Rise Again Episode 12 | Physical Health

Welcome to Episode 12 of Rise Again: Physical Health.

Your body has been carrying you through every season of life. Now it's time to give it the support it deserves.

In this episode, we explore the foundations of physical health during midlife and menopause, including movement, strength, energy, mobility, and the everyday habits that help you feel your best. Physical health is about more than preventing illness. It's about building resilience, maintaining independence, and creating a strong foundation for the years ahead.

Small, consistent choices can make a powerful difference.

Join us as we discover practical ways to support your body and thrive through every stage of the menopause journey.

#RiseAgainSeries #PhysicalHealth #MenopauseHealth #Perimenopause #HealthyAging #WomenOver50 #MidlifeWellness #HormoneHealth #BeautifulOnions

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

One of the biggest wake-up calls for many women in midlife is realizing that your body will not keep responding the same way if you stop physically caring for it. And sometimes we don't notice it at first. We brush it off. We get too busy. We get tired. We stop moving as much. We sit more. Them jobs, work them jobs at home. We rest more than we re and slowly our stimula changes, our strength changes, our flexibility changes, and our energy changes. Yes. And then one day we realize I don't physically feel like myself anymore. I ache when I move. So why?

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Morning breaks on a brand new climb. Shadows fade in the light.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

This time every scar tells a silence tale. Welcome back to Rise Again series. This is series 12. In series 11, we talked about health in the wake-up call. In this series, we're going to talk about health is connected across all layers of our life. But today, the physical health. That's where we're starting, the physical health. And honestly, physical health is often the first place many women need to begin again. Because moving affects everything in our life. This is where we always start. You remember at the first of the year, we're going to start going to the gym or we're going to start moving more. This is why. Physical is normally the baseline of when we talk about health. When we physically start caring for the body, the mind starts responding. Emotions start stabilizing. Our stress goes down. Sleep always improve. Energy improves. And confidence begins rebuilding because we start seeing the energy that we have by exercising. So this episode is not about perfection. It's about learning how to physically support your body in this season of life, in midlife, little by little, just little things. We just have to start. Before I started going to the gym in January, back in October, I started doing bed exercises. Laying in my bed, just lifting my legs. I do for 15 minutes. 10 o'clock was my time that I did bed exercises. 15 minutes. Lift leg for a minute or two, the right leg, then I do the left leg. And then I might do some twists and turns. I'm starting to yarn now because I'm tired. And then I put my feet on the wall and try to do some lift ups so I can lift up my core. So that's all I did for 15 minutes in October to December. Just a little bit. So let's move on. So my scripture I chose for today is do you know that your body are temples of the Holy Spirit? Who is in you? 1 Corinthians 6, 19. With this, your body deserves care. And physical health is part of that care. So we got to start somewhere. And let's start with a little bit of movement. One of the biggest conversations happening right now around the world with women's health, midlife, and menopause. That's why I'm where I'm at talking to you about this. Because with me, my body changed and I didn't know what was going on. And nobody told me I had the menopause that was I was heavy in menopause. But once I learned more and more, I was like, look, I know other women out here like you are feeling like I was feeling. Gained 40 pounds. I was just felt terrible. So after I got certain things under control in my life, I had, you know, cancer and different things. So I had to get that in under control. And once I got that under control, I was like, look, I need to get rid of some of this weight because the health piece for me is, and I'm going to put this out there. I'm trying to get off of diabetes medicines and blood pressure medicine. And I stated last year that I was going to work on it, but I didn't work on it because my mental health and some more of my other health wasn't doing right. So I couldn't work on my physical health. So now I got all of those other health of my body, because I showed you seven of them, correct? You can only work on all of them at the same time. So I had to work on them first. But now since I got that under control, I started working on my physical health because I want to get off of all of this medicine they put me on. So I'm working on getting off diabetes medicine and high blood pressure medicine. If you own medicine, come along with me. You can DM me because I've learned a lot about it and things are changing as we go through this series. So I started moving back and forth, just a little at a time, because many women are realizing if I stopped moving, my body changed quickly. And that's what happened. So when I started back doing a little movement at a time in the bed, even though it wasn't but 15 minutes, I couldn't commit myself to a gym yet. So I said, let me just do the 15 minutes. I saw the difference in my waist. I saw the difference in my legs. So I was like, wow, I needed to work on my upper body because what was happening there is I hadn't moved this upper body in two years because of the breast cancer. So I was like, I gotta get back. So I only started in the bed 15 minutes a night for three months. Once I started the movement, then I started intensifying my workout. So it took me three months at home, and then I went to the gym in January. Sometimes simply means just walking more, stretching more, just standing more. If you're behind the desk, stand up more and then stoop down, do some squats. I had to rebuild flexibility. I wasn't, I had to learn how to rebalance because I couldn't stand on one leg without falling over. Rebuilding my stem, get making sure I can go 10 minutes, 15 minutes without like I'm tired. So now I'm building strength and and also I'm building a consistency because once you learn how to go and do something every day of exercising, you'll be like, okay, it ain't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. Um my circulation started to be better, muscle strength, my mobility. I found myself not wobbling anymore. My stress, which was a big part of me working out, it helped control my stress levels. And my stress levels went down, which is another part of helping me get off of diabetes medicine and blood pressure medicine because if my stress lore, that don't cause me to go and eat crazy stuff or stress out and my blood pressure goes up because I'm eating sugar and then I'm eating salt. Um, my sleep changed, energy changed, balance, like I said, and overall my quality of life in the last almost nine months have changed. If you can't start with, you know, exercising or just picking up your arms and just moving your arms and doing just simple things, like for a little while. That's what I did in the beginning. Just simple stuff. Put my hand up on my hand and just twisting. Those are the simple things that I did before I started going to the gym. Then I started walking, just walking for, you know, 30 minutes around the neighborhood or whatever. And that was another thing, just trying to get the movement in. Next, what is real important is that many women in midlife start noticing one of the things I had low energy. I had stiffness. I was always talking about, oh, my knee hurt, this hurt, body aches. I was exhausted all the time. My weight changed. I was like, I don't want to buy no more clothes. I went and put on them clothes and they was tight. I'm squeezing in them. So yeah, uh, we we notice all of these things way before we recognize, hey, we need to do something. And honestly, our hormones play a big role in this in midlife. The movement still matters, but the body uh needs activities. So here we are. One thing I really want women to understand is you don't have to start perfectly. I didn't start perfectly. You don't have to start perfectly. You just need to start. And honestly, when I first started trying to rebuild my physical health, I like I said, I didn't go to the gym. I stayed at home. I did small things. Like I said, I did squats, I did leg lifts, but I I consistently did that twist. One of the biggest things I did to help me in my midsection is doing the wall twist, making sure I can twist back and forth and touch the wall that helped me try to reduce my mid my midsection sum. That was a good one and stretching more. So those are the things, just start doing simple things because I didn't, I I know I can't jump and go to the gym and be hurting, and then I don't want to go back. So I I started simple. So in the beginning, just small beginnings matter. Just small, small little things. I I I see you out there, sisters. I understand. Menopause, uh, midlife, it's a lot. Because by the time I eventually went to the gym, which was three months later, and I got a trainer, and the trainer was like, oh, you, you, you good. I was able to stand on one leg and balance for one whole minute. That was one of the things that was in my test when I started at the gym. You have to stand on one leg for a whole 60 seconds. So I was able to do that. So to get my balance back, because last year I fell like a couple of times, and I was like, okay, my balance is way off. I'm way wobbly. So, yes. So I I realized, like I said, my body started responding better than I thought it would, because I think I was already used to doing those 15 minutes. So when I got to the gym, it wasn't as bad. So I think women need to hear this because social media sometimes make health look extreme. They jumping around, they doing 50 something 50 things at one time. No, all my things that I did, I only tried to do when I first start doing something about 10 to 20 one time. And then I get into doing four sets of 15 or four sets of 20. But when I first started, and when I was laying in the bed, I did 10 of whatever I could do, and but I did it consistently every night. So that that was my rebuilding. And I started quietly and small. So just one walk, one stretch, one health choice, one extra ball of water a day, one doctor's appointment, and one decision to begin again. Okay? Small changes still count. Okay, like small changes still count. Next, I'm gonna talk about paying attention to your body because it's it's it's talking to you. Your body tells you when is something going on with it. We just don't pay attention to that. This is another major physical health is learning how to pay attention to your body when your knees are hurting, when your lower back is hurting, because those things are telling you, hey, you know, you need to move more, you might need to lose a little weight, get these joints moving so you can be healthier. Not to panic, but pay attention to, because your body gives you signals. And one of the smartest things women can do physically is document what is happening with their body for at least 30 days, tracking it. Your sleep, your energy, your movement, your water intake, where your body aches, what happened when your body aches, your digestive system, your weight change, your physical exhaustion, the cravings that you have, and your physical symptoms. If you document this stuff, then you can start tracking what is happening to you, and then you can begin to see patterns. And when you see these patterns, you then decide, okay, should I go to the doctor or should I start identifying what affects me the most? And let me just work on that. Because we we know things are going on in our body in midlife, we just don't know where to begin. It begins with you tracking it so you can determine what aggravates you the most. Because I knew I had several things that have aggravated me over the years, and and specifically, I've been pretty much tracking my stuff for about three years now since I had cancer. And I've been working on different things a little at a time. Like I said, I would have to work on my mental health before I can work on anything else because I couldn't focus. I couldn't, I couldn't talk because when menopause came so heavy, I lost my vocabulary. So I know, like in the very beginning of this, I can't say that word. And that mattered because many women struggle with a lot of things like fatigue, body pain, they can't sleep, they got low stamina, they got mobility problems, bloating when we eat, weight changes. So when you try this stuff, you can determine which one you want to work on. And if you do not know what is affecting you the most, it can become overwhelming trying to fix everything. You say, Oh, I'm gonna fix this, I want to fix that. No, you can't do that. That's just too much in midlife. In midlife, our brain is not multitasked no more, it is a single task that we can do. We cannot have many things before us now in our life. So, question women should start asking themselves. It is sometimes physical health start with honest questions to up to yourself. You need to ask these questions to yourself. Am I moving enough physically during the week? Do I feel physically stronger or weaker than I did a year ago? What physical symptoms affect my daily life the most? Am I drinking enough water? Because that is another problem. Getting enough fluids in, we get dehydrated. Am I sleeping enough? You need to have over seven hours, almost eight hours of sleep a night. And quality sleep, not that's breaking up sleep, because that's when your body repairs itself at night. And if you're waking up in the middle of the night trying to control hot flashes and everything, that's not quality sleep. What happens to my body when I am stressed? You need to know that because stress causes a lot of symptoms in your body. Stress causes your diabetes to make you eat differently. Stress makes you be short-tempered. It affects a lot of your medical things in your body, mentally and physically. Stress does. That's why I'm not promoting this, but I do have an aura ring and I love it. I love it. I love it. Because it lets me know, hey, you're starting to stress. You might need to bring that down. So I know, okay, I don't been stressed for about 10 minutes now. Whatever this bothered me, I need to go lay it down. I go take a nap or I change it because I don't want me to have two or three hours of being high stress. So next is I have, you need to ask yourself, have I avoided going to the doctor because I'm overwhelmed? And when I go to the doctor, I got so many things that I don't know where to start talking to him about or she about. You got to track. What physical areas of my health needs the most attention right now? That's where I'm at. You got to start tracking so you can know what things you need to change. And when you go to the doctor and you need to pay attention to these things, so then when you get before them, you can talk about your lab work, you can talk about your blood pressure, you can talk about glucose, vitamin deficiencies, cholesterol, inflammatory, hormones conversations, bone health, just your overall physical wellness, and not just physical, just moving up and down. Health, when you talk to your doctors, needs to be how you mentally, like I said, this series is a whole body health, which is mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological, behavior, it's lifestyle, it is many things. So you have to start tracking stuff and understanding where you're at in your life so you can live a better life. Okay? We're gonna move on. So we really have to look at physical health in this season, mental midlife. It's not about becoming perfect overnight, it's about moving again, rebuilding consistency, paying attention to your body, tracking what matters, supporting your body one step at a time. That's the goal. No punishment, no not not partnership, just you trying to feel better in midlife and get yourself on the right track. Because I understand, I hear you, I hear you out there. So this week I want to ask you something. A question is what physical area of health needs the most attention right now in your life? Do you know? And instead of trying to fix everything, if you have more than one, just start in one area, just one thing. Just that's all I'm asking you to do. Start one thing. If you're gonna get up and say, I'm gonna get up and walk for 15 minutes every afternoon, or I'm gonna get up and go sit outside and get some fresh air for 30 minutes, something to calm or put you in a place to start your physical journey. It's just one step at a time. And if you need help organizing your physical symptoms, patterns, and health changes, of course. I I don't know if you can see it up here. I have a book that I created when I was going through all of this new stuff of midlife called It's Beautiful Onions. It is the natural menopause tool tricon kit, and you need to get it. I have used it, I love it. Every time I have something different pop up, I have to go back and read some stuff myself. So it's not a book that you just read through and through. It is a workbook that you use to help you in midlife. Because some things are not always clear with you, and it can help you physically and help you with midlife journey. So stop guessing and start documenting your body is trying to tell you because your body talks to you. So, my reflection questions today is let's come back to the scripture. It was um do not 1 Corinthians 6 19. Do you know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? Okay, your body deserves care, and physical health is part of honoring that care, not perfection. Just start one thing at a time, just start being consistency. If you sit at the TV, say I'm gonna spend 15 minutes of the first of a TV show, and I'm gonna lift my arms for 15 minutes different ways, rotating them around and around, your uh head moving this way. And you can do that 15 minutes, but after you do that a couple of weeks, you'll be like, okay, then I feel a little bit more looser. That's all we're asking is to just start and start being consistent through movement, be aware through support yourself, through paying attention of your body in this season, little by little, step by step, and layer by layer. Okay, I am done with the physical. And uh next episode is gonna be mental health. That mental health, yes, because once the body starts slowing down and becomes overwound with physical, the mind often feels it too. You you you feel I'm I'm just I don't know what's going on. The brain fog, the mental exhaustion, the overthinking. All of this is connected, and we're gonna talk about this. So, this is where I said health is a whole health. It's not physical health by itself, mental health by itself. This is your whole body, all of this working inside you. They are all connected and how you need to take steps in to make sure that you're gonna live the best midlife that you can. So, the next series, like I say, we're gonna dive deeper into mental health. And don't forget to download the bonus sheet out on beautiful onions.com. It has some questions and reflection questions. So you just go to beautifulions.com and go into resources and physical health check-in page and go ahead on and download it. The goal isn't to fix everything, the goal is to pay attention, to notice patterns, and to begin supporting your body one step at a time. You can find, like I say, all the bonus sheets from all of my series on Beautiful Onion resource page. Until next time, this is your girl Andrea with Beautiful Onions shedding the layers of life. One layer at a time. See ya.