How To Maintain Muscle As You Age

Hello. Hello and welcome back to Mastering The Meno(Pause) Transition 3.0. I am still your host, Dr. Sharon Stills And, you know, I’m excited to be here with you.

I’m always excited to be here and learn and share and help you on your journey. And we have a fan favorite here today and a topic that I get so many questions about.

And we’ve got the expert with us. We are going to be talking all about being fierce at 50 and how to move your body. And I have Tracy Steen with me, my dear friend and colleague.

She’s an online fitness coach. She helps women in their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, beyond to move daily to exercise properly. And we all want to have guns like she does because she she walks her talk.

If you see her, she’s every every day I see her an Instagram, she’s jumping on some box, she’s doing some push ups. She’s she’s doing something. And so she’s living proof that just because we are going through this hormonal journey does not mean our bodies have to leave us or not behave, and that we can be healthy, we can be strong, and we can look amazing too.

So welcome, Tracy. Thank you for being here. Thanks so much. I’m so excited to be back. This is, I think, my third time with the Menopause Summit. Many times with you having these conversations and they just get better and better because I think we learn more and more as the years go on and we are learning what is working for our bodies.

Exactly. Yes. And I, I love because the work I do is so, you know, it just goes along with what you do so well. And both of us are very emphatic about.

It’s not just one thing, it’s how you move. It’s balancing your hormones. It’s how you sleep, it’s how you eat, it’s how you think. And so I’m always excited because there’s there’s so much confusion and I’m sure you hear, you know, one of the things I hear all the time is I’m doing the same workouts that used to have me looking good in my bikini, and now they are not working.

And so I’d love to just jump in with that. What what is changing and what are the women listening need to understand about as we age? What are our exercise needs?

Yeah, there is so much confusion and I feel bad for a lot of people who are maybe newer in the fitness world because you come online and you just are bombarded with different ideas of what you should do, you shouldn’t do.

Should you jump? No you shouldn’t. Yes, you should do you have high, you know, high intensity exercises? No, we’re banning that. Yes. We need to lift more.

No, you need to lift lighter. You’re going to get too bulky like it is. So polarize izing at times that it can get confusing. what I like to do, though, is come back down to the basics, and I think that’s really important in fitness, wellness and nutrition and in the fitness realm.

You know, I mean, the basics. I think if you were just to to boil it down, it’s am I moving my body? Am I increasing my blood flow? Because when we increase circulation we can decrease or stave off, you know, the, inflammation, disease and decay.

one of the big things that’s happening as we age, of course, is this threat of sarcopenia or the loss of lean muscle tissue. And you know that old adage, if you don’t use it, you lose it?

Well, that was never more true than it is with our lean muscle. And if you’re not actively using it, there’s no chance really, at maintaining it. And certainly there’s no chance at building it.

And so one of the things that I, I hope people recognize is that if we want to age well, and yes, maybe it’s not looking great in a bikini, but what if it’s just being really strong, right?

I mean, esthetics are great as well. Some of us have goals and targets in that realm, but what if we just said, I really want to be strong for my marginal decade or that last ten years of my life, and then when you think about what you want to do when you’re 80, 90, 100, then we begin to reverse engineer all of those micro processes, those daily steps that are necessary in order for us to succeed and have optimal health when we’re older.

Right. It’s that preventative medicine that we’ve talked about before and how crucial it is. I think sometimes people just don’t maybe see the necessity because I feel okay today.

I don’t have diabetes or heart disease today, but that doesn’t mean that tomorrow you won’t slip and fall and not have enough lean muscle tissue in your legs to catch yourself.

That doesn’t mean you’re not going to, you know, be diagnosed with the disease tomorrow. But if we could do as much as we can today and all of the days leading up, we’re going to be in a much better position to stay our healthiest selves.

so for someone who is listening and kind of isn’t lifting and is it is it too late to start or it’s never too late? And how does that work? Oh yeah, that adage that it’s never too late is so, so, so true.

my mom, this is a great example here. Mom, what was it four years ago with the pandemic started and she had done intermittent exercise throughout her life, but never, never anything super structured and consistent.

Well, pandemic. Everything shut down, of course, and she started walking. And that was just her goal that she was going to walk every day. her and my sister had a little target.

They were going to walk every single day, a minimum of three kilometers. I’m in Canada, so kilometers, just over a mile and a bit, I guess. And with, you know, come range, shine, whatever the weather they were going to, they’re going to commit to this. And they did.

and so she began to see weight fall off. She began to improve her cardiovascular cardiorespiratory system. you know, her legs were feeling better. And then once the gyms were open again, she decided to go regularly, start to build lean muscle.

And so that’s been four years of being consistent. And, you know, blood pressure has come down. Biomarkers have improved. She is almost 77. She’s biking with us. She’s hiking with us.

And she she’s just in fabulous shape. And she’s built lean muscle. She’s staved off sarcopenia slowed the decline of the, you know, bone mineral density loss.

So all of these things are definitely possible. It’s just a matter of getting started and choosing a program that is sustainable for the long haul. And that is really important when you first start out.

so for someone I know, you have like tons of videos that will tell everyone where they can find you and go check them out. But for the ladies listening now, what are some good starting tips?

And can you also speak about the whole paradox of doing a lot of cardiovascular? Because that was, that was a rough one for me personally, because I’ve always been a cardio junkie and learning that as we age, it’s not so much what we need anymore.

And so if you could kind of speak to that as well. let’s let’s start with the, what do you do? Like how do you start off? We know that building muscle is important, okay?

It’s important to support your posture. It’s important to support, your bone health. It’s important to support that your your joints, your ligaments. So so building muscle is important.

Now it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be in the gym lifting seven days a week, right? You can you can do the minimal amount. Or if you want better results, you could move it up to you know, more times a week and more frequency, but minimally, at least two times a week where you’re targeting all of those major muscle groups, I think is really important.

And I would say with beginners, the goal is always, always, always to be able to show up again tomorrow. So if you go into a program and you start lifting really heavy and or you do someone’s plan and it’s too advanced for you and you can’t show up again tomorrow because you’re so sore, you can’t even sit to go to the bathroom.

You can’t climb up and down stairs, you can’t blow dry your hair. Then you haven’t won, right? You haven’t won because it’s going to deter you. You’re going to be like, that’s uncomfortable.

I don’t like that feeling. I don’t want to do that again. and plus you miss out days throughout the week to train. So if you can’t show up, then you can’t overload the muscle.

Then there’s no volume for the muscle to adapt and grow and shift and change. So always start light and work your way up. And so for a for a lot of women, you know, the starting point might be grabbing dumbbells between anywhere between 2 and 8 pounds.

Right. So a lot of our home workouts have exactly that where you’re just following, me or you’re following an instructor on YouTube and you’re just starting with those lighter weights.

Now, I do think it’s important that, again, as we age and as we think about what we want our marginal decade to look like to those last ten years to look like that, you begin to challenge the muscles to do the actions that are going to be necessary for you to do the things you want to do in those light years of life.

So, for example, if you want to be hiking, if you want to be biking or walking a dog, or picking up a grandchild, or getting down on the ground with a grandchild and playing and being able to sit cross-legged, you want to do those things as you age.

You can’t not practice those things leading up to that older age, right? You can’t expect to be able to go for an hour hike if you haven’t been hiking all along the way.

You can’t expect to bend down and pick up a 20 pound toddler. If you haven’t picked up a 20 pound dumbbell along the way. Frequently to increase the muscle, the range of motion, and those, you know, actions that are required.

So I think it’s really important that you challenge yourself slowly and slowly, build yourself up so that you begin to lift a little bit heavier, in terms of your resistance, now.

So once that’s in place, it’s like, what do I do? Do I do all strength? Do I do all cardio? Do I do I mix? Is there stability and balance and what other training protocols are important?

Well, I move daily. We really think that, looking at yourself as a whole person. And again, what do you want to be able to do is really, really important.

So including things like that range of motion balance training, stability training, strength training and cardiovascular training are all part of increasing your your overall health and optimizing that health.

So cardiovascular really speaking, I think yes, when we’re younger we might have been cardio junkies and we and we might have really enjoyed running and spent a lot of our time doing cardio and neglected the weights.

Now we’re seeing weights are important. Okay. We’ve got to incorporate that. Should I still be doing cardio? And my answer to that is yes, you should still be.

It’s yeah, I just I think it’s so important. It’s important for again that cardiorespiratory health. We see a lot of great, mitochondria are functioning with, with cardiovascular health.

telomere lengthening Bdnf or brain derived neurotrophic factor can increase with cardiovascular exercise. So we see a lot of good benefits with cardio.

and again, what do you want to be able to do when you’re 90? And will you have the lung capacity, the heart capacity to do those things if you haven’t been training the heart, probably not.

I know, Doctor Peter Attia says this. He says that one of the greatest predictors of longevity is your VO2 max number, and your VO2 max is your velocity of oxygen, or the the amount of oxygen your your heart can produce during intense exercise and pump that oxygen through to your extremities.

And how efficient is that number? Well, you’re not born with a good VO2 max number, so it has to be earned vis-a-vis the things that you’ve done in your life.

So if you’re sitting at your 50s, I’m almost 54 and my VO2 max number is high. I think of all of the things that I’ve had to do cardiovascular things, intense training, heavy lifting that is now going to give me a good VO2 max number, right?

If I haven’t done much in my life, I’ve I’ve maybe sat on the couch or have been more sedentary. That number is going to be quite low. Here’s the beautiful thing is that that number can always increase, right.

You can start walking, walking around your neighborhood and you can do a walk, an intense walk, a walk, an intense walk, and start to train in that intervals.

that can be a great starting point for someone who’s a little bit more fit, even training at higher intensities, where you maybe do a jog and then a sprint, a jog and then a sprint and, yeah.

So that that’s one way that you can increase your VO2 max. And again, if that is true, that the VO2 max is a great predictor of longevity, then we definitely want to be paying attention to that number.

all right. So you heard it here. You’re not getting rid of cardio. You’re just you’re embracing everything. And so I do want to talk about because I love how you call that because.

So we hear a lot about we hear HIIT the high intensity interval training. We hear about cardio. we hear about lifting weights. But you said, stability and balance and those are two things that we don’t hear about enough.

So I would like you to educate the listeners here about what that means and what they can be doing about it here. new for me, too. Like, I never considered this to be an area that I would spend a lot of time on right now.

Like I’m thinking, okay, maybe when I’m 70 and do some balance training, but then you want to be training these things leading up to these ages so that you get good at them.

so if you think about how people typically will fall, right, you might fall and trip. typically not going up on a curve, but falling off of a curb or coming down off of a sidewalk or coming down the stairs.

And we often don’t necessarily trip and fall right in this front plane. But we might fall to the diagonal. So the question then is, are the muscles in your legs, in your hips, in your core, in the trunk?

your stability muscles, are they available to you? Have you been training them? Have you been using them in a way that now they support that fall or catch you if you fall?

Because as we age, one of the things you don’t want to do is have a bad fall, right? We don’t want to break a femur. We don’t want to break a hip. We just don’t want a bad fall.

And if you can train your muscles to catch you, if you were to take a fall, I mean, you’re going to. That’s going to be better for you. So doing things like diagonal steps, diagonal jump training, this is something I’ve done frequently in our workouts recently, and I am loving it.

And the women are loving it as well. We’ll we’ll literally do diagonal hops and diagonal jumps. So the key is your in motion right. So your body’s in motion and it’s in motion in a way that’s not normal for us in a diagonal fashion.

So maybe it’s to the front maybe to to the back diagonal. Right. So we’re not used to doing these motions. But again that’s might be how you fall a trip and you have a bag of groceries in your hand.

And you’re right, you fall to the side. So when we train these jump patterns now, what we’re doing really is so the body’s in motion. And then you have to stop and then hit that next diagonal jump.

Or it can be steps while you’re you know, starting off. It doesn’t have to be jumping if you can’t jump right now. But even a diagonal step, catching yourself and pausing and then moving to the diagonal step.

What you want is control you’re trying to control while the body’s in motion. So when that happens, we’re working a lot of those eccentric muscles in the legs.

Okay, so there are stopper muscles. A lot of that muscle has to recruit and slow us down, bring that stability and balance in place. And then you move to the next diagonal jump.

It’s what once you start to practice it you’re like okay this is really important because exactly we’re going to fall. We’re going to fall probably in this diagonal pattern or reverse diagonal.

And one of the legs is going to go out or something’s going to happen. And we need our muscles in the legs and that mobility to catch us. Now balance also so important.

I mean, there’s so many easy ways that you can practice balance exercises and on a daily basis, even just taking a pillow, maybe it’s a bit of a firm pillow and you’re putting it on the ground and you’re standing with a sneaker on your foot, and you’re standing on the pillow and lifting up one leg.

You’re going to find that you’re a little imbalanced, right? It’s not a flat surface. And so the ankle strength has to be there. Do we have good ankle strength?

a lot of us don’t. Right. Because we haven’t been practicing these things. So that could be a way, again, standing on one foot with the arms out to the side.

And if that’s easy for you, try it with your eyes closed and all of a sudden is not easy, standing with one foot in front of the other and then just turning your head side to side, that’s incredibly hard.

Try it now if you’re at home. But. But when you create, you’re not. You don’t have a large, you know, a plane. All of a sudden when your feet are one in front of the other, you’re like a tightrope.

How you would walk a tightrope. You’re quite imbalanced. And if that’s too easy for you, then you close your eyes and turn your head side to side, and you will just notice that your body wants to be tippy.

So incorporating things like this, I think is just so important because as we age, I mean, this is what we’ve seen with, seniors that we love, right? They’ve fallen.

They have they have tripped, they have, you know, just gotten dizzy and and fell and injured themselves and sometimes beyond repair. So I think I just think it’s something that we need to practice.

As soon as we’re done with the interview, I’m doing the the feet in front of the turning. Yeah, I’ve never done that. But that’s hard. I’m always like you from standing at the sink.

I’m like, I’ll pick up a foot or, you know, I’m like, I might as well balance I yeah. So so I’m curious, you know, your your brand is moved daily. What what’s what’s like what’s Tracy doing or do you take a day off and what how are you moving daily and is it okay.

That’s a good question. Good question. you know, it’s funny because I have my company used to be called Inside Out Fitness years ago, and, and my background is in psychology.

So I really wanted people to, you know, move daily or I wanted them to exercise, but understand that it we want to move toward health from the inside out.

So that’s what it was called. And then, I can’t remember what made me segue into calling it move daily, but but what I wanted my clients at the time, I was a personal trainer at the time, and what I wanted them to do is just do something daily, like, you don’t have to do it, all right?

And I think sometimes people get, sidelined because they’ll see other people in a program or they’ll see someone else really moving forward in leaps and bounds, and they’ll, they’ll maybe start and then they get frustrated and or overwhelmed because it seems like it’s too much.

And so then they just stop at all. Or if they can’t eat perfectly, then they just throw the baby out with bathwater. Or if I can’t do it perfectly, I’m not doing it at all.

And what I really wanted people to be able to do was just do something daily in your fitness, in your wellness and in your nutrition. Those are our three pillars that we find are so important.

And it could mean in the fitness that you’re just doing morning stretches and you’re committing to that right now. Yes, I have five minutes every day and I can commit to that.

Great. You’ve moved your body. Love that in your wellness. Maybe it’s just putting on a five minute meditation or doing a little deep breathing. You know, your watch reminds you time to breathe.

Deep mind reminds me. Okay, I’m committing to that. Maybe nutrition. It’s just, filling your plate with half vegetables. And every time you eat, that’s your plan.

That’s what you can commit to. And so it’s having these small ways of moving daily. And so in, in my own life, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m thinking, how have I moved daily today in my fitness, in my wellness, in my nutrition?

What have I done to move the needle toward better health for myself? And so for me, I one of the things that I have found very crucial is that morning walk getting morning light in my eyes.

Now we talk about how everything intersects and how everything impacts for me. When I get up in the morning and create that habit, get that morning light that’s going to help me sleep in the evening, because it helps me to set that circadian rhythm in my body.

and so I try and I’m pretty good 99% of the time. That’s what I’m doing. I’m doing that morning walk. And it’s short. Sometimes it’s just with a dog and it’s ten, 15 minutes around the block.

Sometimes it’s a longer hiker walk with my friends. and then and then I come back to my house, go to work a little bit, and then I’m filming a workout.

I do that about five days a week, and sometimes it’s a beginner workout that’s 30 minutes. Sometimes it’s a long strength workout that 60 minutes. Sometimes it’s a combination of cardio and strength.

So I really like to switch it up. you could follow a very structured protocol for four weeks at a time and do this, you know, periodization where you’re starting a little lighter and starting to lift heavier and heavier and heavier.

Your goal is to build muscle, but I like to switch it up for myself because I like variety. I don’t want to be bored. I like to just, you know, have that sort of fun.

I also like a lot of activity outdoors. So once the weather gets nice, I might even dial back the indoor workouts and begin to play pickleball and go biking.

And I do lots of hiking, and that’s something that I really enjoy as well. I had someone comment the other day. They said, someone said, I guess her job is just on Instagram, and all she gets to do is work out.

She should try having three kids and a full time work and it was funny to me because I do have three kids. and and my job, aside from posting things on Instagram, is a 14 hour a day job.

And, you know, so it’s like, where are the where are the priorities? And you almost hate to say that because it sounds a bit cliche, but it is true when it comes to looking at your week, how many hours you have in your week.

I can’t remember her name now. Laura van der camp, she she wrote a book on, on time and How to maximize your time. And when you boil it all down and you take away the amount of time that you are working maybe eight hours a day, and you take away the amount of time that you’re sleeping eight hours a night, you’re left with about 72 hours in a given week.

And if you think exercise is only going to take four of those hours or five of those hours in a given week, you still have, well, like almost 70 hours or 60, 68 hours in a week to do the things that you need to do when you put it into that perspective, it doesn’t seem like a lot.

It seems like I could do this if this was a priority of mine. And I think what I, what I’m trying to help women understand is that this could change the trajectory of your life.

If you add this in, this could increase health, right? This could increase your lifespan. This could make you feel more confident. It could give me give you more energy.

This could reduce your risk of diabetes and heart disease. and so it could literally change your life. And again, sometimes we feel okay today. So we think that it’s maybe not necessary or we’ll start a program and we won’t see change exterior and exterior change.

And so we think it’s not working but oh it’s working. It’s working. So well. It’s working on the inside and it’s it’s doing amazing things for your your blood, your heart, your lungs.

Right. Your visceral fat, like it’s doing amazing things and and that if anyone here is anything today, from what I’ve said, it’s that the focus on what you’re doing internally to yourself, health, to your heart health, lung health, all of that is just so important.

And and it’s making a difference. Yes. I mean, I always say like as a physician, that one of the greatest tools to help you heal is your calendar. And looking at it and making time like I book my life around yoga or hiking or oh, I can’t do that because I know I gotta.

So it’s like you have to make it a priority. And yeah, you know, my kids are grown now, but I’m still, you know, now I’m helping with grandbabies and working.

And so we’re all very busy. I remember being a single mom, putting myself through med school, and all I had time for was, like, a half hour. But I made sure every morning I got up early and I did my half hour.

Back then it was just cardiovascular. This is back in the 90s. But, you know, just that little bit. It’s like, what are the non-negotiables? So maybe at a time in your life when you’re really busy, you know, maybe you can’t afford time wise to go do the hour and a half class or something, but what can you do and how can you make it easier if you can’t get to the gym?

Can you bring the weights into your home? Can you just watch one of Tracy’s workouts online where you don’t have to? So it’s just got to be, which I guess is bringing me to the last point.

A question I want to talk about is just the mindset, how important. And I know you have the psychology background, so how important is this mindset and are there any tips for the ladies listening to to improve theirs?

Yeah. You know, when we talk about mindset I think often about this concept of self-efficacy, right. This belief that change is possible. And it really does start with that in yourself.

Right. Do you believe that you could change? Do you believe that you have the capacity to make a difference in your life? do you believe that change is possible?

And if you don’t, that’s probably going to stall your progress forward. So that has to be worked on. And how do we work on that? Maybe that is with a therapist.

Maybe that’s through reading a book like, Schwartz’s No Bad Parts where where we really take a deep dive into our lives and see why we’re we’re stalling.

and then, yeah, then it’s just beginning to move forward. Forward from there. But, yeah, it’s it’s interesting that we we allow our mindset to, to stall us.

but but it is something like a skill that can be that can be learned, you know, Angela Duckworth has a book called grit. And I think sometimes, too, it’s just developing this mindset of that no matter what takes me down, I’m going to move forward.

Right? I have this grit. And she talks about it being a skill that can be learned. So if you are struggling with that mindset, then know that you can improve upon that.

You can learn how to have grit. You can learn how to have resilience in your life and to move forward right. but back to self-efficacy. So self-efficacy is this belief that change is possible.

So if you have that, what happens then is we commit more time to the tasks that we’re that we’re involved in. So we’ll add more time to our exercise. We’ll commit more time to eating healthy, will commit more time to meditation or forest bathing or whatever it is for our wellness.

We commit more time, and when we do that, we see an improvement in all of these arenas, which then motivates us and makes us believe that change is possible.

So it really is a wonderful little circle of believing in yourself that change is possible. Committing time to the task and seeing improvement because you’ve committed time, because that’s what it takes.

It’s the dripping water on the stone that hollows it out, not through force but through persistence, says Ovid. So we’ve drip the water on the stone, and now we’ve seen the results of dripping the water consistently over time.

Okay, so then we’re over here all of a sudden and we’re like, I can do this. Look at me. So what have you increased self-efficacy. Now your belief is just so much greater.

So if you don’t believe in yourself, start to work on why that is right. Start to think about that. Give that some good thought, take a journal, write that out.

Like I said, maybe read a book, see a counselor, or do something that’s going to build that self-efficacy. So that might mean not setting the goal post so far down the road.

Maybe it’s a short goal post, maybe it’s a short little target that you have for yourself where you say, okay, here’s the target, I’m going to move daily for 15 minutes three times this week.

That’s it. And you’re going to commit to that for a full month. I’m not doing 30. No I have energy today for 30. But I’m just going to do 15 because this is what I said I was going to do.

And then at the end of that month, now, you know, you’re checking off things. You’re like, okay, I could do this. And then now what if what’s happened?

You’ve increased your self-belief and you’re going to commit more time to the task, and now you’re going to see better progress. So I think that’s a really important element of a healthy mindset when it comes to shifting.

And then another thing too, I think is important is. This identity habit, we’re not just in it to lose weight for our son’s wedding or for the cruise or for my birthday, for my 60th birthday, if you think like that, you’re going to get to that end point, and then you’re going to stop the healthy habits because they’re hard.

They’re not easy to maintain. So what needs to happen or what would be better, is if we decided that this is going to be who I am. People like us do things like this forever and ever.

This is not a destination. We are doing this for the rest of our lives, right? And so now we have an identity. And if you use that catchphrase if you want and this is my, my are my groups, I’ll use this catchphrase and we’ll do a hashtag.

People like us, people like us do things like this. We work out on vacation. People like us do things like this. We get up at 5 a.m. to train. People like us do things like this.

We eat in moderation at a buffet, or we’ll have half vegetables at a buffet. Like, this is what people like us do. And when you when you create an identity habit, you’re really proud of that.

You’re like, I’m, I’m a fit and healthy person, so I have to do what fit and healthy people do. And that is helpful. If you have a community who also thinks the same thing.

If you have no friends, no family, no people in your life who also want that for optimizing their health, it’s going to be more of a challenge for you.

So find your community. Find your tribe, find your people, find your women. Right. like that come to move daily. This is where we have our public Facebook group or move Daily Hustle Group.

It’s a free public Facebook group, and these women are chiming in every day with all of their people like us are doing things like this posts. And it is so inspiring.

I know that I’m like, hashtag people like us, I love that, I know, yeah, but those are just such amazing things that you just said. So just rich and priceless.

And I just going to echo right. The down. That on to that. You know, I also think I often say instead of I have to do my hike today or I have to get to yoga, I say, I get to write like I, I have been sick and not been able to get out of bed, and the fact that I get to that, I’m able to, it just switches the way we’re thinking.

Like you were saying, you know, set those tiny goals because then we create these new neural connections, these pathways in our brains that are like, I’m a winner!

Instead of, oh, there I go. I never do what I’m going to say again. So these tips are just priceless. And I remember when I was taking a wellness inventory, a health coach training, and they talked about Kaizen, and it’s a Japanese term of.

And when you were talking, I was like, oh, she’s talking about kaizen, like doing things in small increments to get the win. I mean, they even went to say, like, if you’ve never exercised before, just go buy the sneakers and put them at the door and just start acknowledge the sneakers.

Oh, they’re the sneakers, because I’m going to start hiking in two weeks or I’m going to start walking. And and so these little things, nothing is ever too little.

It’s all building on. Yes. You you’re not starting your diet Monday. Like I just got back from a week away. And, you know, people like us, we just we just carry on on vacation.

And a lot of the people I work with were like, oh my God, I’ve gained so much weight that, you know, because it was like one of these all inclusive places with 24 hour room service and just more food than you knew what to do with.

And, I my stomach didn’t hurt, my digestion wasn’t compromised. I just took care of myself. Because this is our body and this is our temple, and we have to treat it with love and kindness.

And we can’t beat it up because people like us, people like us, people like you, you know? And that’s not to say that you can’t, you know, we’re all human that, you know, did I have an extra dessert?

I dang well did because their their vegan coco mousse was like really good. But you know, you, you you, you can go a little off the path, but you, you appreciate the path because you feel how good you feel when you stay on the path.

And that’s when it’s really become your identity and your lifestyle. And I, I wish that and I know Tracy does for all of you. So go join her tribe at Move Daily.

I mean, I follow you, I’m on Instagram, so I follow you on Instagram a lot, but where else can they find you? Because I know you have a huge YouTube channel that.

Yes, YouTube. it’s @TracySteenMoveDaily. on Instagram we have @movedailyfitness. We have a big Facebook group called Move Daily Hustle. Okay. So you can follow me over on Facebook as well.

I think it’s just Tracy Steen over there on Facebook there. But the Move Daily Hustle Group is our community group. And our, one of our coaches, Kim, she posts lots of challenges there, free challenges.

And we give lots of advice. And again, the women are all just connected and building this tribe of people like us doing things like this. So, follow their TikTok as well @Tracy Steen Awesome. I’m.

I didn’t know you had a Facebook community. I’m going to join that because I want to because people like us move. And I love and I just want to leave with something that you said that really stuck with me, that we don’t hear a lot in the fitness is thinking about, who do you want to be as you age and what are you doing and really visualizing that because, you know, I say I’m going to 130.

And so, I feel like after 110 I don’t want to be in pain, but I’ll be okay if I’m just like on the hammock or rocking, you know, I’ll take it easy. But until then, like, I got everything base camp to go to.

I, you know, I have things so, like, how am I getting there and what am I doing? Because I don’t believe age has to limit us. So I love that whole mind shift.

I hope all of you listening, listen again to this and really start to think about you called it your marginal decade. Was that like? Yeah, that the term is from Peter Attia as well.

That’s where I learned it from in his book Outlive. but yeah, it’s those last ten years of life. And what do you want it to look like? And then you reverse engineer all of those daily tasks leading up to that time.

so everyone we’re going, like, we’re going to end the interview and then we’re all going to stand up, we’re going to put our feet in front of each other.

It’s going to be off screen. But when then we’re going to turn our heads and we’re going to start to practice things. Things. We’re going to go find Tracy and we’re going to start doing like diagonal ninja jumps.

And I’m really excited because I’m not doing that. So I’m very excited to to add that in because it all makes so much sense. And so I just love the way you think about moving and in, in such a holistic viewpoint.

So thank you so much. I just adore and appreciate you and all the work you do. So go follow her, start thinking about how you’re going to Move Daily, and think about what you’re going to add in the Facebook group under the people Like us hashtag, because that’s just that’s a beautiful one.

And we can change. We can create. People like us do all these amazing things, and we have an amazing, sacred second act and we rock our Meno(Pause) Transition.

That’s what people like us do. So thank you for being here. We’ll be back with another interview.