A lot of women come with their partners

to see me and say, "I don't understand.

We're both doing the same training. He's

leaning up and getting fitter. I'm

putting weight on getting slower." And

that is because we have puberty. We have

our reproductive years. We may not have

pregnancy in there. We have

permenopause. We have postmenopause. We

have a menstrual cycle. Each one of

those is a different hormone profile

that can affect the way we eat and the

way we train. But no one told us this or

what we can do until right now. Dr.

Stacy Sims is an exercise physiologist

and nutrition scientist whose

bestselling books and over 100

peer-reviewed studies is revolutionizing

how women can optimize their health,

fitness, and longevity by working with

their unique physiology. We're looking

at sport science research. Everything

from training to eating, recovery, it's

based on male data, and women have been

generalized to that data. Things like we

see men do really well on calorie

restriction and fasting, but for women

doesn't happen that way and we'll talk

about that. And we also know that during

puberty, girls hips widen, shoulders

widen, which changes our angle of knee

to hip, what we call the Q angle. So

they don't feel comfortable running or

swimming or jumping. And because they're

not taught this stuff, we see that by

the age of 14, girls who previously were

sporty, over 60% of them drop out of

sport. The problem is it's never about

how we can empower women to use their

physiology to their advantage. So let's

change that. Let's go. As it relates to

nutrition and exercise, how do I need to

adapt across the menstrual cycle? What's

your view on cold plunges and

supplements like creatine? And what's

the variant between men and women as it

relates to sleep? And then let's talk

about menopause. Starting with per

menopause. I'm excited.

The diary of a CEO is independently fact

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what we do. Thank you so much.

Dr. Stacy Sims,

what is the work that you do and why is

it so important that you do it?

I look at sex differences in exercise

and nutrition because when we think

about everything that we know for

protocols from training to eating

recovery, it's based on male data. And

as a female athlete and working with

women across all ages, just trying to

maximize their potential, you have to

lean into different data, but people

aren't aware of it. So as I'm looking at

what I do and trying to empower women to

understand their own bodies, realize

that there's a lot of research that

still needs to be done. So if we think

about something like caffeine and

caffeine intake, right? And people are

talking about how it either boosts them

or not. Yeah. If we look at all the data

on performance about caffeine enhancing

performance, there isn't anything that's

been done on women. So if we're looking

at how does that work for a woman, we

have to look and say, okay, how much

exercise have you done? Where are you

using the caffeine? When are you using

it? Because we fuel differently during

exercise. So we go through blood sugar

quickly. Caffeine clears blood sugar. So

a woman is going to have to eat when she

uses caffeine, whereas a man doesn't

have to.

You said it's based on male data. How

can you quantify that? like paint the

picture for me that proves this this is

the case for someone that might not

understand the significance of what you

just said. So if we're looking at sports

science research and I'll just bring it

down to sport science because that's the

exercise and nutrition research. If

we're looking at who's around the room

when we're recruiting for studies for

the most part the language around

recruitment is geared for

getting men because we're using a lot of

aggressive language in sport. So it's

offputting to a lot of women. The other

aspect about sport science research is

there's limited funding. So then we're

looking at okay, how can we get people

in that can come in for day after day or

week to week. Most often it's men.

When we look at what we're doing, we

might be doing muscle biopsies. We might

be doing blood draws. And if that's not

explained in advance, it's a little

off-putting to people. So when we're

looking at the major recruitment

strategies and the people that will say

yes, I'll come and do this study, it's

18 to 22 year old college age men. And

that's just been the norm. And when we

look at how studies are designed, and

we're looking again at who's in the room

who's designing the studies, primarily

it's men. Why? because we see that most

of the PIs on the studies and most of

the um I guess scientists that are

coming up in academia are primarily men.

When did you realize this? The first

time I realized it from an academic

standpoint was when I was a second year

at university and I was a participant in

metabolism lab and I was one of the only

women and I standardized properly. I did

all the things I was supposed to do cuz

I come from a military family. I know

how to follow rules. And at the end of

the two weeks of experiments, they threw

my results out. Why exactly? So I asked

why. And they're like, "Well, your

results don't jive with what we thought

we were going to see. They don't mesh

with the results that we got from the

men. So they're an anomaly. So we're not

going to put them in for the the context

of talking about how carbohydrate

metabolism was going." And I thought

that was very strange and I was

like,"Well, I've done everything

properly. How come mine are the anomaly

and those guys aren't the anomaly? How

do you know that?" And they didn't have

an answer for it. So that was like the

sticking point for me to understand why

would my results be an anomaly when I

have done exactly the same thing as what

the men had done. And it came down to

menstrual cycle. came down to

understanding that one week I was in a

low hormone state and then the next week

I wasn't. So when I started talking

about that, this is where the um

professor who was in charge of the

metabolism labs like well we don't study

women because they have a menstrual

cycle and we just study men because

they're easier and we don't have to

worry about hormone fluctuations

interfering with our results. And at

that point I was like, "Excuse me, what?

What are you talking about?" So that was

a defining point from an academic

standpoint. But the seed had been

planted two years prior when my dad who

was a colonel in the army was like, "So

what do you want to do when you finish

graduate or when you graduate from high

school?" And I said, "I wanted to be an

Army Ranger or Navy Seal." And he said,

"Well, you can't." And I said, "Why

can't I?" And he said, "Cuz you're a

girl." I was like, "What? what does that

mean? And he said, "Well, they don't

accept women in in the SEALs or the

Rangers. It's a special ops and they

don't accept women." And that was the

first time in my life I've ever heard

that I was limited because I was a

female and I didn't match what the norm

was cuz my whole life I'd been playing

with boys, competing against boys. I

mean, like, it was just a normal. Didn't

matter if you were a boy or a girl. It

just was what you wanted to do. And then

when my dad said, "Well, you can't

because you're a girl." That was the

first seed that had been planted and

really made me upset and said, "Well,

this doesn't make sense." And then when

I got to university and that happened,

that was the definitive seed that just

really pushed me into the whole academic

and sporting career that I've led over

the past 20ome years. Give me an

overview of that career, the sort of

significant milestones and the research

that you've done that's fed into

everything that you know today. I've

been a competitive athlete most of my

life. So I would I raced bikes

professionally. I did Iron Man. I did

Xterra. And I would have teammates who

would ask me questions of um you like

how am I fueling? How am I going to

perform my best? So we take those

questions into the lab. So we were

looking at how do we optimally fuel or

how do we optimally uh climatize the

heat when we're at a point in our

menstrual cycle where we don't have as

much heat tolerance. So that we see when

progesterone comes up after ovulation,

our core temperature comes up, we don't

have as much heat tolerance. So how do

we adjust for that? So there are a lot

of questions that would come through

just by the nature of being surrounded

by competitive athletes and being a

competitive athlete. So, we look at

things like we know now that when you

want to do um acclimatization to the

heat and I bring this up because if I

live in New Zealand in the wintertime

and I'm trying to train for something

like Kona that happens in Hawaii and we

max out at uh you know 10° C in the

winter but we have to face 40° C to race

Iron Man and we get into a sauna and we

want to accommodate for that heat. We

know that men can go seven days in a row

and be fine to then race in the heat.

But for women, depends on which phase of

the menstrual cycle and if you are going

in the high hormone phase, then we say,

"Okay, well, you don't need a primer.

You can just go in and do nine days in a

row. But if you start in the low hormone

phase, you actually have to go into the

sauna for five minutes, come back out,

and then go back in and do that during

the low hormone phase for nine days in a

row." So there are different nuances in

the way that your body responds to the

heat and is able to accommodate for

those heat shifts versus a man can just

go in and accommodate for that and be

ready for the race. So give me your CV.

Oh gosh, not the whole thing. It's it's

pretty varied. Um what did you study? Uh

exercise physiology and metabolism.

Okay. And then um got into ultr running

when I was doing my masters at

Springfield. Um and then I started

getting into more Iron Man distance

stuff

um before I started my PhD. And you went

to Springfield College as well. Yeah. So

that was my masters. Your masters. What

did you study in your masters? That

again was exercise fizz and metabolism.

And then you did a PhD. Yep. Uh what was

your PhD on as well? So my PhD was

looking at differences between men and

women in heat performance. Okay. And how

you climatize to it and how you hydrate

for it. Um as well as looking between

menstrual cycle phases and oral

contraceptive pill use in women. Um and

again all of these topics were designed

because of questions I had for myself or

teammates had. And then from PhD I went

to Stanford and was working um in the

high performance lab and then moved over

to do a posttock with Marcia Stefanic

who was the PI for the women's health

initiative. So looking at um hormone

replacement therapy in menopausal women

but also looking at exercise as a cohort

to that. And I had another hand in the

high performance um research in human

biology. So I would mesh human

performance with public health and then

that transcend into a lot of the stuff

that I do now looking at what can we do

taking some of the ideas from high

performance and apply it to general

population and how does that improve

people's longevity well-being but also

for those who are trying to be parents

who have a high performing job who want

to do well in their age group race

whatever it is how can we maximize some

of the things we know from high

performance with regards to sleep, heat,

cold, and apply that to a person who's

just trying to get everything done, and

what small things they can tweak to

improve their own training and

performance. And you've authored more

than 100 peer-reviewed studies on

exercise physiology. Yeah. And you're a

research scientist at the University of

New Zealand. I am a research scientist

at AUT. It's where most of my PhD

students are. and we have a women's

health program and then I also have an

adjunct with the lifestyle medicine um

at Stanford. So that's where a lot of

the public health research comes in. And

when we talk about the the differences

between men and women,

what exactly are those differences? Is

it just the menstrual cycle that causes

these differences or is there other

physiological differences that we need

to understand in order to understand the

subjects we're going to talk about today

around exercise, nutrition, and the

variances between men and women there?

There are sex differences in uterero. I

mean when we look uh what does that

mean? So the sex differences when the

baby's developing. Okay. So we look at

stress and the mom under stress. We see

that there's a higher incidence of a

miscarriage if it's a developing boy

fetus than a girl fetus. And it has to

do with XX versus XY. Then after birth

we see that there's relatively little

sex difference that is apparent until

the onset of puberty. But when we're

looking at those sex differences that

aren't that apparent, there are there.

We see that there's a sex difference in

what we call muscle morphology. So that

means that men are born with more fast

twitch fibers. So they have more

anorobic capacity as they get older.

They have more ability to produce power.

We see that um girls are born with more

endurance type fibers. So this means

they have more mitochondria for oxygen

consumption and oxidative stress and

being able to go along and slow. Then

when we get to the onset of puberty, we

see an expansion of these sex

differences with the exposure of the sex

hormones. So what we're seeing is now

the boys are getting leaner, they're

getting faster, they're getting more

aggressive, but girls bodies completely

change because center of gravity drops

from the chest down to the lower abdomen

area because their hips widen and their

hips widen because you know being XX

they have to then accommodate for

getting pregnant and eventually having a

baby from a biological standpoint. Hips

widen, shoulders widen. This changes the

um angle of the knee to the hip. So we

then have a Yep. So for anyone

listening, this is there's an image I

have here which I'll put on the screen

and I'll also link below and it's called

the Q angle. Q angle. Yes. Which is like

the angle of my knee to hip. Yeah. And

it's showing that women's Q angle

basically like the shape of the gap

between your leg is is it roughly 15°?

What is it? Do you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And so when we're looking at girls whose

bodies are changing, we see that by the

age of 14, girls who previously were

sporty, over 60% of them drop out of

sport because they're not taught that

their bodies are changing. So they don't

feel comfortable running or swimming or

jumping or landing because they have a

new um Q angle. They become quad

dominant. Their center of gravity is

different. Their shoulders are wider. So

they don't feel comfortable running

because their whole running mechanics

change. So, you know, when we're looking

at girls who are eight, they can keep up

with the boys, right? Their bodies

haven't quite started changing yet. By

the time they're 10, they're starting to

see a discrepancy. And I say that cuz my

daughter's now 12 and I've seen it over

the course of the elementary school

years where they used to be on par with

the boys playing soccer and rugby and

stuff on the field. And then you start

seeing a more where the boys are

becoming more aggressive and they're

kicking the balls faster and running

faster. And the girls are starting to

develop a little bit more, getting a

little bit more body fat, feeling a

little bit more comfortable running.

They can't do the monkey bars anymore

because their center of gravity is

lower. So they can't get up and do the

monkey part bars as well. But no one

explains this to them. So then when we

see this discrepancy of being sporty,

not sporty, we see um you know changes

in body composition and all of this is

in those early stages of the teen years

which is another knock because we also

have brain changes where girls become

more um self-aware and boys don't.

They're like, "Okay, you know what? You

piss me off. I'm going to beat you up

and we're going to get on with it." But

girls are very self-aware and they hold

things to themselves in a more negative

fashion. And this creates a lot of mood

changes. And this also creates a feeling

of of of negative body positivity. So

they don't feel that comfortable with

how they look or who they are. And

society doesn't help that either. So

this all perpetuates in a socioultural

as well as a biological change with

regards to exercise.

And as it relates to we'll talk about

the Q angle a little bit more in a

second when we talk about exercise but

the as it relates to the other changes

um fat differences in men and women.

Yeah. So if we see essential fat for men

is around 4 to 8%. So that means what we

need for our nerves and just survival.

Okay. For women essential fat is around

12%. Okay. So this is for nerves and and

looking around our essential organs to

survive. We look at body composition

itself, we see that women tend to sit

around 20% as a normal healthy

individual, although the data has

changed over the years. Um, and men sit

around 15%. And what about the heart?

How's the heart different in men and

women? So, women have smaller heart and

lungs. Yeah. Relative to relative body

size to men. We also have less

hemoglobin. So, that means our oxygen

carrying capacity is lower. uh because

if we are looking at our red cells and

we have four different what we call heem

molecules in a red cell and each one

carries oxygen our red cell count is

lower as compared to men because the red

cell count is driven by testosterone. So

men have around 100% more

um aromatized testosterone as compared

to women. So this increases the carrying

capacity of oxygen which means it goes

to the muscles can deliver more fuel to

the muscles to be able to contract

better have more power more strength.

Does that mean women breathe more

exercising the same? Not that they

breathe more. When we're talking about

oxygen carrying capacity, this is the

amount that you're taking into the

lungs, how it transfers to the red cells

to then be able to go to the working

muscles to give the muscles the

available fuel to do a contraction. So,

it's not a respiratory rate, it's the

ability for you to breathe in and how

fast that can be conducted to the

muscle. But, so there's going to be an

impact on endurance then. It's more of a

power and speed factor. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Because the speed in which the

oxygen can get to the muscles is what's

being impacted and the volume of oxygen

that can get to the muscles. Yep. Okay.

Fine. And then you said the lungs are s

sort of I read 25 to 30% smaller

than a man's lungs typically. Yeah. And

what's the impact of that as it relates

to exercise?

So when we're looking at um I guess

world records right that have been kept

and we see there's a gender gap there

and this is slowly closing in the

endurance world but that has to do with

muscle morphology with regards to being

able to go along and slow. We're looking

at the sprint capacity where we have to

have a quick transference of oxygen and

quick muscle contraction. that gap isn't

closing and that is because we have

smaller lungs, smaller heart, we have

less blood volume, we have less red

cells. So the overall capacity for

quickly developing power and speed is at

a smaller um I guess it's a limited

capacity in women versus men.

And in your book raw and page four in

the opening of the book, you talk about

how women are 52% as strong as men in

their upper bodies and 66% as strong as

they are in their lower bodies. But when

women train, they can become 70 to 80%

as strong as men. Mhm. So when we're

looking at resistance training itself,

we see that women relative to men can

accommodate and develop muscle just as

well as men in the lower body, but upper

body not so much. Okay. Um, we talked

about this Q angle thing. One of the

things that I've I'm really fascinated

by is there's been a big conversation

recently around ACL injuries in sport.

Yeah. And from reading your work, it

seems that and just doing some research

online, it seems that this increase in

women getting ACL injuries links

somewhat to this Q angle situation,

which again is the I don't know how to

explain it for someone that is listening

on audio and can't see, but I will link

it in this description. So, I highly

recommend you look at this picture cuz

the minute you see it, it makes a ton of

sense, but it's essentially like, and

this is me probably butchering it, as a

man, because my hips don't widen, my

legs are effectively quite straight.

Yep. So, from my hip down to my toes,

it's quite straight, which means that

I'm going to be more sturdy. Say if I

jump up in the air, when I land this, I

know this cuz my dad's an engineer, the

center of gravity being straight means

that I'm less likely to get injured. But

if you're Is that right right? Yeah.

Because your forces are going to be in a

more linear fashion. So you have more um

even distribution of the force through

the knee. Mhm. But for women, as you're

going to describe, our hips are wider.

So we have more of an angle to the knee

and the forces aren't distributed evenly

when we land. So when we look at that as

well as the quad dominance that develops

for women because quad dominance so that

means that we use our um front muscles

of our legs our quads a lot more than

our hamstrings our posterior chain. So

we don't use our glutes and our

hamstrings by default um as well as men

do. So, we're being pulled forward more

and we let we put more emphasis on the

front of our body. Mhm. Um because those

tend to take the the quads tend to take

the bulk of the muscle work that we're

trying to do unless we're really trying

to train hamstrings and glutes to fire,

which isn't the default for women's

bodies because center of gravity again

is lower and you tend to lean forward.

So, when we're looking at ACL injury,

again, it comes down to one, training

stress, two, mechanics, and if we're not

taught again how to land, how to run,

how to jump with the new angles, it

predisposes people to severe ACL injury.

And how much more likely is a woman to

have an ACL injury than a man?

it is a higher rate but the thing about

the research is that there hasn't been a

direct comparison because we hear

incidentally that women tear their ACL

and so we see a lot of observational

studies that women have torn their ACL

and we have lots of retrospective

studies that are going back to oh where

are we in our menstrual cycle when we

ACL but there hasn't been a definitive

comparison between men and women. If we

were to look at the current research, we

see a 3 to four to one ratio of ACL

tears of women versus men. So 3 to four.

So So either 3:1 or 4:1 depending on the

research that you look. So three women

for every one man or four women for

every one man.

Okay. So 300% difference. Yeah. Okay. So

interesting. I absolutely never knew

that. And in fact, it wasn't until I was

looking through your work that I I'd

seen um I went and did some research and

there's a big conversation online, a lot

of sort of news coverage around women's

football because it's I think it's the

fastest growing sport in the world. But

I read that this the probability that a

woman tears her ACL muscle is

significantly like hundreds of percent

more likely than a man because of this

in part because of this Q angle. in

professional sport is not as much as

when we're looking at recreational sport

because when we get into professional

sport we have specific warm-ups

especially for football um put out by

FIFA to prevent ACL tear to make sure

that you are actually properly warmed up

and engaging the right muscles and

learning how to stop pivot because it's

a it's a a mechanism in action usually

is a twisting angle. But if we're

looking at more age group or grassroots

sports because people aren't aware of

this Q angle, they aren't aware of the

quad dominance, women haven't been

taught again how to work with these new

mechanics. Then we're seeing a greater

incidence of ACL tear. 30 female

football players missed Women's World

Cup in 2023 due to ACL injuries,

including in the UK, Lioness, Beth

Meade, and Leah Williamson. Mhm. Which

is staggering to me. Yeah, it's very

high incidence. Y So, is there something

that can be done if you're a woman

that's exercising, that's doing things

like jumping and running and sprinting

and the fast sort of twitch uh sports,

is there something you can do to avoid

having an ACL injury? It's all about

being strong. So, if we're looking at

how what is the biggest thing for ACL

prevention? And I'll bring in one of my

PhD students just graduated looked at um

ACL rehab after surgery.

And it comes down to the definitive

difference between quad and hamstring

strength. So if we're looking at

improving the um strength capacity of

the hamstrings, then it offsets some of

the

default strength that the quads are

taking. So if we're able to balance it

from being front loaded to being more

even loaded, it comes down to, you know,

how we were talking about distribution

of forces through the knee with men

being more linear and women having an

angle. Well, if we're able to take that

angle and we can evenly distribute the

load between the muscles of the

hamstring and the quad, so the front and

the back, then it pulls the forces more

centrally. Okay. Which reduces the

stress of one point of contact. Got you.

So if we're developing the strength

through the whole posterior chain, we're

looking at glutes, we're looking at

hamstrings, we're doing a lot of calf

work and we can develop that whole

posterior part. It reduces the incidence

of being pulled in one direction and the

misalignment of forces. The other is the

cutting motion where we're looking at at

um lateral movement. So a lot of times

when we're looking at warm-ups and

you're observing on like kids sports,

there's not a lot of lateral

development. So if we're looking at at

um prevent prevention of ACL tear, we

have to work a lot of the explosive

lateral movements as well as jumping and

single length single leg jumping. And

these are things that aren't really done

in grassroots. But as we start to get

more into professional sport, it's

becoming more and more apparent that we

have to do specific mechanism of injury

prevention. So they're looking at the

sport. We're a football player. We have

a high incidence of ACL potential. So,

we have to really develop our posterior

chain. We have to work on our power for

our lateral movements, our step and our

jump. Um, so this is part of what FIFA's

put in for the warm-up because there is

such a draw. And as you were saying that

33 women in the World Cup tore their

ACL. Part of it is loading, part of it

is a little bit maybe overtrained before

they go into the World Cup, but a lot of

it has to do with um this imbalance

between the muscles and now having to

address it. Did science just look at

women as

a different version of men? Like sorry,

did they just look at women as like a

smaller version of men? Is that what how

they looked? Yeah, for the most part

because I mean a lot of the stuff when I

was going through school and even now

textbooks. So, I was standing in the

metro in DC uh a few months ago and

there was a young girl who has just

gotten into exercise physiology and I

overheard a conversation and she was

talking about some of the experiments

that they were doing but it never she

never talked about like we have to make

uh you know we're doing women specific,

we're doing men's specific and I asked

her I was like has anyone you know

talked to you about how women's bodies

are different than men's from angles and

muscle morphology? And she's like, "No,

what are you talking about?" I was like,

"This is a second year in X-Viz." Now,

if you look at the textbooks, it's still

a representation of men in the textbook

with regards to images. You have him or

they. You never have her. They might

have a very small section in there about

the female athlete, but usually it's

about the female athlete and anemia or

relative energy deficiency in sport.

It's never about how we can empower

women to use their bodies and their

physiology to their advantage and it's

what almost 2025 now.

Is there any element of it of people

being too scared to talk about

differences in physiology amongst men

and women? I don't think so. I mean I

always explain it from historical

perspective when we're looking at the

history and when we started seeing the

modernization of medicine medicine prior

to the modernization of medicine it used

to be women who are the caretakers if

you're thinking about you get sick you

go and someone has an herbal remedy for

you but when we started medicalizing and

becoming more nuanced in the medical

education women were excluded. So when

we start looking at at the origins of

medicine and who was in the room, it was

men. We start looking at the origins of

science and science development, it was

men. So all the scientific experiments

and everything have always been a

default to men. We look at AI now and

they're learning from algorithms based

on male data. So even now, healthc care

is still heavily maleoriented.

So when we start looking at why women

haven't been included or why women have

been generalized to male data, it's just

been the nature of how things have

developed. Now that we're aware of it

and now we have more research money

coming into women's health, we're

starting to see a change. And part of

the two definitive moments in healthc

care research that really invoked this

change. One was when we started seeing a

lot of incidences with ambient and the

dosage of medicines where women were

getting into a lot of accidents, car

accidents after they taken ambient

because it was still in their system the

next morning. It's ambient. It's a sleep

aid. Okay. It's a a prescription

strength sleep aid. So then people are

like, whoa, what's going on here? Oh,

the dosage for 180 pound man is the same

as 120 pound woman. And we also know

that there's differences in body

composition and metabolism. So a 180lb

man can take this dose and be fine in

the morning. But 120 lb woman can't take

that same dose and be fine in the

morning. And then we have COVID and the

outcomes of um long COVID and the

differences between the sexes with

regards to women ended up with more long

COVID, men ended up dying. So then in

during the COVID time period, people

were like, whoa, there's sex differences

in the outcomes of this disease. We have

to really start looking at that. So

there are slow things that are really

impactful on society that now people are

starting to step and say, wait, we have

to really look at women as women. We

have to look at men as men.

And is there an element of hormones

impacting injury at all? There's always

an in an impact of hormones when we're

looking at the overlay of hormones and

sex hormones and then the protocols that

have been developed, they don't take

into account estrogen, progesterone, and

to some extent testosterone. So, if

we're looking at injury and the way that

estrogen makes more um laxidative

ligaments. So, that means that our

ligaments become more lax when estrogen

comes up, which is why people assume

that around ovulation is when people

will have more ACL tears. It's not

because we also see that progesterone

comes in and can have a different effect

on the tendons. But that isn't accounted

for in a lot of of the protocols that

are out there for training and

prevention of overtraining. We see that

when we're looking at male and

testosterone, there tends to be the more

testosterone, the better for developing

muscle and recovery, but that's not

necessarily true either. So there's

nuances in the socioultural idea around

sex hormones that also impact on our

actual guidelines and protocols. If a

man and a woman came to you and said, "I

want to lose weight." They said, "I'm

200 lb um and I'd like to lose some

weight." Would you give them different

advice on what to do? Absolutely.

Absolutely would. And it comes down to a

lot of we see this on social media all

the time, calories in, calories out,

right? So when we're looking at calories

in, calories out, that idea of that

algorithm can work well in men. And the

reason for that is the hypothalamus. So

if we're looking at the hypothalamus,

which is an area in the brain that

controls appetite, it also controls our

endocrine system. So for men, they don't

have as many of what we call our kispin

neurons activated. So this is uh neurons

that are responsible for when we have

nutrients coming in, they fire and

they're like, "Yeah, okay. We got enough

nutrition coming in that we can now

accommodate for developing muscle and

losing body fat." For women, we have

more areas that are very sensitive

sensitive to to nutrient density. So

when I say this, when we're talking

about

uh four grams of carbohydrate that come

in and say they're carbohydrate from

fruit and veg, not from ultrarocessed

stuff, those four grams of carb will

affect the bodies differently between

being a man and a woman. For a man, this

four grams of carb coming in primarily

will go blood sugar and then be stored

as liver, muscle, glycogen. For women,

it's blood sugar. it doesn't get stored

because for women in order to store

muscle um and liver glycogen you have to

have an activation of uh some enzymes

from the liver as well as some enzymes

within the skeletal muscle itself to say

yeah okay we want to store this we don't

want to circulate it so then we start

looking at how the brain is perceiving

that so if the brain is saying yeah we

can store this because there's still

enough muscle tissue around there's

still enough blood glucose that we can

keep going and we can survive survive

the day. But for women, it sits there.

The blood glucose sits there and when it

starts being used, the hypothalamus is

like, "Okay, where's the extra food

that's coming in so we can keep going

and countering the stress that's coming

in?" And the best way from a numbers

perspective to look at it is when we are

looking at calorie, baseline calorie

intake just to exist and not get into

any kind of endocrine or hormone

dysfunction and appetite dysfunction.

For men, it's 15 calories per kilogram

of fat-free mass. For women, it's 30.

So, we start to see men do really well

on things like fasted training. We see

men do really well on calorie

restriction because the hypothalamus is

not as sensitive to lower calorie intake

or to low carb intake or to high protein

and um high fat intake. But for women,

because the hypothalamus has more areas

that are sensitive to nutrient density.

What does that mean? Sorry, I'm not even

sure what the hypothalamus is. So, the

hypothalamus is an area in the brain.

Yeah. And it's sensing. So, you have

blood that circulates through the brain.

It senses temperature, how hot your your

blood is. Like the thermostat or

something of the body. Yeah. Okay. So,

it's Yeah, it is a thermostat. It's the

appetite control center. It's how your

body responds to salt, how your body

responds to protein, carbohydrate, do I

need more, do I need less? So, it's it's

like the control center for the most

part. So, for women who come in and

they're doing fasted training, the

hypothalamus is like, "Wait a second, we

don't have any blood sugar. We don't

have enough carbohydrate to actually do

this kind of training." So, what I'm

going to do is I'm going to create a

little bit of dysfunction here and I'm

going to start downturning all the other

systems that need the same kind of fuel

because I don't have enough just to do

these muscle contractions. So, that

means you could end up losing muscle.

Absolutely. So, if a woman comes to me,

it's like, I want to lose weight and

I've been doing fasted training. I get

up, I have a black coffee, I go to the

gym, I do my lifting, I do some of my

cardio. So, my girlfriend does exactly

that. and then I'm not that hungry

because I did a hard workout at the gym.

I might have a protein recovery shake

and then I'll hold off eating my first

meal until noon. I always turn to them

and go, "Well, why did you go to the

gym?" Because all you've effectively

done is burn through your lean mass.

Your body needs to have some fuel and

the first thing that goes is lean mass

because it's a very active component of

the body. So, it would be better for you

as a woman to have maybe 15 grams of

protein if you're going to do strength

or 15 grams of protein with 30 gram of

carb, which isn't a lot before you go do

cardio and strength because this is just

enough to raise your blood sugar to

circulate to the hypothalamus that yes,

there's some nutrition coming in. I'm

able to get that blood sugar working.

I'm able to get that blood sugar into

the muscle. I'm able to stimulate the

mitochondria in the muscle to actually

use some more free fatty acids. I'm a

able to tell the liver that I can

actually get through this and use these

free fatty acids instead of storing

them. It only takes a little bit of food

to then have benefit for what you're

doing. For a man, if he's like comes in,

I have a black coffee, I go to the gym,

I do my strength, I might do a little

cardio, I have my protein afterwards,

and then I might delay my meal. like

that's all right because you have a

longer window for recovery. The

hypothalamus isn't as sensitive. You're

not burning through lean mass. You're

developing a stress on the body and we

know that it's really good that you had

that protein post exercise because

that's going to create some muscle

protein synthesis and hold you over till

you have your meal. Okay. So, I'm going

to try and explain this to you um like

I'm a 10-year-old, which is the exact

level of IQ I have on this subject

matter. So, you've got this hypothalamus

in the brain, which is basically this

sensor. It's trying to figure out, make

sure everything is in I'm trying to

think of that big word that someone

taught me.

Homeostasis. Homeostasis. Everything is

level, right? Yeah. And a woman's

hypothalamus is more sensitive. So if my

partner wakes up, goes to the gym, has

her black coffee, goes to the gym, does

a big workout as she always does, her

body, her hypothalamus is going to

panic a little bit more because it's

going to assume that there's stress on

the body now and it's going to look

around to see if it has sufficient blood

glucose levels. And it's and it's not

going to because she's not had anything

for a while. She's not going to have the

sufficient blood glucose levels. So,

it's going to start burning her lean

muscle mass. Exactly. Which means that

she's she's essentially going to it's

like one step forward, one step back.

Right. Super simplified. For a guy has

his black coffee in the morning, goes to

the gym, does the workout, the body

looks, and because the hypothalamus is

less sensitive, it's less requiring of

there to be higher blood sugar levels,

doesn't care as much. So, it's going to

it can also tap more into our liver and

muscle glycogen stores. So, it's going

to say, "Yeah." Okay. Well, we have a

little bit of blood glucose. We need a

little bit more. So, let's tap into

those stores and pull them out. So, it's

less reluctant to go straight for my

lean muscle mass. Exactly. It has an

alternative fuel source.

That's interesting. And what's the

evolutionary story of this? Why why does

this make sense? When we look tribally

like there and I might get hit by some

sociologists are like wait this isn't

completely true but for the exception

there are some tribes that didn't fit

into this but for the general idea from

a biological evolutionary standpoint

when we had times of low calorie intake

so we had to go find the beast or we had

to go out and find calories. It was at a

disadvantage for the woman to be

pregnant or to have a baby an extra

mouth to feed. So in times of low food

intake, the reproductive system or the

endocrine system of a woman would wind

down. So she would become amenoric or

lose her menstrual cycle for a while.

But it didn't affect men in that same

way because they had to lean up and get

fitter and faster because they had to go

fight the beast or they had to go find

the calories and bring it back. So, when

we're looking from that evolutionary

standpoint, in times of low calorie

intake or low food intake, a woman's

body will start to conserve and wind

down because it thinks that there's a

famine coming. But for men, they're not

as sensitive and the body's like, "Oh,

not a lot of calories coming in. That

must mean there's a fight that I have to

prepare for. So, I'm going to lean up.

I'm going to address all of my fuel

systems so that I can tap into all these

alternative fuel systems so that I will

have the energy to be able to go and

fight the beast to bring the calories

back. Mhm. So when there's adequate

calories available, we see that women

will lean up. They'll become uh more

acutely aware. Cognitive function comes

up. Carbohydrates are really important.

So we see that there is a development of

egg maturation. we have better endocrine

pulse. So that means that our hormones

that pulse on a daily basis, they

actually have the full pulse um and

return to baseline to encourage the body

to have a really robust endocrine

system. So that's thyroid, that's our

menstrual cycle, it's all the things.

But when we start pulling the calories

back, all that stuff winds down. So what

does that say about fasting?

So this is the big debate, right? So we

look at fasting and where it first came

out and it's like okay we see that obese

sedentary individuals who had to lose

weight rapidly for surgery they're put

on a fasting type program to lose weight

quickly in order to survive surgery. And

unfortunately a lot of the times we look

at clinical research and it gets

transposed over to health and fitness

without actually asking if it's viable.

So then we look at the lower end of the

fitness population, people who are just

learning to move and wanting to move and

like I also want to lose more body fat

so that I can move better. Oh, I'll

start fasting. And when we see a lot of

the like push on it, it comes from male

data again. So when we start looking at

women and a lot of women used to come

with their partners to see me and say,

"I don't understand. We're both doing

the same kind of fasted training. He's

leaning up and getting fitter. I'm

putting weight on and getting slower.

I'm like, okay, well, we have to

separate it out, right? If you're a

woman and you want to fast for all the

health reasons that we hear about with

regards to telmir length, improving

longevity, improving our body's

metabolic control. Then we work with our

circadian rhythm where we stop eating at

at dinner. So, we have dinner, we don't

eat 2 to three hours before bed. We have

that overnight fast. And then you want

to have food within a half an hour of

waking up to blunt that cortisol peak

that's natural upon waking. For men, you

can have variations of fasting. You can

do intermittent fasting, you can do a

warrior fasting, and you can still have

benefit. But for women, when we look at

the data, and if we were to do a warrior

fast, which is a 20-hour fast, 4-hour

eating window, for men, we see more

parasympathetic drive. So, they get that

more focused They have better blood

glucose control. They get uh an

acceleration of body fat loss. They

become more metabolically flexible,

meaning their body's able to transfer

between carbohydrate and fat

utilization. For women, it doesn't

happen that way. For women who do a

warrior fast, so that's a 20our

uh fasting and 4hour eating window. They

end up with less blood sugar control. We

have higher resting blood glucose. We

have more fat storage. we have more

sympathetic drive. So that means the

body's under stress and you're not going

to be able to sleep or recover well and

we see a downturn of the thyroid within

4 days of doing this. So when we're

looking at the data of fasting again,

it's pulling from the men and

generalizing to the women. But when we

start really looking and narrowing it

down and looking at female specific

data, the type of fasting that's out

there in the health and fitness world is

not appropriate for women.

But you would say that the sort of

overnight fast

eating dinner at a earlier time at 6 7

6:00 and then eating breakfast when you

wake up at say 8 in the morning or 9 or

something 6 or 7. What about the like

3-day fast you hear about to get into

like autophagy or whatever is? Exercise

is a stronger stimulus for autophagy

than fasting because if we look at

exercise in itself is a fasting state.

What happens during exercise? You start

exercising, your body is trying to

provide fuel. So, it's breaking down

fat. It's breaking down glucose. It's

breaking down amino acids. It's also

creating in a recovery standpoint a

boost of growth hormone, a boost of

testosterone in both men and women that

creates the cell cleanup, which is

autophagy. Right? So, if we're looking

at the difference between fasting and

exercise, exercise is a stronger stress.

All the things that we hear about

fasting and longevity, exercise does the

same. It's a stronger stimulus for it.

But the problem is we've become a lazy

society and people think exercise is too

hard. As an exercise physiologist, it

breaks my heart to see people who are

struggling to walk down the street

because we are so used to being

conditioned to a certain temperature in

a room to having a car automatic opener

or Uber come so we don't have to walk

down the road. And I bring up that movie

Wall-E from the early 2000s with the

little robot who's like wandering around

society and you see all these people on

these floating beds watching a screen

and one of the guys gets kicked off by

Wall-E accidentally falls down. He can't

get up and he's looking around going,

"What? Why can't I get up? What what's

going on?" I'm like, that's today's

society where people are are not able to

actually pull their own body weight

around for a significant amount of time

because it feels too difficult. Whereas,

if we look at all the stuff that comes

out with nutrition and all the trends

that come out with nutrition from

fasting to carnivorous diet to, you

know, the oldfashioned paleo, all these

things that people are trying to do, we

turn to exercise and we change the

modalities of exercise. Are we doing

intense exercise? Are we doing low

intensity? Are we doing resistance

training? Are we doing cardio? What are

we doing? All of these things in

exercise are significantly stronger

stress on the body that create more

adaptive changes than all these crazy

diets, but people find exercise too hard

or they don't have time. So, if I in

that example where a man and woman come

to you, you would you wouldn't recommend

the woman to fast in the same way that

you'd recommend a man to fast. Is there

any differences that you'd recommend in

training if they were if their goal was

to lose weight? Yep, absolutely. So,

when we're looking at regardless of age

for women because we see that women

don't age in a linear fashion like men.

So, we had definitive points. We have

puberty, we have our reproductive years,

we not have pregnancy in there, we have

pmenopause, we have postmenopause. Each

one of those is a different hormone

profile that it can affect the way we

train. for men, you know, you just kind

of go and we start to see a decline of

testosterone, we get into our late 50s.

So, we're talking about women and

training. If someone is coming in and

they're in their mid30s and they're

like, I want to lose weight. Okay,

resistance training. If someone comes in

and they're in their mid-40s and

pmenopause, resistance training doesn't

matter. Resistance training is key for

mobilizing abdominal fat and for

creating more lean mass and also

increasing the amount of cross talk

between their skeletal muscle and our

stored fat through little things called

myioines which are hormone signals that

are released during exercise and

released from the skeletal muscle. So if

we say okay let's do resistance training

to really recmp the body we also want to

increase our protein intake because we

see if you're doing resistance training

with a higher protein intake then we

have complete remp over the course of 12

weeks and it's a very powerful

motivating tool for women because for

the most part women have been

excommunicated from the strength world

until recently it wasn't kosher for

women to have a lot of muscles we see

like I grew up in the '9s with the

supermodels that were super skinny,

right? It wasn't kosher for women to be

in the gym lifting weights. But we see

this evolution change. And so we're

starting to see more research come out

in women in resistance training. And

it's so imperative for body composition

change to invoke that resistance

training. What about a Zmpeek? A Zimp.

Yeah. So I find it interesting because

of all the impact it's having on society

and it is a very powerful tool. The

problem with it is no one is being

necessarily taught how to come off it.

So if we look at osimp and how powerful

the GPL1 is, we see it does invoke an

appetite switch where it mutes the

appetite. It dampens cravings. So we see

as rapid weight loss, but the rapid

weight loss is lean mass. So that comes

back to the wallally picture where you

can't get up because you don't have lean

mass. I fear for society who doesn't

have the opportunity to learn how to

come off it through proper strength

training, exercise modalities, and

nutrition to support the weight loss

that comes with those impecc. It's

absolutely brilliant tool. is absolutely

a brilliant tool, but we're falling on

the behavior change. If we were to

really teach people how to create that

behavior change while they're using the

tool, then they can come off it and not

be afraid of putting weight back on.

Okay. So, would you recommend it for

your for people that come to see you or

ask you for advice? No, because most of

the people that come to see me have

those 10 vanity pounds they want to

lose. I call them vanity pounds because

they're the ones that creep up and you

can instigate little changes within the

daily life to actually lose them and

keep them off. For people who are

struggling who have severe obesity,

they're pre-diabetic, they have other

medical conditions and exercise is

definitely in the too hard basket

because they get breathless just getting

up out of their chair. We need to lose

some weight first so that we can then

implement some of the adaptive changes

of exercise. And do you think women

should be eating immediately after they

exercise and men or is it does it is

there a variance there at all? There is

a variance because when we look at um

what we call metabolism coming back down

to baseline. So that's your overall body

coming back down to its resting state.

For women it happens within 30 to 40

minutes after exercise. For men it's 2

to 18 hours depending on the intensity.

So in that we see that if we want to

maximize our body's resistance training

and muscle building capacity, we need to

give it some food. We need to give it

some really good hit of protein. For

women who are in their reproductive

years, we see 35 grams of protein post

exercise within 45 minutes will tip the

muscle into muscle protein synthesis.

For men, it's 20 grams and it can be

two, four, whatever hours later. When

we're looking at returning our muscle

glycogen back to normal, we don't need

as much carbohydrate post exercise as a

woman as men need more because they tap

more into their stores. So the window of

opportunity for women post exercise is

around that 45 minute mark, but for men

it's open a lot wider. What about the

keto diet for women?

I am kind of anti- keto for both sexes.

And I say this because when we look at

the gut microbiome, that is so

important. We see a decrease in

diversity as we become more and more I

guess city dwelling and we are having

less and less of uh variety in our food

chain. We have to take care of the gut

microbiome. If we look at the ketogenic

diet and the high fat intake that comes

with it, it significantly decreases that

gut microbiome diversity, which reduces

the body's ability to synthesize

vitamins, to produce serotonin, to have

this conversation between the gut and

the brain. And for women, we're already

metabolically flexible by the nature of

being born with more of those endurance

fibers that there's no reason to try to

do a ketogenic diet. Could I not take a

prebiotic or something or just eat more

fruits and veggies and stuff? So, if

you're eating a lot of fruit and

veggies, sorry, not fruit, veggies. No,

if you're eating a lot of fibrous fruit

and veg, then that's how we increase the

diversity. Taking a probiotic pill, it

just affects the upper intestines. But

even that is a little bit suspect

because there's only two to three

companies that are making all the

probiotics that are B2B. So that means

business is business and we don't really

know the long-term outcome and we can

have the overgrowth of some probiotics

that again can cause some dispiosis.

Could I be on the keto diet and still

protect my gut microbiome?

I don't think so. Not from what I've

seen. Cuz I thought the gut microbiome

was predominantly about like plants.

It is. But you also need some protein

that comes from a wide variety of

different sources. And the amount of fat

that is taken in through a true

ketogenic diet is 70 to 80% of your

total intake coming from fat. And then

that will cause the overgrowth of the

bacteria that relies primarily on fatty

acids, which downregulates all the good

bacteria that relies on our fibrous

fruit and veg. because you're not going

to be able to consume as much fiber as

you need on a ketogenic diet to really

invoke this diversity. For thinking

about invoking diversity, you want 30

different plants across the week. And on

a ketogenic diet, you're just not

capable of being able to eat as much to

create that diversity. And the reason

why it's really important for women to

have that diversity is because we have

some gut bugs that are responsible for

our sex hormone metabolism. So, we think

about estrogen, progesterone. People

think, "Oh, yeah, well, it's released

from the ovaries and the adrenals and it

goes and it hits our target tissues."

But we have this thing called a second

pass where our sex hormones will be

taken up by the liver, bound by sex

hormone binding globulin, shot into the

intestines through bile, unconjugated or

unpacked by these little gut bugs, and

then shot back out in the circulation to

work. If we have a lower diversity of

the gut microbiome, we don't have those

bugs that will help with our sex

hormone. um I guess reactivation and the

ability for the sex hormones to work

optimally.

What about things like sauners and cold

plunges? Yeah. Is there a difference of

variance there between men and women?

Absolutely. So if we're looking at cold

plunge and it's all the rage, right? So

we're seeing let's get into ice water.

It's going to invoke this massive

parasympa parasympathetic response. I'm

going to have lots of cognition and

focus. It's going to create a hormonal

response that improves my blood glucose.

It's going to invoke a lot of autophagy

and all the things that we see with

fasting as well. And it gives me this

incredible sense of being in control.

Male data. We look at women who are in

ice bath. It's too cold to invoke those

responses. And the reason for that is we

have differences in um our skin

sensation between men and women in with

regards to thermmorreulation. So women

have more um subcutaneous fat. So more

fat under the skin and we tend to vasoc

constrict and vasoddilate first. So that

means that um blood vessels will

constrict tightly and then we'll start

to have some internal changes or if

we're too hot we'll vasoddilate first

and then we'll have internal changes to

create sweating. So we look at a cold

plunge there's too much constriction and

it becomes too much of a threat to women

and their bodies don't have the same

response to ice water. We see that 15 to

16° C or around 55° F is optimal

temperature for women to experience the

same effect that men have with ice. So

there's a sex difference in the

temperature to invoke the same response

between cold water um immersion

responses. In the sauna, everyone

responds.

And we see that the adaptation for sauna

is different again for men and women

because for women with the difference of

the vasoddilation in the heat before

they start sweating, it takes a longer

time for core temperature to come up. So

women can spend more time in the heat

before they start to get changes in

their hormone responses and blood volume

adaptations. For men, they can go in and

I kind of laugh. My husband will come in

with me in the sauna and I'll sit there

for like 10 minutes. I'm not sweating

yet and he's like pouring. He's like, I

got to get out. And it takes me like 20

or 30 minutes in order to get the same

response. So when we look at the the

actual research and data that looks at

acclimatization and looks at sauna

invoking changes, we see again that

women need more time both long longer

time for an acute bout and longer time

across the weeks in order to get the

same cardiovascular adaptations as men.

Interesting. Didn't realize that. A

typical ice bath is what temperature?

It's what? Minus 1 or something. Or is

it I think it's 0 to 4° C. Oh, okay. 0

to 4. Okay. So, you're saying that a

woman should be nearer 15. Mhm. For the

same benefits. Mhm. Yep. At my company,

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below. One of the um conversations I had

with my partner last year at New Year's

Eve was about creatine. Yeah. Um, I had

it had some with me on the counter in

our in our home and we were away from

home and I said to her, I said, "Oh, you

should take some." And her response was,

"No, that's not for women." And she went

on to explain that she felt it was for

effectively like bodybuilders. Yeah. And

that it would like put on weight. And I

was like, I don't think that's true. I

said, some people on my podcast have

told me that that everyone should be

taking it. And so we sat there and

Googled it. and after googling it for a

couple of um minutes, she was like

scooping it into her drink as fast as

she possibly could. But there is a

prevailing narrative here. Actually,

before you came, I asked AI a couple of

questions about women's perceptions on

creatine and the number one thing was

women thought that it would gain muscle

and gain weight and they thought it was

um for bodybuilders. Yep. That is the

prevailing myths surround creatine. And

what's the expression people use? The

dose or the poisons in the dose, right?

So that's part of the creatine. So if

we're looking at the bodybuilding set

and how it increases muscle capacity and

training status, so if we're using a lot

of creatine, the dosing for bodybuilding

is five grams four times a day with one

gram of carbohydrate. And we see that

creatine helps store water within the

muscle with glycogen. And we want that

for muscle performance because the idea

of being able to train harder with

creatine is to enhance the amount of of

enzymes that are available for muscle

contraction. And creatine is part of the

buffering system of that. If we're

looking at creatine for health and for

women, the dose is 3 to 5 grams only

once a day without carbohydrate. And the

reason for that is women have around 70%

of the stores that men have by the

nature for the most part don't eat as

much creatine fil food as men and we see

that we use it for a lot of our fast

energetics. So like for our gut health,

for our brain health um and then also

for muscle performance. So, if we're

having women take three to five grams

once a day, it does not have the same

side effects as the bodybuilding set of

taking five grams four times a day.

Yeah. Because on the label, it tells me

to take it a few times a day. Yeah. You

don't have to. And it says about

loading. So, this is all the

bodybuilding stuff, right? So, if you

want to load, we see a loading protocols

over the course of two weeks and you're

starting to really saturate the body

with those five grams four times a day.

But for women, we see that 3 to five

grams will fully saturate the body over

the course of three weeks. So that means

that all our fast energetics, like I

said, our gut, um, the intestines, and

we're looking at the integrity of the

intestinal cells and the mucosal lining,

and we see that there is a greater

incidence of GI distress in women. I

think it's something like a 5:1 ratio of

women to men having GI distress running.

And it has to do with estrogen, but also

has to do with what we call the mucosal

lining of the intestines. So we want to

maintain the integrity of the mucosal

lining. And creatine is really important

for that. So if we're looking at

saturating the body over 3 weeks with 3

to 5 grams, we improve that integrity.

So we have less GI distress. We also see

that there have been randomized control

trials looking at u mood and with

specifically with regards to depression

and anxiety and women who are taking

three to five grams of creatine

will come out of a depressive episode

more so than women who are just using an

SSRI. So it's really important for brain

metabolism.

And when we're looking at that whole

loading strategy for men, that's all

about muscle performance. It's not about

gut health. It's not about brain health.

about muscle performance.

Just looking at some studies, creatine

supplication, creatine supplementation

for both men and women enhances muscle

strength, increases lean muscle mass,

improves highintensity exercise

performance. Yep. Improves recovery, has

potential cognitive benefits, and

supports in neurodeenerative diseases.

Yes. So Abby Smith Ryan is a colleague

out of UNCC and she's done a lot of work

in creatine for women. Um, and yes, we

see that there is an improvement in

muscle capacity because you're

increasing the amount of buffer that's

available for muscle contractions, but

it doesn't have to be the same loading

dose as men. If you are looking for

performance enhancement because you want

to improve a training block or you're in

physique building or you're going to do

something like high rocks and you need

to have greater muscle capacity, you

might want to try the loading strategy.

Yes, you will gain water weight because

you're also storing more within the

muscle. But for the general woman who's

looking for health and performance

benefits, you don't have to do a loading

strategy. You just have to do that 3 to

five grams a day. That loading strategy,

for anyone that doesn't know, is

basically some of the creatine boxes

will tell you the labels will say for

the first week or two weeks, whatever,

have a huge dosage of it, and then

thereafter you can kind of ease down the

dosage. M but I think that's kind of

been debunked as something that we all

need to do in all cases. Yeah. Are there

any other supplements that you recommend

women to take based on the way that we

live our lives and the food that we eat?

Vitamin D. Okay. Um and why and what

does that do? So if we're looking at

vitamin D, especially vitamin D3, what's

the difference? So you have vitamin D2

and vitamin D3. Vitamin D2 is more of a

storage form. It's not converted to

being a functional form. So if you take

D3, it's already a functional form. So

that means your body is going to take it

in and use it as it should be. So we're

looking at a vitamin D3 supplement. Then

we are able to boost circulating levels

of vitamin D3 or vitamin D that's usable

and it's used for every system in the

body. And it's really important now

especially I'm coming from the southern

hemisphere just out of winter. You're in

the upper parts of the northern

hemisphere in the middle of winter and

we don't get enough sun. And when we're

looking at now all the worries for skin

cancer, people are slip, slap, slop, you

know, sunscreen, hat, clothes, and we

don't get enough. And then if we're

looking at our food supply, there's not

a lot of proper vitamin D rich foods.

You're looking at mushrooms or fortified

dairy products. And those tend not to be

consumed a lot nowadays. So, if we're

improving the amount of vitamin D3 that

we're taking in and the amount of

vitamin D that's circulating, we have

better recovery. We have better muscle

function. We have better brain health.

We have pretty much every system is

affected in a positive way. Omega-3.

Yep. Omega-3s are good. Especially as we

get into perry and postmenopause, we

want to look at uh how inflammation

affects the cells. So, if we look at

using a really good vitamin or sorry, a

really good omega-3

um and omega uh I guess we're looking at

the types of omega-3s that are in there.

then we're enhancing cellular integrity

that our estrogen used to help with

anti-inflammatory properties. It's not

something that everyone needs to take.

It's something that we have to consider

when we start getting into our late 30s,

early 40s. Maybe get a blood test for

it. See how your omega-3 levels are and

then consider dosing with a really good

fish oil.

What about iron levels? Because I've had

a friend of mine who is a woman um tell

me that their iron levels were low.

This is common and we see that there's

the incidence of

a change in the

norms when we're looking at the

reference ranges.

And I find it really interesting that

the reference ranges that we have for

all of our blood markers are shifting to

a sicker population. What's that mean?

So if we're looking at the bell curve

and we're taking population data,

overall our society has become sicker.

So now we're seeing that the norms for

iron used to be a ferotin of 50 or lower

was considered low ferotin. Now it's 26

for women. We look at testosterone.

Lower testosterone now for men is

normal. And it is because that is just

what a sedentary population now

presents. But if someone is active and

comes to me and says, you know, I had my

iron tested and it's sitting at 26 and

they say that it's normal, but I feel

awful. It's like that is not normal. If

you were part of my high performance

athletic crew, we want to see minimum

50, preferably 100. So, we have to

supplement you to bring it up. And it's

a really specific area of how we

supplement. It's supplementing every

other day with a very high bioavailable

iron. And when we start looking at how

we are supplementing every other day

with either carbonyl or glycinate, then

we're really able to boost that ferotin

and people start to feel better. What

does iron do and how does someone who's

iron deficient feel? So iron is

responsible for that those hem groups

that I was talking about with oxygen

carrying capacity, hemoglobin, the

blood, the blood cells. Yeah. Their

blood cells. So iron is responsible for

allowing those hem groups to carry

oxygen. If we have low iron, then we

don't have enough oxygen circulating

throughout the body or being used by the

body. So you feel very flat, very tired.

You start to get really dark circles

under your eyes. Um it a mission to do

anything. So it's like a deadended

fatigue. And people are like this this

isn't stressoriented fatigue or jet lag

oriented fatigue. This is fatigue where

I can't even walk up the stairs without

getting winded. What foods have iron in

them or iron rich? So, primarily red

meat is where a lot of people turn to.

But if you are more plant-based, then we

look at leafy greens. We look at nuts

and seeds, but using a lot of vitamin C

with that, preferably adding um a little

bit of olive oil on our salads. uh maybe

cooking in an iron skillet to improve

the amount of iron that comes into the

food. And we also know that we have to

time it with what we call hepsidin or

hepsetin depending on where you come

from in the world. It's an enzyme that

decreases the body's availability of

iron absorption. It increases with

inflammation. So it's higher after

training for about 5 hours in men and in

reproductive women. And it can be

elevated for up to 24 hours in late

perry and early post-menopausal women.

So basically, how do I supplement?

Supplement before training or at night

away from training. When you think about

men's and women's diets, is there

anything to be aware of when we're

thinking about because you know, me and

my partner will sit down for dinner and

we share the food. Yeah. So we the food

comes out, we even when we go to a

restaurant, sometimes we'll order the

exact same thing and we'll both finish

it. Yeah.

Is that okay? Is it is it working for

you guys? I think part of the reason I

ask is when I did some um blood glucose

tests. Yeah. I think I I think if I

recall this correctly, my partner was

more sens glucose sensitive than me. And

I recall them telling me that women are

have a greater blood sugar sensitivity

than men. So this is the interesting

part. So when we're looking at blood

glucose and insulin sensitivity,

it changes across the menstrual cycle.

So it depends on is she in the high

hormone phase or not. If she's in the

high hormone phase which is after

ovulation

uh we have more insulin resistance and

the reason for that is when progesterone

comes up it's trying to take in

everything as a building block for the

uterine lining. Insulin resistance what

does that mean? So insulin is the

hormone that that is

a signal for your muscles to uptake

glucose to store it. Okay. So it sends a

signal to grab the glucose out my blood,

store it, which brings my glucose levels

down. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. When

progesterone's in the picture, insulin

doesn't do its job very well. Okay.

Because pro progesterone wants to have

more carbohydrate available to be able

to then send it to the developing

uterine lining, the endometriosis,

because the endometriosis becomes a

really thick layer of

tissue that is really rich in glycogen.

So progesterone increases lean mass

breakdown or you increase your protein

intake to have more circulating amino

acids. It also makes your body less apt

to store glucose because it wants both

amino acids and glucose to build this

lush uterine lining. When we get into

pmenopause,

we have more insulin resistance because

there's confusion across all systems of

the body and the body is like, I don't

know if I'm going to need this glucose

or not, so I'm not going to store it.

And there's a misstep in the liver and a

misstep in the mitochondria

which is responsible for tapping into

using free fatty acids with

carbohydrate. So the body is having a

higher level of blood glucose because

the body doesn't know if it should store

it or not. So when your partner gets

tested depends on how old she is and

what phase of the menstrual cycle or if

she's well beyond that. So that the part

of the menstrual cycle where her

progesterone is highest is when she's

going to be most sensitive to sugar.

Exactly. And that is typically between

day 19 and 23 if she has a normal cycle,

a regular cycle or whatever. Well, the

caveat there is ovulation. Is she

ovulating or not? Okay. And

unfortunately, we're seeing in the

modern fertility literature that women

are having more and more anovulatory

cycles. But you won't necessarily know

that because you'll still have a bleed.

What's an an ovulatory cycle? You don't

ovulate. Why? They're looking at a lot

of the stress that's coming on today's

society, the food system, a lot of the

um I guess trendy diets that are out

there. A lot of women aren't eating

enough to support their immune or their

menstrual cycle function to allow the

egg to actually develop to then

instigate ovulation. And it's not just

in active women, it's across the board.

So, as it relates to this menstrual

cycle, 28 days, I'm going to put it on

the screen for anyone that doesn't

understand it, um, or doesn't know what

I'm referencing right now, but I'll also

link it below in the comments in the

description. Sorry. Um, 28 days long.

There's the early felicular stage, the

late felicular stage, the mid lutulu

lutio. It's exactly what I said. Yep.

And the late lutio phase. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. As it relates to nutrition

and exercise. Yeah. How do I need to

adapt across these 28 days and why do I

need to adapt? So again, it comes down

to the ovulation. Right. So if we're

looking at the low hormone phase, so

that's your follicular phase. Day one to

six roughly. Yep. And even up to

ovulation, which is where? So around day

12 or 13 on 28 day cycle. So right at

that peak 12 to 13. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

there. So, this is where um the immune

system is really robust and we're really

resilient to stress and we can have a

lot of carbohydrate and protein intake

and we're not going to be that affected.

We're more sensitive to glucose. It's

going to be pulled into places it needs

to be. If we ovulate after ovulation,

like I said, progesterone comes up. It's

only produced if we ovulate because

progesterone is produced from the

breakdown of the housing of the egg.

Progesterone, like I said earlier, will

hold everything in the blood. It will it

will tell the body, we need more blood

glucose, and we need that glucose to

come to the endometrial lining. We also

need more amino acids. So, we're going

to break down lean mass or I'm going to

make this person crave more protein

oriented foods so that I can have amino