Episode #25 Amanda Thebe on Menopause, Endurance, and Strength for Female Athletes

In this episode, I sit down with Amanda Thebe, fitness coach, author of Menopocalypse, and fierce advocate for women’s health. Amanda shares her journey into the fitness space, including learning to swim as an adult and how that experience was one of her proudest achievements.

We dive into key topics for female triathletes navigating ageing and hormonal changes, including:

🏊‍♀️ Reframing mindset around ageing and performance
 💪 Why strength training is essential for women
 🌀 The impact of hormonal fluctuations on training & recovery
 🥗 Nutrition & recovery strategies for maintaining muscle and bone density
 🔥 Avoiding burnout while juggling training, work, and family
 ⚡ The truth about fasting, keto, and diet trends for female endurance athletes

Plus, Amanda shares her take on the rising interest in peri- and post-menopausal women’s health.

Tune in for science-backed insights, real talk, and practical strategies for staying strong, fit, and resilient!

Buy Menopocalypse here https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/menopocalypse-book-amanda-thebe-9781771647601

Amandas Website https://amandathebe.com/

Amanda on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/amanda.thebe

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Transcript

[Music] hi I'm Celia boothman founder of LTR coaching and I'd like to welcome you to the inspired triathletes podcast where I'll be bringing you stories from female triathletes and taking on topics that are important to women in the

sport hello and welcome to today's episode I'm here with Amanda Thebe Fitness coach and author of men Apocalypse which is an awesome book I love it um so we'll just start off with a little bit of your background how you kind of got into this space you know what you what got you into menopause and all its Joys uh it was never on my bingo card I'm nothing I probably started a little I know I'm older than you but like when I um I always worked in like it I worked for Northern electric then I worked for IBM so I had a full-time job but i' always been like an active kid and when I finished um like school and college I decided I wanted to be an aerobics teacher so I started doing all of the certifications for like being a remember the rsas the RSA certification school of arts and I did aerobics and then I did a lot of um like body pump like um step aerobics I work for Schwin I used to tour like Europe with Schwin doing that spinning when it first came out and then I decided to do personal training and it was got decades ago now and and it was with lrey University which is the only place you could do it at the time I mean it's still an unregulated business and it was a diploma through them I used to go down once every weekend to do that and so now I don't even think the course exists anymore right so but then you know like all of us in the fitness industry we were just constantly curious I think coaches tend to be curious people so I've got tons certifications and lots of you know different elements and so it was always like a passion for me just I was that fit active annoying kid turned into the fit active annoying adult and then you know I moved from the UK went to Boston to live for two years I moved to Toronto and I became a mom and I couldn't work in my like career my IND tech industry anymore and so I started teaching like all the local moms at the school like Fitness because otherwise they'd follow me around the gym going what are you doing what are you doing and so I started doing Fitness classes and had a very successful business um and then I moved to uh Texas for four years um and you know what happened is during the Fitness business and we move into Texas I I went through per menopause and and that's sort of where my menopause story starts because you know after having I mean I've been doing this now Fitness and Nutrition for what 35 years if I say I was 20 when I started and um never ever have ever have I ever heard about menopause in this in the realm of fitness and so 10 years ago or more when I was about 42 I started to feel unwell and it wasn't anything that made a ton of sense to me um and I was in Canada at the time and I um went to my doctor who was very good and I went to into the medical system and was spinning my wheels for nearly two years getting all different tests and um diagnoses and things that all of the doctors were like you know we're trying to help you we can't work out what's wrong um just you know just keep doing what you're doing and it was just really um frustrating I had more questions than answers essentially and um then eventually at 44 went to a gynaecologist who just said um you know what this is Perry menopause I think you've got migraines with aura CU i' had terrible um vertigo as well and I think you're struggling with depression it's likely because of the hormones and situational right because you're not living up to your potential um and he went and you know I can help you and I was like what Perry what I'd never even heard of that like we're talking over 10 years ago now and it really is something that's in our lexicon now but at the time people weren't using that terminology and so at first I was relieved and I was like okay I don't have a brain tumor um and then I was really pissed off and I was walking down the street kicking all the dust bins going [ __ ] hell [ __ ] hell I've had two years of this and why didn't anybody tell me this and I sort of used that like rage and frustration to sort of start talking about it and that's really my story and I created a Facebook group called menopausing so hard I wrote a few articles that got traction and then women were just like that's me too I recognised myself and and then I started writing a book about it and and teamed up with experts cuz clearly I'm not a medical expert and I didn't want to be one and so I got those people in my back pocket and wrote a book that was evidence-based that was factual but wasn't clinical so that like me and you could just talk about it in a really friendly wear almost like your best mate telling you about it and then what I did is I used all of my sort of um subject matter expertise in Fitness and Nutrition to be able to then talk about Solutions outside of pharmacology obviously hormone therapy and other medications are available but I wanted to speak about other stuff you could do that we know is fundamental and even if it doesn't feel like it in the moment we have data to show that it really is important right and so that's essentially where it's have come from and then everything's just evolved from there none of it was planned at all but yeah it was sent to you as a this is your journey this is where you're going my journey yeah yeah yeah yeah it's um it's interesting as well you're talking about that coming from that athletic background or you know Fitness backgrounds and it is frustrating for a lot of women when they've been really active their whole life and that's it sort of hits them and they're like what is going on and they feel like they're doing all the right things you know it's like we're told when you read nor normal menopause books or normal menopause articles they tell you to exercise and eat healthily and I'm you know if you're doing a lot of that already you can be like why is this happening and it's it's a normal process that your body goes through isn't it it is right and I think you've made a really great point there because it almost feels like you you're you're like you know pissing up a hill sometimes when you're trying to say to people you know nutrition and exercise Stress Management Sleep Quality like mindset how you talk about this process are really important but it's can almost feel a little bit condescending when you know you sat on a sofa and you can barely move to get a cup of tea because you've got chronic fatigue and you've got depression and your joint sick and so I think that the conversation has to be compassionate and it has to be it has to see women where they are and like statistically you you know this and I'm sure your um listeners will know this we've got about 75% of the population of women will experience some symptoms between five and seven symptoms with 25% of those women having symptoms severe enough that it'll impact their quality of life I feel like I definitely fit into that 25% and actually the idea of exercising and eating well weren't even accessible to me even as a fitness professional even as an athletic woman and um and so it's like how do you sort of square that Circle right we we know the data we know that potentially it might reduce your symptoms and it might make you feel better but it might not as well right but we do know that Health outcomes are important so even though you're in a per menopause transition that usually gets better for most women and then you know we live the rest of our life post-menopause the things you do today impact to think your life how it will be as you move forward so we need to we need to promote Health positive um actions and we know that we know what they are but in the thick of it when you're barely functioning in how does that look well I just think that that's when we can have a very valid conversation from a coaching standpoint you know coaches and we can say like what's something that you can do today that might make you feel better than you do now right and so like for me I really struggled with depression which was very new to me I've never had it in my life at all and um for me that was like okay I I don't think I can exercise today but I'm going to go out for a walk and I'm going to do 15 minutes and that's going to be my win and I'm going to like pant myself on the back because I really don't want to do it and it and it's a positive step forward and that's the type of um Health promoting activities we should be leaning into for menopausal women and rather than um sort of I hate the language around it like rather than succumb to things it's almost like saying I acknowledge what's happening I'm not optimal but there are some things that in my toolbox that I can access um and it's down to even things like social connections like a lot of women feel very isolated and lonely through this stage and often Retreat thinking it's only me I'm a failure I'm such a loser I know I did I remember looking at myself in the mirror who who is this person looking at me I don't even recognise myself and and it's it's struggle for a lot of women and so actually joining a community listening to podcast like this where you know you've got other athletic women that are saying my 5K runs killing me I'm doing it and then I'm dead for 4 days afterwards why well maybe it's because your body's actually telling you that it's in a [ __ ] mood and it wants you not to do it today what else could you do could you work on some um biomechanics could you work on some Mobility could you do some power walking could you do Hill Sprints something that's like going to be a quicker recovery type thing rather than like this long catabolic type um endurance type stuff and so yeah like it's it's a hard conversation to have it's very individual even though it's a shared experience and I think you've got to really become your the best detective for yourself um knowing what's out there though being educated I always give way no that's okay that's no that's good that's good we get lots of information um so I'm picking up two things I picked up from that which I'd like to sort of talk about a little bit more is that the idea of being flexible which we're not always and endurance athletes are not always very flexible or they find that very challenging and also mindset um and how we view ourselves and how we see ourselves as people those are two things that sort of stood out to me I just want to say as well that today I've had a shitty day I felt horrible like woke up like oh God I don't want to talk to anyone and I've been yeah just not not happy at all and I went out for a walk for I I walked for like 11 miles just hell you really were stressed I know so you literally turned into today right I'm just gonna walk I've done the same myself and and and to me when you exercise or do any health promoting activities from the lifestyle intervention they always should make you feel better nothing should ever make worse right right so that's always something I think have at the Forefront of your mind and you know um when I look at um the conversation about being flexible a lot of us are either B+ air leaning like personalities right I always say B+ because that's how I did it school and it's my blood type too and I'm not quite an air type personality but you know unless you're very off fair with exercise science Nutrition science all of the different interventions it can be difficult to know what's the right thing to do and I did this post on my Instagram and I pinned it to the top because I posted it just because I just thought oh I'll just remind people about this and it went completely viral because people were like oh we're allowed to make our own decisions we're we're allowed to choose what we want to do in it I called it structured flexibility because as human beings we lean in to being structured we like routine we like to know what coming some of us like a little bit of a surprise but we normally have some bedrocks along the way and structured flexibility for me is when you wake up and you sort of determine on a scale to 10 how am I feeling today right if you're feeling like you did like a three to four in your energy level well then it might be that you just need to move be on your own and just like do something that makes you feel better like sometimes when you're in the one to two Zone it could even just be going outside and and just taking some deep breath breaths and then moving along like I I I know I was like when I was in like a five to six energy range it was like I I think I can workout but I don't think I can do a full workout I want to go for a run but I don't think I can do a full run and it was almost like Fitness snacking just do something that's near what you want to do and anything you do is considered a positive win um and usually what I found is that when you did that or you're in the seven to eight energy level range that if if you started it you could usually finish it like or you could do more than you expected and so and then 9 to 10 you know car pay the [ __ ] DM out of the go it like seize the day and and I think that then people would just like I'm allowed to start a work out and stop if it doesn't feel good and I'm like yes why would you think you couldn't well because it's in my diary to do it's on the plan it's on the plan and often you know we might start a week in per menopause I've seen this a lot with them people that I've coached they might do a workout on a Monday cuz they're feeling quite good and they might do like an a cardio activity on the Tuesday like a run or a bike ride and then they're just exhausted for three or four days afterwards and so use that as a barometer for how your body responds and say I wonder whether something on the Tuesday was just too much or I wonder whether doing things back toback was too much let's play around with that knowing that this is a temporary phase and it it's not going to be how it is forever and I might also add that you know me being 55 now and eight years post-menopause I don't need to have those type of strategies not so much normally if I've just got had a cold or something or you know so I think that it's also worth mentioning that things do get better for most women that's good that's good to hear because it does when you're in the middle of that it sort of feels like oh what's you know is this how it's going to be and there's a bit of like grieving of loss of who you were and you know transitioning to something different and new and you don't really know what that's going to look like so it's it can be quite confusing time that's your mindset then that's that's the mindset coaching and so it's one of those conversations I think all of us who have had a hard per menopause have have had and it's like am I going to have to wake up and feel like this again is this what my life's going to be like where is the real me where have I gone and and it can be very challenging and while I'm not an expert in mindset I've I've studied it and spoken to experts and I definitely recommend that if anyone is feeling like that then working with a psychologist can be wonderful but even just from a very like surface level standpoint there's a couple of things that we can do to actually um make positive strides forward and uh and that is how we talk to ourselves like so managing our stress levels with breathing and exercise can all be really good because when you're stressed you tend to feel worse about yourself um and then um mindfulness um is the method of bringing things to the present so like having questions and thoughts that actually bring you completely to where you are now whereas depression tends to be something when we look back it's what we dwell on and anxiety is anticipating the future like not really knowing what's going to happen and that could be perceived or real it doesn't matter your body's still respond the same way and so mindfulness has a way of like just bringing that back to where you are right now and what that does is it um it actually relieves you of all of the the the stuff that's causing you to feel very frustrated and unsure of yourself um and I often do that because I'm not I always think that mindfulness is some type of a hippie way of like dealing with things and and it can be different for all of us it can be yoga if you like that but it could be going for a walk and just being very present and listening to the birds and being appreciative of nature sitting having a coffee without all the family screeching man I've lost my socks that type of thing like just having time to yourself and then and then actually looking at your life and doing an inventory and saying I have an opportunity now to decide what my life looks like moving forward right things are changing change actually can be good it doesn't always have to be bad um and for me that was was doing two things and I I can't really go into them too much here because they're like online psychological tools but one is understanding what your strengths are because we all have them and so strengths are things like um you know what what makes me tick what are my key assets and for me mine was curiosity which I thought was a bit lame I was like oh that's so boring until I realized that Curiosity was actually the method of finding out um you what something is digging deep and going down the rabbit hole and coming up up and saying I want to share this with you all and so it's actually actually what makes me tick and it's why where where I am today is because I was like no woman should have to question this we should just know what it is so driving through curiosity was is one of my strengths based on my values and my values came up as things like my family and my friends and my health were my top values and then work was forth in the list you know and I'm like okay so now I know that it's okay to be curious as long as it fits in with my current lifestyle where my family come first and me I've been able to then say no to a lot of things really easily and have a very clear path forward and just doing these things where I'm present and I'm very focused on what I'm doing has really changed my life in a way and it took a lot of time to do um in a way that I wish all women could experience and so I do write about it in my book at a very high surface level but if anybody's interested and really struggling and um wants to learn more then a psychologist can help you sort of with with the it's called building a resilient mindset and it's yeah it's really a really great tool for us and women in our 50s and 60s are completely changing their their lives it's amazing you know they they're all of the F people we seeing at 50 60 70 years old that we never used to see all of these women starting new businesses or going for executive roles in in businesses just it makes me so happy right we're usually being told that we're dead and done for we're past our crime and all of those other TRS right and and that's D that's kind of in the background there isn't it that we so that's why it's so important for us to figure out what it is that we're good at and bring that in and actually celebrate it and not you know those be aware that those other voices are in there and that we can replace them with something else that's a little bit more positive I think because otherwise sometimes you don't realise where that voice is coming from that sort of subconscious societal it's condition yeah you don't always you're not always aware of it and you're like why am I feeling and it's because of that so you you have to kind of go in deep a little bit to find that and and brilliantly said and it's like the expectation of me to be doing this is why I'm doing it but does it fulfil me is it what I actually want to be doing and it's asking yourself the hard questions and yeah it's it's really revealing actually yeah and I love what you said about you know when you did your um priorities and family you know work came barely low down and sometimes you feel like oh Society expects me to have know be work work is the most important thing and so we can kind of get lost in that as well in that kind of I should be putting that above that this is more important and actually you know for me my family is way more important and that's my priority but I always have this sneaky little feeling that it shouldn't be it's like that's not yeah that's not the right way that's not good you know good enough that kind of voices that come out and things so I mean I say this and acknowledge that I'm talking from a place of privilege you know and not everybody has those type of options and even if work is the most important thing for you um because you need to feed your family and I obviously understand the social determinant of Health you there's still ways that you can still fulfil other things in your life you know that that actually prioritise yourself and I when I was writing the book I read about a Stanford study that talked about a phenomena when women go through per menopause of the the we to me phenomena whereas women um whether we're mothers or not we we tend to be nurturing for the most part and so we will wake up and we'll be like well I have to do this for Johnny and this for Sarah and this for you know who and and you're always putting people first and you drain yourself because you never look after yourself and the oxytocin levels decline in our body as our sex hormones decline too and that's the the hormone that is created that bonds you so when you breastfeed a baby when you hug someone and there's a slight decline in that and they think that that's where women are able to step back and go oh maybe I might do something for myself I might go get my nails done and and and it can be anything I never get my nails done but what I might do is I might buy myself a nice perfume or I might buy some more stationery that I don't need but that's my weakness but but to me how it actually played out was I was like I'm going to see what it looks like to put myself first especially when I was in the thick of my symptoms and it was I was living in Texas it was beautiful weather and I would get up half an hour early get a coffee and sit outside and listen to the geckos because it was like a tropical um and drink my coffee and just put myself first and just feel really good and just have no thoughts you know if a thought came I would acknowledge it Let It Go um and it meant that I was just in a better place to deal with the the the just chaos of my own family and they benefited from it and nobody in my family ever said oh look how selfish mom is like having a coffee on her own and not looking at you know yeah I actually encourage women to sort of say what could you do that actually does something for yourself and know that it's not selfish and it's actually just it's part of self-care which I mean has been bastardised I know but it actually is something nice that you can do for yourself yeah and also it it helps the people people around you as well to feel that they're helping you you know it's a kind of win-win isn't it because you say I need some support here and asking for support makes people feel needed and wanted which which can be really good for your relationship well done that's exactly it why don't we ever ask for help why don't we ever say I can't do today I need somebody else to unload the dishwasher yeah I mean my boys are lazy little bastards and and they're adult men now and I've made them that way and now I'm asking them to do stuff they're just like what you want me to actually do things I know yeah we do that's I've got two boys and they they're forced to do drying up at night and it's like they're they're not too bad actually how old are your boys I've got an 18 year old who's at Uni now and a 15 year old yeah mine not much mine are like five years just pushed along from there the same age range yeah yeah and actually isn't it really love that all of a sudden our boys are almost adults and they want to talk to us and they're actually really fun to be around and then they leave us they don't really want to talk to oh they don't they do like the 18y old probably will and and then they've left yeah no he does yeah a little bit I mean I I try to speak to him on the phone now but um he's not great at talk talking on the phone so we'll see but yeah it's nice they're great it's you know having them is great and I love love kind of bringing them up and and trying to get them to do a bit of stuff around the house but it's it's sometimes just like pulling teeth isn't it and you're like oh what I know I imagine what it would be like to have like at my just the time of life we had children like later in our like 30s or whatever and um you then have girls that are going through puberty I'm always interested listening to women's stories about where we're going through a reverse puberty essentially they're going through a puberty that's a lot hormones in there I know yeah I've got a friend who's got a girl similar and she's going through that and her daughter's going through F and it's like oh God it's quite nice to chat with her and but they're very close you know they get on really well so it's nice because they can talk about all sorts of stuff they talk about and you finding that like actually introducing the conversation to teenagers is something that's helpful I know my my boys actually obviously I wrote a book about menop poso it's all over and I've got two funny stories to tell you about that but um like they know what menopause is and I think that when it comes time for them to have Partners or nieces or friends they'll be supportive right yeah I hope so I do mention it I S go oh it's my hormones I'm doing you know this is what's happening and yeah so they sort of know I don't know how much they understand because I don't go into that much detail go into that much details yeah I mean should you talk about it over the you know dinner time tea time I do but the I think why not yeah it's like one of those things like how how do you approach up well you can't exactly sit with your fish fingers and chips and go vagina's so dry today it's not what I'm asking people but if we normalise the word menopause and per menopause and people you know it know enough and you know what happened to me is two funny things my oldest son was doing psychology um yeah psychology at um his um senior School in Texas and one of the questions was was does anybody know the phenomena that women go through between the ages of like 45 and 55 that can alter their brain and can cause depression and anxiety and nobody knew my son was like oh and the teacher was like nobody's nobody's ever got that question right but that was that one and then the same kid who has like three friends total and was at the house and his friend came around and the front cover of my book is me like pulling the guns out like looking strong and there friend said um oh my God your mom wrote a book that's so cool I didn't know that and he picked it up and it opened on the page where it says yeah and because of my uh like dry vagina and lack of lubricant I'm not having very much sex lately um and son was like oh my God I had friend and now I've only got two thanks very much um but no but I did a TED Talk well Ted X talk and it was called should men talk about menopause and my answer is well yes and I do a lot of workplace talks and educational um advocacy work and I always encourage men to come along because I know my husband was out on a limb and most of us who are married to a man will be like well they are never going to go through it so how on Earth are they supposed to be there and support us and men want to fix everything don't they that's always my and so it was the whole conversation about things aren't going like as normal and you don't need to fix anything but you need to be aware of what's going on and when I ask you for help you're going to give me it and and it's ch the open communication has changed you know our marriage um same sex Partners I wonder how it would be if they're both going through menopause at the same that can't be much fun either no no I wouldn't have thought I think that' be quite challenging maybe you sort of like one up one up can col that for a little bit you WR that seesaw for a few years

possibly um so you're a big advocate well actually no I want to talk about the swimming first so we discussed your learning of swimming very briefly at the age of 50 was it you decided you were going to learn to swim because we're talking to triathletes here I want to sort of go into that and how what sort of kind made you decide that you wanted to learn to swim and how did it go yeah it's a really fun story and you know can I just start by saying it's the achievement that I'm most proud of in my life cuz um and know I'm speaking to an athletic Community here and I've always been athletic I was that kid that you needed to give something to do because I was annoying with my energy levels so I did Karate I'd got my like second queue KN near a black belt in that and then I did all my fitness stuff um and I every time I learned how to swim I just couldn't do it and I'd do like one length in the pool and I'd be just knackered so then I'd do breast stroke in between and so I was never going to drown but I just was never very good and I relocated to Texas during Trump's first Administration with my family and they have all outdoor pools there and they're beautiful and I had a pool down the road from where I lived and I used to just go to cool down because it was it's very hot there and um anyway when we got covid for the first time in like 2020 I caught Co straight away it was a nightmare I was so frustrated and there was no testing and nobody knew what to do and Texas was just free and open there was no rules or restrictions and that shouldn't surprise you but um and anyway I got covid and it took about four or five weeks for the main symptoms to go but then I was stuck with long covid and it was a nightmare and I had it for about six months and nobody knew what it was and I was in a top one of the top clinics and they were just saying it's the virus it's like post viral fatigue you you're not getting out your system and now we're talking about it a lot right um and going for a walk was just horrendous I would go for a 10-minute walk then have to sit down on the curb and be puffing and panting it was Dreadful and I'd been running like 10K like every other day and strength train and I was really the fittest i' ever been so then I thought you know what would I be able to do and I thought like breathing exercises would be super helpful so every day I started doing breathing exercises to try and just improve my lung capacity and then I thought you know what swimming swimming is a good way to improve um breathing so I started like one length and then breast stroke and then the next time I do two lengths and so I just was building up a little bit and then I thought oh I remember reading a book from Tim Ferris the 4H hour body do you remember that way back in the day I can't remember I know his name I can't and it was like the quickest way to do anything like the quickest way to be better at sex the quickest way to be better at running a mile the quickest way to lose weight and I remember reading the quickest way to learn how to swim a mile and I think a lot of his stuff is [ __ ] actually but this this one used a method called um oh I forget what it was called now anyway it was like effortless swimming or something like that and it broke it down into four components and the four components were learning to float Learning To Breathe learning to um like enter the water and then learning how to not kick as much right because I was like overworking I think that's essentially what I learned was I just was trying too hard and um within a 10 week period I'd learned to swim a mile right I just learned to swim I just was like I was doing it all wrong and the cute part of the story is I never told my husband and my husband's a competitive swimmer and an endurance swimmer he swam alcatraz he swam the circumference of Key West he won that he swam across the the ocean at New Finland and won that broke records like really good swimmer he's Scottish and um they held records in their family and he's been trying to teach me for 20 years and he couldn't so I didn't tell him I was learning and then we went to the pool together and said oh you just do your thing and then I swam a mile and he was like what just happened how did that happen and then so then he took me under his wing and he he introduced me to Lake swimming and in Texas you don't need a wet suit right so I and and he's very white because he's from Scotland so I just swam normally and followed his white body he actually had to tie his legs together because he's twice as fast as me you know like to slow down yeah to slow up so and then we moved we moved back to Toronto and we swim in Lake Ontario there's a team called the Lost team which is Lake Ontario swim team and it's one of the Great Lakes and um it's huge obviously it looks like an ocean but it's weird CU there's obviously no salt in it but it can get very cold and the lake effect you know it it brings cold water in and then warm water in you never know so I swim in a wet suit there and yeah now I'm comfortably swimming three to 2 to 3K I get a bit bored actually after that I'm not very first I'm I've got probably really rubbish form but I swim and I enjoy it and so yeah so now I'm a swimmer and I love to be able to say that I'm a swimmer so yeah and I'm looking at the picture behind you and I'm like okay when I come to Wales North Wales yeah yeah I'll come into I've climbed Snowden a couple of times um and I can see the mountain is that the bre and beacons or is that that is in that's in snowdonia the mountains behind me and that's near pla R the lake I can't remember what lake it is that but it's quite cold yeah and I don't I've never really actually I have done two races but it's within the club that I do it's just called The Lost mile there's a 3K race as well but I just do the Lost Mile and I came back the Third Woman in my age group and I thought that wasn't too bad because the swim clubs I go to a everyone's older it tend it's it's a really great activity for anybody any age right and there's one woman that go who's 85 and she doesn't go in the water without her red lipstick on and I'm like okay you're the one that inspires me to keep coming and I that it makes me so happy yeah I think swimming's that's what I like about you know TR doing Tri on training is there's always something you can pick almost not always but most of the time you can go I'm not feeling so great today you know swimming is great when you're feeling a bit tired and you know I don't always want to get in the water but you know you can take you can take that down you can take and your heart rate doesn't tend to get as high in swimming as it does with running and bikes in the middle somewhere right so yeah it's much more low impact so it's it's a lot easier and and you can use it almost like a recovery session if you're not feeling great so yeah I quite often used to do that when I was training hard um I've never done a triathon I've done I was G to ask you that yeah I've done two team triathlons um and it was only because the people who were doing it were like yeah not very good at running or I can't be bothered to bike and I just jumped in and did it and she didn't bring a bike and so we had to do a BMX can you imagine me doing Triathlon BMX it was the hardest thing I've ever done and then and then I've done uh some duathlons okay and they do a few events here that are like swim runs and I don't know what they're actually called where you swim you run you jump back in the water and you do I can't I think they are called Swim runs I think that's there's the name there's an series I think but I don't know whether that's that appeals to me because I don't I do cycle for leisure just to get around Toronto but I don't cyle but I mean like I probably have the time and the effort to be able to do that you know when the when the snow goes but yeah so I'm not I I always admire people that do triathlons I've got a lot of f fast twitch fibers I'm very much um built to be strong I'm quite a strong person for my age and um you know can do more push-ups than my kids and stuff like that like I am a strong person and so I lean towards that because and I still lean towards martial arts because I'm you know I find that like suits my body type running I'm a very good runner up to about 5k and then the 8 to 10 is hard for me so I don't like the long distances but I think it's good for me to sort of push myself a bit yeah yeah definitely and triathlon is like you know even if you do just a Sprint Triathlon you know it's still endurance event it's still quite a long when I look at Sprint I'm like really it's going to take me like four hours or what I don't think so I don't know how long it takes but it's a lot more than I usually do I look for the minimum effective dose in everything I do what's the best bank can I get from my body in the least amount of time that's how I always think about everything yeah yeah but I think you know as in Triathlon we need to be doing that as well like I always encourage let's train smarter rather than just doing endless endless Miles because you know you do need strength you do need muscular endurance and you can't just do that if you're just going out easy and slow and for longer and longer distances all the time you need a mix of of strength stuff in there as well which kind of brings me on it attracts people out our age as well right the the triathlons seem to be women in the 30 40s 50s and you know it seems to be and I actually read some study by Nick tiller who is one of my favourite um exercise scientists and he's debunked or has has said that there's a few papers that debunk the fact that women are actually better at endurance than men you know there was always that that there's not a ton of difference it's just a myth that's been going around but I do see the participation has changed and I really like that there's more women in it but it does worry me that there's a lot of people doing triathlons and not doing strength training when we know that our risk increases and stress fractures are becoming more and more common in women after men pause and so I I I if we can encourage women to continue what they're doing but just to really focus on some strength Sports specific strength work it would be it would be beneficial for their born health and keeping hanging on to lean mass as as much as possible yeah I was going to that was going to be my next question was about strength training and how we fix it in because it can be a bit of a barrier for some women and you know getting in the gym so how do you encourage people to get started with strength training and what to do what kind of things do you encourage people to do you don't have to go to the gym and I think that's the first thing get well I think it's important to say because even for women who are athletic it can feel intimidating going into a setting that you're just not used to right as as intimidating it is for a gym person to go into the Open Water right like it's sort of the same type of thing and so I mean there's tons you can do at home now and there's tons you can do with just some kettle bells and dumbbells um and I have one a work 12we workout in my book and you don't need to do a lot you just really need to train smart it's the same thing like you can do a strength workout that's actually going to be beneficial and help create a stimulus for um increasing bone health and and maintaining muscle mass with about 30 minutes I mean or less and the recommended um sort of dosage from the government guidelines is two times a week at 30 minutes um I personally think it should be more but if you've being like logical about your training schedule and triathletes have the probably the hardest training schedule to fit in I would suggest you do at least two 30 minutes a week or do the fitness snacking which I'm a huge fan of where you can do 15 minutes every other day um and if you're doing more days you could split between upper body and lower body and then do maybe two full body workouts or if you're doing twice a week just do two full body workouts but work on compounded movements which is you know functional movements that go through many joints like a squat is a really good example of that um your upper body strength is as important as your lower body strength all the power comes from your core and your core is your front and your back and you know it's the trunk we would call it the trunk when you have a functional trunk it means that you move better through your joints and so stuff like anti- rotation and that's like resisting Force when you moving sort of um cross in a cross plan manner it can be very helpful especially if you're a swimmer not so much when you're on a bike and you're static that's more isometric right but when you're running it's cross patterning the whole time it's opposite arm to leg there's not many of us run same arm same leg I think that's almost impossible and so um and what but what we know is our risk of osteoporosis increases after menopause and in that first 10 years it increases is um to one in two people having fractures now small fracture doesn't make a ton of difference but if you're prone to fracture then you need to be really proactive and that means starting in your 30s and 40s with your strength training you know I interviewed somebody that might be interested to your community um I had a podcast which I don't do anymore um and Leslie Patterson and she is a trianing yeah she's on my list yeah all right well I should get connected and Les I have spoke to her she's meant to be coming on well she's Scottish right she loves she loves promoting  triathlon training in the UK and her story is phenomenal how she broke her shoulder and still finished first in her race because she had to raise money to keep the rights for a movie the um All Quiet on the Western Front she was about to lose the rights to be able to make it and she needed to raise $10,000 and so she did it by winning one of the exterior races and she broke her arm and because of this type of she's an amazing athlete anyway but just because she is um so specific in her training she was doing lots of one-arm drills right and she was learning to cycle with one arm like individual arms and stuff so she actually didn't do bad on the swim she caught up on the bike and she beat everyone on the running with one arm working it was incredible like it's a it's different to like our type of level of athleticism but it just sort of and she does strength training too and it's just the way that the body can adapt and so you will see within 12 12 weeks of starting a TR a strength training program actual improvements really really quickly you get the new begins right you get to see the quick the quick gains people like me have been doing it forever after to work extra hard because it's it's harder to come back you know so yeah definitely I mean I I do recommend it for everybody and I give very various options depending on what people have got available to them so there's not like a one-size fit all for strength training I tons and tons of free resources if you didn't know where to start just Google 10 minute strength training upper body low body full body there's loads I so many I can't even begin to s or if you've got the financial means it can be handy to like work with a trainer as well even just two or three times so that they can do assessment on you identify any maybe weaknesses there that you a lot of times we need to do unilateral work a lot of people have like you know weak glutes and any of those stabiliser muscles when you're working in A sagittal plane all the time which you tend to be when you're running and on a bike you tend not to have those uh transverse plain muscles very strong and that's all like the seratus and the the glute meat and all of the things that you know stop you falling over and protect you know and so yeah so I think that that can be something that can be really helpful um otherwise just start doing something and all of a sudden you'll just realise that you're feeling stronger and you'll get curious hopefully and want to do more yeah definitely yeah that's good advice for people and so nutrition obviously is quite important for endurance athletes and women going through this transition what's your take on fast and all these kind of Trends and that we see for women advertised everywhere yeah I mean you've probably got your own thoughts on this and you know as far as I'm concerned like so my background is I'm not a dietitian but I've got a Precision Precision Nutrition certification industry standard I think you've got like BTN over there and a couple of others that are a good Mac nutrition It's s similar like industry standard I got that about 15 years ago and I've just honestly just kept up today with all of like the research um so I feel like I can speak on this with a decent amount of authority and um you know um fasting isn't for everyone I just think it's really easy to sort of dismiss intimate in fasting if if you if you like eating breakfast I mean so it it I think it really depends like if you're a woman that has to train at like five and six o'clock in the morning because that's the only time you've got free you might not want to eat in the morning and your body might just adapt to pasted training very well um or you might want a banana or a bit of peanut butter I don't know like you might just want something on your stomach um some women wake up and they're just not hungry to like like per menopause messes with your gut as well like you wake up just feeling like a bit sickly or not hungry and you don't want to eat till 11:00 so I definitely would say to women work within what your schedule is and what your um personal preferences but intimate and fasting isn't Superior in anywhere from an ex stand point and from a nutritional standpoint um because what you can achieve from just a calorie deficit as far as like improving outcomes for weight loss and autophagy and all of the different things that people shout out because of intermittent fasting can be achieved in the same way um with a calorie restricted diet and most people intermittent fast because they want to lose weight and for no other reason and you potentially are going to lose weight because you're only eating in six hours instead of a 10hour period right there's so much food you can eat so if it works for you fine it's not Superior in any studies at all when you're when you're looking at like um placebo effect and randomized control studies um fat diets simply are fad diets and if it works for you fine but like just because Janet down the street lost 30 pounds on keto doesn't mean you have to completely get rid of all of your carbohydrates and protein it just doesn't make sense and actually there's been poor outcomes for keto ketogenic diets when it comes um like things like gold bladder and um cholesterol raising and stuff right so my principles are we know what nutrition science tells us we know we've got three macronutrients we know that our body uses all three for different things um a balanced plate should definitely contain carbohydrates it's our preferred fuel source and not all carbohydrates are created equal of course right so you know eat as many complex carbs as you can loading up on veggies fruits and then grains Etc down to simple carbohydrates um and then know that carbohydrates despite what everyone tells you about them being bad for you um usually a really good like complex carbohydrates are good for your gut health fiber is so important to us especially as we get older it's good for keeping our cholesterol in check as well as that with the resistant starches um and it crosses the blood brain barrier and what that's really interesting to know because we get really fatigued in per menopause and it doesn't make a ton of sense but we know that estrogen levels decline in the brain which is our Prime area for energy um production and so getting glucose into the brain can be super helpful when you're really really tired um protein increases as we get older it accelerates through per menopause because we know that our lean mass starts to decline and our fat gains start to increase just because of the hormonal shifts and so we need to do everything we can to hold on to as much lean mass as we can and you're going to do that with a stimulus of the amino acids from the protein right so I always just say to women look for about 100 grams of protein a day don't don't kick yourself if you only get 70 don't be too smug if you get 120 who cares just look for protein because it changes for everybody right and I think that most people don't eat enough and if you look for protein you'll you'll probably get in more in your diet than you you're used to right I'm very flexible with food because I think food freedom is something that we all should aim towards fats are very easy to me because we eat enough fat usually in our Foods they contain a lot of fat and we cook with them so usually looking for additional fats isn't normally necessary but if you need some take an omega-3 but even then the scientists out there saying you don't need it right you just don't need it if you've got a good smorgasbord of fats in your diet and limit the amount of saturated fats it's still um associated with um cardiovascular disease and then the ultra processed foods are yummy they're the best foods to eat in the world ever they taste good they make us feel good but they shouldn't be the lion share of your diet right I I always try and plan for them eat them minimally and and respect the fact that they're sort of like a fun a fun carb even though they're also fats and sugars that's sort of my attitude to um eating and really try and focus more on the why are you eating it how do you feel when you eat it um and what are the signals your body's sharing with you right are you hungry should you be eating have you just exercised do you need to refuel it's like really important questions that I think get lost in the I have to eat 30 grams of protein and I can only have spinach that's being cooked down and I have to have oh it just drives me crazy yeah yeah yeah I get what you're saying yeah it's it's like trying to make it simple and and not such a mindfield and stress area for people really because it can be very stressful I mean I do recommend eating a little bit before workouts if if you can but it doesn't have to be load you know I think sometimes people think they've got to eat lots of stuff before they I personally cannot work out unless I've eaten and it's usually yog something it doesn't have to be loads and then the protein is I've is another thing that I'm like try and do that but you know we can't we can't always do it it's not but if we're building habits for women if we're looking for Behavioural change which is honestly the best way to make change in diets it's like protein is one of the first things I say if you're not eating enough protein pick one meal a day and start always eating protein at that meal and then when you've started when you've nailed that after three or four weeks let's start doing your evening meal let's just train ourselves to do this in a very stress free way and knowing as well that women in through the per menopause phase which is very similar to the puberty phase is start to have more disordered eating more body dysmorphia and so if we're dealing with a playing field that's already wrought with these type of like like um Avenues I think we need to be very careful about how we talk about food with women and athletes are some of the worst for being hyper-vigilant on food right so let's try and add a little bit of like pragmatic approach to Fitness and also what you say about you know gradually you know people sometimes expect everything to change overnight oh I'm going to change all this stuff and it's all going to happen and it's too much you can't do that you have to do it gradually over the course of weeks you know months it can take a long time to reprogram and and establish and you have it track it and keep an eye on it see if it's how how successful you are most people aren't successful there's like a I think it's like a 2190 rule when it comes to habits it's like most habits need at least 21 days and normally take 90 days to be completely set so know that these things take time and um yeah just work on small things that you think you're going to be successful on too because that is something that you're likely to be able to do right so and we all go through these things as well and we it's like flossing isn't it you do it for a while and then you stop and you go like oh I'm doing it I'm going to do it well I don't know if they do it in the BR in the Brits but now I'm in Canada I floss because I'm always in trouble for not doing it I know I occasionally yes it's like I learned to um I was trying to do something with my brain elasticity and it was like try and brush your teeth with your left hand in neuroplasticity the brain yeah yeah so I was doing it and I you know every time I'd go to pick up toothbrush with my right hand now i' go with with my left hand now I'm like oh now I'm in the habit of doing it like that now I need to CH so I'm trying to do different sections yeah it's like just weird things that you do I know and there to me things like that are like no harm habits as well like it's fun and it might have some benefits to it like neity is been studied and it's like retraining the brain actually actually going back to mindfulness there's there's tons of data on mindfulness actually changing the structure and shape of the brain um they can see on MRI scans it's it's quite amazing how you can you know and and through per menopause and menopause we know that the CH the brain changes structure and shape because it starts to turn off neurop Pathways that we don't need any longer for reproduction and me it can feel like we're losing our mind and we may be getting like Alzheimer's and and all of these different things but we the studies also showed that the brain rebounds and grows and forms new neurop Pathways and so I think it's really interesting how adaptable the brain is throughout our LIF span definitely yeah yeah it is I just looking at the time now and I know you've got flight to catch although it's been delayed but it's been delayed I'm heading off to um San Francisco um to visit Jen gun we're going to go on hiking so that's my that's my um weekend planned oh that sounds lovely yeah so just finally obviously we'll recommend your book men Apocalypse but is there anything else that you'd like to recommend to athletes female athletes personally no not at the moment I mean you can always find me on Instagram I try I've actually taken a digital detox at the moment and probably will come back in March um but I try and post things that are fun relevant um new data that we have as much as humanly possible I find that for menopause because because it's the new Cash Cow that like um I'm having to filter through a lot of garbage and so I'm okay calling out the garbage as well um they see us coming right they they go like kaching kaching and so I'm really happy to sort of do a bit of debunking when necessary as well so that's just Amanda.Thebe on Instagram yeah that's really I would definitely recommend that to people because you do sift through all of that stuff and you present a very sort of straightforward no [ __ ] this is how it is and and that's what I love about your P my mom always telling me off she said did you need to swear and I'm like still I still get in trouble oh Lessa I know oh God okay well yeah so thank you very much I hope you have a good flight when you managed to get on when I manage to get to it and a lovely weekend thanks for joining me and uh yeah take care thanks for listening today have a great day take care bye for now

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