Where to Start Exercise | Ask the Menopause Fitness Coach

Where to start exercise … if you’re a complete blob? Not my words, but a member of our Insiders group (are you there? https://www.facebook.com/groups/flipping50insiders)

Colleen, first of all I want to thank you very much for your honesty. You really just said it like it is for probably more people than you know. And so, if you're asking the same thing, stick around. The question is this:

Any advice about how or where to start, if you're a complete blob, who hasn't moved much more than to check the mailbox or cook in the kitchen, in the last year?  and she finishes with asking for a friend.

Shredded Mexican Chicken recipe

The answer to this question sets me up, I gotta say. I just opened the doors to the 10-Day Hot Not Bothered challenge. I'm going to tell you how it's different.

The Difference

This program, is this short course program has been really one of my favorite children. I know we're not supposed to have favorites but let's face it, we do. My mission was not just for you to do another challenge. Another five day, or seven day or 14 Day or 28 Day or 30 day challenge because there dozens, hundreds actually of them online. You can do one every day for the rest of the year for free and never have to pay for a program. And yet, It'd be random exercise and one to the next to the next to the next. And that's not what I want for you.

Start right

But what I do want, whether or not after this challenge, you take the next step with me when flipping 50 or nine, is that you understand your choices better. You can take what you've got and make informed decisions about your weekly exercise plan and really get one for yourself, so that when you're struck or presented with different exercise, options, you know, whether that's actually a good choice for you or not, or whether you should pass on that or put it on a different day or alter your exercise schedule so that you can do it if you enjoy it.

5:10

You're free of those ties, strings, and chains, and that's an advantage, really, from starting at scratch. Plus, there is always the fact that anywhere you go from here is up.

Where to Start Exercise, the Right Exercise

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Don't get into that habit of saying something is better than nothing. Because honestly you can exercise wrong and it's easier to do that when we're in midlife+, because we're on a narrower road. We don't have the latitude we had once, and we've got big priorities. We're in this moment of accelerated loss of muscle and bone but yet, what we often do as the solution is try to lose fat.

And that's just not going to work unless you increase the muscle.

Increase Muscle vs. Lose Fat

You can control that so much better if you increase muscle and or you increase strength. Anybody listening has their own pace for gaining lean muscle. It’s beyond just the weight training you do. That is based on what you eat, when you eat it, how you sleep, what kind of inflammation you have going on in your body right now as well as the quality of your strength training.

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We really cannot control fat loss as much as we can control gaining lean muscle. It is also so much more satisfying!! So, if you want to go forward, you really want to focus on increasing your lean muscle mass, not too much on the things you can't control like the weight in the scale. You want to focus on the things like the energy you have, the improved sleep, the ability to make better choices with your food because you've done some high quality exercise and movement.

Included:

• strength training, you'll have
• interval training, you'll have more
• moderate kinds of walking,
• some days I'll tell you to go and do that go walk on your own
• flexibility mobility or core exercise

But here's the real secret sauce in this Hot, Not Bothered challenge. I'm going to whisper in your ear, every day, before you do the workout for the day. I'm asking that you listen to the audio recording that I've given you, because in it, I will tell you what this workout is going to do for you, how it's going to help you, how it is related to your overall fitness and improving your odds of hormone balance, how it won't throw you under the bus.

So, in certain days I'll be talking to you about cortisol and other days I might be talking to you about testosterone or growth hormone, I'll be talking to you know WHY. I know that women in midlife, we like to know. Then you can understand you can be more compliant.

When we fail, or let's say a program fails you, it is often because you don't see results soon enough. Let's face it we all love immediate gratification.

When you’re asking where to start exercise it’s important you realize the better question may be what do you realistically want to be doing a year from now?

The Scale

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What I need for you to know is that even though the scale may not move, maybe even you're not noticing those inches change yet. You will see evidence of change first in improved sleep and improved energy, better, more stable appetite. Women in menopause sometimes don't have an appetite. That's a problem.

[When you’re exercising appropriately for your needs] you should be finding your digestion and elimination, improve a little bit, and that you start getting just a healthy comfortable appetite ready for meals, but you also lose your cravings.

All that can happen in 10 days.

Colleen, thanks for starting this conversation. The answer to where to start exercise is start simply. Find a voice you trust. Find exercise based on the hormone phase of life you’re in. Ask whether that exercise was designed based on you. And then make a commitment to do it. Keep your promises to yourself the duration of the challenge. Then evaluate how you feel.

Any proven program isn’t proven if you tweak it.

Hot, Not Bothered...

Doing more is not the answer. It's doing better, doing the right kind of exercise, making it work when it's work, and recovering when it's recovery day.  If you feel like you have to do your old routine too… this one might not be for you, because you won't get all the benefits if you don't truly get just 100% in.

Are you asking where to start exercise?

Let's start flipping 50 together.