Menopause and perimenopause are a huge part of every woman’s life. Despite this, it can feel like there is very little help and information provided specifically for how woman can help themselves through these periods.Luckily, today we have someone who can help, and if you’re a bloke, trust me you’ll want to know this information as well just so you can help the women in your life.
Ange Clark is Australia’s Leading Perimenopause Dietitian. She has dual degrees in Exercise Physiology and Nutrition and Dietetics holding the title of Advanced Physique Sports Dietitian with two decades of transforming women’s waistlines. Her unique skills and experience in the area of enhancing women’s figures, health, wellbeing and longevity through evidence-based nutrition and exercise science targets the changes preceding menopause.
In this episode Angelique shares:
- What led her into the work she’s doing today
- What menopause and perimenopause actually are
- What some of the key nutritional areas to focus on in the peri menopause phase of life are
- Why she doesn’t suggest fasting for weight loss for mid life women
- Why resistance training is necessary for mid life women
- Why you need to track and record your menstrual cycle
- Her opinion on supplements
Key Quotes
“When we look at weight and BMI it’s not really an indication of what is happening.”
“When we can measure it we can manage it.”
“The timing of fasting does not work with mid life women.”
Episode Resources
Her website: https://www.angeliqueclark.com.au/
Her Instagram: @angeliqueclark_nutrition
For some great deals, Ange has provided these links below
Microbiome Essentials https://www.fertile-gut.com/products/fertile-gut
Code: PERI
2before https://2before.com/
Code: ANGE10
Jessica Spendlove Website – www.jessicaspendlove.com
Jessica Spendlove Keynotes – JessicaspendloveKeynotes – Jessica Spendlove
The High-Performance Profile Quiz https://jessicaspendlove.com/quiz/
Jess Spendlove Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jess_spendlove_dietitian/
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Your Host
Jessica Spendlove | Wellbeing Speaker & High Performance Strategist
Jess Spendlove is an international wellbeing and high performance speaker, coach, and advisor. With over 15 years of experience across corporate leadership, elite sport and the military she is known for helping ambitious leaders and teams optimise energy, build resilience, and sustain peak performance.
As one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians and a trusted voice in executive wellbeing, Jess delivers science-backed strategies that empower individuals, teams and organisations to thrive under pressure and achieve long-term success.
Episode Transcript
The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy
Jess (01:08.526)
I am so excited for today’s episode of Stay At The Top. We have an absolute guru when it comes to perimenopause, nutrition, exercise and everything that you need to know. Please welcome Anne Clark to the Stay At The Top podcast.
Ange is a dual qualified exercise physiologist and nutrition and dietetics expert who also is a very impressive title is an advanced physique sports dietitian. So this means she knows her stuff. Ange, thank you so much for joining me here today. Welcome to stay at the top.
Ange (01:27.632)
Thanks for having me, Jess.
Ange (01:51.536)
Thanks Jess, thanks so much for having me.
Jess (01:54.274)
There’s so much to cover off today. Perimenopause, whether you’re someone who hasn’t quite hit that phase of your life or whether you’re someone in that phase of life, I feel it’s something which is getting a lot of traction. People are talking about it. People are wanting to get knowledge on it. So I know whether it’s a female listener who hasn’t quite yet approached that phase of their life, they might be in it or whether it’s even the male listeners who have a partner.
or even, you know, we’ve got some young listeners. So whether it’s a mom, there’s a whole heap of people that are going to be listening to this today that are going to know someone or that are going to find value out of it for themselves. So I guess a really great place to start is you. Tell the listeners your background and I guess what’s led you into doing the type of work that you do today.
Ange (02:49.264)
Yeah, it’s a really interesting roundabout way of getting here, but I feel like I’m just exactly in the right position. So you mentioned that I have a qualification as being an advanced physique sports dietician. And what that means is when I was specialising in sports dietetics, I went down the pathway of physique and body composition management. So I ended up in sports such as bodybuilding, figure sculpting and really working with the athlete, the younger athlete I might add, with their physique and body composition.
in order to reach elite status and go into competition. So I know a thing or two about lean muscle mass retention, putting on lean muscle mass and getting really shredded and lean at the same time. So it was these sort of qualifications that led me to think a little bit more outside the scope of the female menstrual cycle. Cause as I was starting to see this absent actually, to be really honest in my athletes as I was starting to get leaner.
At the time we kind of didn’t really understand low energy availability. We were looking at people that were training quite heavily. And so the combination of that was really interesting. I started to notice there had been a change in the menstrual cycle from that perspective. And now as I got older, I got a little bit more selfish and wanted to do a bit more research, but also my clients got older. And so a lot of the things that we were doing, particularly with people that weren’t necessarily athletes, these were just general everyday population.
weekend warriors, people that value health and wanted to keep up their health and wellbeing, were coming to me going, look, there’s some things that I’m doing that I just don’t understand why I’m not getting to the same body composition or why am I putting on weight? Why is it not working? And so a lot of this sort of led me back into the research and lo and behold, there was pretty much next to nothing at that point in time. And that really shocked me. It sort of started a spiral into, well,
Yeah, why is the female athlete a little bit different from the male athlete? And my goodness, a lot of the nutrition and exercise prescription that I had been delivering was, unbeknown to me, based on male collegiate athletes. So this was a big eye -opener for me. I felt a little bit betrayed in my industry. And it made me and forced me to start asking better questions and looking for the answers for that. And so it…
Ange (05:09.392)
came through different areas, obviously better mentors, better questions, but also looking at other areas of research to really uncover the difference between a female and how we can change her body composition, but also what happens to her physiology as she starts to age. So I think, as you just said, Jess, it’s such a hot topic at the moment. Everyone’s talking about it. There’s been a beautiful spotlight that’s been put on the active aging female.
In particular, the words perimenopause, people might not know what that means. That’s just the time preceding menopause. But obviously, the terms are used interchangeably. I really wanted to focus on perimenopause specifically because this is this most beautiful, pristine, preventative period of time in a woman’s life where she really doesn’t get a second chance. Now it’s literally now or never, and we need to start implementing some nutrition.
movement, exercise and lifestyle techniques and behaviours that really have to set you up before you hit menopause. So yeah, roundabout way of getting here, but I’m here and I love it and unfortunately not a lot of people are doing it well anyway.
Jess (06:11.886)
And you were genuine, you know, everything you do is grounded in the research. It is a hot topic. And when anything’s a hot topic, it draws attention, which doesn’t necessarily mean from the most credible people. So trying to get cut through and have a voice when you are so extremely qualified and intelligent and grounded in science is so incredibly important, which is why I wanted to get you on here today, because I want to talk about the evidence. I want to talk about the science. I want to get clear.
For some listeners, as you said, they may not have heard the term perimenopause, but it is the active aging female. And as we said, whether you are a female listener or whether you’re a male listener and it’s someone in your family, there’s something for everyone here today. So I think a great place to start. What do we need to know about perimenopause and menopause and body composition for women? I think that’s a really great place to start.
Ange (07:11.024)
And luckily, it’s my area of expertise specifically on body composition change, so I will stick to my lane. There’s a lot of things going on, whether it be, I guess, the biological changes that are happening to a female, but also there’s a lot of behavioral changes that get bundled up in that as well. But first and foremost, when we’re looking at the physiological changes, what is happening when we hit this menopausal transition is that our female sex hormones, our estrogen, our progesterone, and testosterone to some extent,
is on their decline, there is an undulation before that happens. So this could last in terms of the perimenopause timeframe between seven to 10 years preceding menopause. Now, just to give people a bit of an age -related factor, because we don’t know when we’re going to hit menopause itself, we actually don’t know. The best thing maybe would probably be to ask your mum what time of her life that she actually went through that process. That could give you an indication. Other than that,
All we have to go on is maybe some symptomology, but unfortunately what happens is from the biological changes that are happening underneath the surface, we might not all experience symptoms of perimenopause or the menopause transition. So it could be, I always say a silent killer in the instance that, you know, a lot of us will experience something, but it might not be as prevalent enough to actually identify where it’s coming from. So look, the first thing we need to understand is that…
Weight gain is a menopause related phenomenon, but it’s not just literally about weight. It’s also about looking at what happens to our body composition over the course of that time. And by that way, I mean, you know, women, at least 50%, it’s probably more 60 to 70 % of midlife women will report that they increase weight at this time of their life. On average, women gain around 700 grams per year during their midlife period. Okay. This is…
independent of their initial body size, their race, their ethnicity. It’s purely as what we call the menopause phenomenon transition. So coupled with that, it’s very interesting when we looked at, there was a beautiful study, the SWAN study. So the study of women’s health across the nation, they took 1200 women, tracked them over their pre and post menstrual period. So.
Ange (09:21.904)
We term menopause as the 12 month anniversary of your last period after which you post menopausal. So it’s literally just one moment in time. And as I mentioned, perimenopause can last five, sorry, between sort of seven, five to 10 years, really five to 10 years preceding when you actually hit menopause itself. It’s a long time. And what’s happening over the course of that time when we looked at the DEXA scan. So they actually measured their body composition by gold standard. They look to see, look overall in general, when we talk about aging, there’s a three to 8 % loss of muscle.
every decade after 30. However, there’s an accelerated response with women in particular, between five to 10 % increase in that muscle loss after 50. So we see a big chunk of this happening in that perimenopausal period of time. And now why is this? It’s because of those hormones that are undulating on their decline.
So we understand that estrogen is very anabolic. It helps us lay down more muscle, more bone. It is also very anti -inflammatory. It affects how we distribute and store body fat. So that’s one study pinpointed that we are increasing body fat, but not only subcutaneous body fat, which is a fat that sits between the skin and the muscle layer, the things that we can actually manipulate with a calorie deficit.
and an increase if we’re looking at energy balance, but specifically it’s the visceral fat accumulation, so the fat that gets put on around our midsection, our belly fat, god awful term called the menopause, I hate it, but it’s what people talk about, and it’s where that fat is being distributed and stored that’s affected by estrogen. So, very interesting, so sometimes when we look at lean body mass, that’s on the decline, but at the same time we’re increasing our body fat,
which sometimes might mean that your weight really isn’t too far off maybe a goal weight that you had before you hit your 40s. Now that doesn’t mean to say that things aren’t actually happening quite sinisterly underneath the cells. So underneath the surface, we’re really looking at that body composition change being very detrimental, particularly when we’re looking at cardiometabolic health and just metabolic disease in general. So sometimes when we look at weight and BMI, it’s not really an indication.
Ange (11:34.48)
of what exactly is happening. And unfortunately for women, a lot of these factors when it relates to our physiology are going to impact us more in later life, particularly by way of functionality, but also just metabolic disease in general. So it wasn’t just that, it got backed up. So that’s one study was done in 2019. It got backed up by a beautiful longitudinal study in 2022. So it’s only two years ago, Jess, that we’ve started to really look at this and find the data. Yeah.
Jess (11:58.606)
my gosh. Yeah.
Ange (12:03.568)
Yeah, the evidence behind why it is that these things are happening, like women would front up and say, I know my body shape is changing, but we were just like, well, you know, you’re probably just eating too much. Well, no, it actually was separate. It’s relating to the hormonal change. And when we looked at the fat cell biopsy, we can clearly see a difference in an increase in fat cells from pre to post menopause. And in particular, it happens in that perimenopausal transition.
Interestingly as well, when we looked at that, not only were they looking at body composition, but they did look at food intake and energy expenditure, so activity levels. And I do have to say one of the contributing factors, it’s not just your hormones that’s contributing to this, we also slow down in terms of our movement and activity levels. So it was also interesting to look at the food intake actually had reduced over the perimenopausal period of timeframe, which would indicate, well, what’s going on if we’re not…
increasing our food, you know, we shouldn’t be putting on weight, but it’s the body composition changes that are happening that are slowing us down. Maybe it’s also our lifestyle factors, we’re not doing as much movement, sitting in more sedentary roles, you know, we’re adopting a bit more higher level, you know, positions in work, which requires us to reduce our movement. And across the board, what happens is that
Our weight again might not be too dissimilar. It’s not completely significant when we look at the changes in weight, but it’s really about what’s happening with our body composition that’s so important because long -term effective, that is affecting our functionality, which means, you know, we’re not gonna be able to live. Whilst we might be living longer, everyone’s talking about longevity, right? We’re not necessarily living well. And that’s the hard part about differentiating between the two.
Jess (13:49.422)
And one thing you’ve mentioned there is we’re moving less. Is that incidental or is that deliberate or it’s a combination they were finding both of being impacted?
Ange (14:04.785)
Yeah, it’s probably both. Yeah, because we do see just incidental is something that people forget about in terms of their general activities of daily living. They are again, I think it’s also because of the lifestyle factors that are associated with midlife. We get a lot of pressure, a lot of demands, probably career based, we’re hitting the peak or the peak of our, you know, where we’re ending up in our careers. We’re doing a lot more sedentary behaviours just in lifestyle in general. Life is made a lot easier for us.
But also, you know, we’ve got aging parents on one side, we’ve got probably dependent kids on the other side as well. So we’re doing a lot for others and not so much for ourselves. And by way of probably formal activity, I start to see this decline in a lot of women that are just too bloody busy, they can’t find time to fit it in. So it’s a combination of the two. And also making time for yourself becomes very difficult, which then just leads to things such like…
as movement, consistency of movement starts to really decline.
Jess (15:06.959)
And so with what you’ve said there around like these changes, we lose muscle from 30 onwards, we decline 3 % a year and it’s accelerated as we get closer towards menopause, we’re increasing body fat and this is just like physiologically as well as secondary, there are some changes to our movement. Do you think women…
should be getting DEXA scans and if so, how frequently just as a baseline awareness. And if you don’t know what a DEXA scan is, Ange will explain that, but is that your recommendation? Cause that’s really the gold standard practice, how we can get that information.
Ange (15:46.96)
It absolutely is. And I love data as you would appreciate Jess, when we can measure it, we can manage it. And it’s really interesting as a behavioral response to be able to know, okay, if you know what position you’re in, sometimes I say ignorance is bliss, sometimes we don’t want to know, we bury our head in the sand, but having this data is so valuable because it actually tells us a beautiful picture of where you’re currently at. And it also provides a baseline for any
measurements in future to be able to have a comparative measure against. So we can actually start to track your progress and start to see these changes. And unfortunately, if you’re not going to a skilled practitioner that can actually accurately measure body composition assessment, I know Jess and I have this qualification. It’s very hard to come by if we’re doing accurate skinfold measures. But second to that is, you know, the gold standard really is a DEXA scan. It’s a…
essentially an X -ray machine where you go in and it will basically scan you from head to toe. It’s a low dose radiation. So in terms of the frequency of that is very specific, but also we want to try and minimize the amount of time that we are spending in these types of devices just from a safety factor. So I love a DEXA scan every 12 months. You could possibly do it every six months if you were really focused on an intervention where you were kind of wanting change and you want to see that and you want that data. I think that’s really nice if you…
do have the opportunity to get that done. Possibly six months would be great as well. But at the very minimum, I think once we hit 40, we need to be getting Dexa scans every year. And then in between that, you can look at other measures or methods of body composition measurements. And that can be, like I said, maybe approaching a highly skilled trained practitioner in skin folds or the use of Bod Pod and biological impedance. Sometimes gyms have light body scanners and things like that.
it’s hard, there’s a lot of noise within that and there’s not a lot of information or I guess guidance around that when you get these done. So if you are going to be doing that, I always say just do it with a qualified professional that can kind of walk you through those results and give you an indication of what you’re looking for and to make sure you’re doing that in the right protocol each and every time. But I think it’s you know, don’t wait until people wait. This is how medical systems based is like, you go and get a blood test when something’s wrong.
Ange (18:06.832)
you know, you’ll have a look at your position when things are really bad. I want to see you when they’re not so bad. So if we can catch you, you know, within that sort of transition before you hit perimenopause, or even as the entry point into like an age related, you know, just point in time over 40, go and get these measures, go and get a full blood count, do a health assessment check, and just have that data ready and available. Because like I said, if anything changes, you’ll have that baseline to refer back to and then we can make.
very informed decisions based on that difference.
Jess (18:38.638)
100%, it’s really like we need to take control of our health because as you said, the way that the system is designed, it’s only when there’s a problem do we then take action. And it’s like, no, no, no, we wanna be preventing, we wanna be optimizing. And that’s what today we’re gonna really be talking about. So I guess we know this information, these changes, women rapidly, like there’s rapid changes for women as opposed to men who just more is a steady decline in terms of sarcopenia and the decline of muscle.
as we age, but let’s talk about intervention. So whether this is women in their 30s starting to take action now because the sooner we do it, the better, but women coming into this kind of phase of life, 40 onwards, I wanna dive into all of your loves. I wanna dive into nutrition. I wanna dive into training and I wanna dive into supplements. So let’s start with food because we’re food first, we’re food focused. What are the key nutritional areas to focus on?
in this phase of life to help mitigate what is physiologically happening.
Ange (19:45.584)
Yeah, so it’s beautiful that we do have.
principles and protocols that we can implement that we can see these changes mitigated from. So protein first and foremost, obviously, particularly for women, we don’t get enough and we don’t get the quality protein and we don’t get it regularly drip fed over the day. Unfortunately, a lot of women when they start to see their weight or their body shape change will go straight to fasting. It’s something that they think that is applicable to them. But when I look at the
midlife female who is dealing with this undulation of hormonal change. This also affects so many other things. Obviously we’re focusing on body composition, but neurologically, like cognitively, it’s very, very impactful to women and their focus and their ability to do their work and go about their day. Mood is affected. You know, it comes down to also looking at not just the protein.
quality and quantity, but also increasing our microbiome diversity. This looks at not taking out whole food groups first and foremost, because again, just like fasting, we don’t get those opportunities to have that beautiful, nutritive amount drip fed over the day. So that supports our energy, our production. It gives us.
like kind of our mojo to want to exercise and want to train. And when you fast and when you cut out carbohydrates and cut out whole food groups, unfortunately you end up in a space that makes you actually feel worse and it could increase your symptomology. So if we look at the amount, we’re really starting to look at doubling.
Ange (21:26.0)
if not a little bit more compared to the general recommendation for protein intake. So I would be suggestive of around two grams per kilogram of lean body mass in terms of protein intake per day. If you do not have that lean body mass data.
If you haven’t done a DEXA, you don’t know what your body composition is, where it’s sitting at, you can just go with maybe 1 .5 to 1 .7 grams of protein per kilogram per day. And that can be assessed with your health professional, maybe looking at ideal body weight if you’re looking for or chasing weight loss goals a little bit harder. But that’s a really great place to start. So that first and foremost is going to replace what estrogen would normally have done. So we need better quality and we need it drip fed over the day. But in combination with resistance training, which we can get to a little bit later on,
those two just work synergistically together and they really slow down that muscle ageing or that saccopenia effect, particularly because we just don’t have estrogen there doing the work it would have done when we were younger. So that’s the first thing. The second thing, as we alluded to in terms of increasing some fibre rich based foods and the diversity of where that fibre comes from is going to support our gut health. When we can start to do that, we start to actually see the fat distribution and the metabolites that are produced.
as a result of having those beautiful fibres in our body and helping our gut is actually going to help to reduce our ability to store fat. So that’s great. We want to do that in all forms. The other thing that we also are looking at within that is our insulin resistance increases if we’re looking at an increase in visceral fat accumulation. So anything around the midsection belly, if we tend to put on weight in that visceral area, it’s unfortunately closer to our organs. It increases our risk of insulin resistance, which then affects…
our blood sugar levels. So the more fibre we can get into our diet, the better off we’re going to be having to manage that glucose load from eating carbohydrates. Now I would say reduce your added sugars, but I know people are going to go, what? That just means cutting out carbs. No, it doesn’t. We need carbohydrates. I want to make that clear. And we actually need carbohydrates, particularly as women, because our brain thrives off it. It gives us that energy, as I said, to make sure that we’re exercising.
Ange (23:37.264)
But there’s some studies that also have looked at the reduction in osteoporosis and osteopenia as a result of an increase in fibre content in the diet. So when we’re looking at all -cause mortality, it’s around about 160 grams of carbs a day women want to be getting to be at the lowest risk of these lifestyle disease risk factors that we talk about that are really big killers. So.
The idea with that is that unfortunately, as we know, because we’ve just said that we get slower in our older age, our carbohydrate tolerance is probably not going to or our carbohydrate budget more so is not going to be as big as in our younger years because we’re just not as active. So it just kind of needs to be balanced a little bit. We need to change our relationship with carbohydrate. But we need to say it is very important to get it in there. But we could also be reducing that dependent on your activity level.
So making sure that that reflects how active you are and always sort of pairing it with, sorry, pairing your carbohydrates with protein and good fats as well makes sure that our blood glucose response is a lot less. So we’ve got a better way to manage that if we do suffer from insulin resistance. And then fats, anti -inflammatory fats are really important because again, estrogen is not there to be the anti -inflammatory.
agent that it usually was. So we need to focus on increasing our polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Our omega -3s are particularly important, marine -based sources of omega -3, and then also reducing our saturated fat content across the board. So doing these three things, I know they just seem a little bit broad, but they actually bloody work. It’s just getting it right for you as an individual. It’s managing that against how active you are, what your goals are, but also…
what your food preferences are. And I think this, you know, we throw a big blanket, but unfortunately, if you’re not sitting with someone as a professional working out what you like to eat, you’re not likely to keep it up as well. So yeah, that’s a big sort of component. So taking all of those principles and just applying it to you as an individual is very important.
Jess (25:39.63)
out of interest, because the intermittent fasting thing comes up so much and I’m running my own group program at the moment, which is for women of different ages and it just comes up so often. But for you, it sounds like you’re very much like this is not supportive of active aging women who are wanting to thrive in life.
Ange (26:03.184)
Yes, I think there is a place for it, don’t get me wrong, and it is a tool that we pull out of the toolbox if necessary, and I have done that on an individual basis as well, but I find in the perimenopausal phase specifically, it does not contribute to…
A, first and foremost great results, which is the reason why you’d probably be wanting to do it. And B, it’s just not the time in your life to be doing it. So when we abstain from food and we give people a food eating window versus a non -food eating window, unfortunately what happens is those beautiful nutrients that we wanna have, particularly maybe even around exercise. A lot of my midlife women get exercise done early in the mornings because they don’t have any other time to do it.
And if their fasting window then covers that time period, then they’re missing out on this beautiful opportunity to actually provide our body with the nutrients that’s gonna help support the exercise that we’re doing. So you really can’t put yourself in a hole. And unfortunately, the timing of fasting just does not work with my midlife women. And look, there’s needless to say, I think a lot of us could benefit from working with our circadian rhythm. So working with…
daylight hours and eating in daylight hours and switching off a little bit before bedtime to help that sleep and that hygiene that we speak about in terms of getting better sleep management because that’s one thing that is considerably affected, particularly if you are suffering from things such as hot flashes and night sweats, another bit of symptomology that sort of comes in because our thermostat’s a little bit affected, that signal in our hypothalamus isn’t actually.
doing its job properly because of the fluctuation of estrogen and progesterone not coming up if we have more anovulatory cycles. So cycles where we just don’t ovulate. Our beautiful symphony of hormones, which would naturally be doing its thing, it’s not actually doing it in the right way anymore. And so we feel the brunt of that a little bit more effectively. And if you can think about feeling like that and then fasting on top of that, it just puts more fuel to the fire. It increases our stress management.
Ange (28:03.504)
increases our cortisol levels and it just doesn’t make us feel good. So none of which what I see within my ladies is you know we can always get weight loss, we can always improve body composition but fasting is probably not the thing I look to first other than probably a 12 -hour just you know day -to -day fast which is just including your sleep. So stopping food maybe two to three hours prior to bedtime and then maybe having breakfast between one to two hours of rising.
Jess (28:29.966)
looking at that more time restricted style where it’s less forcing, holding off to the middle of the day. Because as you said, if they’re training in the morning, then they’re fasting, they’re missing that protein hit to recover, they’re missing that first protein hit of the morning, which is so important for that muscle maintenance or growth or just preventing the decline.
And then often you have the conversation and they’re feeling tired, they’re craving sugar, and then they’re making those calories up with other foods later on, rather than thinking about protein and fiber and good quality carbohydrates. So I’m really glad we kind of dived into that. I wanted to call it out because it’s something which I see across the board at all different kinds of points in time. I’d love to talk about exercise next, because I think this is gonna be a lot of myth busting and a lot of…
you know, facts about what women should actually be doing, which is different to probably how they grew up and what they’ve been told, but what types of training are important for women in general, but obviously the aging active woman.
Ange (29:43.696)
we need to find time to resistance train. So, you know, I alluded to the fact that protein’s important, but it’s even, it’s heightened or it’s even made better when you actually resistance train. So you need the stimulus.
to stop that muscle wastage, particularly with estrogen not in the picture, not as much in the picture anymore. So we need to start getting into the gym, we need to start lifting. Now, look, that could be very different in terms of resistance. It might not necessarily be in the gym, but you will probably, the goal is to get you in the gym, which means lifting weights that are quite challenging. And the idea with that is that, you know, you can start wherever you are and that’s fine. I often get people say, is Pilates enough? Unfortunately, it isn’t.
So when we look at that, it might be enough for now to start with. It’s a great way to sort of as an introductory, I think for most women in the generation that are in their 40s and 50s now, you’re right Jess, like it’s not something that they probably would have done. You know, I at 17 years old left, the day I left high school, I walked into a female only gym and I said, can you show me how to put on muscle? Now they almost fell over backwards because…
It just was unheard of at the time. It was the cardio bunnies. It was doing as much cardio as you can to be as thin as possible. And because we just associated with the less weight, the less you weigh, the healthier you are. And we know that that’s not at all the case. Weight is not a reflection of our health. And so unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of preconceived conditioning, a lot of stuff that might have worked in the past as well. But unfortunately, when it comes to long, long cardio or excessive cardio, you know,
over two hours of training or multiple cardiovascular sessions. You’re not focusing on resistance training. Unfortunately, you’re just going to accelerate that muscle loss in an environment like that. You also increase your cortisol through the roof because a lot of people aren’t actually fueling that amount of exercise or energy expenditure well. And it puts you in things like pickles, like low energy availability, which affects your menstrual cycles. Now, a lot of the time, sometimes that could mask or underlie
Ange (31:44.88)
menopause and what’s happening in that menopause transition. So we said that menopause is the 12 month absence of your period. Now, if the average age for that is about 51 for a female, anywhere between sort of 51 to 55, but if you’re younger than that and you haven’t had a menstrual cycle for a year, you might also want to explore or investigate, is it because of…
low energy availability that this has been absent. So I just want to flag that because I know obviously you’ve got an audience that is quite active and if there’s things going on with your menstrual cycle, it’s the first thing you need to stop and look at and say, why is this happening? So please start to track and record your menstrual cycle. It is a beautiful indication of your health. And so if there is something that goes wrong or, you know, hey, why are then we need to go, well, what’s causing this?
So, sorry, divert, but I think it was important to go down there, but going back to resistance training. So we need, I’m gonna say a minimum twice a week. I’d love women to get three to four sessions over 10 days. And the reason why I say 10 days and not seven days is because recovery is very important. So when we’re asking you to train at a level that is challenging for your muscles, that we create a little bit of microfiber tearing and we actually create a little bit of inflammation, it’s actually important that we do that.
to build and develop and get stronger and fitter. But we want to be having the recovery in between that timeframe. So sometimes giving you an extra three days in between, you know, the week is actually okay. So more so working maybe on a fortnightly cycle, particularly if you’re busy and can’t get sessions in or you’re traveling and doing these types of things. So three to four sessions over 10 days is my ultimate goal and aim for you.
In combination with a little bit of interval training. So the interval training is important for the blood glucose management for helping reduce our insulin resistance risk and for that visceral fat accumulation. So we need to start doing not necessarily hip but also sit. So shorter interval training. So 30 seconds or less efforts repetitively over a period of time. So you can tack this onto your…
Ange (33:47.568)
maybe end of resistance training sessions or you can do it as separate sessions. But the idea is to get the heart rate up there in order to help our blood glucose. So our body requires and relies on blood glucose or glucose in general when we’re doing higher intensity activity. So we want to be throwing those into the mix. I think it’s also very important to add in multi -directional and plyometrics in terms of by way of movement because it helps the bone matrix itself.
So the integrity of our bone, obviously now, estrogen’s not there, so we need to be counteracting that with some calcium and vitamin D as well nutritionally, as well as our protein. Collagen, we might want to consider something like that as well, particularly for bone, but also adding that type of movement that’s going to be challenging your bone from multiple levels, and also balance and coordination, because that’s a lot of things that could help prevent falls as we start to age as well.
I think a lot of people talk about zone two cardio. It’s very prominent at the moment, which is just simply about 60 to 70 % of your maximal heart rate zone. So technically the fat burning zone. It’s really important just to get that in just in general, I think just from cardiovascular benefits, but don’t ever discredit as we had mentioned already before, just the incidental activity. There’s actually some studies that are looking at about…
around about 3 ,000 steps a day actually can yield significant mortality and cardiovascular benefits. So not sort of aiming for that 10 ,000 steps might just be so unattainable for some people. But you know, obviously, sometimes in that case, around about sort of eight to 9000 steps is where it sort of peters out. So you don’t get any extra more further benefits from that aspect. And I think like I said, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s about identifying, do I have resistance training there? Can I throw in a little bit of that?
interval training, can I then across the board put some slow steady more cardio stuff in there but under an hour? I don’t like my ladies kind of doing any more than 60 minutes of that sort of stuff as well because I want to try and reduce that cortisol and then again we’re balancing that with energy intake too so yeah that’s that’s kind of where I’m at with that.
Jess (35:55.534)
And in terms of like, I’m just thinking people love a class. I wanna go and do a class or join a gym. And I imagine given what we were talking about, like some of the papers being quoted here are two years old. Like this is a new emerging area, which means it’s not mainstream, which means not everyone is across this information. So if someone’s thinking, obviously if they can see a PT and that’s available to them, then that’s fantastic.
but, and have that really individualized approach. But if they’re wanting to join somewhere, what should they be looking out for or what questions should they be asking to make sure it is appropriate for them and their age and what they’re wanting to target with some of the things that you’ve mentioned here today?
Ange (36:43.632)
That’s actually a really great question. And I think it’s really helpful because a lot of the time women are very scared to even first.
step foot into maybe like a globo gym, like a big box type of gym where you’re kind of like, here’s all the equipment and you’re kind of like, I have no idea where to start. So look, often, you know, you might be able and have access, as you mentioned, to to sit with a trainer to show you that sort of stuff. A lot of the pin weight machines in these big gyms are actually really beneficial, like they actually help you to go through the movement itself. So it’s not as high risk in by way of injury management. But I do have to say,
Any exercise is great. So whilst I’m very specific about that, it’s really nice just to encourage women to do any type of movement or activity. So please, if you’re enjoying something and you love, say for instance, a zumba class or a pump class or some description like that, please just start there. And then as we start to get a little bit more involved about understanding your body and building your confidence, then we can start to then go, okay, let’s get a little bit more specific about what that.
programming looks like or what it entails. But firstly, I think safety of any description is always really important. So knowing that you’re going into a space that A, you feel comfortable with, B, don’t be afraid to ask questions. But also the things that I sort of tend to get my women to have language about using are, you know, things such as it might not even, it might just be an observation, but I don’t want to sound, there’s a lot of amazing young trainers out there, but they just don’t get the life.
stage and when they’re saying no you can do more and you know in yourself it doesn’t feel good that’s a bit of a red flag to say this person doesn’t understand the stage of change that I’m in I might look for somebody else in terms of that better guidance from somewhere else so don’t be sort of forced I always say forced to push beyond your current capability but also the same token is okay can we be challenged in a way that you know we’re actually improving and now
Ange (38:43.504)
our muscles need that without the estrogen and we need to be challenging, but also we also need to be thinking safety first. Am I comfortable here? Do I vibe with the people and you know the people that are around and often I would actually seek more functional training facilities as opposed to kind of just big box globo gyms or big group classes and things like that.
So yeah, I know I don’t want to be too specific with that because I don’t want to call anyone out. But yeah, you’ll just kind of get a feel and then you can take it up a level and then going into, you know, maybe working with an exercise physiologist that might actually know a little bit more about that. And as you said, Jess, it’s really new and emerging. A lot of people say, you know, we don’t know too much about it. So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do anything different. That’s true to an extent.
But it’s also understanding and working with the midlife female and just like anything, you know, you’ve got to present with whatever scenario or circumstance that you’re in and move from there. So I know I’m not really specific with that, but hopefully that gives you some element of what to look out for and maybe just have a feel for how.
Jess (39:41.166)
No, it’s –
It’s amazing. And I mean, I’d encourage anyone listening. I mean, Ange has so many available resources. So we should probably mention at this point where best place for people to find you. And also I know you’ve just recently released an amazing winter peri menu plan because a lot of the time it’s like great to have the knowledge, but also like how do we actually eat the food? And I think that’s a resource a lot of people would find.
really beneficial and a great entry point to get into your world in terms of like pricing and what else is available as well.
Ange (40:20.496)
Yeah, thanks Jess. Like it really is. It’s a nice beautiful place to start. If you’re just going, sometimes a woman just come to me and go, just tell me what to eat, and I’m so sick of the noise out there. I don’t know what to follow. I’m so bloody confused. How do I know if it’s right for me? How do I know if I’m trusting this person without them selling a million different supplements before they even talk about food? So definitely start there, but you can find everything on my website, which is just my name. So www .angelicclarke .com .au. If you look there, there’s ways to work with me. It starts with the perimenu.
plan which is just seasonal there’s other seasons in there as well if you operate in a different time zone or if you’re in a different season in the world and then you know there is also I’m going to say specifically as well I actually have put everything into a 30 page ebook everything that we talk about today Jess all the you know the amount the amounts of you know macronutrients call them my midlife macros it’s all in there like there’s nothing that I hide I don’t want anything to be a secret like I want so many women to understand and know this that
I’ve put everything into that little e -book, the things that you’re gonna need to know, and then what I’ve done with the peri -menu plans is I’ve brought them to life with food. So then you don’t have to go, okay, well, where am I gonna get extra calcium from? And these types of things, I know we haven’t, we’ve spent a lot of time on macros, but micros are really important, particularly calcium needs increase. Iron goes down.
B6 also increases and vitamin D increases when we hit those menopausal years. So these are really important nutrients, but a lot of which we can get from our diet. And I always say, you know, food first and supplements second, we’re very much on the same pathway with that as well. But if it helps you to get to a position where you’re really good with your nutrition, it just might help to have the science and the underlying reasons as to why you’re doing that as well.
just helps with keeping it up. So yeah, all the information can be sort of found there. And as I said, you can start there. We’ve got coaching programs, group coaching, and one -on -one individual attention as well. So plenty of ways to work with me.
Jess (42:17.518)
so many great ways. Definitely head over, check Ange out. And then the other place who I know is a friend and a mentor of yours is the very amazing Dr. Stacey Sims. So she has a lot of wonderful information as well. So start with Ange. Ange is all about the nutrition and then Stacey does a bit more with the training. But both do both, but whenever I have anybody ask me, I just actually sent a friend.
your Instagram page, like shared yourself and Stacey with her yesterday because she was asking me, she’s like, I’ve got a great idea for you. I’m like, it’s not my exact area of expertise, but I know the people.
Ange (43:02.16)
And it’s hard just to go back, I know it’s taken me so many years to get to this point, but honestly, I ended up in this space because nobody was doing it and it’s such a tragedy. Every woman is going to go through menopause, every single one of us, if we’re lucky to live past 55, which is probably why we didn’t know much about it because often a lot of us didn’t live past the point where we were menopausal. So now we’re dealing with, like you said, the ageing population and how best to live that out.
as best as we can. So yeah, absolutely follow Stacey. She’s an amazing mentor, amazing friend of mine. And she is very specific about the exercise as well. So that’s, yeah, a combination.
Jess (43:39.15)
It’s the combo. It’s not one or the other guys, it’s both and it’s prioritizing that and it’s investing in your current self, which you’ll reap the benefits of now, but it really is about setting your future second half of your life up for success. We are getting towards the end. I did want to quickly ask you, because I know you’re very like food first, training, you know, exercise and nutrition, a king and queen, but there is a place for supplements in these.
stage of life? Do you have a few heroes or favorites that you really love and maybe any that are getting airtime that you think, nah, absolutely not.
Ange (44:20.528)
I love this question. Yeah, look, you know what, I often find that because women in midlife are so busy, sometimes I work in a roundabout way. If we’re one on one, I actually would generally suggest supplementation just to give them a kickstart. So when you start to feel better, you start to seek more ways to actually live a better and healthier lifestyle. So for me, it is about identifying.
What are the ones with evidence that we can absolutely with certainty say that actually improves and then going and getting you to test and measure that against your own lifestyle and how it helps you and then making a decision afterwards. So my top ones, I always just blanketly, I would happily say put women on creatine monohydrate. I think for me, particularly as an aging population, there’s so many benefits. Yes, from a muscle perspective and helping in terms of training. Traditionally, we’ve used that a lot in sports dietetics.
for the power element, the power aspect of the creatine phosphate system. So for us though, in terms of midlife women, it’s brain metabolism. Like the energy in terms of brain metabolism, a lot of women come to me and say, I just can’t deal with this brain fog. What is going on? I’m like, yeah, estrogen has so many receptors in so many areas of which one of the biggest ones that we find that affects your lifestyle is your cognitive function. So creatine monohydrate, I don’t do any rapid.
loading just a safe baseline dose is three to five grams a day, that’s it. But be consistent and take it every day. Doesn’t need to be around training. Again, I mentioned collagen, which I think is important. There’s some really cool promising research to say the integrity of the bone matrix has actually helped with that. Generally, I would look at collagen being used with tendon and joint support. Again, around training though, in combination with vitamin C. Fantastic to do in there, particularly because most women do report.
joint aches and pains. So that’s definitely something I explore pretty quickly. The other thing is, and I know we didn’t talk about this specifically, but polyphenols, so the use of anthocyanins, things such as, you know, tart cherry juice, 2 before, so black currant powders. If you’re particularly active, I do find without the caffeine, I tend to find that women are a little bit more sensitive, particularly if they’re stress levels through the roof.
Ange (46:25.776)
their sleep’s not great, I tend to not like to go down the caffeine pathway even though it does delay fatigue. I tend to like to use anthocyanins instead and they’re also contributing to good gut health as well. So yeah, anti -inflammatory as well with having that beautiful high antioxidant compound. So they’re kind of the three ones. Also anti -inflammatory, good research around turmeric or curcumin, active form of turmeric in terms of supplementation. But I would probably look at diet food first before I went down that pathway.
I know it’s not specifically a supplement in general, but to try and help women get their amount of protein in a day away protein isolate is very handy to have. I know it’s not 100 % necessary, but bloody hell, it makes life a lot easier, particularly first thing in the morning, particularly around training. So making sure that that really good, high quality, good whack of high quality protein, putting that beautiful amino acid leucine in there for muscle protein synthesis, definitely have that.
as a staple around. But that’s probably the things off the top of my head. I do have a bit of a secret sauce. There is a microbiome essentials that I like to use. And I can give you all these sort of links if you want to. But I generally find it helps with increasing that fiber content from the things that we can’t get from our food. So we can get a lot of it from our food, but we’re trying to hit 25 grams of fiber.
Jess (47:37.39)
Yeah, for sure.
Ange (47:48.496)
intake a day, very hard to do if you’re not sort of adding a little bit to that. And these are the fibers that you’re just not going to get from the foods that we regularly eat day to day. So yeah, the fertile gut microbiome essentials is has been a game changer for most of my ladies in terms of reducing gut. Yeah, gut health, sorry, gut bloat and poor malabsorption of nutrients. Very interesting. I don’t know if we can specifically say this. I know I’m going on a tangent, but it’s important.
Our gut microbiome, the diversity of our gut microbiome mimics quite similarly to a male and when we start to go through that menopause transition. So we think that estrogen and the lowering, effectively the lowering of that has an influence on reducing our gut microbiome diversity. So we start to see more gut problems in midlife. So if that is you, we definitely need to focus on gut health. Obviously we should be doing that anyway, but I think it’s very important that it is now not a time to delay. We need to get on top of that.
Jess (48:42.414)
amazing and we’ll just call out even though the product is called Fertile Gut which people might be thinking is this a suitable product for me? I know that as you said you use it across the board in different age categories because it is just such a good product so we’ll definitely link that in the show notes.
Ange (48:51.12)
I don’t want to be fertile.
Ange (49:07.12)
Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting because again, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to hold on to as much estrogen as we can. If we can delay menopause, that’s essentially what we’re trying to do. So the reason or the how we do that is to try and be as fertile as we possibly can be because menopause is the cessation of our reproductive ability. So if we can try to extend that as much as we can, there is some data, it’s not specific, I don’t think as yet to come out and say we can delay menopause, but…
Jess (49:07.406)
Ange (49:35.152)
There’s about a three year transition that they can extend that with from focusing on our food related and exercise habits. So that is pretty amazing. So even though, like I said, you might not want to fall pregnant, that’s fine. But keeping your body in a position where it could be is actually more beneficial to us, particularly by way of reducing our cardiovascular disease risk factors as well in older life.
Jess (49:58.094)
my gosh, Ange, so much incredible information. I can’t thank you enough. Before we wrap today’s episode, I do have one question that I love to ask all of my guests. So switching gears a little bit, and we’re talking about you, not necessarily about all of your expertise, but what three things, behaviors, rituals, practices, whatever you wanna call them, but what three things do you have in your life?
that help you do all of the things you do and help you stay at the top.
Ange (50:32.4)
this is amazing. I am going to say everyone needs a coach. So whilst I have a very high level standard of my coaching, I pour a lot of my energy, my heart, my soul into what I do work wise. The only way that I can do that is to help restore myself. So I do have some practices around that that help balance my energy and give me the time I need to be the best version or the best.
you know, I guess output that I can do for somebody else. So I do take specifically time to do yoga. I hated yoga. I didn’t have time for yoga, but I love it for the breath work. And it’s just for me, it’s a stress management technique. So I just don’t, that’s always in my life, whether it’s like I said, breath work, meditation or yoga, that’s definitely something I put at the top of my list. I think it’s very important for midlife women to start looking for ways in which to do that. In fact,
You should be doing it earlier to prevent burnout. But I’m very aware of those signs before they get there. So I think putting things in place and having the tools where you can rely on that and just having them in day to day is amazing. I exercise, I just think for me, it was my first love. I’ve got an exercise physiology degree. It was something that I was so passionate about to start with. My intention has changed around exercise where it was.
more so about being the best physique I could possibly be, using all the science we had available, using my body as a guinea pig. Now I exercise because of the endorphin effect, how it makes me feel and to make sure I live not only longer, but to live well. So it’s a non -negotiable for me. I actually tend to feel like I enjoy exercise better now. I’m not doing it from a weight management focused position. It is purely because of how it makes me feel and I just feel so empowered doing that as well, particularly as a female.
And the last thing I have to say is that I actually haven’t said this publicly, but now it’s going to be said in stone. So I don’t drink. I do not drink. And I think, and I’m very, I didn’t realise how passionate I was about that, but particularly as I’ve started to see the research that continues to come out, I cannot ignore the evidence. And every time that this happens, when I look at the ways in which to minimise and or reduce alcohol, it…
Ange (52:53.424)
has such a profound effect on the individual sitting in front of me and I think you just get more clarity in life, you get way more out of it and I think it’s just the best thing that people can do. So I don’t know if that’s popular but that’s it.
Jess (53:08.27)
No, it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s what you found to work for you. And I think, I think the, the alcohol conversation is an important one to have and more people are reducing the intake. More people are becoming sober. I can understand why you’re like, you know, I haven’t actually said this publicly because sometimes I feel like when we put labels on things, but if you feel passionate about it and it’s one of your top three, like sing it from the rooftops, it may, it may translate, it may help somebody and.
it may be a reflection point that they needed. And thank you so very much for joining us today. We’ll have all the links in the show notes. Make sure you head over, check out angelicclarke .com so we can check out the website and we can also look at the Instagram as well as the links to some of the supplements that were mentioned. Otherwise, thank you once again for tuning into another episode of Stay at the Top. If you haven’t subscribed, please do so.
If you’d very kindly leave a rating and a review, it means so very much. Otherwise on that note, I’ll be back again next week. And in the meantime, I hope you will keep staying at the top.
Jess (54:18.574)
Alrighty. Thank you.