150: The Best Fitness Advice for Women Over 40 (Workout & Nutrition) | Dr. Stephanie Estima

As we are aging, the more muscle mass that you have, the better brain capacity, mood regulation, sleep regulation, all the things. We have to, as women, unlearn this idea that we have to be small at any price. I'm doing Pilates multiple times a week. I'm still doing pole and other cardio dance. My body did not change at all. And I joined the gym. My hip pain is completely gone. Everybody always talks about muscle. Nobody wants to talk about joints and tendons. We also have to think in terms of longevity, we have to think about the adaptation that the muscle needs. Even in perimenopause, there is some research to suggest that it also provides a healthy progesterone to estrogen balance in the second half of the cycle. Every time you are going to the gym, you are investing in a short-term, medium-term, and long-term version of yourself. The doors are open to my 2026 live Audacious Embodiment event in Miami, May 15th through 17th, and I'm calling all of my ladies who are ready to stop pretending, performing, curating, and managing a rigid identity. This weekend, we will be focusing on four Ps because I love alliteration. Pattern Disrupt. We are going to lay fresh snow on your mountain so that you can ski new tracks because experiences that take you out of your routine and stimulate all of the right conditions allow you to shift your identity even after one weekend. The next fee is permission field because when you know what's possible, when you are modeled and templated a new breadth of experience for yourself as a woman, you get to be more of yourself. And here's the thing, when you're attending a retreat or a training, you need to choose a space holder who has owned more of his or her shit than you have because they can expand that permission field for you. And if you ask any of my friends or my family, they will tell you that I have done my share of pivots and am pretty practiced at being bad and wrong so that I can facilitate this expansion of your permission field in the space of just a few days, maybe even just a few minutes. The next P is pleasure because it deserves to sit in the proper place in the hierarchy of your priorities as an everyday experience. I also am very focused on creating the conditions for the pleasure that we experience as women together. It is so healing and so powerful. The last P is polarity because your girl just came off of a David Data teacher training. I have many nuggets to share and I have a very particular perspective on what it is to be a woman in her feminine power. And no, it is not rose petal baths and rage catharsis in groups on retreat. Okay. The second edition of Audacious Embodiment Live will feature more practice time with yours truly by request of the previous audience members, and also, of course, daily dance, sensual movement, and transformational practices that will expand your experience of your own body as a woman and create the conditions for more aliveness in your daily life and a total rebrand on who you get to be as a woman in this world. I cannot wait to squeeze you in Miami this May. The link is in show notes and also at kellybroganmd.com forward slash A-E. Hi, and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan. And today I sit down with the glorious and gorgeous Dr. Stephanie Estima, who is a chiropractor, fitness guru, and extraordinary resource for women in midlife. And I turned to her and her content when I began to recognize that it was time for me to pick up some heavy things. As a lifelong dancer and what you would call a cardio bunny, this transition was very humbling. It was intimidating. And I found so much solace in her guidance. We do a lot of myth busting together in this conversation. We talk about why strength training, specifically strength training, okay? So not Pilates, not barre, not cardio dance, specifically lifting heavy things is the most loving investment that you can make in yourself and in your future as a woman. We also talk about the nature of muscle and how much more it is than just something that holds up your bones, right? We also deconstruct eating for a strength training lifestyle. She, like me, is not a low-carb advocate, and she talks about why that is. So if you are someone who's on the fence about whether or not to start lifting, if you have never been to a gym or if you just haven't really captured the spark of motivation, maybe my own story that I get into gory detail around will be exactly what you need to hear. But regardless, this is an offering to all midlife women who are otherwise chasing an experience of vitality that may only be available through this kind of relationship with what I would describe as your own masculine self-containment. Enjoy. Welcome to the show, Stephanie. Oh, I'm delighted to be here. Kelly, thank you for having me. So I was telling you before we started recording that the timing of this conversation is so divinely orchestrated because if I had spoken to you, I would say even like six to eight months ago, I would have been such an annoying skeptic. And you probably would have been like, you know, fuck this conversation. I'm out of here. And in that time, for reasons that I think I understand, but of course are probably far more lofty and meta than I can fully appreciate. I have come to see you as the expert in this arena of conversation in the realm of, can we say like women over 40? and what fitness looks like for this very magical stage of life. And I've also come to, I mean, ask anyone in my life. I am now like a walking door-to-door salesman for gym memberships. I should get a commission off of my own gym because I'm so passionate about it. And that's my nature. I'm a double Gemini. Like I get into things, find the shiny object, go chase it and like really grab hold. So I'll share a bit about my story. I want to first hear about your journey because you're way ahead of me in understanding and appreciating the nature of body composition, mechanics, myth busting. That's what I so appreciate about the overlap in our regard for the human body, her intelligence, and not necessarily taking the fear-mongering bait around so many tropes regarding aging and health and illness when it comes to women's journeys. So I'd love to back up and hear about your awakening. How is it that you came to believe in the essential nature of strength training for women? I know you have many, many nuanced beliefs because your content and your newsletter is one of my favorite of all that I consume. So you're such a treasure trove. But I want to focus in on this because it's something I, as a dancer, as somebody who loves to sweat and do choreography and move, I never appreciated this. And it's literally been like an awakening for me to come into my body in this way and discover all of this potential that was just beneath the surface. So how did you get to this point? Oh, many roads. I would say one of the things that, I mean, I will, in the spirit of truth and transparency and honesty, I got into the gym because I wanted to look good. It was totally a vain pursuit. It was like, I wanted to look good in jeans. I wanted to look good in bathing suits, et cetera. What I found was, yes, building muscle makes you look great. You can build like, you know, we know that we can't spot reduce, but you can certainly spot build. Right. So if you want to build more glutes, you want to build more shoulders, you want to build. You can certainly direct your attention to muscle building in that way. So totally got into it for looks. What I found that it gave me was a sense of confidence that I never learned in society, was never given. And I started to develop trust and reverence for myself, for my capacity. And honestly, there were times, it often happens on leg day for whatever reason, sometimes back day as well. I had these absolute releases of pain and rage and things that I had stored in my body that were completely cathartic and healing for me. And so I really got into it for the looks, stayed for the mental grit and for the confidence and for the self-love that I was able to forge by pumping iron, really. And that's been many, many years. I, when I first started lifting, gosh, probably it was like 20, 2007, maybe. And my first thing was like, I'm going to enter into a competition, like a physique competition. And at the time, the competition that I entered was called figure. So by today's standards, how I looked on stage, you know, over whatever it was, 15 more than that years ago now, would not be the figure that you see today. It would sort of be more what you might qualify as bikini. but I trained really, really hard. And I was able to, in, I don't know, six to eight months, completely shift my body composition and my relationship was lifting heavy. So I probably, like most women listening, was very afraid of getting bulky, didn't want to take up too much space and didn't want to look like those scary orange dudes that were screaming in the corner of the gym. Very quickly realized as someone who was trying to actively put on muscle that as a woman, physiologically that is, you know, it's like a girl can continue to dream. It's very, very difficult to get bulky. But what we do, what we do need as we age, as we, and I'm sure we'll get into this as well, is as we are, as we are aging, the more muscle mass that you have, the better brain capacity, mood regulation, sleep regulation, all the things. So I guess that's sort of a long and short answer. You know, there's many different, you know, routes that I had and experiences that I had in the gym, got into it for looks, originally competed, you know, so literally got up on stage in a bikini and asked people to judge my body next to other women who were also in bikinis and then stayed for what it gave me in terms of self-respect, self-love and capacity. I mean, who would imagine that those could be found at the gym, right? I know that you talk about strength training as the most important investment that you make in your future. And I love that phrase because I often think of, and I talk to my daughters about like loving my future self, right? Like It's like changing the toilet paper roll that's empty and not leaving it to the next time, you know, from the simple mundane all the way to the more profound. And it comes not from an energy of fixing something that's wrong with you. Right. It comes from this energy of offering. And that really serves me, you know, when I've heard you describe that, even when I'm in these like little micro journeys, because that's what it is. right? Like within the sets and then the whole experience at the gym every single time, it's like this micro journey of developing intimacy with the parts of yourself that say, you know, just cheat a little bit or you don't need to do it. It's fine. Nobody's watching, whatever those parts are, at least me. I never really met them before when it came to physical performance because I'm not an athlete. I never had to play with that. I've always just exercised for the fun of it. Never actually for my, I live in Miami. So I mean, most women here go to two exercise classes a day. It's very much a part of the culture to maintain a certain physique. But that's never been my motivation. It's always been mood related and energetic and just feeling like, I mean, even literally metabolic, like I will have cold hands and feet if I don't work out in the day. But to meet those little parts, I think you call it progressive overload or you're pushing yourself with heavy weights, right? It's a very, very different psychology than Pilates. And it sounds like you developed a relationship to this kind of dynamic with your body so early in life, but then it evolved over the decades to be something sweeter, right? Like something more. Yeah. I would love for people to look at lifting weights as a love letter to yourself. It is a, certainly a short-term investment in how you look, medium-term investment in how you feel, and a long-term investment in terms of how you perform. And so every time you are going to the gym, you are investing in a short-term, medium-term, and long-term version of yourself, to your point, around looking into the future and investing in your future self. And I think that if you are someone who, like yourself, who's described, like I worked out for the fun of it, for the energetic, you know, feeling good in my, in myself, feeling good in my body. I think that that is, that can also be translated into lifting weights. And we'll talk about what progressive overload is because heavy is also a very subjective term. Like what's heavy for you is going to be different than what heavy for me is. And that even, even in the singular person that is going to fluctuate over the, you know, as we see that sort of hormonal for women who are still menstruating, you're going to see fluctuations in your mood and your affect and your sleep and your desire and your motivation. So you're going to see over the menstrual cycle, you're also going to see some aberrations in terms of that as well. Your stress levels, if you have a really big deadline, maybe you're not able to push the deadlifts or the squats or the whatever that you were doing last week, but you're still going to push yourself to whatever heavy means for you right now because you will still elicit that same adaptation. So I would love everybody, especially if you are a very, you know, I like to call them like my type A Bettys, you know, very achievement oriented, success driven individuals who probably grew up in the cardio section of the gym, who probably grew up on the treadmill and the elliptical and, you know, every fitness group, you know, group exercise class. And there's nothing wrong with it. Like I still do step class to this day. Like me and my best friend every Saturday, we are in a step because I love it. It brings me, it's like my soul food, right? I love it. I'm not saying to get rid of those things. I'm saying it's a yes and. So you're going to continue doing, I remember watching you doing like African dance on social media and the way that you're moving and then even like the pole dance and like the beautiful way that you were able to express your humanity. And I would say you can also add on to that heavy lifting in the same way that maybe pole dancing or the African dance or the moving of your hips is a love letter and a celebration of life, I would love us to also consider that in the realm of strength training. And maybe you can actually help me with the marketing here because whenever my CMO, I'm constantly trying to push this envelope of lifting heavy, what that means for everybody. And my CMO always says to me, the way that you lift weights is different than when I see other women who are almost using it as a punishment. So it's a punishment for what I ate. It's a punishment for what I didn't do, a punishment for I didn't restrict my calories enough. And she said to me, like, the way that you lift weights is almost sensual, not in a sexual way, but like, but it's like, you know, I'm giving to myself, you know, and so maybe you and I can maybe have an offline conversation around how to. I absolutely see that. And I think that's why, yeah, you're somebody that I take inspiration from. And maybe I'll just talk a little bit about my journey, because I love to, I used to love to market from, and by market, I mean, even the way I used to talk to my daughters about things, right, from like the fear mongering, right? Like, if you don't do this, then you're going to become a rickety old, like withered husk of a human. And obviously, as I've matured, I now know that the yes is the most contagious force. So if I share a bit of my trajectory, I'm sure you'll see confirmation of so many of your beliefs. So basically, yes, as you mentioned, I've always been into cardio dance, all types from hip hop, African, pole, any sort of cardio dance class, I'll be there. And would do that like five plus times a week. I never really got into pretty much anything else, right? So I had like tried Pilates and bar. Oh, I also grew up doing ballet, right? So that was my foundation until I was like 14. And then in 2022, I did a nine-day water fast, water-only fast. And I did so inspired by a male colleague. and I also at that time still had a lot of spiritual thrill-seeking energy in me, right? So I would love to push myself to do courageous things spiritually. And I had also signed up for a darkroom retreat and have done many. I pushed myself in many ways that I felt very proud of. I can do this, right? So when he suggested and he had done like a 21 or 26 day, I was like, I can do that. I want to try that, right? I was also in a very spiritually challenging dark night of my life So I do this thing right And I sit on my couch for a week but I had already started pole dancing So I already was in like I think I was quite fit right When I started this And I was doing just like calisthenic type stuff, but I was motivated to have a little set of weights at home, lightweights, like eight pounds or something like that. And I still had never been to a gym. So anyway, I do this fast and it is one of the, I mean, I've birthed babies in my living room. It is one of the most harrowing experiences of my life that I have had, spiritually, physically. I don't know. I came out of it with a lot of spiritual alchemy, but I lost 17 pounds. I had been the same weight my entire adult life. My mentor would describe me as a sympathetic dominant. It's just like how I be. And that's also why I was not motivated to exercise in that way. I never was because I always was like the same body. It doesn't matter. So I'm not going to do it for that reason. Anyway, so I lost this weight. I was like, oh, that's a little undesirable, but I never saw much of it. And then not only did I gain it back, but then I gained another 15 plus pounds that I've never had on my frame before. And then also interesting things, right? Like my eyesight, my near sight started to go. I started to develop like kind of weird aches here and there. The quality of my skin became almost like kind of crepey. And I just, you know, I still was like thin. Nobody wants to hear complaints from, you know, somebody who's generally well, but it just wasn't me. And so I started messing around with nutrition, right? I know a lot about nutrition and I started, you know, experimenting with different things and nothing seemed to move the needle at all. So I was like, okay, this is a higher level autonomic nervous system thing. like there's something going on here that's way bigger. So then I went more into like the spiritual nervous system layers of it. Anyway, two years. Okay. In this two year period, I also started doing Pilates because I'm like, okay, maybe my body wants more structure or whatever. And then of course I go like full throttle. I'm doing Pilates multiple times a week. Okay. I'm still doing pull and other cardio dance. I did not. Okay. I love Pilates. I was there this morning. However, I did not notice a damn thing. Literally, my body did not change at all. And it wasn't like I was trying to lose the weight. It was more just sort of like, this isn't the optimal place I started from, but I didn't connect. I just didn't know. If I had talked to you in 2022, you would have been like, Kelly, you fucking lost 17 pounds of muscle because you were like 10% body fat to begin with. That's a huge problem in your mid 40s, right? Like it's a challenge, let's say. I did not connect those dots because it's not my world. Like I just wasn't even thinking about it. So I was inspired. I often talk about this little yes, right? So these little impulses that come from, you know, who knows where. And I'm very practiced at listening to them. Okay, so out of the void comes the little impulse. Now, one of my best friends is a gym rat. She's been trying to get me to go to the gym because I would go to the gym with her and go straight to the class, the women's class. And she'd be lifting weights. I'm like, this is just so boring. You can't do it to music. It's not choreographed to the beat. Who wants to do that? Anyway, I didn't get it. So she had been inspiring me for a long time. My eldest daughter is probably going to become a fitness influencer any minute. She's super into the gym. Her boyfriend is very So I was surrounded by people who could have sparked it for me. And it just didn't happen. And that's why I'm a huge believer, as I imagine you are, in when you're ready, you're ready. It's just an ephemeral thing. Anyway, I became ready in January of this year. And I joined a gym, which also got me into a man-woman space. I've never exercised with men in my whole life, ever. And so even just that was like a very interesting energetic. I'm interested to, I want to actually double click on that. I know that you're interviewing me, but I'm really interested. How is that for you? Like working out alongside men? What does that feel like? I don't think I would have appreciated that, right? Because earlier in my journey, I would have been in some sort of like fawn or like performative thing, right? In a mixed gender situation. And now I just, I feel this amplification. Like when I walk into my gym, the energy in that room is so intense. It's like, like throbbing. Right. And I, you know, credit that to the polarity, right? Like, cause there's almost always, and I'm sure you would notice the gym phenomenon of like literally the same NPCs are there every single time. No matter what time of day I go, it's like the same group. Anyway, but it's equal parts men and women. And I just plug into that in a way that going to a small class of five women dancing, it's just a very different thing. And do I imagine sometimes people are critiquing my form and being like, oh my gosh, she needs a trainer, or oh, I like her top or whatever. Sure, there's a part of that being witnessed that is real. you know i don't do it in my living room for that reason i like to be with the peoples however it's more just that i get to enjoy this field right like this this collectively generated field and okay so i'll mention also that in this time i developed like hip pain i'm not somebody who's experienced pains uh that's not my how i express like i got all sorts of other kinks, but that's not been my thing. Hip pain so that I couldn't sit cross-legged. No injury, no idea where I came from. I'm seeing an osteopath and a chiropractor. I'm doing, you know, Egosku therapy at home, like with myself. So I go to the gym in this state. It was about two and a half to three months that my hip pain is completely gone, completely gone. And I actually stopped going mostly logistically and convenience wise, like to the other practitioners. My hip pain is completely gone. My body is like all of a sudden, I mean, I feel like I lost 10 to 15 years in three months. And it's very subtle because it's not like I dropped like tons of weight. I don't even give a shit. Honestly, it's like literally not about what's on. I don't even own a scale. So it's not about that at all. It's the quality of my, I don't know how else to say it, like of my skin. Like I look down at my thighs, I'm like, oh, there they are. And this experience of my vitality that I have never encountered. I mean, it's totally different than anything I've ever done before as like somebody who is very exercise oriented. And every single journey. And I want to talk about the motivation to go, right? Because when I was with my trainer and had my appointments, I would go do the thing. Then I stopped working with her. And then I started to encounter the days where I was like, oh gosh, can I climb the mountain today? And I know that you have some perspectives on motivation. I never regret it. It is never the wrong thing. Every single time that I go and I'm there for like, let's say an hour, sometimes an hour and a half, I feel plugged in and I feel connected to my vitality. And it's not dissimilar to what I get out of cardio, but it's a completely different metabolic experience. And that's what I came to appreciate was the metabolic nature of muscle. And I'll tell one last story because this isn't meant to be like a solo cast, which I find fascinating, right? Is that I thought of myself as like pretty fit, right? Cause I was like thin and had like sculpted body or whatever. I never really thought like, oh, I need to like build my glute muscle. I don't know. I've never, literally never had the thought. Okay. Uh, it's not something that like, I don't know. I think a lot of like dancers are thinking about it. I don't know. It's at least in, not in my world. It's not like a specific intention. So my eldest is a track star. So one day I decide to offer a plot twist and I'm like, I'm going to go on a run with you just a mile into town. I've never run. It's not something I've done. I'm going to go on a run with you. So we go on a run and I'm like, wow, this is kind of interesting. I can do it, right? Like nine minute mile or whatever. So I start doing a little mile run here and there. And it's psychologically extremely difficult for me. Because again, if I'm not doing choreography and I don't have a beat to work with, just being in my body under strain is very psychologically challenging. Okay. So then I go to the gym, as I mentioned. Now, three months later, I'm visiting my friend. She lives near the beach. She's the gym rat. Okay. So she's like, let's go for a beach run. I'm like, girl, I don't know. I've tried this running thing, but beach run seems like very advanced for me. And I just don't even know if I can do it. So I'm like, okay, whatever. I'll give it a try. Never done this in my entire life. So I told you I've, I've gone the mile, just a mile into town. Never more than that. But I'd been at the gym for three months. So I go on the beach in a bikini and I'm running with her. We run two and a half miles and I wasn't even breathless. I could have kept going. I had a revelation. I was like, what the fuck just happened there? And she's like, it's your glutes. It's that you've built muscle in your quads and glutes and probably elsewhere that is now supporting the momentum that otherwise would have been forced that has made something that was such a struggle, like extremely pleasurable and almost easy. And I've replicated this actually many times now I've done these speech runs. And I don't know, that feels exciting, right? Like if I can be in better shape now than I've ever been before, then that defies a lot of aging programs, doesn't it? Right? Like that suggests that it's not this linear decay and decomposition that we are really brainwashed and programmed to believe is the case. So, oh, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's like perimenopause and menopause is going to be awful. And this is why. I love everything. I love everything you're saying so, so much. I mean, I actually, in my next book, I'm currently writing it right now. There is literally, it's chapter seven. It's all about the glutes. Okay. So it's all about the importance of the glutes. The glutes literally, like just to go on like a little nerd safari, the glutes literally connect your upper body to your lower body. So they will connect to your spine, your sacrum, your pelvis and on the side to your femur and then also to the fibula and the tibia via the IT band. So the glutes literally connect upper to lower body. They are the reason they are involved in stability. It's the reason why you can lift one leg up and the other leg doesn't drop. That's an orthopedic test called the Trendelenburg test. There's so many things that the glutes do. They help extend the spine. They help not to overextend. They help to stabilize during flexion. They help with contralateral and ipsilateral rotation. There's so many things. And I can tell you as someone who is a chiropractor in practice for almost 20 years, I retired in 2019, closed the private practice in 2019. So I was in practice for 19 years. The glutes are the key. If you have back pain, like you were mentioning, you did this water fast and you would be what we would call like a toffee. So thin on the outside, fat on the inside, like you lost so much muscle. I didn't even know. Yeah. So that hip pain that you are experiencing, sure, for sure is going to be some degeneration and loss of cartilagous material from the joints. And maybe there's some inflammation in the bursa and some of the surrounding structures. But also, if you lost glutes, which is very likely that you did if you were just doing a 20, what was it, 22 day? Oh, I only did nine. Oh, sorry. A nine. Oh, sorry. 2022. So you did a nine day water. So you're not going to be as active, right? So your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, like your desire to just move around or even just if you're watching this on video, I'm making like Italian gestures. I sound like my husband's Italian. I'm Portuguese. I use my hands to talk. So all these like little movements are going to be downregulated when you don't have appropriate, when you're in a calorically restricted state, which is what you were for nine days. And so this reclamation, to use a word that I know is very near and dear to your heart, of training for strength and power, particularly in the glutes. And we can, if you want to even, we can talk about like the different muscle fiber types and like why the glutes are important. But I like to think about the glutes like lions on the safari. So if you watch, you know, a nature show or whatever, they're kind of like hanging out, not really doing much sunning themselves until they see something that they want to eat. right and then you see the lion like sprinting all out pouncing and using its power to propel forward that's like the glutes the glutes are the lions on the safari except we we usually sit on them all day long and so they can atrophy in terms of their power and their strength so we often talk about growing muscle this is something that is you know you would you know the cool cats are going to call this like hypertrophy. It's just like growing more muscle. But a separate and distinct outcome from growing muscle is strength and power. So how much force can you generate in a given moment in time? And so we want for women, especially if we think about aging well, we want to be thinking about the glutes, not only to be able to sprint, which I think every woman should be doing, but I also think for stability, right? If you trip on the corner of a carpet or if you live on the East coast as I do, and you have icy winters and you're walking on the sidewalk, you want to be able to have strong glutes to be able to break your fall, right? You want to have strong hip flexors so you can get the leg in front of the body before you fall. And then you want the glutes to be your breaks. If it's a skill that is not being trained, which is done in the gym as you're describing, so you're doing leg day, you're doing your deadlifts or your squats or your Bulgarian splits or your lunges or your whatever, your hip abductions. If you are not training that strategically in your 30s, 40s and 50s, to your point, I think that humans tend to think linearly like, oh, my 40s were like, they're just a little bit worse than my 30s. Oh, my 50s are just a little bit worse. There is an exponential cliff, a drop off if you are not strategic right now. And so I think that I love the idea of aging well. I think that there is a lot of talk around like, oh, Perryman, it's going to just be the worst. And you have like, you know, I'm writing a book right now for women in midlife and I'm trying to reframe the narrative. Like it doesn't have to be this dire, you're going to shrivel up and die. And what was the thing that you said before? Just like a- Like a wither away. Yeah, wither away. You're just going to be this like husk of a human. That's what you said. I love that. Like you're just going to be just this, you know, former, like a skeleton of who you were. I think that it is absolutely an opportunity to come into exactly who you are meant to be. And you can do that by subjecting yourself voluntarily to difficult things because your growth as an individual, whether that's spiritually, emotionally, physically, none of that happens when you're sitting on the couch. most of that happens when you are putting yourself in a situation where you are mildly, if not moderately uncomfortable. And in some cases, in the case of Bulgarian split squats, markedly uncomfortable. I always get my Instagram feed always throws me up gym memes. And it's always like, I love everything except Bulgarian split squats. It's like one of the best glute growers and full body, like full lower body exercises. And because it's unilateral, You're also engaging the core and the opposite upper body. Anyway, so I love this idea of developing strength and power as we age. And I think that it's not the end of the road. And to your point, there's so many things that you can garner that are outside of aesthetic from weightlifting. Like you were saying, your skin. One of the best things, with the fasting conversation, one of the big proponents as to why you should fast is autophagy, right? So autophagy is just this big fancy word for the getting rid of kind of like old cells that are maybe not working the way that they should or like nuclear debris of like bits of nucleotide and whatever floating around the plasma. And autophagy is this immune event where you have these macrophages that will come and sort of clean everything up. Like if you imagine Pac-Man, if you ever played Pac-Man as a young girl or boy, you'll remember that Pac-Man is just kind of eating up those pellets. That's basically what autophagy is. But training, strength training is actually arguably at least equivalent to the autophagy that you can experience as someone who's fasting and maybe even more so because you're getting mitophagy, like you're getting mitochondrial turnover and you're getting in terms of the muscle cells, you are now increasing the length and the girth of the sarcomere. So the muscle, like the, when we look at the muscle cell, like the unit is a sarcomere. So you can actually increase the length and the width of it. So yeah, your skin is going to look more, you know, filled out if you, if you will, like when you were looking at your thigh, it's like, oh yeah, because your quad and your hamstring, you know, all those things now are not deteriorating. So you've probably heard about diversifying investments and saving for the future. But what about becoming your own bank and opting out of high interest loans and difficult decisions about whether to sell off an asset? 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I'm pretty skilled, I think, at attracting sleeper resources that are game changing. So I am delighted to put you on. Schedule a free call with them at kellybroganmd.com forward slash whole. Even my flexibility, right? So I've never really been able to land a split, right? Even from my ballet days or whatever. And I noticed after a couple of months and again, a couple of months at the gym and who knows what exercise I can thank for this, but somehow weight loading my hamstrings has dramatically improved my flexibility and my capacity in dance in ways that I wasn't able to achieve through just general stretching and even just the actual dancing itself. So the side benefits are so vast. And again, they're physiologic, anatomical, but then they're also metabolic, right? And this chasing of the hormone balance, right? This concept that I think is like marketing clickbait for so many women over 40. the wisdom that your body has to orchestrate its own hormonal inner physiology can be, you know, assigned specifically to the muscles, right? Like there's so much more there. And of course I even learned this in med school. It's like, I just didn't even connect the dots because I was in this reductionist concept of muscle as just like supporting the bones maybe. And it's nice to have some, but like, you don't want too much. So I want to talk a little bit about this sort of bulking and toning myths, right? So these ideas that we have, because so many women, I'm sure you just cringe every time you hear this. It's like, well, I would like to tone my arms, but I definitely don't want to bulk them. And the squeamishness that we have, it's like, you know, women will do anything but exercise when it comes to strength training. Like we'll get any way around it. And in all those days of doing Pilates or bar with, you know, three pound weights, I mean, there were many classes that I was like trembling and the burn was like excruciating. And to tell me that I wasn't growing, building, structuring, supporting muscle, I would have been like, then what the hell is going on here? Why is that? How am I feeling? I'd love for you to speak a little bit to this, you know, in a miss busting way, because I know that this trope is very, very penetrant. Yes, I get an angry tick when I hear when I hear about this. I want to actually before I do that, I just want to come back to what you said about this metabolic event. And I think that this is you've said it a couple of times. I think it's worth underscoring here that every time you are strength training, we talked about mobility, about falling. So there's, I like to think about it as like three Ms, right? So muscle gives you three Ms. There's mobility, which we think about as we age, want to age well, prevent falls and things of that nature. Muscle also, as you've mentioned, is a metabolic, gives us a metabolic benefit. So your muscle incredibly can bring, can almost sop up extra glucose in the plasma, in the blood. So if you're consuming carbohydrates or proteins, whatever, a lot of that is broken, most of that is broken down into glucose. your muscles can take up glucose in an insulin dependent, so in the presence of insulin, and an insulin independent manner, so without insulin there. And so one of the things that we find as we age is we actually become more, just as a natural function of aging, we can become more insulin resistant, meaning that the cells are not responding to insulin as sensitively as they once were. However, if you have more muscle and your muscles can take up glucose with or without insulin, like the U2 song, like With or Without You, you can now begin to regulate and overcome that natural insulin resistance or anabolic resistance that we see as we age. So that's the second M. So it's mobility, metabolic. And then the third one that I'll just quickly touch on is there is a menstrual benefit as well. And this is really around the reproductive hormones and the fallout, the recovery process after strength training. So we know that anytime you're strength training and you're building new muscle, you are going to require more testosterone in order to maintain that muscle. And testosterone is a sex hormone, famous for libido, certainly, but also very important in the maintenance of muscle mass. And it is not just sequestered to reproductive function. We have testosterone receptors in the heart and the lungs and the brain. And so in perimenopause and menopause, a lot of women will begin to describe cognitive changes as they become more sedentary. So things like brain fog and memory issues and mood and affect and even just their ability to make decisions. Like I've had so many women who are like, I run these multimillion dollar companies and I would just put out fires all the time and I was making decisions. And then all of a sudden I couldn't. I couldn't. I was like a former, I was a shell of myself. I could not make a decision. I could not find the right way through. So I think that that's also something to be mindful of. And then the last little bit of hormonal regulation, of course, is a lot of women, even in perimenopause, who are still menstruating, albeit maybe more regularly now, will describe as estrogen is sort of, I mean, the overall trend is downward, but there can be like pretty big oscillations in estrogen as progesterone is sort of trending down as well. And so as you're lifting weights, there is some research to suggest that it also provides a healthy, we'll say progesterone to estrogen balance in the second half of the cycle when a lot of women will complain of more symptoms that are reminiscent of inflammation. So like tender breasts and water retention and mood and sleep and affect and all these things. So I just wanted to mention, because you've mentioned it a couple of times, and I think that it's a really important point that you're making, that muscle serves, yes, aesthetic, but mobility, metabolic and menstrual functions as well. Okay, so you mentioned about the Pilates burn and I want to distinguish this between hypertrophy, so strength training, and muscle endurance. These are two different functions of the muscle. So I will start off by saying as I love Pilates, I think it is wonderful for women's health. Again, if you're a woman over 40, you've had children, we want to be thinking about the pelvic floor. We want to be thinking about the deep muscles of the core that are going to stabilize and support the back. One of the things certainly that we know as we get older is, and if you multi-pairs, you've had many children, that your pelvic floor takes a beating, unfortunately, in being pregnant, in delivery, and then postpartum. Okay, we're not really thinking about our pelvic floors. We're like in the throes of, you know, motherhood and breastfeeding and not sleeping and all the things. So as we start to lose those hormones in midlife, we can start to see things like incontinence, different types of urge, incontinence, stress, incontinence. So not being able to jump without, you know, peeing or every time this was actually happening to me for a little bit until I was like, what the heck is happening? Like I would put my keys in the in the door, like coming home. And I was like, oh, my God, I got to go to the bathroom like right now. So this like urge incontinence was what I was beginning to experience. So Pilates is a wonderful way to strengthen the core and the pelvic floor, which I think every woman needs. And you are going to feel a burn when you're doing like the trembling that you were describing when you're doing Pilates. This is a outcome of endurance. So your pelvic floor all day is working to basically keep your organs inside your body. So that things don't fall out through your vagina or your anus. And we want to train the core to support the spine in a variety of different positions. Like you and I, well, I'm sitting right now. You might be sitting or standing. I'm not exactly sure. But we want to be training for endurance. We want to be training for being able to support the organs, being able to support the structures for long term. That is not the same as muscle hypertrophy. that is not the same as approaching muscle failure. So when we are strength training and the goal is hypertrophy, or like I said, cool cats will call this hypertrophy, it's just like building muscle, like having more muscle than you did before. You are trying to approach muscle failure such that you can no longer do another rep. There's not necessarily, you might feel a burn, like there may be a burning sensation, but it is, if you've done Pilates and strength training, you will know that those two feelings are different. So strength training, how you know you're approaching muscle failure is not just burn. You're going to see this with a decrease in velocity. So let's say you're doing a deadlift, for example. Let's say your set is 10 repetitions. That's what you set up for yourself. Rep number 10 is going to be much slower than rep number one. So they still look the same in terms of form. And maybe you're starting to see a little bit of breakdown at rep 10. but the velocity with which you can perform it is also going to be degraded. The other thing that you'll notice is your range of motion is going to be affected. So you are no longer going to be able to do the range of motion. Whereas in Pilates, you still might be able to do the crunch or the leg circle or the 100s or whatever it is that you're doing. You're just going to feel a lot of burn, right? With strength training, you are no longer going to be able to perform the exercise in the full range of motion. You may be able to do partial reps and long length partials is maybe an entirely different nerd, you know, little trajectory, little side conversation, but full range of motion is no longer possible. The other thing that you'll notice is that your subjective, like how heavy the weight feels on rep 10 is going to be orders of magnitude greater than it was when you first started. So rep one, two, three, you can do it with good form. And then when you're at like seven, eight, nine, 10, in terms of your repetition, it's gonna feel much, much, much heavier. So these are kind of the qualifiers, the distinguishers between something that is an endurance activity where you're constantly feeling the burn, but you can still keep going versus something where you are no longer able to produce something in the range of motion and at the velocity that you once were and your subjective sort of stamp on how heavy it is, is also changing. So these are some differences for you to maybe think about when you're trying, because the other comment that always comes up is, well, I do agree, or I do Pilates on a reformer and there's the little resistance springs. And it's like, okay, yes. And there's an upper ceiling to that, right? So there's only so much resistance that a reformer with resistance springs is going to have versus the endless plates that you can continue to load on the bar over time as you're getting stronger and the muscle is growing. That's super helpful. And first of all, that's gold. And I'm sort of reflecting on the beautiful balance of that kind of commitment to slow and steady push yourself, I experience almost like it's like a wall that comes at me that I cannot seem to move past. And that that's coupled with rest. So in between sets, my daughter called me out on this early on. Unsurprisingly, she's like, Mama, I'm watching you and you're not resting enough. She literally pulled out a paper that showed three minutes of rest versus 90 seconds of rest was exponentially more beneficial. I was like, oh my gosh, I really have created a mini me. She's like, here's the RCT that you need to, yes, here's the RCT. I look good and it worked. It worked. So if you have a parent or an aging loved one who is struggling with balance, joint stiffness, or simply getting around, you may have wondered what you can possibly do to support them. And I believe that I have found the solution for our parents if you are in my generation. So Juvent's micro impact platform is one of the most effective and science backed ways to improve mobility because it delivers precise, low magnitude vibrations through the soles of the feet that improve circulation and help maintain stability. There's no sweating. There's no strain. You literally just stand on it for 10 minutes a day. I speak to the Juvent CEO, Rush Simonson, in episode 114. And I learned that his own mother, who was in her 90s, went from bed bound to fully mobile with this simple daily routine. So if you want to be sure that somebody that you love stays healthy and independent, go to juvent.com forward slash Kelly Brogan and use the code Kelly300 for $300 off at checkout. You can bring this incredible science-backed tool into their lives. And I think it's one of the most thoughtful and powerful investments that you can make in their well-being. So again, it's juvent.com forward slash Kelly Brogan. And the code is Kelly 300. And then there's even rest. Like I only do a three-day full body. I do full body each time and I do three days. That's the stage that I'm at. And I've noticed these benefits that I'm describing. And so in between learning how to rest, right? So I went to a Legree kind of Pilates. That's not a rest day. That's not going to work as a rest day for me. I learned that the hard way, right? So I'll go on a couple mile walk or do something slow and easy in the house. So learning how to rest in contrast to that kind of failure oriented movement, I think also is a very cool polarity that subtends this. And I think that there is, you bring up a very interesting point because one of the things that I've noticed when I've, when I've coached women is that we have a, for some women, again, is that type A achievement oriented, like, it's like, all right, give me the weights. I'll totally go at it. I'll rip it apart. I'll, you know, have it for dinner. And then when I say, okay, so all of your growth actually happens when you take time off, like the recovery piece. So the rest in between sets or the day off of the gym where you are maybe, maybe you're going to go into, maybe you'll just do an active walk. Maybe you'll go in the sauna. Maybe you'll, you know, that seems to be also another point of cognitive, I don't know what it's cognitive dissonance is something that if I'm not doing something that I'm not worthy, like if I'm not doing something difficult, if there's no productive, right? Yes. If I'm not productive, then I'm a failure in some way. And so I think that that is a very astute observation that, again, we are not giving ourselves sufficient rest in order to go at it again. So using the deadlift as an example, it's a great example. When we finish a set, whatever, 10 reps, let's say, you need to give not only the target muscles time to recover, you also need the accessory muscles time to recover. So when you're doing a deadlift, for example, you are locking the lats in and down in order to stabilize the bar as your hip hinging. The lats also have to feel on the low back has to feel ready to go again. And in addition to that, which I think a lot of people don't think about is also the adaptation to tissue that is not muscle. So tendons and ligaments, we often, I mean, muscle, listen, I love muscle. She's the popular girl at the party. Everybody always talks about muscle. Nobody wants to talk joints and tendons. But I'll tell you that if you don't have good knees, you cannot squat. If your shoulders, if you have frozen shoulder, you can't do a pull up or a push up. So we also have to think in terms of longevity, we have to be thinking about all of the, we have to think about the adaptation that the muscle needs and the tissue that needs slightly more adaptation. She needs a little bit, she's like the shy girl at the party. She doesn't talk too much. She's in the corner, but she's college. She's like your, you know, your collagenous structure. She's tendons, she's ligaments, you know, she's, you know, synovial fluid. She's the articulations of the joint. So we also have to be thinking about her, right? Well, those, those tissues as well in terms of appropriate rest. And so that means the intraset rest, like you were describing three minutes. It can be longer, by the way. I was, um, when I first started doing, uh, like hip thrusts, I needed like four or five minutes in between because it was just such a full body. Again, that's another cathartic, you know, I would have a big release, like emotional release from doing hip thrusts. I needed four or five minutes. Sometimes I would cry. Like sometimes I would just have this like, and I just needed to like, just sit with my body and tell her she's okay. And, you know, four or five minutes is also fine. You're not going to lose your gains. Nothing's going to happen if you wait longer. You're just going to be more ready to go when you decide that you're able to. And I think this is something that social media has really stolen from us women, which is this ability to think critically. You know, I just at the time of this recording, I just put up a post yesterday about I had a guest on the show and she was talking about drinking tart cherry juice as a way to help with sleep. And people were like, but that has 30 grams of carbohydrates in it. I can't believe blood sugar spikes. And it's like, when did we get to the point where we are so deathly afraid of a predictable event, which is a rise in blood sugar after consuming carbohydrates? You know, so I feel like we've lost in some way, women have lost the ability to think for themselves because we have I say predation on social media that make people afraid of perimenopause that make people afraid of a normal physiological event like a blood sugar rise after having carbohydrates. It's so sad. And like these women are like the women that are listening to the show are smart ass women, like the women that like they're running companies or they're, you know, they're at home and they're running the home or both. And then they're like, does this coffee break my fast? You know, and it's like the neuroses. Yeah, it just sneaks right back in. I love that you're bringing this up because I wanted to talk about this because I have never, listen, I'm not trying to get into any sort of like nutrition warfare, but I have never been a keto fan, right? So my protocol is a, if you want to reduce it to macros is a moderate carb and I have had history making outcomes, you know, through my protocol. So the keto thing, I'm sure has a place. And I used to study all of the, you know, the neurologic literature and it was always in male subjects, blah, blah, blah. So I've never really been interested in the effort to restrict or even label fruit and other things as like sugary carbs. And I love that you're pointing that out. Where I started, I fell into the trap a bit, right? So here I am in this brave new world of the gym. And I was a vegetarian for a number of years before this water fast, And I actually, through this very profound psycho-emotional moment of my life, decided to begin to eat red meat again. I've raised chickens. I still don't touch chicken. So I started eating red meat again. And so I would have beef bone broth or whatever. And I have my trainer in my ear being like, well, you can't come to the gym fasted or whatever. Without breakfast, you have to start your protein gains in the morning. So I started to think about, wow, I don't need enough protein to be growing the muscle that I want to be growing now. Because now I'm into this and I'm definitely not afraid of bulking up. I'm very interested in seeing how I can watch the muscle take form under my skin. I guess it's fucking incredible. And I do get a little worried about losing gains. So definitely when we went on a two-week vacation, I was in the gym at the hotel. I cannot believe if you had told me I would be that girl. Okay. Anyway, I did sort of take the bait around the protein thing for a while. And the way that I worked with it was mostly with like beef bone broth. But still, it got in there, right? Like just sort of thinking about nutrition and food as like these very rudimentary building blocks instead of like informational intelligence that's interacting with my body and trusting my own intuition and my own sense and desire and not under or over meeting accordingly. Right. So so I wonder, I know this is a very complex topic, but what do you want to make sure women think twice about? Right. Like what are some of the tropes or myths that you want to just foreground eating for strength training, like a strength training lifestyle, let's say? Yeah, this is I've thought a lot about this. I think the overarching 30,000 foot view is instead of thinking about all the things that you can't have and that you need to exclude from your diet, thinking about all the things that you need to include in your diet in order to thrive. So rather than it be, I can get away with having 1200 calories or 1100 calories or whatever, calorically restricting for eons, what are all the things that must be in my diet in order for me to nourish myself, to nourish myself from the cells all the way up, you know, for it's like from cell to, you know, organ to, you know, tissues, to glands, to systems. And I think that's the big, that's the big idea. I think that we have to, as women continue to unlearn this idea that we have to be small at any price. Because what I see is I see constant caloric restriction for decades. And of course, what happens when you are in a calorically restricted state is basically you're not eating enough calories to match the outputs that you have in your life. So just basic, you know, resting metabolic, just to keep you alive, There's a certain amount of calories, a certain amount of energy that you need to consume. And then, of course, if you layer on top of that goals like muscle, you need to be able to give your muscle the building blocks in order to assemble and grow. So what I most often see is chronic caloric restriction. So this is, you know, a woman maybe in her, you know, in her 20s even. And this is, you know, I don't know if we'll get into like bone density today, but you reach like peak bone density, like late teens, early 20s. So this is why it is so, I think you're doing such a wonderful job with your daughters because I think so many women, so many girls like 18, 22, 25, they're dieting because they see like, what do they call it? Skinny talk or whatever, like TikTok is like all the skinny stuff. And I think that you can't actually recover from that. Like you can't, like you're, you sort of reach a ceiling, like a natty, you know, a natural ceiling in terms of how much bone density you can acquire by about 25 is usually the cap. a skeleton. And then it's like kind of downhill from there. Like there are things that you can do to maintain your bone, to slow down osteoclastic activity, which is like the bones, the cells that sort of claw back bone density. But this is why it is so important for us to be not only getting this message to the women who are listening who are 40 and 50 and 60 today, but who are also their daughters. So the 15-year-olds, the 17-year-olds, the 22-year-olds, like don't diet because you are really sacrificing bone. And that's something that is not, once it's sort of set in stone, it really is just set in stone. So that's one thing. But the low calories, we have this thing called metabolic adaptation, which just means that your body is smart. She's not stupid. So if you continue to restrict calories, she is now going to have to, with the low, just like if you were to give someone a financial budget, it's like, I'm only going to give you a certain amount of money every day, you're going to have to prioritize how you're going to spend that money to stay alive. And your muscle is active tissue. It actually is a huge glucose gobbler. The brain is a big glucose gobbler. And then so is muscle because it's active tissue, it's contractile tissue. And so if you are not giving yourself enough calories, your muscle, your body is going to say, okay, well, we got to sacrifice something. We got to trim this down. And so it turns into the water fast that you were describing earlier, where you might lose weight, right? So this term also, we have to be a little bit careful with our words. When we say weight loss, we want to be careful about the weight you're losing. It's not just the number on the scale. It's like, what is happening inside? Are you losing weight from your bones, from your brain size, from your glutes? These are big no's, right? Can we lose from our adipose tissue? Sure. But there's ways that you can do that. So I think, you know, metabolic adaptation is that budget. It's that, you know, the equivalent of a financial budget. So if you continue to restrict and restrict and restrict years, months, decades, your energetic output will be lower. So you do the same cardio class. You do the same, if you come to the step class that I come to every Saturday, you know, the calories that you burn, even though it's the same effort and same intensity, right, week over week, the calories that you burn are going to be dialed down. Your digestion is going to slow down because your body is literally trying to not be wasteful of any calorie that comes in. You're going to find that your ability to eliminate and have bowel movements is going to be lowered as well. And so I think that we want to be thinking about slowly and thoughtfully increasing the calories that we consume. I can't tell you how many women I've counseled and they're eating. They're like, I can't believe that I'm eating more and I'm losing more weight. I can't believe that that is true. And that's not to say that calories in, calories out is a farce. Certainly, it is a law of thermodynamics. We have to respect it, but you can also overdo it. You can ride out the area of the curve and you can become an outlier and then we get maladaptation right beyond that. So I think that it's important for women to think about nourishing your body. What are all the things you need to include? Protein is certainly one of them. I think that we need to be consuming protein for the, I mean, you're not eating protein just because you're eating it for the amino acids and that's the building block of muscle. You don't need to be having like 500 grams of protein a day. I think like 0.7 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight is going to serve most like 80 to 90% of the population. And again, with the kind of coming back to the carbohydrates, you also need carbs, ladies, thyroid. When we think about, I mean, I know you must talk about this as well, that when we are consuming carbohydrates and you're driving up insulin, you are now going to also help actively convert inactive thyroid hormone to active thyroid hormone. Women who calorically restrict for many, many years, a much higher, I'm sure you've seen this clinically as well, a much higher incidence of thyroid issues, which is your main metabolic organ. So we need carbohydrates. I like to think about it as a bit of an oversimplification, but if it just helps visually, when you're thinking of growing muscle, like net muscle growth is a very simple addition or subtraction equation. It's like muscle protein synthesis minus muscle protein breakdown is going to give you your net muscle growth. So muscle protein synthesis is what it sounds like. You're building new muscle proteins. You're going to do that with having sufficient calories and of that calories, sufficient protein. And then you're going to minus that from net muscle protein breakdown. And what helps with net muscle protein breakdown is consuming carbohydrates. So as we elevate insulin, it is going to protect, it's going to be muscle sparing. It's going to help protect the muscle from being broken down. And so I want people to think about protein and carbohydrates as like sisters. Like we have to, we have to be consuming both of them. And obviously I'm not saying like, hey, I want you to go to your local, you know, 7-Eleven or circle, whatever, and then like throw back all the Haagen-Dazs. But that's what you're saying. But sometimes I feel like that super like Captain Obvious statement needs to be like, I'm not saying throw back all the chips. I'm not saying throw back all the cookies and the crackers in your pantry. I'm saying fruits and vegetables are carbohydrates, nutrients, right? So our potatoes, so our yams and rice. And these are things that for centuries humans have thrived on and we've demonized them. And I think that there is a conscientious and strategic way that we can be consuming our food as a way to nourish ourselves, as a way to nourish our goals, our brain, our body. And I think that there's nothing, I would love to just begin to remove some of these layers of stigma around food. I am one of the, I've sort of evolved my thinking as I've been in this space. And I feel like there are like I have some chocolate every day. You know, like I don't really believe that there's anything bad that you can consume. Like, yeah. Do I have Oreo cookies here and there? Yep, I do. You know, it's like and it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've actually learned this from my my children as they grew into like tween teenhood. It was a very humbling education for me on the power of taboo because I'd been for 15 years a very, very not rigid generally. And I actually never thought about the word calorie my entire adult experience. However, I was very rigid about these boundaries. I've even recorded a whole podcast about it, like the no gluten, no dairy, no sugar, no pesticides, whatever, to the extent that I would like maintain that rigid boundary everywhere I went. No exceptions, literally for 15 years. And I erase them with those boundaries. And I was asked to soften them. And so I watched my daughters who literally are like growing into like Sports Illustrated. I mean, they're there. The gorgeousness level of these humans and their bodies is like, it's like, I don't even know what to do with it. And they eat pretty much whatever they want. So they're definitely not on the diet train. However, they're already, and I would say particularly my eldest, who's the athlete, very aware of this, like the problems of caloric deficits. So she's always thinking about like protein, protein, protein, you know, like we joke about it. So they somehow are more in touch with, again, that less contaminated, I guess, lens that most of us is certainly at this stage of life are struggling to, you know, wipe clean. Proud mama moment though, Angelina. Take that in. That is so great. On and on. So I, for sure, will be having you back on to touch on so many more of the nuanced subjects that you take on. I know that most women listening want to know what you do. I mean, if they're not watching on YouTube, I mean, it's this like gorgeous, vital. I mean, it's just like you look at you and you can, I love what whoever gave you that feedback about like the sensuality that you bring to this because I see it like throughout about all of your movements. I'm very perceptive about this kind of energy in women because I've been on this journey of relaxing my own system, recognizing that these threads, I call it the container, but the threads of strength that we weave into the fabric of our feminine softening are just as essential, maybe more essential to foreground. So I know a lot of women are like, what do you do, Stephanie? And I know that you recently actually shared that very specifically, Like you shared, you know, a four day split that you do and all of the details and video and everything is called Lift Right are in there. I just got it. And I'd love for you to sort of give a framework because I also think you're very there's like a graciousness and compassion, for lack of a better word, in your expectations. Right. So you really have pared down what is necessary to see the kind of enjoyable, pleasurable expansion. Right. And it's it's really not that crazy. So I'd love for you to just speak a little bit about your routine and how women can learn more about it, learn more about what you're up to. Thank you. I really appreciate that. So yes, Lift is the program and it is designed as a foundational strength training program for women. So you can, if you've never lifted weights at all, ever, we have a two day a week, you know, it's like choose your own adventure. So two days a week, if you are someone who wants to do three days a week, we have a path for three days a week. If you want to do four days a week, there's four days a week in there. and it is joint friendly, form focused. I am a very big proponent. I've mentioned it already. It's like you can't squat if you don't have knees, right? So it's very, it's like thinking about our joints and the tissue tolerance of our structures that are muscle and that are not muscle for us to lift and stay injury free for a lifetime. And it is also very form focused. So again, we hear this idea of like lifting heavy and women should be like, we shouldn't be cardio bunnies, we should be muscle mommies, and we should be lifting heavy. It's like, okay, great. And yes, and we are going to master your technique first, because that is the single biggest predictor of whether or not you're going to be injured or prevent injury in the future. And if you were someone who is new to lifting, 40s, 50s, and beyond, your rate of recovery from an injury is a little bit slower. That's not there anymore, but it's not the same as it was when we were 20. So you really want to try to avoid that. So it's form focused and joint friendly. And it does use the principles, as you mentioned, of progressive overload. So it is designed not as a, you know, sort of saying this, as we were launching it, it's like, I did something crazy. I'm not selling you like a six week boot camp. It's not because everybody really loves that. Like in the marketing world, it's like, that's what sells like seven pounds in seven days. And I was like, no, we're not going to, this is like one program for life. That's your life. Yeah. This is like a crash course. It's not a crash. And it evolves with you, right? Because if you are a two day a week, eventually you can graduate to three days a week if that's what you want, or four days a week. Or if you're like, no, I really just have time for two days a week, then we can implement the progressive overload into the program. So you will continue to make gains and you will continue to get stronger. And I have seen so many women with phenomenal results with two days a week. So three days a week is wonderful. Like whatever your capacity and your desire is, the program will meet your needs. So that's sort of my love, I was talking about a love letter. That's my love letter to women in midlife to strength train for a lifetime. And we can drop the links for you, but you can find it at drstephaniestima.com. And there's lots of different, I think there's another link that I'm not recalling off the top. Yeah, we'll have them in show notes for sure. We'll have it for the show notes. Yeah, so you can find me there. And if you're just like, hey, I'm not ready to jump in yet, you can find lots of free content on my Instagram, Dr. Stephanie Estima. You can sign up for my newsletter. As you mentioned, it's called The Mini Pause. It's a weekly newsletter where I will just... Right now, I'm talking about weighted vests. Yes. Scandalous. Yeah. Scandalous. I know. It's so funny. Some of the things I thought were going to be controversial, like I never thought oats would be as controversial as I are. Oh my God. More like weighted vests. Really? We're fighting about weighted vests? All right, let's look at the events. So I will explore topics du jour and things that are relevant for women in midlife around strength training and fitness. And just what is a life well lived? So yeah. Amen. It's such a pleasure to connect to you. And I know that this won't be the last chat that we have. I'm looking forward to future collabs. And I'm just very grateful for your voice and the mix out there. Thank you so much. I appreciate this and appreciate the time that I get to spend with you. And I'm looking forward to the next one.