852: Metabolic Health in Menopause and Perimenopause With Wise and Well

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode goes deep on the topic of metabolic health, nutrition, body composition changes, especially around menopause and perimenopause and all that comes with that. And I am back with Kristin and Maria who have developed a really comprehensive program that helps address all of these factors for women who are navigating those phases of life. They have a deep background in holistic nutrition and nutritional therapy and have done mentorships with doctors, naturopaths, and specialists in hormone replacement therapy and the very specific changes for women in mid-lifetime periods. And in this episode, I was really excited to deep dive with them into what we need to know about metabolic health and how that changes as we age, including factors like what changes when it comes to nutritional needs, lifestyle factors, body composition changes, and how often women will get more visceral fat during these time periods and how we can mitigate that, the importance of muscle mass, especially as we age, and how even if we are doing all the things right and supporting with diet and lifestyle, menopause is essentially a time of inflammation and changing metabolic demand on the body and how we can best support our bodies through that, as well as a lot of important nuance on things like testosterone and how we have dual sources as women from our adrenals and our ovaries, and while we often focus on ovarian sources, that supporting the adrenals in very specific ways can be tremendously helpful. They give so many key points and practical takeaways that are especially supportive for women. So let’s jump in and learn more. Maria and Kristin, welcome back.

Kristin and Maria: Thank you.

Katie: Well, I’m really excited in this conversation to jump into the nitty gritty of what we can all do to support our metabolic health, both nutritionally through lifestyle and so much more as we go through the eras of perimenopause and menopause. And if you guys haven’t listened to our first conversation, I feel like that was really foundational and helpful for debunking some of the myths around these time periods of life and also what we can do that we may have gotten conflicting information on that can really help alleviate some of the discomfort and the negative symptoms that often go along with that. But in this one, I would love to really delve into some tangible things that we can all do to support our bodies as we experience hormone shifts and especially in the nutritional and metabolic side. So to start off the conversation, can you explain what are some of the metabolic changes that naturally do happen as we go through the hormone shifts of perimenopause and menopause?

Maria: Sure. So one of the things that’s been a little bit top of mind for us, because it seems to be coming out in some of the longevity, biohacking spheres is just this kind of curiosity and concern about women’s cholesterol levels as they age. And women will be like, oh my gosh, what’s going on? I was just recommended a statin, right? And I but I eat healthy and I exercise well. You’re losing LDL receptors in the liver. So, you know, you’re just not going to have the proper amount of receptors to properly process the cholesterol in the body and it tends to rise. That can be a thyroid thing as well. You know, if the thyroid is slow, cholesterol will rise. But like midlife women need to know it’s deeply tied into changes in their metabolic health, changes in their estrogen.

Kristin: I would say, you know, insulin sensitivity is on the decline, whether women like to think about it or not. You know, I think the vast majority of your listeners probably have a pretty good hold on carbohydrates. They’re not the standard American eating, you know, 300, 400 grams of carbs a day. But even those who’ve been very carb-conscious coming into this phase of life may need to be a little bit more carb-conscious. And that is because we’ve got changes happening in the gut microbiome and we’ve got changes to insulin sensitivity. And those two things combine to have a woman, we hear it all the time, she may be like 45 and she’ll go, I have changed nothing of what I’m eating and everything is changing on my body. And that has to do with the shift in the microbiome and the shift in your insulin sensitivity.

And as we kind of talked about briefly in the first episode, you know, we also have a change in inflammation is starting to happen behind the scenes just on its own separate because of this decline in our hormones. So, you know, you wrap up this change, this, you know, higher inflammatory response, lower carbohydrate tolerance, the insulin is no longer having its sort of GPS signal, which a lot of women don’t realize that estradiol tells insulin where to deposit fat. So as we lose that signal from estrogen, the fat deposit suddenly goes from our butt and our hips up to our belly. And women are like, where did this tire come from?

We know that belly fat starts to become more and more dangerous because of the visceral nature around our organs. That, in turn, can trigger additional inflammation, right? We know that that also can impact the gut microbiome even further. So it becomes this incredible building cascade of problems with respect to metabolism. And sadly, what a lot of women do is what worked for us in our 20s and 30s. We start exercising more and we start eating less. And we may even start eating just more of a kind of plant-based model. Not saying that you’re a vegan or vegetarian, but you do start to lean into these things because they’re lower calorie and they’re higher fiber and you think you need these things.

And the reality is the number one kind of regulator beyond estradiol of inflammation in the body and really any human body has a lot to do with your muscle deposition. And muscle releases very anti-inflammatory cytokines. I think during the pandemic, we started to all equate the term cytokine with inflammation and that it’s bad. But the reality is, is that the type of cytokine or the impact and effect of cytokine’s action actually is dependent upon the tissue from which it is released. And cytokines released from muscle are actually anti-inflammatory. So we have this declining body composition. We’re losing our muscle. We’re losing this additional regulator on inflammation. And then again, it just hastens the whole insulin resistance, gut microbiome change, et cetera.

So how do women stop it? We start to focus on muscle as our organ of longevity. That’s become all the rage right now anyway, but it’s truly, truly relevant, most poignantly for women in the midlife transition. That means we need to change our movement focus. I get it. I was a complete cardio junkie. I was a very highly competitive rower. I loved my racing. I was hours and hours on the river, et cetera. I need to spend more time in the gym.

And we hear from women, I’m worried about getting bulky. And we hate to break it to you, ladies. But at this age and stage of life, you don’t have the hormonal makeup to become bulky. It’s just not going to happen unless you’re truly overeating and maybe doping a little. But so we need to change our eating a little to recognize this declining insulin sensitivity. We need to improve our focus on our muscles. And that means more protein. And more protein probably means more animal proteins than what a lot of women at this age of life are eating. So it does require a wholesale shift.

And then obviously, we have the issue with sleep affecting our metabolic health. And so as sleep is declining in this phase too, prioritizing that, really starting to rein in our habits around it can sort of help slow down some of those metabolic changes.

Katie: Yeah, I love this. I feel like that this is something we are told is like we lose a certain amount of muscle mass per year or per decade as we get older. But I feel like we’re not told that there are actually ways we can change that statistic in our own experience. And I love that you brought up the supporting muscle. And I know that in all the studies I’ve seen, lean muscle mass correlates very strongly with longevity and also reduced risk of all these things we’re talking about. And we also know statistically most Americans, I believe it might be upwards of 90% now, have some marker of metabolic dysfunction and that these often increase as we get older, though we are seeing them in children now too, which is alarming.

One thing I’ve been doing the last few years is getting a DEXA scan to look at both visceral fat and muscle. And my goal is actually, if possible, to increase my muscle mass as I get older and keep visceral fat very low. But I feel like at least having that data, like you mentioned, those aren’t things you can feel. I can’t feel necessarily what my visceral fat is. And so having that data is, I feel like, very motivating.

I also am glad you brought up the point about you’re not going to accidentally slip and get bulky in the gym, because this is something I implemented about four years ago. And I do a lot of weightlifting. And I had that concern in the beginning. And now I find it so funny to think back. I work really, really, really hard and get less bulky. It would be absurd to think that I would accidentally lift a weight and start looking too bulky.

Another thing that I would guess people have seen circulating around, we’re seeing a lot going around the internet right now about cortisol. And if cortisol is out of range, this can cause bloating and inflammation and seemingly all of life’s problems. And then if we fix our cortisol, that will seemingly fix all of life’s problems. And I know this is a part of the equation, but I would love to get both of your take on what is the actual role of cortisol, what’s happening with it during perimenopause and menopause, and how can we support a healthy response there?

Maria: Yeah, cortisol is a really interesting hormone. I mean, it’s really very important for immune response or blood sugar regulation. I even believe it’s tied into mood modulation. You know, it’s, it should rise when we are faced with a stressful situation. You’re running after a toddler. Or you maybe had a disagreement with someone that becomes heated, your cortisol will rise. It’s, it should come back down though. Okay. So, and also, it can be kind of stimulated by both physiological stress, physical stress, and psychological stress. So I think really managing our mind and our thoughts and how we frame situations is important. But, you know, there is, we can absolutely kind of, I think I intimated this before. Adrenal glands will take a hit to a certain degree. If we are, you know, over fasting, I we are over-exercising. If we are waking up and, you know, not eating and you know, just like sticking to the schedule. No, I have to get 18 hours in before I eat, you know, ignoring the body’s cues. So, you know, cortisol is a very important hormone. I also believe because Kristen and I have seen this is that we can actually bring back a certain degree of adrenal health when we get the sex hormones replenished as well.

So, yes, you know, we truly believe that the whole adrenals and cortisol, yes, herbs can be helpful. They can definitely be part of a kind of a healing plan for women. But it is largely a lifestyle thing. It’s like, put the phone down, walk in nature. Take some time. Breathe deeply. Get off, yeah, did I say get off the phone? If I’m saying it again. Yeah, it’s so healing to get off the phone.

And then to that end, I just want to kind of tie in this little thing about cortisol and the adrenals and is that key is that we see a lot of women your age, maybe early, you know, a little older, early 40s. And they are going and they’re getting themselves a testosterone prescription because of whatever body composition, libido, things like that. And I think what women don’t realize is they have both an adrenal and an ovarian source of testosterone. So, if you do not have a really good testosterone level in, say, as a 38-year-old woman, a 40, 41-year-old woman, you really need to investigate your lifestyle. Because most likely you are kind of squashing it coming from the adrenals. It’s just like you’re in poor health that you don’t even realize you should have a, you know, a robust testosterone level at that age. I mean, I tested my mom at 70. She’s got kind of a robust testosterone level. Again she’s you know 20 years past menopause, but she’s got some coming from her adrenal. You know, again, we’re not against testosterone, but we like to see women just attend to the lifestyle stuff first. So adrenals are definitely important.

Katie: That’s fascinating. And it makes sense because adrenals and ovaries, but I feel like, actually, I’ve heard of more women getting prescribed testosterone replacement, I think, even looking at the other levels, which is fascinating to me.

Kristin: Well, for some reason, you know, we see these women who they’re scared of estrogen, but they’re so quick to take testosterone. Like, wait a minute, we know that we actually can aromatize that into estrogen, first of all. So if estrogen is so scary, like, you know, realize what you’re potentially adding to. But, you know, it’s, there’s also these tropes going around about by volume, testosterone is the dominant hormone in women or there’s more testosterone in the female body. It’s like, OK, that’s true by volume, but we’re really kind of splitting hairs here because what really is driving these homeostatic signals and whatnot throughout the body is estrogen. And so, we know how what makes us women and it’s estrogen. And we know how people who, you know, want to become more feminized, they use estrogen. They don’t use testosterone. So we need to sort of dispense with that.

But another thing I think we see is so many women putting themselves on these adaptogens because they’re convinced that they need to be regulating their adrenals. And Maria and I just want to say, guys, your body is so brilliant and wise, it will figure it out. But you need to stop handicapping it with all of these horrible lifestyle things. And when we see one who says my cortisol is too high, like, no, that’s your adrenals actually supporting life. That’s your adrenals doing their job. You should be thanking them for being high right now. But now you need to ask yourself, why are they in that state and downregulate that.

On the flip side, we see these women who are like, I have this adrenal fatigue, which we reject that term, but they’ll say I have no cortisol. And something that’s really interesting in the work out there is that we see now when short of losing what’s called your diurnal rhythm and some sort of pattern of secretion over the course of 24 hours, too low of production is actually a protective mechanism by the body. So this isn’t your body failing you. This is, again, your body supporting you. And it’s saying, OK, there might be an immune response that I need to let the body mobilize for rather than focusing on this adrenal response. So just know that whether too high or too low, cortisol is not bad in and of itself and your body’s not failing you. You’re just sort of overlooking some problems.

Katie: That’s such a great point. I had a guest one time encouraged the reframe of anything we call symptoms as sort of like healing responses or healing messages, because those are really our body communicating with us, either something it needs and doesn’t have, or doesn’t need that it’s being exposed to. But at the end of the day, those are gifts because if we listen, it’s our body directly telling us how we can support it.

And I think that reframe on cortisol especially is so helpful right now, because I’ve seen so many things floating around of like, oh, just take these herbs and your belly fat will be completely gone because you fixed your cortisol. And I think it’s a valuable perspective to realize like, this is your body being on your side and doing what’s best for you right now. So how do you give it the tools to do that even better?

On that note, are there any I know each woman is different. And there are things like testing can be extremely helpful. But are there any sort of general guidelines when it comes to metabolic health to stress in the adrenals and cortisol to sleep changes that you find sort of like almost universally supportive that women can start paying attention to even before they’re going to consider something like hormone replacement to kind of give their body the best foundation?

Kristin: Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say, first of all, eat, please nourish your body. I think too many women are underfeeding themselves. And that’s putting the body into a physiologic state of stress. I think really basic accessible to everyone is get outside in the morning, walk around, get some daylight in your eyes, etc. Too many of us either hit the gym right away, or we, you know, go on our screens, or, you know, we’re kind of busy at whatever. Doesn’t take much but if you allow your body to get outside and get some light, it starts to go, oh, right, this is the schedule I’m supposed to be keeping.

Same thing at night, I think there’s a beauty, my husband and I have a habit of going and sitting in two Adirondack chairs at the back corner of our pool at like four in the afternoon, it’s a little bit cooler, but the sun’s coming down. I sleep like a dead person on those nights, right. And so just sort of starting to implement these basic things. You don’t need to be walking around with blue light blockers. If that helps you, that’s great. But if that’s really the biggest tool that you’re going to, you know, throw around, there’s some easier, ones, right. And that sort of stuff can be helpful.

So I think stopping some of the fasting. Eating enough, eating nourishing foods, dropping the alcohol, focusing on daily habits that support sleep, and then starting to become in tune. I think so many of us, I’m going through some stressful stuff right now. And I said to my husband, I’m gritting my teeth. And it’s been going on for a couple days, but I didn’t even realize it. And so starting to just do a daily check in, you know, even if it’s once or twice during the day, check in with yourself, how is your breathing? Have you kind of adjusted to shallow breathing, you know, take some deep breaths.

I think basic things like prayer, meditation, gratitude, whatever works for someone in those, you know, situations, whatever you’re prone to, just incorporate, it doesn’t have to be a you know, 45-minute journaling practice every morning. Not a lot of us have super time for that, but it could just be, you know, five minutes after lunch of just going and quieting yourself into a space and checking in and doing some breathing. I mean, anything like that would, I think, be helpful.

The impact that those habits can have on metabolic health, I think, are wildly understated. And that, you know, it’s as basic as people saying, gosh, I started chewing my food and my bowels became normal. It’s like, yeah, it was a pretty easy thing. Same with this sort of stuff. You know, it’s just some really basic slow down, check in, honor yourself, look at your energy spending, whatnot, and then dial it back as to what you need.

Katie: Yeah, I am with you on that. Anytime I get a chance to speak to those sort of like foundational, free habits and how profoundly they can impact your life. And I feel like if anything, it sounds like perimenopause and menopause sort of amplify the effect that that can have in either direction. I’ve had so many guests that speak to almost sort of like a lot of these things we’re talking about and chronic disease and inflammation and all of the different topics I cover. There’s this kind of core that can almost be summed up as nature deficit disorder of living in not in alignment with the way we were designed as human animals.

And not that that means we need to go live in a yurt in the woods, but if we can understand that, it’s like, how do we adapt our modern lifestyles to include the elements of nature that are most supportive to our biology? And that can be, I love that you’re just sitting outside at sunrise and sunset, which is also as a bonus, a natural source of red-light therapy, which is anti-aging. But maybe it’s dimming the lights in your house after sunset so your body’s getting the cues the sun’s gone down. Or avoiding screens after sunset, which is one of the few non-negotiable rules in my house. Things like that, I think we, like you said, we underestimate the simplicity, the simple changes because they’re simple and they can often be the most profound.

And I also want to highlight something you said about not under-eating or doing too much fasting, especially in this phase, because I know those there’s conflicting advice floating around there as well. But I’ve noticed this as I’ve gotten older is my body seems less tolerant to extended fast or to under-eating. And I had to sort of repair my metabolism after years of chronic dieting, and the safety signals from eating enough of the right kinds of foods I found actually helped me get leaner versus gaining weight from eating more calories. And I feel like women especially can be afraid of that because we’ve been sort of told the calories in, calories out model for so long that we’re afraid of actually eating enough food.

Maria: Right. Yeah, I think the most important thing that women need to do with regards to eating in this phase of life and really probably it applies to every phase of life is truly getting enough protein. And I say that as someone who said that for the longest time, but really didn’t make it a priority. For a few years, and, you know, that may mean changing your kind of visual construct, productive what a plate should be. You know, like I do love salad. And I love vegetables and stuff like that.

And I thought, you know, I didn’t realize that what I was doing was really filling up on that and then just not eating enough protein. And when I just one day I just switched. I was like, okay, I’m just going to have more protein. I would like, I’ll have half the salad I used to, and it’s still plenty. You’re still getting plenty of benefits from say that arugula salad that goes with whatever animal protein that I’m having, but like really, really dig into that. Don’t just like lightly touch on it. And I’m just saying that because I said that as someone who like kind of intellectually knew the benefits, but didn’t feel it palpably until I made that change.

Kristin: Yeah. And I think one of the things I want to say about the protein discussion today is that you know, with the sort of carnivore movement that’s happened around this space, I think carnivore can be great from, you know, kind of an interventional therapeutic approach for someone who’s really struggling with a lot of food issues or gut issues or some autoimmune stuff and whatnot, they just sort of need a reset. That’s great. But what I think the focus and popularity of carnivore has done has unfortunately framed in a lot of women’s minds that animal protein means a steak.

And, you know, there’s amazing animal proteins out there that aren’t steak. And we’re really pro red meat, we love it to death. But, you know, for women who maybe haven’t had a lot of it in their lives, or they feel like it’s a digestive kind of brick in their gut or something like that, you know, look at fish, look at seafood, look at dairy, look at eggs, look at poultry, you know, we can get clean sources of all of these things. But it doesn’t have to be, you know, when we say have a protein-forward breakfast, all these women are like, I don’t want a steak for breakfast. I’m like, I don’t have a steak for breakfast, but I have like 55 grams of protein in my breakfast, right? And I don’t have to do it through powders. So getting women to understand that this kind of talk about protein-forward nutrition and nourishing their bodies doesn’t necessarily equate with sort of what we see in this carnivore space, not against it at all. But, you know, just want to kind of be there for the ladies who are a little bit more meat shy on those things.

Katie: That’s such good context. And you mentioned, especially in the morning and for people who haven’t looked into this data, I was so fascinated by this. There is potentially a lot of benefit to getting enough protein, especially first thing in the morning. I know a lot of women kind of got into that, I’ll just have coffee in the morning, do intermittent fasting and start eating at lunch. But there is some fascinating data around if you get that 30 to 50 grams or even more first thing. And if you’re, if you want to, even before coffee, it can make a tremendous difference in your energy levels.

I would also guess there are some women listening who are thinking like I used to think like, oh yeah, I’m probably getting enough protein. Like I, I eat meat. And when I started tracking, I was like, in fact, not getting nearly enough protein. And it took a lot of effort to train my body to actually be willing and able to eat the amount of protein I needed to really thrive. But just to speak to that for anyone thinking like, yeah, I’m probably getting enough protein. You are likely not getting enough protein if you think you’re probably getting enough protein, but have not looked at it and tracked it.

Kristin: Yeah. We love to say you can’t, manage, but you don’t measure, right? And that doesn’t mean because, you know, we’ve worked with women who’ve had eating disorder pasts or just kind of a disordered relationship with food. It doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time, but I think most of us will probably admit that we fall into sort of patterns around having similar foods. And so if that’s it, just measure it like twice a week and kind of see, do you actually hit those with your normal habits?

So I think measuring can be helpful and kind of, you know, visualizing what does six ounces of salmon look like compared to, you know, whatever the salmon portion you might have put on your salad before. It’s probably a lot bigger. That and then I think the other thing is you kind of hinted on it, the coffee before breakfast or coffee as breakfast. A lot of women will say, I get my protein in. But when we look at their food, it’s distributed very heavily in the second half of the day. And what you just pointed out is that getting that protein at breakfast, it’s not just more impactful for like satiety, but it does balance your blood sugar better. I would venture to guess anyone who’s having three in the afternoon cravings where we’re kind of hiding in the pantry going, what can I eat, didn’t get enough protein at breakfast.

But also the research is starting to show that when it comes to maintaining muscle and gaining lean muscle mass, having an even distribution throughout the day and having a high protein breakfast in the morning within an even distribution is actually better than having the same amount of protein, but tilted towards the afternoon. So I think that’s something for women to kind of keep in mind is don’t just think, well, when the family’s home and I get this dinner, I get enough protein or I make up for what I didn’t get in the morning because that morning piece actually helps you retain and build muscle better than just getting a number in over the course of the day.

Katie: That’s such a good point. And from the circadian biology side too, if you shift your overall food consumption, especially high protein consumption to earlier in the day, I’ve been experimenting with stopping eating around sunset. And I find it definitely improves my sleep quality because I have enough time to digest so that I can use that sleep time for sort of the deeper healing and flushing of beta amyloid plaques and everything that comes along with that. And if I am loading my protein where I’m getting it all day and I can stop eating around sunset, I’m able to sort of like enjoy what I want to eat at dinner and not be like, must eat 50 grams of protein and then be full when I go to bed.

In the first episode, we made a strong case for getting a baseline for testing and for being open to hormone replacement when and if that’s the time that’s right for you. But I’m curious if for the people who do want to go the more natural route, and I would say it’s probably a both/and, but are there any natural supplements that are at least worth researching with the caveat that we’re also individual and not every supplement’s for every person? But are there any that you highlight as worth researching or possibly beneficial?

Maria: Sure. And I assume that you mean like things to deal with symptoms. So a really good vitamin E can help with menopausal symptoms. Magnesium can be helpful for menopausal symptoms. Is it pycnogenol?

Kristin: Pycnogenol or pine bark extract. Yep, that’s going to be great.

Maria: There are some combination products that can be helpful as well.

Kristin: You know, turmeric and curcumin can be helpful. But again, this is where they might quell a hot flash. But you’re still having the arterial changes that are coming because of that hot flash. And so that’s the one thing is, you know, herbal supplementation might be great for, let’s say, a woman who’s just struggling and maybe she’s waiting to kind of get informed, learn what she wants to learn before she makes a decision on how she’s going to proceed with HRT. So then I think is a great time for supplements to sort of fill in.

I think maca is another one that we overlooked, but maca is a great herb for women in this time of life. That can help actually if you’ve got very dysregulated adrenals to sort of implement it along with the lifestyle changes and awareness. But again, you know, there’s a huge boom around menopause right now. And so there are supplements aplenty, all telling you sorts of promises and whatnot. They might help with symptoms. They’re not going to help with the chronic diseases of aging, elevated risk that’s coming with that hormone loss.

Katie: And we’ve talked a lot about the metabolic changes that can come along with menopause. And in the first episode, we talked about when to test for hormones specifically. But are there any metabolic factors, whether they be through lab testing or through even things as simple as like waist to hip ratio, or if we wear a glucose monitor that we can wear at home, are there things you recommend tracking for women to just kind of keep a baseline and know if those metabolic changes are starting to happen?

Maria: I love waist to hip ratio because it’s accessible to everyone and it’s free. All you need is a soft tape measure. So, yeah, I think that that’s great. And, you know, once you need to be less than half of your height in inches for your waist. And so, if you’re more than that, then, you know, pay attention for sure. And then maybe you go on and you get the insulin and the C-reactive protein and a bunch of other markers, which really aren’t very expensive either.

Maria: And I think the DEXA scan, like you said, is really good because I think a lot of women will kind of dupe themselves into thinking that if they’re controlling the number on the scale, everything’s good. And we all know that the scale is not a benchmark for health in whatsoever. And so women who will realize that they’ve lost so much muscle and yet the scale hasn’t changed all that much. You know, I think DEXA is to the extent, I think Bod Pod, Maria, what’s the Fitnessity? Yeah. Fitnessity is a company that you can go online and just find something near you. And just know that a lot of times the DEXA that your doctor has is going to be looking at, you know, your bone mineral density and not getting you that body composition DEXA. So that would be the one we’d say would be worth it.

But yeah, I mean, looking at inflammatory markers, looking at the insulin, you know, if you’re going to look at lipids, please look at what’s called a fractionated panel so that you’re not looking solely at quantity, but you’re looking at the quality of those lipids. How many particles do you have? How many smaller dents? Things like that. And a lot of these markers can be on kind of an own your own labs or, you know, online portals and whatnot, or a functional medicine provider should give them to you.

Katie: Awesome. And yeah, to echo what you said on DEXA, I actually am in the process of opening a body composition specific DEXA facility where I live. So if any of you guys are in North Florida, reach out to me because to your point, it will show you if you’re losing muscle or if you’re losing bone density or all those things, but it’s also, I found very motivating in going the other direction as well. So between eight months span between DEXAs, I put on four pounds of muscle, which was really, really motivating. And even though, like you said, the scale didn’t change. So I wouldn’t have known I lost fat and gained muscle without that data. So I love that as a tool, thankfully becoming more available and less expensive and available to consumers without having to go through a medical facility. So I love that we have access to that now, but just to echo what you said on that.

Also, I know that you guys have so much more that you cover in the book and that you’ve also created a tremendous amount of resources to really help women navigate this entire life period. Where can people find you, find the book, keep learning and dive deeper on any of the topics that you’ve covered?

Maria: They can find us on Instagram at Wise and Well. We try to be, you know, education forward, not always put our mugs online, seeing our faces.

Kristin: You’re gonna see us working out too much. That’s okay.

Maria: I mean, you will see it occasionally, but we try to like, just create really rich content where we can educate on various topics having to do not just with longevity, but with health span, right? Because we want to enjoy the longevity that, you know, we’re hopefully going to be blessed to have. So Wise and Well on Instagram. And then the book is really everywhere books are sold, on Amazon. I guess is where probably most people are going to buy it, September 10th in the USA is when it’s going to be dropping and then September 12th in the UK.

Kristin: We’ve got our website, wiseandwell.me. We do have some masterclasses on there, kind of like what is perimenopause for women that I think would be super helpful. Some midlife metabolism little mini course, things like that. So the website would be great. And then we do have an online public community that’s free and it’s open. And the reason why we created it is sometimes Instagram is just not really the place for long-form content or nuance. And so that is on a Mighty Networks. And I think if you just Googled Wise and Well and Mighty Networks, you would come up with that. And it’s free to join. And you can also find it in our Instagram bio link.

Katie: Awesome. Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes for anybody listening on the go. That’s always at wellnessmama.com. But thank you both so much for the time today, for all the tremendous amount of work you put into this book and to serving women. I’m so grateful. I learned a lot. I took some notes and I’m going to get some testing and experiment. And I’m so grateful for everything you guys shared.

Maria: Thank you Katie.

Kristin: Thank you so much for having us.

Katie: And thank you, as always, for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us all today. We’re so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.