Health Expert Reveals: Why Muscle Makes Moms Unstoppable // Episode #12

We explore how women can use strength, smart nutrition, and data to protect energy and health through menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause. Amanda Lim shares practical steps, from protein targets to creatine and bloodwork, to make the juggle lighter and more resilient.

• Defining metabolic health with VO2 max, grip strength and body composition
• Female physiology differences and their impact on muscle and bone
• Teenage fueling, LEA risks and food-first guidance
• Preconception habits, partner support and resilience
• Pregnancy energy demands, lifting safely and protein targets
• Postpartum recovery, pelvic floor function and core strength
• Protein vs resistance training for long-term health
• Annual bloodwork, micronutrients and testing over guessing
• Creatine monohydrate use, dosing and benefits
• Small wins, behavior change and escaping diet culture
• Boundaries to protect energy and sustain training
• Using AI to personalize coaching and communication

Listeners, take that first step, one strength workout today to spark real change.

Check out, follow and subscribe to Amanda and Jasmine's channel on Instagram @coachamandalim, The Forties Formula podcast on YouTube. 

Reach out the LIFT Clinic

The book of Amanda: Motherhood, Rebuilt (coming soon)

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Hit subscribe and share your juggle wins or even failures in the comments.

Transcript

Strength Needs A Real Program

SPEAKER_01 0:00

One big tip for strength is to get on a program. Stop assuming that you can just go into a gym and do whatever and that you're gonna get these amazing muscle building, muscle protein synthesis results. Get a program created by a coach or someone certified in the industry and follow that program. The things that matter never end, right? Our marriages, our parenting, our exercise lives never ends. So the sooner you can organize that side of your life, treat your exercise life systematically as you would treat your parenting choices, as you would treat your professional journey, the sooner you will see results.

Edit 0:45

Welcome to the Juggoverse, celebrating inspiring women who master the juggle. I'm Edit. Today meet Amanda Lim, Harvard certified coach with 20 years optimizing health via fitness and nutrition. As director of Lyft Clinic, Singapore's first metabolic health clinic, she and her physician husband empower clients to build stronger lives. Mama 3, co-host of the 40s Formula Podcast and author of Upcoming Motherhood Rebuild, Amanda shows how muscle, metabolism, and smart habits lighten the load for high-achieving women. Hello, Amanda. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited for this chat. I'm happy to have you here as you are very experienced in making podcasts because you're also celebrating the already the hundredth episode of your podcast. Congratulations. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

What a milestone that we honestly did not see coming.

Edit 1:43

I can imagine. As a mom of three running a clinic and a podcast, you are a living proof of expertise easy to juggle, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Girl, I juggle. I got balls. Tell me something about it. Constantly in the air. I do think that it all roots back to my youth as an athlete and being able to juggle just the two balls, but I was young then, right? The two balls of high-level athleticism and school, right? So already then as a student athlete, I felt like I was getting some good experience in juggling. And then when I went on to university, obviously new passions emerged, you know, everything from joining different clubs, different sports, different friends, and being able to get all those balls kind of going at the same time. And then when I became a young professional, I realized that I was not at that point ever going to let go of my athletic identity. So that was never going to be something that I just let rupture and disappear because now I'm a professional or now I'm, you know, in this case, a mom. It's something that I realized I will carry that with me always. And so juggling is at the heart of what I do because I refuse to let go of the identities that mean something to me.

Edit 2:49

Wow. Um, yeah, from grad school hustles to lift clinic leadership and uh consulting companies. What drew you to metabolic health as an ultimate juggle simplifier, we can say that, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:01

I would definitely say that. I would say you will never regret being in good health, ever. It will never make things harder. It will only make them easier. It will never give you a worse outcome, it will only give you a better one. So if I were to campaign for metabolic health, it would be that it's essential for you to be a good professional, for you to be a present mother. I think if you are struggling with your health, then you have one problem, right?

Edit 3:29

You actually a pioneer of metabolic health, as you said. What does metabolism mean? And what is it actually? How can we handle that uh each day? And what is it about?

What Metabolic Health Really Measures

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Yeah. What I love about the field of metabolic health, it's not the field of longevity and it's not the field of lifestyle medicine, it's not functional medicine. Metabolic health is about outcomes we instantly and directly measure. And that is what I love about it. We're talking about the intake, processing, storage, and utilization of energy in the body. And we can measure that with different outcomes. The main three that we focus on at Live Clinic are your VO2 max, so your measure of cardio fitness, your hand grip strength, which is your proxy for strength and function, and your body composition, which reflects sure, your weight, right? But also the way that you hold on to muscles versus fats in the body. And by understanding and really delving into the processes that produce those outcomes, you can control the future of your health.

Edit 4:31

But this is unique, right? For each and every one.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Very. It's absolutely these data. Have to get a handle on where you fall, because all three of these outcome measures are related to all-cause mortality. This is a life and death situation. So you can't just sweep health under the rug or push it into the future and hope that it'll all be okay. It's something that particularly as women and as women who've gone through pregnancy, we need to take control of that now.

Edit 4:59

Okay, let's uh look at it in more details. So, what's the main difference between men and women, first of all? And are there any differences among women as well?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah. Well, let me first pull out my endless list. Okay. But and again, and again, or I can give you so we can go from the endless list or we can go to the simple one-word hormones. Okay. But what we could also, I'm gonna broaden that to physiology. All right. Okay, so I'm gonna broaden that to hormones and biological differences. One of the main that you will observe in metabolic health is our differences in muscle. How much we have, what type we have, how quick we build it, how much we hold on to it through the life course. So I would say those four factors are quite different for men and women. Men have a lot. They have a lot of the strength kind, we have a lot of the endurance kind. They have more than us at birth, and then even that proportion grows at uh puberty. And then the decline of their skeletal muscle is much slower because the decline in their androgen hormones is much more gradual. For us, we have these events menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding if that's your choice, and menopause. And all four of those will rob you of your muscle density and your bone density without taking action.

Edit 6:24

So this is why we have to handle it uh in a different way than men do.

Women’s Physiology And Muscle Loss

SPEAKER_01 6:28

We have to pay attention to it in a different way than men do. Attention, maybe. Yes. Girl, yes, because we are not at a physiological advantage when it comes to muscle. And we can leverage some of these situations, pregnancy in particular, to build muscle at a time where we would otherwise lose it.

Edit 6:46

Okay, let's uh go into details in case of women. So you mentioned that uh there's the first part that we talk about puberty and uh the starting of menstruation, right? Like uh cycles. Uh, what happens there in metabolism-wise?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

This is what I would say is most relevant when I'm giving talks to student athletes here in Singapore. I talk a lot about the impact of menstruation, the onset of estrogen, and making sure that we are getting enough food in that stage that we are not dipping into what's called LEA, low energy availability.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

We need to make sure that girls at this age are getting not just adequate calories, although that I will always say that's the baseline of the pyramid, right? So if nothing else, make sure they're eating enough, but also make sure that they're getting enough protein to support muscle development, make sure that they're getting enough iron to support obviously healthy iron stores when we're losing blood through menstruation, and make sure that they're at least exploring the potential of strength-building exercise. I'm not saying you got to get every single girl at 13-ish into the weight room. But what I am saying is this is the time for a conversation at minimum with your daughters, with your students that you might work with about the importance of their muscle mass long term.

Edit 8:07

Can they intake all of these, what you mentioned here, with food? Absolutely. But do they need any supplement?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Oh, rarely. I won't say never. I will not say never. So there are instances in which we've had young athletes needing supplements simply because the demands of their training schedule are sky high relative to what they either can or prefer to eat. But what I will say is we are food first at Lyft Clinic. And I would say philosophically, in the medical community, it's food first. We want to make sure that our kids are getting enough food. And then within that, typically they will get enough of this iron and protein if the if the diet is balanced.

Edit 8:43

Okay, let's go to the next stage, which is uh actually before getting pregnant. Preconception. And pregnancy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

What about that stage? Preconception, what we know is this, right? Fertility favors metabolic health.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

So women who have favorable body compositions do tend to do better on their fertility journeys. I want to be crystal clear, though, that being healthy is not the only determinant of fertility. So I don't want women hearing this as, you know, let's strive for maximal muscle mass, minimum body fat on this journey to fertility. That's not what I'm talking about because we also don't want to go too low on our estrogenic fat.

Edit 9:23

But would you say that this is the majority that counts in uh that sense?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

I would say a balanced, healthy lifestyle is going to be your most supportive path to fertility. And that sounds so simplistic. I know, almost like a Pollyanna. But what I will say is we are talking then about some of these lifestyle medicine elements as well. So this is where I would say I broaden the net past metabolic health into things like sleep, stress management, resilience, and social connections. This is where things like partner support can play a massive role, right? In the ability for women to have a mentality that supports optimal fertility.

Edit 10:01

Yeah, but it's not easy in practice.

Teen Girls, LEA, And Food First

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Sure is not. None of this is easy, girl. Building muscle is not easy, building mental resilience even harder.

Edit 10:10

So it's important to have somebody uh next to us who uh gives guidance and support.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Absolutely.

Edit 10:16

Maybe not too frequently, so I don't mean that every day, but just uh give uh proper guidance to right to this, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

You know, challenge and support, one of our fundamental models in behavior change, right? We need an adequate amount of challenge, and I think fertility journeys provide that adequately, uh, you know, mental challenge as well as physical. And then we need support in equal measure.

Edit 10:36

Now um we we actually reached the um pregnancy phase in our life. Yeah. That's where I tell me about that. So let's talk about it's it's something upside down in the body, right?

Preconception Habits And Support

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Upside down, inside out. Everywhere. I mean thousands of percent increase in estrogen instantly. And by third trimester, some of the metabolic shifts that happen. First of all, we're burning up to 30% more at rest, meaning calories. We're burning more, 30% more calories at rest in the third trimester, just sitting around. So if you aren't eating up to your metabolic demands, again, I referenced earlier that low energy availability state, you will fall into low energy availability, even if you perceive that you're eating enough or eating the same that you were in first and second trimesters, simply by the physiological progress of the body, of the pregnant body. So if we're not rising to the demands, and particularly if you, and I pray that you are an active pregnant woman, so you are doing your walks, your yoga, ideally lifting weights, then those energy demands are even higher, right? At rest and proportionately higher in activity. So what we're seeing in that LEA and that low energy availability state is your body taking from your muscles and bones. It is not taking from that baby. Your body will do everything to prioritize the baby's development. So where will it take? From you. And indirectly, or should I say directly, but eventually from your future health outcomes. Osteoporosis is not a surprise when we've underfueled in pregnancy, when we've undertrained in pregnancy. It's the first crack in the system. And if we wedge that with low energy, not training, being sedentary, that crack will only widen as we approach perimenopause and menopause.

Edit 12:29

Yeah, you said that this is the first crack in our life. Um pregnancy.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Menopause is like is like the opening crack. All right. Uh menopause, excuse me. Menstruation is like the first little crack, right? But this is really the one where we drive the wedge.

Edit 12:43

Yeah, exactly. Can we find a way back somehow and get back to the original uh metabolism, or it's absolutely a different uh phase and stage afterwards when um we uh we give birth to our kids?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

You can improve metabolism at any age.

Edit 13:00

Okay.

Pregnancy Demands And LEA Risks

SPEAKER_01 13:01

My 76-year-old mother who is diagnosed osteopenic, luckily not osteoporotic yet, she is weight training. She is gaining muscle mass, she's documenting that journey using you know facts and data. So it is absolutely possible at any age.

Edit 13:17

Why is it important? I always read and and hear and in even in podcasts as well, that after a certain age, especially after giving birth to kids and postpartum and uh and afterwards in in um uh menopause uh and later stages in our life, it's very important to have uh muscles. Yeah. Tell me why is it so important? It's because it's so highlighted.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Earlier I said that you'll never regret being in poor health. But I assure you, triple, and though nor you you nor I are in this stage yet, but my parents are, and and other women in my circle, you will never regret being strong. Independent, able to function. These are things we take for granted when we're young and even in midlife. But I think menopause is the first time a lot of women are confronted with a lack of function or loss of function. Pregnancy to some extent, postpartum, right? This is when we might develop stress incontinence, for example, or we might uh have a diastasis rectile where our abdominals separate and we don't have that feeling of control and security in the core anymore. I think that if you take those clues as writing on the wall for what your muscles do for you on a daily basis, right? We think of muscles like muscles, but we have to think of the pelvic floor, the muscularity there that literally keeps us from peeing and pooping our pants. I mean, these are essential muscular functions and they don't come from just doing kegels, they come from strong glute development, from transverse abdominus engagement through pregnancy. These are the things that women are not getting enough of or enough information and direction to do so that when they get to that stage, they're overmedicalized. Oh, you have a prolapse. Yeah, well, you do, but did you know it was preventable?

Edit 15:04

But it is nutrition as important as building muscles in this age and phase?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

50-50? Great question. I would say 70, 30 in the favor of resistance training.

Edit 15:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah. So so nutrition playing a super strong role.

Edit 15:17

So it changes after a while, no? Because you threw me that, for example, in uh puberty, yes, the most important thing is uh nutrition. Sure, any stage of growth.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Uh-huh. So any stage of growth. So I will say that, you know, uh in puberty when women are still growing, you know, girls are becoming women and still growing, and in pregnancy where you're growing a life, I would say in those particular phases, food is really, really important. Okay. So having enough to eat is making sure that you're supporting your growth trajectory of you or the baby, depending on the stage, uh, to its maximal degree. What I will then say though is what we know about MPS, which is muscle protein synthesis or just muscle growing, what we know about that is that the input, the resistance training, the actual stress on the muscle is more important, more significant in the proportion of MPS that you get than simply the protein-focused diet alone. But the protein-focused diet is important.

Edit 16:14

Yeah, you mentioned that uh um the adolescents in adolescent life uh actually supplements are not really essential. Right. But later on, should we take some supplements as well? Because you mentioned that uh nutrition just uh is not as important than in the earlier uh phase of our life.

Strength, Function, And Pelvic Health

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Yeah. What I'd say about supplementation is always assess, don't guess. So find out before you start any supplement regimen if you are deficient. And if so, where you are deficient, and furthermore, how much you are deficient. How do you know that? A blood test, girl. Oh, okay. Simple, straightforward. We should all be getting blood work if it's within your resources. And here in Singapore, blood work can be procured quite low cost, especially for citizens in PR, but also uh for expats who have insurance. What I would say is get your blood work annually, especially over 40. So I would say 40 is kind of that make or break. What I if we want to extend it a bit, 35 to 45 is a critical decade in women's health. This is where, again, some of those cracks that started to weave in at menstruation and obviously widened in pregnancy, potentially breastfeeding. Then at 35 is when we start to see a little bit more writing on the wall. We start to have shifts in potentially the first thing that a lot of women notice our waistline. Okay. We might have shifts in our sleep. These are clues. They're not independent silos, they're all part of the map that will lead you to your future health outcomes. That's what you can observe. And I encourage you to do that. But what you can never observe is what's happening inside, right? Well, you can you can never infer what your LDL cholesterol might be. You got to test it. You can never imagine what your ferritin levels are. You need to know. And so I would say, again, annual blood work is a must for women over 40, and if you're even more proactive over 35. And that blood work has to include not just your lipid and protein and glucose metabolism, which is your baseline, right? But also things like your sex hormones.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Also things like your micronutrients, iron, B12, vitamin D. You know, you gotta be able to look at the picture of health inside and outside. And that's what I love about metabolic health, is that we have these fitness and strength and body composition markers that are the path to solving what's going on in our blood work. So these are the things we can do and act on. And these this is the knowledge that informs it.

Edit 18:43

So you are saying that there's no uh kind of magic supplement that is a really essential after 40? I'll give you one.

Protein, MPS, And What Matters Most

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Okay, tell me. Creatine. Really? Creatine monohydrate. Wow. Creatine is one of the safest, most effective, most studied supplements in history for helping produce muscle protein synthesis. What it does is it draws water into the muscle, which might not sound so exciting, but that increases the contractile power of the muscle, is uh extends the time to fatigue for that muscle. So, in theory, obviously could extend your training inputs. And there's more research to show now that higher dose creatine, particularly in women and particularly in women who follow a plant-fower diet, can help stave off cognitive decline. Wow. This is as close to a miracle supplement as we're gonna get for now in terms of safety, availability, low cost uh efficacy. Um, and it's something that I would encourage more women to think about.

Edit 19:48

How does it look like in practice? So should we take it uh daily, on a daily base?

Testing, Deficiencies, And Bloodwork

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah. So creatine is one of these supplements. It's not like if you think about caffeine, I think about caffeine a lot. If you think about caffeine, it's an immediate dose response, right? So I take the caffeine, I feel that response. Creatine is more of a top-level response, meaning you want to keep your supply topped up. So it is a daily supplement taken at any time in the day. It's time in the day, you know, it's not like, again, like caffeine where you got to fire right before you want to be on, right? No, you can take creatine morning, noon, or night. All that it does is make sure that you don't go into a deficiency, right, of this of this thing that your body naturally produces. And then you have those benefits afforded to you by making sure that your stores don't fall too low. So this is similar to iron, this is similar to B12, where you just don't want to go under into deficiency rather than you want to go to this like supernatural level, right?

Edit 20:43

Okay. If I start taking creatine today, when will I feel the symptoms first?

SPEAKER_01 20:49

You may not feel it ever.

Edit 20:52

Like meaning, like you might not, it's again unlike caffeine, where you But you mentioned that it's it's uh there's some uh uh effect on uh on cognitive so it's think of it as well as staving off decline.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

So meaning what you would feel is not declining, right? What you would feel in in theory, right? You know, and again, these that that link is is just up and coming. Okay, so we don't have like as much evidence for that as we do for the muscle benefits, but take it for the muscle benefits alone. Absolutely worth your time to have more muscle protein synthesis. Think of it as making the most of your strength training hours in the gym. We are all pressed for time in the juggle verse. What is something we can do to make the most of it to get the most output for the input? Creatine supplementation.

Edit 21:35

That's it. How does it create energy and resilience to handle uh chaos effortlessly?

Creatine For Muscle And Mind

SPEAKER_01 21:42

What I love about strength training and what I've loved about athletics, so I can I can make this about sports, but I can make it about strength training now is the fact that you get little wins every single day. You get to look at your little spreadsheet and say, yesterday I was lifted. 50 and today I'm lifting 52. And you get evidence immediately. And that does the brain good. The human brain likes rewards, right? Rewards incentivize us to continue. And what's a hard sell about strength training, and what I struggle with in all of my metabolic health work is convincing women of the long game, convincing women to put in the work when the results are long-term, eventual, gradual, and incremental. This is a hard sell, girl. We love quick fixes. We love 30-day detoxes. We love 12-week shreds. Well, we don't love it.

Edit 22:37

Even fasting sometimes.

Small Wins Build Big Resilience

SPEAKER_01 22:39

And again, fasting if it's a if it's a tool to get somewhere in a shorter period of time, right? But what the body loves is the slow, the gradual, the incremental, the 100 grams a week loss of body fat, right? That eventually results in a lean body, but not immediately. And what we're seeing now with the advent of some of these weight loss drugs, which by the way, we prescribe and use daily at Live Clinic. So this is not a bash on those drugs. But what we are seeing in those drugs done a certain way is a sudden drop in weight that unfortunately typically contains a sudden drop in muscle. So in the pursuit of the fast and the speedy and the quick, we're losing the tissue that makes us metabolically powerful. And that is a danger. Once we're off these drugs. In what ways is it a danger? Yeah. So three, so diseases that follow muscle loss include sarcopenia, osteopenia, and osteoporosis. So those two things are directly related. And even suggestion that women with lower mass uh muscle mass do suffer higher rates of dementia. So losing our muscles is no joke. It's no joke on paper, it's no joke in real life. Again, you know, back to the peeing your pants example after pregnancy. Losing muscular function is embarrassing. It's it affords us less control over healthy aging. It limits us from doing the things that we want to do. And if there's one thing that I will not accept as a woman in her 40s, looking forward to a life with my kids, is having to admit that I can't because of something that was fully in my control.

Edit 24:22

How do you see what's the most uh difficult for women to um start this kind of life and pay attention, more attention to uh metabolism and healthy nutrition? So what's the you know, the the click?

SPEAKER_01 24:35

You want to know the real talk that's blocking women from these outcomes? Yeah. Diet culture. Really? Telling women to be lighter, smaller, shrink away, be tiny, that is a massive limiter. And that's something that I see in my generation of women that I hope and have in small doses been seeing is different for the younger generation. Unfortunately, now, you know, we do have skinny talk, we do have osempic face, you know, we have all that's what I wanted to ask.

Edit 25:03

Yeah, this is a very dangerous thing.

The Cost Of Fast Weight Loss

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Very dangerous. If you are a mother of a girl listening to this, and and again, boys as well, absolutely. But what I will say is unfortunately, the well is poisoned much earlier and much more for women. What you must do is help your daughter curate the images and the media that she immerses herself in. You got to be in that world with her. And you gotta make sure that the women she are is idolizing, emulating, trying to get toward are not women that promote anti-health practices. I know that's a big ass. Nothing I've said today is easy, by the way. But it's something that you cannot let your daughter get into too deeply. We know that these things are associated with depressive outcomes, outcomes of anxiety, and of course eating disorder behavior. And those are about the scariest three things I can imagine for my daughter, who's only six years old. Your daughters are 11. I know this is something on your mind. We need to get as much information as possible to the girls. First of all, you know, I said starting around pubescence about the power contained in their bodies, and not just in the sense of don't get pregnant, right? It's like I think we do an overly adequate job of warning women about their bodies and an inadequate job of educating them about the power within their bodies.

Edit 26:28

So you see that there's a lack of education um in the society, how we handle um health itself. Health itself. And maybe uh I also see that we want to reach uh the results instantly and immediately.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

The quick fix, girl. Yeah. The quick fix takes us down. I said diet, culture, exercise.

Edit 26:51

So you don't have to do it for a week or two weeks and a month. Should be really a lifestyle. So you have to change. You have to change.

Diet Culture’s Grip On Women

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Do you remember this terrible quote of our generation attributed to Kate Moss, the supermodel? Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. That summarizes what I mentioned about the damage the diet culture has done. And unfortunately, it that statement's popularity has kind of disallowed what I would argue as a similar statement, which is nothing feels as good as being strong. Nothing. Being powerful and strong in your physical body is the highest of highs. And that's the message that I want women to get at. Forget this skinny crap, forget this bone, you know, bony look that's never going to do you well. And in a lot of ways, is going to do you a disservice.

Edit 27:46

Are you either optimistic or pessimistic about the future? How will this whole um metabolism, health, and um and nutrition will change in women's life?

Eat Enough And Prioritize Protein

SPEAKER_01 27:59

So optimistic. Really? Oh, good news. The most optimistic. I would say if you know, if you know me, if you've worked with me, my clients are probably giggling. I am the relentless ray of sunshine along these journeys, right? You know, like I will see the silver lining in the darkest cloud. And what I think is I I see it in younger generations. I see it in my niece. She's 15, turning 16. When she came to visit me here in Singapore, she's American, she came to visit me here in Singapore. First thing she said was, Can you show me how to bench press? And I was like, Wow. I mean, literally, it was I was like, get up, get over your jet lag, girl. We're going to the Lyft Clinic. Yes. They are educated about that. They want that. I didn't even want that. And I was an athlete at that time, at that age. And I, and I didn't even know how to ask that question because bench pressing at that time was still kind of on the men's side of the gym. Right. We were more in the in the side of, you know, again, gymnastics, obviously being a specific style of sport, but you know, we were more about the artistry, the ballet side of things, even Pilates we were doing back then. But uh, we hadn't yet gotten in the weight room in a real way. Girls are now. That gives me so much hope. So much hope.

Edit 29:12

Well, yeah, that's absolutely good news. Um, what are the top uh nutrition shifts for um sustained energy without extra effort?

SPEAKER_01 29:21

This is gonna sound like almost like a uh what's the word, like a catfish? Eating enough. Eating enough. Does it matter? Oh, absolutely. It definitely matters.

Edit 29:34

Okay, so let's let's start from the beginning.

Motherhood Rebuild And Lifting Pregnant

SPEAKER_01 29:36

So it definitely matters what we're eating, right? Like we, you know, we can't pull the wool over our eyes. You know, there's all sorts of videos you can find on YouTube where it's like, I ate only Twinkies for 28 days, and here's what happened, right? And the answer is always my skin went broken out, my hair got thin. You know, it's it's never a good outcome to eat a bunch of junk crap, right? So I would say, you know, if we want to be specific about what to eat, I'm always talking about whole foods first, unprocessed, limiting processed sugars, eliminating alcohol to the extent possible. So those four things I'm never not saying. Whole foods, unprocessed, limiting sugar, eliminating alcohol to the extent possible. So those four things I'm talking about for no matter what dietary practice you follow. Secondly, I'm talking about protein. I'm talking about 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of your own body weight per day. Specific. Again, I'm back to what I love about metabolic health. We can prescribe based on outcomes that are rooted in research. Can you intake it with food? Yes, girl. Is it possible? Holy cow, here I am intaking with food. Now, I will say I supplement when I want to go to that higher end. I do supplement. So, for example, I'll use a protein powder to make sure that I get like that extra, that last 20 grams to get me from two to 2.2 grams per kg. Um, but whole foods are absolutely protein rich enough to get you what you need. There's no need to supplement unless, again, your lifestyle and and environment demand it.

Edit 31:10

Let's talk about your um upcoming book, Motherhood Rebuild. That's the title. Yep, that's the working title. Uh, how does a pregnancy and postpartum strength and nutrition rebuild habits that ease the juggle for years?

SPEAKER_01 31:24

If there is one time to hyperfocus on your own nutrition and fitness, it is in pregnancy. Because I will say postpartum makes it challenging because your focus immediately shifts to that beautiful new human in your life. And it should. We're programmed for that. So allow it. But pregnancy is when you can leverage a body that is anabolic, that is pulsing with muscle-building hormones, if only you would lift. And back to what I said about resistance training being the main catalyst for muscle protein synthesis. This is the time where you put in half the effort to get double the results. And this is funny because when I'm talking to my majority audience, which is women 35 to 55, I often say, as you approach perimenopause, it seems like you're putting in twice the work for half the results, right? Pregnancy is the opposite. You have a physiological advantage, especially in the second and third trimesters, toward building muscle. Yes, it will result in weight gain. So this is something I want to be very clear about that muscles are heavy. They do make up weight. Yeah. And so if you are on a pregnancy journey of your own and you're working out and you're lifting weights, you're eating enough food, and you do see the scale going up, be precise. Find out what's actually going on in your body. I was obviously in a lab every day. That made it quite easy. I was able to monitor all three of my pregnancy journeys for fat, muscle, and overall weight gain. That distinction not only gave me such mental clarity about what my outcomes would be, but allowed me and my doctor to feel really confident about my process. And I think that because we don't separate muscle and fat when we're talking about weight, and because prenatal weight gain guidelines are just weight gain guidelines, they're not, they don't separate and differentiate muscle and fat. It's very easy to tip into the don't gain too much. Whereas I argue in the book that every gram of muscle you can leverage in pregnancy is gonna pay off twofold on the backside in the postpartum recovery.

Edit 33:40

Um, why is this book a big breakthrough in uh your life? Because uh it's not an everyday thing that you can edit and write a book.

Boundaries, Energy, And Saying No

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Yeah, it is definitely not an everyday thing. Thank God. Because this this book gonna break me, girl. Okay. If those authors listening out there, I'll tell you it is this process of traditional publishing is not for the faint of heart. So thank goodness I got through my three pregnancies. Uh, because I I had this fantasy that I would write this book with my last pregnancy. Well, good thing I got over that quickly. Um, but now I have the you know, the hindsight being 2020. Why is it important? Women have been fed a narrative that motherhood is martyrdom, that motherhood is fragility, that motherhood is a time you must be protected. And my book argues the opposite. Motherhood is when you step into yourself, you don't fall away from who you used to be, you assume a new role, this identity of mother, and it buttresses and bolsters all of your previous identities. I mentioned early in this interview that I've been an athlete my entire life. That identity is airtight, but I didn't rupture and discard it when I became a mother. I found a way, though difficult, to synthesize those two parts of myself because I knew damn well I would not stop being an athlete simply because I was becoming a mother. I'm not gonna let one trump the other, though they are of an equal importance to me. And I think that guiding women on this path away from the assumption that you have to give up yourself, give up your strength, assume again, all of these things that we hear, rest is best, only do yoga and walking, don't strain yourself, don't eat too much. Sleep enough. Sleep enough, sleep enough, girl. We got we we are everybody's on page with sleep, sleep enough. We definitely all need to be sleeping. But when we can whisk away some of those narratives with evidence that we finally have for the safety and efficacy of weightlifting and muscle acquisition and pregnancy, well then heck, we've unlocked an entire new approach to motherhood and metrescence that did not previously exist for us, our mothers, their mothers, but now we have. So let's get that message out there.

Edit 36:03

So you are saying that this book helps actually mothers, because for a person who you are, you're very conscious about your body, conscious about your food and all the intakes, um, and uh healthy life as well. But for a woman and for mothers who are not really uh familiar with this type of um uh lifestyle, that might be a guidance and assistance.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Absolutely. This book is guidance and assistance. I say, you know, in my in my book pitch for my agents, it's like this book is like having a conversation with a friend, but a really well-informed, a little bit forceful friend. Right. So this book is holding your hand, but also giving you a little pat on the back, right? Let's get in there, let's lift weights together, let's do this thing, mama, because your future and your child's future depends on your health.

Edit 36:56

What's the most common mistake that uh mothers really make in terms of uh nutrition and um healthy life? I I know one mistake, maybe I probably hear it too much and too many times that everyone is counting calories.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Kills me.

Edit 37:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

In pregnancy, in pregnancy, let it go. If there's one thing, if you if you want, let's put it this way, to count calories in pregnancy, you want to count them up to your energy expenditure, which is at an all-time high for the entirety of your life. So you want you want to make sure you're eating enough. If you want to count something, count grams of protein. Make sure that you're getting that 1.6 to 2.2. And again, I'm gonna argue for mother pregnant mothers, 1.7 is actually your bare minimum. These are the things you might want to count if you're in a pregnancy journey. But restriction, shrinking, not gaining too much, caution. You're treading on dangerous territory.

Edit 37:58

Three immediate steps: strength, nutrition, boundaries for listeners to a lighten their juggle today, not tomorrow, but today.

AI As A Coaching Force Multiplier

SPEAKER_01 38:08

One big tip for strength is to get on a program. Stop assuming that you can just go into a gym and do whatever, and that you're gonna get these amazing muscle-building, muscle protein synthesis results. Get a program created by a coach or someone certified in the industry, and follow that program. That's my first. How long is this program? Forever, girl. Oh, forever. Okay. The things that matter never end, right? Our marriages, our parenting, our exercise lives never ends. So the sooner you can organize that side of your life, treat your exercise life systematically as you would treat your parenting choices, as you would treat your professional journey, the sooner you will see results. Nutrition, other than eating enough, which again I'm I'm very ardent about, as you can hear. Eat protein, make sure that you're giving your body the building blocks that it needs not only to develop the muscles, but to prevent disease, to protect your health long term. Invest in what we know affects those outcomes. And when it comes to boundaries, set them. No is a complete sentence. I used to be a default yes person, right? Because I thought that if I didn't say yes to everything, opportunities would pass me by. And I firmly believe now, as someone anchored in the juggle verse with 16,000 balls in the air, that if I don't say, if I don't default to no, then all I will be doing is overspending on the most important currency I have, which is my energy. I protect my energy at all costs. I say yes to the things that matter and no to the things that don't. And that actually translates so well into my exercise life, my nutrition life as well, right? I say no to alcohol because I know that that will not move me toward my goals. I say no to um extraneous levels of H IIT because that will exhaust me and not move me toward my goals. It's crystal clear when you have a direction that you're moving toward where you can shed. And I think the most successful people are those who have refined their no and made change their default away from the yes.

Edit 40:29

When did you start saying no?

SPEAKER_01 40:31

About age 40. So girls do it early than me. Age 40. Okay, do it earlier than me. Everybody, oh no, I'll say really truly when I had kids. I mean, I will say when I when I had my daughter in 2020, and now, granted, it was a lot easier saying no back then because it was COVID times. So it's real easy to close doors, right? A lot of them were just locked anyway. But that was when as a fitness professional, I was able to really re-evaluate the number of hours I was spending in client training sessions. And I kept thinking to myself, my real value in this industry at this stage, right? Because I'm already 38, all right. So I'm I ain't no spring chicken. It's like at 38, I'd been training since I was 24, meaning training others since I was 24. I had 14 years of experience under my belt. It was time to move into a coaching, consulting, directorship role. But I was too busy in the trenches with all my clients, hour to hour to hour to hour, to have that pause. So, what having my daughter and having COVID did for me was give me time to reevaluate where I spent my time and energy.

Edit 41:37

I'm also interested in your opinion uh about something else, um, a topic which is very um common nowadays, AI. How does AI affect uh your sector?

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Oh gosh. I mean, I for me, AI has been a boon. I love it. Welcome, AI. Thank you for your friendship. What I love to, I'll go, I'll give you an example of how I use AI in my coaching practice. So I have an app that's how I manage all of my clients. So all of my clients have accounts, that's where they log their workouts and meals and all this type of stuff. What I love is I can, in my interactions with clients, I can mirror their tone using AI. And we know that when we respond to someone in kind using their style of communication, the message is more likely to be read, understood, and appreciated. So I've been able to say, okay, AI, read this tone from this client. So I'll cut and paste our chat into AI and I'll say, write me a workout description that answers their pain points, that specifically speaks to what they've wanted from this. And then I just update the workout description so that when they open that workout for the day, yeah, they're still going to see the same movements, squat, deadlift, bench bread, like that stuff doesn't change for nobody. But they'll see it written in such a way that appeals to their specific interests. And that has been a game changer for me. But still, there's a human control, which oh yeah. And I'm all, you know, I'm a writer, a girl. So like I can't help but edit, right? Like it's like, I'm like, that doesn't sound exactly like what I'd say. So, you know, I'll change it up a bit. But what it allows is it takes it actually, you know, people are scared of AI kind of like, you know, wiping the personality out of different sectors. I actually think it enhances my ability to communicate in 60,000 different ways efficiently without taking up all of my time. And again, have that message be received. Because something I've had to learn time and time again in my career is that the success of your message is not simply the validity of the message, how evidence-based it is, you know, it's how well it is received by the person with whom you're communicating. And if my messages can be better received by tweaking my delivery, I am open to that. I'm in that world.

Edit 43:48

But I'm quite traditional. So I do believe that your book will um give this message to many, many people. My book is this voice.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

If if you get into my pages, you will you will hear this also. Over it, and that's what I do love to express myself in, you know, in the way that I do.

Edit 44:04

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to uh reading your book and um congrats for that. It's a really huge milestone, I assume, in your life. Huge, long time coming, a lifetime coming. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you so much, Amanda, for coming. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. It was a very uplifting, literally uplifting uh uh conversation.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

We're here to please our lift clinic and again with uh optimism forever.

Closing Notes And Next Steps

Edit 44:29

Thank you, thank you. Listeners, take that first step, one strength workout today to spark real change. Discover Lyft Clinic, tune into the 40s formula, and watch the launch of Motherhood Rebuilt. Catch your previous episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Hit subscribe and share your juggle wins or even failures in the comments. Until next time, keep exercising, keep juggling, keep shining.