#nutrition

Chronic Muscle Soreness Your fitness trainer told you that you might be sore for the first couple of weeks. Liar! You’re sore after every workout as if it’s your first day—every day—and it’s definitely not your favorite part of the process. If this sounds familiar, you’re likely experiencing DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). It typically kicks in a few hours post-workout, peaks within 24–48 hours, and fades after about three days. But if it feels like DOMS is your permanent workout buddy, what’s going on? Several factors might be contributing to this constant soreness. While it’s always wise to consult your doctor if you’re concerned, here are some common culprits—and how you can tackle them: 1. Irregular Workouts Keep Your Body in Shock Mode When your workouts are inconsistent, your muscles don’t get the chance to adapt. Instead, you’re essentially starting over every time, which keeps soreness around longer. The fix? Aim for consistency: working out 3–4 times a week helps your body adapt and strengthen rather than just recover from surprise attacks. Regular exercise creates a rhythm that allows your body to handle increasing challenges. 2. Skipping Warm-ups and Mobility Work Heading into a workout cold is like slamming on the gas in a frozen car—it’s rough on your engine. Warm-ups and mobility exercises prepare your muscles and joints, improving circulation and reducing the risk of soreness. Dynamic stretches, light cardio, or joint mobility drills make a world of difference. In fitness classes, arriving on time ensures you benefit from structured warm-ups. Arriving early? Even better—you can add a few extra moves to loosen up and start strong. 3. Neglecting Recovery Habits What you do outside the gym is just as critical as what you do inside it. If you’re sore all the time, ask yourself: Hydration: Are you drinking enough water? Dehydrated muscles recover slower. Sleep: Are you giving your body the 7–9 hours it needs to repair and recharge? Stress Management: Chronic stress keeps inflammation levels high, which can delay recovery. Simple changes in your daily routine can make soreness less of an issue and recovery much faster. 4. Under-fueling Your Body Think of food as fuel for your workouts and recovery. If you’re not eating enough protein, your muscles lack the building blocks to repair. Without carbs, your energy reserves can’t recover. To reduce soreness, make post-workout nutrition a priority. A snack or meal with protein and carbs within an hour of exercise kick-starts recovery. It doesn’t have to be fancy—yogurt with fruit or a protein shake works great. 5. Balancing Intensity with Recovery Not all “hard” workouts are created equal. High-intensity workouts and strength training serve different purposes and stress your body in unique ways. Understanding the difference can help you avoid overdoing it. High-Intensity Training (HIIT): Think sprints, circuits, or cardio intervals. These push your heart rate and burn calories fast but also place heavy demands on your whole system. Strength Training: Lifting heavy with controlled rest builds muscle and strength. It creates micro-tears in your muscles (a good thing!) but doesn’t leave you breathless like HIIT. Both are valuable, but they require balance. Pair hard training days with lighter activities like walking, yoga, or recovery-focused mobility work. For example, in my classes, we might push hard 2–3 times a week with strength or intensity, and one session may focus on recovery. The rest of the week is up to you—mix in lower-intensity movement to give your body a chance to adapt and repair. What Can You Do About It? Constant soreness isn’t a badge of honor—it’s a signal that something needs adjusting. Reflect on your routine: Are you skipping warm-ups? Forgetting to hydrate? Pushing too hard, too often? Undereating or eating the wrong things? Working out consistently? Small tweaks can ease the soreness and make your fitness journey more enjoyable. Remember, it’s not just about working harder—it’s about working smarter. Takeaway: Soreness is part of the process, but it shouldn’t dominate your experience. Find the balance between challenge and recovery, and your body will reward you with strength, resilience, and progress. So which habit will you start improving today? Your muscles (and your future self) will thank you!

Combat Sarcopenia: Strength Training for Aging Muscles How Building Muscle Now Can Help You Stay Strong and Independent as You Age You’re often sore, sometimes you get injured and it would be -so- much easier to plop down on the couch and enjoy a well deserved glass of wine instead of working out, wouldn’t it? Wait, Wait, Wait! Don’t skip the workout just yet – It’s more important than you think. Sarcopenia. Sounds terrible right? It’s actually the name to describe the loss of muscle and strength with age. Sarcopenia literally means ‘lack of flesh.’ It’s particularly concerning for inactive women during and after menopause, as it leads to muscle loss, reduced strength, and functional impairment. Statistics vary widely because no two people are the same, but men and women can lose 3-10% of their muscle mass per decade after 40. This rate increases for women after menopause due to hormonal changes. But these losses can be slowed, stopped and in some cases reversed (you get even stronger and fitter than ever!). Some factors for stopping or reversing muscle and strength atrophy include individual genetics, frequency of exercising, fittest level achieved, diet, recovery and consistency. How to Slow, Stop or Reverse the Effects of Sarcopenia: Individual Genetics: Mostly outside your control, but hormonal changes can accelerate muscle loss. Frequency of Exercise: Training 3 – 4 days a week promotes muscle growth and helps maintain bone density. Fittest Level Achieved: If you were a long-distance runner or powerlifting champion in your youth, it’s unlikely you’ll reach those peak levels again. But if you weren’t very active before, you still have the opportunity to achieve new personal bests as you age. Diet: Maintaining a healthy weight and increasing protein intake significantly reduces muscle loss. Supplements like collagen, creatine, and fish oil may also help—consult a professional to determine what’s right for you. Recovery: Aim to feel fully recovered between workouts. Some soreness after exercising is normal, but chronic soreness or pain suggests overtraining or inadequate recovery. Prioritize 7-9 hours of sleep and stress management. Why Build Strength Now? The more muscle and strength you have, the more likely you are to bounce back when facing any physical or mental health challenges. Have you ever seen someone who was injured as an older adult and you think to yourself, “That person never recovered from that.”? Your chance of recovering and returning to a functional life are that much better, the more fit you are. Hopefully your goal in retirement isn’t to sit on the couch and waste away, but to live it up doing all the hobbies and travelling that you’ve always wanted to do. Risks of Inactivity as You Age:   Increased Risk of Falls: Weak muscles and slower reaction times raise the likelihood of falling. Fractures and Bone Injuries: Reduced bone density increases vulnerability. Loss of Independence: Daily tasks become harder, possibly requiring caregiving. Chronic Pain and Joint Issues: Weak muscles fail to support joints, which also lose mobility. Metabolic and Cardiovascular Issues: Inactivity increases risks of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Cognitive Decline: Poor circulation from inactivity may affect brain health, while reduced independence contributes to anxiety and depression. Premature Death: Studies consistently link sarcopenia and inactivity to higher risk of early death due to associated health issues When you consider skipping a workout and avoiding a little soreness, remember that you’re doing it for your long-term health. Exercise ensures you can fully enjoy retirement – travelling, exploring hobbies, and living your best life. So, what’s stopping you? Grab some weights and get moving toward a stronger, healthier future.

The Body Whisperer Tune in, Train Smart, Stay Injury-Free Nothing can cause a setback like an injury, and when you’re training hard, depending on your sport, they’re almost inevitable. Yet, there are plenty of things you can do and watch out for to minimize injuries and keep you exercising. Listening to your body can’t be overstated and should be your first consideration when planning your next workout or adjusting it. The feedback you feel when you wake up in the morning, during your day and while exercising is critical to identifying problem areas before they become issues. I’m as guilty as the next person of pushing too hard, too often, and sometimes ignoring my body’s messages that I need to rest or adjust training for that day, week, or more. The second major consideration is your sport. I’ve lifted weights for thirty years (which is weird since my body is thirty years old), and rarely been injured during lifting. The worst of my injuries has been in rock climbing. Why is this important? The difficulty of a sport on your joints has to be considered when looking at your overall program. A sport like rock climbing needs a lot of accessory work, but when it comes to older athletes, more rest between sessions, especially when our body is letting us know something isn’t right. So take all activity into consideration when it comes to training, and if needed, add sessions slowly (especially once you’re over forty years old). Three major steps you can take to avoid injury include a proper warm up so your joints are ready for the load, adjusting your workout, and recovery. Warm-up: You can easily warm up joints for ten to fifteen minutes without negatively impacting your workout. I like to include joint prep in my warm-up, especially as I’ve gotten older. Gone are the days when I was twenty years old and could jump into an exercise for a couple of warm-up sets, then go hard for the rest of the workout. Joint prep includes knowing the workout plan for the day and preparing those joints by moving them through their full range of motion and considering tension bands for further prep (e.g. for shoulders, complete shoulder clocks to warm up the shoulder, then do light banded rotator cuff movements to prepare the rotator cuff). Workout Adjustment: A workout adjustment can happen because you feel discomfort when you wake up, during your day, or while warming up for your workout. You have to listen to your body and over time learn the difference between a few normal aches and your body telling you something isn’t okay. You also have to give your body the opportunity to warm up and decide if it’s worth doing a few sets of exercises to see if you improve with load or if the pain persists. In the case of persistent pain, you’ll want to adjust your workout for that day by changing the muscle groups you’re training, or by doing a mobility/stretch session. Recovery: Muscles grow while they recover; the workout provides the stress, and resting is when the real magic happens. There is no one size fits all. Some people need more rest and some can get away with less. Much like some people can sleep five hours a day and feel fine while most people need eight. Age also plays a big role in recovery—take more time as you get older. A couple of things to keep in mind: very sore muscles shouldn’t be trained multiple days in a row; allow at least twenty-four hours of rest between workouts (some exceptions apply, like running in the morning and doing some upper body in the afternoon); if your numbers are dropping (weight or rep capability), consider if you need more rest. Injuries are impossible to prevent completely, but many can be avoided. Remember to listen to your body and warm up properly, adjust your workout if you need to, and get the rest your body needs to make the gains you want.

Why You Should Disassociate Nutrition & Fitness Two Tools, Two Purposes, Even If They Work Well Together Nutrition and Fitness are two tools that you should and arguably must (for a long, healthy, happy life), use on a regular basis, forever. They are two different tools that, when applied, work well together but serve separate purposes. Fitness is not the best way to lose weight and the goal with fitness shouldn’t be weight loss. Nutrition is not the best way to maintain functional movement and strength for life. Adults (especially seniors) are thin and immobile too and need strength training. People often link nutrition and fitness in an all-or-nothing mindset or they think if they have one of these figured out, the other doesn’t really matter. This often results in less than ideal results, frustration, and unfortunately a nothing mindset, which is where most people end up. There are too many senior people who look like the man on the right. Don’t skip working out your whole life and end up with no capacity for movement because you have no strength. And don’t skip eating well so you feel good and maintain a healthy weight for your joints. Common misconceptions about nutrition and fitness:• If I exercise enough, I can eat whatever I want• Having a cheat meal means I need to do extra exercise• If I can’t do both perfectly, it’s not worth doing either If you put proper gasoline into your vehicle, nothing is going to save it when the joints aren’t greased and there’s no lubricant left to keep the wheels rolling. You end up with an immovable object. Likewise, if you don’t put good gasoline in your engine, you might be able to move a little, but punching the gas produces clunky, labored results. Nutrition Nutrition is the cornerstone of weight loss and body composition. When it comes to nutrition, there are many factors that can make one nutrition program work very well for one person and get nearly zero results for another. Factors affecting individual nutrition results:• Sex• Genetics• Bioenergetics• Exercise habits• Mood• Stress levels Of course, exercise, mood, and stress also play major roles. The goal is to slowly introduce the right nutrition program that will work for you. Diet fads and extreme changes to eating habits don’t work. Working out more might help a little, but it’s not the best tool for getting and maintaining a healthy weight. Let’s do some math. Consider that exercising on average for a 30 year-old woman, burns 200 – 400 calories per hour depending on many factors (intensity, bodyweight, exercise selection, etc). Assume you burn on the higher end at 400 calories per hour and exercise 4x per week. That’s a total of 1600 calories burned in a week. If you go to a restaurant, you can safely assume anywhere from 1000 calories to 2000+ calories in a meal (obviously also varies widely). A pound of fat is 3500 calories. If you change nothing in your diet and go from zero exercise to four times per week for an hour, it will still take you over two weeks to lose one pound and if you eat at a restaurant as a reward once a week, you’ll be lucky to break even. One pound every two weeks might be a great result for you, and if you can eat to maintain, that’s great. Now, if you eat healthy, unprocessed foods as much as possible and stick to a calorie deficit of 200 – 400 calories per day, you’re losing 1400 to 2800 calories per week. You’ll also feel better, have fewer highs and lows, and give your body the fuel it needs to perform when you do exercise. Key takeaways from the calorie math:• Exercise alone is not efficient for weight loss• A moderate daily calorie deficit is more effective than intense workouts• One restaurant meal can easily negate a week’s worth of exercise• Consistent, healthy eating habits have a bigger impact on weight than occasional workouts Strength Training Most strength training takes care of cardio conditioning at a very basic level. You probably won’t run much faster by lifting weights, but your heart and lungs are working hard enough to get the benefits for most long-term health goals. What you’re really getting from fitness is movement and muscle for life. You won’t keep all the muscle you had when you were thirty, but if you keep exercising and moving, you’ll maintain enough to keep exercising and moving. A body in motion stays in motion. Let’s hope no external factors alter that for you. Looking at the math, you can see that exercise has a small impact on calories burned. It’s very easy to undo the calories you get from exercise. What you can’t undo is the benefit to your joints, range of motion and muscle mass. Convinced on the isolated impact of nutrition and exercise yet? The important thing to remember, and the point I’m trying to make, is that you really need both and you can have a bad eating day and crush a workout, or skip a workout and still have a great nutrition day. You don’t have to give up on both. You don’t have to think that one automatically impacts the other. Benefits of treating nutrition and fitness separately:• More sustainable long-term results• Reduced frustration and ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking• Better overall health outcomes• Improved ability to maintain healthy habits even when life gets busy The best thing you can do for yourself is to get on a nutrition plan that maximizes muscle growth (or maintenance), keeps you at a healthy weight (your joints will thank you), and an exercise plan that will keep your joints moving well, muscle on your body, and give you the freedom you want when you retire. Need some help? I’m happy to chat. Just reply to this email and let’s get the conversation rolling.