So I don't think it had come as any surprise that I love the health and fitness industry and it's been an enormous part of my life for over two decades.
But one thing that I hate, and I.
Don't use that word lightly, is just how prominent this diet culture has become in the health space when most of these diets, if not all of them, are anything but healthy. From talking to so many people, I understand why it is so confusing to figure out what's healthy and what's not, And I feel like it's really important. It's part of my responsibility that I answer questions like this for you.
I'd be very interested to see what your thoughts are on keto.
Just wondering your thoughts on juice cleanses. Do you view them as a fad diet, a good way to de tops, or a good way to strip f.
Our favorite nutrition as Shanna will be in a little later on to help me answer these questions. But first, pelvic flaw? What is it and who does it impact? Is it just pregnant women or old men or is it something.
That we should all know about? Well?
With Sess and I expecting our fourth daughter only a few weeks away. I thought it was the perfect time to chat to a good friend of mine about pelvic floor fitness and exercise during pregnancy and postpartum. So if you're expecting, or you have a partner a friend that's expecting, or you've recently given birth and you want some tips that you're going to help make sure you stick around.
I'm so excited that we are joined now by not only someone who is a wonderful friend of mine, but she is a physiotherapist, women's health experts specializing in pregnancy, post natal and pelvic floor and owner of the wonderful fit to Deliver Pilarate Shidio just for women pregnant or post natal. And my great friend Chloe law Back, Welcome to the WOODLFE.
Great to be here. How exciting.
There's so many things I want to talk to you about. I think let's jump straight into it because the question that you probably get the most is should you exercise while you are pregnant?
Yeah?
What a ripper question to start us off. Absolutely, yes, you should exercise when you're pregnant, provided there are no contra indications, and in actual fact, the contra indications are things like extremely high blood pressure, or pre existing medical stuff, which is actually pretty rare. So provided that you're fit and healthy, which ninety five or ninety eight percent of
pregnant women are, yes, you should be exercising. And the guidelines for the amount of exercise you do and the intensity are the same as for everyday Australians, So we should be doing one hundred and fifty minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise, so that's about half an hour a day, and that's going to just lead to so many benefits, not only during pregnancy for the mum, but
also for the bub which is really great. You're setting yourself up for great success and ultimately optimizing your recovery after you've had the baby, but you're also giving your bubba the best start in life that you can, which is one of the coolest things I think you can do.
I don't think there's a woman out there who would be listening to this who's either about to go through pregnancy or perhaps has that wouldn't be.
Nodding along going well.
I don't need any more reasons than that totally. There still is a little bit of a funny stigma attached to pregnant women exercising isn't.
There totally absolutely, Yeah.
Why why do you think that is?
Well?
I think because in the olden days, people used to like to wrap pregnant women up in cotton wool, and the advice, probably thirty five forty years ago, was to rest, and the medical evidence at the time support of that. But since then we've got a bunch of really good, rigorous research to show the benefits of exercising during pregnancy. And one of the main reasons that people I think are reluctant perhaps to start exercising or to continue is
just fear. So they're worried that they can perhaps cause damage to the baby's development, or particularly in the first trimester, I think people are concerned about miscarrying. And that's a really a valid concern that I talked to lots of women about when they call up when they're seven or six weeks pregnant and they're wondering if it's okay to exercise. But it's almost more important for those women to be
exercising once the pregnancy is well established. Then you want to be breeping all those benefits and making sure that your pregnancy is really healthy, you're really healthy, and that your baby's really healthy and again you're optimizing all of
the things are going to help you recover. So I think it's fear and also just a lack of awarenes It's just lack of education because maybe their grandmothers and their mothers are saying, oh, it's time for you to rest and put your feet up, and you're working too hard, and you know, how could you be bothered to do the exercise after all of that hard day work And
it's just, you know, it's just not right. So it's great that there's an opportunity for us to spread the word that exercise is definitely a really great thing to do while you're pregnant. The caveat in exercise is that it's got to be something that you like. You better, you may as well choose something that you like, and it has to be you have to listen to your body.
So if you're really really exhausted because you haven't slept, because you've been so sick with nausea during your pregnancy, or you've just got zero energy, then you're crazy to try and push yourself to go and do a thirty minute workout. But if you can get the energy to walk around the block or to do lapse of your whole way that is already going to give you some benefits.
So you have to take the pressure of yourself and do what you can when you can, and then when you're feeling a little bit more energetic, that's when you can put your foot on the gas a little and do a bit more.
You must get a lot of questions about what is the best type of exercise to do while I'm pregnant or post nat or what do you say when you get asked that question?
So, low impact, moderate intensity, right, okay, So if you love cycling or rowing or.
So resistance type classes or pilates.
Walking, all that stuff is exactly what you want to be doing. Where it's enough to get your heart rate up and to make you feel a little bit huffed and puff so that you can still carry on a conversation. That's the level of heart rate that you want to have, so that you've got a little bit of breathless feeling,
but you can still talk. That's the intensity and low impact so that you're not putting pressure on your joints, because your joints are softening during pregnancy to prepare for delivery, and that happens from about starts happening from about eight weeks, so the little hormones get into the ligaments and start to create more space, particularly around the pelvis, and so higher impact exercise can lead to a little bit of discomfort in pelvic joints or other joints. So low impact
is better. And low impact is also really good because your pelvic floor muscles, which are under extra load, can tolerate a low impact move, but less likely to tolerate higher impact exercise.
So higher impact you're talking about jumping squats and jumping lunges and burpies and this kind of stuff.
You yeah, yeah, yeah, running, yeah yeah.
So people who love running are the ones who usually don't like to hear about low impact exercise because people
who love running want to keep running. And I understand that running is a fabulous exercise, but I've seen the evidence that it's better to have a little break from running after your second trimester and get back to it in the post natal period once your pelvic floor is strong enough and your joints of are strong, because it's just a lot of pressure on the pelvic floor and it's a short window of your life to cut back on something even if you love it, and then we can get back into it afterwards.
So then from a post natal perspective, you get your six week check from your doctor, you have six weeks off, giving yourself plenty of time to rest and recuperate and spend time with a little bub And then if you get your six week check from your doctor, the advice is you continue on with the low to moderate intensity, lower impact stuff that you were doing during the pregnancy
and slowly but surely build yourself back up. Yeah, over what time period to potentially then get back to running for those women out there that are listening that do love running.
Yeah, So, provided all is well, then three months is the recommended time to start being able to do a bit more high impact exercise. So your first six weeks you kind of in your little bubble with your baby and getting to know your family and spending time learning how to feed and all of those things, and recovering from the delivery. Gentle walking, gentle stretching is great. And then from six to twelve weeks you can up the ante a little bit with that load and moderate intense
but still low impact. And then from twelve weeks on wards, if your pelvic floor feels strong enough and you're ready and you're keen, then you can start to introduce some more high impact load if those joints and muscles are ready for that. And so there's a test. It's called the stress test, and it's a star jump and a cough at the same time three times. So when I show it to people, they're like, holy moley, no, I'm
not ready for that. It's well, if you can't do a cough and a star jump three times, then I think a five k run is probably going to be beyond what your pelvic floor is ready for. But the progression you just touched on that, and that's exactly what you do. You start with a walk run program, so
you walk for four minutes, run for a minute. You allow your body chance to strengthen up and to adjust, but you've got to keep up with your pelvic floor exercises and the strengthening of your core muscles and the glutes and all of that good stuff so that you're ready to run.
So just we're talking about, you know, coming back gradually and at the right pace for us after having a baby.
It's not a race.
It's not a race.
Every pregnancy is different. Work yourself back. If you can exercise once a week, great, twice a week, great, three times a week, great, do what you can.
Dance around the house every day exactly.
You know, if you're torn between having an app that you desperately need or fitting a workout in, have an app, you know like that is most likely a much better choice for you to make, and then just work yourself back,
slowly but surely. Now, I'd love you to give our listeners your thoughts on peerlvic floor, because you said something to me really interesting once, you said, Sam, everyone should do pervict floor and I said every woman and you said, no, every person, and I was like, oh, even me, And so it's always stuck with me. It's always stuck with me. I do my perfect floors after hearing that, So I'd love you to elaborate on that a little bit more.
You're damn right. So pelvic floor muscles, we all have them. They're part of our core. They support our organs underneath in men and women. So in women, the difference is that we have three openings in the pelvic floor, and so that's what makes our muscles a little more vulnerable, whereas in men there's just two openings in the pelvic floor, and the urethra is really long, like in a woman
it's just a four centimeter tube. In a man it's a variable length, but fourteen centimeters or so, so there's a long way for the weed to go before it accidentally leaks out. That's the difference. So women have got a more vulnerable pelvic floor because of those three openings. And then with childbirth, so the pregnancy weight of holding the baby in the extra fluid plus the delivery is what it leads to some stretching and perhaps some damage
to the pelvic floor muscles. So that's why we hear about it more from women in those years, the thirties and forties. In men, we hear about pelvic floor dysfunction much later in life. So that's when the prostate land gets enlarged often and removed, and then the tension around the urethra is gone, and so then men have to then learn how to activate their pelvic floor muscles to control the flow of urine because that pressure has been removed once the prostate's removed. So there's no get out
of jail free card. But the stats are definitely stacked up against women, so one in three women who've had a baby will experience stressing continents, and it's about one in five men in their sixties. So it's much laid down the track and it's much less prevalent, but it's
still really important. And if you think about weightlifting or something that men and women both do where it puts pressure down on the pelvic floor, that's when men really need to focus on balancing that load or that intrabdominal pressure by having enough pelvic floor strength.
And this is not something we know for women. It's not a post pregnancy thing. This is a during during pregnancy.
During life. So teenage girls really should know how to should be taught or should understand or have some more education about how to activate their pelvic floor muscles, because there's lots of young women or girls who haven't had a baby who still experience involuntary loss of urine, and particularly sporty girls, particularly the athletic girls, the netballers, the trampoline as, the gymnasts, the horse riders, the hurdlers, the sprinters, basketballers,
so they've got lots of pressure. They're doing those high impact sports with lots of pressure on the pelvic floor muscles. And often they just haven't been taught the mechanics of activating the pelvic floor muscles, or they've got really well developed external muscles like their abs are super strong, their back muscles, their groups, but there's been no focus from the strength and conditioning side of things on the deeper pelvic floor muscles.
So how do we build up our perfect floor.
Well, unfortunately, it's a bit boring and it's just one of those things you kind of got to just do and you can't always do it along with other exercise. So it has to be specific initially so that you're really focusing on the muscles. So the first thing is understanding where the muscles are. So they're the muscles that are at the base of your pelvis, running from your pubic bone at the front and attaching to your tailboat
at the back. So you picture that hammock of muscle and it's sitting like a bowl holding up all your organs. And then for girls, imagining that you're tightening around your back passage. And I say for girls because boys don't ever hold in farts, so.
You don't understand.
So we'll get to you in a minute. So I say to the girls, if you're the lift with your boss and you've just been having your chickpea soup for your homus on toast. You've got to squeeze and tighten around your back passage. And we say around the back passage because there's so many nerve innings. There way more nerve things that are in your vagina, so you're tightening around the vagina too, But it's a different feeling around the back paste. You've got much more feedback, so it's
the same muscles. You can just feel it more at the back, so you squeeze and tighten, but your bum stays relaxed and your legs are relaxed. You can feel a little bit of pulling in from your tummy and that's activating your pelvic floor. For boys, you're going to imagine walking into Port Philip Bay down there in the nice freezing sixteen degree water and just slowly as you're getting deeper and deeper and the water's coming up your thighs up and it's just about to touch your balls.
That feeling of everything lifting and drawing in is activating your pelvic floor muscles.
Right, okay, And how long do you hold it for?
So when you're starting out about three seconds, so you want to get a really strong contraction, give it everything you've got, and then release fully. So it's just as important to release fully, same as any muscle. If you're trying to strengthen, you need to relax so that you can then activate it again.
When you say this is something you need to do in isolation, so you're not doing this what you're trying to do your squat So you did list at the gym, this is a that's correct morning exercise.
Or you're brushing your teeth.
Right, okay, and how many reps am I doing?
So you're standing there brushing your teeth, you're doing ten three second.
Holds, ten three second holds, And that's.
Kind of like a baseline maintenance homework program. And that's a really great thing to start because then you don't build up that fear about exercising the pelvic floor muscles. It just happens and it gets stronger and the feeling comes back much more quickly. So start as early as you can, and if you haven't, don't worry. You haven't missed the vote because you're still going to get the benefits of strengthening whenever you start brilliant advice.
Klok. I've spoken to you five thousand times and I've still.
Learned a lot today.
I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing all of you with them today with our wood Life listeners, and.
Thank you so much thanks for having me.
So to all of our Woodlife listens out there, I think you know what your homework is. Get doing those pervict floor exercises every day while you're.
Brushing your teeth.
And next, we're going to dive into questions with our wonderful nutritionist Shana about diet culture. There's a good chance that you've either been on a diet or you know someone who has. Diet culture is alive and well, and there's so many different ones out there, some promising crazy results, others saying they're good for your health. We're going to unpack your diet questions with our favorite nutritionist Shanna.
Welcome, Hey Sam, great to be here.
This is a funny one because I would be in the absolute minority. I've never been on a diet.
I'm probably in the minority.
There would definitely be most of our listeners out there that have tried a diet of some description, so it's no surprise when we get questions.
Like this, Hey, Sam, I'd be very interested to see what your thoughts are on Keto and something that I'm looking at doing. And I think even though Keto is a lifestyle, I think it's something that we should horribly talk about more.
So, isn't that an interesting great question Brooklyn that Brooklyn said it's a lifestyle which I don't necessarily agree with, which I think can be a controversial opinion because those that are on the Keto train are pretty steadfast about it, and it's I believe that Keto has some good bits, but it's far too restrictive as it definitely leaves out some key nutritional areas. Do you want to elaborate a bit more and explain to our listeners first of all, if I'm right and what.
I'm on about, Yeah, absolutely so. I think with any diet diets that take out entire food groups or macronutrients, they're a bit of a red flag straight away. So with the Keto diet, you're having very minimal, like virtually no carbohydrates whatsoever. You're focusing more on the high fat foods and protein as well. But by removing the carbohydrate that's actually the kinds of foods we get fiber from, and fiber is really important for our gut health and
carbs in general, they are our bodies preferred source of fuel. Obviously, we want to choose the right type of carbohydrates. The less refined, the better, so that's the key.
That's okay.
I think carbohydrates are being demonized, and some carbohydrates probably deserve to be demonized and don't really do us any favors, and getting rid of them out of our diet, or predominantly getting rid of them actually does do us a whole lot of favors. But getting rid of them altogether, not getting that fiber and and some other valuable things that we need from our carbs, is.
Not the answer, is it exactly? And I think we often forget that lots of veggies fall under the carbohydrate banner as well, so you're also limiting your vegetable intake. And we know how important it is to get plenty of veggies as part of a balanced diet, so we want to be careful when we are restricting entire macronutrients or big food groups like that. In saying that keto can be beneficial in particular, conditions like epilepsy. There've been
some studies done there. However, for general health, it's not something I would get behind or recommend.
So it's a really good question from Brooklyn, and that's I hope that clears up Brooklyn why I said. I don't personally, and China shares this opinion that it is a lifestyle choice because when I hear the term lifestyle choice, I think sustainability. Now, there's a lot of good things about it cuts out a lot of the bad things that too many of us consume in two higher quantities.
And this is where it's all relative. So many of us seats so badly that if we change from what we're currently eating to go to quito, we're probably eating a lot better. However, is it the optimal long term way to eat?
I don't think so.
Yep, I'd agree with that all right. Next question is from Larna.
Hi, Sam, just wondering your thoughts on juice cleanses. Do you view them as a fad diet, a good way to de toks or a good way to strip that?
Thanks?
Sam.
So, I've got a good mate who is a bit of a juice cleans nut, and it's always to come back from the brink of very unhealthy periods or unhealthier, more stressful periods in his life. He's a super busy guy, and he also loves his pastries and that kind of thing, and so he goes from one extrand to the other. I'm habit to put my hand up. At the end of the seven days, he looks pretty good. He doesn't really enjoy it. You know, he's starving and it's not sustainable.
I mean he hangs on by his fingernails to get to day five, six or seven. Typically, what I see is most of the people that lose weight on these things just regain it again. Yeah.
I think this is a really interesting one because some people love them, rave about them, find really good results through them, and others absolutely hate them. I know they're even in the nutrition and dietitian world, there are many who are absolutely so against juice cleansers. I personally sit somewhere in between. I think they can have a time and a place. I don't think it's a sustainable, long term thing.
All the full seven days though, because I don't love them is a little kicker.
It's seven days.
It's a long time, and it's a particularly long time to go without particular macronutrients and food groups. Like we were saying about ketohuts cutting things out, juice cleanses are the same. You're missing a lot of important vitamins minerals, or you're getting lots of vitamins and minerals, but you're missing like your protein, your healthy fats. They can work in terms of, like you said, as a bit of
a reset. So if you just feel like you need a little bit of a detox or you need to just help reset and kick start your habits, that can be a good way to start, and it can give our body a rest because our bodies then not digesting.
Digesting does take up a lot of energy. Something we do want to be mindful of, though, is making sure we're going for veggie based juices when we do juice cleanses, because otherwise it's just going to be so high sugar and it can send our blood sugar levels out of regulation and that's not something we want to be doing, especially because with those juices, when not getting the fiber that helps to slow the release of those sugars.
I think that's a really good point because we tend to think of juice cleans as a juice cleans, and they're definitely different. It's an interesting thing when you see what people do from an exercise perspective as well, when they take on one of these cleanses. I sort of sitting on the fence are a little bit later. I hope you don't think, oh, thanks for nothing, but I think we've given you a bit of a well rounded opinion. I hope that helps you to make up your own mind.
So I think it's safe to say, Shanna that keto and juice cleans might not be the best things, but they're definitely not the most extreme options out there. We're going to hear from some of our wood Life listeners with some seriously extreme crash darts that they've tried.
I've done the GM diet, so, which is like a seven day literally a cleansed program.
So every day you just got.
To eat, like one day it's only bananas, one day it's only watermelon, one day's only tomato raw tomatoes, and yeah, I think one of the days it's vegetables. So it's like a crazy seven day diet. I tried my best to do that and it was It did help in losing a few pounds, but it's not sustainable.
I did the soup diet once, so basically you're supposed to eat I have soup for fourteen days and I only lasted two. I just remember it was almost like I was see like I was water logged because I'd had so much soup and I was also drinking water I think the.
Lemons for about three weeks, and it was correndous. I don't ever do it again.
I don't know if we ever need to comment.
I think those three listeners sum that up absolutely perfect. I mean, so the GM diet, which has been around since the eighties, it's as old as it's as old as they come. On day four, just as an example of how wacky this diet is, you're only allowed to consume milk and bananas. I mean, WTF, seriously, I mean that is just weird. And at least all three of our listeners had tried those things, hadn't enjoyed it, had worked out for themselves that this is definitely.
Not the long term way ahead.
But what's your overarching thoughts on crash diets.
Definitely not a fan of crash diets or fad diets or anything that promises quick results, or just limits really good.
Foods for us.
So all of these are very restrictive and limiting. One of the people who shared their experience, they said that it's not sustainable, and that just hit the nail on the head because they're not sustainable. They are crash diets, they are a few days, they're promising those results, but they're not helping you make those changes, change your habits, working with behavioral change methods to actually get you doing
what is going to support your health long term. And these things, if you were to do the long term, you would feel like absolute trash. Like these people probably felt not great when they're just doing it short term as well. And some of them said that and they might lose that weight in the short term, but then they're going to put it back on because they haven't actually learned what they need to eat to support their body and support them staying at their healthy weight long term.
So it's literally that is you're just going to yoyo. You're going to end up trying one then having to try another, and it's not actually creating that sustainable change that we want.
And so from a science perspective, I've always explained to my clients and perhaps you can explain it better, but I always say, well, you lose the water because you're not eating carbs and it's a lot of carbs in your system that hold water.
So as soon as.
Those carbs are flushed out of your system, all the water gets flushed out too. You kind of dehydrated and depleted of everything. And then the second you eat it again, your body just sucks it all up like a sponge and you bring all that water back on to sort of what your weight's meant to be, and turns out in that time you've lost no actual fat. So when you're thinking about what you're trying to do, it is it sustainable? And how am I actually burning fat?
Yeah? So I think placing the emphasis on the fat loss as opposed to the weight loss is something that is really important to note.
Channa, thank you so much for coming into the woodlife. As always, I've learned many things I'm sure our listeners have too, And to our listeners, thank you so much for sending those questions. This show really is all about you and trying to help you, so please, please, please always continue to send in your questions as a link in the show notes.
If you ever want to do that. We'd love to hear
From you, and you'll see now on Monday for a motivational moment