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9. Midlife Physical Wellness with Michelle Stiff
98 Plays1 year ago
How do fitness and nutrition affect our midlife?
This week, I am joined by a close friend, Michelle Stiff, a Women’s Health, Fitness & Metabolism Coach, teaching women how to reset their metabolism, shed stubborn inches, and regain confidence using a sustainable and flexible macro approach.
Michelle shares her journey of struggling with the yo-yo diet cycle that affected her fertility. After suffering multiple miscarriages, she had to find a better way even when doctors couldn’t help her. Using a mind-body holistic approach, she was able to improve her health & now has two healthy boys. She then went on to found her company, Wellness Elevate and create her signature program, the Metabolic Momentum Method - so that other women don’t have to suffer.
The Wellness Elevate team includes Transformational Nutrition Coaches and a Functional Diagnostic Practitioner who utilizes functional blood tests to identify each client's unique needs. Whether you're battling fat loss, managing hormones, or simply seeking better health & fitness, the WE team will tailor a customized plan that truly works for YOU.
Featured in this episode:
- Perimenopause and hormone fluctuations
- Resistance training and building muscle for metabolism
- 80/20 principle with food
- Batching meals and getting creative
- Exercise for purpose instead of just weight loss
Submit your questions on anything and everything women's health-related and we will answer them in one of our episodes.
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Transcript
Introduction to Michelle Stiff and Her Methods
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome back to Our Womanity. I have Michelle Stiff with me today. She's a women's health fitness and metabolism coach, teaching women how to reset their metabolism, shed stubborn inches, and regain confidence using a hormone-sink flexible macro approach.
Michelle's Personal Health Journey
00:00:17
Speaker
Michelle's journey from struggling with yo-yo diet cycle that affected her fertility. She unfortunately went through multiple miscarriages and she had to kind of figure out a better way even when medical care doctors just couldn't help her. She's got a mind-body holistic approach and she was able to rebalance her health, her hormones, and she's got two healthy boys now. She went on to found her company Wellness Elevate and create her signature program, the metabolic momentum method so that other women don't have to suffer.
00:00:46
Speaker
Michelle is truly gifted. She's a good friend of mine.
Founding of Wellness Elevate
00:00:50
Speaker
We met when I was living in Malawi and she and her husband were my husband and my personal trainers and they did classes that, you know, everybody in the community really loved to join and she's become a really dear friend since then. So I'm so excited to have her here with us today. Welcome, Michelle. Thank you for your time.
00:01:08
Speaker
Oh Rachel thank you so much for having me. I feel emotional just hearing that like our history together and I'm so honored to be here and to share. Yeah and Michelle is the best and she runs all of this stuff virtually so she's based in Florida now she's not in Malawi anymore but if you're wondering where her accent is from that's
00:01:27
Speaker
That's where she gets her beautiful accent from. But she's in Florida now and does virtual work. So we're gonna give you all information if you want to work with
Women's Health in Midlife
00:01:36
Speaker
her as well. But today we're talking about women's health and their midlife. So I feel like this is such a topic that all women at this point in life, you know, have struggles around. It's so true and struggles
00:01:49
Speaker
is unfortunately the right word for it because Michelle and I were just chatting you know I've got so many patients that as they're going through perimenopause and menopause they're asking me as their gynecologist what can I do about my body changes and my weight changes and my nutrition and honestly that's a really tough one for me to answer so I look to people like Michelle so Michelle
00:02:11
Speaker
Is that where we should just start? Just kind of test body changes and perimenopause? Yeah, absolutely. Because I see that often as well, that women feel like these symptoms are controlling their life. And they're confused because all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they feel like they're, say, gaining weight or belly fat and having extra fatigue or weakness and brain fog. And it feels like things are off, but maybe their labs and things are actually showing, oh, well, things look relatively normal.
00:02:40
Speaker
So what is the root cause of them not feeling as good at this point in life? And so yeah, coming to their doctors as questions like I haven't changed anything. But yet, things have changed in my body. And it's very frustrating. Yeah. And the thing that I hear all the time is I exercise five times a week, I do this, I eat really well, but I'm still gaining the belly fat. I'm not a big proponent of like the weight loss medications, people who are
00:03:06
Speaker
really at risk for diabetes, metabolic syndrome, all of those things, sure, but that's the thing that people are asking you for most frequently. But you tell me what you think. They're looking for a quick fix, and there just isn't.
Holistic Health Approach
00:03:20
Speaker
And we don't know the long-term repercussions of taking that in someone where it's not medically necessary.
00:03:26
Speaker
And so I really think that taking a holistic approach and getting to the root cause of what is the reason for the hormone balance, because hormone disruption is really not a root cause, it is a byproduct of some sort of dysfunction in the systems of the body.
00:03:43
Speaker
So it's kind of like if we were to have a massive boat that has a hole in it, or a massive hole in the boat, and we're trying to like scoop it out with tiny, like a tiny Dixie cup, it's not going to be effective rather than getting to the root cause of why there is that hormone imbalance to begin with. And it's usually some sort of system disruption, right, that happens and stress is a huge one. And as we go through
00:04:07
Speaker
perimenopause into menopause and postmenopause, we're losing our estrogen and progesterone, which is kind of like our suit of armor and our shield against stress to buffer us. And naturally, it has to decline. That's part of the aging process. But in that there's more anxiety, there's more sleep issues. And we have the most cortisol receptors in our belly area. So you've mentioned the belly fat. So when we're stressed out, that's the first place that it goes to.
00:04:35
Speaker
So we have to tackle it from a mind, body, soul approach to figure out what's going on with that unique individual.
Health Needs Across Life Phases
00:04:44
Speaker
Right. So where do you start with people? How do you help them? And I mentioned that some of my patients say that they work out five times a day, they eat well, and all of that. And some people have never worked out before, right? Yes, they're still frustrated about these body changes. So how do you meet people? How do you get started? And I always say that we have a female superpower, because we do have these
00:05:05
Speaker
hormonal fluctuations. And we're kind of like four different bodies throughout the month. And we go through different phases of life much more than men. And like, especially if we get pregnant, so we've got pregnancy, we've got postpartum, we've got perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause, men don't go through those phases the way we do. And we really haven't been studied as extensively as men have. So a lot of the generic fitness and diet programs out there are geared towards young men or athletes.
00:05:33
Speaker
And we're not, right? Like women aren't just small men. We don't need to do the same thing that men are doing. And we need to take into account those hormone fluctuations and the different phases that we go through throughout life as well. And really try to manage and mitigate that so we can feel our best. So as you've mentioned, every woman's unique.
00:05:52
Speaker
So I might have a woman coming to me who's been eating 900 calories a day where her maintenance should be maybe around 2000. And she's doing CrossFit or Orange Theory, a lot of like, high intensity cardio, she's sleeping for hours a night, and her body is absolutely stressed out. And we have to work to heal her metabolism, because that is the root cause of again, all of these imbalances. By contrast, we might have
00:06:18
Speaker
woman who never works out at all, but she's still stressed out. Maybe she's overeating or eating a lot of processed foods. So she's almost malnourished, but not on a macro level, on a micronutrient level, because the food she's eating is just not that nutritious. So
00:06:34
Speaker
you know, she's struggling with other stresses because it's not balanced. It's almost like finding the Goldilocks for each woman that sweet spot between what's effective and enjoyable what you can integrate into your life and sustain. I call it a discovery phase to figure out where that woman's metabolism sits. What is her lifestyle? What are the obstacles? And how can we weave it in in a way that just feels good? And
00:06:59
Speaker
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00:07:27
Speaker
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00:07:44
Speaker
You describe the two different women, like I've been both of those women at different times of my life. It's so interesting to think of it that way. Yeah, and you can swing between the restriction and then the kind of effort mode and going into just like, I don't care, I'm just going to do whatever I want and oscillating between them. There is like kind of 50 shades of gray in there that we need to find a happy balance in between which most women struggle to find.
00:08:10
Speaker
And you're totally right that they influence one another, right? Like I know when I haven't slept well, I am just craving the sugars and the carbs and things that like make me feel more awake for that minute to like get through that minute. But then I feel like crap later. Because your blood sugar is on a roller coaster at that point, right? It's
00:08:27
Speaker
spiking and dipping. Yeah. And so blood sugar dysregulation actually can cause a lot of other hormone imbalances as well. So that can be a rare cause that we need to address with a lot of women. And if you're stressed out and you're like starting your morning with just coffee and no food, you're actually increasing those stress hormones leading to more dysregulation throughout the day as well.
00:08:48
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Okay. All right.
Nutrition as Medicine
00:08:50
Speaker
My mind is all over the place. I'm thinking like the nutrition side and physical activity. Why don't we start? We start with one of them. Which one do you want to start with? Yeah, let's start with the nutrition because I think that piece and in terms of
00:09:03
Speaker
really managing symptoms that we've talked about, nutrition is medicine. And it's not universal in terms of like, there is good and bad foods, like I really don't like to moralize foods, but there are foods that obviously give us more nutrition and foods that give us less. But in our modern society, we tend to be eating, you know, again, the convenience foods, the processed foods,
00:09:26
Speaker
that our body isn't naturally meant to really digest and assimilate, right? So on a cellular function, we can improve how our metabolism works by trying to think about foods that we could grow or kill and really focusing on those that don't have a ton of packaging. And, you know, if the label has 50 different ingredients in there, and you can't pronounce them, it's probably not the best foods to eat. Not to say you can't have any of that. I believe in the 80-20 rule. 80-20
00:09:55
Speaker
meaning 80 whole natural foods that you can recognize from the earth, 20% foods and things that aren't necessarily super nutrient dense, but that we like to eat and are enjoyable and ice cream and chocolate and wine or whatever it is, right?
00:10:10
Speaker
Absolutely. I wouldn't even say cheese is a fun, cheese might be in the 80% actually. And I think a lot of women we have a been on the yo-yo diet roller coaster where we've cut out a whole macronutrients, right? Like we've cut out carbs or we've gone super low fat. There was a low fat craze, you know,
00:10:28
Speaker
in the 90s, where it was like, whoa, everything's fat free, these like candies, it's just like, as much as you want, because it's no fat, right? But actually, physiologically, we have a need for all three of those macronutrients. Most women aren't eating nearly enough protein, which is really the building block.
00:10:48
Speaker
of the body. And when they're not eating enough, they're going to have more cravings, they're going to feel like they don't have the same energy, they're not going to be able to fuel their workouts in the same way. So really prioritizing protein is huge. And obviously, you know, fruits and veggies for fiber, especially as we age, and we can end up with, as you know, issues with estrogen, either too high or too low, that can help to stabilize things as well as having enough fiber in the diet.
00:11:13
Speaker
Oh, fiber's so important. I see so many women with issues with constipation, with vaginal issues that really source from their constipation, whether it's prolapse of the rectum kind of coming into the vagina, like a rectocele, and they are just constipated and in pain.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah, and that bearing down causes yeah, a lot of so the fiber just really helps to flush everything out and make sure again that those ratios are good. And it's obviously good for our gut health, which is another root cause of hormone imbalances when because our gut is, you know, 70% of our immune system is in our gut. So if that's not balanced, and if it's not working well, then it leads to a lot of imbalances down the road as well. Okay, so I'm gonna throw a small wrench. You
00:11:59
Speaker
because I hear what you're saying, but I'm a terrible cook. And I don't know, like, I'm so bad at cooking. Like, I would love to be a good cook, but honestly, like, grocery shopping, the organizing a recipe, like, I can do surgery, give me complex
00:12:20
Speaker
I looked it down and figured it out, but it asked me to make something from a recipe and organize it. My head explodes. Maybe when you want to be healthy and you want to strive for this balanced diet, but okay, where do I start? How do I make it?
00:12:37
Speaker
And it doesn't have to be complicated. And we have so many strategies that we teach our clients. I'm not a meal prepper that would have all my meals prep for a week. I can't function like that. But there are ways that you can batch things. Like yesterday, I did a lot of ground turkey, right? And so I have a ton of that. And we can season it in different ways. Like tonight, we're going to do spaghetti, we could do tacos, you know, but I have all that meat there. And we just mix and match because I'm also I'm like a 15 minute, let's get it done kind of person.
00:13:04
Speaker
And the same thing, just rotating out some vegetables in there. A sheet pan meal, just put it in the oven and let it go and don't have to really worry about with some seasonings and olive oil, right? It doesn't have to be very complicated. But once you kind of don't overthink it and just get creative, I often use my like Instapart and have like a ton of shredded chicken that I can make in salads or different things. And again, just mixing and matching.
00:13:28
Speaker
And once you get into a rhythm, it doesn't have to be, if something has more than, I would say eight ingredients, I'm never going to do it. I would say like five or less and I'm good. Right. But for those who do enjoy it, they could get more elaborate. And I do have some clients that meal prep the every single meal and it just doesn't work for me. I just, I can't manage that way. So I think it's not overcomplicating. It's trying to find a system.
00:13:50
Speaker
that works for you and i think planning ahead having a list making sure you have the groceries on hand that you can quickly whip up something and maybe you have a rotation of five different meals that you know are simple and easy to throw together in a pinch that's your backup so you're not ordering pizza at the last minute and i mean food now is expensive when you're eating out as well i had a client saying that
00:14:10
Speaker
She's saved several hundred dollars a month just because she implements what I'm teaching and food isn't going to waste. And they're not going out to eat randomly because she's not prepared. Yeah. One of the things that you taught me when I was doing your course was during the pandemic and we had just moved back to the US and you had just moved back to the US and we were doing the virtual course.
00:14:31
Speaker
You had said like put your vegetables like right in front of you in the fridge. So when you open your fridge, like that's what you see. And I can't remember if it was like on a rotating tray or what exactly it was, but that has been one thing that I have tried to, you know, really implement and I'll just buy like a veggie tray.
00:14:49
Speaker
something that's already made. By a veggie tray and put it right in that middle shelf that like you open up the fridge and you see that I love those sorts of tips. And that's just like a reminder again, it's front and center. Because if you're making like your candy bowl easily accessible, like on this desk here, that's going to be what I want to grab versus if you open the fridge, and that's the first thing you see, you're going to be reminded and that really works with your brain, right training your brain and getting in those new habits.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my gosh. You just reminded me when I was a kid, we had neighbors who had kids my age and they had these little bowls of like M&Ms all around the house. And I thought it was like the coolest thing ever.
00:15:35
Speaker
do we have sweets all over the house? But I'm actually really grateful. Yes, we can really set the stage. And when we think about our health, it doesn't just affect us, it affects everyone else. And we're teaching our kids and those around us those habits, and they're going to benefit from it when we feel better. It's kind of like when we're putting our oxygen mask on first, we're able to then help other people because we're not passed out.
00:15:59
Speaker
So I think that so often the women we're stressed out, we've put ourselves lost, we have just like our cup is empty. And so yeah, at the end of the day, we really suffer
Balancing Exercise and Stress
00:16:10
Speaker
for it. And what's so interesting again, as we go through perimenopause, and like I've mentioned into menopause, and we have
00:16:16
Speaker
less of those hormones that kind of buffer us against stress is the activities, the high intensity interval training and the cross fits and the things like that, that we could get away with in our twenties and thirties really start to change and cause more stress on the system. And exercise is a stress regardless. It's a good stress, but we need to balance out that stress. And most women, if they are cardio bunnies really prioritizing that
00:16:40
Speaker
shifting into doing resistance training, so they can build muscle is the only way we can build our base metabolism is having more muscle on our body, which by the way, we're losing every decade after 30. Anyway, it's slow. But if you are not like, I think it's after age 50, if you're not using it, you're losing it at a rapid rate, which is why you see people into their 60s and 70s who have completely atrophied
00:17:05
Speaker
and are hunched over and they're breaking their bones and their hips and other things, you know, because they haven't maintained it. It's their activity level has really decreased over time. And so really prioritizing most women, if they can just do two to three, what we do with our clients, two to three full body workouts, they're about 30 minutes. That's it. That's all they need to really maintain a good level of fitness, bone and heart health, all of those things to build that lean tissue. That is really what we need
00:17:34
Speaker
You think about the women who are in menopause, maybe more the menopausal generation right now, and sort of the fads that were around when they were in their 20s and 30s. And Jane Fondo is a little bit older than that, but I remember my mom doing Jane Fondo. Me too! I want to be when I grow up. Literally, I did Jane Fondo.
00:17:58
Speaker
I did Jane Ponda in our living room as a kid. I still love Jane Ponda for different reasons now. Such a good role model. But that aerobics was what women really, really pushed and not having too much muscle because you didn't want to look masculine. You didn't want to have big arms. You know, Madonna kind of helped us a little bit to like show off her amazing buff arms. But I do think there's a little bit of a shift that we have to make
00:18:24
Speaker
as well in terms of what we're trying to achieve from exercise then influences how we go about it. Absolutely. And I think that if we are looking at exercise as a way to just burn calories, that's really the wrong approach. Or I ate this chocolate cake and I've got to go for a run now to burn it off is actually a very disordered way of looking at
00:18:43
Speaker
food and fitness. And so when we can start to separate them out and really realize that our fitness is for our longevity, again, for our bone health, our heart health, all of those things. And then the nutrition is how we're going to really fuel our
Importance of Strength Training
00:18:58
Speaker
body. And if we have weight loss to lose, that's where we need to focus. So kind of separating them out. I've just found that for my clients, we all have this misconceived notions of what we need to do. It makes us not look forward to exercise, right? It's a punishment.
00:19:12
Speaker
versus well, this is something that is amazing for my body and what it can do for me. Yeah, right. So if you're in your 30s now and you're listening, you want to start working on the strength training, incorporating that into whatever other cardio you're working on. If you're in your 40s, you may want to start
00:19:29
Speaker
for the first time working on strength training, if you're in your fifties. No, I mean, I could see why you would adapt it really, but like every age needs to do more strength training. This is not like big time weightlifting, right? No, we're not doing like crazy Olympic lifting or anything like that. And honestly in my program, so as you know, I also do virtual personal training as part of my program, which most online coaches don't include as part of that. So we have the nutrition side. We have actual one-on-one coaches.
00:19:58
Speaker
guiding them through exactly where their metabolism sits and kind of what phase of their journey because if they're in a fat loss phase or maybe they're in a metabolic healing or a metabolic boost phase or where they're at in the journey, that's all customized to the person. And then we also do the live workouts. I've actually got two that are 70 and had never weight lifted in their life.
00:20:17
Speaker
which is incredible, right? And they loved it. And they've continued doing that. And their whole bodies changed. And they really didn't bulk up. They were like, wow, this I feel just so much better in my skin. So it's never too late. And then by contrast, I've got women in their mid 30s who are very fit and active and have never had a weight problem. So at all these different levels that we can cater to the individual modify or progress that as needed for what their body is capable of and their experience, but also even hormonally. So
00:20:46
Speaker
you know, there are different phases of a woman's menstruating versus in menopause. Again, we're more stress sensitive after menopause. So we need more rest, recovery, sleep, more like woosah type of thing, walking with, you know, a friend in the park, like fresh air, all the things that we can do to manage stress is going to be even more important as you go through that transition.
00:21:10
Speaker
And in terms of like, if they do still have a cycle, I don't know any woman who on day one of her period wants to go do a heavy sort of HIIT training workout, high intensity, super heavy lifting, right? We want to do more gentle things, go inward, maybe yoga, Pilates. And when you actually are able to phase your workouts like that with what's going on in your body, it allows for better recovery, you're not going to burn out, you're not going to get injured. And then long term, your compliance is going to increase as well.
00:21:38
Speaker
I love that. Okay. So moral of the story is we all need to work on our strength, regardless of how old we are. We all need a well-balanced diet and don't ever think it. And as we go through perimenopause and menopause, we need to be aware of the stress and not push it so much. You know, like the crazy, crazy exercising may actually be detrimental and really just kind of focus in on the strength and the healthy aspects of lifestyle.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yes, you nailed it. Thank you.
Virtual Training and Resources
00:22:09
Speaker
I know we could talk probably for hours. I would love to come back on to talk about more things. But this is a really good start. I would encourage anyone who wants more information. Michelle is a wonderful person to work out with and to get information from. Like I said, I've personally worked out with her for years now. And we will post all of her links and stuff in the show notes so that if you are interested, she does virtual and
00:22:34
Speaker
you have clients in Korea, right? Like you've got people I've got like 11 different time zones. So it's pretty amazing the reach now that I have online versus just doing it in Africa at our little studio. It's really lovely. And I do have that free gift that's really about crack your fat loss code and harness your hormones. So they can sign up for that.
00:22:54
Speaker
and get that free guide. And I'm just literally here if they have any questions or to reach out to me on Facebook or Instagram. And I also have a free Facebook community that they can join where I'm always doing free trainings and recipes and workout ideas and things like that. So I love them to pop in there and join us. That's awesome. All right. Thank you so, so much for your time and we'll talk to you all soon.