69. Are You Really What You Eat? | Emilee Wise

In this episode of the School of Midlife podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Emilee Wise, a holistic health, wellness, and nutrition coach who specializes in working with midlife women. Emilee is also an accomplished endurance athlete and coach, and she brings a wealth of knowledge from her diverse background in sports medicine, finance, early childhood development, spiritual psychology, and functional medicine.

We discussed the overwhelming amount of health and wellness information available to midlife women, especially on social media. Emilee emphasized the importance of cutting through the noise to find what truly works for each individual.

She shared her journey from sports medicine to finance and back to health and wellness, highlighting her frustration with traditional medical approaches that often overlook root causes.

Emilee explained her holistic approach to coaching, which goes beyond just nutrition. She focuses on understanding clients' relationships with their bodies, food, and exercise, and helps them prioritize their well-being.

We delved into the importance of managing blood sugar levels, especially for midlife women. Emilee provided actionable tips, such as eating fiber first, followed by proteins and fats, and saving starchy carbohydrates for last to maintain steady blood sugar levels. She emphasized the critical role of strength training for midlife women, particularly in maintaining muscle mass, bone density, and overall health. She recommended lifting heavy weights and incorporating plyometric exercises to keep muscles responsive.

We also explored the benefits of functional medicine, which looks for root causes of health issues and treats the whole person rather than just symptoms. Also, Emilee highlighted the significance of mindset and attitude towards aging and body changes. She encouraged women to embrace the aging process and focus on overall well-being rather than just physical appearance.

This episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice for midlife women looking to improve their health and wellness. Emilee's holistic approach and deep understanding of the unique challenges faced by midlife women make her an incredible resource. Whether you're dealing with hormonal changes, struggling with nutrition, or looking to incorporate strength training into your routine, this episode offers something for everyone.

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📲 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilee_wise/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00:
Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. This is the podcast for the midlife woman who's starting to ask herself big life questions like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work? Each week, we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school. And we're figuring out, finally, what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

If you're a midlife woman, and I'm assuming that you are because you're listening to the School of Midlife podcast, well, then you'll understand what I mean when I say that there is health and wellness information everywhere about what it means to be a healthy woman in midlife. All you have to do is pick up your phone to check Instagram or scroll Facebook and I guarantee you that your feed will be full of sponsored ads or posts relating to calorie deficits, intermittent fasting, upping protein take, cutting carbs, adding strength training, taking supplements, the efficacy and safety of hormone replacement therapy, Should you cut out alcohol? Should you take something to help you sleep? How much water is enough or too much? Do you know what I'm talking about? It can be very tough to sort through all of the noise to figure out what exactly you should do from a health and wellness perspective to live your best life in midlife and beyond. On today's episode, I am thrilled to introduce you to Emilee Wise, a holistic health, wellness and nutrition coach who works primarily with midlife women. She's also an incredible endurance athlete and coach, which is where I first met her three years ago. But mostly she's a woman who didn't like some of the information she was getting from her doctors, especially when they just wanted to write her a prescription and send her on her way, instead of taking the time to identify the root cause of what was going on in her life and in her body and causing her issues in the first place. Combining her lived experience, her background in sports medicine, and her education in nutrition and wellness, Emilee has become an incredible advocate for midlife women. In this episode, she's sharing with us actionable tips and information in easy to understand terms so that we'll be able to sort through all of the health and wellness noise out there and focus on what is actually working for midlife women. Let's dive in. Emilee, I am so excited to have you here today to talk all things relating to health and wellness, especially as it relates to fitness for midlife women, nutrition, all the things. In fact, you do so much. I'm not entirely sure how best to introduce you to the audience. So will you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what it is that you do?

SPEAKER_01: Yes. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to see you and chat with you, Laurie. Yes, I have a very varied background, which I think ultimately leads to the work that I enjoy doing and how in-depth I get with clients. I am I did not have a straight path to health and wellness, but in some ways it's the, I knew at 18 what area that I wanted to work on. I love studying the human body. I wanted to be in medicine. I wanted to Studying health and wellness in the human body is all I've ever loved to do. So I originally started in sports medicine. And then at some point in college, you make really good decisions. And I decided I wanted to go live in a city and work in a big building and do that. And so I ended up in finance and international studies and worked and did the whole corporate finance thing. And I won't spend a whole lot on all the things that I've done, but It all has led to working very comprehensive with clients in the work that I do. So yes, I have a background in finance, in elementary and early childhood development, from spiritual psychology, functional medicine, nutrition, the gamut of life. So it's all gone, Pilates, pelvic floor, all the things. And so when I work with clients, I feel like I can relate on a lot of subjects, which is great because they're all integrated.

SPEAKER_00: So would you say you're a holistic? Yes, I'd say- A fitness coach or like what, how, which crayon would you use to paint yourself and for what purposes?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is, this is kind of, yeah, this is kind of a big question. But yes, I do call myself like a nutritionist and life coach. So, you know, I do use, for most people, the nutrition aspect. And I do believe nutrition and health is the foundation of everything. And it's teething out. with clients, what's getting in the way of them. Most people know that eating broccoli is better than eating pizza. I don't have to necessarily teach them what healthy foods are, but it's a matter of why aren't you implementing the plan or why aren't you living out the life that you seem to want to live? And it's the way people relate to their body. It's the way they relate to food. It's the way they relate to their exercise. It's the way they believe whether they're worth it or not, whether they prioritize themselves within their household, things like that. So I do work different that while nutrition is the basis of a lot of it, I do work very holistically. I don't just do a nutrition consult and send people on their way. Because here's a lot of people doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't work. Or if it does work, it works for a little bit of time. And then the reason for them not being able to keep it steady gets in the way again and then they fall off the wagon per se. And my work with clients is to transform and live out the life that you're meaning to live in a healthy way with a lot of ease. A lot of people come to me, their relationship with food or they're constantly thinking about it and they want peace. right? Because they're always either criticizing themselves or thinking about or restricting themselves in some way or, and they just want peace, right? So that takes some time to tease out and every road is different for the clients. So that's what I love. I love digging in and exploring all the little closets that they want to or not.

SPEAKER_00: I would think that the breakthroughs that they have when they're working with you on an attritional standpoint, point, those probably spill over into all sorts of other areas of their life. I mean, when you talk about, why aren't you implementing the plan? What is getting in the way of that? I mean, that's not just solely related to nutrition, is it?

SPEAKER_01: Never. Never. Yeah. So people come to me wanting to focus on food and learn how to eat better and do all those things. And I would say 85% of the time we are not talking about food.

SPEAKER_00: I explain exactly the same thing with my coaching clients.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, right. Where they think, so you always have the avenue or the interest that, that brings them to you in the first place for other people like Chris, people want to train for something. And then that's the avenue to, to then open the doors for conversation or executive coaching or for their job. They want to be better at their job. That's the avenue that you break into. And then maybe you start talking about nutrition or you start talking about sleep or you start talking, but it's all so integrated. Many years ago when I started out and was just doing the nutrition part, I felt very frustrated. It wasn't until I opened the doors that I feel like it was really, really making a difference in people's lives. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Well, let's start with the nutrition. I will say I first met Emilee at the 29029 Everesting event in Sun Valley in 2021. Emilee was part of the incredible team of coaches that were helping us train and make it up the mountain during the event. And, and Emilee focused on nutrition and how to properly fuel yourself to complete the event. I'm sure there are a lot of listeners who are thinking, well, I will never do an endurance event. I guess to them, I say, you never know. So you just might.

SPEAKER_01: You never know. People think they can't, but anybody can. You just have to want to.

SPEAKER_00: And you train for it. I mean, you don't just go climbing 15 times in 36 hours just this weekend. You train for it. Correct. But am I correct in assuming that there are some similar health and nutrition principles that apply both to women, whether they're climbing a mountain 15 times or they're just training to live a healthy life?

SPEAKER_01: Yes. Yes, the principles apply. The principles applied are across the board typically. I think women that are inactive can maybe play a little bit more. I say this sort of just out of books and other podcasts, right? Because most of the people I work with are active in some way, right? Just given the nature of what I do, where I meet people. are somewhat active, so it's not something… But anyway, if they're sedentary, then you can maybe play around with fasting and tricks and hacks and things a little bit more. But if you're active, you've got to fuel yourself and nourish yourself. In reality, the body works off of nutrients. I mean, cutting them out, then certain parts of the body won't work. It's nutrients make enzymes, they make hormones, they make cartilage, they make skin, they make everything in your body. So we literally are made of what we eat. And I think that's still sometimes astonishing in the medical world. Sometimes you go to a gastro doctor or something and don't think it matters what you eat. And I'm still, I just don't understand, right? The body's made of what you eat. So it takes the particles that we eat, it breaks them down and shuttles them to where they need to go, which is amazing. And if they have healthy particles, right, from healthy food, then you have healthy cells. And if you constantly give it sugar or fried foods or bad oils, the body, that's what it has to use. So then it uses those damaged oils and fats and damaged proteins, and it makes damaged cells and causes disease. And that's just the way the body works. So I don't you know, when you think about what you're going to eat or when you're looking at food, yes, and our body does have a detoxification system, right? So it knows how to take the food that may not serve us, right? So if we do eat some sugar or some alcohol or some things, it knows how to get rid of it. That's why we have a detoxification system, right? So you poop, you pee, sweat, you cough. you get rid of things that the body doesn't need. But if those things are in excess and the body doesn't have enough good nutrients, then it's going to have to use some of the damaged ones, if that makes sense. So yes, women need nutrients just as men, but our body physiology does change. And what we need when it changes, say for puberty, pre and postnatal, and then through this perimenopause, postmenopause phase, the body's composition is different. So it needs slightly different amounts of nutrients.

SPEAKER_00: So with that change, are there certain challenges or considerations for women in midlife when it comes to fitness and nutrition? You mentioned fasting. I know that that seems to be having a moment.

SPEAKER_01: It's had a moment, then it didn't have a moment, then it had a moment. Right. Fasting, I think, is, and I'm not going to speak to it. There's experts on it. And there's a time and I think there's a time and a place for all these things. Right. And so but given what we're I think what you're headed towards and for active women or if you're training for something. And a lot of those same benefits from the training that you're doing and kind of double dipping sometimes doesn't serve you. People don't get enough. But to talk about midlife, one of the biggest things that shifts and I think women struggle with the most is Estrogen plays a role in glucose metabolism and insulin. And when the estrogen starts to decline, it gets harder to process glucose in the insulin response. So insulin resistance becomes more common, and processing and eating starchy carbohydrates and things get trickier. I'd say that's… I think what the majority of women initially struggle with and have to learn how to not necessarily change what they eat, but one of the most fascinating things I think is change the order in which they eat them can make a big difference. Say more about that. Glucose and blood glucose. So managing one's blood sugar is top of line. So if somebody is not feeling well, the first thing you have to do is stabilize their blood sugar. So whether that's with a glucose monitor or just, again, timing of food and order of food. But yes, you can start to, if you eat Fiber first, right? It will slow down your gastric emptying. So the amount of the quickness, how quickly your food is processed, or like if you imagine your stomach is the catcher or like a sink, right? And then your digestive organs are like the, your intestines are like the pipes that carry it to either where it needs to go or out the body, right? So it will slow how quickly the food you eat after it goes through those pipes. So starting with your vegetables and your fiber, huge difference. And then you eat your proteins and your fats and then your carbohydrates, anything starchy or that will turn to glucose, you eat that last. And it will go to the bloodstream much slower. And therefore, if it goes to the bloodstream slower, it creates less of a spike in glucose, right? So when you, I mean, just to simplify, when glucose, if you eat something sugary, starchy, something in your blood glucose spikes, insulin is then quickly released to bring it back down. The body likes homeostasis, the body wants a steady blood sugar. And so it's a matter of like managing those spikes and trying to keep that flatter curve really. And people will feel and their body will respond a lot better with a more steady blood sugar. So that's the first thing I always do with people. And I think with athletes a lot, they have this concept or sort of old belief that I'm going to exercise a lot and I'm going to eat less and then I will lose weight. And the opposite happens, especially to midlife women. And they often end up gaining weight because the body It says, oh, I'm starving in the way the body wants to store energy. It's really smart. The body's really smart. It's trying to save your life. The body will always try to save your life first. And so it's going to store energy as that. So one of the things and so again, a blood glucose level that's going up and down. And then if the blood glucose levels are too low, most athletes, they eat too little and then they crave sugar, right? Because sugar is the body's fastest way to energy.

SPEAKER_00: And and not only athletes, men like women.

SPEAKER_01: Yes, because a lot of women don't eat enough. So it's the- No, it's not just, I wouldn't say midlife women. I would just say women. Because they have this concept, well, one, I'm not supposed to eat breakfast, I'm supposed to fast. And then I'm just supposed to have this tiny little lunch of like a couple of grains and some chicken. And then by the middle of the afternoon, they're starving, they're tired. So they reach for something that's going to raise their blood sugar, which would be sugar or alcohol, or caffeine, right? Those things will all raise your blood sugar. And then they eat like the house for dinner because they're starving. And I don't. With most people, again, there's exceptions to everything, so I'm not saying I always do anything, but for most people, I subscribe to the eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, then dinner like a pauper. Most people I know that are active, they're eating three salad meals, not necessarily one bigger than the other. I don't like people to think oh, I shouldn't eat dinner, right? They should if they're hungry. My point is, if you eat a big breakfast and you eat a big lunch and you're not starving for dinner, you can have a nice little dinner. That's fine. But if you are hungry, then eat the dinner, right? But most people starve themselves the first half of the day and then they can't control themselves the second half of the day and then they beat themselves up about it and then do the same thing all over again.

SPEAKER_00: you'll eat common food that you were talking about and then the order you eat it and it's just a it's fascinating to me. I hadn't really heard about it.

SPEAKER_01: It is. It is fascinating. And I think, I mean, you can change your blood glucose like that response. I say, and I'm not much of a statistics gal, but I want to say it's close to like 73% or something like that. It can make a massive difference in your blood sugar response. And the other point is, I, and I tell people, I've told people this for years, but I didn't necessarily actually know why. I didn't know the blood glucose response so well, but from a satisfaction standpoint, right? So eat the vegetables first, get them in, right? And then you eat your proteins and fats. And then a lot of times, you're more full. So you're not going to eat as many starchy things after, right? Because your body also It's going to crave sugar and food until you meet a protein quota. Protein is the only macronutrient that you actually need. Your body will make glucose if it needs it. Your body makes cholesterol.

SPEAKER_00: My body's making a lot of cholesterol these days.

SPEAKER_01: Yes. Again, because again, estrogen plays a role in cholesterol too. So as that declines, cholesterol rises up. So it's common during this time.

SPEAKER_00: It's so intertwined, and you just can't parse it out, right? I mean, you can't talk about nutrition without talking about everything else, it seems like I mean, so yeah, we met at the event, but then I feel like I really got to know you after that first women's wellness retreat that you hosted in 2022. And then I went back in 2023. Yeah. And during during the retreats, the thing that I really loved about the way that you presented them is you you did explain how everything kind of works together, right? We talk about how hormones impact our lifestyle and how important sleep is and why we need to focus on strength training and women and why we need to reduce stress and certainly what we're what we are consuming and from a nutritional standpoint, how that impacts us. And I mean, we're not going to go into all the PowerPoint presentations, but I think it was taking a while. But I think let's, let's dive into those in turn a little bit. And maybe we start with hormones because certainly many women in midlife struggle with hormonal changes. seem to affect weight gain and energy levels and sleep. And are hormones also impacted by what we eat? Or does it go the other way? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, absolutely. I mean, there's two physiological things happening, right? Like, I mean, are hormones affected by what we eat? Yes. In that, again, maintaining your blood sugar levels and keeping a better steady glucose line or whatever. blood sugar balance is going to help a lot of things. I mean, if you've ever seen a moody teenager who just eats pasta and like I have one in my house, so I just eat pasta and then is starving and then, you know, they crash, they come down, they eat sugar and then they have energy and then they eat. So then you go up and down. The body doesn't like that, right? The body really likes, again, homeostasis. So so all of it, yeah, is going to be impacted by blood sugar levels. for sure. And then women's hormones fluctuate with a cycle, right? And then eventually no cycle. So perimenopause is like puberty. It's a second puberty. It's the opposite of our teenagers. We all know how a little unstable they tend to be and it's their estrogen is kind of volatile, just kind of figuring out how it's coming in and how to steady out and then it steadies out through the fertile years and their progesterone is increasing. So it's when it finds that balance, then they have those fertile years of when the cycle should be pretty consistent and normal and I think one of the misconceptions that PMS is normal, there's nothing about it that's normal. It's common, right? We accept it as normal, but it's really the body, the signs and signals when people have a lot of cramping or excess bleeding or lots of mood fluctuations or hot flashes, like that's the body saying, I'm out of balance, I need help. There are certain subtleties that should be felt, right? Like the organs get bigger and some people can feel like the contractions when the eggs are released and things like that. But they should be pretty mild and subtle. We've accepted those symptoms as normal. So in the perimenopause years, the opposite is happening, right? The estrogen is kind of going nuts. It's trying to figure out what to do and then goes away. And progesterone is declining. And so there is that, that is happening regardless of what you eat, right? But I think people that are, and again, you all understand this is because of what you do as well as how you work with women, is there's a couple of things that will come into play as far as how people, why people experience so many symptoms, right? So I do think blood sugar balance is one of them. Getting a protein is another, which is they're going to tie together, right? Somebody's relationship to aging, their relationship to their body, right? How are they looking at it, right? Your attitude towards it, if it's very negative, if it's following some of the media or aging is bad, right? We shouldn't look like this. You're going to tend to have a worse experience. Right? Versus this is part of I think aging, when I think about aging, or going through perimenopause, or these stages, they were all hard, like being a teenager was hard. And I never want to go back. Right? pre and postnatal was hard, and I never wanna go back. Perimenopause, I mean, luckily mine's not all that hard, but there's just definitely changes going on, and I have to believe I'm never gonna wanna come back here, because life just gets better, right? Our attitude, our wisdom, our care, where I am in life, I would never trade for those, and I think So a lot, I think a lot has to do with attitude, a lot has to do with how you're taking care of yourself as far as yeah, what you're feeding yourself and how you're exercising. And then there are people that genetically have a more difficult time or whatever. So I'm not saying all symptoms are a result in there, of course, exceptions.

SPEAKER_00: I think it's fascinating question, drew that you differentiated between something that is air quotes normal and common. And it sounds like there are plenty of things that women have just written off as normal. But I don't get me started here. Let's keep me on the phone. They're so confident. Right?

SPEAKER_01: Yes. Yes. I mean, blood tests are another great example, right? We have standards that are set on what common. They take an average of people that get blood tests, which are a lot of sick people, because most people that feel really good, they are more now starting to get blood tests, right? But typically, the ranges were made up of sick people. And then we call them, oh, well, you're in range. Okay, great. Well, that doesn't mean I'm optimal. That doesn't mean I feel good. It's kind of how I got started in all of this. After my second daughter, it was breaking down, mentally, physically, all of it. I had private medical insurance. I went all over to fancy doctors in San Francisco and everybody told me I was fine. I was not, there was nothing fine about me at that moment. And that's when I did find functional medicine and learned about what's optimal and fixed the leaky gut and fixed the migraines and fixed all the injuries because I wasn't absorbing nutrients. And so there's a lot of things in our society, yes, that we take as fine and normal, that really it's just common. And unfortunately, we have a very unhealthy population. So I don't want people to just be normal.

SPEAKER_00: I want them to be optimal in every way that we can. You mentioned functional medicine. So how is that different than you go to the doctor and you get your annual exam?

SPEAKER_01: Our medical system, I mean, there is a time and a place that I don't want this to come across as I am very grateful for our medical system in many ways, right? I mean, it has, it can do miraculous things and save people's lives. And there's, again, great time and place for it. They are taught to diagnose and prescribe. And if you have a condition, they want to give you a medication for it. And they don't have any more tools, right? They're not trained in nutrition. They're not trained in exercise. Just the other day, I was sitting at a cocktail, our thing. And someone was talking across and telling me she's like, Oh, I'm really I really need to start getting lifting weights. And I need to, I need to get on it. I'm just doing yoga too much. And I really want to start lifting weights. So my bones are better. And there was a doctor sitting there. And she's like, again, she's probably upper 50s, lower 60s. And she said, Well, why do you have to? And she's like, Well, I know, that's just better for my bones and osteoporosis. And I can maintain muscle and do all those things. And she's like, well, that's not true from a medical perspective, but whatever you want to do. And I love this woman. I mean, I love this woman that was sitting in that doctor. It's just they are not trained for prevention at all, right? So functional medicine, they look for the root cause of something, okay, why is your thyroid off? Is there something in the gut? They'll look down the chain a little bit more. If you go to the doctor for a hypothyroid, they'll give you meds. They don't look at your gut or are you eating enough or are you sleeping enough or all these, what's your iron levels? They're not looking for the things that may contribute to your hypothyroid. They are just see, you have hypothyroid, here's some medication, right? So it's just a difference. Like I said, I mean, if I had an emergency or I mean certain conditions, like you want the US medical system. You're not. We're grateful for it, but they're not great at these prevention or lifestyle medicine whatsoever.

SPEAKER_00: And is a functional medicine practitioner, are they more likely to look at the full body? You mentioned root causes. Oftentimes my, my knee hurts. I go to an orthopedist. I, I have a, I get migraines. So then I go to a neurologist. So it feels like we all have a, a long list of different doctors that we go to for different symptoms. If we go to a functional medicine practitioner, are they more likely to treat the whole person versus yes.

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SPEAKER_01: Yes, they are. They're more looking for, okay, well, why do you get migraines? Let's look at your hormone levels. Let's look at your gut situation. They will. And I love functional medicine. I'm glad we have it. I do throw caution in that there are some practitioners that get test happy. And I think There's a time and a place for testing. When people ask me if they should get this test or that test or whatever, I always go back to, well, what are we going to do if we find out? If we find something out, what are we going to do with the protocol? Is it going to change the protocol? And sometimes it's not, right? If you go and get a gut test, it's not going to change the protocol. We're going to still end up doing an elimination diet. So let's just do the elimination diet, get the couple hundred dollar test and see where we end up, right? Sometimes it can be very beneficial if you're testing for parasites or mold or other conditions. Some practitioners will take you down a rabbit hole and then which is fine. I think it's great. It's meant to be comprehensive. The thought behind it is great. But what happens is people don't comply. They don't follow through, because it starts to be expensive. There's a lot of supplements, there's a lot of appointments, right? So people don't follow through.

SPEAKER_00: Well, you feel better, and then you start doing what you did before. Exactly. It's just me.

SPEAKER_01: Now, that is very common, right?

SPEAKER_00: You get an injury, you do exactly what the PT says, and then you feel better. And then you just go right back to what you were doing before that caused the injury. And then you're right back to the same spot.

SPEAKER_01: Which is why I work with people the way I work with people. Because so when you start to fall back to the same spot, we say, okay, what's happening? Why did you do that? What's going on? You know better than I do. Yeah, because people do the same with food, right? And food is even more complex, right? Because people's relationship with it is complicated.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's talk about strength training, even though the sweet doctor that I believe that it's important for midlife women, but pretty much everyone else says it is. So yeah, as women age, obviously we're experiencing a change in muscle mass and flexibility and bone density and all sorts of things. So are there certain types of strength and mobility exercises that are particularly important for midlife women?

SPEAKER_01: I back up a little bit just because Strength training is always important. And yes, it becomes more evident, like it becomes more clear that it's really important during these perimenopause years, because again, estrogen is a building hormone. And when we start to lose it, it gets harder to build muscle. And it's men go through something similar. There's men go through andropause. Nobody talks about it. They don't even know they go through it. I've never even heard that word. I know. It's a thing. It's just slower. What does it mean? Again, they go through the same things, a decline in testosterone. We sort of like run and jump off a cliff. They just sort of jog down the hill.

SPEAKER_00: And they've got Viagra, the insurance covers, so they're perfectly good there. Hormone patches are getting more and more expensive. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: Right. Okay. Yes. Yes. Personally, when I had two babies, I was always an endurance athlete, so the first baby, I did lots of cardio and ran and cycled and did everything all the way up. My body composition did not recognize at all. I was like, what is all this? And so my second daughter, I did a lot of strength training and body held together like so much better. And that was my first moment of like, hey, these hormone things have something to do with like my body composition, right? And nobody was talking about it and I didn't have any proof or anything else. But then, so when we entered this perimenopause and all this is coming out, I'm like, so strength training has been a part of my life for, and I think teenagers, like I try to get my girls in the gym and because they're building bone density, right? They can only build, you can only build up bone density for a certain amount of time. So our hormones are always important and strength training is important at these big fluctuations of of hormones from teenagers. Really, I feel, and I'll get back to your original question, that I feel like all these stages would be better if we could just teach our teenagers and they would hear it, because that's different. How to manage, there's an education and a here's how your body works, and then all these stages would be better. But we are learning by fire at each stage, and we're grateful again, the research coming out that we're finally being observed, that we're finally being looked at as individuals and not just small men, right? So during this perimenopause phase, yes, strength training is ready. And it has to be heavy, right? I mean, I'm sure most of your listeners have seen the Instagram posts and the lift-heavy shit. And Stacey Sims is amazing. And we're so grateful, again, for the work that she's done, especially in the endurance community. But Yes, lifting weights, heavy weights is important. It's just, it's the work on the bone, right? So it's not even just the impact. Like I think I used to understand years ago that like say running was good or like that you had to have the impact to make the bones respond. But the bone is living tissue and it will respond and it's lifting weights. It's that pull, the muscle tug on the bone that makes the bone get stronger. So it's important that you are lifting and then again we lose. I have something to say about muscle then. But we lose that elasticity or that power too, right? I mean, and this is just not just women. Again, men do it too. It's just aging really, right? And so your muscle fibers change. And so practicing that explosive or plyometric type movement, jumping, right? I think Stacey Sims recommends you jump like 10 minutes, three times a week or something. So jumping rope or plyometrics or lunge, squat jumps or something like that. And just incorporating that into your training helps keep the muscles a little bit more responsive.

SPEAKER_00: And ideally, how many times a week would we be strike training?

SPEAKER_01: It depends what you want to accomplish, right? A healthy lifestyle. Yeah. So I'm big on, I mean, for me personally, and a lot of the people that I work with, they do events or training for something, right? So in the winter months when it's darker, it's colder, it's rainier, I live in California, I go to the gym three times a week for a period of time. But now when I'm out and I'm running longer and I have different events happening, I'm I'm maintaining, so I'm in there once, maybe twice a week. So it shifts for me, depending what else is going on. If you just care about fitness and you just want to stay healthy, at least two or three times a week is, I think, recommended. Yeah. Yeah. Three, I'd say if you want to make a change. So if I have a client that is really wants to make a change in their body composition, you're going at least three times a week. If you're just maintaining strength and staying healthy and you do other things the rest of the week, I think two times a week is great. If you really, really want to change body composition quickly or so, like four times a week would be right, your jam. So it depends what you're trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00: And just to confirm that I'm hearing you correctly, the two or three pound weights that we have on the back of our Peloton, that's not what that doesn't count.

SPEAKER_01: Is that right? No. That is absolutely correct.

SPEAKER_00: Better than nothing? Or is it really not doing much for us?

SPEAKER_01: I think everything's better than nothing. Peloton's done a great job. I'm not going to cut it down or anything, but the idea of doing weights on a bike really makes my head explode. I'm a cyclist. My best friend in New York, you know her, Amy, made me go to these classes. That's not my thing. I just think it messes up all things, right? I'm a purist. So no, I think you need more than two or three pound weights. Yes. For everybody, if they're going from nothing and you are starting somewhere, starting somewhere is great, but you're going to need more than that to really make a difference. And what I was going to say about muscle earlier, people that say, well, I don't like strength training, or I don't. A lot of times it's because they don't know what to do in the gym. And I hear that, right? It's intimidating. It's a very interesting environment. But I do recommend get a personal trainer to teach you, tell them you want to learn the basics, squats, powerlifts, some of the basics, and so that you feel comfortable going in yourself. And because what happens I'm just writing a newsletter on this. So sarcopenia, do you know what that is? Please explain.

SPEAKER_00: I heard the term. And now I didn't. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Sarcopenia is the breakdown of muscle, right? So we've all seen an older person potentially fall and they're doing fine. They're perfectly healthy. They fall, they become immobile, and then they die. And they die because of the breakdown of muscle. The breakdown of muscle happens quicker and quicker as we age and it will kill you, right? It is. So maintaining muscle to me is your key to longevity. And the way to maintain muscle is to eat protein and strength train, not solely, right? But those two components, they just have to be part of your your routine. It just has, if you want to feel good and live and be able to move in what we're doing right now, when we're in our fifties, sixties, it's training for seventies and eighties, right? Like you, you want to move when you're 70, you got to move now. You got to like to me, get in the gym now. Cause it's going to be easier, even though it's hard for some people to understand getting in the gym. It's going to be easier now than it is when you're 60 and when you're 70. You got to go just to figure out how it's comfortable for you to go. There's so many either apps or YouTubes or programs or online programs or online trainer. There's so many ways. now to be able to learn how to be comfortable. And I think strength training also just gives women a sense of confidence when when a woman feels strong. They just have a way about them and it comes into their psyche, too. So I think strength training is wonderful for so many reasons. You know, it does impact your hormones. blood sugar balance, bones, your mobility, all of it. So even as an endurance athlete, I am a big proponent of strength training and it's been a part of my life always.

SPEAKER_00: And it's quick. Yeah, it doesn't happen quickly. But if you were to go, and I know this because I've witnessed it in myself, but instead of say going out for a two hour long run or spending a bunch of time on cardio, you can go in, knock out a workout, a strength workout in 30 minutes, do that a couple of times a week. And it's incredible from a body composition standpoint, how you can see results so quickly.

SPEAKER_01: Yes. And that's what I'm telling you. If I have a client that wants body composition results quickly, it's in the gym. That's where you're going to make the big difference. And it does transfer to with my work in the gym this winter completely set me up to be able to do what I'm doing now without injury. It gave me the foundational strength. Women are built for aerobic machines. We're good at burning fat. It doesn't necessarily need to be trained all the time, especially as we age. We're very efficient. We do carry more body stat than men typically, right? I mean, obviously. person-by-person basis, but women have a higher body fat percentage and we are better at using it as a fuel source than men. So we don't always need to train that. I mean, it requires some training depending on what you're doing, but we do need to train our muscle system, right? Cause we, as our hormones decline and thinking about the muscle actually, and this I think is important for people. So we started to talk about sarcopenia, so it breaks down, right? And that, but it also, if you don't train it, it turns to fat. Like, so there are some like older people, if they've never exercised or something like their muscle isn't responsive, right? Like it doesn't, because it's like marbled fat in there. And that visual just doesn't work for me.

SPEAKER_00: So I'd rather. And because we lose the ability to gain muscle as we get older, then it's like saving money for retirement, right? The best time to have started was in our twenties and invest as much as you can. If we haven't been good about adding strength training now is as good a time, like. Decades ago would have been better. Let's start today.

SPEAKER_01: Just start today. And that's with anything, right? Like that's your nutrition. Like, well, a lot of times, I've always been like this or I've always had this. Well, that doesn't mean you always will. That's just what you're used to or the story you've told yourselves, right? Let's see. I mean, again, genetically, sometimes people have certain conditions. And then other times you've told yourself you have that, like, because your parents do. But back to how this all started for me was I was experiencing a lot of depression and whatnot, and there was a lot of it in my family. And so there was a piece of me that was like, well, here it is. This is what I got from my family. And I did a lot of work around it, a lot of studying, a lot of understanding. No, this can change. And that's not me at all. Am I predisposed to it? Genetically? Yeah. But do I choose to express it? No. And I know what things make me feel better. So people have this belief or this story that, well, this is just, I've always been like this, or I always have this, or my parents have this, so I have this. It doesn't have to be that way. And yes, I'm not saying everybody's excluded from some certain conditions, but a lot of things are changeable. And whether it's physically or mentally or how we believe about the things we believe about ourselves, right?

SPEAKER_00: Well, it goes right back to exactly what you were saying about the menopausal transition and what your expectations of how rough it's going to be or how easy it will be. A lot of how you approach it is going to depend on how you experience it. And that's right.

SPEAKER_01: Yep. Yeah, a lot of people come and say, Well, I want to lose this or I don't like the way my body looks. And I hear that. I don't dismiss that at all. I totally understand. And there are some times a person puts on a few pounds or something, it's because there's something off in your body. And I hear that. I'm not discounting that. But one of the things I will ask is your body is going to change. We have to somewhat accept the butt's going to get saggy. I'm going to get wrinkles. My skin is going to get thin. like, things are gonna happen, like, and I have to be okay with that. Like, it's okay. Like I said, I, I don't know, I think I'm meant for bigger things. Like, I'm not going to be a supermodel at, well, I was never going to be at 5'2". I mean, there's still time. I don't think so, Laurie. We're meant for different things. Yeah. Right. And the relationship to our bodies, I think, I'm grateful that I can move and do everything that I want to do. without injury. I have niggles, of course, like everybody, but we have to appreciate what our body does do and not what it doesn't do a little bit more than we, most people, are used to.

SPEAKER_00: A couple of other things that we talked about at the retreat were the importance of sleep, stress, cortisol. Stress is massive. Alcohol consumption. So let's talk about stress. One of the things you taught me was the chronic stress that we have that creates the cortisol is the same exact stress that cortisol is also produced when, say, we tax our bodies in an endurance training way. But stress has such a significant impact on our overall health and well-being. Are there any effective strategies that you know of to manage stress? People just say, be less stressed. And I don't know that that serves everyone perfectly well. But I mean, sleep obviously plays a role into it. Sounds like what we are eating also plays a role. But Can you leave us with Hans Travis? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Stress is perceived, right? So learning, you can have, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, but you can have a victim mindset or a creator mindset, right? It's how you interpret the things that are happening in our lives, right? They're just happening. And there's people that perceive them as they're happening to them. There's people that perceive that they're happening for them, right? And we have that choice. And I think the biggest, we can never control the stresses in our lives, right? Like we cannot control every little one. I have a client just last week that we're working on her, her perception of all these things, right. But this idea that like, I just want to break, I just want this to be done, I want to be able to focus on myself when I want. And it Again, life's going to keep throwing balls at you. That's how it goes. We can't decide. We want a break. We're going to take off. We can, I guess, go live on an island or something. But it's just getting better at how you perceive things. I think, and Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning is one of my favorite resources for that, of the space between stimulus and reaction lies opportunity. I think I'm messing that quote up a little bit, but you can fix it in the show notes or something, for whatever reason. But it's that space that, again, between stimulus and response that I spent several years just focusing on pausing in that space. and then you get to choose your reaction. I think that's the power of meditation is teaching you that the thoughts are just thoughts. They don't have to tie to being true, right? So this is kind of going off maybe too many things, but I think at the end of the day, it's managing and learning and that's different for everybody. Whether meditation is a tool for people, breath work is an incredible tool for people, but you have to first build that awareness that you are stressed. I meet so many people and just even talking to them on the other end, I feel stressed because they're like, I'm not stressed. What do you mean? I don't feel stressed. I feel fine. So you first have to build the awareness of the body. And sometimes when people don't do that or know or realize that they're in a stress state most of the time, I think breathwork is really powerful. because you learn the parasympathetic state. You learn what the body feels like when it's relaxed. And I think that's important for people to understand what it feels like to actually be fully relaxed, so they know where they're trying to get more of the time. So many times we're just kind of revved up all day long and they don't realize it. That's their normal. But if I can get people to feel what it feels like to actually like be in a parasympathetic state and understand that that's actually what we're trying to build more of in our day. So I think breathwork can be a great tool. Meditation can be a tool. Journaling and building that awareness can be a tool. It depends on the person and where they're at and what they're trying to accomplish. But I think as far as stress goes, we first have to build that awareness and then we can start to manage our reaction to it.

SPEAKER_00: And the building awareness, that the fact that you are constantly in a stress state, for instance, that goes back to what you were talking about earlier is that there's a difference between what's normal and what's common, right? So finding ways to get us out of that perpetual fight or flight stress situation, super, super important.

SPEAKER_01: And once you become aware of it, in my mind, I like, I think you were alluding to exercise, people a lot of times will say exercise, exercise is my stress release, and the body doesn't know the difference. Stress is stress is stress, right? Whether it's emotional, whether it's work, whether it's physical, whether it's a food sensitivity, right? The body's reaction inside internally, the chemical reaction is the same. So in my mind, to myself, sometimes I'll notice that I'm thrust in traffic or And being stressed in traffic does mean zero good, right? Like it's not going to make the traffic go away. It's not going to make me get to my destination any faster. And so in my mind, when I'm aware of it, I'm like, then I have a different conversation with myself. Like there, that is not the time that I want to use my cortisol because it does me no good. I'd rather use my cortisol on my long run or my whatever because it's actually going to serve me. So you get a decision like, where am I going to spend it? Where am I going to use this allotment? And once you build that awareness. But if I don't realize, if I just sit in traffic and I start bitching at everybody and I start getting all upset and I don't actually realize that that's useless stress, then I can't ever correct it.

SPEAKER_00: I love that distinction. And yeah, I think that women are going to look at how they're reacting differently if they understand that it's the same cortisol. It's the same hormone.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. And we have more cortisol. We have more cortisol receptors around our gut. So when women are putting on weight around the middle, stress is usually where we look. Again, blood sugar, stress. And in some ways, The body is so smart and it is so looking out for us and we get mad at it, right, because it doesn't look like what we want. But the body, when we start to lose estrogen, Fat builds estrogen, right? Fat makes its own estrogen. So when the estrogen is declining, the body says, oh, I know how to help. I'll give you more fat. I'll give you some around your middle, some around your thighs, some around your upper arm, and that will help you. have more estrogen. And instead, and so we don't say thank you body for extra fat. We get mad and we start starving ourselves or overexercising or talking negatively to ourselves and builds more stress and more fat.

SPEAKER_00: If it's just like teenagers around the upper arm, my body apparently is very smart. It's like super smart.

SPEAKER_01: It's like teenagers do the same thing. Teenagers, if you watch them, there's some that start to fill out, right? And then they'll lean out again because their body is like adapting and adjusting and it's for them. It's working for them. And they don't know that. So then they start starving themselves and all sorts of things, right? So to some degree, it is normal and healthy for our bodies to put on a little extra in excess. Do I say like, do I am I saying, oh, just accept it and put on 20 pounds every year for the past for the next five years? No, that is not what I'm saying. But I am saying to some degree, it is normal and healthy and have to make some adjustments and kind of listen to it and be a little bit forgiving in these

SPEAKER_00: I want to be mindful of the time because I'm so grateful for you coming on and talking with us. And I don't want to take too much more of your time, but I do want to, one thing that came up at the retreat, which I know is important to you is pelvic floor health. Is that right? Is a pelvic floor health is a pebble for strength. I'm not sure I'm saying that right, but let's talk about why that's important for women and why. they may or may not be having more of an awareness of it in midlife than they ever have before and what they can do to strengthen it.

SPEAKER_01: Again, because it's something we're not Right. It's something we're not taught about, right? The pelvic floor, if you think about, I mean, it's a set of muscles between the pelvis, right? And we hold as women, a lot of emotion in our hips, right? There are people that hold emotion and tension in their neck and shoulders and others that hold it in their hips and pelvis, right? And some hold it both. It depends what's going on in your life. And if you can imagine, I mean, the pelvic floor, the hips, I mean, it's a vulnerable area, right? That you could potentially be holding emotion from your teenage years to your 20s to your 30s, depending on what happened, right? Or like whether it's painful periods, to bad sex moments, to having children, right? There's a ton of things that could contribute to tension or dysfunction there. And we're not up until five years ago, probably, it really wasn't talked about, right? So it's the inner workings of your hips and pelvis, and it holds up your organs. I mean, it literally holds up your organs. and they are muscles. So we all know like, again, as estrogen declines, the muscle starts, it's harder to maintain, right? Tone and flexibility and whatever. So we do strength training and we do exercises. The pelvic floor are muscles too. And they must be exercised. And when they're functioning properly, they are kind of involuntary, right? They'll just, they do move with the cycle, sort of like your breathing diaphragm, right? They're a set of muscles that are domed, and when functioning properly, they should move with your breathing diaphragm. So when functioning properly, not something we necessarily have to think about, right? But because people have misalignment or tight back or other things, those inner muscles get dysfunctional. And there are pelvic PT's that can be really helpful. And I think what's a good one. What's helpful about it is they can go internal. So then you have a tactile feeling of where are these muscles? Am I doing it right? Right. There's also there's there's apps and tools. You can get a little it's a Ali Ali. It's been a while. It's been a little out of. Yes, you can you can get it. There's probably so many more now. And I I didn't look up to date. But there are tools that you can insert and then you hook it up to an app on your phone and it tells you whether you're contracting or It can teach you how to use the pelvic floor muscles, which I think are great. Any biofeedback, it's really helpful for a ribbon to understand. And keeping in mind, I got involved in the pelvic floor work because I was a Pilates instructor. I went through additional training and many workshops and additional this and that. And when I went through a heck of a lot of injuries post-children, a lot of it came down to my pelvic floor function because that's the inner workings of the hips. And I realized out of all the hours of training that I had in sports medicine and I've been trained in massage therapy, I'd been trained in Pilates and personal training and all sorts of things, coaching never taught about the pelvic floor. I found it infuriating that I had never talked about it. So I did, and again, where I live, I'm blessed to have the opportunity of really great instructors and teachers and workshops. So I was able to just go an hour away and take a 30-hour workshop on pelvic floor function. And I So it's important and it resurfaces during midlife because it is a set of muscles and it does get weaker just as all our other muscles. So it does need to be paid attention to. Obviously, it becomes a very popular part of conversation during pregnancy and postpartum because of the stress of holding an infant inside your body. And it can get dysfunction there. But then again, in midlife, because it's a set of muscles that gets weaker if it's not paid attention to. Or again, like I said, in a functioning, healthy body, it's kind of involuntary. But if there's any misalignment or regular PTs will focus on the outer, the glutes, the hamstrings, the quads, and they don't pay attention to the inside, which they're not trained for that. But if you can imagine, that doesn't make that much sense, right? That we're only talking about the outside muscles and not the inside muscles of something that moves. I know we can't see on video, but you know what I'm saying, I think. Am I clear? So it's important because Yes, it gives you mobility. It's an important part of your breathing. Your breathwork is incredibly powerful. Breathwork will help the pelvic floor as well because of that relationship between the breathing diaphragm and the pelvic floor diaphragm.

SPEAKER_00: I recently visited a pelvic floor PT because I have noticed that when I and finishing my long hikes or a run or something, sometimes I feel like my internal organs are going to drop out of my body. And they're not, but that's what it feels like. Some people's do. What? Some people's do. I know. It is a real… Yeah. Yes. I really didn't know anything about the pelvic floor until the retreat. And now I've had a decent amount of exposure to it. And the great thing about, certainly you mentioned some apps and tools, but just going once or twice to someone in person, they can show you how to do the exercises.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. You see it on a screen, right? You could see.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. They tell you, and then you're able to. correlate, you think that you are squeezing the muscle, but you're really not. So how can you move it in a different way? It was really, really interesting.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's what I was saying that the tools and again, I think it's elvie. And I'm sure there's other I'm just looking at quick, but I'm sure there's other ones now. Yeah, elvie pelvic floor trainer. If you can't get to a doctor or you don't have live in an area where there's maybe there's a shortage of pelvic PTs. right? So if you don't have one, you can get this tool. It's maybe 200 bucks. Yeah. So it's not cheap, but that's an option for learning that connection. And when I had babies, it was all about Kegels, like do Kegels, do Kegels, do Kegels. So me and the athlete and kind of awareness that I am sure, okay, I'll squeeze But nobody talked about relaxing. So my pelvic floor was too tight. And when your muscle is too tight, I kind of equate it to, if you can imagine a muscle that you can see, if my bicep were too tight, I'd be walking around with my arm. I thought it will extend my arm, right? So if the pelvic floor, I can't fully contract and it can't fully relax, but then people have incontinence or pain with intercourse or other things, or, and again, it holds your sacrum or pulls on other parts of your pelvis, which causes pain. And so healthy muscles should be able to relax and contract. And I never going to a PT, pelvic PT can give you some indication of is yours too tight? Is it too weak? What is going on specifically for you?

SPEAKER_00: Mine's too weak. I have not had children, so no one had ever taught me how to do a Kegel.

SPEAKER_01: It's okay, because most of it, if they had, it was probably wrong then anyway.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Anyway, okay, good enough. I do have a set of exercises on my website if you need more.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you. We will put a clickable link in the show notes to Emilee's website for those of you who are interested in some pelvic floor exercises, as well as I will link the app and the tool that she just mentioned. I think to wrap up here and switching gears entirely there, there might be so many, so many directions we can go.

SPEAKER_01: I know.

SPEAKER_00: Um, but there might be some in listeners who are interested in endurance training or looking to take their fitness to the next level. What advice would you have for them? What would you give them as far as setting realistic goals? Maybe how would they go about picking an endurance event? How can they progress safely so that they don't get injured? I know that that is a totally loaded question.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a big question. I mean, there's, I mean, right now there are so many events everywhere in communities. So I think it's first identifying what it is you like to do. A client, bless her heart, just been 29029. She's on her short time. and she doesn't like hiking. She just doesn't like it. She did it because her friends were doing it, whatever, but she felt like it kept her fit, so she would train and then she would do nothing because she didn't. So we really worked. I'm like, what do you like to do, right? She loves tennis. She's just gone all over the place playing tennis. She's super fit. She's lifting weights. She's doing things. So really getting, I think, in tune with yourself and like what you do like, not what you think you should do, right? Because endurance training is a lot of time and commitment. And I think obviously 29029 is a big part of our stories, Laurie. And the beauty of that, like endurance training, some people use it as a stepping stone for changing their lifestyle. So paying attention to how they're eating, paying attention to how they're sleeping, learning about the different types of training. How much strength training do I need? How much cardio do I need? What is and taking it as a lifestyle. So for somebody just starting out, one, identify what it is you like. Is it running? Is it hiking? Is it trekking? And then, I mean, it's easy to do a Google search. And then two, where do you want to go? Like, do you want mountains? Do you want… Find something that resonates, because if you're excited about it, you're going to do it. And something that is a little bit, I think, There has to be a little bit of fear, right? Like that keeps you training. That keeps you on it. Yes, because even for me wrapping up what I'm training for, there's a little bit of like, am I going to make it? Right? So I do, it gets me out the door, right? Like I'm going to do this last long run or I'm going to do this last thing because I am a little bit afraid of the event that's in front of me. So picking something that is somewhat of a challenge I think is important because that gets you out the door, right? It kicks you in the butt to go do something. Excellent. Thank you. And then, like I said, using it as a full lifestyle, take on the whole thing, eat well, sleep well, be an athlete. That's another thing that I talk to a lot of people about. They don't identify with being an athlete until the event is over. And it's like calling yourself an athlete the second you start training changes the attitude and how you treat yourself. If you believe you're an athlete, you're going to eat well, you're going to sleep well, you're going to recover. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: If you're an athlete, you're protecting the asset, right? You're thinking about yourself first, and that is not only your physical health, but certainly your mental health and well-being. You can't just decide, well, I'm going to eat whatever the hell I want and I'm not going to sleep well and I'm not going to set boundaries and I'm going to talk real shitty to myself and then expect that you're going to have this wonderful experience on the other side of it.

SPEAKER_01: Yes. No, no, it's not going to be a very, can people not train and do an endurance event? Yes. I always tell people too, you're going to suffer somewhere. Yeah. And it's not, if you want to have fun, it's, it's going to suck during and after. You can find the people on the mountain at 29 or 29, right. They can do the training. It sucks out there for them. And the people that did do the training, it's hard, but they're having a little bit more fun. So you got to put your time in somewhere. Where do you want to suffer? A slow, a little bit slow time?

SPEAKER_00: There are moments of suck. There are always moments of suck. So embrace it.

SPEAKER_01: But that's the, that's the growth, right? My heart for growth. Yep.

SPEAKER_00: For our listeners who want to learn more about working with you, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01: This is my website, emileewise.com. And it's obviously scum. Different. We will send her.

SPEAKER_00: Yes. Clickable link to Emilee's website on the show notes.

SPEAKER_01: I do have Instagram, same name, same thing. I'm not very active on the gram, but I'm there and I do check in every now and then. I have my moments.

SPEAKER_00: We'll link that too. We end every episode with the same two questions. So question one, if you could go back to your 30-year-old self, knowing exactly everything that you know now, you've learned all the lessons, you've had all of the life experiences, Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give her?

SPEAKER_01: I think what I would have known sooner is just like we talked about earlier that everything is how I perceive it and that I actually have control and that everything is part of my story. It's meant to be. It'll pass.

SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Question number two, what have you loved most about being a midlife woman?

SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I feel a sense of, I feel more in control of who I am and a confidence in who I am and what I do. And I wouldn't trade that for a younger body or my younger self at all. I mentally, the things I know, the place I am, I, and I, that's the piece that I think or look forward to continuing to get better. Right. And that's. It just makes life more fun, more enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing. Well, Emilee, thank you so much for being here. You are just a true gem and I love anytime I get the opportunity to spend with you. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. You too.

SPEAKER_01: Talking with us today. Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. I hope I get to see you sometime this summer.

SPEAKER_00: Do you ever wish you had a community of midlife women you could go talk to about those big life questions that seem to pop up in midlife? Like, what do I want? What's my legacy? What's next for me? A community of women to have candid conversations with about all the things that come at us in midlife that no one else seems to be talking about. Changes in our bodies related to menopause, sure, but also changes in our relationships and family life and careers. Well, great news! The School of Midlife has launched a book club called Your Next Chapter. Each month, we'll be reading and discussing books that relate to the unique experiences of midlife women. It's absolutely free to join, and we'd love to have you meet up with us and add your voice to these important discussions. And this isn't like other book clubs, because if you didn't have time to finish the book, but you're still interested in the conversation, absolutely join us anyway, because you'll still get so much out of the conversation. The book club is free to join, but you'll need to sign up. Click the sign up link in the show notes and you'll automatically receive your invitation to join us. Get signed up, grab this month's book, and start reading. And we'll look forward to seeing you at the next book club discussion, where together, we're helping each other make midlife our best life.