Welcome to another compelling conversation, this time with the incredible Maggie Stewart!
Picture this: it's the late 70s and diversity in fitness is scarce, especially when it comes to weightlifting for women. Enter Maggie, a trailblazer who not only passed the fitness test to join a fire crew but later becomes a personal trainer at age 40!
Navigating the complex and evolving world of nutrition, we examine everything from the damaging misinformation about fats to the importance of protein. Ever wondered about the nuances of animal and plant-based proteins? Maggie has the answers.
Maggie’s Off of the Couch Podcast is for both beginners and health enthusiasts, to promote exercise and how and why you can get started creating a fit future by taking small steps to fitness. She hosts the most amazing guests and has fantastic conversations aimed at getting people moving to improve their lives! She currently lives with her partner John and their new puppy named Cooper!
Find Maggie at-
https://www.offofthecouch.com/#/
IG- offofthecouchpodcast
Find Boundless Body at-
Welcome to another compelling conversation, this time with the incredible Maggie Stewart!
Picture this: it's the late 70s and diversity in fitness is scarce, especially when it comes to weightlifting for women. Enter Maggie, a trailblazer who not only passed the fitness test to join a fire crew but later becomes a personal trainer at age 40!
Navigating the complex and evolving world of nutrition, we examine everything from the damaging misinformation about fats to the importance of protein. Ever wondered about the nuances of animal and plant-based proteins? Maggie has the answers.
Maggie’s Off of the Couch Podcast is for both beginners and health enthusiasts, to promote exercise and how and why you can get started creating a fit future by taking small steps to fitness. She hosts the most amazing guests and has fantastic conversations aimed at getting people moving to improve their lives! She currently lives with her partner John and their new puppy named Cooper!
Find Maggie at-
https://www.offofthecouch.com/#/
IG- offofthecouchpodcast
Find Boundless Body at-
Hello and welcome to another episode of Boundless Body Radio. I'm your host, casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce you. Now.
Speaker 1:Margaret Stewart, also known as Maggie, is the host of the Off of the Couch podcast. At 66 years old, she considers herself semi-retired, but she still teaches people to use the weight machines at a new Hampshire YMCA and has recently become an AquaZumba instructor. After 8 years of working for the Sequoia National Forest in the 80s, she moved to New Hampshire and started a family. She became a personal trainer at age 40 to teach people how to strength train using nautilus equipment. She is a health coach, having completed Mark Sisson's Primal Health Coach certification course. She shares her message that a small but consistent exercise practice that includes weight training along with eating real food will allow people to enjoy their later years.
Speaker 1:Maggie's Off of the Couch podcast is both for beginners and health enthusiasts, to promote exercise and explain how and why you can get started with creating a fit future by taking small steps to fitness. She hosts the most amazing guests and has fantastic conversations and be getting people moving to improve their lives. She currently lives with her partner, john, and their new puppy named Cooper. Maggie would an absolute honor. It is to welcome you to Balanced Body Radio.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Casey. I'm so happy to join you today. See you again.
Speaker 1:So happy to see you again. I just have to say I love your work. I love your podcast. I have seen so many podcasts come and go and people having expectations that they're going to have tons of followers or they're going to monetize something, and I just look at somebody like you who is still just putting out these amazing episodes with amazing people that are saying yes to coming onto the show, and I'm so happy that you're continuing to do it. So I told you offline. I'm going to tell you on the air right now, very selfishly. I hope you continue for as long as you like.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much. Yeah, while you were an inspiration, I had listened to your how to make a podcast podcast. I think I had started before you came up with that, but it was encouraging to me, gave me a lot of tips, and it's kind of really valuable for the host as much as the listeners. I can only imagine how much you've learned since doing yours. What do you do? Three a week.
Speaker 1:Three a week. Yeah, we do a lot, I don't even know how you do that.
Speaker 1:Good for you. Well, it's exactly what you said. I feel like if nobody listened to our show, I would still get so much benefit. I mean, I look at your guest list. Even Teresa Hewlett you just had on amazing couple. Nicole Laurent, amy Berger, dr Chris Kenobi like the list of all these people. Stuart Phillips like amazing people that are saying yes to coming onto the show. We have also both interviewed Dr Al Dannenberg, and he has since passed away recently, and so what an opportunity that you had as a host to be able to have a conversation with him before he moved on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was very privileged to get to meet him. I know it's so, so interesting to get to talk to these people and I, you know my podcast is very small, I think, compared to yours. I don't have a ton of listeners, but I think people see my intent, that I really hope to somehow reach people that are not doing any strength training. Or you know women that just think they have to eat a low calorie diet, maybe go to Weight Watchers, get a lot of steps, and you know, you just really see the destruction as the older we get in people who are losing muscle. You know they're not healthy when they get to some kind of they have to go into assisted living, walk in with walkers, and you just really see that it's not necessary. And you know, the more of us out there spreading the word, the better you know. So even if I reach a handful of people and maybe they reach a handful of people, you know.
Speaker 1:We never know what our impact can be in this life. And you use the word intent and I couldn't agree more. I can tell how much you care about this topic and how much you want to get this message out, and it's absolutely wonderful. So, again, selfishly, I hope you continue to do it for as long as you like. And it's cool that you found the other podcast, the how to Make a Podcast podcast. That was one that, since I was dedicating so much time to doing Balmous Body Radio, I did that one for a year, year and a half, and I just kind of ran out of time and you can still find the episodes but I let it kind of die off. And you were one of the last guests I ever hosted and it was a really interesting conversation. I went back and listened to it this morning on a walk. So, yeah, really cool.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say I was just so privileged some of the people that did say yes to me. Yeah, dr Ben Bokikio, dr Doug McGoff, wayne Westcott I was just thrilled to interview, I mean, all my guests I've really enjoyed and you know we're kind enough to come on and spend the time. But, like you said, stuart Phillips, just some people that I really look up to in the field and I think that gave me the confidence kind of to keep going that they said, sure, yeah, that's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I look at your podcast and, frankly, I do get a little bit jealous sometimes when I see some of your guests. Dr Ben I got to meet him in person. I've reached out to him several times. I've never heard back. Dr Doug McGoff his work has totally changed my personal training career. I probably reached out to him like 10 times and I'm like Maggie got him Dang it. What can I get him? Oh, that's fantastic. What does it mean to you when some of these people that we kind of look up to as our heroes say, yes, like I'll never forget, I thanked him for this every time I see him. Dr Bill Schindler when we had no downloads, nothing going on, he was one of the very first people I reached out to and I remember word for word Casey, I would love to be on your podcast. He didn't care. He didn't care that we didn't have downloads and a huge reach. What does it mean to you when you're seeing some of these people say, yes, I'd love to be on your show?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really means a lot to me because other people have said no and you could tell that they checked how many listeners or how good is my social media, which I'm not super skilled at social media. I find it the most helpful for me to reaching out to other people. I have reached out to people on Twitter and that's where some of them have said yes. I've reached out to some people on Instagram and that's where it said yes, and other people I've emailed I'm really just cold email and I don't know why they said yes, but they were kind enough too. That's funny because actually I just interviewed Dr Bill Schindler and that's my next episode I'm putting out. Oh great, the reason I reached out to him? Because I heard you say that he loves to do podcasts and he doesn't care about the reach. It was so interesting and I went back and watched his TV show. I'll be putting that episode out.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's amazing. I mentioned Stephen Teresa Hewlett. I was lucky enough to meet them in person in his book that he wrote your Plate is your Fate, so wonderfully done. I could say the same thing about Dr Bill Schindler. Eat Like a Human is absolutely wonderful. Such a great book that he wrote it was great to listen to, and him and Christina are just absolutely wonderful. I will very much be looking forward to hearing that episode. Next one up, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 1:Before we get into your personal story, we've got two recent events that I would like to catch up on. The first is the form of a new puppy in your house named Cooper. How is puppy time going in your house?
Speaker 2:I would say it's a little bit wild. Both John and I worked part-time. He had really really wanted to have a dog and I had said, well, when you retire? Because I didn't want to take care of his dog when he was working long hours. But now he retired from his real job and just took a part-time job. So we put our name on a list and we were. We eventually heard from this animal rescue league near us that they had taken in 10 puppies and we're looking for adoptive homes and you know they're so cute. We went thinking we were going to an interview and we came home with a puppy and we had like starboard stores and buy food and collars and toys and you know, we just came home with it and we're like, okay, here we go. So it's not quite as hard as having a new baby, but it is a little bit similar in some ways. Yeah, a little bit of work.
Speaker 1:You said it's frowned upon if you put a child in like a kennel and leave them like a few treats, like you had a dog that's not looked on kindly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at least you can create, train a puppy and have a little time to yourself. But yeah, it's frowned upon if you do that with your children. That's funny.
Speaker 1:That's funny. I was able to adopt him as well, but he was a little bit older at that time and he had already had behavioral problems Like he nipped it a kid, and that's why the family had to get rid of the dog. I didn't need to stop and grab like all the things on the way home, because he came with his crate and his food.
Speaker 1:They just they had to get rid of him, which was fine, but it came with its own set of challenges. For sure it still does Like the behavior thing is really really tough once. It's kind of in there with them and you can see his anxiety and things like that. So it's nice that you got this one as a puppy and it might be a little chaotic for a few weeks or months, but I'm sure that will even out and you guys will have a great time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and any behavioral problems will be our own fault. We didn't do it right, but we're trying, we're trying. We're suddenly learning to be dog trainers this best weekend.
Speaker 1:Yep, not always easy. And then okay. And then, on a bit of a more serious note, we know that you spend most of your time in New Hampshire, but you also have your sister who lives in Maui. We know what happened in Maui a few months ago. Was your sister affected? Is she doing okay?
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's actually fine. The fire did get to her town. She's in Kihei, but it was on the other side of the highway, so but Lahaina is only like half an hour away and, as you know, it was completely total. So, no, my sister was fine and luckily I had texted her about something silly, some TV show we were both watching. I knew, you know, and then I heard about the fires and I already knew she was okay or she obviously would have mentioned it, and I checked back with her and her town was completely fine. But, yeah, it's, the island is kind of traumatized.
Speaker 1:I'm sure some of those pictures and videos were absolutely horrific and shocking. I can't imagine what it would be like to be anywhere near that but, like you know, I've spent a limited amount of time there, but enough to know that the people of Hawaii, and the people of Maui specifically, will definitely kind of come together and bond together and help get everybody through. Have you seen that yourself?
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely, yeah, and it was funny. I was interviewing a woman who lives on the island that week and so she actually it was actually that day that she was. She goes by Maui Meaton in Fitness 1961. And she, her name is Holly, and she could see smoke from her driveway and she was like, well, I'm okay, I don't think it's going to come up here. She was, you know, getting a little nervous. So we were actually speaking the day after LaHina burned and then, yeah, and I think if I honestly, if I hadn't gotten the puppy, I might have considered going to help out, I could have stayed with my sister, but then, but at the timing, wasn't there. Yeah, I've been to LaHina many times and and to picture it just being flattened like that is pretty, pretty shocking.
Speaker 2:But, they will come together. They and you just want to make, want to see that people don't come in and you know, buy that land cheap and put up touristy stuff. I mean it's a very special place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just had that kind of like old town kind of feel, with all the shops and beautiful places by the beaches. That old tree Do you know if the tree survived?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the banding tree, I think it did. It looked pretty bad in the following days, like the leaves were black, but I think that it did survive. I mean, from what I've seen, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it'll definitely come back because the roots, you know, are underground and the fire just went over it, but hopefully it'll just leaf out again. I know the banding tree is such a landmark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is. And speaking of trees, that was a really good segue. You kind of got into fitness because of trees. I know you always wanted to be in the Forest Service and you made your way out west. Can you tell us your story and how you got kind of interested in fitness and health to begin with?
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I ended up going to college for forestry. I just really liked being outdoors and somehow I fell into that particular major and then the thing to do was apply for seasonal jobs. When I graduated there weren't a lot of full-time positions, but there were seasonal jobs all over the country and I ended up at the Sequoia National Forest in California and, excuse me, I worked there seasonally for about eight years. I actually had kind of a permanent seasonal position and I worked in different departments and one summer my position wasn't really funded. So I got to kind of pick a job and I went to work on a fire engine and you had to do some specific requirements, including you had to do I think it was 25 push-ups and seven pull-ups, and I went to the gym to see how many pull-ups I could do when it was zero. So I lowered myself down, I started with that and I ended up in my early 20s. So by the time I went to the job I think I could do four and they were pretty impressed with that because the other people on the crew were men and I think at one a couple times I was able to do the seven, and then I kind of let it go and I cannot do any pull-ups right now. I'm hoping to work my way back up to doing them. I'm working with that the pull-up machine where you can counterweight it and have a ways to go, but I'm making progress.
Speaker 2:But there was a fitness culture. If you wanted to go on to help firefighters when they popped up, you had to pass a certain fitness test the step test. They measure your heart rate, make sure you weren't going to kill over of a heart attack when you were out on the fire line. And it was extra money and it was big excitement. So we all kept in shape. And then we would keep in shape in the off season because it snows in the Sierras. There's not a lot of work there in the winter. Usually you're laid off, but we would keep in shape in the off season so that when we went back to work we would be able to be on the fire crews.
Speaker 2:And I just really developed that habit, the fitness habit. You felt better. And then when I had to have a career change, when I was hitting 40, I wanted a little more flexibility. I had a couple of kids by that time. That's when I decided to become a personal trainer. Actually, at the time my sister's husband was a personal trainer and I thought, well, that's a good idea. And he gave me some advice and I became one at 40. So it might sound old to you but, looking back, the time goes by. And so now and I didn't work as a personal trainer the whole time I had different jobs, but when I retired I decided I definitely wanted to keep doing the fitness thing. It's always been something I've been passionate about, even if I haven't been working in it all the time.
Speaker 1:So very interesting. So if we go back to when you first got interested in fitness, these are very, very different times than today and I think we still struggle with this today. But what was the state of weightlifting back then when you were getting started, especially for women?
Speaker 2:It was kind of unusual. It was kind of unusual for women. I think I had some college roommates that did it in. I think it was 1977. And everybody thought they're really crazy. They had a weight bench and they ate a lot of egg whites and built muscle and everybody was like that's weird. Women don't do that. What are they doing? They were just kind of considered very strange.
Speaker 2:But then it was only a couple years later and I was at the main campus of Penn State and they put in one of those, a brand new studio with Nautilus, and it was sparkling clean and both women and men attended it and they gave me a tour and I was really impressed and ended up joining one. When I moved to California, when I wasn't living up in the mountains, there was a similar one that I was able to join, and so it's more the late 70s that women started coming into gyms and fitness centers and of course in California they're a little, I think, ahead of the rest of the country although New York City as well that women found that they could also do weight training to slim down or stay in good shape and became popular for women as well as men. But it was a very clean studio kind of thing?
Speaker 1:Was it the same kind of stigmas back then about women and weightlifting, that they wouldn't want to do it more because they didn't want to get bulky?
Speaker 2:That has always been a thing, and even then, like this was like a nice clean machine circuit, beautiful locker rooms, that kind of thing we would wear like leotards I'm not sure why and tights and starved dancer tights. And yeah, they stressed that you were not going to get bulky, and so it was quite a bit later. I think that women were commonly in actual weight rooms with, like, free weights yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 1:So when I first started as a personal trainer, that's pretty much all we used was free weights or whatever bands or TRX or whatever we had and we were taught to do kind of functional training. We were taught that machines are inferior definitely to using free weights and it's much better to use the dumbbells again the free weights standing on, standing on you know, the BOSU balls or using Swiss balls. You've not only mentioned machines, but you've mentioned specifically nautilus machines. There's something really special about nautilus machines in particular that I always like to kind of call out. Can you explain why it's not necessarily true that using machines is inferior to using free weights, and can you explain why nautilus equipment is particularly special?
Speaker 2:Well, nautilus was designed, as you know, by Arthur Jones and he figured out the exact angles so that you could work one muscle at a time and not injure yourself and get the most benefit from each individual exercise. Now, most gyms today probably don't have Nautilus, but you can still use the same type of work out and really get all the benefits. You can get those benefits with the bands, with the dumbbells, with the body weight, with your TRX, whatever. But the nice thing about the machine circuits is really that you're not going to injure yourself. You're working one muscle at a time and you're seated and you don't have to worry about balance or tweaking anything. You're much less likely to get injured. They're all going to be effective. But that's why I really do like the machine circuits and I followed, as you did, dr Doug McAuff Body by Science and then I was lucky enough to catch one's podcast came out, lauren Sneals podcast that is for personal trainers and he went through all that whole history of Nautilus and interviewed people at New Earth or Jones and told all the crazy stories about the man and his quirks and probably his genius as well, and how he invented it.
Speaker 2:But at the time I just kind of fell into it. It was a nice studio and I just found that of course I was in my 20s but that in 12 weeks I could really just make progress and if I had been maybe gaining a little weight, I firmed everything back up and it was just kind of simple. It doesn't take as much time. It was well before CrossFit and before women were hanging out in the most of the free weight rooms. But I just learned it, or I was lucky enough to learn it early.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very lucky. That's amazing. Yeah, it was much later in my career that I came across some of those principles and I don't train exclusively in that way. But again, remembering those certain principles that they talked about can be leveraged, and you brought this up just for the listener. Don't think that if you don't have access to the very best machines Nautilus equipment don't think that you can't use the other things that Maggie and I have already mentioned, like using bands. You can order a set of bands on Amazon $30. You can have incredibly hard workouts doing that.
Speaker 1:What Maggie's describing this is kind of difficult to describe.
Speaker 1:But what Maggie's describing is, on certain lifting patterns, there's places where you have a lot of mechanical advantage and there's other places where you don't have very good mechanical advantage. And so, for the listener again, if you're thinking about a bicep curl in particular, I think this is the best example. When you're at the bottom or when you're at the top, the weight to you is going to feel the lightest. You have the most advantage when your elbows are at 90 degrees. That lever is as far out from the fulcrum as it's going to be. That's when it's its heaviest. If you could control the strength curve and make it feel lighter here at 90 degrees and heavier at the top or at the bottom. Well, that would be a much more consistent strength curve for that particular exercise. So this is also where I do think bands are a wonderful tool, because bands, as you're pulling them, as you're pushing them, the further out or in you go, depending on what you're doing, they're getting harder with you as you're lifting. So it's different than lifting weights.
Speaker 2:Thank you for explaining that. And then it was named Nautilus because of that whole Nautilus shell. Right, it was like the cam that, as you explained, different tensions on different angles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, and it was Dr Doug McGuff's and John Little's book Body by Science that helped me understand that. Before then, if you'd have asked me what the difference between a Nautilus machine and another brand of equipment, I would not have been able to tell you. I don't think there's any difference and that was explained as like oh, this is actually engineered quite a bit differently. But again for the listener, don't think that any of that is prohibitive if you're getting great results with very, very simple equipment, with a few simple lifts and a little bit of know how. I do want to know, since you've been doing this for so long, has the protocol changed very much like the way you lift weights? Is it vastly different now than when it was, when you first got started?
Speaker 2:No, I actually do the exact same thing and as much as I have interviewed people that use slow training, like Dr Ben Bochiccio, I think he uses like maybe 10 seconds each way and some use time under load 90 seconds but honestly, it was so ingrained in me at the Y lift for two seconds, lower for four.
Speaker 2:I think the most important thing is that you tire the muscle, and I think what I've seen a lot of women do wrong is they're taught to use the machine and then they do 10 reps and then they move on to the next one and they do 10 reps and then they move on to the next one and do 10 reps and I'll say is that as many as you can do? Like, could you do more than 10 in there? Like, oh yeah. And so what you really want to do is get to that point either muscle failure or, at the very least, muscle fatigue where you're really starting to strain. You have to hire that muscle. That's where you're going to get the benefits. If you can do, if you do 10 reps and you really could do like five or 10 more, then you're really not getting the full benefit out of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Exercise, and that's what some people do.
Speaker 1:You know the 10 reps and move on, yeah, and so like that type of movement, the person that's doing the 10 reps and then finishing like that's fine, but you're also not sending a strong enough signal to your body to actually get stronger and build muscle. Because, I understand it, the body has abhorrent to use a bunch of calories when we've lived, you know, for millions of years and probably a caloric deficit, and so it doesn't want to just use more energy and make more things that it doesn't have to. And so by pushing yourself to that level of depth, that's when you get the more strong signal for your body that it says well, we really have no choice. We have to get stronger, we have to build up muscle, and you know bone density and connective tissue. Is that the way you understand it as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and the. And you know, when I was doing it I was really just trying to get myself in shape, you know, obviously, be stronger and healthier, but you know, thinner. There was all about that. And now, having done these interviews, you know it's all about the myokines, right. It's all about not just the signaling to build muscle to be stronger, fitter and healthier, but it's also about the immune system. And I think the thing that took me back the most was Dr Stuart Phillips, when he when, at the end of our interview, you know, he talked about dementia and how. You know, if I had asked him 10 years ago, is there any relationship between sarcomenia and dementia? I'm not sure if that was the exact question I asked, but he said, well, I would have. I would have said probably not. And then, five years ago, he would have said, well, possibly. And then now he says unequivocally yes.
Speaker 1:Which, which, now, that may be the best benefit of any type of exercise. Who would have thought that it was primarily for mental health and like the physical health is almost like the side benefit.
Speaker 2:Right, wow, that you can keep your mind as well as your body.
Speaker 2:And also, the older I get, the more, the more I realize how important it is to be able to get in and out of a chair for as long as you possibly can. You know, and and yeah, and I think you probably have heard that my story in that the last couple of years my mom passed away last year she was 92. But so she lived a very long life, but it's it's, you know, challenging for the children at the end to help their parents through that and and she did have some type two diabetes at the end and a little bit of dementia and some confusion. And we were lucky enough to take her actually out to Maui where my sister had had a really nice wheelchair, accessible home and you know nice weather, and we were kind of able to help her through that. But she had not really believed in exercise. She had believed in breastfeeding and just for some reason didn't see the value of exercise. We, you know, we kept having physical therapists go to her home and she would fire them.
Speaker 2:So, you know. So, having been through that, I really see the value of. I really don't want to put my own kids through that. Honestly, I want to keep my muscle as long as I can. Is it Mark Sisson or someone that says live long and true?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:You really want to keep your functionality as long as you can for the dementia and for getting you know up, up and down off the toilet and into chairs. That's right.
Speaker 1:And then all the quality of life leading up to that point is just so much better, and I just think it's amazing that you have gone almost 50 years kind of doing this and you're doing the exact same thing that you were doing almost 50 years ago. Talk about calling balls and strikes. You nailed it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was very lucky. I just stopped having to stumble into the right places sometimes at the right time. Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, so, speaking of Stuart Phillips, this is maybe another good segue. So, as I've talked, been able to talk to him over the years. He's incredible. It seems like in his career he was more sure about the exact amount of protein that somebody needed to eat. He's more sure about the exact protocols you should do for strength training, and the more I see him do this, the more I see him changing his mind about certain things which I absolutely love.
Speaker 1:And I've also seen him kind of relax a little bit with, like we don't need to get caught up so much in the minutia of how many exact grams of protein do you need, how much exercise should you be doing, what's the right number of sets and reps and all this stuff. He kind of seems to have relaxed a little bit more about that and just said look, you need to eat protein, eat lots of protein. You need to strength train, do that. The way you go about that can. There can be some variants there, but it's the principles that really matter and he seems to get lost less in kind of the minutia of everything. Would you kind of agree with his stance on things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that the main thing is consistently doing something, and even I have switched it up over the years. Sometimes I've been religiously going to a gym. For a while I did Beachbody. What else have I done? I've done bands at home. I've done a lot of dumbbells at home. I like dumbbells. My favorite is to have access to a machine circuit, but in some stages of your life that's just not gonna happen. Another doctor that's really into protein is Dr Gabrielle Lyon. I'm sure you're probably familiar with her, but I think she's kind of intimidating to some people in that she works all day as a doctor, does a podcast, writes a book, has two little kids and still goes to the gym four nights a week. It lifts heavy and I think that's really way beyond most people's capability Most of us. If you have two little kids, you're lucky to just get through the day.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you just have maybe a little Beachbody workout, you can pop it at home or some bands or some dumbbells at home with a YouTube video, or yeah, there's some good body weight exercises too, but most people that have two small children are not gonna make it to the gym four nights, so it gets pretty unlikely unless they have really good childcare at the gym. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Intimidation is a really good word to use there and you used two terms earlier that I don't wanna pass this up. I love the way you talk about this and I'm curious to hear your answer. I think I'm gonna end up agreeing with what you say here Difference between muscle exhaustion and muscle fatigue. Can you explain the difference between those two things and how you value each of those, especially in the context of either the time that it takes to do the workouts during the week or even again, that intimidation of like muscle exhaustion might be so difficult that a majority of people might not ever wanna do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the people that are able to go to some of these fitness studios with machine circuits that have a personal trainer and that trainer will be able to convince them to do those extra reps until they are at muscle they've exhausted the muscle, muscle failure or at least very close to muscle failure, and then they're gonna be able to maybe go once a week because they're gonna need that more recovery.
Speaker 2:And I've usually taught people to go to muscle fatigue like just a couple of reps shy of muscle failure. You really do need to tire that muscle to get those benefits, but I think you're gonna be less sore and it's really not a big difference in time, other than if you just go to muscle fatigue, you probably need to work out at least twice a week where if you go to muscle failure, you might be able to get away with once a week but you might be more sore. And I think for I think a lot of that's like an attitude there are people that think that's great, I'm really sore, I must have had a really good workout and as long as they feel good about that and like that, I think that's okay. But I think most people are busy and pain is a signal that you're doing something wrong in those cases and you're gonna try to talk yourself out of continuing that workout if it hurts. So I believe in kind of working up a little bit gradually till you get to like doing the first couple of weeks a little bit easy if somebody hasn't been exercising and then working up to that muscle fatigue and that's usually where that cause you're still gonna make progress.
Speaker 2:It might not be quite as fast, but there's no finish line, right? You?
Speaker 2:and that can be a personal preference too.
Speaker 1:Totally yeah. I think of it as like, if I can push somebody to a 10 out of 10 and they're gonna hate life for the next three days, not be able to get out of bed, maybe it'd be more beneficial to push them to an eight or nine. Let's make sure their form is still perfect. Let's take them as far as they can without breaking form, but let's not push like way over that limit to the extent that they're again not gonna want to do that. Do you notice that people are still able to get really good results, even if they're not going to absolute complete exhaustion every time?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, you're still gonna make progress as long as you get to where you have actually tired that muscle. And even my interview Bill DeSamone joined Friendly Fitness and he says you know, really any exercise is good exercise. But I think for a lot of people that place where you hit muscle fatigue, but not necessarily muscle failure, is a good goal. And to do that a couple of times a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really appreciate that. That's a very thoughtful answer. So, on that note, any exercise is beneficial. How do you value cardiovascular exercise? I always want to correct myself when I say that Doug does a great job in the book talking about, like how we even got to call quote unquote aerobic exercise like cardiovascular training. So the question is, like, how do you value aerobic training versus resistance training that we've been talking about this whole time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think most people have the wrong idea. They think they have to do an hour of hard aerobics or at least that used to be the thing women would always want to do. You know, step aerobics or some hour long aerobic program at probably mostly too high of a level I think you can do. I think it's still valuable. You know, I think if you're going to prioritize one, probably I would pick the strength training, but I think that the cardio is really, you know, proven to have good benefits as well. But I think most people try to do it too hard.
Speaker 2:And it's funny because when I was interviewing Doug McGuff so I've admitted my age, but last year I turned 65 and it was a big shock, I was becoming a senior citizen and so you know he talks about like people that do these Johnny Quest things right. So we decided that we would do a half marathon. I had never done one. I've run like 5Ks and I had done, I think, one or two 10Ks and you know, mostly 5Ks for a good cause with my friends and stuff. But we decided we would do a half marathon and I did finish it.
Speaker 2:I was very, very slow but I developed like some muscle or issues in my head and I had to go to physical therapy and it's like, well, maybe running, you know, but I mean, some people love running. I think the thing with cardio is, if there's something you like to do, that's great, you know. If it's like a hobby, something you enjoy, then you should do it. Otherwise, maybe just find something you like to do, but maybe aim for that, like 20 minutes three times a week, or walking is actually very, very beneficial, as you know, and I'm sure, now that I have a puppy, I'll be doing a lot of walking and that was actually sort of yeah, that was actually kind of part of our reason for getting it.
Speaker 2:We both decided maybe we weren't really runners and, you know, walking a dog would be really good.
Speaker 1:That's great. Wow, that's great. Well, okay, so I agree with you. I think resistance training is if you can do one or the other, or if you have to choose between one or the other, I would go towards resistance training. This could be because I'm terribly biased. You mentioned aerobics and you just accessed a memory out of long-term memory for me. When I was a kid growing up, I'd always turn on the TV to PBS to watch Sesame Street. We'd come on at seven, but the hour before would be the BYU local kind of the videos of aerobics where they'd have the three instructors on the three platforms and one would be going nuts really hard and the other person would do like the easier version. And I hated it so much because I just wanted to watch Sesame Street and couldn't figure out what they were doing and this is like late 80s, early 90s or sweat beds and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's probably why I don't like it anyway.
Speaker 2:Right, they look pretty ridiculous looking bag, totally Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, I think, a great summarization of exercise and resistance training. I do want to go back to when you were getting into exercise and all this stuff. I really hope that your mind has been changed about certain things. When it comes to nutrition, I think we were doing things quite a bit worse in the 70s and 80s than the things that we're learning now about nutrition, but tell me what your nutritional journey has been like. Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Not so good, really. Luckily, I always thought I was pretty healthy and everything, but I kind of fell into being a vegetarian. In the late 70s there was diet for a small planet and Francis Morlapae I forget the name of her book, but there was a lot of. We just thought it was good environmentalism to be vegetarian On Imeena and I ate a lot of carbs and I just like.
Speaker 2:I kind of took the meat out for a while there and I used to fall asleep in my classes and it was not. I lost some tooth enamel, I had receding gums and I started to get more tired and a little hypoglycemic. By the time I had my kids, I think I was probably tireder than I would have been had I not thought that healthy eating. We were eating all like more healthy whole grains and occasional meatless meals. Even once I had a family my then husband didn't want to be a vegetarian, but we had some meatless meals and, yeah, low fat. And then, even when I became a personal trainer at 40, I was telling people to do the six small meals and you were starving in between those meals and, god forbid, you missed one. So our blood sugar was just going up and down.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, nutrition has come a long way and I know you're a carnivore, I know when I mostly eat, like a whole, real foods, a lot of. I try to eat a lot of. Most of the stuff I buy has one ingredient, not everything, but mostly a lot more, trying to get that protein in, and I do do some protein shakes. I'm always trying to get different ones to see which ones I like, just because I find I tend not to get enough protein just in what I would normally eat during the day. So I've been trying to add that protein shake. But yeah, when I first heard about the carnivore I really rolled my eyes but it does seem to be.
Speaker 2:It does seem to be catching on, like more and more people that I interview and say oh, I'm on the carnivore diet, are you? And so far I'm not. But I certainly give it a lot more credibility than when I first heard about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure yeah, no, it's a really good point. Do you remember, as the low fat message was catching on, do you remember any strong kind of counter message? Was anybody talking about the benefits of proteins and fats? I mean, I know Dr Adkins was maybe starting to come out with stuff, but I don't know how popular that was when he first started, which was late 70s, early 80s, or any counter to the low fat message.
Speaker 2:Well, I remember, before the low fat message, I think I mentioned what we were talking with the Hewlett's. I remember there was a diet plate that had a burger, patty, lettuce and tomato, no bun and a side of cottage cheese. That's what women would eat at a restaurant if they were trying to lose weight. Then suddenly it all went to low fat. Then came the Snagwell cookies. It shifted from if you were gaining weight it was because you were eating too much bread and potatoes to oh, you have to lower your fat. In my house we always had both. At that point my mom bought marjoram but she also bought butter because she had really grown up on French cooking. She was a fan of Julia Child. She would eat the butter. My sister would eat the marjoram. We had that little, which is better, but we all thought marjoram was probably healthier, but we just really liked the butter. Then later we found out that was false.
Speaker 1:When was it that that thinking started to change for you personally? When did you start to realize that fat is actually valuable? We need a decent amount of protein. Was that more recent or was that fairly early on in your journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was probably more recent. I was big on the low fat bandwagon and I got my other friends to lower their fat by the lower fat products unfortunately, except I did buy real butter. Then we went through a phase where we thought we were making butter healthier by mixing in canola oil. That was a mistake. I was probably more recent. The main thing I think that woke me up is when I remember reading Wheat Belly. I think that was 2013, maybe 2014. I think that's when I started to realize I had been wrong. That's when podcasts, I think I listened to Ben Greenfield and he was starting to become fat adapted for his triazolons. I think that's when I woke up to it was about 2013, 2014 and started to get rid of the bread out of my diet, which I brought a little bit back recently because we have this really good bakery here in town that has fermented sourdough.
Speaker 1:Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's when I woke up to the fact that all my wheat and pasta was probably not the best for me and that the fat we had been given the wrong information.
Speaker 1:It's a shame from looking around and seeing how wrong we got that message and all the damage that we have done and all the money that's been made for the food companies and the medical establishments. It's really unfortunate Then to consider these people are already making so much money. Of course Coca-Cola is going to tell you that you need to exercise and they're going to invest millions and millions of dollars into advertising the exercise kind of movement. It's not necessarily that they want you to go and be healthy and exercise. They want to distract the conversation so that people don't understand what they're eating has a huge impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard to talk people out of counting their calories, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really is Okay. So protein, let's talk about protein. I know this is a huge priority for you. What recommendations do you have when it comes to protein? Is there certain amounts we should be looking for? Is there certain ratios of protein to fat? You asked me that on your show when you interviewed me. Get a turnaround and ask you again Is there a major difference between animal proteins, fat proteins? What are some of your thoughts around the importance of protein?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm not really a nutritionist but I was kind of influenced by. I actually am one of the few people that kind of like the MyBlade and I know, don't turn off the podcast until I explain. I like that you can eyeball. Really. What it was more was, instead of quarters, cutting the plate in quarters, it was more in thirds. It was the trainer meals. You had a protein, a carb, a starch and a vegetable. I still don't dislike that. I have cut out a lot of the bread that I have made for breakfast or lunch. Americans like the reservings of bread, that protein. I'm more about eyeballing it. That's probably why I don't get enough. It's hard to get enough, I think, at breakfast and lunch for people that have had that standard American diet. We used to eat cereal for breakfast or toast and then maybe a sandwich for lunch. It's a little harder to get it at breakfast and lunch. I've added a protein shake to my day. Sometimes I don't eat breakfast. Sometimes I might eat eggs. Even two eggs is only what. 12?
Speaker 1:12, yeah 14 grams.
Speaker 2:It's not quite enough. I think it was really talking to Stuart Phillips that made me really do the math. I still wasn't there, even as healthy as I try to be. If you look at a plate, if you do a good size quarter of it, like for a woman, that's going to be about four ounces of protein. You really want to try to get somewhere around. An average size woman would want to get somewhere around 100 grams a day. That would be at a minimum, maybe 90 at a minimum.
Speaker 1:I noticed with carnivore diet one of the challenges you just become so satiated. I was easily able to slip into a pattern where I was doing one meal a day. I did that for a long time. I started to notice I was having a bit of a metabolic slowdown. I think it's because it's a challenge to get that much protein in. I added a second meal. I tried to do eggs. In the middle of the day, before we started this conversation, I was able to eat seven of them. That's a decent amount of protein there. I feel so satiated. Right now I'm going to have really good energy. That means I might not be able to eat as much at dinner time. It's challenging for me to get enough protein. It's challenging for you, you just said, to get enough protein. You've been concentrating on this for a long, long time. What does that tell you about the general population and the amount of protein they're getting? That's the scary stuff.
Speaker 2:Right, you know that they're not getting enough. Especially, you look at older people my mom was in a rehab and then an assisted living and just looking at in a hospital and looking at the food that they're served oh my word, there's always dessert and a lot of them push the meal away so they can fit dessert.
Speaker 1:It's a huge, huge challenge. Unfortunately, if you were to Google how much protein should I be eating, you're probably going to get. I believe it's the World Health Organization recommendations. They're like 55 to 60 grams, depending on your male or female. If that's a challenge, that's like bare bones minimum that anybody should be shooting for. Then they list really good protein sources. There are a lot of plant sources, a lot of combination of carbohydrates and protein that can be, challenging itself.
Speaker 1:It gets really tough for people to get the protein that they really truly need to be getting. Regardless of what people do, they need to make that a priority, Would you agree?
Speaker 2:I would agree. I think that you're not going to support gaining muscle, much less not losing muscle. Also, your bone healthier bones are a protein matrix. We think of a lot of women take calcium but they're not getting enough protein.
Speaker 1:That's such a great point that can wrap up our nutrition discussion as well. I have to just ask you is there a dream guest that you would like to have on your podcast? Oh gosh Dream guest, hmm, I don't know how I would answer this question. It's a tough question.
Speaker 2:I already had. Yeah, dr Doug McAuff was a dream guest and Lawrence Neal was a dream guest. I've listened to his podcast for years and I just was really excited that he said, yes, he's a young guy compared to being. Anyway, he is I think in his early 30s, but he dug up all those old stories about Nautilus and just has such a passion for the whole thing and has really become a well-known person in the industry. I can't think of any other dream guest. I'm sure as soon as we get off I'll go, oh yeah totally no.
Speaker 1:I think it's a really good answer. I don't know how I would answer that question. Like I said, I would probably say somebody like Dr Jason Fung, but I would also say somebody like Nina Tyshals, and it's like we've interviewed her three times already. I couldn't even get through the very first introduction of her without tearing up. I got emotional when I was using Nina Tyshals.
Speaker 1:Anyway, podcasting is such a wonderful journey. I'm glad that you said in the beginning it's selfish for all of us that are podcasting if nobody listens. We listen and we've learned so much and get to talk to just amazing people. I had just spent a very enjoyable hour talking to somebody that I very much admire. Maggie, you do such a great job with your show. Like I said, I hope you continue for as long as you like to continue and hope to continue enjoying all the content that you put out. But for now, where would you like people to go to find you and connect with you in your work?
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, I have a little website off ofthecountscom. If they want to contact me, there is a contact page there. You can find me on Instagram. I actually just started a second one because I just had a little one with photographs and things that I used really to find other people and just put up little scenic pictures of New England kind of thing. But I started one for Off at the Couch podcast because I thought I should really show pictures of my guests and when I put out new podcasts. I have been on Twitter. I think that might be coming to an end. If they start charging. I'm really going to let that drop.
Speaker 1:I know it's so ridiculous. I was just thinking earlier in the episode, as you were saying, like I reach out sometimes on Twitter to get guests, I'm not able to do that anymore because you can't message these verified people. It's such a bummer.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, yeah. Yeah, that's been changing, but I did get some of my early guests that way. But there's always. I guess we can always go to their websites and stuff. And I'm really hoping to go to one of these low-carb conferences and actually meet people in person. I might go to the one in Florida in the winter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kind of targeting that myself, florida seems like a great place to go when it's winter. For both of us, in very kind of harsh climate, it sounds like a nice little getaway. Well, maggie, again, I really admire you and your work, and I just see somebody that's got so much passion is putting out a really great message that's really helping people. So thank you so much for all of the work that you do and thank you for taking the time to produce your podcast and be on ours today. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Well, same to you, same to you All. Right, casey, have a great afternoon you too.
Speaker 1:We'll see you in another episode of Boundless Body Radio, as always. Thank you so very much for listening to Boundless Body Radio. I know I say this all the time, but I really really mean it. It has been such a joy to make and produce this podcast and really watch it grow. We started the podcast after we started our business in October of 2020. So it's been three years now and to see that our podcast is over 400,000 downloads worldwide is just simply unbelievable.
Speaker 1:This year has been such a blast to travel to different health conferences and not only meet some of our amazing guests, but also meet many of you, our listeners and supporters. I just really can't thank you enough. As always, feel free to book a complimentary 30 minute session on our website at any time at MyBoundlessBodycom. One of the first things you're going to see on our homepage is a book now button where you can select a time to speak with us about anything you like. Really, we can talk about health, fitness, nutrition whatever you want to chat about. We've loved connecting and chatting to so many different people around the world, bounce ideas off each other and really try to help people come up with plans to achieve specific goals in their health and wellness.
Speaker 1:Be sure to check out our YouTube channel if you want to watch any of these full interviews and also shorter videos on more specific topics taken from these interviews. We've gotten really good feedback over there. It's been really fun. It's also a fun way to interact with people who comment. We don't normally get that on reviews on the podcast, obviously, and we do read and reply to every comment that we get and, as always, if you haven't already, please, please, please, leave us a five star rating and review on Apple. It really is the best way to make sure that the podcast gets out to more listeners. I've been able to keep Balmous Body Radio ad free for these three years and would love to continue to do so, and so your support through five star ratings is really the best way to keep it that way. So cheers, thanks again. So very much for listening to and supporting Balmous Body Radio.