Speaker 1: Get everyone. Sam here. We are taking a short break
Speaker 1: from our new interviews over the Christmas period, but I'm
Speaker 1: putting together some of my favorite interviews of the year,
Speaker 1: bit of a highlight reel as we cover different topics,
Speaker 1: and this week we are diving into a full episode
Speaker 1: on aging. We're going to be looking back from an
Speaker 1: interview that I did with Susie Burrell, who spoke about
Speaker 1: metabolism and how we can influence it. Then we're going
Speaker 1: to hear from the incredible doctor Joanna McMillan, who's an
Speaker 1: expert on menopause, how and why our body changes during
Speaker 1: that time. She says it all comes down to two
Speaker 1: different factors and how we can manage it. Enjoy the
Speaker 1: little bonus episode. I'm Sam Wood and this is the
Speaker 1: Good Knife. Our next guest that I am very excited
Speaker 1: to speak to. She is the TV nutritionist, one of
Speaker 1: Australia's leading dietitians with the background in nutrition and psychology,
Speaker 1: Cezi Burrell. Welcome to the WOODLFE and thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us.
Speaker 2: I'm so honored to be here, Sam. Thank you for
Speaker 2: having me.
Speaker 1: You are so knowledgeable and you've got so much experience
Speaker 1: in dealing with the whole spectrum of nutrition, and I
Speaker 1: thought we could really focus on a topic that I
Speaker 1: get a lot of questions about, and that is metabolism.
Speaker 1: What is our metabolism? How does it work? And these
Speaker 1: people that are saying I can't lose weight because of
Speaker 1: my metabolism? Is there any truth to what they are saying?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's complicated, isn't it? It's simple, But it's not.
Speaker 2: So I'll try and explain it in as simple terms
Speaker 2: as I can. I would describe metabolism as the body's
Speaker 2: basic engine of burning, and some of it is programmed.
Speaker 2: We don't necessarily have control over it. It's the number
Speaker 2: of calories that's required to keep us breathing. It is
Speaker 2: heavily dependent on our size. So for example, males have
Speaker 2: a higher metabolic rate or higher metabolism because they've got
Speaker 2: a larger body frame generally, and the more muscle mass
Speaker 2: that you have, more what we would describe as being
Speaker 2: more metabolically active, so you burn more calories to keep
Speaker 2: that muscle mass active. And it's dependent from genetics, gender,
Speaker 2: a certain degree of our training loads. So athletes or
Speaker 2: ex athletes personal trainers will have a higher metabolism because
Speaker 2: they've got more muscle mass. And then about twenty five
Speaker 2: percent of the calories that we burn are controlled by us,
Speaker 2: So that comes down to the volume of food that
Speaker 2: we're eating, the amount of activity or the burn that
Speaker 2: we have each day, on top of what we would
Speaker 2: need if we were laying in a hospital bed at
Speaker 2: rest and just needed that certain number of calories to survive.
Speaker 2: So the average person, in my experience, has the resting
Speaker 2: metabolic rate we call it, which is the number of
Speaker 2: calories they require without any other level of activity. Ranges
Speaker 2: for a very small inactive female from maybe a thousand
Speaker 2: up to fifteen sixteen eighteen hundred two thousand for a
Speaker 2: large frame guy with a lot of muscle mass. So
Speaker 2: I think one of the misconceptions about metabolism is people
Speaker 2: believe or like to tell themselves that we can't change it.
Speaker 2: You know, I've got a poor metabolism. My body is
Speaker 2: not burning or working as well. And indeed, when people
Speaker 2: gain weight over time and have higher proportions of body
Speaker 2: fat or have hormonal shifts, certainly that does happen to
Speaker 2: people as they become less efficient at burning glucose over time,
Speaker 2: and hormones like our insulin are not being well regulated,
Speaker 2: and that can predispose us to storing body fat. There's
Speaker 2: a perception that the metabolism isn't working because you would
Speaker 2: take one person who could eat certain number of calories
Speaker 2: each day and lose weight successfully a person given exactly
Speaker 2: the same number of calories, and yet they still don't
Speaker 2: lose weight or even gain weight, depending on some of
Speaker 2: those underlying factors, like how much body fat they have
Speaker 2: or what their hormones are doing. So indeed, there are
Speaker 2: large individual differences in metabolism and metabolic rate, but what
Speaker 2: I want most people to take away from it is
Speaker 2: that we all have the capacity to improve metabolic rate
Speaker 2: and become better at burning over time. And I would
Speaker 2: say that one of the key jobs I have, particularly
Speaker 2: working with women in their thirties, forties, fifties, as they've
Speaker 2: experienced that gradual weight crete and had some of the
Speaker 2: metabolic inefficiency build over time as a result of gaining
Speaker 2: weight and having those in pormodal impairments. My job as
Speaker 2: a dietician is to help what I describe as rehab
Speaker 2: that muscle and try and get it better at burning,
Speaker 2: and then of course working very closely with personal trainers
Speaker 2: who are also skilled in that area. As we're sure
Speaker 2: you would agree, your job is also getting that person
Speaker 2: better at burning with their muscle mass or the type
Speaker 2: of training that they're doing. So it's absolutely a misconception
Speaker 2: that people have got a bad metabolism because the truth
Speaker 2: is larger people, even if they've got more body fat,
Speaker 2: have also got more muscle mass, so they've actually got
Speaker 2: a higher metabolic rate than someone who's much smaller. But
Speaker 2: they're not operating efficiently as such, and perhaps sitting down
Speaker 2: a lot through the day or consuming their calories at
Speaker 2: the wrong time of the day, and so hormonally they're
Speaker 2: not working as efficiently as they could. And there's absolutely
Speaker 2: no reason why we can't, as we would describe, rehab
Speaker 2: that muscle over time and get it back on track
Speaker 2: and improve an increase metabolic rate. But it takes time.
Speaker 2: If you think about bodies, you know they might have
Speaker 2: had ten or twenty years of that gradual inefficiency happening.
Speaker 2: It takes time to reverse it. And that's why when
Speaker 2: people are wanting to improve metabolic rate, lose body fat,
Speaker 2: lose large amounts of weight ten twenty thirty kilos, it
Speaker 2: takes three, six, twelve months to reverse all that what
Speaker 2: we would describe as inefficiency that's built over a long
Speaker 2: period of time.
Speaker 1: I am absolutely thrilled to be joined in the Woodlife
Speaker 1: Studio today by someone who've just had a little chat
Speaker 1: with off air if I'm going to be really honest
Speaker 1: with you, and has already blown me away in five
Speaker 1: glorious minutes, so I think we can recapture that magic.
Speaker 1: It is none other than Joana macmillan, who has a
Speaker 1: PhD in nutrition. She's a dietitian, she's a women's health expert,
Speaker 1: she's an author, amongst many many other things. But what
Speaker 1: I really want to dive into and pick your brain
Speaker 1: on today, Joanna is menopause and aging the right way
Speaker 1: with the right attitude. Welcome to the WOODLFE and thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. SMU's delightful to be here
Speaker 3: and such a good topic, a topic i'm certainly very
Speaker 3: passionate about.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you where to start, because
Speaker 1: you're the absolute expert on this, and as a four
Speaker 1: year old men it's not my ear of expertise, but
Speaker 1: it's something I'm really really interesting in, both for my
Speaker 1: own knowledge and development, but also so I can help
Speaker 1: other women moving forward.
Speaker 3: Yes, and thank you to Sam being a forty year
Speaker 3: old man. That's great that you're prepared to have these conversations.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think in the past everything was
Speaker 3: just women were just expected to get on with it,
Speaker 3: and this is the trouble that we're in. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't mind sharing that I'm forty nine. I'm going
Speaker 3: to be fifty later this year. I'm no doubt in
Speaker 3: those perimenopausal years. I'm not at menopause yet, but I'm
Speaker 3: in that group of women who in my personal life
Speaker 3: are starting to ask me about all sorts of different
Speaker 3: things that they're experiencing. And in my professional life, of course,
Speaker 3: I'm always asked about what's happening. Why am I gaining
Speaker 3: weight around the middle, Why am I having mood swings?
Speaker 3: You know, why am I struggling with this, struggling with
Speaker 3: that brain fog, you know, taking longer to recover from exercise,
Speaker 3: all of these different physical things that are happening. Because
Speaker 3: I see it as two sides of the story, or
Speaker 3: two sides of the same coin. So one is the
Speaker 3: science side, the physiological side, what's happening inside your body?
Speaker 3: Why are these particular changes going on. But the other
Speaker 3: side of the store, or the other side of the coin,
Speaker 3: is about this psychological aspect that we cannot expect to
Speaker 3: have our twenty year old body when we're fifty or
Speaker 3: when we're sixty. We've got to look at each stage
Speaker 3: of our life and make the best of our body,
Speaker 3: make our best our abilities and our strengths and weakness
Speaker 3: has changed throughout life. You know, my fifty year old
Speaker 3: body is not going to be the same. I can't
Speaker 3: expect it to do the same things. It's when I
Speaker 3: was an aerobics instructor, aged in my twenties, teaching twenty
Speaker 3: classes a week. I'm in a different body now, but
Speaker 3: there's great advantages to this body. You know, I've got
Speaker 3: experience under my belt there, I've got different job opportunities.
Speaker 3: I've got my brain contains different information. You know. I've
Speaker 3: got two teenage boys who are fascinating me as I
Speaker 3: watch these kids become young adults, and they've got their
Speaker 3: own opinions and so on. So it's a different stage
Speaker 3: of life. My training has changed. I do different some
Speaker 3: exercises actually remarkably similar, but other things have really changed.
Speaker 3: And so What I want to encourage women to do
Speaker 3: is to one make sure that their goals are aligned
Speaker 3: with their stage of life. Understand what the underlying physiology,
Speaker 3: understand the how to make the most of the biological
Speaker 3: changes that are going on, how to reduce their risk
Speaker 3: of various sorts of chronic diseases that start to affect
Speaker 3: us pust fifty, hopefully not to later. You can steve
Speaker 3: them well off and dramatically reduce your risk through dying
Speaker 3: lifestyle changes, and it's effectively about having our feet firmly
Speaker 3: in health is about understanding how to make the best
Speaker 3: of yourself at every stage of your life.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting you say, you know, we shouldn't try
Speaker 1: and be our twenty year old body when we're fifty,
Speaker 1: and it just as you say it. The natural reaction
Speaker 1: to that is, of course not, but so many people do.
Speaker 1: And whether it's trying to get that back, or whether
Speaker 1: it's starting a new wellness program and trying to make
Speaker 1: in roads and just being frustrated by the fact that
Speaker 1: you're expecting faster results, so you feel like you're doing
Speaker 1: all the right things and you're just sort of stuck
Speaker 1: in quicksand and you're not getting those results because you
Speaker 1: could be in that menopausal period. And we get lots
Speaker 1: of questions from our wood Life listeners ringing up, I've
Speaker 1: actually haven't got a couple of them. Well, we might
Speaker 1: just play you because I'm sure it's a style of
Speaker 1: question or a theme of question that you've had a
Speaker 1: million times before, and I'd love your advice on it.
Speaker 4: I'm fifty one years old and menopausal. I've got about
Speaker 4: twenty kilos to lose, and over the past couple of
Speaker 4: years have been focusing on clean eating, water intake, and
Speaker 4: I exercise three times a week. Most of my weight
Speaker 4: is around my tummy area and torso just wondering if
Speaker 4: you've got some advice around what I should be focusing
Speaker 4: on for this part of my life and how to
Speaker 4: move that's stubborn fat.
Speaker 5: Since hitting fifty, I'm finding it so hard to shift
Speaker 5: the weight around my midrift no matter what I do,
Speaker 5: I just feel like I'm floated and heavy all the time.
Speaker 5: Would love something to look at this area.
Speaker 6: What would be some of the best advice that you
Speaker 6: could offer in regards to the menopausal mound or the
Speaker 6: tummy that we older ladies seem to carry around with
Speaker 6: us once we hit that horrible menopausal phase in our life.
Speaker 3: Please tell me there's a magic kill.
Speaker 1: So isn't that interesting to you?
Speaker 3: Know?
Speaker 1: That three very very similar questions And I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: that term before, But the menopausal mound, you know, that
Speaker 1: stubborn tummy fat that these women are so determined to
Speaker 1: lose but really struggling to do so, is there any
Speaker 1: advice you can give anyone that's experiencing that to help them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is probably the most common physical kind of
Speaker 3: body change question that we see around menopause, and the
Speaker 3: reason for it. Understanding the biology of what's going on
Speaker 3: behind the scenes might help people to understand. And it's
Speaker 3: because the female hormones like estrogen are dropping and you
Speaker 3: take on a more male like pattern of hormone distribution
Speaker 3: post menopause. So that's what's happening during menopause. So your
Speaker 3: hormone levels are changing and with it becomes a more
Speaker 3: male like pattern of where you store fat, and that's
Speaker 3: exactly what happens, So you tend to store more fat
Speaker 3: around the middle. So for women post menopause, the risk
Speaker 3: of heart disease rises until it's roughly the same as
Speaker 3: men and that part of that is that reasoning for
Speaker 3: fat around the middle. Prior to menopause, women tend to
Speaker 3: store more fat, and this is good news for women
Speaker 3: who are a bit more pear shaped. If you're storing
Speaker 3: fat around your hips and thighs and bottom, that fat
Speaker 3: or even in your arms, that kind of fat is
Speaker 3: actually not really associated with health at all. You may
Speaker 3: want to slim down or whatever, but rest assured that
Speaker 3: that fat is actually there to help get you through
Speaker 3: things like pregnancies and especially breastfeeding. Breastfeedings the most energetic
Speaker 3: sort of experience that you'll go through as a woman,
Speaker 3: aside from you know, I'm not talking about any sort
Speaker 3: of forms of exercise or anything, but as a continual
Speaker 3: energy drain, it is the most energetic part. So that's
Speaker 3: really why we store that extra fat there. So that's
Speaker 3: worth every woman understanding that women will always even if
Speaker 3: we look at two athletes, the women will always have
Speaker 3: more fat than men as a general rule. It's just
Speaker 3: our physiology. It's the way that we're made. I should
Speaker 3: say up front, there is one book that I really
Speaker 3: recommend that women read that I think should be a
Speaker 3: bit of a bible for women going through menopause, and
Speaker 3: it's written by a colleague of mind, Dr Ginny Mansberg,
Speaker 3: and she's written a book called The M Word. It's
Speaker 3: like a bible for people going through menopause because she
Speaker 3: will talk about things like hormone replacement therapy and all
Speaker 3: sorts of other different kind of from a medical perspective,
Speaker 3: but she will also talk some aspects of nutrition, particularly
Speaker 3: to be supplements in there that might help. So I
Speaker 3: refer people to that book for more of the medical advice.
Speaker 3: But understanding, I'm going to lay down fat in a
Speaker 3: different way, so instead of it going where it used
Speaker 3: to go, it's going to go more around the middle.
Speaker 3: Now that doesn't mean that you necessarily have to store
Speaker 3: more fat. It means that whatever else is going on
Speaker 3: in life, if you are storing fat, it's more likely
Speaker 3: to go on around your tummy. The types of things
Speaker 3: that can help you to stop doing that are involved
Speaker 3: in looking more holistically at your lifestyle. So one of
Speaker 3: the things that we forget about is that fat tends
Speaker 3: not to be gained overnight. We think it does. You
Speaker 3: sort of have a big weekend and you have a
Speaker 3: slice of chocolate cake at a Bursday party. The next day,
Speaker 3: you're sure that you feel faster, that's all up here,
Speaker 3: it's all in your head. In the same way that
Speaker 3: it takes a long time to lose weight, you slowly
Speaker 3: chip away at those fat stores. You don't gain fat really,
Speaker 3: really quickly. Fat is a very energy dense store of energy,
Speaker 3: so it takes time to build up. So that fat
Speaker 3: around your middle has actually been gradually building up, probably
Speaker 3: over a number of years, and it's just that you
Speaker 3: sort of suddenly notice it. And two things are happening
Speaker 3: around this stage of life. One, people who have had kids,
Speaker 3: Their kids tend to be getting a stage where they're
Speaker 3: leaving home or they're at least teenagers, and they're a
Speaker 3: bit more out and about and independent. So possibly you've
Speaker 3: got more time in your hands and you're not running
Speaker 3: around so much after little kids. You may be more
Speaker 3: progressed in your career, and unfortunately, often being more progressed
Speaker 3: in your career ends up more time sitting at your
Speaker 3: desk or sitting in a chair, or sitting in meetings.
Speaker 3: You may simply be starting to get tired, taking longer
Speaker 3: to recover, so inadvertently you're actually not training is hard.
Speaker 3: You're not training is often you're actually starting to and
Speaker 3: that's for the people who are training. Lots of people
Speaker 3: are actually very very sedentary. So what's happening is that
Speaker 3: every year you're losing a little bit of muscle. And
Speaker 3: think of muscle as like the engine of your body.
Speaker 3: It is burning energy, is burning away all of the time,
Speaker 3: so muscle is continually turning over our calories or kilodoles.
Speaker 3: Fat is just tiny little idol. It uses a little
Speaker 3: bit of energy, but not very much. It's a store
Speaker 3: of energy. So when you've got less muscle and women,
Speaker 3: you know, I always get frustrated the woman not wanting
Speaker 3: to lift weights because they say, oh, I don't want
Speaker 3: big muscles. Actually, if you're one of those very skinny
Speaker 3: young women, listen up, because you're gonna have a problem
Speaker 3: later in life. Because if you start with not much muscle,
Speaker 3: you know, you're really going to have problems when you
Speaker 3: get to menopause. So as your muscle dies off, and
Speaker 3: actually it's from about age thirty, most people, unless you're
Speaker 3: doing something very actively about it, are losing a bit
Speaker 3: of muscle year on year, and any men that are
Speaker 3: listening it actually is happening to you too. But as
Speaker 3: you lose that muscle, you're getting a bit more fat
Speaker 3: because you keep eating the same. So it's for because
Speaker 3: you think, but I'm just eating what I've always eaten.
Speaker 3: I've got to you know, I actually don't like that
Speaker 3: term clean eating, but you know that sort of I'm
Speaker 3: eating really well, I'm eating really healthily, and why am
Speaker 3: I gaining right then this doesn't make sense, But it's
Speaker 3: because you're eating the same, but you're burning less energy
Speaker 3: even if you're still going to the gym three times
Speaker 3: a week as you've always done. Actually, what's happening is
Speaker 3: you've got less muscles, you're even burning less energy in
Speaker 3: that session as well as burning less energy all of
Speaker 3: the time. So it's just that very small energy surplus
Speaker 3: in your body that's ending up, meaning you're just gradually
Speaker 3: gaining some fat, losing some muscle, and because of the
Speaker 3: hormone changes, it's going on around the middle instead of
Speaker 3: going elsewhere, so it becomes really really noticeable. So that's
Speaker 3: the first thing is to really step back and go, okay,
Speaker 3: truly evaluate your exercise, truly look at you know, doing
Speaker 3: all the sit ups in the world is not going
Speaker 3: to get rid of the fat that's there. You need
Speaker 3: to really look at what your training is. Are you
Speaker 3: doing progressive resistance type training? Are you doing things like
Speaker 3: hit training can be very effective. I'm pretty sure you'd
Speaker 3: be doing some of that in your programming. Sam. It's
Speaker 3: one of the workouts that I think is most effective
Speaker 3: for people to shoot in and do because you can
Speaker 3: do it in My session on the bike is forty minutes.
Speaker 3: It's so efficient. Turn up, turn, it is so hard,
Speaker 3: get out and you've done it and you feel great
Speaker 3: for the day. But make sure that you're doing resistance
Speaker 3: training as well, so you're using your muscles. And then
Speaker 3: take a really good close look at your diet. And
Speaker 3: then the last thing I'm going to throw into that
Speaker 3: is two other factors before. Obviously we'll talk a bit
Speaker 3: more about diet, but two things that women often forget
Speaker 3: about is one is sleep. And one of the biggest
Speaker 3: symptoms of perimenopause and menopause itself is insomnia. So lack
Speaker 3: of sleep actually is associated with white gain for a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of different reasons, including some physiological ones, so
Speaker 3: sleep is a big one. And then stress, so this
Speaker 3: is a time when you might have you know, I said,
Speaker 3: the kids might be moving out of home a bit,
Speaker 3: but it can also be really stressful. I've got two teenagers.
Speaker 3: I know it can also be stressful dealing with teenagers.
Speaker 3: But it might also be you've got a lot of
Speaker 3: career stress. Perhaps you're dealing with elderly parents. You know,
Speaker 3: I've got a whole bunch of mates who are currently
Speaker 3: dealing with terminally ill parents or parents dying. And there's
Speaker 3: that whole end of life stages in your face. You
Speaker 3: start having friends, there's a whole load of different stressors
Speaker 3: of life. And if you've got a lot of cortis
Speaker 3: cortisole rather coursing around your body, that also is directing
Speaker 3: fat to be around the middle. So I think it's
Speaker 3: sort of being able to step back and look at
Speaker 3: that whole lifestyle diet, exercise, activity in sedentary levels, sleep, stress,
Speaker 3: putting it all together into one spot, and that's then
Speaker 3: when you're going to really start making some good strains.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed that little bonus episode. If you have
Speaker 1: any people that you would like to hear speak to,
Speaker 1: please send through your suggestions. You can do that through
Speaker 1: the Woodlife Facebook page or Instagram account. Just send us
Speaker 1: a message, or you can send us a voice message
Speaker 1: with the link in the bio and