Tired of Hormonal Chaos? – How Real Food & Strength Training Transform Women’s Health
What if the secret to healing your hormones and rebuilding your metabolism wasn’t more dieting or cardio—but real food and strength training?
In this empowering episode of Hormones, Metabolism, and You, Dr. Cassie Smith welcomes Kitty Blomfield and Craig McDonald, co-founders of NuStrength, The RYM Method, and the Win At Life Program.
Kitty shares her personal journey through years of fad diets, intense cardio, and chronic hormonal struggles—including painful periods, broken sleep, digestive issues, and binge eating. Craig, a sports nutritionist and expert in body recomposition, breaks down their science-based, pro-metabolic approach that focuses on healing the metabolism, building muscle, and improving overall wellness—especially for women over 40.
This episode is a must-listen if you’re tired of quick fixes and want to embrace real food, strength training, and sustainable transformation.
Cassie info and links:
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Guest info and links:
Kitty Blomfield
Kitty is the co-founder of NuStrength and Saturée. Her health journey began with years of restrictive dieting, cardio obsession, and hormonal imbalances. After discovering pro-metabolic nutrition through Emma Sgourakis and strength training through Craig, she transformed her health and now helps thousands of women do the same.
Craig McDonald
Craig is a Recomp Certified Coach and Sports Nutritionist who specializes in metabolic recovery and body recomposition. He co-developed a powerful system that combines science-backed nutrition and strength training to help women reclaim their health and confidence.
Blog/Transcription:
0:00 [Music]
0:05 Welcome back to this week’s episode of Hormones, Metabolism, and You. I’m your host, Dr. Cassie Smith. I’m a functional
0:11 medicine endocrinologist based out of Oklahoma City. Today, I have two podcast guests, Kitty and Craig, who are
0:17 co-founders of New Strength, the Rhythm Method, and the Win a Lift program. I
0:22 asked them to come on because Kitty has this really powerful way of talking to women in their 40s. She has been through
0:29 a lot of what she calls fat diets in her life. She tells us about how she had a
0:34 struggle with food, just all sorts of different issues losing weight in her 30s and in her 40s. She has a very big
0:40 following on Instagram and I follow her and I just I think she has a very empowering story. Her and her now
0:46 husband Craig have developed this really cool app where they teach women how to
0:52 actually reverse diet and how to become stronger. They’ve used a lot of really cool AI type material. I’m going to let
0:58 them explain it to you to show women how strong they can actually be and how to re like re-change and reform their
1:05 bodies. So, Kitty’s journey began with years of struggling through restrictive diets, intense cardio, and constant
1:10 paddles with her body image, leaving her feeling depleted and frustrated. She struggled with irregular painful
1:16 periods, broken sleep, digestive issues, low energy, and constant binge eating. Everything changed when she met Emma,
1:23 the nutrition coach co-founder with Kitty of Sock Tree, who introduced her to the principles of pro metabolic
1:30 eating, and Craig McDaniel, who was a sports nutritionist and rec certification coach, who taught her the
1:36 power of strength training and body recomposition. So, her and Craig talked to me a lot and just went over some
1:43 things what women need to know about how to re recmp their body, how to eat right, how to strength train, especially
1:49 as we get into our 40s. Together, Kitty and Craig developed a unique system and an app that combines protabolic
1:56 nutrition, which we also talk about what is that with strategic strength training and body recomposition. They’ve helped
2:02 over 18,000 women over 40 ditch fat diets lose weight, build muscle, and take back control of their health
2:08 through their proven method coaching programs and supportive community. So, I hope you guys enjoy this interview. I
2:16 love their Australian accent and I really love their heart to really help women understand why the diet culture is
2:23 not the best place to be and how body recomposition can be so empowering.
2:29 Thank you for joining us this week. I have two guests this week as you guys can see. So, I have Kitty and I have
2:36 Craig. And I asked them to come on the podcast this week because I started following Kitty. She uh when she starts
2:42 talking, you guys will understand. You know, my sister’s from Australia and so she’s from Australia. She has that fun
2:47 accent like my sister does. But she does a lot of posting about women in their 40s and just misconceptions around
2:54 health, diet struggles, a lot of things like that. And so I found her content that was very resonating with with me
3:02 and with you guys. And so I asked her to come on and just kind of talk to us about some of the struggles she’s gone through and different things she’s
3:08 helping people with. So thank you for coming on my podcast, you guys. Oh, thanks for having us.
3:13 Pleasure. Thank you. Do you want to briefly tell everyone a little bit about yourselves and like how
3:19 you guys work together? Just maybe give everyone like a three or four minutes and then I have lots of questions for
3:25 you. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, we’re married. Like, we’ve been together. I mean, we met and
3:31 then basically after 6 months moved in and bought a business together, which is a bit crazy. It’s like, cuz I, and I’m
3:39 sure a lot of women who listen to your podcast can probably relate to this. Like, I did every diet under the sun. Like, I was the crazy der, keto,
3:46 fasting, shake diets. Like, I sold Isogenics for 12 months, paid for my boob job. I’ve had fake boobs and I’ve
3:52 had them out. Um, fasting, just crazy [ __ ] Like I remember Craig likes this one. I ate tuna and apples once for 12
3:58 weeks straight. Just like crazy. Like took that drug where it makes you That’s the best diet ever. The one that
4:04 I’ve heard any fat you ate and I was just obsessed with being like small like you in the 90s cuz I’m 40 nearly 45. How old are
4:10 you? Okay. I’m almost 40. So 40. Yeah. So like you the 90s like the Kate Moss like super stick thin
4:17 and so like it was just eat as little as [ __ ] possible. Salads I and I exercise like crazy. So I was always
4:25 very tiny, you know, like at my lowest weight I was 54 kilos, at my heaviest I was 75. So I’m 5’8. So you can imagine
4:32 me at 54 kilos. Um, and I had horrendous cycles. I had a miscarriage. I had
4:38 polyps removed. Um, you know, PMS, didn’t sleep, hair was falling out, you
4:44 know, just cuz I was undernourished. And also I drank a lot of alcohol and took a lot of drugs and just, you know, like
4:50 just crazy [ __ ] Like just really destroyed my body, you know, trying to be thin. And um then I got divorced and I met
4:56 Craig. And so Craig’s background is he’s a he’s a sports nutritionist and recmp
5:01 certified coach like specializes in body recomposition. And um I was just out one
5:07 night on a bender cuz I just got divorced of course and was taking heaps of drugs and drinking and you know and I
5:12 met I met Craig and um she was high as a kite. Yeah. This is like back in the this is
5:19 like what I know 13 years ago or something. 13 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And uh we ended up
5:24 sleeping together the first night, which I was really mad at myself about cuz I was trying to, you know, not just sleep with men on the first date. And I was
5:30 like, “No, this is just going to go nowhere.” You broke the cardinal rule in this book that I’d read about dating men. Anyway, he did call me and then
5:36 yeah, within 6 months we had um opened a gym because at the same time I’d also
5:42 come across my um business partner in Saturray. So we’ve got a skincare and supplement company as well. So basically
5:50 that aligns with our nutrition approach. the pro metabolic nutrition approach and we’ve created a line of skin care that
5:55 is just made with saturated fats, you know, like no vegetable oils, no endocrine disruptors. Um, and anyway, I
6:02 worked with her for six, I don’t know how long, maybe 12 weeks, 14 weeks, cuz then she went on maternity leave and she
6:08 basically flipped everything I knew about nutrition on its head. So, she’s like, “Drink orange juice and eat sugar and eat carbohydrates and, you know, all
6:14 of these foods that I’d avoided for so long. At the same time, Craig really taught me how to strength train, like
6:19 properly strength train. So, I fell in love with strength training, started competing in powerlifting, started eating all of this nourishing, delicious
6:27 food. And when I thought about it, it was really just the foods our grandparents used to eat. So, like organ meats and liver and oysters and and
6:34 fresh milk and dairy and cheese and just, you know, all the foods that the fitness industry tells you that you shouldn’t be eating because they’re
6:39 inflammatory and you shouldn’t eat carbs. And like within six months, my periods have become regular and
6:44 painfree. I was sleeping through the night. I put on heaps of muscle. Um, I stopped binge eating. I had way more
6:50 energy and yeah, Craig and I were like, “Fucking we we need to open a gym.” So, we opened a gym and that’s where we
6:56 really developed our methodology. So, the rebuild your metabolism method and we did that for how many years did we do
7:02 that for? Three years. Three years. Yep. Three years. Yeah. And then we were like, okay, do we open more gyms or do
7:08 we create an online program? So, that’s when we decided to create an online program specifically to help women like
7:13 me. So women who have done a lot of restrictive diets, who have metabolic health issues, hormone issues, who want
7:19 to like build a strong athletic body, but also want to feel good and sleep well. So naturally, we just tended to
7:25 attract women sort of 40, 35 plus, cuz you know, when you’re young, you can just do a lot of dumb [ __ ] and you can
7:31 get away with it, you know, and then you sort of hit 35, 40, you’re like, “Oh, fuck.” Like, you know, I’ve got all
7:37 these pyramid. It just reveals all this dysfunction from the way that you’ve been living. And so yeah, we we just
7:42 developed our online program. We’ve spent nearly a million dollars building this app specifically for these this
7:47 program. I opened Saturray with Emma. Um and yeah, that’s like basically the
7:53 story. So Craig heads up like the coaching. He’s built the app, heads up our sales team, and I just do all the
7:59 marketing, the operations, the admin. I do in coaching in our group like calls
8:05 and things, but that’s sort of how we work together in our business. And we’ve got another company actually called the Pro Metabolic Company which is a
8:10 supplement company which is supplements specifically related to like our like women who lift and train and metabolic
8:17 health which is um pretty cool. So that only has one supplement at the moment creatine
8:23 but new stuff coming. Sorry that was a bit longwinded. It’s just so much you know
8:29 that was a lot to unpack. So for the my listeners when she says 54 kilos it’s
8:34 118 pounds. So she went from 118 pounds to 165 pounds at 5’8. So you were pretty
8:41 lean. Um and I grew up in that era too and I it’s very similar. We have very similar backgrounds. So I grew up in
8:48 that era as well in like the 80s 90s where you wanted to be stick thin. And so I went through this crazy time in
8:54 life right after I got out of med school and residency where I decided I was going to go on like a bender and lose
8:59 all this weight and be this big. and so stopped exercising, got down to like 110
9:05 pounds, looked like I was dying, was drinking excessively, just got a divorce, like all the basically you. Um,
9:12 and so I did that, too. And then I was like, “Wow, everyone thinks I’m sick. I
9:18 don’t look well. I don’t feel well. Something needs to change.” And so, similar to you, I was like, “I got to
9:23 start lifting weights or doing something, you know?” And um now I like
9:28 try so hard to put on muscle, right? As you get older, it’s so hard. Like you hit, you’re right, you hit 35. Like when
9:34 I was 30, got stick thin. Then I still kind of acted like an idiot till I was about 35, but still looked pretty good.
9:40 And then all of a sudden you wake up and you’re like, what is this thing? Like you know this muffin top thing. And then
9:47 you’re like starving yourself and you still have a muffin top and you’re like, “This [ __ ] doesn’t work anymore.” And you don’t have the willpower either that you had when you
9:53 were 20. Dang it. you know, I’m not even drinking alcohol. Anyways, so it’s true in the
9:58 fact that a lot of my listeners understand this, like you hit a point in your life, a pivotal point where the things you used to do don’t work. And
10:05 then you really have to start relying on muscle and your metabolism because you can’t keep starving yourself. You
10:11 completely, you know, obliterated your adrenals like I did when you were younger. And so you really have to go
10:17 back to nourishing your body, feeding it, refeeding it, things like that. And so I love that this was your story, too.
10:24 I actually had a coach who helped like me go through a refeeding cycle where I was eating like 12, 13,400 calories. Got
10:31 me all the way up to like 2,600 calories. I was loving life and like getting muscle. And so I love what you
10:37 do. I so important for people and I really really like that there are people out there saying this, right? Because we
10:43 lived in this culture of like diet, starve yourself. And so many people still live in this culture. I still have
10:48 patients every day. eat 1500 calories and I’m not losing weight. I’m like, you don’t say
10:54 because you’re not sleeping and your body thinks you’re starving and your cortisol is high and you have no muscle and so
11:00 I love all of this. And so your guys’s app and everything is kind of tailored around this to help people. And Craig,
11:05 you’re so you so tell me about what is this body recomposition? Yeah, talk about the app Craigs
11:11 business that you’re so good at. Like tell me about this. Yeah. So, I think one of the biggest issues I found with
11:16 within the fitness industry is there’s not enough detail around understanding where the person’s currently at and and
11:22 where they ultimately want to be and and if that path actually makes sense for that particular person. Like for
11:28 example, we have women who come in who are, you know, 160 lbs and they’re, you
11:33 know, 5′ 10, 5′ 9, you know, like average and they’re like, “Oh, I want to be 120 lb.” I’m like, it’s very unlikely
11:39 you’re going to be that by the time we actually put on the appropriate amount of muscle to to to look like the version
11:46 that you’re likely envisaging in your head, which is this more athletic, toned, physically capable version of
11:52 yourself. So, it’s it’s kind of realigning that. But the the whole point of of what we kind of do is go right we
12:00 need to do a body composition assessment first which is like understanding like okay
12:05 your your current body weight is X you’ve got X amount of body fat and you’ve got X amount of lean body mass.
12:10 You then need we then need to work out what your goal body composition is. So what body weight is it going to be? What
12:16 body fat percentage it’s going to be? And how much lean body mass? And the way we determine this is very quite simple.
12:22 It’s the amount of calories you eat controls your body weight. Now, everyone knows this intuitively. You eat too much, your body weight goes up. You eat
12:28 less to a point, your body weight comes down. Now, that part is affected by a
12:33 few other things, hormones and gut health and stuff, which I’m sure we’ll probably talk about, but essentially, there’s still a calorie equation there
12:39 for the most part, right? The amount of uh or the strength that you build in the
12:45 gym is what’s going to determine your muscle mass. So, if you’ve got two women, one who’s, you know, 130 lb at
12:51 30% body fat, and you’ve got another one who’s 130 lb at 20% body fat, the one
12:57 who’s 130 lb at 20% body fat will be leaner and be wearing the smaller dress size because she has more muscle. The
13:03 only difference in that equation is understanding which one has more muscle and you know, looking at the modality of
13:09 which that actually happens by getting stronger in the gym. So when we can determine these two variables, body fat
13:16 is always the difference between getting those elements right. Body fat is the difference between changes in body
13:21 weight, which is controlled body food, and the amount of lean body mass you can uh put on, which is controlled by
13:27 strength training, which I I won’t get on too much of a cardio rant today, but
13:32 um in that equation, cardio doesn’t exist. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things that we see a lot
13:37 of women that go wrong. you just do way too much cardio already on top of a stress system. So you get stress on top
13:43 of stress which equals more stress. You then you know have all the downstream effects of thyroid dysfunction and you
13:50 know gut health, leaky gut and all all those sort of things. So you know our whole method is is basically going
13:55 through an assessment to understand where you are right now, where you want to be, right? How much body weight do you need to lose control the food? How
14:02 much muscle do you need to put on? And then we have an equation by whereabouts where after the the person does like uh
14:08 essentially about two weeks of training and we can look at their their logs within when in the app we can go right
14:13 this is where your current baseline of strength actually is for you to be at this body composition. You need to
14:19 deadlift x amount. You need to be able to chest press x amount. You need to be able to, you know, do a thigh movement
14:25 like a squat or a hack squat or something for this amount. You need to be able to do x amount on your row. X
14:30 amount on your hip thrust. So we’ve we’ve got this equation by which lean body mass is determined by how strength
14:36 how how strong you get in the gym and then that way when the inevitable question always gets asked around how
14:41 long is this going to take I just go well that how long is it going to take you to add you know 180 lbs to your
14:49 deadlift and you sort of see the deer in the headlights and they’re like oh that’s going to take a long time. And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s that’s probably
14:56 right, but we can reverse engineer it and just go, do you reckon you could put a pound a week onto the bar for you to
15:01 deadlift? You know, continue to progressing that deadlift.” And they’ll go, “Yeah, I could do that.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool. You now know more
15:07 than 99% of fitness individuals because you’ve just realized that you have a very simple equation in which to build
15:13 the body you want, you have to get exponentially stronger. If we’ve determined exactly how strong you need
15:19 to be, you reverse engineer. You work out how many weeks you need to before you get there. So I’m the whole point of
15:24 the app and what we’ve designed is essentially to create or sorry to remove all of the white noise that comes with
15:30 you should be training like this, you should be doing fast, you should be doing this, you should be doing that. It’s just like we test and measure. We
15:35 set the body composition, we set the goal, body composition, we set the strength goals and we start working
15:40 towards that goal. Client does their check-in every week. We then look at all the metrics. So you know their uh their
15:46 body fat percentage, their lean body mass, all their measurements, their uh their nutrition compliance. We’ve got
15:51 the full food tracker in there which is basically just like my fitness palette works exactly the same way. Um all of
15:56 the subjective measures so stress, energy, mood, sleep, digestion, uh weather and the menstrual cycle, any
16:03 symptoms and getting around with that. And then also the temperature and pulse which is you know our biggest objective metric when it comes to assessing um
16:10 metabolism in general. Um and then we’ll have you know some other tests around depending on you know gut health and a
16:16 few things like that we’ll utilize but it’s essentially just trying to create what’s been made a very over complicated
16:23 process into a very simple logical you know uh results or outcome driven you
16:31 know process. It’s interesting like I was on a call because I do a group call once a week in our group coaching
16:37 program like 10 women on there and one of the ladies got on and she’s like telling me she joined our program because she was sleeping three hours a
16:43 night for five [ __ ] years cuz she was doing like low carb and she said two weeks into your program I slept through
16:50 eight hours. I literally woke up and cried and she’s like I’m just eating so many more carbs. Like I’ve learned how to do
16:56 the food prep. She’s like, once you actually go through this process, you realize all of the [ __ ] out there is
17:02 just [ __ ] Like it’s actually not that difficult. Like eat enough, include all the nourishing foods, get some
17:09 sunlight, get strong, you know, get enough sleep. And then then we then we we do work, we have specific
17:14 supplementation protocols we do with people, but based on what they need, not like every woman needs every supplement.
17:20 So yeah, it just is quite incredible because once you can show them the
17:26 physical data and show them that their body is changing because so many of them too are so stuck in this like I just
17:32 need to lose weight. I just need to lose weight and I this is another example a lady on our call yesterday. She came in
17:37 with adrenal fatigue. She’s like 75 kilos and five foot. She’s pretty tall. Taller than me and I was looking at her
17:45 D. You’re you’re 5’8 for people listening. 5’8. Yeah. So, so she’s like 510 or something like pretty tall, 176 cm
17:53 and um she’s like I just feel so much better kitty like eating the carbs and I’ve been prepping my food and you know
17:58 I was just reminding her listen what we want you to do is eat at maintenance for a while and work on body recomposition
18:04 cuz we need to support your adrenals, improve your metabolic health, build your build your foundation of muscle and
18:09 then slowly recmp your body. And she’s like yeah yeah no I know you’re right. It’s just you know like we’re so stuck in this mindset of [ __ ] we’ve got to
18:15 lose weight. got to lose weight. But because they can see the data every week and when they check in, they’re like, “Oh, I can see my muscle going up and my
18:21 fat going down. I can feel my body changing.” It it gives them that motivation to keep going. Because this
18:28 process for most of them is going to take 12 plus months, you know, when you [ __ ] yourself for 20 years like us doing dumb [ __ ] you
18:35 know, like eating chicken and apples and taking mass of drugs and drinking alcohol, like you can’t fix that [ __ ]
18:41 and build your dream body in like three months. that when they have this data and we get them focusing on the strength
18:46 and the nourishment and feeling better and sleeping better, it just becomes more fun and enjoyable and more
18:54 sustainable. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you know you guys I
19:00 was going to ask this question, but I know you guys said you’ve helped over 18,000 women and I would say what is one
19:05 of the most common myths women over 40 still believe about weight loss and health? You touched on one of them,
19:11 Craig, which is cardio, right? We grew up in this era of cardio cardio. I had a trainer who I fired recently, but I had
19:18 a trainer who like he was a man. First of all, I should have known better. No offense, but sometimes men,
19:23 we’re not all bad. Oh, jeez. We’re not all bad. But he the first thing he said to me was
19:29 like, “You have to do 30 minutes of fasted cardio every day, and I want you like dying.” And I was like, “Okay, my
19:35 adrenals are already shocked. That’s not a good idea.” Well, you’re never going to get skinny if you don’t do 30 minutes of cardio. I was like, “What is wrong
19:41 with you? I was like, “Okay, maybe you know what he’s talking about, right?” Like, “Fine, you’re the, you know, I don’t want people telling me how to be a
19:47 doctor.” So, I did it for like three months and I felt like absolute garbage.
19:52 Like, whenever I would go to lift, I would like I couldn’t lift. I was, you know, I was just like, “No, I’m going to
19:57 go back to walking because he had me like stair climbing until I was about to fall off the stair climber.” Like, I walk. I like walking. I love walking in
20:05 the morning, but like that whole like get up and just kill my adrenals didn’t go well for me like at all. I couldn’t
20:12 lift, you know, and I was like, I want to make muscle. And so I actually got fatter and looked worse. And I was like,
20:17 I’m paying you a lot of money to look like a girl. So
20:22 body trainer. And so now I’ve just been like walking in the morning and strength training again, doing some Pilates, and
20:28 I’m starting to see some of my muscles come back. So can I just add a little point in here because I get this asked this question
20:34 all the time. People think that we’re like, “Oh, you guys are any cardio.” And that’s not the case. I am.
20:39 No. Like I always say to women in the context of body composition. Yeah. But we a lot of women come in too,
20:46 they’re like already overwhelmed. They’re busy. They’ve got kids. They’ve got work. And we’re like people like you
20:51 have to do sprints. You have to do zone 2 cardio. You have to walk. You have to strength train. So what we do is go
20:56 let’s just what what can you manage right now? Three days a week of strength training. Great. Can you walk? That’s easy. Let’s work on your nutrition. And
21:02 then after that, once we’ve built that solid foundation and they’re feeling good, cuz some of our clients do like to
21:08 sprint and they do they are healthy and they’re but a lot of them don’t. But then again, I also too like I
21:13 personally, you know, I was having this argument with some chick on Instagram. She’s like, “Oh yeah, but because I
21:19 posted what I did in my fat loss phase.” So I when we came to Thailand I went a bit yol yolo and I just enjoyed Thailand
21:24 too much and drank too many [ __ ] pina coladas on the weekend and you know um I put on like three kilos ate too many red
21:31 duck curry so I just did a sevene fat loss phase it was very easy I dropped like 3.5 kilos and then now back up to
21:37 maintenance um and yeah this woman was like yeah but kitty and I just posted what I did so my cardio was just like
21:44 walking I like the cross trainer I walk the dogs I play pickle that gets my heart rate up so I said I just do
21:49 activity I enjoy It gets my heart rate up. I keep it’s I keep active. And she’s like, “Yeah, but
21:55 shouldn’t you be doing sprints?” Because these PhDs tell you. I’m like, “Well, I’m just going to go by how my body
22:00 feels, like how my temps and pulses, how am I sleeping? How am I recovering? If that’s all good, I’m not going to do
22:05 something just because some PhD tells me I have to do it to be healthy.” Right.
22:10 But I’m also not saying don’t do it. Yeah. So, that’s a good point. So this
22:16 is like this is the foundation that my practice sets on is everyone is different. Like every single human is
22:22 different when you look at lab work. It’s different. I mean you have to meet that person where they are. And so if you you know my husband used to love to
22:29 run marathons. How about it babe? Not for me. He goes and runs on track sometimes like hey babe let’s go sprint.
22:36 Not for me. I’m not running unless I’m being chased. I don’t like it. Like I will walk. I will lift heavy things. I
22:42 am not running. Like that’s not my thing, you know? But like if you want to sprint, then have at it. And so that’s
22:48 one of my problems with Instagram too and all these people like you must do this, you must eat carnivore, you must
22:53 eat keto, you must No, you should do what makes your body feel well and what something that you can do long term.
23:01 Enjoy. Because part of the fact that you lose weight is that your stress and cortisol are high. And in order for your
23:06 stress and cortisol not to be high, you have to be happy. You have to sleep. All the things. And so to your point, it’s
23:12 just like people I think that’s one of the biggest myths that women over 40 still have, right? Is that they must do
23:17 all this cardio? They can’t eat any carbs. They have to, you know, restrict themselves.
23:23 But it’s like how are you supposed to lift and actually really lift when you’re not eating anything?
23:28 I think too like obviously there’s benefits to sprinting and like cardio, but it’s like if you’re active, if
23:34 you’re doing if you’re active in ways you enjoy, like we play pickle. We’re just obsessed with pickle, aren’t we,
23:39 Craig? Like our whole group isdeed because we’re getting better. We’re quicker. We’re mov like that really gets
23:45 your heart rate up. So to me I’m like we play for an hour and a half twice a week sometimes.
23:50 Not constantly like you swap in and out but that’s getting my heart rate up. It’s movement I love. I get connection.
23:56 I’m like it’s fine. Yeah. I I I I think I’d just like to add
24:02 to this too that it’s you know obviously Kitty makes a point of saying you should
24:07 do what you you love to do right and you know some of the women who do come into our program they’re like well I really
24:13 love to do cardio I really love to sprint I love to do these things and I go okay cool let’s just for a second
24:18 let’s put the emotional attachment aside because it’s 100% that is the case let’s
24:25 talk about the goal body composition that you want so when they say like we will work this out and it’s just like
24:31 okay they’ve got to gain you know four let’s say 5 pounds of lean body mass I go cool is the cardio that you’re doing
24:39 going to help you build that lean body mass they will unequivocally say well no I need to be lifting weights and I go
24:44 okay cool so we’ve established that we understand that how much you eat is going to determine your body weight yes
24:51 okay cool so cardio is a modality that’s going to help with further energy
24:57 expenditure throughout the Okay. But for every give me, there is a gotcha.
25:03 You only, if you’re training to the level to actually genuinely put on the the the 5 lbs of lean body mass that
25:10 we’ve determined, you’re going to need to get exponentially stronger, which means the training that I’m going to get
25:16 you to do needs to be getting pushed to the limit of your adaptive recover recoverable, you know, situation. Any
25:23 anything more than that is going to be detrimental. Now, there’s not a single woman that comes into our program. I’m
25:29 sure um you, Dr. Cassie, deal with women like this. No one’s living on an island,
25:34 kid-free, stress free, debtree, and just, yeah, cool, you can go and do that stuff,
25:39 right? Everyone’s recovery ability or recovery cup is bigger or smaller depending on what’s going on in life.
25:45 that the vast majority of women, they’ve got kids, they got a full-time job, they’re managing finances, they’re doing all of these things that ultimately to
25:52 get the body they want, the thing that’s going to take them further away from that high intensity cardio or higher
25:57 endurance, even things like F45, which is probably the worst because they’re doing, you know, anorobic uh sorry,
26:03 aerobic type stuff for 45, 60 minutes multiple times per week.
26:08 When you train to a level that creates enough stimulus to create an adaptation, you don’t recover for free, right? you
26:14 you still need to eat and sleep and do all those things, but anything that’s going to take away from that recovery
26:19 process is always going to be a net negative. So, we need to look at cardio as the thing that goes, okay, in the
26:26 terms of body composition, the equation is build muscle by getting strong in the gym, control your body weight with
26:32 calories, and we measure those two outcomes. You can’t measure the effect of what cardio is doing other than the
26:38 fact that you’re more exhausted and your hunger levels go up as a result of greater energy expenditure. Just because
26:44 someone is fitter does not mean that they are healthier. So the way that I’ve
26:50 always determined this is by using a temperature and pulse. Literally just cheap thermometer from the chemist. They
26:58 take their basil temperature in the morning. First thing they wake up 30 minutes after meal one, 30 minutes after meal two. The temps and pulses is all
27:05 you ever need to know to determine your current metabolic state. and if the modality of training you’re doing is
27:12 actually affecting you positively or negatively. So when you lift weights
27:18 you’re creating adaptations for muscle mass which increases basil metabolic rate. When you do cardio it does not it
27:26 has no effect except if you go over and do too much you’ll start to see a judgment. Now, obviously lifting too
27:32 much weights too many times per week or doing too much volume will also have that same effect, but there’s still
27:37 going to be some net positive there because there’s still going to be providing that you’re lifting with enough intensity, there’s still going to
27:43 be some muscle gain from that. So, we just have to kind of try and separate this emotional attachment of just going
27:49 you have to do cardio because you want to be fitter and all of the studies show that people who are fitter are
27:54 cardiovascular, fitter, and all of these sort of things. and I just go cool let’s
28:00 look and see what your temperature impulse is. If your temperature is you know under 97.4 on waking then you have
28:06 some sort of metabolic issue. If that continues to go down over time the more and more you do you’re getting further.
28:12 So fit people have a low temperature impulse right it’s not the fact of you
28:18 have a low temperature impulse you’re fitter. Like fitter does not mean healthier,
28:24 right? People who have no temper pulse are dead people. So you could make the
28:29 point that the closer you get to a lower temperature and pulse, the closer you are to death. The people, interestingly,
28:36 who have a higher temperature impulse and see these rays after they eat food, right? also have sleep through the
28:44 night, also have really good digestion, consistent bowel movements, good skin,
28:49 they don’t have any menstrual cycle symptoms, they’re resilient to stress is a lot higher. So, if I’m measuring against the subjective measures of how I
28:57 feel, sleep, digestion, mood, energy, metric, and the objective measure of temp and pulse, my muscle mass is going
29:02 up, and I’m doing all of that without doing the cardio. Well, you tell me who’s going to have a
29:09 better longevity outcome. There’s no one who’s ever going to be able to convince me that you need to do cardio for the
29:18 case of having better health. Does it make sense? Would you say you need to be active though? I think that’s where the
29:24 confusion. I’m not No, no, no. I’m not saying you can’t don’t be active. I walk 10,000 steps a day. We walk the dogs. We play
29:30 pickle. Right. But I’m saying for the deliberate act of going through to do a
29:35 deliberate cardio session. I’m taking time out of my day to go and do an activity to get into a zone 2 or zone 3
29:42 or do zone five hit training or whatever in the belief that is going to create a
29:47 better or more superior body composition. So you’re saying if you have better like
29:54 muscle or or you’re more fit, your temperature should go up after you eat. But there are though just I’m just going
30:00 to put this that we have seen clients and again I think you can’t just put the blanket statement out there that are
30:05 have you know I’ve seen clients who for example like have a slightly lower um
30:10 pulse like might be 60 or 65 you know they do more cardio they’re well nourished well fueled their temperatures
30:17 are are good you know there are people like that I think I think the biggest thing is that women are underfueled so
30:24 it’s folks yeah so so get so getting to the to the next point so as I mentioned for is we have
30:29 to look at the individual in terms of their stress bucket. If you are overworked and you’ve got minimal time, trying to create more time to doing a
30:36 thing that’s not going to give you a net positive doesn’t make any sense. But I’m not saying I’m like everyone
30:42 that we do I’m like you’ve got to be getting 8 to 10,000 steps per day, right? You just need to be active. like
30:47 after we try and go for a walk, you know, like we we obviously depending on the person in their life, that makes sense. But it’s just there’s just so
30:54 much um information, especially what you were saying before uh when you were working with your trainers like you need
31:00 to get up and do 30 minutes of [ __ ] what for? Well, because it’s going to help burn fat. I’m like, but it doesn’t.
31:08 Yeah. Right. It doesn’t. Yeah. And it actually makes me feel like crap. So tell me about pro metabolic
31:15 eating. So, it’s something that isn’t necessarily mainstream, right? But you guys talk about this. So, how do you
31:21 explain this in everyday language to women who, you know, have only known calorie counting or like restrictions?
31:28 What is pro metabolic eating? Craig will probably have a more scientific answer to this, but for for
31:34 me, like I feel it’s about nourishing, easy to digest foods that like our
31:41 grandparents used to eat. Like that’s how I look at it because I remember when I first did the consult with Emma and
31:46 she was talking me through all these foods like orange juice and potatoes and seafood and I was like do you know what
31:52 this is this exactly how my nie who was my she lived into her 90s used to feed me. So for breakfast she’d cook eggs in
31:59 butter. So she’d have the little you know the glass container on the side. She’d bake her own bread. The milk would
32:05 get delivered in glass bottles with the little silver tops. She’d make custard and ice cream. She’d do lots of roast
32:11 meat with roast vegetables cooked in tallow. Um, you know, like potatoes, parsnips. She’d have gu salads from her
32:18 garden, but they were side dishes. Um, you know, she’d bake all everything homemade. She’d make liver and kidney on
32:25 toast for my gramps, which was disgusting, with parsley. They had a big boat, Winda, and we’d go out fishing,
32:32 and we’d go get mud crabs, and they used to love oysters. And I’m like, this is just like good old-fashioned
32:38 nutrient-dense foods. Like, might I never remember drinking [ __ ] green smoothies and making almond flour cakes
32:45 and just eating dry chicken and salad. It was just very nourishing, nutrient-dense, easy to digest food and
32:51 they ate carbs and they got lots of sun. So, anyway, Craig can probably have a more scientific answer to that, but
32:57 that’s how it it feels to me. Like that’s how I describe it when I describe it. Um, oh, she she’d squeeze orange
33:04 juice every morning for us fresh for breakfast. It was the bomb. Yeah, I look I mean you eat food like
33:12 there’s foods that you like and there’s foods that like you, right? So, I think we need to determine that and that can kind of take into a bit more of a gut
33:18 health thing, but the whole protabolic sense is basically just eating foods that have the most nutrient-dense
33:24 uh sources available that you can easily assimilate and digest. Right? So again,
33:30 a lot of the women they’re coming from the like vegetarian diet or your vegan diet, eating lots of plants, lots of
33:35 nuts and seeds, things are hard to digest and they’ve all got gut problems. They’re all super bloated. They don’t have bowel movements. You know, their
33:41 liver is not detoxifying properly, like they’ve got low stomach acid, all of these things that are being controlled
33:47 by metabolism, and your metabolism is being controlled by the nutrients that you can actually absorb. So if we start
33:52 looking at food and kind of go okay here are all our carb choices which are the ones that are going to give me the most
33:58 bang for my buck in terms of nutrients generally that’s where we would want to start and then you want to kind of
34:03 design a new nutrition structure around your preferences in terms of what you enjoy to eat every day. So when you
34:09 actually look at it from that lens, you start to sort of realize that the
34:15 like the you know the the foods that are yeah the clean the say plant-based diet
34:22 because I’m not against plants but I think you know just like I said liver oysters are nature’s multivitamins. Like
34:29 if you actually run a Google panel and look at the nutrition that you get from that, you know, vitamin A is needed to
34:34 make progesterone that just about every woman is low in vitamin A, T3, and
34:40 cholesterol. So it’s like when you eat animal based foods, you start including liver, all of a sudden, you know, things will start to improve as a result. So
34:46 it’s just looking at foods for have the highest nutrient contents at the most bioavailable form and uh starting down
34:52 from there. Tasty as well, too. I’m like, [ __ ] I used to just like live like this was my diet. I would get up in the morning and
34:59 I would train fasted. Then I would eat egg whites scrambled with spinach and
35:04 then my morning tea would be like almonds and green beans or tuna with flax seed oil and green beans. Huge
35:10 chicken salad for lunch, boiled eggs and green capsic cuz I didn’t want to eat red capsic cuz it was too high in sugar.
35:16 And then my dinner was with like steamed heaps of steamed vegetables and then I’d
35:21 eat like diet jelly. And then I’d just fall off the wagon and binge eat on the weekend.
35:26 Yeah. Like it was crazy. Whereas now, like this morning I had two slices of sourdough, butter, jam, eggs with
35:33 palmesan cheese, an orange, coffee with milk, sugar, collagen. You know, lunch
35:39 is like rice, loads of rip tropical fruits, like pork cooked in coconut oil,
35:45 air fry chips cooked in lard, orange juice, homemade ice cream. It’s like every meal I eat, I think, I just love
35:52 this food, you know? Like I really look forward to my meals. I I really like food. I’m a big fan.
35:57 You ate all that stuff this morning already. The stuff that you No, this is what I’ve got planned to eat today. So, I’ve eaten the breakfast.
36:02 She hasn’t eaten ice cream for breakfast today. I haven’t eaten ice for breakfast. But yeah. No, listen. It’s so true. And
36:07 like, you know, all these people that get on social media and talk about like your green smoothies and your this and your like a lot of that stuff actually
36:14 hurts your gut. So, I tell people this all the time. So, I’m like a huge gut health, you know, expert. We do a lot of gut health testing. If you have SIBO, if
36:21 you have IBS, if you have a lot of these issues and you eat green smoothies and all this green juice, I mean, it it
36:28 actually makes it worse. It makes your SIBO worse. And so, sometimes all this healthy stuff that you’re eating is
36:34 actually worse. And to your point, Kitty, like I like to chew my food. I I like to like it. Um I lived, you know,
36:41 whenever I was 30 with like no carbs. And I’m the same way now. Like I’m eating sourdough bread every morning. It’s homemade. It’s made with, you know,
36:48 a really good flour that comes from Italy. So, I’m eating my sourdough bread every morning.
36:54 I eat forbidden rice. I have this amazing recipe for this black rice that
36:59 you slow cook with turmeric and almond milk and just like I eat so many carbs
37:04 now. But to your point, like it’s nourishing, it’s good. I don’t ever like last weekend I was traveling with my
37:10 husband and we were, you know, in a place where there was massive dessert everywhere. Like all over the place.
37:15 Everywhere we went had dessert and my husband’s like eating all the desserts and I’m like I don’t really want any because I’m eating all this good food
37:21 and I’m full when I’ve done, you know, used to when I starve myself and never eat carbs. I’m like, give me the cookies, give me the chocolate.
37:28 Yeah. When you’re eating rice and you’re eating good fats and you’re eating, you know, it’s like
37:33 potatoes, all the things. And to your point, it’s like I remember when I grew up, my my
37:40 grandma used to make me all sorts of good stuff and I was never hungry. And so it’s just it’s interesting. But I do
37:47 think that, you know, this pro metabolic eating is something that obviously you
37:52 can’t eat, you know, excessive amounts of all this food. Of course, you have to you have to track. Like that’s one of our things too
37:58 is is where I feel like a lot of women go wrong when they come into this space is they’re just like, “Oh, I can just eat all of this like milk and cheese and
38:05 all of these foods and not track and suddenly my metabolism is going to like improve and I’m going to and I’m just going to like drop all this fat.” I’m
38:11 like, “Well, no, what you eat matters, but how much you eat matters.” And this is exactly why we track it in the app
38:16 because a lot of women, they either undereat consistently, like that was like me and I was I was tiny,
38:22 or they undereat and then they binge and binge and binge, you know, so it’s sort of trying to get them to eat
38:28 consistently what they need on a day-to-day basis. Um, and balancing, you know, eating enough protein, getting
38:34 enough carbohydrates in, balancing the meals. And it’s just it literally blows like this woman posted on her page like
38:39 KK Bloomfield, you’re a [ __ ] genius. Day two of eating the meals that you guys have suggested, balancing my blood
38:46 sugar and I have so much energy and I’m sleeping through the night. I just feel so nourished. It’s like so basic.
38:53 Yeah. And just bringing back like the joy of eating to people too, right? Like you like you eat to live. You don’t live
39:01 to eat. And so it’s just like when I want I think I live to eat, you know? I Yeah. I mean, it’s just
39:07 But it’s good now. It’s a good thing. Like, I really I love cooking, too. Like, I always make Craig’s always like,
39:12 “No, you’re the best cook.” I’m not really the best cook. Craig’s just easy to please. But I love creating like new
39:17 delicious recipes and marinades and, you know, like all these yummy foods cuz I
39:23 just think you can have both. Like, you can be in good shape and be healthy and you can eat all of these delicious
39:28 foods. And once you can you learn about tracking and listening to your body and you actually give yourself enough of the
39:34 right foods, it doesn’t become this like, you know, like we can go out and I can just have one scoop of gelato. I
39:40 don’t need to eat the whole [ __ ] tub because I’ve restricted myself all day and I want to binge. I can just I can
39:45 just enjoy one scoop of gelato cuz I know that every [ __ ] day I get to eat delicious food I like. I eat ice at ice.
39:52 Last night my dessert was I make like um salted caramel ice cream and chocolate and I mix it together and then I
39:58 sprinkle granola on top and add milk. It’s incredible. Well, and not only that, but also like when you feel good and you exercise,
40:05 like for me, when I exercise, I know like, well, I need these carbs. They’re going to nourish my muscles. They’re going to And so it’s almost like a
40:11 win-win because it’s like, well, I exercise, so I get to eat my sourdough with my butter and, you know, I put my
40:16 eggs on it and I actually make homemade apple butter and things like that. So, it’s like, well, I get to eat this
40:23 because I also exercise and my body needs it, right? But it’s also to your point, like I think a lot of people eat
40:29 a lot of crap that’s processed as opposed to, you know, making it at home.
40:35 I eat I eat carbs, but I don’t eat processed carbs. So, I eat sweet potatoes, I eat rice, I eat fruit, I eat
40:41 vegetables, I eat homemade sourdough, but nothing that you buy at the store that like sits in your pantry for a
40:47 year. like my pantry doesn’t have things in it because that’s disgusting. Um and so I think you just have to again
40:52 think about like what they did when they didn’t have refrigerators, right? Yeah. Traditional foods like seasonal
40:58 stuff, you know, like Yeah, totally. And it’s really yummy though, too. You know, like we make homemade burgers
41:05 with sourdough and like meat patties and pickles and gouda cheese and then the air fried chips with the lard,
41:11 you know, with fresh juice, coconut water. I think it’s interesting too like
41:16 if you think about like whenever I was a kid or like even in my early 30s when I
41:21 would eat things like sandwiches and chips like I love I used to love Cheetos. I used to make Cheetos peanut
41:27 butter and jelly sandwiches with Cheetos. So disgusting. You know you could eat Cheetos like I remember
41:33 literally sitting there and eating Cheetos and eating like almost an entire bag and being like why am I not full? Like this is an insane amount of food,
41:39 right? But you can make a burger and eat sweet potatoes and like you like like tonight I had a piece of sweet potato
41:45 that was probably this big with some chicken breast, some vegetables. Um you know and it’s like I’m full. That sweet
41:52 potato made me full because it’s actually real food, you know, and but you could I guarantee you sit down with
41:57 a bag of Cheetos, see how many you can eat and then try to eat. I used to eat them too when I was younger and I’d drink heaps of alcohol
42:03 and the next day I’d be so hung over and I’d just smash those Cheetos. Just eat the terrible at the most terrible food
42:08 all over your fingers. Yeah. Yeah. They were pretty delicious though. They’re so dirty. But they hung
42:15 over. Peanut butter. Oh yeah. Not even like the good peanut butter like the cheap peanut butter, you know? But like that
42:20 stuff doesn’t fill you up. But when you actually eat real food, it actually makes you cool, you know? So it’s just
42:27 very So another question I want to ask you guys, how do you address this? So many women over 40 feel intimidated by
42:34 lifting weights, right? So, I have this all the time. Like, what do you say to someone who says that they’re going to get bulky if you make them start lifting
42:39 all these weights, Craig? Like, oh, you want me to deadlift 200 pounds? I’m going to look like a man. What do you say to somebody like that?
42:46 Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m like, I’ve been trying to do that for the last 10 years. Tell me that.
42:52 Yeah. I mean, that’s the uh that’s the point. It’s just like, well, if you end
42:58 up looking that way, come and tell me your secret. Because all of the women, all of the transformations, you look at us that they become
43:04 and use the word that they’re like tiny, but like I use that uh example at the the start, you know, you’ve got one
43:10 woman who’s 130 lbs at 30%. Uh the other woman who’s 130 lbs at 20% body fat. The
43:17 difference between those because they both got the same body weight. The difference between that is the the one who’s at 20% body fat has more muscle uh
43:24 and therefore she’s at the lower body fat percentage. So she has the smaller dress size because she has more muscle.
43:31 So this whole thing about oh if I lift weights I’m going to get bulky. It’s that’s absolutely physiologically not
43:36 how it works. Right? If we look at if I mean you can there’s a a picture on Google if you just type in like uh 2
43:43 kilos of muscle versus fat or something you’ll see the the the picture of the muscle there. It’s like this little
43:48 thing. It fits in the palm of your hand and then you see the 2 kilos of fat which is like five times the size. So
43:54 fat takes up more space in the body. So the more muscle you have then the the
44:01 the leaner you are if you’re not eating like an [ __ ] right? So as I mentioned at the start, if you eat too
44:07 much food, you put body fat on. If you put eat too much relative to your ability to get stronger and put on lean
44:12 body mass, the difference is the only changes in total body weight if we remove bones, organs, and all those sort
44:18 of things is muscle and fat. Muscle goes up as a result of getting stronger. fat goes up as a part of just eating too
44:23 many calories, right? And then if you’ve got metabolic issues, then it’s exacerbated a little bit more. But the
44:29 that that’s that’s the reality of it. So if we just kind of look at and kind of go, well, if we just get really strong
44:35 by what we lift in the gym and we control our body weight by the amount of food that we eat, then if you only put on lean body mass, you’re going to get
44:41 leaner as a result. So it’s from a physiological standpoint, you can’t quote unquote get bulky unless you just
44:48 eat too much food. You just consume too many calories. So yeah, if we’re just
44:53 bring like you do have to kind of eat like well it takes a long time to build like
44:58 a really decent amount of muscle. One of our clients yesterday on a call she’s um been in the program for 12 months and
45:05 she spent 9 months just building up her calories to like 2300 and she got to nearly double body weight deadlift. Like
45:10 that’s pretty strong. 120 kilos I think for two reps and she’s like 63 kilos.
45:17 She like it’s like she looks just like she’s tiny. tone. I’m like,
45:22 it’s just impossible. You got to train for like 10 like really heavy strength train to like to look like me.
45:29 It takes a long time and you have to lift a lot of heavy weights. Like it’s just not possible. Yeah. It’s so hard.
45:36 Yeah. Yep. No, I completely agree. But I think it’s just this again there’s a lot of influencers out there who, you know,
45:43 say stupid things and people just they don’t know any better. But I think that it is really important
45:49 that people talk about it like you guys talk about it, we talk about it so that people understand that. And yes, to
45:55 your, you know, I have somebody who did a program with me and it took her nine months, but she lost about 30 pounds,
46:02 lost 28 pounds of fat. Wow. She maintained her muscle. Yeah.
46:08 Maintained her muscle mass and even put on a little bit of muscle mass. Uh but she said, you know, she so good thing is
46:17 uh muscle memory. She was an old bodybuilder, right? So muscle muscle memory is good there, right? She’s like,
46:23 I lifted really really heavy, like heavier than I thought I would ever have to lift. And I was kind of scared, but
46:30 as she put that muscle back on, the fat just kind of came off, right? And so I
46:35 mean, it’s just I don’t know until people actually do it. And to your point, I think this is a good point,
46:40 too. Muscle. So, if you’re just going off a scale, this is what I hate scales. I call them cry boxes. I think everyone
46:46 should just throw them out the damn window. All they do is make people cry. Like an actual number on a scale, worthless. Completely worthless. How
46:53 much muscle mass do you have? Right? How much muscle mass did you have? Um, and I tell people this all the time, and I’ve
46:58 actually posted this on Instagram. So, I posted a picture of myself on Instagram at 120 pounds. Looked terrible. Like a
47:05 doughboy. Picture of myself at 132 pounds on like literally I did. I was just doughy
47:11 and nasty and like 132 lbs jacked with muscle, right? Up 12 lbs looked totally
47:17 different. I asked people which picture is me 132 pounds. Not one person picked the muscular picture and I was like 100%
47:24 it was this per this one. And they’re like there’s no way. There’s no way. It was because I had muscle, you know, and so and I but it took me a really long
47:31 time to make that muscle. And the more muscle I think this is what’s frustrating for women myself too, right?
47:37 Like I get in my own head sometimes too, but like I started developing muscle and then I kept trying to make muscle and my
47:42 weight actually keeps going up which kind of screws with your head, right? You’re like, damn, I’m 135 pounds now,
47:48 but I have 63 pounds of muscle. I used to have like 48 pounds of muscle, you know? So it’s like you have it scales
47:55 are stupid. That’s the point of that. Like they’re completely dumb. What you have to be looking at is like how much muscle you have, right? And then your
48:02 need to look at both totally different, right? Yeah. Yeah. You need to like this is why in our program we measure weight and
48:08 measurements and actual body composition because there are women like you’re like me we’re women that were underweight. So
48:14 I used to be like hovering around 60 at 5’8. So when I gained muscle I actually gained weight and looked better. But we
48:20 have women in our program that like 80 kilos and in order for them to actually they still need to put on muscle but
48:26 they have to lose body weight because you can’t be 80 kilos and 20% body fat. You’d be the most [ __ ] jacked female
48:31 ever. So I think it’s important like to look at all of the metrics and then look at the body composition because
48:38 Yeah. would you agree Craig? Like and I think a lot of women too like once we get them cuz I used to it used to be a total head [ __ ] for me the weight like
48:44 I’d weigh myself every day but once I went through and worked with Craig and we looked at the body composition it really took away that tri trigger of the
48:50 weight cuz I was like it’s just a it’s just another metric and at the end of the week like I’m looking at everything.
48:57 I’m looking at my body composition, how I’m sleeping, and it really took away that trigger because I realized too that
49:02 even when I was 100% consistent, my weight would fluctuate daily because of like where I was in my
49:08 cycle, if I taken a [ __ ] you know, how was I hydrated? Did I train legs the day
49:14 before? So, I think the weight I agree, I do think that the weight is important
49:19 to look at, but as with all of the other metrics as well, I think I really care about whether my pants fit
49:25 or not. Like that’s what true true but there’s a lot of women like that
49:31 are not like us that they’re bigger they’re like 80 90 kilos and for them they have to lose weight like but they
49:37 also have to build muscle so they’re recoming their body which I I think I think I think that’s the important dist distinction is that
49:44 they they need to lose 20 kilos of body weight but we want that 20 kilos to be from fat not muscle. So that’s that’s
49:51 again if we’re measuring calories that body weight comes down and we’re measuring the strength that’s going up,
49:56 the body fat is going to be the thing that they lose. And I think for a lot of women who are usually overweight, they
50:02 usually do the extreme diet. So they lose a lot of weight um but they lose a lot of muscle mass which is obviously
50:07 the big controversy at the moment with the GLP1s is that you know they’re they’re eating such low calories but
50:14 they’re not they first of all they don’t have the habits to be able to sustain it when they finish the GLP1 but also that
50:20 they’re their training capability when they started the GLP1 was very very low. They’re likely not training in any kind
50:26 of capacity to maintain even maintain their lean body mass. So when they end up losing the 20, 30, 40 lbs, it’s going
50:34 to be a lot of fat, but it’s also going to be a lot of muscle. And this is where, you know, the the issue tends to
50:39 come in. So I will say though, we use I use very very micro dosed GLP ones. And in my
50:44 girl who lost 28 pounds of muscle, she was actually on a micro I mean tiny amount.
50:51 But so it depends on how you do it, right? But yes. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah, 100%.
50:56 Track that every week too. So like if you start losing muscle, you’re done. But I think that in a lot of people it
51:01 helps with inflammation in very low amounts assuming that you’ll lift weights. But there are also skinny fat
51:07 people as well, right? So I see people who are thinner like 120 pounds and you think, “Oh, they’re perfect.” You look
51:14 at their body mass and it’s like you have 39 pounds of muscle. This is a huge problem. Like you’re actually like that
51:20 this is not good. Right. So I think that the muscle is is super important. And to your point, like yes, those people need
51:26 to lose some body weight, but muscle, it just goes back to muscle. It’s just so important. And we were so brainwashed,
51:32 like Kitty said, if you grew up in the 80s or 90s, we we’re so brainwashed into being like this big. Everyone wanted to
51:39 be this big. All the people that were this big have
51:46 no 100%. It’s interesting though, you talked about the information. Like we we we’ve have clients come into our program who’ve done GLP1s and like not done it
51:53 well and they’ve ate [ __ ] all and they’ve lost heaps of muscle. But we get a lot of women because we don’t obviously prescribe it or use it in our
51:59 program. But one of the biggest things feedback we get is like that all our clients inflammation. It lowers
52:06 inflammation like our nutrition approach. And you know we use a lot of aspirin, vitamin K, you know,
52:11 progesterone other things like it’s my brother and sister both have cancer. One has breast cancer. She’s been
52:18 through like all the treatment. My brother had stage four saroma. And so Craig and I got on, did this huge
52:23 protocol with him, like all of these supplements, got him on progesterone, aspirin. It was interesting. He went for
52:29 his first scan. He did chemo, but apparently only like 20% of people
52:34 actually respond to chemo in this type of cancer. It’s a muscle cancer, so it’s very low. And the survival rates beyond
52:40 5 years is like 15%. He went in for his first scan after a couple of rounds of chemo, and the doctor’s like, “You’re
52:45 actually nearly cancer-free.” And so anyway, we went and got all our markers done, like we got tests and got our
52:51 inflammation done, all of our cancer markers really low and all our inflammation was really low. So it’s
52:57 like I truly believe that through diet, lifestyle, specific supplements, you can actually really lower inflammation.
53:04 Um I just don’t think people know what to do. They just don’t. Yeah. No, I think that is true. It’s if
53:10 people will do that or not. But then it’s also the toxic environment you live in, right? So a lot of people I mean you
53:15 guys live in Thailand it’s a little more conducive but like in America I tell people this all the time you usually are
53:21 not going to get well in the same environment you got sick. So if you’re not willing to change your job change your location change your mindset change
53:29 you know a lot of things you’re probably not going to get better unfortunately. True. Yeah. So that’s part of the problem in the
53:36 states right is like you have to change the environment you got sick in. Yes. So
53:42 agree inflammation is the key to all illness. Like that’s what I’ll tell you. Every patient I see at Modern Endocrine
53:48 and we see hundreds of people. We do extensive blood work. Everyone that comes to our clinic has a
53:54 ton of inflammation. High CRPs, high insulin, high ESRs, their liver enzymes
53:59 are starting to be high, their glucose, you know, it’s just it’s so crazy. And it’s like you have to go back to the
54:05 very basics of like how are you sleeping? Are you pooping every day? What is your nutrition like?
54:10 Are you talking to yourself? Are you moving? Do you see the light? Just so many things that are really important,
54:17 right? But all those things affect how they move, right? So, like you know this, Craig, like if I come to you and
54:22 I’m like, “Hey, fix my body composition, but I feel like crap on the inside. Like everything hurts.” And you’re like,
54:27 “Hey, Cassie, deadlift 200 lbs.” I’m like, “That’s not going to happen because I don’t feel good.” You know, I don’t lift it up
54:32 because it hurts. No. No. And and that’s that’s a great point. And I and I think you know
54:38 obviously when we’re working with clients obviously meeting them where they’re at and I’m I’m not saying if a person can’t even deadlift you know
54:44 close to their body weight I’m not going to be like okay we’re going to be deadlifting 200 lb in a week do you know so it go ahead go ahead
54:50 but I was just going to say this is one of the things I love about our app and like when people say lift heavy heavy is
54:56 relative to the individual. So what why I love our app so much and how Craig’s designed the training component is so
55:02 let’s a client will come in they’ll have a training program three or four days for every exercise in the first week
55:08 there’s a detailed video tutorial so let’s say you got a leg press so you’re just going to pick a weight let’s say you’re a completely [ __ ] new beginner
55:15 you’ve never lifted weights before you might put 10 kilos on the leg press you’re going to do as many reps as you can with good form until you can’t do
55:22 anymore so let’s say you get 10 you put that into the app the app then calculates your 1 RM and it bases your
55:30 progression on what you did the week before. So it always meets you where you’re at. So he heavy that’s heavy to
55:36 that woman. Doing 10 kilos to 10 reps of leg press is heavy. But then it progresses her week to week based on
55:42 where she’s at. And it’s amazing. Like we get so many women come in and go, “Fuck, I’ve made more progress on in
55:48 your app in three months than I have in five years.” Because one, I was doing like three sets of 10. I was never actually pushing the
55:54 sets close to value. my technique was [ __ ] And so I think, you know, if like
55:59 women, we get a lot of women coming in our program who’ve never lifted. I signed up this lady to our program like
56:05 six months ago and she was just adamant she wasn’t going to go to the gym, but she really wanted to change her body composition. And I’m I’m pretty like
56:11 direct. I just said to her, “You’re just not going to get the result you want if you train at home with dumbbells. You
56:16 can start with dumbbells, but you’ll progress beyond them.” So I said, “I get it. I understand you’re afraid, but can
56:22 you just go and can you just try?” And so she decided to do it. Six months later, she gets on one of my calls and I
56:28 was like, “How’s everything going?” She’s like, “You know what? I need to probably be be a bit more consistent with nutrition.” She’s like, “I [ __ ] love the gym. I love it. I love the app.
56:36 You were right. I was a little bit scared when I first went in. I wasn’t quite sure about the exercise. I just watched the videos. Did what the app
56:42 said and then every week I just got a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger. And now I feel really, really
56:47 confident. And I’m so much stronger than where I started at.” And she’d never lifted weights in her life.
56:53 So, you know, again, it’s not like when we say lift heavy, we don’t mean every woman goes into the gym and deadlifts
57:00 100 kilos off the bat. You start where you’re at and then we progress you from there. And you would be
57:06 that’s that’s got to be the goal down the road. But, yeah, as as you start where you’re at and like you sort of
57:11 said, if someone’s really really [ __ ] that the the thing is it’s it’s training volume that I found is the biggest
57:16 issue. So for you know some clients who are really really power I get them to do a one-split workout where it’s like one
57:22 push movement. So it might be a chest press machine, one pull movement which is a lat pull down uh like a dumbbell
57:28 squat and then maybe like a lying leg curl or something like that. Like literally like those four movements.
57:34 They repeat that same thing uh three times per week or even two times a week. And we we monitor levels like with the
57:40 the temps and pulses obviously really trying to do their food. And as they start to feel better and their their
57:45 recovery starts to improve, we start to increase the volume a little bit. But the reality is most people don’t need to be doing more than, you know, six to
57:53 eight sets per body part per week, you know, and you can do that in three sessions per week or some people prefer a 4 day split where they train the upper
57:59 one day and lower another day. Um, you really just don’t need that much. you know, it technique execution is a huge
58:05 one because then you can express the strength that you’re ultimately trying to get to in order to change your body
58:11 composition. And when you do, you never program anything more than two sets for people. Like that’s all the stimulus
58:17 that they need. You know, I I kind of I I put it back to like getting a suntan, right? If you have no if you’re pale
58:24 white, you don’t go out and sit in the in the midday sun for half an hour because you just burn and then you it
58:30 just goes nowhere. Training is the same. You go out and smash yourself. If you’re so sore for so many days, you’re tired, you feel like [ __ ] you can’t do
58:36 anything. So, it’s just like we just start with with a suntan, you might just go out for a couple of minutes, right?
58:42 And then you come back inside, let your body recover, you get a little bit more conditioned to that, and the next time you go out for 4 minutes, and then you
58:47 go to six minutes, slowly over time that that T will develop. It hasn’t, you know, created any any issues. You
58:54 haven’t got sunburn or anything, and it just happens. Training is exactly the same. You just need enough stimulus to create an adaptation and then you go
59:00 home and like you said, you do all the things. you get the sun, you start prioritizing sleep, you start prioritizing nutrient-dense foods. Um,
59:08 you know, have more sex, you know, do the things that are that are having more of a stress reduction. Yeah.
59:14 You do yoga, you breathe, all I love. Yes. You do things that make you happy
59:20 that drop dopamine. Ideally, more sex always, always more sex. Yeah. All the husbands like, “Yeah, we agree
59:26 with you, Craig. We agree. We agree.” Okay. So yeah, I think that
59:31 that’s all really good information and I and I definitely want um you to tell everyone. So what is the name of your
59:37 app? Like how can people find it? We can definitely put it in the show notes, but what’s the name of your app? So you can’t just use our app on its
59:43 own. It’s we designed it to facilitate the coaching. Um so you can work with us
59:49 like we have three ways you can work with us. We’ve got a challenge um rebuild your metabolism 28 day challenge
59:54 which is a really good introduction to our method. You know everything that we’ve talked about. We have group coaching program which is a 12-month
1:00:00 program and then we’ve got our one-on-one coaching where you can work with the um coach oneonone. So, it’s all
1:00:06 of the it’s all the same method. It’s just that what’s the level of support, coaching, and accountability that you
1:00:12 want. Uh if that makes sense. Okay. So, we’ll make sure that we link your stuff in the show notes so everyone
1:00:19 can find it. I want to transition and ask you guys three questions. Don’t overthink them.
1:00:24 very easy like it’s quick answers but what is one food that you think is most beneficial and why
1:00:31 okay why liver it’s just one of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet like Craig said
1:00:36 vitamin A which is used to make your protective steroid hormones um copper CoQ10 B vitamins
1:00:44 what else the ratio ratio of copper to zinc is really good uh oh look you you I mean
1:00:50 you can be hardcore and you can do what Liver King does and eat it raw Well, you can buy our saturated liver
1:00:56 capsules. We That’s why we made them. So, Saturate, we made organic Australian freeze-dried beef liver capsules
1:01:02 because a lot of our clients were like, “Oh, I just can’t stomach the liver.” So, I take them every day. So, I just
1:01:07 say to women like, “Get it in. How we can get it in?” 100 grams a week fresh. Sometimes I make beef liver pad, which is yummy. Um, but mostly I just take the
1:01:14 Saturray A+ organic liver capsules. Okay. I’ve never had anyone say liver
1:01:20 and you both said it at the same time. I tried to eat organ meat once and it
1:01:25 was just it was a lot for me. Just get the living. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s all of the organ meats are really tough to eat. I mean,
1:01:31 you can fry them, you can do garlic and stuff, but even then you’re just like, “Oh god.” Um, but it’s it’s one of those things
1:01:36 where the the the like you said that the nutrients the amount of nutrients in the bio available form just outweighs just
1:01:42 about anything. So, I mean, to put it into chat GBT and just compare it to Yeah. you know, just normal red meat or do it
1:01:48 against eggs. You’ll just you’ll just see the for for the amount of what you get. It’s just exponentially more. So
1:01:55 liver and then oysters is a quick second. I’ll get the capsules. I can do anything for health. I’ll get the capsules.
1:02:01 What is one thing that people can do for their health that’s 100% free? Get sunshine. You go first.
1:02:07 One thing. Greg, you go first. 100% free. Uh sleep. 100%. Eight hours sleep. Yeah.
1:02:14 I mean, that’s that’s that’s the lowhanging fruit that life is just going to be better if you just get more sleep.
1:02:20 What about you, kidding? Yeah, I was going to say sleep. Actually, that’s true. Cuz I’m always like [ __ ] very angry when I don’t get
1:02:26 enough sleep, aren’t I? Cuz I can’t attest to that. Well, everyone is. Everyone’s a pain in the ass when they’re
1:02:31 doesn’t have a good sleep. If I’m stressed, you know, if I’m obsessing about something or work’s stressing me out, you know, I get cranky.
1:02:37 So, the next time somebody’s rude to me, I’m going to say, “How much sleep did you get last night?” Yeah. Absolutely.
1:02:43 And having slept enough. Yeah. Well, the carbs will help you sleep. So, there you go. Did you eat enough carbs? Have you
1:02:49 slept? Yeah. I reckon it’s like Exactly. Yeah. Have you had enough sex?
1:02:54 And not enough sex. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Okay. And the last question I have for
1:03:01 both of you is, what is one thing you wish you would have known about your health 20 years ago that you would have
1:03:06 done differently? You go first, Kitty, because that way Craig can’t spoil yours. What would you have done differently about your health 20 years
1:03:12 ago? Just cuz I think about like when I was before I started doing all the diets and I just ate food and I didn’t worry about
1:03:19 my weight, you know? So, if I could go back and just not fall into the trap of the Kate Moss dieting and just keep just
1:03:25 eating like I just ate a balanced diet, you know, and I I never worried about my
1:03:30 weight. So, I think I would have just not got sucked into all the diets. But then saying that then it’s like if I
1:03:35 didn’t do all that stuff, I wouldn’t have the business that I have now and be able to help all the women. It was part of my journey. But yeah, it would be
1:03:42 just not getting sucked into all these crazy [ __ ] diets. Okay. What about you?
1:03:48 Um yeah, it’s a really good question. I I think um I
1:03:53 I think just just eating enough of the right foods. Do do you know I it’s I mean it’s not a
1:04:00 particularly sexy answer but again I was I was you know when I was younger and I was wanting to get into training I just
1:04:06 followed the typical bodybuilding diet which was protein powders you know egg whites, nuts, lots of rice and you know
1:04:13 you just didn’t eat fruit or anything particularly enjoyable. Yeah. you know, and and it’s just I think if you eat a
1:04:18 variety of foods that you really enjoy that don’t cause you any um issues um
1:04:24 and like I said, understanding, you know, things like liver and oysters, like it’s just I I guess probably just having a greater understanding of food
1:04:31 um and what a food is actually doing and not buying into some marketing hype that’s, oh, kale is like a superfood.
1:04:37 I’m like, it’s [ __ ] not. It doesn’t do anything. Like, it’s just it’s so overhyped [ __ ] you know? So,
1:04:42 that’ll be it. It just hurts your stomach if you eat too much of it. 100%. Yeah, exactly. It causes more
1:04:48 issues. Yeah, exactly. Okay, perfect. So, I think both of those answers are wonderful. So, is there
1:04:55 anywhere So, tell everyone where they can find you if they want to find you guys, work with you guys. Just social
1:05:00 media. Do you have a website? Let everyone know. Yeah, I probably say just go to Instagram. So, it’s Kitty Ki Ty B L O M
1:05:07 F I L D. And if you click on the link in my bio, you can see our website, our podcast, our supplement companies. Um,
1:05:14 it’s just all there. We’ve got a free group. We’ve got a podcast like you. So, we will link all that in the show
1:05:20 notes. Do you have any parting words? Anything that you want listeners to maybe take away from this?
1:05:25 I feel like women just need to like stop doing the dumb diets. But you have to
1:05:31 start realizing that improving your health and getting the body that you want, it’s going to take you 12 months.
1:05:38 You know, like a lot of women come into cuz we’re very much about empowerment and teaching them. So, we teach them how to about macros. We teach them how to
1:05:44 build their own meal plans, track their food, learn how to train. So, we give them the skills and the knowledge so they can go and do this themselves. But
1:05:51 a lot of women come in going, “Oh, I just want you to do everything for me.” But I’m like, “You have to take the time, slow down. This isn’t a race.” So
1:05:58 if you take that time pressure off yourself, stop expecting quick results and start just being more curious about
1:06:05 learning this stuff, I think it just becomes so much easier and just you’ve
1:06:10 got to accept that it can’t be quick. Yeah. No, I 100% I I think you know we
1:06:16 can’t want this any more than you want it for yourself. So you know I think it’s everyone’s responsibility to to be
1:06:22 a bit more proactive to understand how things just work at a basic level. I know look I understand it’s a bit tricky with the noise of of social media. Um
1:06:30 but you know if if you start looking at you know well how do I feel? It’s like I feel like [ __ ] I’m like okay let’s
1:06:36 let’s start to just get a bit bit curious as to why that is you know and I think um like I said if you’re doing if
1:06:42 you’re getting if you start prioritizing sleep you start eating carbs if you start getting excited about getting
1:06:48 strong in the gym um pull the cardio back you know just get some grounding every day get sunlight in your eyes. If
1:06:53 you just do those things, you will see a pretty dramatic change pretty quickly.
1:06:59 Um, so yeah. Well, thank you both for taking the time to come on our podcast.
1:07:05 No worries. Thank you for having us. Yeah, we appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I
1:07:11 thought that it was very important to make sure that you hear from somebody other than me that fat diets are not the
1:07:17 best way to lose weight, especially in our 40s. That we don’t need to be so super restrictive. So, we really just
1:07:22 need to look at food as a way of life and making sure that we’re nourishing our bodies and eating until we’re full.
1:07:27 I also like Craig and Kitty’s perspective on how to recmp your body, how lifting heavy weight can be done as
1:07:34 a woman, but maybe starting out where you are and developing a process to getting there. Not overex exercising,
1:07:40 not an excessive amount of cardio. All these things I preach about, but I like for you guys to hear from somebody else
1:07:46 who’s been on this journey and who has helped thousands of women. So, if you liked this episode, please make sure
1:07:52 that you share it with somebody that it could benefit. Please leave me a review wherever you get this podcast episode.
1:07:57 Let me know that you like what we’re doing. Follow me on social media. Let me know who you would like for me to interview or what you would like for me
1:08:03 to talk about on the next episodes. If you haven’t caught our gut health accelerator live program, you definitely
1:08:10 want to make sure and get on the list to know when our next one is. So beneficial in helping you connect the dots between
1:08:15 symptoms and gut health. And Modern Endocrine is now licensed in 42 states. We would love for you to be a patient.
1:08:22 For more information, check out our website. Have a wonderful week and thank you so much for spending this hour
1:08:28 learning about your health.
Disclaimer:
The information presented including any materials discussed, referenced, or linked within this podcast are for general educational purposes only, not the practice of medicine.
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If you are experiencing any health problems, including problems you believe have been touched upon in any respect within this podcast, you should consult your doctor about the problems without delay. You may ask your doctor whether he or she believes the information I have provided would be helpful to you, but you should still consult your doctor immediately and follow his or her medical advice as your treating physician.
I’m just here to provide you with basic knowledge about the issues we discuss so you are more aware of them and can better discuss them with your doctor.
That’s why we call it Back to the Basics. Join me on the next episode as we continue our journey.