Episode #183 - Let's talk about my P$#&#$*!

Welcome to the Mastering Midlife podcast where we talk about all the crazy fun things that happen when you are a midlife mama. I'm your host, Heather London. Let's dig in. Hola guapas and welcome to the podcast. Today I want to talk about something I don't normally talk about. I'm going to talk about the P word. That's right. Fasten your seatbelts. Today we are talking about protein.

I know you thought it was something else, but it's not. Listen, the P word protein is really, really important. And in the past, I was always because I've always been. a plant-based person and many different forms of plant-based person like i've done it all i've done raw vegan and all the things And I feel like I've got a really good vibe on what works for my body. And then guess what? Midlife and menopause happens and it all changes. And in the past, I have always been a big advocate of.

Hey, you don't need a ton of protein. You don't need to count your protein. You don't need to worry about your protein because you'll never be protein deficient. Like it's just unheard of. And as long as you're eating a whole clean, balanced diet. you are going to be fine. Because here's my philosophy. It's that if you're not eating meat, then people think about meat as a complete protein, which it is.

But there's other ways you can get a complete protein in the plant-based world. But you don't need it. complete protein. You don't need to eat a complete protein and here's why. Because you have a protein and when you eat it, what your body does is it breaks it down into the amino acids and it's all the essential amino acids that make something a complete protein. protein in one food but when you eat it your body breaks it down into the amino acids and it stores them and and

All you need to do is over a couple of days, get all of your essential amino acids in. You don't need to eat them all in one sitting all at once. And so that's why I was always a believer of don't worry about your protein. You'll always get enough protein because.

What you're really looking for are the amino acids because proteins and amino acids, they're the building blocks of everything in your body. And as long as you are eating a well-balanced... diet with whole clean foods you could you could you don't need to count your macros and and worry about stuff like that but but I have to say now that

you know, eating the rainbow and whole clean foods. There's more to it now when you get into menopause. Why? Because when you hit midlife and menopause, everything changes. There's the shift. and the huge shift is a hormonal shift and we also know that hormones kind of run the show hormones are what dictate everything that goes on in our body And I'll repeat this over and over again, because I think it's so powerful is that every time your body goes through a hormonal change.

It comes out the other side different, completely different. When you go through puberty, you go through a hormonal shift and you have a different body. When you're pregnant, you go through a hormonal shift. and out the other side you have a different body and then even breastfeeding that's a whole hormonal shift

And then hello, welcome to midlife. The same thing happens. You have a hormonal shift for a reason. Nature has intended this. Your body is supposed to do it. We don't want to stop it. We just want to. Help it. We want to be like they're going, what can I do to make this as easy and as graceful as possible?

We want to support our way through it. We definitely don't want to stop it. Our body is supposed to do this. And when, after we go through menopause and we're in menopause, our body is different again. It's so... different every single time. So know that nothing has gone wrong, but protein can actually make a difference here.

in this situation so now before i used to be like protein schmotein i'm not counting that i'm not you know putting any stake in having to have any kind of amount of protein Because I knew that if I just ate a whole, clean, well-balanced meal or food, that my body would have everything that it needs to sustain itself. But as soon as we get into midlife, that does change. And there's a couple of reasons like our muscle mass starts to.

breakdown our metabolism slows down and our hormones change and so the hormones are the driver behind all of the changes that happen to our body in midlife it's like All of a sudden you literally wake up and then you've got that fat that just like sits in your belly area and you haven't changed anything. And it's not because of what you're eating or what you ate or didn't eat. It was because of the hormonal shift.

Once your estrogen levels change, your body is like, oh, we're going to store fat here now instead. And that's just how the body works. That's all it is. You haven't done anything wrong.

Another connection that's really important when I think about protein and aging, the reason it's so important. And I noticed this all the time when I look at my mom and she's 85 and I look at how her body is changing and how it affects her life. And you have, you know, your physical.

health your body and then you have your mental health and it's usually one or the other that will will go quicker than the other one so if it's your physical health the problem is now Your mental health will deteriorate as well, simply because the key to living a long, healthy, like the key to good longevity, not just living long, because there's a lot of people that are. living to older ages, but they're in a nursing home and they're vegetables and they can't physically move out of their bed.

So that's not the life that we want for ourselves. But when I'm thinking about longevity, what I'm talking about is a really good longevity, like to be the healthiest. When we look at the blue zones. This is where people live the healthiest and longest lives. And the reason that they do, there's no food that's the same.

it is a generalized whole clean food system that that works for these blue zones but there's different foods that are eaten in every blue zone so the key the key component that is similar in all of the blue zones is it's because of being social and being mobile. Those are the key community. We all know that community is everything. And in today's society, that's what's being.

lost, it's being destroyed intentionally, divide and conquer. And so it's our mission to build strong communities, I think, especially when we start to hit midlife and older, we need community, it is like the pillar. of our health and our well-being and mobility is so important because how do you think you get to these gatherings of your friends and your people you've got to be able to get your booty there in the first place

And that's why mobility is so important. And protein plays a role in this because we want to keep our muscles strong so that we can actually move our body around. you will get the most bang for your buck if you work on your legs because then your legs will be able to take you wherever you want to go and your legs have huge muscles in them so they

It will keep your metabolism up because when you have more muscle in your body, it requires more calories to keep that muscle going. So the more muscle you have, the quicker your metabolism will be. Don't get me sidetracked on that. Let's just talk about this protein for a second. It's so important to, like I said, they're the building blocks of all of the components in our body, especially muscle.

We don't need to get ripped, but we want to be strong. We want to be strong and we want to be mobile and we want to have bones that can really maintain their integrity so that we're not breaking anything or falling or because that can be the demise of the elderly quicker than anything else.

the way we train is really important that's a whole other thing but I'll just I'm just gonna throw it out there that I've added jump training to my repertoire because when you have that impact like like really like jumping and making that pounding that impact on the bones that's how you build stronger bones is to have some sort of jump training in your life now when it comes to the protein

The key here is that you want to make sure that you do hit a certain protein marker because this is what's going to keep your muscles going and this is what's going to keep you functioning and mobile. because as soon as you lose your mobility it's game over your world just shrinks and and you find that you'll run into a lot of other problems one of the

um specialists experts that I follow her name is Dr. Sims and she has this favorite quote women are not small men and this is just so mind-blowing and this is why this changes everything this quote because most of the studies done on aging and muscles and bones and protein it's all done on men the majority of the studies are done on men And so what they do for women is they just take these findings and then they make it a little bit less based on body weight and size.

But women are not small men, meaning our hormones function differently. Our muscles are created differently. And until they started doing... studies specific to women we would just take these studies that pertain to men and then make it relevant to our our weight and that's all it was but that is not the case It's really important to know that our bodies react differently to training and fasting and all this. And I love intermittent fasting. Like I am all over intermittent fasting.

Until I started listening to Dr. Stacey talk. And when she put it into relative terms of like why, what this means, you know, women are not small men. She's talking about.

In the morning when women will work out or exercise or train in a fasted state, it has a different effect on the female body the men can do it because they have certain stores and it's not a problem for them but when women actually do that when women actually train in a fasted state it has the opposite effect on us it stresses our body out and our body is like damn we don't have enough energy for this we don't have enough protein to build muscle we are going into fight or flight

which is stress. And when your body is in stress, it just holds on to everything. And the key is, and I totally flipped my whole... strategy around training based on this philosophy because I used to train in a fasted state and little did I know I was doing more harm than good I was making it harder than it had to be

um because I could go all day without eating and do any kind of cardio that's not a problem but when it came to strength it's hard for me to do to lift weights to do heavy training without any kind of fuel on board so and I don't like lifting weights I don't but I know now that it's critical that I need to keep building that muscle in order for me to live a long

healthy life because I want to make sure that I'm always mobile that's how it all comes back together I don't need to have big muscles but I need to be mobile like I'm not doing it for show I'm not doing it So you can see the muscles in my arms. I'm doing it so that I can live a long, healthy life and be independent and follow my dreams and do all the things that I want to do so that my body will allow me to follow these big dreams that I have.

So instead of intermittent fasting, so instead of doing my training, I do my training first thing in the morning because I like training that I'm a morning person. And by the time, you know, the day, the longer the day gets, the less energy that I have. I wake up first thing in the morning and then I will right away take a protein shake. And I was never into protein shakes. You know me, I like to have all my nutrients come from whole clean foods.

But in this case, because I do need more protein, I needed to get some protein in before my workout. And I just can't have eggs and then work out.

I do a protein shake and I'm put in the least amount of water possible so it's not gurgling around while I'm trying to work out and then I will eat after after my workout as well but that's totally been a game changer for me I never ever would have done that before so I still am a fan of intermittent fasting don't get me wrong because I believe that when we are when you look at the history of

humankind we never just had a consistent supply of food all the time at the ready and so our body is designed to go without food and when it does go without food there's so many things that happen but one of the main things is that

it can heal itself when it's not digesting, it can heal and repair itself. That's the key thing. So now what I do is I just do my fasting in the evening and it's... really easy because before it used to just be attached to my sleep and then through the morning but now I just stop eating um have an earlier dinner and then stop and

My fasting starts then and then takes me through my sleep, which makes it so easy. And then in the morning I wake up and I have my protein shake and off I go. I lift some. Throw some heavy weights around. And I have changed the way I train just because I'm specifically building muscle now and for mobility. And that's it. So that was a huge.

change for me and so we want to avoid the stress and the cortisol because when we're doing that our body is stressed and our body just holds on to everything you it's you can't lose weight, burn. It's just, you're kind of fighting against yourself when you do that. So the million dollar question is, but Heather, how much protein do I actually need? So just an easy the kind of standard to go by is one to 1.1 or 1.2 grams per pound of body weight. And I try to get that throughout the day.

I try to eat as much whole foods as possible. I do have my protein shake in the morning because that's just how my morning starts. But here's some of the top proteins that I use. Like I don't eat meat. Actually, since doing my...

um go eating meat for 30 days I now sometimes will do steak Friday with my son because he barbecues steaks and I'll do that every once in a while but nonetheless i really don't i don't eat meat so here are some of my top protein foods of course meat is at the top of the list but um

I'll start with a shake. I find a really clean shake. It's important to find a clean shake because you never know what they put in these things. So something that's independently like third-party tested is always good. Eggs are my go-to. I eat a ton of eggs. Now you're going to talk about... cholesterol and I'm going to say don't girl don't worry about the cholesterol I really feel like there's a myth around cholesterol that it's bad for you and if you have high numbers it's bad

And I want to say that's not the case. There is good and bad cholesterol, but most of it is good. And all the functions in our body that are created through. all the chemical reactions need cholesterol and sunshine and so to that end i would say don't worry about eating too many eggs and high cholesterol that's that's not a thing even if you have high the high bad cholesterol there's two different kinds of

the bad cholesterol, the big and the little. And so it's not always bad. And they've changed the numbers over the years. So don't be afraid of eggs. I eat minimum three every single day. My favorite proteins, cleanest protein is eggs, I think. And if you can get local, organic, free range, just the healthier eggs, the better, the closer to home, the better, the more natural, the better.

There's also tuna, non-GMO soy, nuts. You have to be careful about nuts. You want to make sure that they're mold-free because there is a huge mold issue going around. Just in general, people don't know about it because you can't see it. It's internal. But nuts. are high in mold. Also, coffee is very high in mold. So if you're going to have nuts, be really mindful that they are mold free. Cottage cheese.

yogurt, TVP, which is like textured vegetable protein, lentils, quinoa, and vital wheat gluten. Vital wheat gluten is a thing. If you have a gluten allergy, don't even think about it because this is just full-on gluten but it's super high in protein and that's all that it has in it so if you are eating your protein you want to have it

before your workout you and you want to have some after as well you spread it throughout the day because that's a lot of protein to get in protein helps to keep you satiated so you feel full after eating protein And then you're fasting at night so that you can have your protein in the morning. And at night when you're fasting, your body can detox and can, you know, recover. You could just do simple swaps like.

adding in these snacks that are higher in protein it doesn't have to be a thing it doesn't have to be hard um you've got your protein for breakfast some of mine like my meals that i do

We're creatures of a habit and I eat the same stuff all the time. So I have my shake and then my first meal is usually... can be around lunch after the shake I have eggs I do over easy and I do toasted sourdough and then I put avocado on it and it is I just am in love with this this is like the thing I'll eat every single day

And then what else will I have? I'll have like yogurt, yogurt with protein, cottage cheese with olives or tuna with pickles, or I'll make protein buns with my vital wheat gluten. And it's just like... all protein. They're so easy to make. I make them in the air fryer. So here is the synopsis. The protein game, it doesn't have to be overwhelming. It can be fun and delicious. Just keep it super simple.

The more you can just eat whole clean foods and up your protein, the better it is. And it can help you to lose weight and feel better, but also to build muscle and to... be able to be mobile and stay strong allow you to do all the things that you want to do look we have big dreams in midlife and we are not going to stop for anything so if we want to live

our best life for the longest time possible then girlfriend we want to get that protein in and we want to be build muscle so that we stay mobile and active and get out in the community and get together with our sisters and all the other women out there who are looking to...

Create amazing lives in the world. So that is my talk. That's my P talk. I wanted to talk about protein today. And there you have it. If you have any questions, please reach out to me because this was a total shift for me in the way I thought about protein. And trust me, I've been a holistic nutritionist for a very long time. And it is all based on the big changes that happen when you hit midlife with your hormones and your muscles and your bones.

And if you can put these key pieces together, you're going to see amazing results. So take this and... Run with it. Don't be afraid of protein. Have a ton of eggs so that you can go out there and live your best life for as long as humanly possible. Thank you for listening. Always, always, always love yourself first and have an amazing day.