. So very, you know, different, difficult. My mom was significantly older, so minimal discussions about, you know, the female hormones and, and all of that. So I don't have a lot to base it on. If you grew up with a household of women, you're probably way ahead. But I think it's really, um, something that I would highly recommend you listen to if you're curious. Because there are women who are just significantly affected. And I have had the blessing of working with so many different women over a now 42, almost 43-year career that I've seen so much difference and variation in the way women respond at different weeks in their period. Women who, you know, premenstrual could barely function. And I remember distinctly working with one young woman who, as I look back now, probably had PCOS, which has had a name change by the way, but was so, you know, severely suffering with endometriosis and pain. She was practically balled up, you know, during a weight training session. She was, you know, knees to her chest, sitting down on the floor. She could go on. She probably shouldn't have showed up on that day. But, you know, I had never experienced anything like that in my life. And so it was, it was challenging. And, you know, although I was empathetic with the way she felt, never doubted once, but I, I found it fascinating that, that a woman was suffering like that simply because she was premenstrual, you know, and in a dorm room, or potentially you experience it too, and maybe in a sorority. But where a lot of women are, you know, suffering or dealing with the same things, you know, but very differently. That was probably the closest I got to quote unquote having sisters. Okay, next up, Dr. Mark Hyman. This episode is sponsored by the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. It is the framework that we designed our entire membership and program based on. Since 2013, I've been developing that after 30 years of working working with women in midlife. That was born, and in 2018 we rolled out the Menopause Fitness Specialist to train other fitness and health pros on how to actually prescribe exercise. Here's where we're going next, in case you want to get started now, that we're actually training physicians on exercise prescription, knowing they get very little of it in medical school, and hoping that it also bridges the gap for you who may be a fitness or health professional or want to be, who works with women in menopause, because there is so much demand and so much room for you right now. If you are working with women in menopause but not getting all the results, don't have a reliable, predictable framework that gets you results over and over that people know, like, and trust, come and talk to us. We'll put the link in the show notes for today. That's the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. And if you want to head on over to Fitness Marketing academy.com. It's where we have all of the content dedicated to you, health and fitness pros. So the token man in this group, he's functional medicine physician, functional food, strongly anti-seed oil. Um, his claims on seed oils are probably the most directly contraindicated by the evidence of any claim on this space, and You know, still I wonder, you know, do we have enough knowledge? Do we know, you know, enough or not to make this call? And that is, I think, where I go back to a little bit of irony from— I learned this first and heard it first from Dr. Stuart Phillips, whose, you know, statement sit with me, which is show me the data, right? But he also was the one who pointed out to me that it takes almost 17 years. And since hearing him say that, I actually went and looked at this research. It takes almost 2 decades or 20 years. The number is actually 17 on average years for science that validated something to get out in mainstream because we're, we're so short, or we're so— I— we, we are reluctant to change. We're resistant to change. Adopting new things, new concepts, especially something that challenges something we believe for so very long, is hard. It's extremely hard. So when did we first realize that that high-intensity exercise was a better way or a better route to fat burning than moderate exercise. Well, it didn't come into mainstream until probably the late '90s. That was the time it really took off and everybody began doing it. Did we know about that before? Probably so. But, you know, his call that, you know, it took that long and yet still he's like, "Show me the data." It's like, wait a minute. On one hand, maybe there isn't data, but if there's a collective— enough people don't fit into this, you know, round hole that we're trying to say, get in there, do this. If that's not working for enough of them, shouldn't we look at something else and keep our mind open to the fact that we are all an N of one? And that can get dangerous if that N of 1 is trying to tell everybody, "This is what works," and you're not taking it as, "This is what worked for her. Maybe I could try it, but there's no guarantee." But I think Dr. Mark Hyman is probably loved by some and hated by others, or laughed at or ridiculed by others. And yet that is the way that change generally happens. When a new idea comes out, when a new idea is poised, that is the first thing that will happen. You'll be ridiculed, you know, and laughed at. And then pretty soon there are about 2 more steps that happen. And then the 4th step is that it'll be adopted by everybody and everybody will, will be saying that they've always believed that, forgetting all the steps between where you ridiculed and laughed at that person who first brought it up. So those are, you know, kind of the laying out the steps here. But here's what's going on, you know, and I have to share this one, just an example of we're in this moment of contradictory of terms. I just gave you one, you know, show me the data versus it takes an average of 17 years to get science that's out there even into the mainstream. But this is another one. I, it genuinely stopped me mid-listen. I listen often while I'm going on a walk and I was listening to a podcast with, as part of research for having Dr. Stuart Phillips on, on another episode, or if I'm planning to have a certain guest, I will go and try and listen to previous episodes they've done with somebody else. To number one, ask something unique, because if it's already out there in the world, you can listen to that. And I want to also give my guests something new that they haven't said a million times. I want to ask a question that maybe is a gap that was said in another podcast, but for you listeners, it doesn't land quite right because it wasn't directed or targeted at women in midlife or beyond. But I'm doing research, I'm on a walk, I'm listening to Dr. Stuart Phillips, one of the world's most cited researchers on protein. He appeared as a guest on the Optimal Protein Podcast, also a good one to listen to, with Vanessa Spina. And in that episode, he made a comment, and I'm paraphrasing right now, essentially that you shouldn't take protein advice from anyone who's selling protein. Because they have a commercial interest. Now, she respectfully listened to that. She didn't say anything. But during that very episode, she had a segment where she was doing a native ad, meaning she was advertising her own supplement brand that sponsored the show. She sells her own devices and products under the Tone brand. The very episode in which a guest warned you not to trust protein sellers is monetized by a protein supplement. Interesting, right? So I wanted to be careful here because I don't think either of them are acting in bad faith. And I think this is exactly the kind of thing that happens when we don't pause and look at the whole picture. I use this as an example, not to discredit either one of them, by the way. Dr. Stuart Phillips is a serious scientist, but to illustrate, the conflict of interest problem runs in every direction in this space. And I think in my, in my own defense, and I'll say that I have to say this here because otherwise it wouldn't make sense, I have a protein product and I, for the first 30 years of my career, from the moment I became a professional in 1984, Until 30 years later, you do the math, I said I never ever ever will sell supplements, right? So I now have, I started with 2 different types of protein in vanilla and chocolate and a fiber product. And the reason I did that is because I began using protein powder probably, A little less than a decade after I first made that declaration, "Never ever ever will I sell supplements," I began using it because I needed the supplement. I needed, number one, to stop skipping or skipping on breakfast. And after going for a run and then going off on a busy day, I needed to get something in that I wasn't resistant to because of time or effort. And smoothies were it. And I knew it needed to be high protein. I knew that back, you know, 34 years ago. Um, and so I started using it. And while I was at first using it, I didn't know what I didn't know. So I was buying it off the shelf in the grocery store and at, you know, GNCs, just like anybody else was. And then I started learning. And looking at ingredients on the label. And you'd have thought I'd have done that first, wouldn't you? But I didn't. And, you know, I started realizing that there's about 24 minimum names for sugar. And sure enough, maltodextrin, dextrose, sucrose on the label in that protein powder. I'm like, "No thank you very much." Then it was next, it was the chemicals and the other things that were in there, and the flavorings were artificial, and the soy that I did not want. And then later, you know, of course I knew whey protein is a dairy derivative, you know, curds and whey, so, right? Whey and casein are the two distinctions. Whey is rapidly absorbed easily absorbed, and that's why it's such a favorite for bodybuilders and figure competitors. And use of whey for pre and/or for post-exercise— readily absorbed is great. Casein, not so readily absorbed, and that's why often it's used like at night before bed when you don't want it spiking blood sugar, because you're not using it as fuel or to replenish or prevent loss of muscle. But then I realized midlife women, as I became one and found this experience for myself, we don't tolerate dairy as well anymore. And when you're trying to reduce inflammation, whether for joints or a condition like RA, rheumatoid arthritis, for those of you that don't know, potentially fibromyalgia, and I will throw that out there just because that's still a bit of a mystery. And, and a lot of women still do need to, because of it, reduce their inflammation. But joints that swell with women who have Hashimoto's and painful joints, eliminating dairy and gluten are almost the first two things that we recommend taking out, and they feel better simply by doing that. And why wouldn't we feel better and do everything we can? So I eliminated whey off of our repertoire. But the reason that I started my own, because people started asking, "What are you using? Why are you— what are you taking?" And they would show me their labels. And I was like, "Oh no, you don't know what you don't know." And I began writing lots of blogs and sharing sharing articles about it, trying to dispel it. And I thought, okay, forget it. Let's just help them make it easy to find and do it right here. And I wanted fewer than, you know, 5 or 6 ingredients. I wanted you to be able to pronounce them. I wanted you to understand each one of them. And so we just started carrying it and we still do today for that reason. And there's lots of choices out there today, and I get it. And right now everybody thinks, well, protein, protein, protein. But a lot of us have been talking about it for 20 years. It's not new. It's just that now you feel like you didn't hear me talking before and now you do. And we started talking about it probably harder, hotter, more frequently after 2013. And, uh, I hosted, co-hosted a protein symposium with some world-renowned researchers in protein, muscle protein synthesis. All came together on the campus where I then was, or had recently been, a senior lecturer in kinesiology. But these things are also so, so very important, you know, and the logic that gets applied in this space is worth examining, right? Necessity is the mother of invention. So I think to say anybody who's selling a protein product can't be trusted if they're talking about protein is kind of ridiculous. We are also the people who are saying there's a problem and a gap, and I want to solve that problem. So I have a hard time with that one, and especially because I did this well-intentioned. I, I don't know if you understand, like, starting a product line. Some people today will say, well, it's not that hard, you know, but frankly, it is hard. It is an entire part of my team and time and energy and there are a lot of moving parts that are related to that in our business, and there's a lot of expense in the inventory, and the expense always comes before any revenue. The profit margin is not that great. It is more a gift of, you know, an act of service than it is of, you know, trying to make a profit. So that, that one doesn't sit very well. And I think if you are coming only from an academic world, maybe you can look at things that easily, but I don't think the rest of us can. So I think the podcast, you know, pattern that I've noticed is also something that once you hear it, you'll start to see it everywhere. Podcasts are increasingly becoming living room conversations among people who already agree with each other, and I think that it's not really healthy to only bring people in who agree with you and think the same thing. I think having people that you learn from and are willing to have an open-minded conversation and not to simply say, show me the data, show me the research, but to have a conversation about There are gaps in that. What do you think needs to be done with that? And if you, you have the data right here on your desk, but what would you say if you've got a female right here or you've got 30 or 100 or 1,000 in our case, in our membership, they don't all fit that. What would you do with them? You know, I think this is really, really a very interesting concept here. So we don't need just agreement or amplification and shared audience growth going on from podcasts. What you want, I think, is a legitimate conversation. The Movement Logic podcast is— which I actually respect for engaging directly with research— literally titled a segment of their Lauren Kalento-Semple interview, Has Stacey Sims done more good or more harm. You know, and that's naming the tension directly, but notice it's still a show that already agrees with Calenzo Simple, and they were using Sims' name to warrant more viewers, right? To elevate the status of the podcast. And she wasn't even in the room. Now, I didn't listen to that all the way through, But there is some disagreement, you know, with, with due respect. I don't, don't believe that Kalenzo Simple or Sims disrespect each other in any way. Don't, don't mean to leave that impression with you. Okay, so let's talk about the wasted energy. You know what nobody is addressing and what frustrates me the most about this is almost every new voice in this space said that they're fighting for women. But they're also busy fighting each other, fighting to get to the top of the mountain. Like, I want to be heard first. I want to be heard loudest. I want to be seen as the credible authority. But they're missing the actual problem. We are confusing women. We're confusing you, listener, who are trying to start or get better results. We're creating overwhelm in women who are trying to stay consistent. We're generating dropout in women who can't figure out whose rules they're supposed to follow. A woman who hears lift heavy and then hears you don't need to lift heavy, it's bad for your hormones, just reach fatigue. She doesn't hear the nuance. She hears contraindication or incongruence. And so contradiction produces inaction. When we're confused, a confused mind doesn't do anything. The energy being spent positioning against each other, the subtle shade in Instagram captions, the episode titles that bait with words like "myth" and "wrong" and what they're doing or not telling you or outright, you know, saying, "Anybody who says this, don't believe them." And that's kind of quote unquote the tactic or strategy of Dr. Lauren Kalento-Simple. And for me, something about that resonates with— this sounds, I hate to say it, but juvenile, somewhat childish. And there is probably a more respectful way to say this. I just don't think we've nailed it or we've chosen it yet. And that unfortunately probably sounded a little disrespectful. For that, I apologize. Okay. So last piece here, the real answer on heavy, what the science actually shows. All right. So I want to give you this because I've kind of opened this up. What does everybody believe? So when somebody says, do I have to lift heavy? Because that's how I opened with the show. So I would be doing you a disservice if I left you hanging on this. They're asking one of three different things. Do I need to use a challenging weight? Do I need to go actual heavy load gym program? Do I need to gym equipment? Or will the weights I've been using, which feel pretty easy, be enough? You know, there are different questions that are in there tucked within that one. So here's what the research shows, replicated across multiple studies, meta-analysis— that means big analysis of a lot of pieces of literature done at different times. It's this: when sets are taken to or near failure, that's what we call reps in reserve. You're maybe 2 from failure if you're somebody who's experienced You can be 5 or 6 from failure if you're brand new. So that's a nice thing to know. You can stay safe, no injury risk. And high-load training produce equivalent muscle hypertrophy as long as the effort basically is the same. You can use heavy, few reps, or you can use lighter weight and more reps. They both work. They activate type 1 and type 2 muscle fibers when pushed to task failure. It's the effort that matters. The mistake that you'll make is if you pick up a lightweight and you're doing a program that says you should fatigue by 12, but the weight that you have, you actually would need 25 repetitions to get to fatigue. So if you just go right along with the, the video and the instructor, even if it's me, and you put them down at 12 instead of pushing pause and going to all the way to fatigue for yourself, yourself, you've done yourself an injustice with that workout. So I hope that's clear. So the mTOR— that's little m, capital T, capital O, capital R— mTOR pathway, the key anabolic signaling mechanism for muscle protein synthesis, is activated in both heavy mechanical tension and by metabolic stress from lighter load, higher rep ranges. Training to failure. Phosphoprotein responses were similar between 30% and 80% of a one-rep max biopsy studies when both were taken to failure. And this means we took you into a lab and we, we extracted your muscle. Trust me, you don't want to put your hand up if they're asking for subjects who want to do that because it's not comfortable. But the key distinction Load is the shortcut. Effort is what really matters. So I want you to be sure that you understand that. Where does Gabrielle Lyon actually land? Here's the thing. Even Dr. Lyon, who many, you know, criticize for being too aggressive about heavy lifting, she's been clear on this when pressed. In her own words, she stated on the Mel Robbins podcast, "There was a period of time where I believed that you had to lift heavier weights." And I personally prefer to do that, but the evidence would suggest as long as a woman is really taxing herself, going to where she really goes to fatigue, then da da da da da. She didn't finish the sentence the way her critics might expect. She's saying fatigue is the mechanism, not a number on the barbell, and not so important that, because that's relative to each of us. So you pick up a heavy weight, relative to you would mean few repetitions. You can't do more than 6 or 7. That means it's heavy for you. What you lift though, and what I lift, and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon lift could be very different. She's been explicit in other contexts. The stimulus matters more than whether you lift heavy or light. For older adults and beginners, higher volume at moderate loads reduces risk of injury. Because tendons typically lag behind muscle in strength gains. Amen. Thank you, Jesus. Because too little this is said. This is not sexy, right? Ligaments and tendons do not adapt. They also don't recover even— I don't care who you are, elite athlete, they don't recover as quickly as muscle. And so we kind of ignore, but I'm not sore. I feel good. I'm ready to go. Maybe you are, but your ligaments and your tendons are not. So just hang it up, play pickleball, do something else for a bit. The loudest voice in the "you must do heavy compound lifting" camp agrees with people criticizing her, but they just don't talk to each other. So she softened a little bit on this. And I would say that over time, over the last 3 years, Dr. Stacy Sims has also softened just a little on this as well. The practical answer, right? Proximity to failure. That's what really matters for you. So you don't have to choose, "Do I listen to them or do I listen to them?" Listen to your own body if you're listening to anything at all. Not just the quota of how much weight or how many reps, but what's your outcome? Is it working? What's your body composition? How well are you sleeping at night? What's your digestion, your elimination, your libido? And if you don't know it, proper exercise— you're in the sweet spot for your exercise, your digestion improves. You do too much, your digestion actually will get worse. So all of those little things are signs and symptoms. I like to teach clients How do I, how do I judge that for myself? How do I know if I'm going down the right path or not? Okay, so questions before you follow advice. Yes, this is valid. What are they selling? Does their advice align with what they sell directly? So everyone has a business model, even academics, academic researchers. Have grants, institutional affiliations, book deals, speaking fees. Do you think that people applying for grants from somebody to fund them for their research, do you think that those people giving it, giving them money, don't look at how widely known they are at their social media accounts? I think you'd be wrong, right? Social media, we have to give it some more credit because like it or not, wish it would go away or not, It just became a major at ASU in Arizona to be an influencer. I kid you not. And this is, you know, even 7, 10 years ago, students in college were saying, "That's what I want to be when I grow up is an influencer." And now it's happening. So question number 2, are they speaking in absolutes about things the research describes as conditional. So I think, "You have to lift heavy," "You should never do fasted cardio," "Seed oils are inflammatory." You know, these are pretty absolute statements about maybe things that could be conditional. So good science communicators say "tends to," "almost always," "there's no absolute about it," or "when compared to." If I were choosing between this and this based on the data that I've seen, those are good statements. But there is, you know, the rules, right? If you were taking a test and the true/false question says always, never, you got a pretty good hint about how to answer that question. False, right? Who's missing from the conversation? If a podcast episode is called "Debunking Female Fitness Myths" and the guest is somebody who already agrees with the host, notice who wasn't invited. You know, the opposition. Why is that? You know, so the podcast that hosted Kalento Semple to discuss Stacey Sims didn't have Stacey Sims in the episode. Now, to their credit, because I don't know, I haven't listened word for word to that episode, it may only have used her name in the title to give the episode some curiosity-peaking headline to get you to listen. They may not in fact have thrown Stacy Sims under the bus. So they may have agreed with her, right? But that is the kind of thing happening, and it may make you make an immediate snap judgment that, oh, they don't— they're fighting, they're— they don't believe each other. Not necessarily the case. Okay, last question to consider: is this person making the science more accessible or more complicated? So I think that question is still out. The jury is still out, I think, for a lot of them. And I come back to Dr. Lauren Kalento-Semple, and I am really actually trying to reach her, not successfully, but— or maybe I haven't, she's ignoring me. But there are several things that I have reached her to talk about. I said, wow, you know, I mean, that is just like black and white, and, you know, we're confusing consumers when you make a post like that. And she didn't like it, and she said You know, I'm not going to apologize, basically, was her answer. I was like, I'm not asking you to apologize, just asking you to— can you see how this might be confusing for a consumer to read this? And what a waste it is because she's bright, smart, intelligent, wants to help women. And, and in, in really wanting to help women, I think it is that we want to help trainers and health coaches who are not getting up in the morning saying, "I want to dispel information that is wrong." And I think in some cases we're pointing fingers at, "Don't believe any trainer who says this." By saying a statement like that, the very trainer who might have said that because they believed it is thrown under the bus and they're not very likely to come looking for help because now they're embarrassed. We've called them out instead of figuring out a way that we could be more inclusive and help educate them. We've missed that opportunity. And that is really what bothers me most. And I would love to have Dr. Kalento-Semple on just to talk a little bit more about, because I think we are very aligned with many things. It's the delivery of the message and the tone that That is the challenge for me with the way the information is coming out. So there's that. The framing really matters. So the coach in the room is the one who's lost, the one who really needs the help and might have said the information wrong, but they're not going to come for information and actually get the training that they need in some, some ways. Coaches with really strong personalities, when they're pushed, will push back by going deeper in the corner and hands on their hips. And I'll give you a case in point. This was 10 years ago, potentially. I think it was Jillian Michaels was sometimes put in a corner, and, and I don't know that she cared because she got lots more publicity She's a person, she's a human, so potentially she may have cared more than we all got to see in that public persona. But she had come out saying certain statements, and then those were legitimately, scientifically, like, false. And then we saw what happened with The Biggest Loser, but she would not back down. She'd already made certain claims, and so She never retracted what we all knew had been disproven. She never retracted her statement or clarified it. And I think a lot of times we'll see that with coaches who are not a big name as well. You know, they are going to stand their ground and they are going to argue. And because they may be embarrassed to have to admit, I was wrong. You know, I believed this for a long time. Any good researcher, somebody who puts faith in academics, has to do that, has to be willing to say, for a long time the science was kind of skewed to this belief, and I believed it and used those, quoted that study as well. And now here's what we're seeing. I could say the same back in 1995 and through 2000 and a little beyond that, we did not think anybody who was diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopenia should be doing anything that was high impact, that was, you know, super heavy. Well, actually, I take that back. Super heavy and safe being a machine, but not necessarily, say, dumbbells or freestanding work. You know, we, we were very, very careful and conservative. And then it's like, over all this time, we have certainly relaxed because we see more risk of injury when people are not exercising. No one has ever fractured from lifting weights. And that's where people started to say, wait a minute, maybe we're not thinking about this right. Right? Because, you know, if we have them do more, will we actually be able to bring the bone back and bring it along for the ride? And true, it's actually what we found. The problem isn't that practitioners are paying attention to hormonal patterns. The problem is when that observation gets marketed as settled science before it actually is. So the opposite problem, when researchers use the absence of a large random controlled trial to dismiss what practitioners see in working with real populations. That's equally counterproductive. So I think there's something to be said for both sides. We just have to watch that we're not making claims that can't be proven. The facts are there are a lot of women who don't fall into the science in that neat little box and get the same results that subject studies did, or that, say, an average strength gain or an average change in body composition. Not everybody is going to get that. So I think the education gap is the real culprit. And, you know, I think it's keeping an open mind and watching your back. I think we've got to be willing to say, this is what we know, this is what we don't. That's not a weakness. I think that's what you do when you're actually trying to serve, in this case, you women, female listeners who are here. And if you're a health coach or a trainer, either also and a woman in this niche, I think all of it is we just have to be willing to listen, keep an open mind. What am I hearing? What am I seeing? And You know, be willing to keep listening to people who you don't agree with, because if we stop doing that, we'll stop learning, and we will just, you know, have this monogamous relationship basically with duplicates of ourselves. That's not a great learning environment. So get out there, listen to other people. And in the next episode that will be very similar, I'm gonna do a little recap, talk a little bit more about some of the researchers and everybody that I've mentioned here on the show may not all be included in the next one, but, um, many of them will. And I'll talk about what is their current research, what are they looking at, what, when would you follow them, where would you go for them. And I will link to any previous episodes that I've done with them. And there was another researcher or two not mentioned here that will be in that next episode. So tune into that. Please do let me know if this was helpful. I love hearing from you. Reach out, let me know in DMs. Did you like it? Did you enjoy it? So usually I'm sharing in stories in Instagram. The day podcasts are released or shortly after that, we generally at least once a month, if not once a week, we'll send out an email about podcasts that we've released, comments that are coming in about them, and let you know that way. So if you're on our email subscriber list, you'll get it there. If you're not and you want to be in the loop, the Flipping 50 Insiders group on Facebook is a place to join us if you're not in a current program or in the app where you have the access to ask questions. Thank you so much for listening, and if this or previous episodes are helpful to you, please share them with a friend. It's how we spread the word. The information shared on Flipping 50 the Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only, not intended as a substitute for medical advice diagnosis or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified healthcare provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcomes resulting from information presented on this podcast.