Almost everything you’ve ever been told about working out was tested on men.
Today’s guest is here to hand you the actual playbook for your body. The one that accounts for your hormones, your cycle, and your life stage instead of pretending you’re just a smaller man.
In today’s episode we’re talking to Dr. Stacy Sims––exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist, and one of the leading voices on training women’s bodies––about why lifting heavy protects your brain (not just your muscles), why “toning” isn’t even a real thing, how to actually train through menopause instead of white-knuckling it, and why your smartwatch might be lying to you about how tired you really are. If you’ve ever felt like the fitness industry wasn’t built with you in mind, you’re absolutely right, and Dr. Sims is going to tell you exactly what to do instead.
Key takeaways:
Most fitness research was built for men — and women are still living with the fallout
Dr. Sims didn’t set out to become the person correcting decades of research. It started with her own frustration as an athlete and a scientist, watching her data get dismissed because it didn’t match the “standard” — which was male. Sports drinks, medication doses, even the symptoms doctors are trained to recognize for a heart attack were all built around male physiology, which is part of why heart disease is still the number one killer of women. The takeaway isn’t just “the research is flawed” — it’s that you’ve been handed a playbook that was never written for your body, and that’s not the same as being bad at this.
Lift heavier, not more reps
Women are typically told to reach for lighter weights and higher reps — but Dr. Sims says that’s backwards. Because women are born with fewer fast-twitch muscle fibers, and we need those fibers to maintain power, strength, and balance as we age, the lower-rep, heavier-load end of training matters more for us, not less. Heavy lifting also increases neural connectivity in the prefrontal cortex, which is a real, modifiable factor in reducing dementia and Alzheimer’s risk — diseases that hit women disproportionately. This isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about protecting your brain and your independence decades from now.
Strength is the goal — not thinness, and definitely not “toning”
“Toning” isn’t a real physiological thing — it’s marketing. Dr. Sims makes the case for a total reframe: instead of chasing a smaller body, focus on what’s happening on the inside — bone density, muscle mass, visceral fat, brain health. Chasing thinness keeps women small and, frankly, more controllable; chasing strength builds a body that can carry you through 100 healthy years, not just 100 years. Gym intimidation is real, and if a gym’s vibe (or a coach steering you toward Pilates instead of the lifting platform) doesn’t feel right, that’s information — go find your people.
Don’t skip fuel before you train
If you’re one of the many women who trains “fasted” because you don’t feel hungry in the morning, Dr. Sims wants you to know that’s not a sign of discipline — it’s a sign your appetite hormones and circadian rhythm are out of sync. Skipping food before a workout keeps cortisol elevated, disrupts your melatonin rise at night, and tanks the quality of your sleep. You don’t need a full meal — something small (think: protein coffee, a banana, a slice of toast) around 150 calories is enough to stabilize your blood sugar and let you actually hit your lifts instead of fading halfway through.
You can train for menopause instead of white-knuckling through it
Menopause can span up to 40% of a woman’s life, and Dr. Sims is adamant that it doesn’t have to be something you survive — it’s something you can prepare your body for. As estrogen and progesterone drop, heavy lifting, sprint intervals, and jump training all step in to do some of the jobs estrogen used to do: supporting bone density, insulin sensitivity, and body composition. Start the behavioral changes — strength training, protein, sleep, circadian rhythm — before you lean on anything else, including hormone therapy, which she’s clear is a tool in the toolbox and not a one-size-fits-all mandate (the science on it is still evolving, and it’s not right for every woman).
Your smartwatch might be lying to you
Wearables are trained on male physiology, and it shows. Heart rate variability algorithms don’t account for the natural hormone shifts of your menstrual cycle, which is why almost no woman gets a “good recovery” score the week before her period — even though nothing is actually wrong. Anemia can also tank your HRV score in a way that has nothing to do with overtraining. Dr. Sims’ advice: look at trends over time, not a single day’s data, and when your body tells you something different than your device does, believe your body.
Ten minutes counts — you don’t need an hour at the gym
If the barrier to working out is “I don’t have time,” Dr. Sims wants you to lower the bar. A “wellness meeting with yourself” — 10 minutes, three times a week, non-negotiable on the calendar — is enough to start. That can be breathing exercises, bodyweight squats, or a couple of 30-second sprint intervals with a kettlebell. You don’t need to leave sweaty and destroyed to know it worked; a focused 20-minute strength session with one compound movement counts. Quality over quantity, every time.
Notable quotes
“I always tell people the gym is like your adult playground. If you can get all your friends around you, sweet.”
“If we could just take the rhetoric away from the aesthetics of what you look like and what media thinks women should look like and bring it to how we look on the inside, that would be a completely different story.”
“You are more controllable when you are the weakest version of yourself, when you’re the most exhausted version of yourself, when you are the least fueled version of yourself — and I have to think that’s not an accident.”
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 Intro
00:50 The Fitness Industry’s Blind Spot
02:14 When the Research Is Only About Men
04:16 Why Women Need Heavier Weights
05:42 Lifting Heavy Protects Your Brain
07:26 Strength Over Thinness
10:36 100 Healthy Years, Not Just 100
16:27 Why Women Fear Lifting Heavy
17:04 Pushing to Failure Is the Point
21:35 Where to Start: At Home, 10 Minutes
24:58 Why You Shouldn’t Train Fasted
30:03 What to Eat Before You Lift
31:52 Training for Menopause, Not Against It
35:41 The Hormone Therapy Pendulum Swing
38:16 Why Girls Really Quit Sports
40:36 Your Smartwatch Is Lying to You
45:35 Relearning Your Body’s Signals
46:57 Fitting Fitness Into a Busy Life
Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode!
Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode!
Dr. Stacy’s Links:
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Meet Dr. Stacy
I’m a forward-thinking international exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist with an MSc and PhD. My aim is to revolutionize exercise nutrition and performance for women.
I have directed research programs at Stanford, AUT University, and the University of Waikato, focusing on female athlete health and performance and pushing the dogma to improve research on all women.
With the unique opportunities Silicon Valley has to offer, during my tenure at Stanford, I had the opportunity to translate earlier research into consumer products and a science-based layperson’s book (ROAR) written to explain sex differences in training and nutrition across the lifespan. Both the consumer products and the book challenged the existing dogma for women in exercise, nutrition, and health. This paradigm shift is the focus of my famous “Women Are Not Small Men” TEDx talk.
My contributions to the international research environment and the sports nutrition industry have established a new niche in sports nutrition and solidified my reputation as the expert in sex differences in training, nutrition, and health.
I’ve published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and several books and am a regularly featured speaker at professional and academic conferences.
I currently hold a Senior Research Associate position with SPRINZ-AUT University, an adjunct position with the Stanford Lifestyle Medicine Group, supervise PhD students, write academic papers, and am on the advisory board of several cutting-edge companies.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
Almost everything you’ve ever been told about working out was tested for men but today’s guest is actually giving you the step-by-step resources to build your strength, increase your health and feel good in your body. My guest today is the world-renowned Dr. Stacy Sims, she’s an exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist, and one of the most leading voices on training women’s bodies for women’s lives. We get into why lifting heavy not just protects your muscles but also your brain, why toning isn’t a thing, how to actually train for menopause instead of just white knuckling through it and why your smart watch keeps telling you you’re exhausted when you might just be fine.
Plus, if you stick around to the end, Dr. Sims is going to break down the functional full body movements that actually build strength and how to start them from your living room even if you’ve never touched a barbell. Let’s get into it.
But, first, a word from our sponsors.
I’m so excited to have you on the show. What is something that the fitness industry is telling women to do that you know deep down is actually setting them back when it comes to their time, their money or their health?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
I think what’s happening now is we’re seeing just one category of women and it’s not taking into account are you in your 20s, are you trying to get pregnant, are you coming back from pregnancy, are you perimenopausal, are you post-menopausal, do you have PCOS, it doesn’t take any of the life factors of women into account. It’s just you’re a woman coming into the gym and we can have you, quote, tone up, and toning is not a word but that’s the thing, and you see the marketing and it’s not really playing well to women in the fact that it’s just using buzzwords and it’s not really accounting for any of the life phases of women.
Tori Dunlap:
When I first discovered your work, I think the thing that I found so interesting is you were citing all of this research that showed we were just telling women things that had only been tested for the male body. And we were just handed it and just said, “Well, this applies to you too,” which feels very similar to the way I’ve thought about money and the coaching that I do around money where the playbook has just been given to us and it is a copy and paste for men but it is very, very different when you are trying to save and spend money as a woman. So, when did it click for you that that data was just not serving women?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
I think most of it stems from trying to get better myself as an athlete and then looking at the same time of I’m in the lab, I’m trying to answer questions for research for studies and my research is being thrown out because it doesn’t look like the standard quo of a teaching lab. So, there’s small things that kept coming up and then, as I’m pursuing my research as a student and then further on as an academic, going into the literature and not seeing real representation. And I’m also a person who wants to know the history of something so I did my PhD in hydration and hydration status and I want to know what was the origins of the sports drink. And so, you go all the way back and you see all the research that comes up and the existing sports drink is not based on original research, it’s how did that come to be.
So, you see all the cultural and the socio-cultural influences that come out into these parameters, you’re like, “Hold on a second, we have to really look at what are the origins of the research.” And so many important things that we see like medication doses, we see things like heart attack symptoms and signs for what we think of as a myocardial infarction and, when you’re looking at it from the male perspective, it makes sense but it’s completely different for women and this is why we see heart disease and heart attacks are the number one killer for women because of the misinformation that’s being promoted out there. And it goes wider than just the medical, we see it all across every touch point and, even when we’re talking scientific design, we still are fighting about what are the right methods to be able to assess a woman in different life phases. I’m like, “Come on, it’s 2026, let’s figure this out.”
Tori Dunlap:
So, what is the big piece of advice women are hearing constantly that only exists because the original test subjects were men?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Where do you want to start? There’s so many things.
Tori Dunlap:
Give it all to me.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. So, if we start looking at the methodologies and we start looking at things like strength training and we know that women and men can develop muscle at a similar rate but what are the end results, why are we looking at different rep ranges. We know you can build muscle at any rep range but for women it’s more important to be at the lower end and the heavier lifting end because we’re born with less fast-twitch fibers and we need them as we get older to maintain our power, our strength, our balance, our stability and, if we’re not training it, then we lose it anyway at a rapid rate regardless of age.
So, it’s the miscommunication of what’s happening within different protocols is because we’re stemming it from that male lens and we like to say the baseline is broken when we start talking about protocols for women so how do we make that baseline correct. And this is what we’re having a lot of the infighting within the fitness and sports science industries because we’re trying to find what is the baseline and I’ll go into different meetings and there are still people who are creating research studies who are like, “There’s no sex difference.” It’s like, “How can you say there’s no sex difference? Maybe not in this one particular area that you’re looking at but you can’t say there aren’t sex differences that need to be accommodated for the methodology,” so we have to go right back to the baseline.
Tori Dunlap:
The thing you just said there, I want to double click on a little bit where you were saying it’s higher weight, lower reps, do I have that right?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Correct. So, we talk about lifting heavy and heavier loads and the rationale for that is we’re seeing more and more research coming out specifically on women. So, not only is it really affecting our fast-twitch fibers as those are our type two fibers which means that we can maintain power and strength but we also see that there’s an increase in the neural connectivity or the neurons talking to each other in the prefrontal cortex of the brain and this is really important because we see there’s such a sex difference in the development of dementia and Alzheimer’s. So, if we look at strength training and the way we’re strength training in our earlier years, we’re setting ourselves up to have a risk-modifiable risk factor with dementia and Alzheimer’s by reducing the neural decline that happens in the prefrontal cortex. So, it’s not just about building muscle, we know that that’s important but it’s about what fibers are we attacking, how we’re lifting for neural connection because it’s bigger than just the aesthetics.
But we see for men it’s different, it’s completely different, it’s more about the lean mass gain. And, yes, there’s some brain connectivity that comes into it but, because they are not affected by the same types of diseases that women are, we have to look and say, well, is this protocol that’s based on men really appropriate to apply to the female population that has an incredible database and research showing these differences in autoimmune diseases in things like Alzheimer’s, dementia, osteopenia or osteoporosis, loss of lean mass. And when we start looking at through that lens, you’re like, “Oh, it makes sense,” this is why we want to change the protocols, why we want to emphasize a different way of doing strength training for women.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So, let’s talk about strength training because for me, in my own lived experience, I started working with a trainer a couple of years ago and was only starting to lift heavy at the latter half of my 20s into my 30s because I think that, the narrative around strength training, it’s changing, thanks to people like you, but I think that we have always been told as women that skinny is the goal, right? Taking up the least amount of space possible, making sure that, yeah, you’re lean and toned but, frankly, just skinny. And we could unpack the patriarchy of that, of course, of meant to keep women small and controllable but, when we hear strength training, I think there is both this very real fear or very real concern when you go into a gym and you just see these … It’s the gym bros who are lined up in front of the mirror, pumping these huge weights and it’s not a very welcoming place and also this belief that, oh, if I lift heavy, I don’t know, I’m going to look different.
So, debunk all of that for me and tell me why it’s more important for us to build strength rather than pursuing thinness.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Right. So, I will use an analogy that I’ve been using recently because of the upsurge of the misuse of the GLP-1s and we’re seeing the super skinny heroin chic and it’s affecting our teenage girls. So, I go into a department store like Macy’s or something and you’re bombarded with all this information about how to look skinny, how to look better, how to look younger, I want to just take this away and I wish that things of dominance were based on what you look like on the inside. What I mean by that is how strong are your bones, how much muscle mass do you have, how have you reduced your visceral fat, how is your brain thriving.
So, if we could change the narrative to that, then it would be really important focus on maintaining lean mass, maintaining our bones, trying to get adequate visceral fat levels, trying to reduce the amount of subcutaneous or body fat that we’re gaining that’s above and beyond what our body actually needs and it creates a hormone balance, it creates better sleep, all of the things that people are searching for, if we could just take the rhetoric away from the aesthetics of what you look like and what media thinks women should look like and bring it to how we look on the inside, that would be a completely different story.
We wouldn’t see these rabbit holes of going down TikTok with eating disorders for young girls or even in their 20s, we wouldn’t see all the filters and things that you see on social media to make someone look a certain way because I think the aesthetics is driving this conversation so much that people forget why we are exercising. And because the fitness industry is so much about the aesthetics, oh, eat this, not that, you burn X amount of calories which is all not based on anything substantial because everybody’s a little bit unique. If we were to take it and say we want to lift this way and we want to be strong, we want to take up space so that, when I’m 80, 90, 100 years old, I am still very vibrant and living well, I want a 100 healthy years, not just to be 100 and that’s the push that I want people to understand.
So, the gym intimidation is real. I’ve just relocated and I’m going to all the different gyms to see what the vibe is and that-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, gym shopping.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Right, exactly-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
… because I don’t want that vibe of gym bro and the loudness that comes with that culture, I want people who are there and can laugh and we all look different and it doesn’t matter but we’re all there for the same thing and that’s to get strong, it’s to get healthy, it’s to have fun. And if we can preface that to women, it’s, when you walk into a gym, if you feel the ick factor, that’s not for you, go to a different place. If you encounter someone who’s like, “Oh, you’re a woman coming into my gym, here’s all the fitness classes and this is how you can do Pilates and yoga,” and they’re not directing you to the lifting platforms, that’s not your vibe either. So, it’s how do we recreate that education and the awareness for women so that they feel emboldened to find the gym space that’s appropriate for them. And it might not be a gym space, it might be buddying up with your good friend and following an app together in your garage or your living room.
And when we talk about lifting heavy, it is a journey. Just like you were saying that you started lifting heavy in your late 20s, early 30s, yeah, it is a journey so start with strength training with the eye of being able to lift heavy in a year or two. And I think that’s also the other fear is, if I start lifting heavy right away, I’m going to get injured. Well, yes, but that’s not the point, the point is that journey to lifting heavy and know you won’t get bulky. And if you’re striving for aesthetics, if you do all of the things of eating to fuel your training, to recover from your training, you have a purpose for the training and the exercise session, the aesthetics fall into place. And it’s just that mental switch of trying to get people away from the aesthetics as being the primary driver to the health factors and why we are trying to build lean mass and bone and then the aesthetics come because you are focused on the health and the lean mass and the bone and all the benefits that come with it.
Tori Dunlap:
I’ve been so excited to chat with you because I feel like I can connect everything in the way we view women’s bodies and the way we view strength training to patriarchy and just making women as, again, tiny as possible and we don’t want them to have strength, we don’t want them to take up space because, frankly, you’re controllable when you are the weakest version of yourself, when you’re the most exhausted version of yourself, when you are the least fueled version of yourself, you are more controllable and I have to think that’s not an accident. And especially when all of the research has been done on the male body, it is confirming that these spaces were not built for us just the same way I view money, money has not been built for us on purpose.
And so, I think that all of these things that feel intimidating or overwhelming or all of the narratives we’ve been told about lifting heavy, about strength training, about the reason we should be working out, all of those narratives are negative to get us to not do it and, again, that doesn’t feel like an accident.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
No, it doesn’t at all and I see it, I see it. You look at the early history of strength training and we go back into the ’30s and ’40s and we had the strong man and the strong woman and it was more of a circus thing where you see pictures of the really strong women lifting their husbands because it was a circus act so it was this undercurrent. And then people started gravitating to it in the ’50s and women were secretly lifting heavy and doing the bodybuilding on the off circuit and not really letting people know because of this pushback and then it wasn’t until CrossFit became a thing in the early 2000s where it started to become more okay for women to be lifting in the same environment as men. And my gosh, oh, my God, it was from the early ’30s all the way to the early 2000s that it took to normalize a woman being with a barbell and there’s a reason for it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And I love Pilates and some of the stuff that is lower weight and I also watch my trainer who, by the way, is the strongest woman in Washington State deadlifting 500 pounds and I’m just like-
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Oh, my gosh, love it.
Tori Dunlap:
… “It’s so fucking cool, it’s so great.” And as soon as I think you’re around that for the first time, it’s all of the clichés, it’s representation matters. As soon as you start seeing women build strength, you’re like, “I want that too.” So, one of the things that I wanted to chat with you about, so I have done barre3 for 11 years and I love it and one of the things they’ve started doing over the past couple of years is they do a strength specific class so it’s heavier weights, it’s slower up and down, it’s less of a Barre class and it’s more of a strength training class. And something really interesting happens, Dr. Stacy, because what I have realized going to the gym with my trainer is that we are pushing to failure.
We are pushing these weights and we should get to the point where they are too heavy after a certain amount of reps and I do have to take a break. And yet often I am in these classes and I see I’m the only one taking breaks, maybe one other person, two other people who are actually the weights are too heavy and they have to set them down. And I have to believe this stems from our belief as women that it shouldn’t be difficult, you don’t want to see me sweat and also that, if I fail, that is a bad thing. So, talk to me about, when you’re strength training, this idea of fatigue or pushing to fatigue or pushing to failure actually being so great and why we are hesitant to do that as women.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. The rhetoric that’s been pushed to women is don’t lift too heavy because you could get injured and this goes through everybody’s brain. And then we also have the aesthetics thing where, if you lift too much, you’re going to get bulky and we don’t want you to get bulky. So, that’s the combination factor of why women have this fear of lifting more than they think they can. I’m always, in hotel gyms or when I’m at my parents visiting and I go to their fitness center, I’m always telling women, “Put that down, pick the next one up,” and they’re like, “I can’t lift that,” I’m like, “Yes, you can, try it,” and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m stronger than I thought,” because most women are so much stronger than they think.
So, when we start trying to unpack it all and go, “Well, why do we want to lift to failure or what does that mean,” we have to think about the reason we are trying to lift a certain load is we want to instigate an exercise stress. We build things up by breaking them down first during exercise and then we build back through the recovery. So, if we are challenging our bodies, first central nervous system, so that’s the ability to recruit muscle fibers and to have them contract at a particular rate to be able to lift a load, that can’t be sustained for a long period of time because it’s a nervous system response. So, if you’re lifting adequately, you might be able to do five or six really heavy load reps before you take a break and this break part is really important so that your central nervous system and the nerve firing can regenerate to be able to lift that load again. But it gets to a point where your body can’t regenerate enough because it is duly fatigued so that’s when you stop.
So, that’s why the basic idea of five by five is five sets of five reps at around 80% knowing that, when you get to that last or set four or five, you’re not really going to be doing five reps, you’re going to might eke out four and then three and that’s fine and that’s what we’re after. It’s when you start doing the 15 to 20 reps and you feel the, quote, booty burn, that’s a metabolic stress. So, yes, you are instigating a little bit of hypertrophy because you’re tearing the muscle fibers and, in the reparation, they split and they get bigger or you end up with more fibers than what you started with and that’s the hypertrophy effect but that’s not the central nervous system effect that’s creating the change in the brain that we want.
So, when we talk about lifting to failure and having that break, it’s important so that your body can regenerate to be able to encounter that stress again. Because if you’re doing 20 reps in a circuit and then you go to another 20 reps in another lower body exercise, you’re not taxing the body to the extent where it’s going to adapt really well. So, this is why we want to go to failure, we want to go to failure to improve central nervous system responses as well as instigate more muscle fiber development.
Tori Dunlap:
That makes total sense. And I also just think it’s the perception of I don’t want to be seen as someone who is struggling with this and I think it’s a larger conversation we have as women of I have to do it perfectly so I’m not going to take a break, I’m going to do all the reps and it’s, no, we don’t want to do all the reps.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
We don’t, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
And the other thing that breaks my heart is I’ll see women in class put down the heavier weights and then they pick up the lighter ones and I’m like, “No, just take a break. No, just take a break because we want to keep working with the heavier ones. You did it for a while and that was great, set them down, take 30 seconds and pick them back up.”
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
But I think it is that belief of I have to do it perfect and no one can see me sweat and I definitely can’t get halfway up and then fail.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah, I know and I don’t know how to break that. I think it’s going to take a large movement within the industry to be able to break that cycle and we’re seeing it more and more in some of the smaller box type functional fitness gyms where they’re having seminars on strength training for heavy women and why it’s so beneficial and they’re not promoting the lighter weights, they’re always like, “Let’s pick up heavier ones and let’s try to stay with that and, if you can’t, then in your form, then you’re done.” It’s not pick up the heavier ones and then drop to lighter, it’s, if you have to go light, then let’s see how light that is the first round and then you’re going to go up because there’s always that encouragement to listen but, in the general big box places, it doesn’t happen. Especially when we’re looking at the circuit type classes and a lot of the Les Mills body pumps and those kinds of classes, it just doesn’t happen.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I will say, every time I go to a strength class, they’re always like, “We’re lifting heavy to failure,” and I think it’s just some people are just they either don’t know what it is or, again, I think the perception is that I have to do all the reps. So, as we’re having this conversation, I know there’s a woman listening who’s like, “Okay, I have been avoiding strength training for all of the reasons you’ve just outlined or, yes, I am just lifting really light because I’m nervous or because I’m worried about what people are thinking about me.” So, where do we actually start in changing that mindset? How do we get more comfortable in a gym? How do we start lifting heavier in a way that’s still safe?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. So, for women who’ve never lifted before and they’re listening to this, yes, I know why to do strength training, we’re seeing all the research come out for heart health, brain health, all of the things. I tell women, when you first start, let’s just start in your house, let’s have 10 minutes three times a week and it’s a wellness meeting with yourself. So, maybe the first trying to instigate those 10 minutes, it’s a meeting on the calendar that you cannot erase or delete and the first time it might just be breathing exercises then, the next 10-minute session on another day, you might start with some body weight squats or maybe sit to stand or maybe some wall pushups, something that is a movement so you start to get that feeling and then we start adding load.
And maybe you’re adding load through a front loaded backpack, so the backpack’s loaded on the front and you’re doing air squats so you stay upright and, when you start feeling comfortable in those movements, then you can find your people. And maybe you want to book an appointment with a physiotherapist who can assess your movement if you have the funds to do that so that you know how your movement patterns are and where the sticky points might be that you have to work on. If you don’t have the funds for that, that’s fine, you can do self-video and do some comparisons or we can look at doing unilateral work. So, that means you’re doing your single leg RDLs or you’re doing single leg Bulgarian split squats so you start getting the balance between the muscles and learning the movement there and, once you start developing that baseline of strength, then we can move you to a barbell.
But when you start doing barbell movements, you do want to have someone that can show you how the bar moves. What’s the path of the bar for a back squat or a deadlift or a bench press and that’s where I’m finding more and more of these smaller boutique … Well, I shouldn’t really say boutique, these smaller gyms that are coming into play that are having specific strength training classes, they’re being coached and it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or a man, they’re trying to teach you the proper technique for lifting and then you can progressively add load under the guidance of a coach. So, there’s lots of different ways of doing it but, to make yourself comfortable, you first have to be comfortable in the movement and that always starts in the house because that’s where women, for the most part, feel the safest for the different types of things that they want to try.
Tori Dunlap:
And I know my trainer works with people one-on-one but she also does, literally, deadlift classes for women and a bunch of women come together and then it’s let’s learn, the only thing we’re learning today is how to properly deadlift. And so, I think that those are great ways that, again, it feels more accessible, there’s other women around, there’s typically women instructors so that feels more comfortable than just trying to figure it out by yourself.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
And it’s social. I always tell people the gym is like your adult playground and, if you can get all your friends around you, sweet.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, totally.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Healthy and friend time, love it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I have a confession for you, I felt like I brushed my teeth before going to the dentist because I usually go to my Barre classes in the morning and I forget to eat. And today I knew I was going to be talking to you so I ate a little bit of food before I trained because you have said that we should not train fasted, meaning not eating. Talk to me about why that is and what should we be eating before we go work out?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. If we’re looking at chrononutrition, so we talk about our circadian rhythm and women’s circadian rhythms are a little bit shorter than men’s. So, when we’re looking at the way that the body responds through our circadian rhythm, we have certain hormone pulses that rely on our circadian rhythm. So, when we first wake up, we have what’s called a cortisol awakening response, women’s peak is higher than men’s, it’s also attached to some of our appetite hormones. And if we then continue through the day without eating something especially if we’re going to go into training, then our body is like, “Whoa, what’s going on?” because the way that we can reset our circadian rhythm is primarily through looking at light when you first get up or it’s dark and timing of the food that we eat.
So, if you wake up and you’re like, “I’m part of the 6:00 a.m. club, I don’t want to eat anything so I go and I do my workout, then I’ll come home and I’ll have some food but I really don’t feel that hungry because I just had a workout,” and most women don’t feel that hungry first thing in the morning, part of it’s dehydration, part of it is the way our appetite hormones are regulated. And so, they delay eating or they only have a small amount of food and then about noon they’re like, “I’m going to have lunch now,” and then their eating window becomes from noon to 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., they’ve effectively phase shifted just like a shift worker does. So, what happens when you’re looking at phase shifting is now we have a perturbation or a misstep in our normal rhythm of how our hormones pulse throughout the day including when our melatonin rises and starts to peak.
So, women melatonin rise or starts to rise about 9:00 at night and then the second one that comes about 11:00. When you phase shift it, that melatonin rise isn’t as robust so you aren’t able to get into a really good reparative sleep. So, we talk about fasted training, there’s a whole bunch of things that happen when we wake up, we don’t eat, we go train. We’re resetting our circadian rhythm, we are keeping our cortisol elevated so then we have a blunted in our cortisol responses throughout the day which is not necessarily a good thing either because cortisol is a necessary hormone for us to have that fight or fight or have our arousal when all the things that we need for cortisol.
And then we have a misstep in our appetite hormones. So, we know a lot of women are like, “I don’t feel hungry first thing in the morning and I’m doing fine with fasted training,” it’s dysregulation of our appetite hormones. And the best way I can describe it instead of getting into the deep neuropeptide, all of the regulation that people are like, “Ugh,” it’s do you have a wall lean in the afternoon. Because we see that a lot of women, around 2:00 or 3:00, maybe 3:30 in the afternoon, yup, they start to lean and they start to feel really tired and they start craving caffeine or simple carbohydrates, that’s a dysregulation of our appetite hormones. So, when women are like, “I get this slump in the afternoon and having problems sleeping,” well, that all exacerbates it so I bring it back to let’s look first thing in the morning, what are we doing.
If you get up and you’re not training til lunchtime and you’ve had your breakfast and maybe you have a snack about 11:00 but you’re not training till 1:00, you’re not doing fasted training, you’ve had food throughout the day, it doesn’t mean you have to eat right before. But when you first wake up in the morning, you’ve had that 10, 12, 13-hour overnight fast, your body needs some fuel. Not only do we need fuel to not phase shift but we also need fuel in order to hit the intensities that we need to during exercise. And I’m now telling people I want you to think like an athlete, an athlete has a purpose for each training session. What is the goal of this training session, what is the intensities, I need to fuel for that goal and recover from it. And we start to have that mind shift into what would an athlete do to purposely fuel for this session, what’s the session, why are we doing it and then put a priority on sleep, it falls into place.
And then people are like, “Oh, that’s right. If I have a small snack before training, I’m fueling, my body fuels itself really well during training, either strength training or cardio stuff, and then I have real food within an hour or so after training. And then, the rest of my day, I just have more energy and then I can sleep better and then I wake up and repeat.” So, there’s a whole bunch of things that go into why not fasted training. There are exceptions to the rule all the time like if someone is really struggling and trying to lose weight and is in a guided medical supervised type program, then maybe they are doing a couple of sessions of fasted training but that’s not the norm. The norm is we don’t want to phase shift, we want to be able to sleep well so let’s fuel for what we’re doing during the day and then we have dinner and we don’t have anything after dinner and then we have that 12 to 13-hour overnight fast so we get up and we repeat and we feel much better with much more energy.
Tori Dunlap:
So, we obviously don’t want to eat a plate of biscuits and gravy before we go lift-
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Probably not.
Tori Dunlap:
… so can you give us a couple quick examples of what could we eat before we go work out in the morning?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. So, a lot of it is taste specific because there are some women who are like, “Oh, what do you mean? I can handle a plated biscuit and gravy before I go lifting.” It’s a rarity but some people can.
Tori Dunlap:
I wish I could.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
I couldn’t imagine it. I know.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
But no. You can always do the infamous protein coffee which is a cold brew with a scoop of protein powder and some almond milk or rice milk or whatever kind of milk you want to put. You could have a piece of toast with a spread on it, you could have a banana, you could have a couple of tablespoons of overnight oats, you could have half your breakfast and then have the other half afterwards. It’s not a lot of food, it’s maybe 150 calories and we’re looking at a little bit of carbohydrate and protein just to bring your blood glucose up, to dampen cortisol, bring everything into line and give you some fuel so that you can do your lifts properly. I think the other thing that people forget when they’re not fueling is then the fatigue comes in a lot faster and technique goes out the window.
Tori Dunlap:
Lot quicker, yup.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yup. And then you’re like, “I missed that lift. Oh, if I’d eaten, then I probably would have made that lift.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Happened to me earlier this week because I did my same strength class on Tuesday, forgot to eat, it felt different than the strength class I did this morning when I remember to eat just a little snack. Yup, it feels different.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
I’m guilty of that this week too. I tell people but people are like, “What? You didn’t eat before?” I was like, “I was rushing around, it was the first day of school and trying to get all these things.”
Tori Dunlap:
Well, you’d rather work out than not work out, right?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Right, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s, okay, I’d rather do it imperfectly than not at all. But, yeah, if we have our say, we want to be able to eat a little bit.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Exactly, yup.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. We have to talk about menopause because menopause can sometimes be up to 40% of a woman’s entire life, so nearly half, but you can train for it instead of white knuckling through it. So, if someone is listening who’s premenopausal or in the midst of menopause, what can she start doing to both prepare and also to guide herself through this period of her life?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. I’m happy that menopause is getting its heyday but I’m also like-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, me too.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
… I don’t want it to be a fear factor because I’ve had younger friends go, “I don’t want to go through it, I’m really afraid.” I’m like, “Well, what are you afraid of?” And they hear all these horror stories and that’s the generalization, every woman’s experience is different but we can prepare the body and support the body as we go through the transition and then come out the other side a lot stronger and better. So, what does that look like? We know that estrogen, progesterone and testosterone are … We have receptors all over the body. When we look at what’s happening in perimenopause, we know there’s a precipitous drop in estradiol and progesterone. Testosterone is not related to ovarian failure but, because the body is under so much stress going through all these changes, we also see a decrease in testosterone.
So, when we start going what am I going to do, we have to look at what kind of external stress can we apply to the body so the body can respond and adapt the way it used to with these hormones. So, if we look at why I keep coming back to strength training is really important because it affects a lot of the systems that estrogen does. So, we think about lifting heavy because we want central nervous system to still be able to activate those muscle fibers and, without estrogen, we have to have a stimulus that is heavy lifting to then create a good contractile protein response to lift the fibers together to be able to lift that load. We look at the way high intensity and sprint interval training affect metabolism and increase our insulin sensitivity, it reduces our visceral fat, it improves our body composition. We look at how jump training improves bone density so does heavy lifting improve bone density.
So, all of the fear factors, we know there’s a lifestyle intervention that we can start in our 40s that will attenuate the changes that are coming and help us through the transition. And if we start with nailing good sleep and if we start having sleep interruptions, then we can look and say, well, what’s happening, what’s going on, how do I support that. And if there is such severity of symptomology, then we can lean into some pharmaceuticals. It doesn’t necessarily have to be hormone replacement therapy or menopause hormone therapy, there are other non-hormonal options to help with symptomology. But with the lack of education because it’s been put in a box and been, oh, after 40 you don’t exist and we don’t talk about it, people are really afraid and then we have this overabundance of just this crazy pendulum swing of, no, these are all the things you should do.
It’s let’s look at behavior first, let’s implement the strength training, let’s implement a little bit of high intensity work, let’s make sure we’re getting our protein and our fiber, let’s make sure we’re paying attention to our circadian rhythm. When we have those nailed and we have additional symptoms that are interfering with our quality of life, then we can look to some other kind of intervention that will also help what we’re doing from a lifestyle perspective.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Is there a particular piece of advice that you hear all of the time that’s aimed at women that just really pisses you off?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
There are some things right now that are really making me mad. I think it is that everyone needs to be on menopause hormone therapy and, if you’re not, you’re missing out. And, again, this comes from the big pendulum switch of when the Women’s Health Initiative came out and everyone was like, “Oh, I’m not ever using menopause hormone therapy.” And then, at the same time, there’s a study going on in the UK called the Million Women’s Study that was specifically looking at perimenopausal women and they found a benefit with menopause hormone therapy which was very contradictory to the Women’s Health Initiative. So, if you’re in the expat country, so the UK, somewhat Canada, definitely Australia, New Zealand, there’s this whole you can get it, it doesn’t matter and there’s a lot of the push to get it. And in the States we’re seeing this uprise through telehealth that everyone needs to be on menopause hormone therapy but we don’t have the longitudinal data yet. And, yes, it’s still being done but we don’t have all the data.
So, when I get pushback when I say it’s a tool in the toolbox, you don’t have to use it but we hear this that it stops dementia, the data’s not there. If you have the APOE4 gene, it’s beneficial and there’s a timing hypothesis around it but it’s not for everyone. Oh, it helps with cardiovascular risk factor. Sort of if you’re not doing the lifestyle stuff. But if you’re doing the lifestyle stuff, you’re going to see a change in your blood lipids. And, yes, we know there’s a perimenopausal paradox where there’s an increase in your LDL and an increase in your total cholesterol and a lot of it is in women who are in low energy availability so, if we start eating more, then we see that shift and that’s part of the lifestyle. So, I get frustrated with this all or nothing that is just being hammered right now and it makes me mad because I feel women don’t have enough information to be empowered to say, “Wait, maybe I don’t have to be on it.”
So, I’ll have friends who are breast cancer survivors and they’re like, “I need to be on it.” It’s like, “Do you? Are you having lots of symptoms or do you fear that you’re missing out because all this stuff that’s coming out that really doesn’t have a lot of robust science behind it yet?”
Tori Dunlap:
That’s so interesting and it is the same way that I say personal finance is personal. There are certain cardinal rules I have of you need an emergency fund, you should never completely combine your finances with your partner, there’s a concrete set of rules but, at the same time, everybody’s situation is unique and different and so it’s very hard to just say, yes, this blanket advice works for every single person.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Exactly. And the other big thing that really frustrates me is the rhetoric around why girls drop out of sport. And most people are like, “Girls drop out of sport because they get their period and they don’t feel very comfortable.” It’s, no, that’s the end game, girls drop out of sport because of the changes that happen in puberty to their biomechanics and the way that we are defaulting to the way we coach boys and that doesn’t work for girls. So, girls get into a toxic sporting environment and they’re being yelled at and male coaches and other coaches think that’s encouraging but girls feel like, “Well, you’re yelling at me. I don’t want to be here.”
So, there’s so many other things to unpack in the puberty set and I think we just keep defaulting to that broken baseline across the lifespan for women and it’s coming out to play where we’re seeing more and more girls are dropping out of sport, we’re seeing less physical activity. And then on the other end, in perimenopause, the same thing because they’re like, “What’s going on with my body? I don’t understand, I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t want to keep doing what it’s doing, it’s not working,” because of these normal body shifts but the rhetoric around it is creating confusion and that’s what’s angering.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I want to ask you a bigger question just about the way we think about our bodies and, of course, the way that society perceives women and their bodies generally. But I think that we have this deep distrust of our own body because we have been made to believe that our bodies are not to be trusted and that our bodies are something to mold and to, again, just focus on aesthetics and to create in the lab because that is what’s desirable to men, that’s what’s desirable to society. And that deep self-trust that it needs to be built for all of us when it hasn’t … When isn’t there, when it isn’t present, I think shows up in every aspect of our lives. It shows up in our relationships and our careers and also our just general relationship with ourselves.
So, talk to me about why we feel so disconnected from our bodies and is there a solution for that or is there something that somebody can do to feel more in touch with their own knowing and their body.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. So, this is something that has come up quite a lot recently and part of it is all the data that’s available. We’re looking at all the wearable and information that comes out with the wearable and then we’re seeing all these at home tests and the ability to be intuitive has been taken away because we’re told by our Apple Watch, oh, my gosh, you had a shit sleep, you shouldn’t be doing anything, you should be recovering.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m wearing an Oura Ring right now and it’s funny you bring that up because I started realizing I love it for tracking sleep and I really need it for my steps because I’m on my own fitness journey with a coach but I did realize, especially when I had it a couple years ago, I was like, “Oh, I am not asking myself when I wake up in the morning did I sleep well, I am checking my app to see if I slept well,” yeah.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. And then the problem with it is all the algorithms are based on a male body and how that plays out in our recovery scores. If we’re looking at heart rate variability, it’s the variation between what we call the R2R interval, so we have … And that’s how it’s measured on an ECG when we have the electrodes on our heart and there’s a sex difference between the R2R but, in the algorithm, it’s not being picked up. So then when we also look at menstrual cycle changes and hormone fluctuation, we know that there’s a change in our autonomic nervous system that’s driven by progesterone. So, this is why almost no woman will be in any kind of recovery through the wearables about a week before their period starts because a natural occurrence has occurred in the woman’s body but the algorithm doesn’t pick it up.
So, we start seeing all of these things, oh, you shouldn’t do anything, you are getting sick, you’re over training-
Tori Dunlap:
Strain, yeah.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah, right and it’s just because the algorithm has been weighted for male physiology. We’re seeing wearable companies come out with retrospective fits but it still does not correct the original algorithm. And then there are things like relying too heavily on a heart rate variability and I see this a lot in really active women where they’re like, “My heart rate variability has dropped over the past two or three weeks, it’s an unusual pattern. I’m dropping back on my training but I’m still feeling really, really tired and I don’t really understand what’s going on,” and it’s because they’re anemic, because the LED reading is based on how much hemoglobin is circulating. So, if you become anemic, your heart rate variability tanks and it’s not a representation of nervous system strain, it’s a reflection of low hemoglobin so the algorithms don’t pick this up.
So, this is where, when women start relying too much on the wearable data that’s being pushed everywhere, we lose sight of, oh, I’m feeling really tired and fatigued, have I been eating well, do I have a history of iron deficiency and that doesn’t even cue in. So, I think that we’ve lost this autonomy because we’ve been pushed down the data route. And now more and more we’re seeing AI come up and AI is just an echo chamber of male algorithms and male data as well. And it’s someone goes to Consensus or maybe they go to Claude and I’m having all of these issues and what’s going on and spits out misinformation, old research data or information that’s viewed through a male lens that’s still not true for the woman’s body. I like playing with Claude and saying you’re wrong, you’re incorrect and then it’s like, “Oh, yes, you’re right, I didn’t dig deep enough.” I can do that because I know what most women don’t.
So, yeah, it is a step where I want women to look at trends over time not the absolute acute data so that you can start understanding how your body responds across different seasons, across your menstrual cycle, across perimenopause and really listen to your body versus the wearable information. So, if you wake up and your wearable is telling you you’re in the red but you actually have a lot of energy and feel great, maybe you’re in the red because it’s the day before your period and your hormones have already dropped and so now you feel great because you don’t have the influence of high hormones. So, it’s we need to have that individualized information that we’re bringing from ourselves and not from that objective external data that’s not really built for our bodies.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think it’s bringing it back to your body’s knowledge rather than your brain’s knowledge, that is something I had to work through the past few years of just overthinking about certain things and then asking myself not what are the 12 situations that could happen or what are the 12 things I think might be going on. What is my body telling me because my body is never wrong, my gut is never wrong, my body tells me what to do but I think we’re so tuned out. And, again, this is intentional, we’re so tuned out of our own bodies that we are not able to make the smartest decisions for ourselves.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
No. And for us as women we often put ourselves last. We take care of everything first and it might be 9:00 at night and you’re exhausted but yet you still have to do stuff for your kids to get them ready for school or you have to finish those emails because the kids have gone to bed or your partner’s interrupting or whatever it is then we start putting those priorities first and it gives us this downward spiral. And I’ve had to reteach women what it means to feel fatigued from stress versus fatigued from low sleep versus rested and, when they start being able to understand that, they start implementing changes throughout their day or the week so that they don’t get that dead end fatigue.
The same with food and eating, so many people forget what it actually means to feel hungry and what it means to feel full and re-teaching that is so essential because then they get ownership and control over the food and they can understand that, if I eat some of this ultra-processed food, I’m going to feel maybe somewhat full but not energized and then, two hours later, I’m going to feel hungry again and what do I do. It’s like, “Okay, well, let’s see. What is that ultra-processed food? Why did you drive for it? What time of day was it? So, let’s take some steps to be able to give you energy.” Even if you want to eat that ultra-processed food, that’s fine but let’s see what we can do to allow you to cue in to why and how and then how to reset.
Tori Dunlap:
The thing you just mentioned was a question I had already which is that woman who gets to 9:00 at night and goes, “I haven’t worked out and I haven’t eaten well.” How do we incorporate these things in a way that is accessible and doable for someone who is so busy, who has kids or who runs a company she says for herself? How do we make this a priority where it doesn’t feel like I’m just adding it to the never ending to-do list?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
No, I’m right there with you. I’ve got all the stuff and then a new start-up and then we just moved, my daughter started high school, I’m living that life, right?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
I tell women, it’s we want to have three times a week of a wellness meeting with ourselves, like I said earlier, when we’re trying to learn how to lift or become confident in that and maybe it’s only 10 minutes. I work with morning TV anchors and they have to get up and be on set at 3:30, 4:00 in the morning so they’re getting up in the middle of the night, we can do some sprint intervals right there. It could be a kettlebell swing or something like that and it’s going to wake you up, it’s going to create central nervous system whoo and in only 10 minutes and you have a whole cascade of positive effects that comes from that super high intensity work. If you-
Tori Dunlap:
So, even 10 minutes? Because I just want everybody to hear that because, again, I think there’s this perception I have to go to the gym and I have to walk out a sweaty rat and I have to have been there for an hour and pushed myself really, really hard.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
No, and that’s the misconception too that, if you leave a workout not sweaty and exhausted, it wasn’t a workout and that’s absolutely not true. How many times have you come out of the gym after a heavy lifting session and you haven’t been sweaty and you feel energized? Old school thought is you-
Tori Dunlap:
All the time.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah, right, right.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Old school thought is you didn’t have a good workout unless you went to a spin class, you got completely sweaty and you’re so exhausted and-
Tori Dunlap:
And also the spin class was 90 degrees which I don’t think we talk about enough.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
No, no.
Tori Dunlap:
The room was 90 degrees, no wonder you’re sweaty.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah, I know, exactly, right.
Tori Dunlap:
It was so hot in there.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
I know. Code Johnny G from the ’90s. Yeah, so that’s the other misconception that you have to spend a lot of time and be super sweaty. So, if we’re looking at what are we doing for health, we know that a couple of high intensity sessions a week is fine. That high intensity does not have to be a 45-minute high intensity interval training class, it can be a sprint interval session which is 10 to 15 minutes where you warm up really well then you do maybe five at the most, 30-second all out efforts with one and a half to two minutes recovery in between, boom. So, for my early, super early shift workers or TV anchors, I said kettlebell or battle ropes because some have home gyms and they just do a quick warmup, a couple of 30-second blasts and then they’re awake and they’ve done really good things to improve their insulin sensitivity which goes awry with shift work. They have been able to coordinate their appetite hormones, they’ve created a cascade of signals to improve strength and reduce visceral fat all in 10 minutes.
Then we put aside strength training, right? So, how do you fit strength training in? It doesn’t mean you have to go to the gym for 90 minutes, you could do a really successful 20-minute session. You can go and have a really good warmup and mobility and then you focus on one compound movement and you do some mobility and you get out of there, 20 minutes done and dusted. It’s the quality counts not the quantity and the quality counts with regards to how are we feeding our brain and our muscles and that’s what we want.
Tori Dunlap:
Compound movement, explain it to us really quickly for those who may be really, really new to this.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah. So, compound movement is something that’s more of a total body movement. So, we think about squats, a barbell back squat or maybe we’re doing a goblet squat holding a kettlebell, we have to use all the muscles in our body to perform that movement. So, if we are looking at our core and our back and our legs and holding the bar on our back or holding it in the kettlebell movement or a goblet squat, we are tensing and contracting all the muscles in our body and we’re using all of our glutes, we’re using our quads, our hamstrings and we’re developing functional pure body strength and that’s a compound movement. We also talk about isolation movements, those are your tricep kickbacks, those are your bicep curls, that’s not that functional. It’s a time and a place if you need it because you’re a swimmer or you’re a bodybuilder but you’re going to develop your biceps and your triceps by doing deadlifts because of the way that you have to hold onto the bar and tense and pull. So, deadlifts, squats, hip thrusts, overhead press, bench press, all of those are total body compound movements.
Tori Dunlap:
Yup. And I will say, I am not the expert here, but if you are bench pressing or chest pressing and it is not a full body movement, you are either doing it wrong or it’s not heavy enough.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Right, right. I often have finished a bench session and my glutes are-
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, my glutes are on fire, my legs are on fire.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
Yup. Because I’ve had to turn them on in order to get the weight up, that’s the only way that the weight has gotten up.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Exactly, exactly. Right.
Tori Dunlap:
Because my arms were not going to push it up by themselves.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
What do successful women know about their health that the average woman doesn’t?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
I think when we think about our C-suite women and other successful women in that regard, they’ve had to learn how to navigate and compromise but also advocate for themselves. So, we learn that through activity, we learn that through sport, we see a lot of women who are in the C-suite who are team sport players earlier. And then when we start looking at menopause and we see a lot of women who drop out of work or get bypassed through promotion because they’re having hot flashes or symptomology, they start lifting and they build that confidence back up and their brain switches on and then they’re like, “Hold on, I can make these decisions and I can do this.”
When you are investing in your own health, you’re also building stress resilience and confidence and that’s what we need to front up for anything. If we are not taking care of ourselves then we can’t show up for anyone else and I tell women that. I’m like, “You think you don’t have time to exercise but, if you were to invest even an hour a week in your own health, then you can show up for everything and everybody else a little bit better, more stress resilient and so all the negativity doesn’t affect you as much.” And if I could wrap exercise up into a pill, then everyone would take it. But because it involves time management and work and being a little bit uncomfortable, people think it’s not that accessible.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think there is this level of, just like money, just like anything you’re trying to pursue, you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable, we say that all the time on this show. And just the same way that you were mentioning, okay, if it’s just an hour, an hour is better than nothing. We did a whole episode prior on the show about the all or nothing mindset and about how it kills us because it’s I either do it perfectly or I don’t do it at all. I do it 100%, 100% of the time or I don’t do it at all and that’s just not sustainable, that’s not realistic, that’s not actually success.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
I grew up in a military household and my dad used to joke around and go, “Well, it’s good enough for government work,” I’m like, “What does that mean?” And he’s like, “It’s the 80% rule. 80% done, the 20% is the extra and the only person who’s going to pay attention to that 20% is you.” So, I’m like, “Oh, I got it. So, if I strive for 100 but only reach 80, then that’s fantastic. Even though it’s only 80, only I know it’s that it’s 80.” So, I try to get people to go it’s the 80/20 rule for everything. You have 20% that’s life and, of course, we want to experience life and there are hiccups in life and, if we’re on it 80% of the time, then that’s your 100 healthy years.
Tori Dunlap:
And I love what you said too about this giving us energy because that is truly how I feel as someone who has managed now to find a very consistent routine with fitness and with the food I’m eating is I feel bad when I don’t do it. And I know I sound like a disgusting gym person who’s like, “I’m craving working out,” but it is one of those things where I actually feel worse both mentally and physically when I don’t do it. And I think the perception is, oh, this thing’s going to take energy from me and it might at first because, again, it’s uncomfortable but very quickly you start to actually feel better.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
You do. My daughter is like, “You need to go work out, you are grumpy and it’s not just jet lag.” I was like, “I know.” Because if I have the space and time to just do a little bit of heavy lifting, then everything feels better. My body feels better, my brain feels better and I’m not grumpy. And it becomes one of those habits, once you start it, you’re like, “Wow, I feel great.” Yes, it’s uncomfortable and there are times where you just don’t want to go but, if you show up and start moving, then it starts to get real and you feel better. And, yeah, you’re right, I wish everybody could have that feeling that you and I have when we work out.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for being here, thank you for your work. I have long admired you, I’ve seen you on other shows and just have always loved your perspective and I appreciate you sharing it with us. If somebody wants to learn more about your work, where can they go to do that?
Dr. Stacy Sims:
You can come to our website and I say ours because it’s a team, the drstacysims.com. And then the other company that we’ve just started is called Collective X and it’s a women’s intelligence platform and so you can learn about all the stuff that we’re doing to improve women’s health on that platform as well.
Tori Dunlap:
Cool. Thank you for being here, I appreciate it.
Dr. Stacy Sims:
Thank you so much.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists, produced by Her First $100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.