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Transform Your Health: Menopause Fitness · Create The Best Me

• 0:00
  Carmen Hecox: Well hello there, fearless midlife trailblazers.
• 0:03
  Carmen Hecox: Welcome to Create The Best Me.
• 0:05
  Carmen Hecox: If you are new here, I'm so glad you made it here.
• 0:08
  Carmen Hecox: If you're a returning listener, welcome back to the one and only place where we encourage and empower women in midlife to pursue their dreams and live life to the fullest.
• 0:19
  Carmen Hecox: I am Carmen Hecox, your host and personal development coach.
• 0:23
  Carmen Hecox: Today's guest is Kathie Owen, a seasoned fitness trainer and life coach with over 20 years of experience.
• 0:32
  Carmen Hecox: Kathie's passion for fitness began in the year 2000.
• 0:36
  Carmen Hecox: She quickly became a specialist in senior fitness.
• 0:41
  Carmen Hecox: With Kathie's own podcast, Kathie's coaching and a YouTube channel, she is a beacon of inspiration for many.
• 0:49
  Carmen Hecox: Today she'll share her expertise on crafting a personalized program, especially for older adults and women going through menopause.
• 0:58
  Carmen Hecox: Let's dive in and learn from Kathie.
• 1:01
  Carmen Hecox: Kathie Owen, welcome to Create The Best Me.
• 1:06
  Kathie Owen: Thank you.
• 1:06
  Kathie Owen: Thank you for having me.
• 1:08
  Carmen Hecox: I am so happy to have you on.
• 1:10
  Carmen Hecox: For some of the people who may not be familiar with you, can you please let the audience know who you are and what you do?
• 1:19
  Kathie Owen: My name is Kathie Owen.
• 1:21
  Kathie Owen: I am a Corporate Wellness Director.
• 1:23
  Kathie Owen: I'm also a, a certified fitness trainer, certified life coach for 20 plus years.
• 1:30
  Kathie Owen: I have my own coaching business as well as I am a corporate wellness director for a company.
• 1:35
  Kathie Owen: So, I'm also a consultant for Corporations,
• 1:39
  Carmen Hecox: And you also have a podcast.
• 1:42
  Kathie Owen: I have a podcast.
• 1:43
  Kathie Owen: I have a YouTube channel.
• 1:46
  Kathie Owen: Yes.
• 1:46
  Kathie Owen: Kathie's coaching is my podcast.
• 1:48
  Kathie Owen: Yes
• 1:49
  Carmen Hecox: Perfect.
• 1:49
  Carmen Hecox: Is that also the name of your YouTube channel?
• 1:53
  Kathie Owen: Um My YouTube channel is just Kathie Owen.
• 1:55
  Carmen Hecox: Kathie Owen.
• 1:56
  Carmen Hecox: Okay, great.
• 1:57
  Carmen Hecox: Can you share a little bit about your personal journey?
• 2:00
  Carmen Hecox: What led you to become a health and wellness coach, especially for older adults?
• 2:05
  Kathie Owen: So, it started a long, long time ago back in the year 2000 I was I was taking water aerobics, and my kids were little.
• 2:14
  Kathie Owen: And water aerobics is typically where seniors hang out, where they exercise.
• 2:21
  Kathie Owen: And so, I was taking the class and they asked me if I wanted to start teaching and I'm like, okay, sure I'll start teaching.
• 2:29
  Kathie Owen: And so, I started teaching.
• 2:30
  Kathie Owen: And, shortly thereafter, I just fell in love with the older adult population, and I was in my 30s at the time.
• 2:38
  Kathie Owen: So, I just started working with them as well, and I got certified to work with older adults, and I'm also a certified fitness trainer.
• 2:46
  Kathie Owen: But that specialty certification led to everything that happened, including, and especially today, how I train myself.
• 2:55
  Kathie Owen: And others as well.
• 2:57
  Carmen Hecox: And that takes me to my next question.
• 2:59
  Carmen Hecox: How has your own experience with health and fitness shaped your approach in coaching?
• 3:05
  Kathie Owen: So, my experience has been I know what to do as for older adults, because as a certified fitness trainer, every two years you need to get recertified, you need to take continuing education and that continuing education needs to apply for the certifications that you have.
• 3:24
  Kathie Owen: So, fitness is an ever-changing industry, as you know, and there's so many components to it that continuing education is very helpful.
• 3:33
  Kathie Owen: So, I keep learning and learning and learning and adding to that.
• 3:37
  Kathie Owen: And that helps me personally, because now I'm considered an older adult and I just use what I've learned along the way.
• 3:45
  Carmen Hecox: So, you're now older back when you started, you were in your thirties.
• 3:50
  Carmen Hecox: I know menopause is something we all face.
• 3:54
  Carmen Hecox: You're going to go through it.
• 3:55
  Carmen Hecox: It's a guarantee.
• 3:56
  Carmen Hecox: How have you incorporated your fitness program to help women overcome some of the challenges that come with menopause?
• 4:07
  Kathie Owen: Right, right.
• 4:08
  Kathie Owen: So, I'm very happy to say that I've had very few menopause symptoms and I'm in menopause now.
• 4:16
  Kathie Owen: But about three years ago, I took a certification that was all about menopause and how to balance hormones through exercise and fitness.
• 4:27
  Kathie Owen: And there's this method called the BEST method and it has to do with bone density, it has to do with estrogen dominance, it has to do with strength training, and then your training as well.
• 4:40
  Kathie Owen: And those things led me when I took this continuing education class.
• 4:44
  Kathie Owen: I was like, okay well, I have been doing all these things, so I believe that that and my mindset are the things that led me to not have menopause symptoms like I have hot flashes every once in a while.
• 4:59
  Kathie Owen: I had night sweats every once in a while, but I didn't have a lot of the things that my friends are talking about.
• 5:05
  Kathie Owen: And so, I started training them as well and my clients and started teaching them the fitness methods that I use.
• 5:13
  Kathie Owen: It's not something you can just jump into.
• 5:15
  Kathie Owen: You've got to gradually get into it.
• 5:17
  Kathie Owen: But that's how it happened.
• 5:20
  Carmen Hecox: So, what are the most common misconceptions about health fitness for women in their menopause years?
• 5:27
  Kathie Owen: Oh, I would say one of the main misconceptions is they think they have to go super hard in their fitness or not at all.
• 5:38
  Kathie Owen: It's both ends of the spectrum that are both misconception.
• 5:42
  Kathie Owen: And here's why when I took that continuing education class, one of the things that I specifically learned is that your cardiovascular and your strength training combining of both of them, you need to keep it at right around 60 percent of your max.
• 5:59
  Kathie Owen: So that would mean if you lift a hundred pounds, you would only lift 60 pounds.
• 6:04
  Kathie Owen: And if your heart rate is 220 beats a minute, minus your age, if that is in the one sixties, then they think that they need to go all heavy.
• 6:17
  Kathie Owen: Or not at all.
• 6:18
  Kathie Owen: But the thing is, and the good news is, it's all about balance and mostly about keeping it in the lower range rather than in the hard range.
• 6:30
  Kathie Owen: So, the 60 percent is like a magic number, I tell my clients.
• 6:34
  Kathie Owen: It's like a magic number.
• 6:36
  Kathie Owen: You want to hit that and just keep it in that rather than taking your heart rate up and going hard the whole time.
• 6:43
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, cause I think that, um, a lot of people think that I have to like go really hard.
• 6:48
  Carmen Hecox: I got to keep my heart level like way up here in order to burn fat.
• 6:53
  Carmen Hecox: And because I know like I'm also going through menopause, I did notice that as I approach menopause that my muscle mass significantly changed, not for the best, for the bad, and my fat went up.
• 7:09
  Carmen Hecox: And so, I know that for me, I'm like, okay, well, I can't get my heart rate up that high and I can't, I can't keep it up that high.
• 7:17
  Carmen Hecox: Then I'm not really doing anything.
• 7:20
  Kathie Owen: Yeah, and like I said, that's a big misconception about your workouts.
• 7:24
  Kathie Owen: And here's a little thing that I noticed, during the pandemic, how I trained people was using their smartwatch.
• 7:31
  Kathie Owen: And so, I could tell when they were doing it wrong, which is taking their heart rate up and working hard the whole time.
• 7:38
  Kathie Owen: When I first started training somebody, they would send me their workout and their heart rate would be, FOOF! at hard, going hard the whole time.
• 7:46
  Kathie Owen: And I said, no, no, no, we need spikies in there.
• 7:48
  Kathie Owen: And the good thing is you need lower spikies, down at the bottom and, very little at the very top.
• 7:58
  Kathie Owen: So that is one of the huge things that help because estrogen dominance starts taking place.
• 8:03
  Kathie Owen: Our brains release chemicals that go off, especially during stress, during menopause.
• 8:09
  Kathie Owen: Cortisol becomes dominant.
• 8:11
  Kathie Owen: Cortisol has a party with fat cells in our least favorite sections on our body.
• 8:17
  Kathie Owen: And the more you release a lot of cortisol when you're working too hard.
• 8:22
  Kathie Owen: So, you want to keep it, like I said, it's the good news.
• 8:25
  Kathie Owen: It's the magic number.
• 8:27
  Kathie Owen: You want to keep it in your low number.
• 8:28
  Kathie Owen: And if you look on treadmills and some elliptical equipment, they have this little Heart rate zone training, and you'll see the green is where you want to stay if you're trying to burn fat.
• 8:41
  Kathie Owen: That's not what everybody's goal is but that green zone is like the magic zone.
• 8:46
  Kathie Owen: That's where you burn fat.
• 8:48
  Kathie Owen: That's where you're you get oxygen going through your body better.
• 8:50
  Kathie Owen: You start feeling better.
• 8:52
  Kathie Owen: You stop releasing cortisol, you release better brain chemicals like endorphins and things like that.
• 9:00
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, cause I always tell my husband, cause we walk three and a half miles every day.
• 9:03
  Carmen Hecox: And I have shorter legs than he does.
• 9:05
  Carmen Hecox: And so, I'm trying my hardest to keep up with him.
• 9:08
  Carmen Hecox: And he'll look at his, he has an iWatch I have and Samsung.
• 9:12
  Carmen Hecox: And he'll say, why can't you keep up?
• 9:14
  Carmen Hecox: My heart rates at this.
• 9:15
  Carmen Hecox: You're really not burning any fat.
• 9:18
  Carmen Hecox: And I tell them I don't want to stress myself out because here I am, I'm trying to keep up with you.
• 9:23
  Carmen Hecox: And if I'm stressing myself out, I don't think that I'm actually burning fat.
• 9:29
  Carmen Hecox: I'm inviting my friend cortisol to come and, kind of like eat up all the benefit that I'm think I'm trying to do.
• 9:37
  Kathie Owen: Exactly.
• 9:37
  Kathie Owen: Exactly.
• 9:38
  Kathie Owen: So maybe he needs to listen to this episode and see that.
• 9:42
  Kathie Owen: And I've got a ton of content that I write about that.
• 9:45
  Kathie Owen: And also, another hormone that's released is human growth hormone and we need that to be released.
• 9:52
  Kathie Owen: To just help the body.
• 9:53
  Kathie Owen: I mean, some people get it injected into them just for that reason, but when you exercise like that in the magic zone, you're going to release human growth hormone, which is something we want to be able to do.
• 10:06
  Kathie Owen: So yeah.
• 10:08
  Carmen Hecox: And I know you and I had had a previous discussion before this recording and I did tell him, I said, hey, you know, I was just talking to this lady, Kathie Owen, and she talked about the importance of being at different levels.
• 10:21
  Carmen Hecox: And I said, I'm going to interview her.
• 10:23
  Carmen Hecox: So, you're going to have to listen, because you're wrong.
• 10:26
  Carmen Hecox: And she's a certified trainer.
• 10:28
  Carmen Hecox: She knows she's been doing this for years.
• 10:30
  Kathie Owen: Yeah, that's for sure.
• 10:33
  Carmen Hecox: So how does the body of a woman going through menopause differ than someone who's younger in terms of fitness needs and challenges.
• 10:42
  Kathie Owen: Yes, for sure, you know, I kind of alluded to this a minute ago is that, if somebody's coming to me and they haven't exercised in a while, you can't just jump into this heart rate training.
• 10:53
  Kathie Owen: You can't just jump into the 60 percent max.
• 10:57
  Kathie Owen: it's all about taking it easy and not working so, so hard and gradually making it happen because what I see happen is people start exercising, especially in January, they start exercising and they go all out and then they hurt themselves.
• 11:15
  Kathie Owen: We don't want to do that, and you can get a good workout without going all out, obviously as we talked about before.
• 11:23
  Carmen Hecox: How do you keep people encouraged?
• 11:25
  Carmen Hecox: Because I know that, like you said, there might be some people that have never worked out before, or maybe haven't done it in, several years and now they want to start and maybe they're in a group with other people that are around their same age, but the other people are doing a little bit better than they are.
• 11:43
  Carmen Hecox: How do you keep them encouraged to keep going when they really feel like I'm not doing anything?
• 11:49
  Kathie Owen: This is a great question.
• 11:50
  Kathie Owen: I love this question because this is bottom line, what I deal with every day.
• 11:57
  Kathie Owen: As the corporate wellness director, I'm constantly trying to keep people encouraged and keep people motivated.
• 12:03
  Kathie Owen: In fact, on my website at the top of the website, it says, lack of motivation sucks.
• 12:10
  Kathie Owen: Don't let that be you.
• 12:12
  Kathie Owen: Because when I interview people, I go, what do you like to do for exercise?
• 12:16
  Kathie Owen: Well, I'm not motivated to exercise is usually first thing they tell me.
• 12:20
  Kathie Owen: Even at the job that I work at, and I'm trying to get people to come to the gym.
• 12:25
  Kathie Owen: I'm not motivated to come exercise.
• 12:27
  Kathie Owen: I get that a lot.
• 12:29
  Kathie Owen: And I get that, but motivation is a funny thing, and it comes from the inside.
• 12:35
  Kathie Owen: Most people are used to external motivations, like, I'm gonna have a weight loss contest, I'm gonna win money, and that's what's gonna motivate me.
• 12:44
  Kathie Owen: Yes.
• 12:45
  Kathie Owen: It does, but when the contest is over, do you continue?
• 12:48
  Kathie Owen: No.
• 12:49
  Kathie Owen: Most likely you don't.
• 12:50
  Kathie Owen: If your motivation comes from intrinsic motivation, like,"oh, I'm doing," you understand completely your why, you're doing it.
• 13:00
  Kathie Owen: And you have your values in there as well, then you're going to stick with it.
• 13:06
  Kathie Owen: You're going to go exercise when you don't feel like it.
• 13:09
  Kathie Owen: You see your tennis shoes, you put them on and you go out the door and you go walk.
• 13:14
  Kathie Owen: So, for somebody who feels like they're, I work with all different fitness levels.
• 13:18
  Kathie Owen: So, for somebody who feels like, oh, I'm just new and I don't know what to do.
• 13:23
  Kathie Owen: I help them see where they achieve.
• 13:26
  Kathie Owen: I go, you're not doing it wrong.
• 13:28
  Kathie Owen: You just want to do here, so you're working this muscle group.
• 13:31
  Kathie Owen: And it just encourages them and keeps them in the same line.
• 13:35
  Kathie Owen: And at the same time, I try to help them find their intrinsic motivators as opposed to extrinsic motivators.
• 13:42
  Kathie Owen: So that does it.
• 13:44
  Carmen Hecox: So, you're sort of encouraging the small wins and building from the small wins.
• 13:50
  Kathie Owen: Definitely.
• 13:51
  Kathie Owen: In fact, this month, every month I have a different calendar and this month is all about setting goals and setting realistic goals.
• 13:59
  Kathie Owen: And we take daily steps in my calendar blog that I have and my email list, and we take daily steps, and we work on it together and we motivate each other.
• 14:10
  Kathie Owen: And that calendar, I also incorporate into my job as the corporate wellness director.
• 14:16
  Kathie Owen: So, people print that calendar out.
• 14:17
  Kathie Owen: They have it at their desk.
• 14:18
  Kathie Owen: They're in fact, they'll come to me and go, okay, today is one brick at a time.
• 14:23
  Kathie Owen: And I love that because that's just motivation is a funny thing.
• 14:28
  Kathie Owen: And it's just daily steps.
• 14:30
  Kathie Owen: And, as you and I talked before we even got on here, stress is going to happen.
• 14:35
  Kathie Owen: It's not if, it's when.
• 14:37
  Kathie Owen: And when you are prepared for stress to happen through exercise, through a mindset, which is more to talk about more than anything is your mindset.
• 14:47
  Kathie Owen: If you're prepared for it, then when it hits, you can easily go through it.
• 14:52
  Kathie Owen: So, I have a lead magnet where I talk about getting into flow.
• 14:57
  Kathie Owen: Because if you can get into flow and you make flow a priority in your life, you'll be in flow at any given time, even under stress.
• 15:06
  Kathie Owen: And then when you know what flow feels like, which is what I teach in there, then when you are under stress, you know, okay, I'm taking a break.
• 15:14
  Kathie Owen: I'm stepping away from this for a moment and then come back to it.
• 15:19
  Kathie Owen: And then you look at it with different eyes and it just it helps a lot because like I said, it's not, if you're going to hit stress, it is when.
• 15:28
  Kathie Owen: Be prepared and have flow in your back pocket because it will help a lot.
• 15:34
  Carmen Hecox: How do you tailor your program to fit each person's individual needs, especially those going through menopause?
• 15:42
  Carmen Hecox: Cause we're all different and, I might have a lot of hot flashes and someone else might have a lot of night sweats.
• 15:52
  Kathie Owen: Yeah.
• 15:52
  Kathie Owen: So, I work with all ages.
• 15:54
  Kathie Owen: I work with ages twenty-six to seventy-five seventy-eight.
• 15:59
  Kathie Owen: And what I do, and I don't know if it's a gift I have or what, but I can pick up on where people are saying, like for today, for example, today I had somebody tell me, she was telling me she's having problems with hot flashes and things like that.
• 16:14
  Kathie Owen: And I said well let's try cutting out sugar or at least cut back on sugar because she goes well, I have a sweet tooth.
• 16:22
  Kathie Owen: Well, I have a sweet tooth, but I cut back on sugar, and she goes you go to the other side of the gym Kathie I don't want to talk to you anymore And I go no, no, no, I get that.
• 16:30
  Kathie Owen: I also get I'm not telling you you don't want to do it.
• 16:33
  Kathie Owen: Just cut back.
• 16:35
  Kathie Owen: And she goes I can't.
• 16:36
  Kathie Owen: And I say this can't, never did anything.
• 16:40
  Kathie Owen: So just reframe your thinking because I also trained somebody this morning that's in their 70s and he's lost like 25 pounds in several months.
• 16:51
  Kathie Owen: Brought his glucose numbers down because of my training with him.
• 16:56
  Kathie Owen: All I did with him, Carmen, was I made him aware of what he was eating.
• 17:01
  Kathie Owen: He had to text me his food every day.
• 17:04
  Kathie Owen: Not everybody needs to do that.
• 17:06
  Kathie Owen: But what that made him aware, oh, I got to send this to Kathie.
• 17:09
  Kathie Owen: I better be careful.
• 17:10
  Kathie Owen: But what he started doing and he'd done it before.
• 17:12
  Kathie Owen: I've been training this man for 13 years, but he'd done this before, and he started doing intermittent fasting.
• 17:19
  Kathie Owen: But that's different from this other person.
• 17:21
  Kathie Owen: However, I'll take bits and pieces of his story and share it with somebody else.
• 17:26
  Kathie Owen: And I go, well, you know, he loves food.
• 17:29
  Kathie Owen: He loves to eat.
• 17:30
  Kathie Owen: I've known him for years and he's loved to eat, but he just cut back.
• 17:34
  Kathie Owen: He didn't cut everything out.
• 17:35
  Kathie Owen: He just cut back, and he started intermittent fasting and even fasting for longer hours.
• 17:41
  Kathie Owen: Now that doesn't work for everybody.
• 17:42
  Kathie Owen: So therefore, I'm not going to tell somebody else that's in their twenties that, doesn't want to do that.
• 17:49
  Kathie Owen: I'm not going to tell them that I just kind of tweak and play around with it.
• 17:53
  Kathie Owen: And know, what some people can do, some people can't do.
• 17:57
  Carmen Hecox: And I thought that's really funny when you said sugar because, I don't know, I was feeling a little stressed and when I get stressed, my go to thing, I don't know why is sugar.
• 18:06
  Carmen Hecox: And so, I found myself sticking my hand in the M M container.
• 18:10
  Carmen Hecox: And then I told my husband, I said, I'm getting some hot flashes, I wasn't getting those before.
• 18:14
  Carmen Hecox: I said, I think it's related to the sugar.
• 18:16
  Carmen Hecox: Cause I wasn't eating M& M's and now I'm eating M& M's and I'm getting hot flashes.
• 18:21
  Carmen Hecox: I said, I'm not doing this anymore.
• 18:23
  Kathie Owen: Yeah.
• 18:24
  Kathie Owen: And sugar is unfortunately, I love sugar too, but it is a poison.
• 18:29
  Kathie Owen: It's a poison.
• 18:30
  Kathie Owen: And I noticed lately, I had a lot of sugar the other day.
• 18:33
  Kathie Owen: They kept tempting me with it and then I could feel it.
• 18:36
  Kathie Owen: And so, when you start to feel it, that's becoming aware of what it's doing to your body and feeling that and then you know next time maybe I won't do that or just cut back a little bit and still have some but not a lot if that makes sense.
• 18:52
  Carmen Hecox: Mm hmm.
• 18:53
  Carmen Hecox: It's learning how to balance.
• 18:55
  Kathie Owen: Yes, balance.
• 18:58
  Carmen Hecox: Are there any specific exercise or practice that you believe are particularly beneficial for women in this age group?
• 19:06
  Kathie Owen: Yes, for sure.
• 19:07
  Kathie Owen: And that is called Routine.
• 19:10
  Kathie Owen: A routine is super-duper important.
• 19:13
  Kathie Owen: It's like a non-negotiable in my opinion and my beliefs.
• 19:18
  Kathie Owen: The reason why is because a routine, I'm not talking about so structured that you can't be spontaneous.
• 19:25
  Kathie Owen: But I'm talking about especially your morning and your bedtime.
• 19:29
  Kathie Owen: So, your morning routine, if that will get you into flow if you have a good ritual for your morning.
• 19:36
  Kathie Owen: And it doesn't have to be long.
• 19:38
  Kathie Owen: It just could be 15, 20 minutes, even 10 minutes, just something.
• 19:43
  Kathie Owen: And I'm a firm believer in getting up early.
• 19:47
  Kathie Owen: I love to sleep, but I've noticed that when you do get up early and you start your day early, you get the good feeling brain chemicals going in your body and that will pull you through your day.
• 20:01
  Kathie Owen: Whereas if you wake up and you're running out the door to go to work and you're running late and you're grabbing everything out the door, then that's already setting the moment.
• 20:11
  Kathie Owen: So, I believe if you're not early, you're late.
• 20:15
  Kathie Owen: And so, I apply that to my day, and it's served me.
• 20:20
  Kathie Owen: And I also coach that as well, because I do have people who resist that, but what you resist persists, and if you don't just 30 minutes, I say just 30 minutes earlier, it will serve you, especially in your most stressful times.
• 20:35
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah, and I wake up early.
• 20:37
  Carmen Hecox: I mean, I've kicked it back.
• 20:38
  Carmen Hecox: I used to wake up at four o'clock in the morning, but now I wake up at 5 30.
• 20:43
  Carmen Hecox: But if I wake up at seven or eight and it's happened before, I just feel like I'm rushing myself throughout the day, even though I may not have commitments.
• 20:55
  Carmen Hecox: Scheduled commitments, I just always feel like I'm kind of behind.
• 21:00
  Carmen Hecox: And I don't know if it's because used to wake up at three, then I kicked it back to four.
• 21:03
  Carmen Hecox: Now I'm at the five mark, but you're right.
• 21:07
  Kathie Owen: Yeah, it's a ritual.
• 21:08
  Kathie Owen: I believe it's a ritual.
• 21:10
  Kathie Owen: And instead of a routine, I like the word ritual just because it just sounds more healthy.
• 21:17
  Kathie Owen: And it also, it's also leaves you room for spontaneity, which I think is important to just be creative.
• 21:24
  Kathie Owen: Especially as a creative, you've got to have spontaneity in your life so that you can just jump in the moment.
• 21:31
  Carmen Hecox: How do you incorporate mental well-being and emotional support into your workout routines, given the hormonal changes women experienced during menopause?
• 21:42
  Kathie Owen: Okay.
• 21:42
  Kathie Owen: I can go back to an experience I had during COVID.
• 21:46
  Kathie Owen: You know, the gyms were closed so we couldn't exercise, and it was really hard.
• 21:51
  Kathie Owen: And I started having the brain fog, the headaches because I wasn't getting the exercise that my body is used to.
• 21:59
  Kathie Owen: And I think what I started doing was I had some equipment at home, I started incorporating workouts and started getting that movement early in the morning because it's been proven, studies have shown that if you do movement 30 minutes a day, especially in the morning, it's going to release endorphins that will help with those headaches that you have.
• 22:22
  Kathie Owen: It will help with the brain fog.
• 22:23
  Kathie Owen: Again, let's go back to the brain chemicals that we're releasing when we exercise and those are good chemicals, but let's not do the bad ones.
• 22:34
  Kathie Owen: So, we stay in the magic zone and get that good mindset.
• 22:38
  Kathie Owen: And I combine that with what I'm listening to, and I was just listening today to a coach talk about how music affects us and how we can listen to a song in the morning, and it can help inspire your day and you know, just make a playlist of stuff that you listen to.
• 22:56
  Kathie Owen: I personally listen to podcasts.
• 22:58
  Kathie Owen: I listen to books and those things help me in my day that help me, either maybe it's something I'm going to coach that day or maybe it's something I'm going to work with that day, but it just helps me get in the zone and that's so important.
• 23:14
  Kathie Owen: And it helps with again, let's go back to the stress and the hormone issues, it's not if it's going to happen, it's when.
• 23:21
  Kathie Owen: And so, when you have these rituals in place or this mindset in place, it's just gonna, it's going to help you all the way through.
• 23:30
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah.
• 23:31
  Carmen Hecox: You know, and I wanted to ask you, because I think that some people will like myself may veer more to working out, like walking or doing some floor exercise.
• 23:42
  Carmen Hecox: And my husband always tells me, you need to lift weights.
• 23:45
  Carmen Hecox: Don't just do this stuff.
• 23:46
  Carmen Hecox: You need to build muscle.
• 23:49
  Carmen Hecox: Can you talk a little bit more about the importance of weight training, especially for women in menopause?
• 23:56
  Kathie Owen: Absolutely, because that is extremely important.
• 23:59
  Kathie Owen: And the lifting the weights will help build muscle that pulls on the bone.
• 24:05
  Kathie Owen: So, as we age, we start to lose bone density.
• 24:09
  Kathie Owen: You've heard that before, I'm sure.
• 24:11
  Kathie Owen: And when you lift weights at sixty percent of your max.
• 24:16
  Kathie Owen: So, let's go back to the hundred pounds, that's sixty pounds of weight, but even if it's ten pounds.
• 24:22
  Kathie Owen: That mean if ten pounds is your max, then that means six pounds and do ten reps two or three sets.
• 24:29
  Kathie Owen: So, my strength training program is revolved all around the posture.
• 24:34
  Kathie Owen: It's a hundred percent about your posture.
• 24:36
  Kathie Owen: You have a front muscle, you have a back muscle, you have your shoulders and your glutes and every muscle counts.
• 24:43
  Kathie Owen: So, where I work, I break the workouts up into two lower body days and three upper body, one day is core.
• 24:52
  Kathie Owen: And your core has to do with your balance.
• 24:54
  Kathie Owen: So, we build all of those muscles and it's funny because some of the girls that are like my age, they come in and they're like, oh, this is hard.
• 25:03
  Kathie Owen: I'm sore here.
• 25:03
  Kathie Owen: And I'm sore here.
• 25:04
  Kathie Owen: And I'm like, you're doing the right thing.
• 25:06
  Kathie Owen: It's all good.
• 25:06
  Kathie Owen: So, you know, it's just building one day at a time, one day at a time.
• 25:10
  Kathie Owen: But yes, strength training is super important.
• 25:13
  Kathie Owen: And let's say you don't have weights or a gym to go to.
• 25:17
  Kathie Owen: You can still do pushups on your counter.
• 25:20
  Kathie Owen: You can still do squats.
• 25:22
  Kathie Owen: I highly recommend squats for especially people who are very sedentary or sitting in a chair.
• 25:28
  Kathie Owen: Doing squats, while you're watching TV, just sit there and do squats and do a hundred squats a day.
• 25:34
  Kathie Owen: And you will start to notice a difference in your body and your glutes in the way your hips feel.
• 25:39
  Kathie Owen: I was training my older gentleman today, and he was showing me some stuff that he's been doing, like, he's been doing, he calls it fire hydrant, I call it dirty dog, where you get on your hands and knees, and you lift your leg like a dog.
• 25:52
  Kathie Owen: I can't tell you how important that is for your hips.
• 25:55
  Kathie Owen: For your hip flexors, because our hip flexors are used to working like this, you know, front ways, but we need that flexibility in the sides to help us stabilize, to help us balance.
• 26:09
  Kathie Owen: He was showing me he did, some other, like yoga he did, dog pointer.
• 26:14
  Kathie Owen: And that works your lower back.
• 26:17
  Kathie Owen: It helps it strengthened that.
• 26:19
  Kathie Owen: I'm like, yep, these are all very, very good and great for your hip flexors and he has sciatica.
• 26:25
  Kathie Owen: So that helps with that.
• 26:27
  Carmen Hecox: And it's interesting that you brought that up because last week I was among, some women that were my age and maybe a little bit older and we were talking about, taking, joint, supplements.
• 26:37
  Carmen Hecox: And then one gal said, oh yeah, my hip hurts.
• 26:41
  Carmen Hecox: And she's not very active.
• 26:43
  Carmen Hecox: And then my sister-in-law who's incredibly active, she runs marathons, she also complained that she was having hip issues.
• 26:50
  Carmen Hecox: And I just said, well, first thing in the morning, before I put my shoes on, I always stretch my hips.
• 26:56
  Carmen Hecox: And I said, and I do that because, after having my neck surgery, my first neck surgery, they had to remove bone from the side of my hip.
• 27:04
  Carmen Hecox: And that's when I started to have hip pain.
• 27:06
  Carmen Hecox: And so, I found that the only way to recover from that hip pain was to stretch my hip.
• 27:12
  Carmen Hecox: And now I've just kind of kept doing it.
• 27:14
  Carmen Hecox: But I noticed that a lot of women my age or older are complaining of hip pain.
• 27:19
  Carmen Hecox: And it's because you said, we don't open in that direction.
• 27:23
  Kathie Owen: Yeah, yeah, so those exercises right there.
• 27:27
  Kathie Owen: You could do those at home in the comfort of your home and just think of how I used to teach an arthritis class in the pool, and we would start at the feet.
• 27:36
  Kathie Owen: And rotate your ankle, point and flex your toe.
• 27:39
  Kathie Owen: What's good about the pool is it doesn't hurt when you're doing it, especially if you have arthritis.
• 27:44
  Kathie Owen: But if you don't move it with arthritis, you're going to lose it.
• 27:48
  Kathie Owen: So, you need to move it so they would get in the pool and do it.
• 27:51
  Kathie Owen: Some of them would get in the hot tub and do it because the hot water's even better.
• 27:55
  Kathie Owen: And therefore, we'd start at the foot and move up and move everything in the range of motion that it should be moving all the way.
• 28:04
  Kathie Owen: That's what our bodies are meant to do.
• 28:06
  Kathie Owen: And we need 30 minutes of movement a day.
• 28:09
  Kathie Owen: If that's just movement, yoga is also good.
• 28:12
  Kathie Owen: Pilates is good.
• 28:13
  Kathie Owen: And especially for women who struggle with even going to a gym, or maybe they don't want to lift weights still by doing those types of exercises.
• 28:23
  Kathie Owen: That type of movement is very beneficial.
• 28:27
  Carmen Hecox: How do you handle clients who might be dealing with other age-related health issues alongside menopause?
• 28:33
  Kathie Owen: Like what other issues maybe?
• 28:35
  Carmen Hecox: Well, like arthritis, cause I think that's pretty common.
• 28:39
  Carmen Hecox: You know, menopause brings its twin sister arthritis.
• 28:42
  Kathie Owen: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:44
  Kathie Owen: Yeah, so, you know, arthritis is one of those things, like I talked about a moment ago, if you don't move it, you lose it, but it hurts to move it.
• 28:52
  Kathie Owen: So, getting in the water is a great way to do it.
• 28:56
  Kathie Owen: Or, I've had people, I've worked with older adults who they couldn't do those moves, but they could do them in their bed.
• 29:03
  Kathie Owen: You could do them first thing in the morning.
• 29:04
  Kathie Owen: Maybe you can't lay down on the floor, but you can do those stretches in your bed, those types of things.
• 29:10
  Kathie Owen: And then, you know, another thing that comes, I see a lot of is sciatica.
• 29:15
  Kathie Owen: Sciatica is a pinched nerve that's in your butt, as I call it, the pain in the butt move, you know, that hurts.
• 29:22
  Kathie Owen: But sciatica can be relieved by doing things like fire hydrant, by doing things like hip flexor movements, things like that.
• 29:29
  Kathie Owen: It can't be totally relieved, but also a stretch that's good for that is where you cross your ankle over your knee, and then bring your knees into the chest.
• 29:38
  Kathie Owen: And so, I tell them while they're laying in bed, if you can't get down on the floor, do it in bed.
• 29:43
  Kathie Owen: You can also do it standing up, and it's funny because I would do that stretch in water aerobics, and the whole class would be going, Ah! You know, because it just feels so good to get that hip.
• 29:55
  Kathie Owen: Because sciatica is a pinched nerve.
• 29:57
  Kathie Owen: And so, it's almost like giving it some relief and the more stress that you have or if you've put weight on, it puts more impact onto that point.
• 30:07
  Kathie Owen: And to help stretch it and pound it out.
• 30:11
  Kathie Owen: It just helps to get that going.
• 30:13
  Kathie Owen: But back to posture as well with posture and strength training, go hand in hand and you don't want to neglect the other muscle groups.
• 30:22
  Kathie Owen: You don't want to just train your legs.
• 30:24
  Kathie Owen: You don't want to just train your arms.
• 30:25
  Kathie Owen: You want to do all the muscle groups.
• 30:27
  Kathie Owen: And if you can only do the big muscle groups, like the chest, the back and the glutes.
• 30:32
  Kathie Owen: You're pretty good on strength training that way.
• 30:35
  Carmen Hecox: How do you, I know that you have a corporate job where you help the corporate employees stay fit.
• 30:41
  Carmen Hecox: You also have one on one coaching that you do, and that's, face to face.
• 30:46
  Carmen Hecox: Do you help people online, too?
• 30:47
  Kathie Owen: Yes, in fact, I will be having, a launch of a program in January where I'm doing group coaching and the group coaching is all centered around the questions, I get asked all the time, a hundred percent of the time by the corporate people that I work with to my one-on-one coaching.
• 31:07
  Kathie Owen: And so that will just be, it's launching in January.
• 31:11
  Kathie Owen: It's called the resolution revolution, because what happens in January, people set their goals and then they don't reach them because they don't have a concrete foundation.
• 31:22
  Kathie Owen: It's all about your foundation.
• 31:24
  Kathie Owen: And when you learn your foundation, just moves right, through; it makes it easy.
• 31:30
  Kathie Owen: And inside this program, they'll have access to how to use your smart watch as a personal trainer.
• 31:36
  Kathie Owen: What's your heart rate supposed to be.
• 31:38
  Kathie Owen: How to get oxygen going through your body better.
• 31:40
  Kathie Owen: How to feel better.
• 31:41
  Kathie Owen: And of course, most of my clients are women over the age of 50.
• 31:45
  Kathie Owen: So, we all have the same struggles and getting those hormones balanced through fitness.
• 31:53
  Kathie Owen: yeah.
• 31:53
  Carmen Hecox: And is there like, a support group or is it just kind of a web-based program where people are just kind of move along at their own pace?
• 32:01
  Kathie Owen: Yeah, so I like this question because I joined Mighty Networks and so I have a community inside Mighty Networks where, it's a free community where we bounce ideas off of each other and then inside there you'll have access to to the courses or the group coaching or, and that's if you want to do it.
• 32:19
  Kathie Owen: But if you want to just do the free community, the free community goes off of my calendar that I do every month.
• 32:24
  Kathie Owen: So, every day I have a journal prompt.
• 32:27
  Kathie Owen: I have an idea and they just go off of that.
• 32:31
  Kathie Owen: So, what we work on.
• 32:33
  Carmen Hecox: Can you share another success story?
• 32:35
  Carmen Hecox: I know you mentioned that there was that gentleman that you've been coaching for over 13 years, and he's been able to lose weight.
• 32:41
  Carmen Hecox: Do you have any other success stories?
• 32:43
  Carmen Hecox: Someone who just said, I have tried everything.
• 32:46
  Carmen Hecox: I've tried different trainers or different programs, and nothing worked.
• 32:50
  Kathie Owen: Yeah.
• 32:50
  Kathie Owen: I have numerous success stories.
• 32:53
  Kathie Owen: One that comes to mind right now is a girl that, that's relevant to your audience, I think.
• 33:00
  Kathie Owen: She's in her fifties and she was one of my sorority sisters in college and she just tried everything.
• 33:06
  Kathie Owen: She was doing Orangetheory.
• 33:08
  Kathie Owen: Orangetheory is a phenomenal workout because it does your heart rate and it watches your heart rate.
• 33:13
  Kathie Owen: It works off of it.
• 33:14
  Kathie Owen: So, I would read her stats from her Orangetheory and It wasn't, she was hitting her high number too much.
• 33:22
  Kathie Owen: So go back to that, that's the issue.
• 33:25
  Kathie Owen: And then on top of that, she was inconsistent.
• 33:27
  Kathie Owen: Consistency wins the game all the time.
• 33:31
  Kathie Owen: Consistent action wins the game, and it also burns the bridge of procrastination.
• 33:36
  Kathie Owen: Well, a lot of times people don't, they just put it off, put it off.
• 33:40
  Kathie Owen: I'm going to do this later; I'm going to do this later.
• 33:42
  Kathie Owen: And that is going to hurt you.
• 33:44
  Kathie Owen: And so, what happened with Carol is she would not be consistent.
• 33:49
  Kathie Owen: So, when she hired me to be her coach, she started going, oh, okay, I see this.
• 33:54
  Kathie Owen: We went through one whole month, 30 days.
• 33:56
  Kathie Owen: She did 30 minutes of movement every day because of what I taught her.
• 34:01
  Kathie Owen: And her success story is even better because she started seeing changes in her body.
• 34:06
  Kathie Owen: She started seeing muscle definition that she hadn't seen before.
• 34:10
  Kathie Owen: And this just snowballed into better and better things like she started paying attention to her diet.
• 34:16
  Kathie Owen: She started paying attention to this and that and it's just been better and better and better all the time.
• 34:23
  Kathie Owen: So that's a really good success story with her because she was tired when she hired me.
• 34:28
  Kathie Owen: She wasn't motivated.
• 34:29
  Kathie Owen: She felt like crap, and she just didn't feel like doing exercise even though she was going to Orangetheory.
• 34:35
  Kathie Owen: It wasn't serving her because she wasn't doing right.
• 34:39
  Carmen Hecox: But it goes, I think a little bit beyond that because it's not just about losing weight and being healthy.
• 34:46
  Carmen Hecox: It's also about her mental well-being.
• 34:48
  Kathie Owen: Yes, for sure.
• 34:49
  Kathie Owen: And the thing is, she's an accountant and she was under tremendous amount of stress.
• 34:54
  Kathie Owen: Back to the cortisol.
• 34:55
  Kathie Owen: She was releasing a lot of cortisol and in fact, she had medical research done on her, she had blood work done and that blood work showed that she was working out too much.
• 35:08
  Kathie Owen: That's what her doctor told her, but she wasn't working out too much.
• 35:12
  Kathie Owen: What happened was she was under too much stress.
• 35:16
  Kathie Owen: So, her stress was releasing all that cortisol.
• 35:18
  Kathie Owen: And then we turned it around by balancing out her workouts.
• 35:23
  Kathie Owen: And then I introduced her to the smartwatch.
• 35:26
  Kathie Owen: She got, not the Apple watch, but the Android and she fell in love with what I taught her, how to use it as her personal trainer.
• 35:36
  Kathie Owen: And she just was like, that's her accountability partner.
• 35:40
  Kathie Owen: So, I showed her how to use it when she's just walking, when she's working out, she sends me her stats and I show her how to analyze it.
• 35:48
  Kathie Owen: And it just motivated her even more and helped her not release.
• 35:53
  Kathie Owen: So much cortisol and then we started releasing human growth hormone instead because of the way she's working out so.
• 36:00
  Carmen Hecox: And I think that's really important, cause I think there's a lot of people out there that have either a Samsung watch or have an iWatch or whatever form of smart watches that is out there.
• 36:11
  Carmen Hecox: And a lot of us don't know how to use them other than to make phone calls, check our emails.
• 36:16
  Kathie Owen: Yes, I rely on those heavily heavily, but there's a specific way I do it I actually teach a course on how to use them either the Samsung or the smartwatch and even the Fitbit.
• 36:28
  Kathie Owen: So, I teach a course that shows you how to use it because for example what she did she was walking around Target, and she put her watch on, and it would tell her are you done with your workout, or you're done with your workout?
• 36:40
  Kathie Owen: Well, no, she wasn't,and it did not read her stats properly.
• 36:44
  Kathie Owen: But if you put it on strength training; traditional strength training the only time.
• 36:50
  Kathie Owen: I don't use traditional strength training is when I'm on a walk because I want to see the distance.
• 36:55
  Kathie Owen: I want to see something other stats.
• 36:58
  Kathie Owen: But when you're doing some kind of movement, even cleaning your house you can burn more calories in your day by turning on your watch but turn it on to traditional strength training or strength training on the Samsung watch, because it will give you the stats that I want to see.
• 37:15
  Kathie Owen: I want to see the spikies in the heart rate.
• 37:17
  Kathie Owen: I want to see how many calories you burned.
• 37:20
  Kathie Owen: Those things are things that you want to start paying attention to because every time you want to get a little bit better, a little bit better.
• 37:27
  Kathie Owen: It's all about the slight edge.
• 37:28
  Kathie Owen: Just one percent better today than yesterday.
• 37:31
  Kathie Owen: That's it.
• 37:32
  Carmen Hecox: Mm-Hmm.
• 37:32
  Carmen Hecox: Yeah.
• 37:33
  Carmen Hecox: Kathie, how can people learn more about you?
• 37:36
  Kathie Owen: Um, I have a website, kathieowen.com, and that's K A T H I E.
• 37:41
  Kathie Owen: My mom made it hard for me, but yeah.
• 37:44
  Kathie Owen: So, it's kathieowen.com, and I've got ton of resources there.
• 37:47
  Kathie Owen: I've got a blog; I've got my YouTube channel linked there.
• 37:50
  Kathie Owen: I'm real active on Instagram, so that's, probably the best way to find me.
• 37:56
  Carmen Hecox: And so, I would say the best thing to do now is to visit your website so that they can sign up for your course that's launching in January.
• 38:05
  Kathie Owen: That would be awesome.
• 38:06
  Kathie Owen: I would love that.
• 38:08
  Carmen Hecox: Kathie, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your thoughts, your insights with Create the Best Me.
• 38:16
  Kathie Owen: Thank you.
• 38:17
  Kathie Owen: Thank you for having me.
• 38:18
  Kathie Owen: I sure appreciate it, Carmen.
• 38:20
  Carmen Hecox: As we wrap up today's enlightening conversation with Kathie, let's not forget the invaluable insights she shared about integrating smartwatches into our workout routines.
• 38:33
  Carmen Hecox: Monitoring your heart rate during workouts can be a game changer, and Kathie is an expert at helping her clients Harness this technology for optimal results.
• 38:45
  Carmen Hecox: If you're a woman navigating the challenges of menopause and are seeking guidance from an experienced trainer, look no further.
• 38:54
  Carmen Hecox: Kathie is launching a new program this January, tailored just for you.
• 39:00
  Carmen Hecox: Kathie's information and today's transcript can be found at CreateTheBestMe.com/ep046 if this episode resonated with you, please subscribe to stay updated.
• 39:16
  Carmen Hecox: Join me next week as I will talk about menopause.
• 39:21
  Carmen Hecox: Until then, keep dreaming big.
• 39:23
  Carmen Hecox: Take care of yourself and remember you are beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself.
• 39:32
  Carmen Hecox: Thank you for watching.
• 39:34
  Carmen Hecox: Catch you next week.
• 39:35
  Carmen Hecox: Bye for now.