¶ Intro / Opening
Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. If you're anything like me, you might have been someone that either currently or in the past really shied away from a lot of exercise. You might have thought, well, I've been sedentary for a long time, or I haven't really been doing these things, or my body's not capable of them. And then, maybe you got on the road to working on this stuff, and you realized, oh, this is actually a really important part of the journey.
But you've got some mental blocks, you either don't know where to start, or you don't know what's reasonable, or you don't know why you're doing it. So today I have a really, really knowledgeable, special guest on, it's physician Dr. Allie Nowitzki. She is truly a leader in this space. She takes a really holistic approach with mental, emotional, physical health, and she is so great at the fitness part of things.
In addition to everything else, but today I specifically wanted to talk to her about that. Now, Stay with me here. If you are someone that this is not your favorite topic in the world again You have no you don't know why you should be excited about it I think if you listen to today's podcast, you're gonna be super motivated To get out there and to move some because we're gonna talk about What age do we typically start to see that muscle starts to go down?
It's gonna shock you We speak a lot about, specifically with these GLP 1 medications, how much protein should we be getting? How much resistance training should we be doing? Why do these things matter? What is reasonable? And I have to tell you the last thing that I'm so excited I got a chance to ask her. I have always been curious if the home scales that do the body composition testing, if they are actually accurate. You are going to love, love, love this episode.
I would listen to it all the way to the end. And then I want to ask you a really big favor. If you love this episode, the only way that we get more people to find out about the podcast is if you leave a review wherever you are listening. If you have not done that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate if you would leave a review wherever you're listening, because this is how we get amazing guests like Allie to come on and to share this life changing information with us. All right.
I hope you love today's episode. Okay, I just want to say welcome, Ali. For those people that are not familiar with you, can you start out by telling us who you are and how you help people?
¶ Dr.
I love it. Thank you so much for having me. I just want to say that you put out amazing content and knowledge into this world. And I am very, very thankful for what you're doing for so many people, but I'm Allie Nowitzki and for years about six to be exact, I worked primarily with women physicians on optimal health. So mental, emotional, and physical optimal health.
Since then, we are now going through a rebrand to the fit collective because what we found is that our principles, which do target mental, emotional, and physical health are applicable to everyone. And so the things that I'm passionate about, I am all about body positivity. body acceptance because I had a very long journey of my own where I didn't have any of those things.
I'm also very interested in the long game strategy for success, which really requires us to kind of get over so many of those limiting thoughts like the all or none thinking. because ultimately what we need to have is consistency. So I help people with sustainable health implementation in order to achieve their most optimal health. And I really am not in the interest area of helping people drop numbers on the scale. I definitely identify myself more as a body composition expert.
And so I help women and men now to actually maintain and gain muscle mass. Just, we know that if we can, gain and maintain muscle mass, our health is going to be better overall. So thank you again for having me that. Okay. Everything you just said, I, I knew you were around years ago, but I sort of othered myself with you. And I said, well, I'm not, you know, I'm going to learn your body. Like I can't do these movements. I just thought you were sort of like a fitness person.
And then I started to listen to your podcast and you were talking about. body composition. And well, maybe you don't want to do this if you're still emotionally eating. You did a workshop one Saturday and I remember being just sitting there and saying, Oh my gosh, I have a lot to learn and I need to list it off. Oh my gosh. Well, I think you bring up an awesome point. And I think the really thing that I'm going to be completely.
just transparent about is that I was a larger body type for most of my life. So up until the age of about 22, I was over 50 pounds heavier than I am right now. And that came down to restrictive yo yo dieting and actually having a horrible body image. And the thing that nobody tells us. And this all started when I, again, I was very, very young is that we have different body types. So the three somatotype body types, so ectomorph, that's your naturally thin body type.
You have your mesomorph that you're naturally muscular. And then our endomorph body types carry a little bit of additional body fat. Most of us are a combination of two. Most people in the U. S. are a meso endo combination. That's the most common body type. Now, the thing about this is that we tend to gain muscle, but we also tend to gain body fat pretty easily. Where this comes to be a problem with how we view ourselves is we will never fit on the BMI chart.
So we let this number, we let this, This BMI, which one time I did a podcast on this, it was essentially determined by a mathematician who just ran some numbers, but it has no indication on our actual health. So sometimes when people are in, let's just say for what they call it now, but they'll say, Oh, you're in an obese category range. It actually means nothing for our health and people sometimes that are in a larger frame.
They have such advantage when it actually comes to movement, they're actually really gifted at things that require a lot of strength, but nobody ever told them that. So they usually shy away from a lot of these activities. I love what you bring that up because I do think there's this side to me. So when I was in college, I loved weightlifting and I had a trainer and I did all those things.
But then you're right, I sort of made it mean, well, the scale's not going down or this or that, you know, there were always all these other metrics that it's like, that's the only important thing, not the fact that I felt really amazing emotionally and physically, like none of that mattered, right? Only what the scale's doing. I want to start out there because I, again, I want to hit on several different areas with you because you're really an expert in a lot.
But one of the first things I want to ask is, can we just talk about what are some of the benefits of movement? Just in general, I love this. And to be honest with you, my view on what I recommend for people for movement has absolutely evolved over the past six years. So being an athlete myself in college, and I was a bigger athlete. So I'm telling you, I was about 50 pounds heavier playing a division one sport.
That was a lot of additional weight to carry around and still perform at a really high level. With that being said, at that point, I was doing so much more than I'm doing now. So the point is that more is not better. So actually work smarter, not harder is really how we have to start thinking about it. And so. What I can tell you is the benefits of movement, couple different things in general, just being more active in our every day, not actually clocking a Peloton ride.
I mean, clock a Peloton ride, but in general, that's not like you don't have to have a Peloton to be in good physical health. Getting steps. So we know that if we're getting 5, 000 or more steps a day, we actually improve our longevity. So the idea of 10, 000 did come from somewhere. However, when they look back at it, they saw that actually 5, 000 is almost as beneficial as 10, 000. But what happens is people say, Oh, well, it's too hard for me to get 10, 000.
I might as well not do any the whole all or none thinking. And so we don't do anything. So there's two, that's one of the two. Of my heavy hitters for exercise and how it can really benefit. So movement in general, yes, it's going to increase our total daily energy expenditure, the calories that we burn, but we don't really care about that. We want our body to be functional.
And I always say the goal really is let's carry our groceries when we're 90, let's be able to walk without a walker for as long as we can. And so getting those steps in crucial, the next component, and for the benefits of. Is strength training.
And when I say strength training, particularly for women and even some men, because if for example, my husband hadn't lifted weights in so long and he was so intimidated to get started because he thought that people would judge what it looked like when he was lifting weights, but the idea is this. So for strength training, so many benefits, first of all, women, when we hit the age of 30, start losing muscle mass. We start losing it at about one to 3% per year. So by the time you're 80 Yes.
Stop for a second. Like, I'm horrified because most women I don't think are doing any of this after that age. Right? So sorry, keep going. But I'm like, everybody listen up. Like, this is why we have to listen to what you're saying. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So what happens though, and the really interesting thing is that to actually maintain muscle mass, it takes. two things and I'll tell you what those are. But the idea is that, strength training is going to help us maintain lean muscle mass.
It's going to keep our body functional. A lot of people are now saying that muscle is the new anti aging mechanism because it's really true. The other thing about actually the benefits of strength training, yes, you'll maintain lean muscle mass. A lot of people don't realize this, but it improves insulin sensitivity. And the reason why it does this is because when you're actually moving your muscle and you're using glycogen to move your muscle, right?
And what we can consider that is stored sugar, let's just say, so you're getting rid of your stored sugar. So now you have an empty muscle and your empty muscle is saying, Hey, can I have some sugar back? And when I say sugar, I mean, food substrate, I'm not telling you to go eat sugar, but I'm saying in general, like whatever foods to substrate you eat, your body kind of metabolizes it in a way to make. What it needs and your muscles ready to take it up.
So when you're doing strength training and you're kind of emptying those stores, they're ready to build them back up. And so what happens is instead of having. to use additional insulin to make that happen. Your muscles already primed. So actually we can kind of fill up our muscles. We don't require extra insulin to do it. And when we don't require extra insulin, that means more, more, more insulin sensitive.
And so over time, strength training is actually something that is so overlooked because people think it's about the calorie burn. But if you look at our daily energy. expenditure, our basal metabolic rate, and you know this because it's the obesity medicine teaching, but our basal metabolic rate makes up 70% of our calorie burn. Well, how do we increase our basal metabolic rate with muscle mass? Okay. Also organs, organs are also important. So the idea is that, you know, if we're eating.
enough protein and we're doing some strength training, then we're going to be able to maintain muscle mass, maintain our basal metabolic rate. So again, so many different, we know exercise alone is going to decrease the incidence of so many different cancers. So many different chronic diseases. So, in general, exercise is good for everything, but exercise doesn't have to be this marathon. It doesn't have to be this all out sprint all the time. Ten minutes a day is a big deal.
Ten minutes is more than most people are doing, in fact. I like that you bring that, because I was just going to ask, hey, what do you recommend to people? I mean, obviously there's a huge spectrum, right? So, let's say if you had someone that, they're entirely sedentary right now. Okay, so they're going to start to get out, maybe they'll try to, A few days a week, get those 5k steps in or maybe every day, whatever they can do.
But from a strength training perspective, what do you, how do you get people started on that? So such a good question. So I do it and I'll talk a little bit about the evolution of how I started helping people because what I found out is that. You know, I've had my own journey and I've gotten to this place. So I get every step of the way. I get that it's hard to move. I, at some stages, if you're not maybe doing it all the time and I get that starting point.
So what I'll say is this, is that first thing is starting to get those steps. I have one client who was able to do 2000 steps a day. That's it. We recently went on a retreat. We happen to be in Disney. She was doing 16, 000 steps a day. So just by being able to slowly build on that step count, that's where I'd start with most people. When we get into the strength training piece, a couple different things.
So strength training doesn't have to be these big, heavy barbells where you're going to CrossFit, hitting the gym. You actually don't need any equipment to do any strength training. You can use your body weight. And so one of the things I recommend and typically what I do in my programs is I always have a yoga series. So I usually say, start with a yoga class.
And so I really have now decreased all of the workouts I offer to 30 minutes because I think anything beyond that is actually not all that useful unless you're training for an Ironman or something like that. So the idea is I'll say, Hey, listen, I want you to do your steps. So come up with a step count. Let's say that 5, 000 isn't available right now. Why don't you start with 2000 and then we're going to slowly build your steps. I want you to do one yoga class a week.
And the reason why is because yoga is going to help a lot with breathing and balance. And once people kind of get comfortable with where their body is in space, they're going to feel more comfortable to then go ahead and move up and try one strength training. So I'll do a, I always have a segment of, you know, yogas to pick from, and then I'll do something where I have all these 30 minute mind body strength routines.
And the beauty of those is that, you know, they can be modified from the most beginner. through the most advanced and it's very easy to modify it. And so that's typically how I say to start. And most people find that they gain strength so quickly. Cause that's the other thing. Our muscles actually want to be strong. So when you start taxing them just a little bit, you start gaining strength like pretty quickly.
Okay. I need everybody to hear, cause you have such mastery of this and I hear it, but I need to like recap this for everyone else. You. Truly understand how to build people up because I hear so often from patients and coaching clients that will start working with some trainer absolute insanity what they're doing makes no sense to me I'm sitting here thinking they're so going to get injured. So I'm hearing what you're saying and by the way like.
Literally listening to her stuff inspired me to up the steps and now I'm doing five times as much as I was before like this is the story this is the truth. So people, I mean I'm just sitting here and I'm saying yes the the balance the the breathing, all of that yeah that has to be in place before you're just suddenly lift, I don't know like people have this crazy vision of lifting weights I think I think it's a really like out there version. So, okay, so we understand the benefits of movement.
Basically, there's nothing that it's not improving. Right. Remembering sound like dementia. I mean, it's just like, it's incredible. So I'm wondering, a lot of people that listen specifically to my podcast, they are on anti obesity medications. So let's just say, for example, the GLP 1s.
So something that we know, and you had an incredible podcast on this, and you talked about some of your clients that you had monitored, you sort of spoke about the importance of eating protein and resistance training to hold onto that muscle along with weight loss. So some is acceptable, but we don't want it to be excessive. Can you talk a little bit about what you have seen as important as far as what we can do there to really help them out metabolically later?
Yeah, I love this because I think that this question is, it's my favorite question to answer. And I think the reason why is because when the GLP ones first became, I mean, they'd been out there a really long time, but when they became hot for the weight loss, I mean, I would get so many messages from obesity medicine doctors saying like, Oh my gosh, did you see the study? Oh my gosh, like these GLP ones, like wasting muscle left and right. And that is actually not the truth. So GLP ones.
are not going to cause muscle to go away. That's not the problem. The problem is they decrease our appetite, which makes us not crave protein. We don't want to go ahead and hit up a chicken breast usually. And with that being said, just the accessibility to strength training, to also promote that muscle maintenance. I don't know that our country does a fantastic job of making it available to everyone. So people are super intimidated. My mother in law, she's in her, she's 70.
She, has gone down like her whole journey and started losing muscle mass. I gave her a simple band and gave her five movements. And she's gaining muscle mass now. So the point is that, you know, there's a couple things. So with the GLP ones, right, I think that it's an incredible, incredible medication for so many people. It's, it's so useful. And I would say that losing muscle mass.
Can absolutely 100% be avoided by simply getting enough protein and making sure that we're moving the muscle and it doesn't even have to be excessive. What I've seen with my clients and I have many on GLP ones. Again, I don't prescribe, but because I'm also obesity medicine, then I can monitor like their, I monitor their in bodies. I do all of that because if I see a problem, then I could say, okay, what dose, like, where are you with things? Are you eating? You know, this and that.
But what I'll say is that my clients. Right now, for all the ones that are on the GLP 1s, they're gaining muscle mass on my programs. So I don't see my muscle moment. So what is it that's happening though? Cause I don't think it's rocket science, what you're doing with them and that's what I want people to hear. What are you specifically guiding them on?
Like, what are the principles that you see the people that are either not losing a lot of it, maintaining or gaining, what are they doing specifically? And I'm going to make it super easy because I have a protein chart that will tell you like for your specific height and goal, like this would be the ideal protein amount. However, what I'm going to say. Is if in general, women are eating three solid portions of protein a day, right?
So that can, again, how I define one portion of protein is about 30 grams, about the palm of your hand. And the other thing too, is like vegetarians will say, well, I'm vegetarian. I can't do that. And that's not true because I'm not vegetarian. And most of my protein. Is vegetarian protein. Okay. So the idea is about three servings for women per day. So if you're a faster, if you're doing fasting, usually what I recommend is, okay, you're going to eat a really solid lunch of protein.
You're going to have protein in that lunch. You're going to have a snack in between maybe even half a serving of protein or a full serving of protein. If you really can't do the full, I'll tolerate a half. And then your dinner, you're going to have another solid portion of protein. If you're a regular eater throughout the day, then I just want three solid servings of protein for men. I go to four. So I say, keep it simple. You're going to four servings of protein a day.
Literally if that's all I tell you, three servings of protein for women, four for men strength training. I want you to move your muscles against resistance one time a week. That's it. One time. I don't see muscle loss. My God, I love, okay. I just like, I, I, this is why I brought you on because I've heard you talk so much about this on your podcast and you know, obviously your clients do great.
Everybody talks about how great you are, but it's because I think it's so reasonable what you're asking. Like people keep wanting to go down these crazy roads where. They're just wanting the scale to go down, but they're, they're not understanding any of the physiology or just any, frankly, you know, common sense. But how great is that? So 30 grams of protein, roughly three times a day. And again, we're talking in generalities, right?
Like everyone can talk to their doctor, everyone can get specific things, but that's generally what I say too. I kind of call it like the target 100 approach, right? Like, are we roughly, roughly getting to a hundred? Because I don't know about you, like when people come to work with you, but. When I, I'm not a dietician, I have them on my team, but I look at, you know, kind of, what are people writing on the intake? I don't think most people are getting even 50 grams of protein.
Like I think maybe 40. And so when we, even if you can get like over 60 or 80, they're already feeling more, you know, they're already feeling better, but I like that you just made it so concrete. And also with the weight training, it's not like initially every single day. Alternating upper, lower body. I think I have a lot of trauma in this area to be honest.
Yeah. And it's so, it's so interesting because a lot of times people will think, right, the old diet mentality is to eat less, exercise more. And what I will tell you though, Is my individuals on GLP ones that are doing marathons and they're doing a lots of cardio. They are losing muscle because they actually require more protein and they're not eating that because they're not, they're not even with that amount of training, they're just not hungry enough. So. It is super simple.
And then what I would say is, for your athletes that are doing more training, you know, if it is a woman, I might, I might say, okay, you're going to four proteins, right? A male athlete. I might say, okay, you're going to five proteins. So I love the hundreds. I think that's super awesome. I think that. Anybody who is willing to be consistent with that amount of protein, which by the way, like if you do the numbers and breakdown, that's not even high protein, that's literally moderate protein.
So it's not like people will say that everybody has all these excuses. Isn't that going to hurt my kidneys? Is it? No, no, no, it's not. It's not going to, obviously check with your doctor, however, but, but in general, I think keeping it super simple because the name of the game is consistency. And if we can be consistent. Right. Maintain our muscle mass, eat our protein, you know, do the strength training, do those things.
Then the one thing I'll say is I'm not going to say that people are going to be able to come off of GLP ones. I know that question probably comes up all the time for you. What I will say is we're going to be able to stabilize them on a much lower dose. Yes, yes, that's always so I find either lower dose or being able to space it out a little bit in between. So instead of seven days, right? And sometimes that matters from an affordability standpoint. So not everybody has coverage.
So people hear me when I say like, they sit there and do the math. They're like, I'd never be able to do it because it costs this and that. And I'm like, Listen, until you've actually talked to a doctor, until you've actually worked with an expert, you just don't know and no one's going to get online and say all these things because we can't give recommendations to the right.
So, but I love that you say that, that you see the need potentially go down because I think people just have a fear of being on medicine and I understand it. You know, we're changing your physiology some, so that's, that's good to hear that. Now, something I want to follow up that you said, sometimes you're following body composition testing, right? And my question is, do you have any faith in, like, the home scales, what do you think of those? Oh, I love them. They are amazing. They are.
So let me tell you this. So I, everything I recommend to my people, in terms of like progress tracking, I make sure that it's something that I can consistently do for myself. So in other words, like I'm not going to tell somebody that I need a DEXA scan once a month. Because that's ridiculous and it's hard enough to find a place to do a DEXA scan. Although we know like potentially back in the day that was the gold standard.
And then you have your, you know, professional models of your in body testing, which gives a really, you know, nice print out. And it tells you a little bit more information. And then you have, and you have your home body version. Now I will tell you, and I'm not an affiliate. I think InBody, the brand InBody does the best job. When I did my own DEXA.
And then I went and did a professional and then I bought a home model because I wanted to test it to be able to speak on this exactly the same, exactly the same. Now, I can tell you I've replicated that with my clients. So for 300 or less, getting an in body at home scale is going to be excellent. Now, obviously there's some parameters, so you can't, you have to make sure that, you know, you give yourself a little bit of grace here because, you know, there are some water fluctuations.
So what I'll say is this, is that, you know, making sure that you're well hydrated when you're doing the testing that you're testing at the same time that you don't have clothes on. That, you know, doing these kind of simple things because you want to be in the same hydration status every time you check it. And also to a lot of people do this daily. I don't like to evaluate them that often. Most people, I'm actually only looking at them once a month.
Because my next question, I feel like people are just, they're obsessed with this daily data. And I'm like, your body is not a freaking robot, you know? Like it's, it's going to have some variants, like you said. So once a month, you're having them kind of get that data point. And track it to kind of see what, what, what do you adjust based on it? Like, if you're seeing that the muscle goes down too much, are you upping protein or what common things do you see? I love it so much.
And actually you said something earlier about how a lot of people coming in are getting 50 grams of protein. So I do nutrition audits. Most of my people, when they first come in are getting 50 grams of protein and a hundred grams of fat when the whole high fat, low carb thing came in, everybody thought that it was a free pass. And they're, it's not working just FYI. Okay. So anyway, I'm referencing every single podcast episode cause I love it, but I'm literally gonna link some down below.
You had this so funny episode. You were like, yeah, ranch on everything. And yeah, like let's give a little more cheese. Okay. So this is a really good question. This is simple. Like, so if you get a professional model, you'll be able to see the dry skeletal muscle mass. Which can be really useful if you're not paying attention to your hydration status when you're testing, the in body will not give you a dry skeletal muscle mass, but it's really not that big of a deal.
So here's the things I'm looking for. Essentially, I'm looking for body fat mass, and I'm looking for skeletal muscle mass. Now, some of the other scales and I'm sure like I have people in the programs that I run that will have a different brand and that's fine, but typically, however they're reporting the skeletal muscle. It's coming in way too high because I have like women that are reporting like 120 pounds of lean.
I'm like, you do not have a hundred, like, cause your body, that's not, that's not right. So I like, I'm telling you, I think in body does the best job. So in body is, going to give you a skeletal muscle. So for, and, and there's one more thing I want to say about muscle gain and progress with, the in body scans. But what I'll say is that a typical woman. Let's say average height, five, five. Okay. So an average skeletal muscle mass for them may be about 55 pounds of skeletal muscle mass.
And so what I like to see, this is my own rule. I made this one up and this is what I use for optimal body composition in my programs. And I'll tell you what that is, but I'm looking for skeletal muscle mass and body fat mass. I want to see skeletal muscle mass above body fat mass. That's what I want to say. I was going to ask you how you, what success rate you're looking at. With that? Is it that you're taking health in mind or just what their body's capable of?
Like, you know, if their muscles up, then you almost don't even care if the weight's up. Is that the logic? Yeah. Yeah. Because what I'm seeing is that for most women, if they are doing strength training three days a week, For about 30 minutes. And if they're consistently eating that protein every single day, and if they have a mesomorph body type, cause this is not true for ectomorph, which is the naturally thin, the most muscle I can expect in a year is six pounds in a year.
I mean, that sounds like a lot of gain though. I mean, yeah, yeah, well, no, it is, but people are thinking they should be gaining a pound a month. So they get really just, I'm like, that's not going to work. So how I'll put it is this way. When I was playing softball back in the day, 50 pounds heavier, I had a little bit more skeletal muscle mass, but it wasn't, it was more fat mass that I had at that point. It wasn't that I had, I wasn't more powerful. I wasn't stronger.
And I have a mesomorph body type, but even for me, for me to gain muscle mass. I have to eat probably five servings of protein a day. So if I'm doing the regular, I'm just maintaining. So I have to actually overeat. I wanna tell you this really cool story as it relates to InBody. I've been traveling a lot this year. There's just a lot of things happening. We were away for about a month, actually. It was a month, we'll call it two months. And literally every meal was out, every single one.
And I'm like, oh my goodness. But I kept up with my workouts. I knew I was eating in a surplus. Right. Kept up with the workouts, whatnot. And again, like I'm kind of at this phase in my life where, you know, by the time I was 22, I kind of figured it out. And then, you know, my, my health really improved. So the whole time I'm, I was really curious. I'm like, I'm eating way in surplus two months. I'm like, but I'm going to keep up with my workouts.
I wound up gaining two pounds of muscle and losing a pound of fat in an excessive surplus. My point is this, that we need a surplus to actually gain a lot of muscle. So our weight will be up. So I gained five pounds because there was water involved too. I had gained five pounds on the scale, two pounds of muscle gained, and I was down a pound in body fat. But if you just looked at the scale. Think of it this way. Here's the standard thing. I just went on vacation for two months.
I'm up five pounds. But in reality, my body composition had significantly improved. Okay. I love hearing that story because it's just, it's, it's, we need to look at health in a different way is what I'm hearing. And I'm always about anything that's not. a scale number. So whether you're actually looking at, like you said, what the actual body composition is doing.
Do you find that measurements, like if you were to physically do the measurements for the arms, the leg, the abdomen, things like that, that that correlates with those types of changes happening? Like if someone can't afford an in body in home, can they do measurements? Will it work? Yeah. I love that question. So here's the thing. So if you kind of look at body type in general, like, so that's going to be super useful because what I'll say is this, yes, measurements can definitely be useful.
So I would say in general for fat loss, A waist circumference, easiest, best measure, right? And that's the other thing too, knowing that it does correlate with cardiovascular risk, it's really useful for us. So we say, okay, so let's see what the waist is doing. Caveat is, if you have an individual that stores all of their body fat in their midsection, They could be losing on their extremities, right? And then it's kind of like, okay, well they are losing. So that's rare.
I would say that's not the typical pattern. Typical pattern is you are gonna see a decrease in waist circumference in terms of arms and legs. Yes, you will also see a difference in arms and legs. And I would say that you're gonna see that. Again, I don't wanna get it too confusing with the different body types, so I'll keep it super simple. I would go waist first and then I would go hip second. And I would go arms and legs third.
So usually like for the arm, it's an unflexed around the bicep for the leg. It's an unflexed midway between the hip and the knee waist. It's actually around the narrowest point. So you find the narrowest point of the waist measure their hips is going to be the fullest part. And the order, again, I would go waist hips. Legs, arms. I'm so, it's funny when you were saying this, I'm like, okay, good.
I just told the patient the right things because I'm always like, I always, I'm trying to remember like, is it where the, where the belly button is or is it higher? I'm always like, no, it's the narrow, narrow because everybody's a little different. Some people's belly buttons at lower bits, it's just the narrow part. And then, and then people are like, well, how, and you know, you just kind of hold the measurement to where it's taught. You're not pulling and squeezing, but just so it's taught.
And then that's going to be, the number you're looking for. Yeah. Listen, I, when I've talked to you today, I just, again, I want to reiterate to everyone, like you have such mastery of all these areas. I feel so much more inspired to keep doing the resistance training and know that it matters and what to look for better. I feel like probably honestly, I'm going to change a few things in my clinic from what we've talked about. So let me ask you this.
Obviously, I a million percent know that you're an expert in this area. And I think that you have some really exciting things coming out here. And this is a really big reason that I brought you on the podcast, because I want people to be able to work with you. And I think you are the person for this. So how can people work with you? Obviously we'll have stuff in the show notes, but can you tell us what you have coming up? Because I think it's, I think it's beyond exciting. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate this. And actually, a lot of what you do has inspired me to actually rebrand my entire company so that I could offer kind of the other side of obesity medicine where I'm not, cause I'm not prescribing, but what can I offer with all the pillars to support those that are prescribing? That's like really where I see kind of my area. And so.
Excitingly enough, we actually as of right now in a couple of weeks are launching our very brand new program and it's called fit woman collective. Now I will tell you, we also do have something for the men. Something very similar. That'll be coming out. We have the men's beta program running right now. It's amazing. That's going to be closer to kind of, the, the beginning of the new year.
So, you know, end of 2023 for the men, but for the women fit woman collective, we said, let's keep it simple fit woman. And here's the whole premise. So the idea is this. Really what I focus on is the mental, emotional, and physical component of health. From the mental standpoint, as women, we always feel like we don't fit in. Like our body doesn't fit in. We're not a good, if we're a parent, we're not a good enough mom. Our mothering techniques don't fit in.
And so we go through life just really feeling as though we're not good enough. And so the fit woman collective is all about what does it mean to redefine yourself As a woman who creates her own space. So we're not trying to be small and kind of try to squeeze into a space we were never meant to fit in. But how can we really create this space? So the idea with this messaging is that it will attract women who really want to live an empowered life.
And we know that when we gather women who are empowered together to lead empowered lives, the energy is out of control. So we're looking to build the community in a way where there's just positive building, uplifting energy. With all that being said. What we do is we offer a whole mindset component to this programming. So for example, the onboarding portion is going to be, defining yourself as a fit woman, fit woman's emotional health, fit woman's nutrition strategy.
It goes through all the things that I teach. And so after that. The beautiful thing is that every month there's a kind of a new theme of content. And then there's a whole library where I do my 30 minute mind body strength training workouts. So this is a great way for people to be able to access strength training regimens that really, really work. You know, I lead them all and it's all on our fit collective app. So it's super easy to access.
So we do strength workouts in there and we release four new ones every single month to develop a really awesome library. We have a whole yoga program. So for those individuals that aren't ready to go to the strength training, they can get started with their yoga and said, and then work themselves up. We have an amazing, meditation series that was custom created for my principals.
So things like, you know, anything you can imagine that I would speak on, we have a meditation series written by another physician, actually. And then from there, we are offering a community discussion board. So this is where you can come in, communicate with other members who are doing the same work to try to build relationships. We also, like I said, the monthly content changes. But the beautiful thing is our fit collective app is a click away. And so everything's accessible right there.
It's like not all of this different logging in and this and that, and everything can be done on your own time. We're also offering the program for 59 a month, which is pretty remarkable. That's like craziness. When I was reading, cause I got this before. Cause like, you know, I kind of knew this was coming. I saw that and I was like, I don't even know how this is possible.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, cause we want, the reason why I chose that price point is because I think that everybody should have access. To the level that I provide my clients that are kind of working at a higher end level. And this would be a way for people to get introduced. And then over time, obviously, if more support is needed, like there can be those options, but I also believe that the way we deliver the content and we have like this beautiful high def equipment.
It's so engaging that I think that people are going to do really well with kind of a self guided type of program. So I'm super pumped to offer it at this. I've never had a price point here. It feels really good to me. I am so excited. Number one, that I'm hoping that when we release this, like it will be active at that point, or you're okay to release this episode. But I'm so excited for people because they, they have no idea about any of this there.
To be honest, they're getting harmed by just being on the meds and not getting additional help. And I feel like this is going to be such a nice way to round out that experience. I have a rather big like social media presence, just in the sense that people are learning about these things. They don't get any of the other support. They're always asking questions about the meds, but I tell nothing else is there for them.
So something like this is really going to provide, if you're listening and you don't have direction with the rest of it, there's no way that your doctor in one visit can go over this. Number one, they don't know the knowledge. They do not understand this at all. It's not their area of expertise. I don't ever pretend to like play around with understanding how to educate people on movement. It's definitely something I get, other people's help from.
So I just really want to recommend that to people if they're doing that. And there's no, like, Affiliation here where I get paid for this. I just genuinely love your stuff. It's just awesome. Thank you.
Thank you so much Yeah, i'm super excited and thank you for for the space to be able to talk about it Well, thank you so much for coming on people are going to learn so much I'm sure this is going to be the most favorite episode ever We're gonna have the link to that down below But are there other ways that people can find you if they want to just follow you in general? Yeah, so It's super simple. Best way is literally probably Instagram.
I'm Allie Nowitzki, MD. And once you go to Instagram on Allie Nowitzki, MD, then my link in bio has access to all of my things. Our website is becoming thefitcollective. com. It's the before, so thefitcollective. com. So that will be our new rebrand for right now I'm under life coaching for women physicians. But as I mentioned, the fit collective is where it's at, but Instagram is probably the easiest way to kind of link to all the different things I have going on. Awesome. Thank you so much.
This was so great. Thank you so much.