Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Q&A - Women Over 50 Strength Training and Fat Loss (Pam Sherman) | Ep 399

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Q&A - Women Over 50 Strength Training and Fat Loss (Pam Sherman) | Ep 399 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: If you're a woman over 50 who's been strength training and eating enough protein, and you've heard all the things about your metabolism and hormones working against you, that building muscles harder and harder, and frankly, you're not seeing the strength gains or the fat loss or body reconf you know should be happening.
• 0:17
  Philip Pape: This episode is for you because today I'm teaming up with fitness coach Pam Sherman to answer all the questions women over 50 are asking about training, nutrition, body recomp.
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: We're covering everything from bone density and joint issues to protein and recovery.
• 0:33
  Philip Pape: You'll learn why the advice you've been following might be holding you back, what a realistic timeline looks like for gaining muscle over 50, and specific tips that make a difference in strength and fat loss while your physiology is changing.
• 0:46
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and today I'm doing something a little bit different.
• 1:03
  Philip Pape: Instead of an interview, I'm teaming up with fellow coach, women over 50 expert, all around great person Pam Sherman.
• 1:11
  Philip Pape: She was on the podcast before, we'll give you a link to that.
• 1:14
  Philip Pape: But today we're gonna do a collaborative QA focused specifically on women over 50.
• 1:20
  Philip Pape: Now, Pam and I are going to tackle those super important questions that all of you have about strength training, nutrition, body recomposition for women who, when you're over 50, we've covered the period of post-menopause and beyond phases of life.
• 1:36
  Philip Pape: And all these questions actually came straight from you, the listener, the women who listen to the show and are struggling with real challenges, concerns about osteoporosis and joint pain, to how much protein do I eat, to what's going on with my metabolism.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: And neither Pam nor I have actually seen the questions yet.
• 1:53
  Philip Pape: I took a lot of questions from you guys.
• 1:55
  Philip Pape: I smushed them into AI and came up with a curated list.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: And we're gonna make it a surprise QA, a little twist to make it more interesting for all of you.
• 2:03
  Philip Pape: So, Pam, my friend, thank you and welcome back to the show.
• 2:07
  Pam Sherman: Thank you.
• 2:07
  Pam Sherman: It's so great to be here.
• 2:08
  Pam Sherman: We always have the best time talking.
• 2:10
  Pam Sherman: You could talk for too long, so I know we're gonna keep it in a certain amount of time.
• 2:14
  Philip Pape: We'll keep it concise.
• 2:14
  Philip Pape: I so I have like 11 questions.
• 2:16
  Philip Pape: I don't know if we'll get to them all, but we'll just tackle them.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: How about that?
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: You want to jump right in?
• 2:20
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 2:21
  Philip Pape: So the first one is about bone mineral density and strength training, very important topic for this age range.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: And the question is how does strength training specifically impact bone density, bone mineral density for women in peri and postmenopause?
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: And then, of course, corollary to that, what exercises are effective for the areas that a lot of women care about the most, like your hips and your spine.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: So, what are your thoughts on that?
• 2:45
  Pam Sherman: Well, hips and spine scream deadlift to me.
• 2:48
  Pam Sherman: Uh, truly.
• 2:50
  Pam Sherman: Our muscles protect our bones.
• 2:52
  Pam Sherman: And I still see a lot of ladies at the gym not lifting enough weight.
• 2:58
  Pam Sherman: Anytime your dumbbell has a color, we're gonna put those dumbbells down and we are going to lift heavier weights.
• 3:04
  Pam Sherman: That's really weird.
• 3:04
  Philip Pape: Wait, wait, wait.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: Mine are black.
• 3:05
  Philip Pape: That's my color dumbbell.
• 3:07
  Pam Sherman: Pink, orange, yellow, blue.
• 3:10
  Pam Sherman: Uh I think a lot of women, and if you are not certain of what to do, hire a trainer for a session or two to get your forum down.
• 3:17
  Pam Sherman: But you're gonna get the most bang for your buck with your basic compound lifts, your deadlifts, your squats, overhead press.
• 3:24
  Pam Sherman: You don't have to do bench press, but shoulder press.
• 3:26
  Pam Sherman: More load is gonna be better for your body.
• 3:29
  Pam Sherman: And that's not more load right away.
• 3:30
  Pam Sherman: It's working up to more load, but your muscles always are gonna protect are protective for your bones.
• 3:35
  Pam Sherman: So starting now and never stopping, I think is your best bet to help.
• 3:39
  Pam Sherman: I have osteoarthritis in my low back.
• 3:41
  Pam Sherman: And I like I've been strength training and it is a natural cause in our bodies, but I'm gonna do everything I can to keep it from increasing.
• 3:49
  Pam Sherman: So more load, more load, more protein, more calcium-rich foods.
• 3:54
  Pam Sherman: I even take a supplement, but I know the supplements aren't gonna do nearly as much as my strength training does for my body.
• 3:59
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I love that you well first mentioned deadlift.
• 4:02
  Philip Pape: It's my favorite lift personally, and it's also one that I tell people all the time can solve a lot of back issues for folks if you do it right.
• 4:08
  Philip Pape: But the heavy is a trigger word because I know when I go on shows and they're like, what does it mean to lift heavy or how should you lift heavy?
• 4:15
  Philip Pape: It requires some nuance and maybe you can help us explore this.
• 4:19
  Philip Pape: Here's my perspective two things.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: One is that we know the driver of muscle development specifically, not strength, but muscle growth and size, is mechanical tension, which is getting close to failure.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: And we know that there's a wide range of heaviness, i.e., rep ranges, that can get you there.
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: When we're talking osteoporosis specifically, and you mentioned heavy, I really do think we mean in the strength regime of heavier, more like 60% of your max or higher is the threshold I've learned, where it truly is lower reps and quite heavy because the bones respond to that pressure on the muscles, kind of requiring the matrix inside those bones to stitch back together more densely when you adapt.
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean?
• 5:05
  Philip Pape: That's kind of where my mind goes.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: And then I've heard other good coaches say, like, yeah, one of the important things is the big compound lifts actually in the like five to eight rep range ish when osteoporosis is a concern.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: So do you agree with that?
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: Is that what you think of as heavy or is there a wider range here?
• 5:21
  Pam Sherman: No, I definitely do.
• 5:21
  Pam Sherman: If you're getting a 10, that's not heavy enough.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 5:24
  Pam Sherman: Um, and if you've never done this before, I want to start with a movement pattern.
• 5:27
  Pam Sherman: In fact, I have a couple male clients I just started with.
• 5:30
  Pam Sherman: We started with a body bar to get the pattern of the hinge because they weren't hinging.
• 5:35
  Pam Sherman: So you have to get the movement down first.
• 5:37
  Pam Sherman: And I love what you said that it's great for your back because I know people who don't know about lifting say, oh, that lifting's terrible for your back.
• 5:43
  Pam Sherman: I'm like, it's not for your posterior chain, it's great, but you have to have the right pattern for that to work.
• 5:49
  Pam Sherman: And then I would say six, eight is even too much.
• 5:51
  Pam Sherman: I would say four to six is a great rep range as well.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: Yeah, it's interesting because if you program eight, then it almost mentally gets to the point where people will not push hard enough and they'll kind of like stop at eight.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: If you program five, you kind of start getting the picture of what heavy means.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: Yes.
• 6:11
  Philip Pape: Because you're like, well, yeah.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: You know, it's a different now.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: When you get down to like singles and triples, that's a little more on the powerlifting side.
• 6:17
  Philip Pape: That's a different beast altogether.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: You don't have to do that, but it's interesting.
• 6:21
  Philip Pape: Okay, let's go to the next one.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: Let's just pop through these.
• 6:23
  Philip Pape: This is fun.
• 6:24
  Philip Pape: So, another muscle training, a muscle-related one, and this is about the timeline for regaining lost muscle mass after age 50, which I think is a great premise on the question that acknowledging we do lose muscle mass, like starting in our 30s, if we're not doing something about it.
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: So, this question is if I'm sedentary now, which a lot of listeners have found this show maybe wondering about training, training curious, what are the expectations?
• 6:49
  Philip Pape: Because we know we're not about quick fixes, we're not about like getting jack swollen six six pack in six months.
• 6:55
  Philip Pape: If you've never trained before, that's not what it's about.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: What would you say is like a timeline for at least regaining lost muscle mass, let alone building new muscle?
• 7:04
  Pam Sherman: Realistically, nine months to a year.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 7:07
  Pam Sherman: Um, I it's not that long.
• 7:09
  Pam Sherman: It's not that long.
• 7:10
  Pam Sherman: And time is gonna pass anyway.
• 7:12
  Pam Sherman: It's just hard in our quick fix society where we get I can order something on Amazon now and have it be delivered tonight.
• 7:18
  Pam Sherman: I mean, your health really is something that is there's never a quick a quick solution.
• 7:22
  Pam Sherman: And where you are right now, say where you are right now is at the top of a mountain.
• 7:25
  Pam Sherman: Well, how long did it take you to get to the top of that mountain?
• 7:28
  Pam Sherman: 50 years?
• 7:29
  Pam Sherman: You can't expect a quick on the other side.
• 7:32
  Pam Sherman: Consistency is going to be your best friend and know that a year from now, you could feel 100% different with consistency.
• 7:39
  Pam Sherman: That's it.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Philip Pape: Let me ask you about consistency because first of all, I love the quote that time is going to pass anyway.
• 7:45
  Philip Pape: I always say, like, you can't get in a time machine.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: So let's buckle up, let's be stoics about it and say, what can we control now?
• 7:51
  Philip Pape: But consistency, I heard someone mention, actually, it was Alan Lazarus who was actually recently on the podcast just last week before this episode came out, and on his podcast was talking about when he works with men and women, he hears different language sometimes that resonates when it comes to consistency.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: That sometimes men respond to that word and respond to discipline more.
• 8:10
  Philip Pape: And then women sometimes respond to routine.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts?
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: Being a woman, working with women, are is there language that this is a side tangent, but I was just curious about that.
• 8:19
  Pam Sherman: Well, I think women probably do because we are mostly in charge of, well, when our kids were little, they're breakfast, they're packing their lunches, making dinner, getting to soccer, laundry, and that's our routine for many, many, many years, where it's different for guys.
• 8:34
  Pam Sherman: They don't, you know, they're not as much in the day-to-day as in as far as child raising goes.
• 8:38
  Pam Sherman: So that probably does resonate more with women.
• 8:41
  Pam Sherman: And putting it in your routine does not make you selfish.
• 8:44
  Pam Sherman: It's self-care.
• 8:45
  Pam Sherman: That's it.
• 8:46
  Pam Sherman: And yeah, you hear people say, you know, put yourself first on the list.
• 8:49
  Pam Sherman: It's very hard for women to put themselves first.
• 8:51
  Pam Sherman: I just want them to put themselves on the list, period.
• 8:53
  Philip Pape: Put themselves in there.
• 8:54
  Philip Pape: Yes.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: With with everything else.
• 8:56
  Philip Pape: Okay, so building that routine.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: So you said nine months to a year, which I like that timeline because it's like not so long that it feels forever, and it's not so short that we're unrealistic about it.
• 9:07
  Philip Pape: My opinion on this, so to give you my thoughts, are we're talking about regaining loss muscle mass and training for the first time.
• 9:13
  Philip Pape: You're gonna get a lot of, you know, what we call newbie gains, right?
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: In the first three months, let's say, even the first month, you're gonna find your actual numbers.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: Like if you start with a movement pattern, like Pram was talking about, and you learn to say body weight squat, then you grab a goblet, maybe, and then you immediately go to a barbell, which you can start pretty early in a barbell.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: I've heard like I've heard narratives of like, we don't start with a barbell, we'd ladder up, but but you can go really light with the barbell.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: So it's in my opinion.
• 9:39
  Philip Pape: And it's a very different like center of gravity and slight different positioning.
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: But you start there, and then the first month or two, your numbers just go up and up and up because if you keep the routine of showing up in the gym two or three times a week and squat every time, it's gonna be easy what you did last time.
• 9:56
  Philip Pape: So you're gonna have to go up.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: That neuromuscular adaptation is all between the brain and the nervous system.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: You're not gonna see necessarily visual changes in that first month.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: Probably not.
• 10:06
  Philip Pape: You know, you may, you may not.
• 10:08
  Philip Pape: I don't know.
• 10:08
  Philip Pape: But when you're talking nine to 12 months, now you've got like, okay, the first three months is strength.
• 10:13
  Philip Pape: Then your body has to build more muscle and make your muscles bigger because you just keep pushing it.
• 10:18
  Philip Pape: What are you doing to me now?
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: You you're trying to actually use this thing after all these years.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: And so it has to get bigger, and that's where you start to see visual changes.
• 10:27
  Philip Pape: The one thing I would caution is like, make sure you're tracking this stuff and have maybe somebody else that gives you an independent perspective because people are down on themselves all the time.
• 10:36
  Philip Pape: Like, women, like, I don't see any change.
• 10:38
  Philip Pape: I'm like, show me your before and after photos.
• 10:40
  Philip Pape: Wow, look at those back muscles popping, like your waist is down, you're looking more vibrant, you've got great posture.
• 10:46
  Philip Pape: And that's just the physique side, let alone the mental changes.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: So, what what are your?
• 10:49
  Philip Pape: I know you have some thoughts here.
• 10:51
  Pam Sherman: Yeah, women are very hard on themselves.
• 10:53
  Pam Sherman: And I encourage them to take weekly pictures because it's very hard to you see yourself every day.
• 10:57
  Pam Sherman: It's very hard to see that.
• 10:58
  Pam Sherman: But in a picture, you might see your waist coming in, you might see muscles in your back.
• 11:03
  Pam Sherman: I mean, it's the little, and you know, before women get in a you could be in a gym outfit, you could be in a bathing suit, you could be something that just shows your body, but it's just for you to see and to take measurements because those inches here and there, you won't see in the mirror.
• 11:18
  Pam Sherman: But when you measure, you're like, oh my gosh, I lost an inch off my hips.
• 11:22
  Pam Sherman: That's a lot.
• 11:22
  Pam Sherman: And to celebrate showing up for yourself.
• 11:26
  Pam Sherman: There is no overnight success, but showing up for yourself over and over, I encourage my ladies to keep win journals.
• 11:32
  Pam Sherman: Did you drink water?
• 11:33
  Pam Sherman: Did you eat enough protein?
• 11:34
  Pam Sherman: Did you show up at the gym?
• 11:34
  Pam Sherman: Like those are all wins as opposed to, I didn't, you know, X, Y, or Z.
• 11:38
  Pam Sherman: Like, let's be positive with your progress.
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 11:41
  Pam Sherman: You're amazing.
• 11:42
  Pam Sherman: You're showing up for yourself.
• 11:43
  Pam Sherman: That's great.
• 11:43
  Pam Sherman: And yes, you will see gains.
• 11:45
  Pam Sherman: But I also think you have to like do those things every week to see.
• 11:48
  Pam Sherman: You don't have to be on the scale, maybe once a month, once every other week if you hate the scale, but you have to do the things to show yourself progress.
• 11:55
  Philip Pape: 100%.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: 100%.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: And and anyone who listens to this show knows I actually have a slightly more extreme take on scale weight of weighing yourself every single day because there's trade-offs or benefits to that in terms of the psychological aspect, but you have to have some context and awareness of like when you see that number, how not to freak out and understand what it means.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: But that's a different topic.
• 12:15
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, I love everything you're saying.
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: And I guess the next question is perfect because we're talking about lifting heavy, we're talking about developing a routine, but we're also talking to women over 50.
• 12:24
  Philip Pape: And the question is about joint issues while training.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: Some of you already start with joint issues, knee issues, back pain, um, shoulder issues before you even start.
• 12:34
  Philip Pape: And you may feel like that's holding you back.
• 12:36
  Philip Pape: Others who are listening, they're like, okay, I hear what Pam and Philip are saying about lifting heavy.
• 12:41
  Philip Pape: What about bad knees, frozen shoulder, that back pain, you know, because you're probably sitting all day at your desk job.
• 12:47
  Philip Pape: How do I prevent getting injured?
• 12:49
  Philip Pape: Because this sounds like a scary thing, slinging around all this weight.
• 12:52
  Pam Sherman: Frozen shoulder, ladies.
• 12:54
  Pam Sherman: Have you gone to see your OB and gotten your hormone levels checked?
• 12:56
  Pam Sherman: That is a common symptom of menopause and low estrogen.
• 13:00
  Pam Sherman: Literally, it's one of the biggest it really is.
• 13:03
  Pam Sherman: When you've got menopause symptoms, frozen shoulder is huge for menopausal women.
• 13:07
  Pam Sherman: And for if you've never heard that before and you haven't gotten your hormone levels checked, listen to my friend Karen Martel's podcast.
• 13:12
  Pam Sherman: He is amazing about educating you on hormones and menopause.
• 13:15
  Pam Sherman: But estrogen can make a huge difference with that.
• 13:18
  Pam Sherman: If you have bad knees, oh my gosh, strength training is gonna help your knees because you're gonna strengthen your quads and your hammies and your glutes, which will make your knees feel better.
• 13:26
  Pam Sherman: It's gonna do nothing but make your knees feel better.
• 13:28
  Pam Sherman: If you have extra weight to lose, losing that weight will make your knees feel better as well.
• 13:32
  Pam Sherman: Those are my my first initial thoughts.
• 13:34
  Philip Pape: Yeah, those are great.
• 13:35
  Philip Pape: And I want to add to that, because that's that's an encouragement to just get going with it and see if your symptoms actually improve, like doing a squat the right way.
• 13:44
  Philip Pape: And now you're loading your knees a little bit, but doing it through the range of motion and seeing how that progresses.
• 13:49
  Philip Pape: I guess to add to that would be if you're doing something that's out and out, outright painful, that is something's off there with potentially your form or the weight or something like that.
• 14:00
  Philip Pape: But if you start light and you build from there, your body will adapt to it.
• 14:05
  Philip Pape: And that's an important concept for people to understand.
• 14:06
  Philip Pape: They're like, well, I'm gonna lift heavy.
• 14:08
  Philip Pape: It's heavy for you, which might be like 50 pounds, might be 20 pounds, you know, not 200 pounds, but eventually you get there.
• 14:15
  Philip Pape: And then the other piece, I guess, is if you truly have an injury or surgery you're recovering from, of course, take your medical advice.
• 14:21
  Philip Pape: But also, there are so many ways to adapt a movement with grips, with width, with range of motion.
• 14:30
  Philip Pape: And I've had to go through this myself, ladies, with with my shoulder because I had rotator cuff surgery.
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: And I finally found, like with landmines and close grips and pauses that I can train.
• 14:40
  Philip Pape: And the guy, the goal is how do you train?
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: Not I can't train because I'm injured.
• 14:43
  Philip Pape: It's how do I train not through the injury per se, but how do I train in a safe way?
• 14:48
  Philip Pape: Anyway.
• 14:49
  Philip Pape: Any other thoughts add there?
• 14:51
  Pam Sherman: Yeah, I feel like we need to focus on what we can do versus what we can't do.
• 14:55
  Pam Sherman: I had a friend that had meniscus surgery last year, and I'm like, okay, so why can't we just train your upper body and your core?
• 15:00
  Pam Sherman: And she's like, Oh.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, the all or nothing is like so So prevalent.
• 15:06
  Philip Pape: Prevalent.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Philip Pape: Um, all right, we're almost at a protein question, I noticed, but the next one is one more training question, and that question four, because I I I love this uh yoga.
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: Is yoga, Pilates, or bar considered adequate strength training for women over 50, or is dedicated heavy resistance training non-negotiable?
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: Okay, this is this is an easy one for us.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: Come on.
• 15:27
  Pam Sherman: Stop it, ladies.
• 15:28
  Pam Sherman: Non-negotiable.
• 15:30
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 15:30
  Pam Sherman: I I I have many, many women who love, love, love, love, love Pilates and bar.
• 15:34
  Pam Sherman: Fine.
• 15:35
  Pam Sherman: However, you are not gonna get that load on your muscles in Pilates or yoga.
• 15:39
  Pam Sherman: Do it because you love it and add two minimum days of strength training in a week.
• 15:44
  Pam Sherman: If you could do three, that would be amazing.
• 15:46
  Pam Sherman: I encourage women to do what they love because you should get joy, some joy of your exercise, and then some exercises do it because it's great for you for your long-term health and wellness.
• 15:54
  Pam Sherman: And it actually drives me crazy that women think that Pilates is enough.
• 15:57
  Pam Sherman: Like I can't even with that, Philip.
• 15:59
  Philip Pape: Is it because they just love it so much?
• 16:02
  Philip Pape: Or does strength training sound too hard and different?
• 16:04
  Philip Pape: What's the reason or another reason?
• 16:08
  Pam Sherman: Well, I do think women love group exercise with other people, you get those endorphins, somebody's telling you what to do.
• 16:15
  Pam Sherman: Strength training, I don't think so, but many do.
• 16:18
  Pam Sherman: It's just boring and it's hard.
• 16:20
  Pam Sherman: It's hard to push yourself.
• 16:22
  Pam Sherman: Uh, and it's just not fun.
• 16:23
  Pam Sherman: I mean, I'm weird.
• 16:25
  Pam Sherman: I think it's fun.
• 16:25
  Pam Sherman: I have a great playlist, I think it's fun, no problem.
• 16:28
  Pam Sherman: But many women are not self-motivated and don't know what to do, so they find it a struggle to make that time that 45 minutes to an hour to get to the gym to work out.
• 16:36
  Pam Sherman: Nobody's there cheering them on, telling them what to do.
• 16:38
  Pam Sherman: It's more of a solitary thing, which if it's all or nothing, yes, go to bar, but maybe find a girlfriend and go to the gym and do your strength training together if that's what it's gonna take.
• 16:48
  Pam Sherman: But really for the rest of your life, I think strength training is a non-negotiable.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I think what you hit on is trying to find the thing that motivates you and that you like about it and maybe integrate it into your strength training and or add in the training, understand that that's important and that's why you're doing it, and then still do one or two of the other things, knowing there could be some trade-offs depending on your goals and everything else.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: But all in all, that's part of life, right?
• 17:12
  Philip Pape: Is trade-offs to enjoy and stay consistent.
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: Okay, so now we got our first protein question.
• 17:17
  Philip Pape: Question number five.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: Now, as this episode comes out, guys, you just heard episode 398 was a definitive updated protein episode I did.
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: All the things, okay.
• 17:27
  Philip Pape: So the straight up what the science says, but what are the minimum daily protein intake goals uh in grams or pound per body weight, specifically for women over 50 who are lifting and want to improve body composition?
• 17:40
  Philip Pape: So, what I want to I want to add to that, Pam, I think what she we should answer is what are the differences because they are women over 50?
• 17:46
  Philip Pape: I want to see if if there are and like why, rather than general protein requirements, because they can hear my last episode and I talked it to death.
• 17:54
  Philip Pape: Let's just be specific here.
• 17:56
  Pam Sherman: Well, our protein needs actually increase as we get older because we are losing muscle.
• 18:00
  Pam Sherman: So I would say at a minimum, one gram per pound of ideal body weight.
• 18:05
  Pam Sherman: So if your ideal body weight is 150, if you can get 135 to 150, like it's not a game of perfection, it's a game of you know, doing what you can.
• 18:13
  Pam Sherman: That is so, so important.
• 18:15
  Pam Sherman: And I find so many women struggle with this.
• 18:17
  Pam Sherman: And I'll say it, it's not hard.
• 18:19
  Pam Sherman: You just gotta.
• 18:20
  Pam Sherman: I actually enjoy my two cups of coffee in the morning with uh protein powder in it so I can start my day with 30 grams, and I'm ahead of the game there.
• 18:28
  Pam Sherman: But we want to build muscle and we want to keep our muscle.
• 18:32
  Pam Sherman: And in order to do that, we have to get enough protein in.
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: You know, you mentioned the reason for that is the loss of muscle mass.
• 18:39
  Philip Pape: But are there other factors?
• 18:41
  Philip Pape: Um, because there is this concept of anabolic resistance that I've researched a lot and I still feel like it's slightly not supported as a real thing.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: And a lot of these things are confounded by the fact that you're losing muscle mass and you're just older because of that.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: But I have I have seen through the evidence over the years that like women might need a little more than men, older people need a little bit more than younger, independent of some of these factors.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: But I do like your recommendation of one being kind of the upper limit where you need to be worried about.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: If you're nowhere close to that, get more, you don't have to go more than that.
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts on that?
• 19:13
  Philip Pape: Like, I don't know how much of a science you're aware of.
• 19:16
  Pam Sherman: I I am not aware of a ton of science.
• 19:18
  Pam Sherman: I just know that women have the hardest time.
• 19:21
  Pam Sherman: So for if you've never even logged your food before, I would say minimum 25 grams of protein every time you eat.
• 19:27
  Pam Sherman: That includes your snack.
• 19:28
  Pam Sherman: So if you ate four times a day, you're at 100.
• 19:29
  Pam Sherman: Baseline, start there and then get it to 30 grams every time you eat, and then 35 grams.
• 19:35
  Pam Sherman: And what I find is women are like, I just want a little mid-afternoon something.
• 19:38
  Pam Sherman: And I'm like, yeah, yeah, have 30 grams with that mid-afternoon something, something.
• 19:42
  Pam Sherman: Be intentional with your food.
• 19:44
  Pam Sherman: And I know I'm over the top on this, and I'm so passionate about it, as I know you are, Philip.
• 19:48
  Pam Sherman: But I'm looking at, I'm almost 60.
• 19:50
  Pam Sherman: When I'm 80, I want to feel as good as I do now.
• 19:52
  Pam Sherman: And how I eat and how I move is gonna affect that.
• 19:54
  Pam Sherman: And, you know, women are a lot of women are afraid to eat more.
• 19:58
  Pam Sherman: I'm like, you're never gonna gain weight eating protein.
• 20:00
  Pam Sherman: You're just not.
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 20:02
  Pam Sherman: Please, your your body's gonna look better when you eat more protein.
• 20:05
  Philip Pape: And sometimes the opposite happens in that you eat more protein, you get fuller, you know, you eat higher quality food, and all of a sudden it displaces things, and you eat less calories, fewer calories.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: You know, that's what I see way more often.
• 20:16
  Philip Pape: Yeah, you're not gonna overeat on protein.
• 20:18
  Philip Pape: If you ate pure sirloin steaks all day, which you know, there's carnivore people that do that.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: Seriously, though, like how much could you eat?
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: Like, that's just a good thought experiment of how many calories you actually or bowl of yogurt.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: Like, I eat a bowl of yogurt and I'm like, okay, I'm done.
• 20:32
  Philip Pape: Like this, I'm pretty full, you know.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: This is great.
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: But if I ate bowls of a bowl of yogurt all day, I'm only gonna eat what probably my body needs.
• 20:39
  Philip Pape: It's kind of interesting.
• 20:40
  Pam Sherman: Yeah, your protein department, like we went out for a steak dinner, my son's birthday was Monday to a steak place.
• 20:45
  Pam Sherman: The smallest steak they had is eight ounces, and I'm like, I can't do that.
• 20:48
  Pam Sherman: I can't even, I can barely even eat four.
• 20:50
  Pam Sherman: I got the lobster tail instead because I could eat all that lobster tail, but there's a certain amount of fullness that your body's like, I just I can't do it.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:56
  Pam Sherman: So um, when women say, Oh, I had two scrambled eggs, I'm like, you need four or five, like, oh, I can't eat that much.
• 21:03
  Pam Sherman: Like, you can.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 21:05
  Pam Sherman: Or have a cup of egg whites and one egg, and then you know, that'll be easier.
• 21:09
  Pam Sherman: But really, you are so much more full.
• 21:11
  Pam Sherman: I could eat my head size in chips.
• 21:13
  Pam Sherman: I could not eat my head size and protein.
• 21:15
  Pam Sherman: It just doesn't work like that.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: It's exactly it.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: It's exactly.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: Every time my wife cooks big pork chop or chicken breast, I'm like, you know, it's it's it's protein and I'm full.
• 21:24
  Philip Pape: Like it's just gonna be full, you know.
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: So all I can stomach on the side is some quinoa broccoli or something, you know?
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: Yes.
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, it's good.
• 21:30
  Philip Pape: Okay, let's go, let's continue on the food train here.
• 21:33
  Philip Pape: The next question is about calorie deficits, which we talked to death on this show.
• 21:37
  Philip Pape: But the again, let's get specific.
• 21:39
  Philip Pape: How should a woman over 50 calculate a sustainable calorie deficit?
• 21:43
  Philip Pape: I like that word for weight loss, which here we like to talk about fat loss as well, not just weight loss, given common issues with tracking inaccuracies, hormone-related changes throughout the cycle and fluid retention.
• 21:56
  Philip Pape: I'm just ad-libbing here, and uh potentially lower BMR, which I assume could mean just women versus men, but also your metabolism tends to decline during peri postmenopause for other reasons as well.
• 22:10
  Philip Pape: Go.
• 22:10
  Philip Pape: Sustainable calorie deficit.
• 22:13
  Pam Sherman: Well, I really like you introduced me to macrofactor, and I really like that.
• 22:17
  Pam Sherman: And one other thing that I really think is important is eating different calories on the days that you lift versus the days that you don't lift.
• 22:24
  Pam Sherman: Where I mean, until you introduce me to that, and I've done, you know, obviously, as you get older, you get more research in.
• 22:31
  Pam Sherman: Like, we shouldn't be eating the same amount of calories every single day.
• 22:34
  Pam Sherman: When you put more effort into your lifting, your body needs more food on the days that you're maybe it's doing a little bit of cardio, you don't need as much.
• 22:41
  Pam Sherman: So you have to look at your life and think, okay, well, first of all, there's also your online calculators with your daily um T D E, right?
• 22:49
  Pam Sherman: Those calculators.
• 22:50
  Pam Sherman: I would do those.
• 22:51
  Pam Sherman: That's that's a great baseline.
• 22:53
  Pam Sherman: And it's really so individualized.
• 22:56
  Pam Sherman: If you are working really hard, you are not in a big calorie deficit that day.
• 23:01
  Pam Sherman: That's just you just and make sure your protein is spot on so you are not hangry all day long.
• 23:06
  Pam Sherman: I find women, you know, when they want to save calories, they're trying to cut back like don't eat a lot for breakfast, don't eat a lot for lunch, and then they they're hangry and then they overeat.
• 23:15
  Pam Sherman: Be smart about your food and try to plan it out.
• 23:18
  Pam Sherman: When you eat it, like you said, a big bowl of Greek yogurt with some berries, that's a great meal post-lift because you aren't full.
• 23:23
  Pam Sherman: Maybe some you know, oatmeal on the side, you want some carbs in there too.
• 23:25
  Pam Sherman: And don't be afraid of carbs.
• 23:27
  Pam Sherman: You talked about that a lot too, is our bodies need protein, carbs, and healthy fats.
• 23:31
  Pam Sherman: All that is going to play in your calorie deficit.
• 23:33
  Pam Sherman: And the great thing is, you get to decide what you eat.
• 23:36
  Pam Sherman: Like don't look at online food plans.
• 23:39
  Pam Sherman: Eat what you would like to eat.
• 23:40
  Pam Sherman: That makes such a big difference.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: Yeah, so you hit on a couple of really good themes.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: One is just tracking, which we'll talk to the cows come home.
• 23:47
  Philip Pape: You have to track whatever you need to measure.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: And the other is what you're eating.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: And ladies, listen, this is a really important point because I'm gonna tie this into a concept I've been like playing in my head with recently.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: Let's say you're not tracking any of this stuff, but you listen to what Pam says and you focus prioritize protein.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: I would also argue prioritizing fiber and nutrients, and and nutrients only come from nutrient-dense foods, you know, berries and you know, uh seeds and nuts and lean meats and dairies and all the fun whole foods we have available, the bounty of foods, lots of colors, lots of variety.
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: If you start there and now you're feeling better and you're more satiated and you're performing better in the gym, only then should you say, okay, calorie deficit.
• 24:32
  Philip Pape: Like too many women get it backward.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: They're like, how do I calculate my calorie deficit and jump into that?
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: No, no, no, no, no.
• 24:39
  Philip Pape: Let's eat really well.
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: Let's perform, let's set ourselves up for success.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: And then even if you weren't tracking, and this is gonna sound like sacrilege for me, Pam.
• 24:48
  Philip Pape: Even if you don't use MacroFactor, guess what you have to do?
• 24:52
  Philip Pape: See how you feel and is your body trending up or down, and then change the amounts.
• 24:56
  Philip Pape: It's actually that simple.
• 24:57
  Philip Pape: So a sustainable calorie deficit should feel like something that's just a tiny bit hungrier than usual, that's a tiny bit less than usual, and your body fat is trending down slowly over time relative to maintaining.
• 25:11
  Philip Pape: And if you were then to track that with a calorie app, you would see it should match something like a few hundred calories below your maintenance, you know, and it's gonna change constantly.
• 25:20
  Pam Sherman: You can't measure what you don't track.
• 25:21
  Pam Sherman: So I have had 99% of my clients go, I hate tracking.
• 25:25
  Pam Sherman: I'm like, they said it's hard.
• 25:26
  Pam Sherman: I said, you know, it's hard.
• 25:27
  Pam Sherman: Having a baby's hard.
• 25:28
  Pam Sherman: Tracking your food is not hard.
• 25:29
  Pam Sherman: Literally.
• 25:29
  Pam Sherman: No, it's not hard.
• 25:30
  Pam Sherman: It's not hard.
• 25:30
  Pam Sherman: It doesn't take very long.
• 25:32
  Pam Sherman: We eat a lot of us eat the same stuff all the time.
• 25:34
  Pam Sherman: It might take an extra five minutes a day.
• 25:36
  Pam Sherman: If it's important to you, it's worth doing.
• 25:39
  Pam Sherman: I love the TikTok.
• 25:41
  Pam Sherman: I love my animal videos on the TikTok.
• 25:43
  Pam Sherman: I can also track my food.
• 25:44
  Pam Sherman: Like people make time for the things that they want to do.
• 25:47
  Pam Sherman: And if it's important enough, if it's important enough for you, you can absolutely do it.
• 25:50
  Pam Sherman: And I will say this also can we please get rid of that stupid 1200 calorie number that was has been around forever.
• 25:57
  Pam Sherman: That's for a very small person, like maybe five, two or less for an adult woman.
• 26:02
  Pam Sherman: That's way, way too little.
• 26:04
  Pam Sherman: And what happens is you might gut it out and get there, and then you're starving and you will overeat to compensate.
• 26:09
  Pam Sherman: Your body will always try to catch up.
• 26:11
  Pam Sherman: So throw that number out the door.
• 26:13
  Pam Sherman: That is not for an adult-sized woman for the most part.
• 26:16
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, a hundred percent.
• 26:17
  Philip Pape: And if you're hearing that and and feeling like, no, no, no, that is me.
• 26:22
  Philip Pape: There's probably something on the expenditure side, right?
• 26:25
  Philip Pape: On the uh metabolism side we want to look at.
• 26:27
  Philip Pape: And it might be the lifestyle factors, it might also be hormones.
• 26:31
  Philip Pape: Because again, we're talking 40s, 50s.
• 26:33
  Philip Pape: There definitely could be a thyroid thing going on.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: There could be, but I don't want to fear monger, because many cases that's not.
• 26:38
  Philip Pape: Um, could be a testosterone, could be all these things.
• 26:41
  Philip Pape: Uh something in your blood work, could be a nutrient deficiency, right?
• 26:43
  Philip Pape: Could be all those things.
• 26:44
  Philip Pape: I would look, that's going back to how are you eating?
• 26:46
  Philip Pape: How are you feeling?
• 26:47
  Philip Pape: How are you performing?
• 26:48
  Philip Pape: Tracking is gonna accelerate that process because it'll give you more targeted awareness of all those things.
• 26:54
  Philip Pape: And then I was gonna address your timing comment.
• 26:57
  Philip Pape: The cycling is also very individual.
• 27:00
  Philip Pape: That I think that's what you're getting at is like you don't have to do it in one way.
• 27:04
  Philip Pape: You know, you don't have to have the same calories every day, nor do you have to do up and down every other.
• 27:07
  Philip Pape: Like it could be all on the weekends that you get your extra calories.
• 27:11
  Philip Pape: It could be very fluid and it could go with your cycle as well.
• 27:15
  Philip Pape: Not that there's a benefit in cycle-based eating or training necessarily, but that you feel hungrier and so you should eat more then.
• 27:22
  Pam Sherman: I think all the tracking is good.
• 27:23
  Pam Sherman: Tracking your sleep, tracking your steps, you know, tracking your workouts and noticing like if you keep a journal, like noticing the days you're hungrier, they're probably your lower body days if you're lifting because you recruit so much more muscle.
• 27:34
  Pam Sherman: So you're gonna be a little hungry on those days, and that's okay.
• 27:36
  Pam Sherman: But it really is important to know yourself inside and out.
• 27:40
  Pam Sherman: And on the days when you're not as hungry, go, oh yeah, I didn't lift today.
• 27:43
  Pam Sherman: I just walked, and that's okay.
• 27:44
  Pam Sherman: That that's fine.
• 27:45
  Pam Sherman: You might, you know, bake a couple calories for the next day.
• 27:48
  Pam Sherman: But really becoming the expert on you is so, so important.
• 27:51
  Philip Pape: Yep.
• 27:52
  Philip Pape: We have a challenge coming up uh called the strong finish challenge in physique university.
• 27:56
  Philip Pape: And I'm doing something I've never done before, Pam, but it reminded me of that is a lot of times you talk about a minimum viable habit or product, right?
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: Like here's the minimum, no zero days, here's the thing I want to do, but here's the minimum.
• 28:08
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna take it a step further and say there's a bailout strategy.
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: In other words, even if you can't do the minimum because you're shopping for Christmas presents, you've got all the events, you've got all the parties.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: Is there something even less than that?
• 28:18
  Philip Pape: To your point of like, if you're tracking it, at least you can have a streak of something.
• 28:22
  Philip Pape: Like I went out for a five-minute walk, not a 20-minute walk.
• 28:26
  Philip Pape: It's still a five-minute walk, you know?
• 28:27
  Philip Pape: It reminded me of that.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: So um, yeah, no, good stuff.
• 28:31
  Philip Pape: Okay, so continuing on, kind of related, is a metabolism question.
• 28:34
  Philip Pape: And this is a good one.
• 28:35
  Philip Pape: This is gonna hit on something that is, I think, highly misunderstood.
• 28:39
  Philip Pape: And that is the assumption that your metabolism slows down with age.
• 28:43
  Philip Pape: Okay, and I don't want to gaslight anyone, but the research is very clear when they've looked at populations all across the planet from the Hadza tribe to Western obese populations, that our metabolism is pretty steady from the age of 20 to age of 60, and then it starts to decline, most likely because we've lost so much muscle mass and are so sedentary that it just can't help but reflect that.
• 29:05
  Philip Pape: So when we talk about our 40s, 50s, and maybe 60s, what the heck is going on when it looks like our metabolism is slowing down, and what do we do about it?
• 29:16
  Pam Sherman: I think people are just in general less active.
• 29:19
  Pam Sherman: They are at their desks more and they're not moving as much.
• 29:22
  Pam Sherman: I mean, think about your 20s, you're in college, you're working on campus.
• 29:24
  Pam Sherman: I was a waitress.
• 29:25
  Pam Sherman: I walked a million miles a day as a waitress.
• 29:27
  Pam Sherman: Um, I ran marathons, I was really, really busy, and your life slows down a little bit unless you make time for it.
• 29:34
  Pam Sherman: If you make sure you walk every day, if you are fitting in, putting yourself on that list and getting your strength training in going to yoga, fine.
• 29:42
  Pam Sherman: Go yoga is great for some mobility.
• 29:44
  Pam Sherman: I mean, we are losing losing mobility as well, but making your health a priority and fitting it into your week.
• 29:50
  Pam Sherman: I don't think our metabolism has to necessarily go down if you are staying active as you age.
• 29:56
  Pam Sherman: Now, if you're like, you know what, I just want to sit, I'm getting old.
• 29:59
  Pam Sherman: It's I'd rather be doing nothing, then yes, your metabolism is going to go down and you will see the effects of that.
• 30:04
  Pam Sherman: We see the effects of it all around us.
• 30:05
  Pam Sherman: It was very interesting, Philip.
• 30:07
  Pam Sherman: I was just in the Paris airport last month.
• 30:10
  Pam Sherman: No overweight people.
• 30:13
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 30:13
  Pam Sherman: They're active.
• 30:14
  Pam Sherman: They walk everywhere.
• 30:15
  Pam Sherman: They are a culture of walking, walking.
• 30:18
  Pam Sherman: Same thing in Greece.
• 30:18
  Pam Sherman: I was in Greece.
• 30:19
  Pam Sherman: No heavy people, really, the only heavy people sound Americans.
• 30:22
  Pam Sherman: Our American society is set up to be less active as we get older.
• 30:25
  Pam Sherman: So I think 60 is an age where like I'm just kind of coast.
• 30:29
  Pam Sherman: But if you want to feel great, if you do not want your metabolism to go in the tank, lifting, daily walking, eating for your health.
• 30:36
  Pam Sherman: I mean, I think we can do things to reverse that statement.
• 30:41
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I agree.
• 30:42
  Philip Pape: The guys on Mind Pump were talking about going to Disney World and all the people on scooters.
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: However, they mentioned the difference between Florida Disney World and California Disneyland.
• 30:55
  Philip Pape: California had far fewer of those people, and there was just like more of a culture in that particular area.
• 30:59
  Philip Pape: What's it Anaheim, I think, is Disneyland?
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 31:01
  Philip Pape: Where obviously it must be more, you know, there are stereotypes about the South being having a lot of health issues that are true stereotypes regarding diet and things like that.
• 31:10
  Philip Pape: But it, in other words, it's in our control as human beings.
• 31:13
  Philip Pape: It's not inevitable.
• 31:14
  Philip Pape: I guess the the thing I want to challenge both of us on then is what about the hormone piece?
• 31:19
  Philip Pape: I know that's Karen's like bag.
• 31:20
  Philip Pape: She and I talked about the metabolic storm and how, oh, what if you are doing all these things and still something's there?
• 31:27
  Philip Pape: Is it then inevitably hormones?
• 31:28
  Philip Pape: How big of a piece is that?
• 31:30
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts there?
• 31:31
  Pam Sherman: I love hormone replacement therapy.
• 31:33
  Pam Sherman: And I really encourage women to find out more about it.
• 31:36
  Pam Sherman: That it's not awful for us.
• 31:38
  Pam Sherman: It's actually awesome for our health.
• 31:39
  Pam Sherman: And it helps our bodies run like they should be running.
• 31:42
  Pam Sherman: It's keeping your hormones stable.
• 31:44
  Pam Sherman: When we're in menopause, they start to tank and really keeping your hormones stable.
• 31:47
  Pam Sherman: You're doing everything you can to keep feeling great.
• 31:50
  Pam Sherman: So if you are not on anything, certainly you your energy is going to go down without that testosterone.
• 31:56
  Pam Sherman: You're not going to be sleeping as well.
• 31:57
  Pam Sherman: You're getting hot flashes, which means you are not going to want to work out.
• 32:01
  Pam Sherman: You're not going to want to prep food.
• 32:02
  Pam Sherman: Like it's going to affect every part of your life.
• 32:04
  Pam Sherman: So, yes, it could be a hormonal storm in your body.
• 32:08
  Pam Sherman: And you can also get them replaced and see how great you feel.
• 32:12
  Pam Sherman: So everything is in our well, I shouldn't say everything, a lot of things are under control.
• 32:15
  Pam Sherman: Some women can't take it for certain reasons.
• 32:17
  Pam Sherman: If you can, I would suggest it because it just means you're like fine-tuning your health by keeping your hormones in balance.
• 32:24
  Philip Pape: Yeah, get yourself baseline tested.
• 32:26
  Philip Pape: Um, any men who are still listening to this or decided to listen through this, same thing, like get it tested.
• 32:31
  Philip Pape: Um, we do performance blood work, but there's lots of great practitioners.
• 32:34
  Philip Pape: You know, we talk about Karen and I can hook you up with Pam when it comes to a lot of this stuff as well with connections.
• 32:39
  Philip Pape: But yeah, it's it's more and more important.
• 32:41
  Philip Pape: Hopefully, the healthcare industry will slowly shift over toward a better recognition of women's health and hormones because obviously it's not there yet, but I hear see inklings of it starting to happen.
• 32:52
  Philip Pape: So maybe 30 years from now.
• 32:54
  Pam Sherman: I hope so, because I know I'm have my hormones done through Karen's group and they want you to feel optimal.
• 33:01
  Pam Sherman: And it's interesting because I get it's out of pocket, of course.
• 33:04
  Pam Sherman: So I go to my regular OB and I'm like, so can I get my testosterone cream at this level?
• 33:08
  Pam Sherman: I'm like, oh no, that's way too high.
• 33:10
  Pam Sherman: It's not.
• 33:11
  Pam Sherman: It's actually how I feel my best.
• 33:12
  Pam Sherman: So I will continue to pay out of pocket because I want to be optimal.
• 33:15
  Pam Sherman: I don't want to just be okay.
• 33:17
  Philip Pape: I agree.
• 33:17
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 33:18
  Philip Pape: It's uh I know some of the practitioners will also call it like physiological levels, which I like that term as well.
• 33:23
  Philip Pape: I like optimal and performance and physiological.
• 33:26
  Philip Pape: Like all those terms kind of mean the same thing in our world of it's not the normal population range.
• 33:31
  Philip Pape: It's shifted up to a feeling better range, which then some regular doctors might say is too high or unnecessary.
• 33:37
  Philip Pape: So when you think of physiologic range, it's like, where were you in your 20s and 30s?
• 33:42
  Philip Pape: If you were there and perfectly safe, why couldn't you be there in your 50s and perfectly safe?
• 33:47
  Philip Pape: It's, you know, now men trying to get up to 3,000 total testosterone for perform, you know, for the gym, that's that's a different thing.
• 33:54
  Philip Pape: There's risks there.
• 33:55
  Philip Pape: So um, yeah, no, that that's good to understand about this whole metabolism thing.
• 33:59
  Philip Pape: I think it also ties into all the research.
• 34:00
  Philip Pape: Uh, Lauren Calenzo's Semple of Mass, I drop her name all the time because I love her.
• 34:05
  Philip Pape: She's great.
• 34:05
  Philip Pape: She is constantly pushing back on the narrative that the sky is falling for women, like for everything.
• 34:12
  Philip Pape: And and it's not really true.
• 34:14
  Philip Pape: It's just that there are lifestyle factors and some other things that are exacerbating it for women in that age range.
• 34:19
  Philip Pape: And it's not to, again, gaslight you guys.
• 34:21
  Philip Pape: It's to say, you've got power here.
• 34:23
  Philip Pape: Like you can go after it.
• 34:25
  Philip Pape: And then once you do the things, it removes constraints that were there and it reveals whatever constraints were made, you know, like the hormones.
• 34:33
  Philip Pape: Anyway, I'm going on a diatribe.
• 34:36
  Pam Sherman: No, I've heard women say, like, I'm just gonna suffer through it.
• 34:38
  Pam Sherman: And I'm like, why?
• 34:39
  Pam Sherman: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:39
  Pam Sherman: You don't have to suffer through it.
• 34:41
  Pam Sherman: You can feel better.
• 34:42
  Pam Sherman: You can actually sleep better too.
• 34:44
  Pam Sherman: That let's not suffer.
• 34:45
  Pam Sherman: Come on.
• 34:46
  Pam Sherman: Let life is hard enough.
• 34:47
  Pam Sherman: Let's feel great during this stage of life.
• 34:49
  Philip Pape: Feel great.
• 34:50
  Philip Pape: And so part of feeling great, moving to the next question, is the physical expression of all this.
• 34:54
  Philip Pape: And a lot of women who have gained a lot of weight over the years and then they lose the weight, they lose some fat, and they're trying to work on their, you know, how they look and feel, they got loose skin.
• 35:03
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about loose skin.
• 35:04
  Philip Pape: The next question is about women who've lost a lot of weight and they have loose skin.
• 35:08
  Philip Pape: Is this purely a cosmetic thing?
• 35:10
  Philip Pape: Can it be helped with like how much muscle you have, your nutrition can be helpful with any of that?
• 35:15
  Philip Pape: Should you get surgery in certain circumstances?
• 35:17
  Philip Pape: Like, what are your thoughts around loose skin?
• 35:19
  Pam Sherman: I think a lot of that's genetic.
• 35:20
  Pam Sherman: Okay.
• 35:20
  Pam Sherman: Whether I and if you've lost a hundred pounds, I don't know how much strength training is gonna help that.
• 35:26
  Pam Sherman: Like, I really think a consultation with a plastic surgeon, it would be great.
• 35:30
  Pam Sherman: That's amazing.
• 35:31
  Pam Sherman: But that's a whole like fifth grader that you lost.
• 35:33
  Pam Sherman: Now, if it's 20 pounds and you're a little loose, I I think you always have to give yourself a year of regular working out to see what your body's gonna do.
• 35:40
  Pam Sherman: You can't make any snap decisions, but with a lot of loose skin, that's really such a personalized decision.
• 35:46
  Philip Pape: Yep.
• 35:47
  Philip Pape: I can't add to that because it's not my area of expertise.
• 35:49
  Philip Pape: I have seen that the degree, the degree of it matters and your body does adapt to some extent.
• 35:55
  Philip Pape: But like obviously, if you have massive amounts of loose skin, you know, it's your personal choice how you want to deal with that.
• 36:00
  Philip Pape: But just do the things you can do and then see what's left.
• 36:02
  Philip Pape: Kind of continuing our theme today.
• 36:04
  Philip Pape: Okay, recovery uh is the next question, of course.
• 36:08
  Philip Pape: Recovery strategies.
• 36:09
  Philip Pape: And the question here is really about recovery being harder when you're older.
• 36:13
  Philip Pape: You know, recovery time is a little bit longer.
• 36:16
  Philip Pape: And so there's a lot of information out there about supplements, mobility work, sleep hygiene, mindfulness, meditation, yoga.
• 36:25
  Philip Pape: The list goes on and on.
• 36:27
  Philip Pape: Walking, what should you prioritize?
• 36:29
  Philip Pape: Like if you had to pick one thing to recover from your training, that's gonna assume your strength training and not over-training.
• 36:37
  Philip Pape: Actually, that's maybe a part of the answer, right, Pam, is don't overtrain.
• 36:40
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts on recovery?
• 36:42
  Philip Pape: It's a big topic.
• 36:43
  Pam Sherman: I think you absolutely have to have rest days.
• 36:46
  Pam Sherman: And rest days can include walking.
• 36:47
  Pam Sherman: I think we should walk every day.
• 36:48
  Pam Sherman: I know me personally, on days I do legs, my legs always feel better if I'm walking afterwards.
• 36:54
  Pam Sherman: But days of no strength training.
• 36:56
  Pam Sherman: Like you need you need rest.
• 36:59
  Pam Sherman: Stretching, I'm a big proponent of stretching.
• 37:01
  Pam Sherman: I always have been.
• 37:02
  Pam Sherman: I think stretching is great.
• 37:03
  Pam Sherman: I'm gonna drop the name um Travis Elliott on YouTube.
• 37:06
  Pam Sherman: He has a yin playlist.
• 37:08
  Pam Sherman: It hurts so good because he's holding the stretches for like three to five minutes.
• 37:12
  Pam Sherman: Stretching, great.
• 37:13
  Pam Sherman: And it's like a meditation and stretching, so it's two for one.
• 37:16
  Pam Sherman: If you like yoga, great.
• 37:18
  Pam Sherman: But I really think you have to know your body.
• 37:21
  Pam Sherman: I was just having this conversation.
• 37:22
  Pam Sherman: I just told you this with a gal who wants to train for a marathon.
• 37:25
  Pam Sherman: I told her, you can't work out every day.
• 37:27
  Pam Sherman: You have to actually, she's 62.
• 37:30
  Pam Sherman: I said, you have to let your body have rest days.
• 37:33
  Pam Sherman: You're not gonna perform unless you give your body the rest it needs.
• 37:36
  Pam Sherman: And yes, sleep hygiene, crazy important.
• 37:38
  Pam Sherman: I mean, sleep is our number one thing for recovery for everything.
• 37:42
  Pam Sherman: So it's a good sleep, total rest days, daily walking, stretching, really important, and not beating yourself up for doing less.
• 37:50
  Pam Sherman: We need to do less so we can do more in the gym.
• 37:53
  Philip Pape: Yeah, I think maybe the psychological piece of the doing less is maybe you replace that thing with the thing you're doing for yourself and count it as that.
• 38:03
  Philip Pape: In other words, like you can call it active recovery.
• 38:06
  Philip Pape: I don't like that phrase so much.
• 38:08
  Philip Pape: But like, if you like to work out every day, well, on your rest day, your workout is your walk.
• 38:13
  Philip Pape: You know what I mean?
• 38:14
  Philip Pape: Like, like put that as part of your routine.
• 38:16
  Philip Pape: So I was thinking, I want the listener to think about when they've gone on vacation to a beach, you know, they're stressed out of their mind from their work, from their lifestyle.
• 38:26
  Philip Pape: And they finally go to the, they go to a beach, the weather's beautiful, they get to relax, they're not thinking about training, they're not tracking even, they're not maybe not thinking about food and they're just enjoying whatever food, maybe alcohol.
• 38:36
  Philip Pape: I don't care.
• 38:36
  Philip Pape: You know, you're just relaxed and enjoying yourself.
• 38:38
  Philip Pape: And like from a parasympathetic nervous system state, you're maximizing it to the fullest.
• 38:42
  Philip Pape: However, you get there.
• 38:43
  Philip Pape: Maybe not alcohol, but anyway.
• 38:45
  Philip Pape: Um then you get back, and of course, you reached out to me or Pam ahead of time, and you're like, how do I deal with my not working out for a week?
• 38:53
  Philip Pape: And we're like, don't stress it, it's just a week.
• 38:55
  Philip Pape: And then when you get back, you find that all you're stronger than you were, and you find that like lifting feels great and your joints feel better.
• 39:01
  Philip Pape: What does that tell you?
• 39:03
  Philip Pape: Like that tells you that we need this time, and sometimes it happens accidentally.
• 39:06
  Philip Pape: Like for me, if my schedule gets so hectic, I just can't get that training day in and just skip a training day.
• 39:11
  Philip Pape: I don't feel guilty about it anymore because sometimes I come back and now I've skipped two weeks on that session, like that Wednesday session I haven't done in two weeks.
• 39:19
  Philip Pape: All of a sudden my lifts all go up again.
• 39:21
  Philip Pape: I'm like, this is crazy how that works, right?
• 39:23
  Philip Pape: So we need it.
• 39:24
  Pam Sherman: But your body needs rest.
• 39:27
  Philip Pape: Sleep and sleep is a big part of that too.
• 39:28
  Philip Pape: Oh, don't get started on sleep, right?
• 39:30
  Pam Sherman: That's uh and can we stop shooting all over ourselves?
• 39:34
  Pam Sherman: Sometimes you shouldn't.
• 39:35
  Pam Sherman: And look what happens.
• 39:36
  Pam Sherman: You you are more rested.
• 39:38
  Pam Sherman: So that next session, your body's like, let's go.
• 39:41
  Philip Pape: Yeah, for sure.
• 39:42
  Philip Pape: So I mean, I guess the long and the short of it is what Pam said is first, are you doing too much and not giving you yourself space for rest?
• 39:52
  Philip Pape: And then pick a few things that are the most important low-hanging fruit for you.
• 39:56
  Philip Pape: And that could be sleep, that could be the stretching, something else.
• 39:59
  Pam Sherman: Well, look at your whole week.
• 40:00
  Pam Sherman: I mean, I know I'm a former over-exerciser.
• 40:03
  Pam Sherman: I'm just gonna say that I used to run marathons, I used to probably run seven days a week.
• 40:07
  Pam Sherman: I just way too much.
• 40:08
  Pam Sherman: No strength training.
• 40:09
  Pam Sherman: All I did all the things wrong.
• 40:10
  Pam Sherman: And now when I help, I have some runners that I'm training.
• 40:13
  Pam Sherman: Like, do we need to do a junk mile?
• 40:15
  Pam Sherman: Do we need to do a three mile run?
• 40:16
  Pam Sherman: I don't think you do.
• 40:17
  Pam Sherman: I think you could do some upper body strength and do some stretching and help.
• 40:20
  Pam Sherman: Like, what is your long-term goal for yourself?
• 40:22
  Pam Sherman: And you want to feel good doing this, whatever you're doing next year, five years, 10 years.
• 40:27
  Pam Sherman: So doing less is gonna really benefit you later on.
• 40:31
  Pam Sherman: I mean, if you felt better two weeks later, that's still on your body, like rest is best, really.
• 40:37
  Philip Pape: Exactly.
• 40:38
  Philip Pape: And you just mentioned aligning with your goals.
• 40:41
  Philip Pape: We have two questions left, and I'm gonna flip them around because the last question was gonna be about goals.
• 40:45
  Philip Pape: Let's talk about that.
• 40:46
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 40:47
  Philip Pape: And the question is just how can a woman set meaningful long-term fitness goals beyond the superficial like appearance or beyond weight loss, that center on capability, aging gracefully, you know, the things that, you know, as we get older, we start to value these things more and we want to kind of latch on to those and get motivated and push on those.
• 41:06
  Philip Pape: What do you think?
• 41:07
  Pam Sherman: Well, I think it's good to pick, like I just, my girlfriend, uh, she's 59, she goes, I want to do a pull-up before I'm 60.
• 41:12
  Pam Sherman: That's that's a good goal.
• 41:14
  Pam Sherman: And I told her exactly exactly how to do it because it's not easy, but there is a way to get there.
• 41:18
  Pam Sherman: Do you have a like a squat goal you have?
• 41:20
  Pam Sherman: Do you want to be able to do a full body push-up?
• 41:22
  Pam Sherman: That's very hard for women.
• 41:23
  Pam Sherman: Like, I would pick out physical things that are a challenge to you.
• 41:26
  Pam Sherman: And then once you get there, set another goal.
• 41:29
  Pam Sherman: But yes, we all want to look at our clothes and all the things, but it's good to have a physical challenge to work on.
• 41:36
  Pam Sherman: And then when you get there, you're like, oh my gosh, I did it.
• 41:39
  Philip Pape: Like it feels really good.
• 41:40
  Philip Pape: That's a really good one, Pam, because I know I can blather on about like process-related goals and habits and blah, blah, blah.
• 41:47
  Philip Pape: But the idea of like still making it about some outcome to help drive that process, but an outcome itself that makes it more meaningful is beautiful.
• 41:56
  Philip Pape: Like that's goal, right?
• 41:57
  Philip Pape: So physical could be competition, it could be, you know, if it's if it's food related, I don't know, what would be a good like food-related?
• 42:04
  Philip Pape: Do you even need a food-related goal?
• 42:06
  Philip Pape: Because if you're trying to get a training goal, it kind of forces in the right nutrition.
• 42:09
  Philip Pape: But what would be a good food goal?
• 42:11
  Pam Sherman: It depends what you struggle.
• 42:12
  Pam Sherman: If you struggle with protein, getting 125 plus grams of protein a day for the next year, that would be hard to do for a lot of women.
• 42:19
  Philip Pape: Yep.
• 42:19
  Pam Sherman: But you guess, but you have to track to be able to do that.
• 42:22
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 42:23
  Philip Pape: So that's see, that that goes to a conversation I had with again, Alan Lazarus.
• 42:26
  Philip Pape: We talked about meta skills, how there's like meta skills, skills, and micro skills.
• 42:31
  Philip Pape: And like to me, the grams per protein a day is like a micro skill.
• 42:35
  Philip Pape: And the skill is just consistently getting protein, and the meta skill is consistency, you know, how it like abstracts up.
• 42:42
  Philip Pape: So trying to get your first pull-up, you then have to map it back and reverse engineer and say, like, okay, what is the escalation process to get the pull-up?
• 42:51
  Philip Pape: What do I have to do three days a week or one day a week or whatever to get there?
• 42:55
  Philip Pape: You know, you have to break it all the way down.
• 42:56
  Philip Pape: So with a protein goal, let's brainstorm it real quick, Pam.
• 43:00
  Philip Pape: Is that enough to say, like, I know I need X per day?
• 43:04
  Philip Pape: Or is there something more meaningful, like medium to long term, that would drive that?
• 43:10
  Pam Sherman: Well, I think for women, we're so used to not thinking about ourselves.
• 43:14
  Pam Sherman: We have to think about ourselves and look at our day.
• 43:16
  Pam Sherman: What's realistic?
• 43:17
  Pam Sherman: You know what?
• 43:17
  Pam Sherman: Getting 30 grams of my coffee, yummy and delicious, easy, easy way to start the day.
• 43:21
  Pam Sherman: Greek yogurt, one meal a day, super like and it's like two servings because I want to get over that 30 grams.
• 43:27
  Pam Sherman: Thinking about the meals that you like.
• 43:29
  Pam Sherman: And of course, if you have dinner with your family, that's a different story.
• 43:31
  Pam Sherman: But the first, you know, your coffee, breakfast, lunch, you can control that and thinking, what do I like?
• 43:37
  Pam Sherman: And have it's okay to have boring meals on rinse and repeat that you like that keep you satisfied, but it makes your life easier, makes grocery shopping easier.
• 43:45
  Pam Sherman: And then dinners, you know, they can be more than three or four because they're probably for your family.
• 43:50
  Pam Sherman: But really reverse engineering your whole week to go, okay, what are my breakfasts this week?
• 43:54
  Pam Sherman: What am I gonna pack for lunch?
• 43:55
  Pam Sherman: What are my non-negotiables?
• 43:57
  Pam Sherman: What am I not gonna have?
• 43:58
  Pam Sherman: If you're a teacher, there's a bunch of holiday treats in the room, you're not gonna go there, or you're just gonna have gum or mint and avoid that.
• 44:05
  Pam Sherman: Like literally think about every part of your week and how you're gonna hit those goals.
• 44:09
  Pam Sherman: It's a lot of saying no, and it's a lot of thinking, what am I gonna do?
• 44:13
  Pam Sherman: How am I gonna create a successful day for myself every day?
• 44:16
  Lisa: Hi, my name is Lisa, and I'd like to give a big shout-out to my nutrition coach, Felipe.
• 44:20
  Lisa: With his coaching, I have lost 17 pounds.
• 44:23
  Lisa: He helped me identify the reason that I want to lose weight, and it's very simple longevity.
• 44:28
  Lisa: I want to be healthy, active, and independent until the day I die.
• 44:31
  Lisa: He introduced me to this wonderful little app called Macro Factor.
• 44:34
  Lisa: I got that part of my nutrition figured out.
• 44:36
  Lisa: Along with that is the movement part of nutrition.
• 44:39
  Lisa: There's a plan to it, and he really helped me with that.
• 44:42
  Lisa: The other thing he helped me with was knowing that I need to get a lot of steps in.
• 44:44
  Lisa: So the more steps you have, the higher your expenditure is, and the easier it is to lose weight.
• 44:49
  Lisa: When it's presented to you like he presents it, it makes even more sense.
• 44:52
  Lisa: And the other thing that he had was a hunker guide, and that really helped me.
• 44:57
  Lisa: So thank you, Villa.
• 45:00
  Philip Pape: We just had Halloween and uh when Chuck Retreating, and you because you mentioned the candy, and it's like those are super calorie dense, and I know I'm getting off track, but like even I enjoy the occasional Kit Kat or Reese's or whatever.
• 45:11
  Philip Pape: I think I told you this on I on IG, and I don't know if you were horrified or not, but that's me.
• 45:14
  Philip Pape: It's like my idea of flexibility, right?
• 45:16
  Philip Pape: But I know they're so calorie dense that I'm like, even just one little mini Kit Kat's like, you know, 120 calories.
• 45:22
  Philip Pape: And so I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna have one and I'm gonna build it in, I'm gonna pre-log it, and now work back from that.
• 45:27
  Philip Pape: And it's like, okay, that's in there.
• 45:29
  Philip Pape: Now let me get my protein, let me get this, that.
• 45:31
  Philip Pape: And you mentioned the one or two meals a day that you can start with.
• 45:35
  Philip Pape: I do, I love that idea, especially breakfast.
• 45:38
  Philip Pape: Maybe at the top of the list, and maybe lunch is secondary, only because so few people get enough protein at breakfast.
• 45:44
  Philip Pape: Like lunch, they might, you know, maybe they have a lot of turkey in their sandwich, they have leftover chicken or something from dinner, maybe.
• 45:50
  Philip Pape: But breakfast, I almost never see people have enough protein because you have it's like breakfast foods we get from growing up in America, where like cereal, bagels, muffins, maybe oatmeal.
• 46:01
  Philip Pape: That's like starting to get protein, but we don't often don't have eggs.
• 46:04
  Philip Pape: Like I grew up thinking eggs and bacon are like a fun weekend type thing at a diner or like on the weekend.
• 46:09
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna have eggs on a Monday, you know?
• 46:12
  Philip Pape: So um, anyway, I it's a great idea.
• 46:15
  Philip Pape: So, ladies, think about that one meal a day that you just don't get protein and how are you gonna do it?
• 46:20
  Philip Pape: How are you gonna do it?
• 46:20
  Philip Pape: It's you know, make it happen.
• 46:22
  Pam Sherman: Well, and you can use convenience foods like Fair Life is a great shake.
• 46:25
  Pam Sherman: I just saw Chibani came out with one for people who are not way-based or gain house when they're all at Costco.
• 46:30
  Pam Sherman: I've seen those.
• 46:31
  Pam Sherman: If you had that with your breakfast, you're gonna get to 30 grams.
• 46:34
  Pam Sherman: So you don't have to make everything yourself.
• 46:37
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:38
  Philip Pape: There's competition now among the processed food makers for higher protein foods, which I don't think is the worst thing in the world.
• 46:43
  Philip Pape: It's not bad.
• 46:44
  Philip Pape: Um, like oikos brand Greek yogurt.
• 46:47
  Philip Pape: Um, I forget what it's sweetened with.
• 46:49
  Philip Pape: It might have artificial sweeteners, you know.
• 46:51
  Philip Pape: Um, but I recommend it to a lot of people if you can, if you like, if you're okay with the ingredients, you know.
• 46:55
  Philip Pape: I think they they use either artificial sweetener or or stevia.
• 46:59
  Philip Pape: It might actually be stevia, and and it's fat-free, but because it has some vanilla flavor in there with a stevia, you know, it tastes great and it's a ton of protein.
• 47:07
  Philip Pape: So look for those options.
• 47:09
  Pam Sherman: I am gonna say I love powdered peanut butter and Greek yogurt.
• 47:12
  Philip Pape: There you go.
• 47:13
  Philip Pape: Yeah, like PB2 or something.
• 47:15
  Pam Sherman: Oh with a little bit of brown sugar swerve.
• 47:19
  Philip Pape: It's like a beef in a cloud.
• 47:20
  Philip Pape: I love it, love it.
• 47:21
  Philip Pape: And it's easy, it's easy to make.
• 47:23
  Philip Pape: And then ninja creamy is a whole other thing.
• 47:24
  Philip Pape: I should do a whole uh episode just about that.
• 47:26
  Philip Pape: That um, my actually kids got me for was it my birthday?
• 47:30
  Philip Pape: Yeah, it was my birthday just a few weeks ago.
• 47:32
  Philip Pape: They got me a ninja creamy high protein recipe book.
• 47:35
  Philip Pape: I was like, this is great.
• 47:36
  Philip Pape: You guys are awesome.
• 47:37
  Philip Pape: So, all right, so the last question we have today is, and this is a good one to end on.
• 47:43
  Philip Pape: For a beginner, woman over 50 who is maybe intimidated, intimidated by the gym, you know, not used to going, maybe anxiety over the gym, maybe doesn't have a lot at home, but wants to build a home gym.
• 47:55
  Philip Pape: Let's focus on that.
• 47:56
  Philip Pape: What's the most essential home?
• 47:58
  Philip Pape: So, this question was exercises with minimal equipment.
• 48:02
  Philip Pape: I want to challenge the question and say, like, let's address the equipment too, because you may need to invest in some more equipment.
• 48:08
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts just on this very common problem?
• 48:11
  Pam Sherman: Well, I would say you can do a ton with your body weight.
• 48:14
  Pam Sherman: There are so many YouTube videos out there, and I have a bunch myself on my YouTube channel.
• 48:19
  Pam Sherman: Bodyweight exercises start with body weight.
• 48:21
  Pam Sherman: Get a mat.
• 48:22
  Pam Sherman: You want to stretch on the mat.
• 48:24
  Pam Sherman: Dumbbells are great, but I feel like women would not buy heavy enough dumbbells to that's a fact.
• 48:31
  Philip Pape: Like nothing truth right there.
• 48:33
  Pam Sherman: Nothing under 10 pounds.
• 48:34
  Pam Sherman: But and and Facebook Marketplace is a great place to buy used workout equipment.
• 48:39
  Pam Sherman: So I would definitely go on there.
• 48:40
  Pam Sherman: Um, and it depends how much space you have and where you live.
• 48:44
  Pam Sherman: I live in California.
• 48:45
  Pam Sherman: I can walk outside all year long, so I would not buy a treadmill.
• 48:48
  Pam Sherman: If you are in the East Coast, you're you know, winter's coming, treadmill might be a great option.
• 48:52
  Pam Sherman: Uh, what are you looking for?
• 48:53
  Pam Sherman: Cardio, I mean, I hope you're gonna do strength, but I would say a mat and some good, like a kettlebell.
• 49:00
  Pam Sherman: Kettlebells would be great to start but body weight for a month, see how you feel, and then work from there, but get your body moving first.
• 49:09
  Pam Sherman: And then you might be like, all right, this is boring, go to a gym.
• 49:12
  Pam Sherman: I would highly recommend go to a gym.
• 49:13
  Pam Sherman: Because most people, I used to actually, I worked at Linda Evans Fitness Centers in the 90s.
• 49:18
  Pam Sherman: She was a big deal back.
• 49:19
  Pam Sherman: I'm a lot older than you, Philip, but she was a big um TV star.
• 49:23
  Pam Sherman: And when we got trained, 95% of people who have equipment at home do not use it.
• 49:28
  Pam Sherman: They use it for clothes hangers, they use it for everything else besides.
• 49:32
  Pam Sherman: So I would say if you live within eight minutes of a gym, join a gym.
• 49:36
  Pam Sherman: But if you want to start at home, find home workouts that are for body weight and then get a friend and go to classes and then get a trainer and be in the gym.
• 49:46
  Philip Pape: Yeah, there's some common themes there.
• 49:47
  Philip Pape: I see all the time with clients as well.
• 49:49
  Philip Pape: So, what one theme, as you mentioned, is don't use the excuse of not having equipment to not start, get started.
• 49:56
  Philip Pape: And maybe getting started at home is the lowest friction thing for a lot of people.
• 50:00
  Philip Pape: But then within a few weeks, you're gonna find you're too strong for some of these exercises.
• 50:05
  Philip Pape: And then it like gives you the bug of, okay, what's my solution?
• 50:07
  Philip Pape: You got to kind of keep pushing that and and be and get ahead of that.
• 50:11
  Philip Pape: Like, where's the nearest gym?
• 50:12
  Philip Pape: What do they have?
• 50:13
  Philip Pape: Go visit it.
• 50:14
  Philip Pape: So I have clients who like across the spectrum, some will say, you know, they've got a sweet home gym set up, and I'm like, good to go, or hey, my husband has barbells.
• 50:22
  Philip Pape: I'm I'm like, good, let's start using that.
• 50:24
  Philip Pape: And they have a coach to kind of push them to do it.
• 50:27
  Philip Pape: And like you said, not 95% of people don't use their home gym equipment.
• 50:30
  Philip Pape: So you gotta evaluate what's keeping you accountable.
• 50:35
  Philip Pape: And then the I'll say, like, is there a commercial gym?
• 50:39
  Philip Pape: And sometimes people are just in rural areas or they're ranchers or something, and it's like, you know, 40 minutes away.
• 50:44
  Philip Pape: I don't even want to spend 10 minutes going to the gym, me personally, but that's because I will work out at home.
• 50:48
  Philip Pape: So it's a whole spectrum of like, where are you starting from?
• 50:52
  Philip Pape: Love all that advice, Pam.
• 50:53
  Philip Pape: I also think getting gym equipment on Facebook, getting gym equipment from like all these sad CrossFit gyms that are closing that have to get rid of their equipment.
• 51:01
  Philip Pape: Um, there's not many left now, but they were closing a lot over the past few years.
• 51:06
  Philip Pape: And yeah, just uh no excuses.
• 51:08
  Philip Pape: Just get strong.
• 51:10
  Philip Pape: Get strong and have fun with it.
• 51:12
  Pam Sherman: Well, and really, we talked about group exercise.
• 51:14
  Pam Sherman: It's a fine place to start.
• 51:15
  Pam Sherman: I find women don't push themselves enough, but that's a great place to start.
• 51:19
  Pam Sherman: And then be like, okay, I can do more.
• 51:20
  Pam Sherman: Then grab a friend and get a trainer, do a double training session and start from there.
• 51:24
  Pam Sherman: But you always want to be progressing.
• 51:26
  Pam Sherman: I have a girlfriend who takes classes and she goes, Some of these ladies have not changed their weights in class for six months.
• 51:32
  Pam Sherman: Yeah, you are not gonna see results by doing the same thing over and over.
• 51:36
  Pam Sherman: That's the definition of insanity, right?
• 51:37
  Pam Sherman: So you always want to be challenging yourself.
• 51:40
  Philip Pape: That's exactly it.
• 51:41
  Philip Pape: That's progressive overload right there.
• 51:43
  Philip Pape: So, all right, that's all the questions that I have.
• 51:45
  Philip Pape: But I always like to ask one final one is is there one do you think women over 50 are asking a lot that we didn't really touch on?
• 51:54
  Pam Sherman: Yes.
• 51:54
  Pam Sherman: And I'm sorry to break your hearts, ladies.
• 51:56
  Pam Sherman: Peanut butter is not protein.
• 51:59
  Philip Pape: Peanut butter is very specific.
• 52:02
  Pam Sherman: Nuts are not protein.
• 52:03
  Pam Sherman: Do not grab a handful of nuts and think you're doing yourself a favor.
• 52:06
  Pam Sherman: I have said that over and over and over, probably for the last 20 years, on you could be eating 600 calories of nuts.
• 52:12
  Pam Sherman: And if you're trying to lose weight, that could be more not half your day's calories, but a lot of your day's calories in a handful.
• 52:18
  Pam Sherman: Um, and I just had a lady this week who just said, you know, well, I love my peanut butter and jelly.
• 52:22
  Pam Sherman: I said, okay, but you're not eating for your goals.
• 52:25
  Pam Sherman: That's eating for comfort.
• 52:26
  Pam Sherman: And sometimes you have to break up with a toddler inside of you and say, okay, you're not getting any protein.
• 52:32
  Pam Sherman: And you're not having only two tablespoons, you're probably having four or five, because nobody can just have two.
• 52:37
  Pam Sherman: It's too delicious.
• 52:39
  Pam Sherman: So if you are serious about your goals, I you I you have to eat for your goals.
• 52:44
  Pam Sherman: And it that that doesn't mean eating bad stuff.
• 52:46
  Pam Sherman: What do you like?
• 52:46
  Pam Sherman: Do you like chicken?
• 52:47
  Pam Sherman: Do you like fish?
• 52:48
  Pam Sherman: Do you like steak?
• 52:48
  Pam Sherman: Do you like pork?
• 52:49
  Pam Sherman: Do you like turkey?
• 52:50
  Pam Sherman: Eat what you like protein-wise and get enough fiber, 25 grams a day, I would say minimum.
• 52:55
  Pam Sherman: And then really prioritize that protein and fiber at every meal.
• 52:59
  Pam Sherman: But so many women think avocado toast, almond butter toast, peanut butter and jelly, that's a good meal.
• 53:04
  Pam Sherman: I'm like, that's not a good meal.
• 53:06
  Pam Sherman: And that's so much fat.
• 53:08
  Pam Sherman: And in my experience, I'm not a doctor, nutrition or nutritionist, women don't do well on a ton of fat.
• 53:13
  Pam Sherman: They don't get enough protein, eat more protein, and then let's see how you feel.
• 53:17
  Pam Sherman: Sorry, sorry.
• 53:18
  Philip Pape: No, it's true.
• 53:19
  Philip Pape: Uh, a lot of that is a vestige of like the paleo and keto world because they pushed a lot of those recipes that end up being super, super high fat.
• 53:26
  Philip Pape: I was in that world for a while myself.
• 53:28
  Philip Pape: Listen, I'm a big, not big.
• 53:30
  Philip Pape: I wish I was big.
• 53:31
  Philip Pape: I'm only I'm an average guy.
• 53:32
  Philip Pape: I'm a guy, so I'm bigger than most women, and I eat about 2600 calories for maintenance right now.
• 53:38
  Philip Pape: And I have 20 grams of peanut butter a day in my oatmeal.
• 53:42
  Philip Pape: That's all the peanut butter I have.
• 53:43
  Philip Pape: And I intentionally include it in there because I like the taste of what it does to my oatmeal.
• 53:47
  Philip Pape: And that's a little over a tablespoon.
• 53:49
  Philip Pape: And I, but I have to measure that out because if you take a big spoonful and dump it in, you'll find you're already past that amount.
• 53:55
  Philip Pape: Peanut butter is so calorie dense.
• 53:57
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 53:58
  Philip Pape: And I include that in my oatmeal.
• 53:59
  Philip Pape: My oatmeal is like 325 calories, and like half of that is the peanut butter.
• 54:03
  Philip Pape: Like that's it, it's super dense.
• 54:04
  Philip Pape: And when you mention nuts too, nowadays my thought on nuts is like a nutrient source, like to supplement in little amounts.
• 54:13
  Philip Pape: So, like if you need some selenium or um other nutrients that are found in certain nuts, I think you think of it as like almost like a supplement you're adding in in small sprinkled amounts.
• 54:22
  Philip Pape: Because you're right, if you just grab a handful, that's like 500 calories right there of whatever nut it is, even though they're delicious.
• 54:29
  Pam Sherman: So and so many people think they're healthy, so they're fine.
• 54:31
  Pam Sherman: And yes, they are healthy, but not in that quantity.
• 54:35
  Philip Pape: Yeah, because in nature, you'd have to like you'd have to grab them one by one, you'd have to break them open, you have to peel, yeah, you have to take them out of the shell and all that.
• 54:43
  Philip Pape: Yeah, exactly.
• 54:44
  Philip Pape: All right, that was fun, uh, Pam.
• 54:46
  Philip Pape: I think we covered a lot of great questions.
• 54:48
  Philip Pape: Definitely watch your peanut butter, eat for your goals, track, lift weights, do all the fun things.
• 54:53
  Philip Pape: Hopefully, we covered it from some fun angles today.
• 54:55
  Philip Pape: And Pam, I'll just leave with where can people reach out to you so you can continue your conversation here?
• 55:01
  Pam Sherman: I'm on Instagram and TikTok at lowercase pam underscore sherman one.
• 55:05
  Pam Sherman: I'm active on those, so you can reach out and, you know, well, message me, be happy to talk to you.
• 55:10
  Pam Sherman: I think it's never too late to reach your goals.
• 55:13
  Pam Sherman: I would love to help you.
• 55:15
  Pam Sherman: I've been there, I've gained weight, I've lost weight, I've helped women for 28 years on their health journey.
• 55:20
  Pam Sherman: And there's no quick fixes, but consistency will definitely help you get to your goals.
• 55:24
  Pam Sherman: And I'm sorry, peanut butter is not awesome.
• 55:28
  Philip Pape: So if you need help with peanut butter and you're picking up what Pam is putting down today, please definitely reach out to her.
• 55:34
  Philip Pape: I love the community of coaches we have, you know, throughout the industry and on this show.
• 55:39
  Philip Pape: And like it's an abundance mentality here because we can all help the right people if they need it.
• 55:43
  Philip Pape: So reach out to Pam.
• 55:44
  Philip Pape: Pam, thanks so much for doing this.
• 55:46
  Philip Pape: It was kind of a last minute, guys.
• 55:47
  Philip Pape: Like, I invited Pam like last week.
• 55:48
  Philip Pape: We said we need to get together for a fun QA.
• 55:50
  Philip Pape: Let's do it.
• 55:51
  Philip Pape: She said yes.
• 55:51
  Philip Pape: So thank you so much.
• 55:52
  Philip Pape: I appreciate you, and thank you for coming on Wits and Weights.
• 55:55
  Pam Sherman: Always a great time.
• 55:56
  Pam Sherman: Thanks, Philip.