Are you concerned your metabolism has slowed down?
If you are, you are not alone. It is one of the most common questions people ask as they move through midlife. But what if the problem is not your metabolism at all?
In this episode of Stay at the Top, I’m joined by Angelique Clark, advanced perimenopause physique dietitian, nutritionist and exercise physiologist. Together we unpack what is actually happening in the body during perimenopause and midlife and why muscle becomes one of the most important assets you can build for health, performance and longevity.
We cut through much of the noise around metabolism, weight gain and midlife changes and focus on the practical strategies that genuinely move the needle. Ange also shares her PERI Perfect Plate concept, the exercise hierarchy that gives you the biggest return for your time and the role muscle plays in supporting metabolic health as we age.
If you feel like your body has changed in ways you do not fully understand, or you want evidence based guidance on what actually matters for your health in midlife and beyond, this episode will give you clarity and direction.
In this episode Angelique shares:
- What is actually happening to metabolism during perimenopause and midlife
- Why muscle becomes one of the most valuable assets for long term health and performance
- The role declining oestrogen plays in changes to muscle, body composition and metabolic health
- Ange’s PERI Perfect Plate and how to structure meals for midlife physiology
- The exercise hierarchy that gives you the biggest return for your time
- Strength training and muscle as a foundation for metabolic health and longevity
- Which supplements are worth considering and which are mostly hype
- How to filter through the overwhelming amount of information online about midlife health
Key Quotes
“Muscle is one of the most powerful assets you can build for your health as you age.”
“What most people blame on metabolism is often a loss of muscle.”
“Midlife is not the time to be doing less resistance training. It is the time to prioritise it.”
Episode Resources
Listen to the previous episode with Angelique
Angelique’s Website https://www.angeliqueclark.com.au/
Angelique’s Instagram https://www.instagram.com/angeliqueclark_nutrition/
Peri Lean Method™ Coaching https://www.angeliqueclark.com.au/peri-lean-method-coaching
Peri Set Go – 7 Day Challenge https://www.angeliqueclark.com.au/perisetgo
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/?hl=en
Jess Spendlove LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-spendlove-64173bb8/
About Angelique
Angelique Clark is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and Exercise Physiologist specialising in nutrition, body composition and metabolic health for women in midlife. With a background in physique sports dietetics and advanced body composition transformation, she helps women navigate perimenopause using evidence-based nutrition, resistance training and lifestyle strategies that support muscle, metabolic health and long-term wellbeing so they can age better.
Ange is the creator of The Peri Lean Method™, Peri28™ Program and Peri Set Go™, and is passionate about translating complex research into practical tools that help women build strength, improve body composition and support long-term healthspan through the menopausal transition and beyond.
Through her clinical work, education and online programs, her mission is to empower women to move beyond decades of dieting and take ownership of their health with strategies grounded in both science and practical, real life.
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 Spendlove (00:03.276)
Are you concerned your metabolism has slowed down? If you are, you are not alone. This is one of the most common questions and concerns that I hear. But what if the problem is not your metabolism at all? And that is what we’re covering in today’s episode. I’m so thrilled to welcome back Ange Clark.
Now Angie is an advanced perimenopause physique dietician, nutritionist and exercise physiologist. And in today’s episode, we unpack what is actually happening to the body through perimenopause, why muscle becomes one of the most important assets you can build in midlife and beyond. And this is for men and women and the practical things that actually move the needle for your health.
your longevity. We also talk about ANGES PERI PERFECT PLATE – the exercise hierarchy that gives you the biggest return for your time and which supplements are worth considering and which are mostly hype. This episode will clarify so much noise that you’re probably hearing or seeing on your feed when it comes to metabolism, midlife and metabolic health. Let’s get into today’s episode.
The Wonderful Ange Clark, welcome back to Stay At The Top.
Ange (00:25.843)
Thank you so much for having me back Jess.
Jess Spendlove (00:28.726)
I’m looking forward to this. I’ve had so many requests for more content like this and I thought who better than the expert herself. Let’s bring her back and let’s dive straight in because we’ve got so much to cover. We’ve got a time frame and today I really want to kind of have it as a continuation of the last episode. So I will link that in the show notes. It was season two episode 10, but we’re changing it up today. I wanted to actually start with something quite practical, something us health professionals
are not always comfortable with, which is talking about ourselves, but I saw you post your own DEXA scan recently. It was a six month comparison and I thought let’s start there, let’s talk about it, let’s talk about the results and then let’s talk about what you did to get those results because the results were amazing and it really does show that even in this phase of life where there’s a lot of talk about perimenopause, menopause, you know, the body composition changes, but
with the right targeted strategies that you speak about, you can get the results that you want.
Ange (01:34.899)
Yeah, and it was quite enlightening. I think if we, you saw the results from the last six month change, but I want to actually just take people prior to that and why I wanted to do something about it and really went in with the inventory of actually seeing and creating the change based on all the stuff that I talk about. Cause basically I was a perimenopause statistic. So the last time we got together, we spent a lot of time sort of looking at the research and literature and the trends of what’s happening to females body composition wise.
as we start to go through this menopause transition and often what comes up in the literature is that we lose muscle, we put on body fat, subcutaneous and visceral fat so in and around the belly and then concurrently so what we’re doing is we’re having a look at our lifestyle and we’re going well we’re probably not moving as much and you know just midlife in general is really really busy and that’s exactly what I was living right so at 40 I decided that it is the perfect time for myself to take myself off and get a dexer like I tell
everyone if they’ve hit 40 to do and so off I went got a dexa and originally that sort of that first report showed me my baseline and where I was at and that was really good because then I would have had a comparison against that and my goal was to do one every year but life got in the way and I didn’t get back there until I was 42 so went back in at 42 and I was a little bit disappointed with those results so over the course of that two-year time frame I had actually
dropped 900 grams of lean muscle or lean tissue and I’d put on 1.7 grams of fat. Obviously then my body fat percentage increased it was sitting at 24.8 it went up to 27.3 which is still you know anything under 30 for females is still okay but I was like well hang on a minute what just happened what did I do or what have I done for the last two years that got me that sort of result which is a little bit shocking and amongst that there was also one thing that I didn’t really which actually
took me a little bit by surprise and that was looking at my lumbar bone mineral density and that actually wasn’t too high and it wasn’t statistically significant and it wasn’t diagnostic of anything like osteopenia but it did indicate that I thought I had pretty good bone mineral density because I’ve been strength training most of my life. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and now there’s a lot of things that have happened between then namely my mum getting diagnosed with severe osteopenia that really shocked me as well so genetically I probably don’t have an amazing bones but like a lot of women
Ange (04:04.449)
particularly in my era, born in the 80s, we probably under-fuelled and over-trained for a very long period of time. So when I look at that, it was probably very prevalent that my bone mineral density probably wasn’t going to be at the highest that it was going to be. So it got me into gear. It helped motivate me to do something about it. And because I teach about all the principles of how to reverse this with most of my women that I speak to, I basically was like, well, here we go. I’ll better practice what I preach. So the next scan that I did after that was six months. So I gave myself six months.
between that second scan and obviously then doing all the things that I’m gonna maybe share with you that I did and it was an amazing result and again I didn’t do anything too crazy or too like I didn’t upturn my whole life and that’s the biggest thing to remember I was just really consistent with the principles that we need to be hitting over the course of our midlife and now it doesn’t really we don’t have a lot of room for margin of error but we just need to be consistent we don’t need to be perfect but it needs to be consistent so over the course of that six months
I was able to reverse and even better what I’d actually done over the two years prior So my fat mass decreased that 1.7 kilos, which is so bizarre But it was exactly what I’d put on in the other time frame But the great thing was that my lean mass actually increased 1.8 kilos So whilst I went about my everyday my weight actually didn’t change too much on the scales and that’s deceiving because ordinarily people would normally think gosh I’m putting all this effort in I’m doing all the right things. not seeing a result
I may as well just bloody give up and that’s often what women do but underneath the surface my body absolutely was responding and until I got that DEXA scan that was six months after I would not have known that if I just faced my judgment on my weight on the scale. So that was the favorable result I think it was so nice for me to actually receive that but the biggest challenge I think for most women is to not bury your head in the sand and to really actually go and get the measurements done that can tell us a lot more about what your body composition is doing right
than just relying on the scale weight to tell you maybe an indication of your health.
Jess Spendlove (06:09.197)
before we dive into what you did, because I think it’ll be so encouraging and obviously people want to know the information and as we were talking about, like our feeds, particularly your feed is just overflowing with all of the information because it’s…
topic is hot, you’re engaging in it, everyone’s creating content, but having and sifting through this information from somebody who is a true expert, who is science trained from both a nutrition and dietetics, but also an exercise science and physiology perspective. Like we are not getting anyone who lives and brings this space more. But my question was, while you had to stick to it for six months, not stick to it, but commit to a process which according to the scales were not shifting,
Were you feeling different or whether that was subjectively in how you felt getting stronger or in your clothes? Were there any signs there or was it really like, I’m not sure if things are changing but I’m sticking to this process for six months because I don’t know what the average is but I feel like people if they don’t get results in four to six weeks they’re off the wagon.
Ange (07:18.311)
and it’s a great point that you bring up and they’re absolutely were signs other than the weight on the scales that I was heading in the right direction and it is really important because I think if we only use weight as a success measure we miss often a lot of the things that are improving on our way and so I actually wouldn’t have given that up anyway even if my results weren’t as good as what they were but it goes to show that the science does work and we know a thing or two about how to manipulate and change that so the first thing of course was my energy levels I found that that
was actually really consistent and so there weren’t days where I was just super jacked and high and you know all days where I was really really low because I stuck to that consistency and I’m a little bit of a stickler for commitment so my biggest thing was I have to be consistent so if I missed a day I didn’t fret about it I just kind of got on with it and so over the course of that time frame there were weeks where of course I didn’t you know train as hard as what I probably anticipated or wanted to often in the perimenopause transition we are starting to see a little bit
symptomology that might be indicative of some hormonal undulation and for me that actually presents itself with migraines and headaches and I didn’t have a lot of that before I hit 40 so that’s definitely something that I noticed in and around my menstrual cycle particularly my period so where my hormones would be undulating a little bit more and we call that maybe PMS week for some of us that are normally or still in a normal cycle reproductive cycle so I noticed that those types of things did slow me down and then there were things like you know kids in school and all that sort of stuff that had to you know life takes over and I
need to take priority of that and so there were sessions that I missed but I never ever got to the point where I was really like kind of burnt out for a better word but there were never days where I was like yep let’s go you know I was completely motivated absolutely not I just was consistent and the more consistent you are the more you just show up right so I committed to that had really good programming and then as I was recording my programming in terms of the weights I was lifting the sets and reps and these types of things that record actually showed my improvement and I got started to get really
about that and so that was the other thing that kind of drove me to keep going with it because I was like well I’ve recorded this and now I know that I’m aware of the numbers last week I lifted this this week it’s predicting me to lift this okay I better not go under that you know so there was there were changes that I made in reference to other data that I was collecting over the course of that time frame I also got a whoop so you know there was that data as well that kind of layers on to it you know exactly what I mean and so again we’re a bit of a stickler for data aren’t we just
Ange (09:47.713)
We sort of love those markers not everyone has access to that but if you just go on how I was feeling My clothes definitely were fitting better and of course my strength was so empowering in the gym And of course that was a big factor particularly as my mom got diagnosed in the middle of that with that osteo severe osteopenic Diagnosis and I thought gosh like I don’t have a choice now like it is now or never and I’m committing to this and it’s it definitely didn’t stop after six months either
Jess Spendlove (10:13.677)
steam ahead and that’s what momentum and results does. I’m interested to know, this will kind of tie in with what you did, but what shifted? What did you either lock into more, whether it was consistently, what did you dial into more or dial up or yeah, tell us the changes that you made because you were coming from a baseline of you teach this, you preach this, you were doing this.
in some capacity. So what did you look into and then like take us through, you know, the kind of the priorities?
Ange (10:45.471)
Well, I hate to say it, but my husband actually picked it up. And so I always say everyone needs a coach, right? You’re often just living in your body, in your life, and you don’t actually, you know, observe what it is that you’re doing in terms of habits. But the people that live next to you and are closest to you might actually have a better insight. So my husband actually said to me after I came home, disappointed in that body composition change. And here’s another fun fact. I actually did it on my birthday. So on my 42th birthday. that disappointing result probably I wouldn’t suggest to do on your birthday. However,
came home and noticeably it was a moment in time my husband went and do you think you’re actually eating enough protein i was like what did you just say shut your mouth but
Jess Spendlove (11:24.013)
you
Ange (11:27.367)
I did take his advice on board and I started to measure what it was specifically that I was eating. So I didn’t calorie count. didn’t go and like crunch the numbers and be obsessed about my fitness power. I literally just started to weigh and measure my food. And because I’ve got a really good knowledge base of like what a good protein foods and what to add. I just started with calculating how much protein I was going to get in every single meal and then to make sure I’m eating that on four occasions over the day. So that was the first thing that I did and automatically what happened
as result of that is that my appetite did actually change. The other thing I made sure of was that I was getting a really good decent amount of salad and vegetables every single day and so I often would look at lunches and dinners having to have at least 200 grams of that weighed out. Again I weighed it out, got my food digital food scales out, get them at Kmart, really cheap like it’s actually really easy to do but I just wasn’t doing it and it takes two seconds like literally you’re plating up your food you know pop it there weigh it
It doesn’t actually take much time at all, but those are the two things that I did Specifically that actually then led to all these wonderful changes that happen as a byproduct So when we increase our fiber see my micronutrients increase with that and my protein and by that I mean quality protein as well I then tended to stop snacking Firstly on little things that I was like not even that much it won’t contribute But there were definitely some late-night snackings that I had then put a line in the sand and went I don’t need to do that every night
I’m not really all that hungry for it if I ate better during the day actually I didn’t really feel like it at the end of the night so I just cut out a lot of late night snacking past dinner and then I measured those two things and that was literally all I did and then like I said just got really consistent with my training recording and just making sure that progressive overload was happening so I wasn’t just going and doing lifting the same weights all the time I was really focused on improving each of those markers over time with more or better programming basically with
strength training.
Jess Spendlove (13:28.461)
And I know you’ve got like a peri plate which we’ll get into and a lot of it is kind of what you’ve just touched on. But if you then think about, I’m just really interested to know the detail, where were you lacking it? And therefore where were you over consuming? Like was it breakfast and snacks, which we typically see, which then became the focus.
Ange (13:51.188)
Yeah.
It absolutely was, it was breakfast straight up because I would get up and I get up pretty early because I love a quiet household so often my kids are still in bed, I get some good work done but I love a coffee first thing in the morning so I was putting a bit of collagen into my coffee which boosted the protein amount of that and I had the high protein milk in there so and of course we know that caffeine is a little bit of an appetite suppressant as well so I was actually finding that I was really fine for many hours until then I needed to eat breakfast and then
kind of became a bit of an afterthought because I was like oh now I gotta rush and get the kids out and blah blah blah so I really wasn’t hitting that 30 to 40 grams first up there was a little bit there enough to stop my appetite but then I was falling behind on that and then that setting up for the rest of the day it kind of just rolled into having a later lunch sometimes I got busy and I forgot about that you know I was having one maybe it was a tin of tuna and when I looked at the amount of protein in the 95 gram tin of tuna it’s only like 17 19 grams
or something like that, it wasn’t actually enough and I just wasn’t hitting that each of those occasions which then meant dinner time came around, I wasn’t too hungry so I was kind of doing a pretty good dinner anyway but then that’s when the snacks would happen after dinner because I was just catching up for what I did and missed out on for the rest of the day.
Jess Spendlove (15:08.589)
I talk about it so much. I’m sure you do in some way as well. is like nutrition training, the way you need to eat, particularly in this phase of life. I’m keen to talk about not just the perimenopause transition, but women and men at different time points. I think a lot of this, the principles, in my opinion, transfer. Yes, you need to be more targeted in this.
season of life but realistically a lot of what we’re talking about here in my opinion I’d welcome yours is everybody in in some capacity these are the principles.
Ange (15:46.463)
you
The earlier we do it, the better. You know, when we talk about longevity and aging, the sooner you start, the better. And we can’t change and turn back the clock. But I always say the best time to start was yesterday. So if you’re listening to this and you’re not 40 yet, now’s your opportunity. So setting in motion these principles is going to make sure that you have an easier perimenopause transition or an easier just aging process in general. If you’re not a female, that’s totally fine. And when we understand the aging process, sarcopenia happens. We spoke
about this last time after 30, we’re on the decline. So if we aren’t doing something by way of mechanical loading, resistance training, and then coupled that with the quality of our nutrition at the right times of the day as well, we’re really starting to see an accelerated decline rather than just a slower decline. And we can absolutely do that. And we know that our bodies respond at any age. But I think for a lot of people that don’t capitalize on their youth, they might be able to get away with a little bit more, you know, late night.
probably a little bit more discretionary foods or alcohol and then after a while they realize oh my gosh I’ve set up this pattern in this routine now all of a sudden I’m 40 and it’s very hard for me to change my habits so I think that’s the real key as well I see a lot of people that come into my clinic obviously I’m working with women in their 40s and 50s they have come through with a baggage and a lifetime of being told certain messages certain things that aren’t necessarily conducive to their overall health and well-being from a longevity standpoint and when we’re young we don’t really think about that because why would we?
It’s not on our radar of stuff to think about. I want to prevent myself from falling over and breaking a hip when I’m older. It’s just not the way it is. But I think if we have parents or elders that we look at and we can kind of see a little bit of that pattern playing out, that’s a good telltale sign to let’s put some investments now in our health and wellbeing so we actually don’t have the same trajectory. Because now when we know better, we can do better.
Jess Spendlove (17:41.485)
And I think I want you to go into your plate just to give people a bit of a framework to work off. But how closely did you follow this? When you say consistent, we talking 100 % to get these results or what kind of percentage are you talking?
Ange (17:58.673)
I was pretty dedicated and I don’t really use percentage much because I know everyone’s like know 80-20 rule and that sort of thing and I kind of feel like yes that gives people permission to think that they can have whatever they want but my flexibility really comes in snacks. I now come back to a system of being non-negotiable for breakfast lunch and dinner and if I just start there I think a lot of foundations can be put in those three meals and making sure that we are nailing that every single day then you can be flexible with whatever snacks you want to put on top of that.
And then of course we’ve got training that kind of adds into that and training nutrition kind of bundles with that So if you’re not training you don’t need that training food So let’s just remove that and if you want to have like I said the discretionary foods the snacks and things like that in between Become your buffer for adding those types of things in so I have to say I wasn’t perfect My kids are like I bake for my kids. They have lunch boxes. They’re two growing adolescent boys So their energy needs are very different to mine But I will often have like muffins on the go or a banana bread or something
that coming out of the oven, of course I want to eat that stuff. So I got really savvy about how I designed my plate. The principles were still adhered to but sometimes the carbohydrate budget was chosen with you know maybe a hot cross bun or something like that so I actually never missed out. I never felt like I missed out at all but my non-negotiable was always breakfast, lunch and dinner had to be the peri plate that we might talk about because that was really it. That was the key factor. So again I’m not really about a percentage I’m just about non-negotiables and things you cannot
away with anymore and that is really it. That’s what I did.
Jess Spendlove (19:31.746)
Perfect, I love that. And it was kind of a trick question. I knew it wasn’t going to be 100%. But that is, you people get this all or nothing kind of thinking, which they don’t execute on anyway. Like they’re setting themselves up for failure. But it is clarity on the non-negotiables and then building around that. So take us through the peri plate and any tips for like particularly corporate women, which also might translate to men on navigating these non-negotiables and principles when things are a little bit more out of their control.
Ange (20:00.317)
Yeah, look in an ideal world, I’d love everyone to go back to home cooking, but I know that’s not the reality, particularly if you are busy, you’re in CEO roles, working corporate, and you just don’t have a lot of time in your life anyway, being in midlife regardless. So I think what we can do is remember that the principles I’ll teach you, they’re fundamentals, we’ll talk numbers, we’ll talk stats and things like that, but how to build that can actually be really simple. So we’ll take it to the level of, okay, what does that look like on a plate?
really helpful for people but to give you an idea we start with the science behind that and then we make it practical for you to be able to execute it and you don’t have to cook every single meal once you learn the principles you can take that with you you can’t unlearn it everywhere you go so you will use that as a reference point all the time even if you’re eating out even if you’re grabbing a bang together meal the you know my Friday can’t be f-ed cooking I don’t want to swear but that’s kind of how Friday feels sometimes
Jess Spendlove (20:53.6)
you
The CBF meal.
Ange (20:58.559)
That’s it! That’s exactly what it is. I have plenty of those on rotation. And the more combinations you can get that are easy, that like I said, sometimes you don’t need to cook, they’re no fuss, but you can still bang them together in the right proportion and portion, then the easier this will be to execute and implement as well. So it doesn’t have to be crazy fancy, we don’t all have to be chefs. I do love the fact that I get to explore in the kitchen, but every time I make a meal or I analyse a meal and create a recipe, I’m always thinking about that person on the other end of that going,
make it as quick as I can, let’s make minimal ingredients but it needs to be tasty, it needs to hit the midlife macros that I’ll speak about and it also needs to be something that also the whole family might be able to enjoy because the other thing is like you don’t want to be cooking five separate meals for everybody else in the household and you don’t have to and so what I often say when you’ve just alluded to that Jess is people think it’s all or nothing like shit like mum’s on a diet now everyone the whole household’s gonna get like you know like everyone hates it because you’re in a bad mood because you’re on the diet and everyone else
isn’t and it doesn’t have to be like that at all and I teach a little bit of a deconstructed smorgasbord to help with people that do have family members with differing needs. All we need to do is make sure that you understand your portions and that’s available there for everyone and then they can have their portions by the same token as well and that works with husband and wife sort of teams as well. We can use hand portions and determine those sorts of needs as well but if we get into exactly what I’m looking for for that peri plate, so this is my formula I don’t keep this at all
you can actually go onto my website or my Instagram linked profile and actually download this and save it for yourself. It’s all written there for you so you don’t have to remember it. But what we’re achieving or hoping to achieve is a minimum of 30 grams, hopefully 40 by the time we add other elements of the plate together of protein. That’s the first part.
Jess Spendlove (22:46.571)
So that’s 30 grams high biological value. So you’re talking 30 grams from animal or plant, sorry, legumes, et cetera, as opposed to like the grains which might add it up or something like that. that, yeah.
Ange (22:59.259)
Exactly, exactly. So that’s why I always go 30 grams minimum from HBV high biologically valuable protein and that is generally going to be from when we’re looking at the quality of those sources we’re looking at the potential foods that contain the highest amount of essential amino acids and these are of course other things that we have to obtain from our food we can’t assimilate it in our body and so particularly the one that we look at from an amino acid perspective is leucine and leucine is a really great trigger for muscle protein synthesis it’s got what’s going to help us to stop and delay that
sarcopenic effect, just aging of muscle and so when we are looking for those types of foods they are particularly animal based. So I would always suggest because of course we’re layering on top of that maybe some body fat that’s increasing at the same time as muscles dropping so if we can get a lean cuts of any sort of animal based like skinless chicken, breast or thigh, actually thigh fun fact is a little bit higher in iron so that might be a little bit more important as we start to age as well for females. But you know beautiful cuts of
fish like you know omega-3s are present in those types of foods as well particularly salmon the oily fishes the mackerels sardines if you want to go down that pathway but then there’s also this wonderful animal-based products that have exploded in the supermarket that can actually have a little higher amounts of protein than what we normally would have been able to access so all our dairies that are strained or high protein as it says on the packet they’re really good ones to kind of keep an eye out for as well and then by default they actually
have a really concentrated amount of calcium which then of course is very good for our bone mineral density as well as we start to age. So those are the types of kind of high biologically valuable foods I want present on that plate and the portions will change depending on what food you’re actually looking at but we’re wanting the total amount to accrue to 30 grams of protein as a minimum. Now ideally yes we absolutely can go to 40 grams but as you mentioned Jess you know there’s some other elements of the plate that we’ll put together with that that might bump that up a little bit more and one of those is getting high
carbohydrates so it’s not about not having carbohydrates I think lots of people go down the low-carb pathway they think that it helps them lose more weight we absolutely know that’s not the case but the higher protein grain that we get the more protein contributes to the total amount but we’re also getting that beautiful high-fiber carbohydrate effect as well which females absolutely love and males as well but females in particular we love it for our brain health but also our gut health as well and our bone mineral density too so we’re looking at things such as maybe
Ange (25:28.769)
or millet. A lot of the pulse pastas are available at the moment. That’s fantastic in terms of the amount of protein that’s contained in it as a pasta based type of food but it’s actually quite high in protein. Potatoes, I love rice particularly for resistant starch. If we cook it, cool it, reheat it again, we increase the resistant starch. don’t…
Jess Spendlove (25:48.759)
wash it.
Ange (25:49.693)
Yes, yes, yes. And that way, you know, obviously, it goes down to our gut microbiome and fuels that as well more effectively. So I want also to give you an understanding. It’s not necessarily maybe just an amount in terms of carbohydrates. Like I said, it’s probably around 20 to 30 grams anyway on the plate. But roughly, it’s kind of in comparison to what the protein needs to be. So protein looks like about a third of the plate. Just under a quarter is where your carbohydrates are coming from. And so people might often say to me, are you a low carb fan?
definitely not in that instance but what happens over time as we age and we know and the studies say that, we mentioned the swan study last time, we’ve got a little bit more data now on longevity, so longer term studies that looked and followed women across that menopause transition and we often find that we’re just not active enough. I’ve been looking at some other research that really looks at how carbohydrates are depleted in exercise and if I’m asking people to do more resistance training, it’s actually not as carb depleting as what I originally would have thought and being sports dieticians, we have a
background of working with high level elite athletes so we are very focused about pushing more of that because that is increasing our performance but when we start to hit midlife and if we’re talking about just general everyday active people that are concerned about their well-being and their health we’re not doing exercise at the level or intensity that would actually deplete our glycogen fully so we just don’t need as much anymore and when we look at I guess the gut microbiome and maybe our risk of insulin resistance and that visceral fat accumulation again we’re trying to really manage that blood glucose and the best
way we can do that is to put more fibre into our diet.
obviously then adding protein and good fats are going to help slow that blood glucose response. So our body’s just got the ability to be able to break it down and use it and put it where it needs to go for that reason as well. So that’s the carbohydrate element. And of course, layered into that is the fiber where we need to be hitting at least seven to 10 grams of fiber in that meal. And that’s not going to happen unless you get some sort of vegetables held on the plate. That needs to be about half of your plate and from colorful sources as well. So the more color, the better.
Ange (27:53.437)
to your boring ones, please be adventurous with that and that increases the plant-based microbiome diversity of where we’re getting those nutrients from to feed that gut microbiome too. So yeah, I think that’s kind of the general consensus of it and then we layer the fat on top of that which isn’t a huge amount but it can be on top of the fats that you might use in cooking. Say for instance, you might use extra virgin olive oil to roast your veggies in or maybe use it to saute some onion before you make a bolognese or something like that.
add a little bit of fats on top of that and it’s around about a thumb size serve is kind of how I determine how much roughly or generally that we’re looking at there but things such as avocado seeds and nuts using extra virgin olive oil in our know salad dressings or to roast our veggies in and things like that are absolutely fantastic and they help to break down some of those the bulk of the veggies and salad that I would love you to eat which is around about two to two and a half cups volume wise you know before you cook it so it’s a lot and it’s probably
way more than people realise or expect to eat in a day. So overall that’s the plate and if we look at it obviously we can use our hands as well in terms of determining what those portions are. So generally your protein wants to be around about the palm size of your hand. The carbohydrates if you cup your hand and put that whole grain carbohydrate on there then pop it on your plate that’s around about it. Thumb size as I mentioned of the fats on top of that and at least two fist sizes of veggies or
salad if you cluster them together that should be pretty equivalent to what we’re trying to achieve with the perfect peri plate and now that you know that you can go to any restaurant any you know family function and remember that that’s what we want to be looking for visually on our plate.
Jess Spendlove (29:40.814)
And ordering exactly accordingly. It’s having the tool in your toolkit to orchestrate and pull together. And I think, you know, the point with the carbohydrates, it’s not about focusing on not having them. It’s just the hierarchy of priorities. And when the protein and the fiber, which you’re getting from, you know, the high biological value animal source and the vegetables, it’s just where it fits in. It still plays a role. And also, like, I definitely find I get hungry. And most of it, like, if that’s gone,
I’m just hungry and I’m tired and I’m overeating so it all they all really do work together
I do want to spend just a little bit more time talking about fiber because I agree no one’s hitting it. Not no one, but it’s a lot of people are struggling to hit it. Why is it particularly important in this phase? And then while definitely we want to be upping the vegetables also, you know, some fruit as well to increase in the whole grain components. What are your thoughts on some of the like the prebiotic powders to either support or if we’re just not hitting
using them.
Ange (30:51.517)
Yeah, look, I have changed my opinion on this because originally, you know, as dietitians, we recommend around 25 grams of fiber a day. And we know that not many of us are achieving that. think at best, think women are a little bit better than men when it comes to hitting that. They realize it’s a little bit more important or they maybe like to eat plants a little bit more than men do. But the really interesting key is when I looked at the studies that have the lowest risk of all cause mortality. So they’re bundling in all the biggest killers, like we’re talking heart disease,
try to diabetes, dementia, even bundled cancers in that as well. So when we look at what is the lowest risk factor and how much fiber we need to reflect that, it actually sits around, your breath, 40 grams of fiber a day, right? So I know, and I think, and I always say, I’ve done myself a disservice, I’ve done my clients a disservice recommending 25 grams a day, but if not, everyone’s really hitting that anyway. How the hell am I gonna get them from 25 to 40?
Jess Spendlove (31:43.681)
you
Ange (31:51.313)
Look and I would often advocate for 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day coming from food-based sources So that would be the first thing and then to reach that extra 10 grams That’s when I would rely on maybe a prebiotic powder or something like that that we can actually add in you can actually do something really cheap and easy like psyllium husk You know, it can boost that fiber intake without it being something that you need to eat as well Obviously, you’re be quite full trying to get you know 25 to 30 grams of fiber in
we’re eating whole grains and lots of fruits and vegetables over the day. But often my non-negotiable, like I said, that sort of aim for five cups of salad or veg every day and two pieces of fruit. Guarantee you, not a lot of people are actually getting at that. So that’s where you first and foremost want to start. Adding new things like your plant-based proteins into reduce the amount of animal-based protein you are having is actually another fantastic way for us to get there. And it also enhances our gut microbiome by doing so. We’ve looked at a lot of the, you know,
Mediterranean type and style of patterns which actually come up all the time on top when we’re looking at the best types of diets essentially Particularly for midlife there is absolutely every reason to be believe that that is actually again something really good in terms of patterns to follow But they do suggest not eating as much red meat in that now of course We understand red meat is a beautiful source of iron and B vitamins and that’s so Important as well as we start to go through that transition, you know, possibly we’re having some irregular menstrual
maybe a little bit more heavier bleeding so we’re at risk of some iron deficiency as we start to age as well and then once we hit menopause then that actual need drops a little bit more but these are the things that we go okay on one element it’s great to get these nutrients in on the other side what is it doing to our gut microbiome because we’re seeing a lot of inflammatory processes from having a lot of animal-based proteins and now everyone’s going let’s up the protein and Perry we need to eat more protein protein this protein that and of course protein is you know animal-based foods are not just protein they
often come with a little bit of saturated fats as well. So we have to be considerate that if we can blend and combine and increase our plant-based source of protein we can reduce thereby we can reduce the animal base or source of the protein content. We’re still hitting our protein marker but now we’ve increased our fiber at the same time and we’ve helped our gut microbiome. So the legumes are especially something I like to like say add it into a mince like you know throw some kidney beans in a Mexi bowl or put some lentils into a bolognese or something like that or
Ange (34:20.863)
just throw them in as your carb maybe but it also then translates to increasing and boosting your protein amount so you can drop your protein back a little bit from the animal-based sources. So we’re basically essentially killing two birds but really what we’re looking at is having the amount of fiber coming from multiple different sources. I would always recommend things like nuts and seeds as a snack option if not to boost maybe adding it to a yogurt or something like that or always having a staple of a handful of nuts every single day. We know that again there’s the fiber container
component of that so don’t always stick to peanut butters. Get like five seed mixes and things like that because we need to chew that really helps but yeah they’re the biggest things that I can say is where the diversity of that is all coming from and how it builds into your plate and that’s the best thing we can do for our gut and then on top of that maybe there’s some things that we might add so I take a product called microbiome essentials and that’s by the fertile gut fully researched fully backed into the certain types of prebiotic fibers that feed
our gut microbiome so it’s one thing to have a beautiful ecosystem and a diverse ecosystem but what we see particularly in the perimenopause transition is that as that the hormonal undulation starts to happen and drop we definitely tend to mimic a little bit more like men so we’re putting on weight around that midsection and we think that that’s as a result of the decline in hormones but what we’re seeing now within the cellular or the gut lining lumen
is that there’s a beautiful mucosal layer that really separates your gut barrier to your bloodstream and that tends to deteriorate over time. And when we add these types of products into our daily repertoire, it starts to rebuild that a little bit more again. It helps to like tighten up the junctions that sit between the gut lumen and the bloodstream and then hopefully reduce that inflammatory marker. And then when we eat all our beautiful prebiotic type of foods, then that’s gonna help us to increase the microbiome diversity of our good gut bugs that help our immunity as well.
So yeah, it’s definitely some things that we consider and just I would say just eat the rainbow. Yes, because there’s some beautiful things in terms of like high polyphenol foods, the deep red, purple and blue colored fruits and vegetables. But there’s also a really cool aspect about the microbiome and that is something called the astrobalone. So this in particular in relation to females, so there’s a group of gut bacteria and they are called the astrobalone because they help to regulate how estrogen is actually metabolized.
Ange (36:45.057)
and then actually recycled and recirculated back into the body. So as we know if we can try to do a lot of these things that help support something like that, we need to eat things like cruciferous vegetables, so green cauliflowers, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, a favourite kale, which needs a bit of love but it’s still all there. These produce wonderful metabolites and in combination with a beautiful functioning gut help to produce those
wonderful metabolites that can kind of recycle estrogen and send it back into the bloodstream in a good effective form that we can use. So how cool is that? Like that is just how powerful the gut microbiome is and we need to take and nurture it a little bit more particularly as we enter into those perimenopausal years.
Jess Spendlove (37:30.209)
I use that product as well. I don’t consistently take it every day, but I do use it. And I like the cacao latte as well.
Ange (37:40.169)
So yes, the range has extended. so there’s different, each one has different, my God, you need to get Dr. Cecilia Kiddick actually back. You need to get her in here because, and you’ll appreciate this Jess, I actually had a photo that came up in my stories. I was looking for something. I had a photo that came up in my memories that was a picture of the Sports Dietitians Conference where a panel of people were on that. I’ve looked and I’ve gone, there’s Dr. Cecilia Kiddick. said, and I was like, my God, you’ve been talking about
Jess Spendlove (37:46.637)
Okay, get her on.
Ange (38:10.113)
this forever. So she is the real deal. She’s amazing. She’s such a good friend of mine. But I was like, my god, how did I not know you but we were operating the same circles for so long. So she’s a stickler for the evidence and the product line has just actually exploded in terms of what she’s now discovering about the gut microbiome. And then she’s creating these wonderful bringing these wonderful products with epic reputable evidence to the market. This is where we want to be looking and to be honest, I’ve actually changed my
Jess Spendlove (38:32.173)
Where’s it?
Ange (38:38.431)
opinion also again, so another fun fact as well as we age we get wiser right on whey protein isolate. So whilst we understand that to be you know one of the highest sources of leucine I have now switched over to using it’s called gut plus protein which is another one of Cecilia’s latest products that have been has come out purely for the fact of when she showed me the research about leucine coming from animal-based foods and obviously then enhancing muscle protein synthesis and then we looked at leucine coming from
plant-based foods not as high in terms of that synthesis but when we take plant-based proteins and add leucine to it it is better in response to muscle protein synthesis compared to animal protein alone. I have now switched over because it does also have a interesting gut bacteria, sorry gut probiotic that she’s put in there that actually helps you absorb protein better in the gut. So many wonderful things.
Jess Spendlove (39:19.607)
Wow.
Jess Spendlove (39:32.513)
Getting her on. Getting her.
Ange (39:34.449)
You have to get her on because I’m not doing it justice. Honestly, she can walk you through all the different products that’s available but it’s definitely as we said, you know when I’m because I eat, you know, dairy based foods and it’s often whey protein isolate is a dairy derivative. So I was getting a lot of dairy based foods in my diet. I wanted to increase the plant-based diversity of where my protein was coming from and so then I opted to make the change in the switch over to that and my goodness I feel so full after it like it’s incredible in terms of like it helping the absorption of protein and just again helping that satiation effect.
Jess Spendlove (39:44.781)
Mm.
Ange (40:04.433)
as well. So that’s the switch I’ve made. It’s all certified low FODMAP so it doesn’t give you any gas when I’m bloating. If you do have some gut dysbiosis, it’s actually, I’m selling it, right? I’m selling it, but like I said, it’s, and again, let’s mention this as well. I think it’s important that the more you eat great, the less reliance you have on supplementation, right? So, you know, even the micro-brine essentials, the recommended amount is like a tablespoon a day. I have half a tablespoon a day and sometimes I miss it as well. And that’s totally fine because my diet is making up for
Jess Spendlove (40:11.702)
Tick,
Jess Spendlove (40:23.778)
Yes.
Ange (40:34.313)
lot of it anyway after if I don’t get it in every day. So I think the worse your is the more probably reliance you need these types of things to help you get by but the better you achieve and you know we’re not all perfect so these are nice things that kind of help to the gap in between.
Jess Spendlove (40:49.431)
So good. Super quickly, just before we move into exercise, you’ve mentioned DEXA scan once a year. What are your thoughts on microbiome testing? Because there’s a lot of technical stuff here. Do you have thoughts on yay-nay frequency?
Ange (41:06.292)
I again data right I love data so if there is and we do have I believe there is a testing place called Micruba.
Jess Spendlove (41:13.985)
Yeah, that crowbar. Yeah.
Ange (41:14.949)
Yes, is it kind of one of the gold standard places where you can get that done? I think you need a degree to understand the results. I do not have the skill set to be able to do that. But I know some of my dietitian friends definitely understand that a lot better than what I would. I think a lot of the time with these testing is that we can test for lots of different things, but what do we do with that data? And so if we don’t even know that these microbes are present, what their function is in the gut, we can measure it. But what do we then
do with that moving forward and so don’t know if we’re quite at the point where we can say this is the gut profile of a certain ailment of some description and maybe we need to be starting with a certain probiotic to help restore that but at this stage I don’t I don’t particularly administer it but I love seeing the results from it and also I have to consult with my other dietitian experts on how to interpret it though but it’s great.
Jess Spendlove (42:08.161)
Very technical. They’ve actually changed it where you now can’t order it yourself. You actually need to go through someone accredited. And even though they gave you different reports, but I agree for that exact reason. Let’s move on to exercise. I’m mindful of time. There’s just so much value here, nutrition, huge, huge, huge factor.
But we can’t ignore the exercise. So what do we need to know? What do people need to be doing? What is a heck yes? Where is the biggest bang for bark? Again, from a hierarchy perspective, you know, I love the protein and fiber nearly equal at the top. Therefore, this is next down. And it’s just a matter of where are we spending our time? Because, as you mentioned, midlife people are moving less. Is it a time factor? Is it a lifestyle factor? As a new mom in, you know, my later 30s, I’m thinking, oh my gosh, I’m going from like having a baby
straight into perimenopause. I can see why people maybe have children younger if they can. But time is a factor. Time has never been a factor for me. And from an exercise side of things, I like to exercise first thing in the morning. And I was struggling. If I couldn’t get it, I was in this nearly analysis paralysis. So if we only have so much time for whatever reason, whether it’s someone like me or just a work life, children, elderly parents, high flying job, whatever the
factor, where are we spending our time and what are we doing and why.
Ange (43:32.425)
think that’s great and I always talk about efficiency and meeting you where you’re at. So I have been where you’re at Jess, I sympathize with you, I can absolutely understand that and to be really honest I didn’t have the same 24 hours in the day that my other peers and colleagues might have had and that’s okay and that goes for anyone you know your 24 hours is not the same as your neighbors or somebody else that you follow on Instagram so firstly it’s okay you don’t need to feel less than you just need to work with what you’ve got and I think that’s always like I said if we meet you where you’re at
and really just say, what’s the most, the minimum amount of bang for our buck that we can put in, what’s going to be the most efficient. And that’s really how I train. I would love to train more volume than what I currently do, but my time and my life just doesn’t allow it. And I hate to say that just unfortunately, like, I’m not sure you’re to get much of your time back anytime soon. But in saying that we have to prioritize. I think that’s it. And the first thing is to go, don’t wait until somebody gives you permission is the first thing. think that was something that I
Jess Spendlove (44:17.581)
You
I’m figuring it out. I’ve got a new rhythm.
Ange (44:32.489)
was like sitting back going, but you know I don’t have time and I feel guilty for doing this sort of stuff for everybody else so I can’t possibly be away from my job or my kids or anything else like that. Absolutely not. We need to first and foremost let that shit go because that was I was just waiting for somebody to give me permission and that’s never gonna happen you’re gonna need to take it. So firstly it’s okay to take your time back and if that time means that you’re wanting to devote to some sort of element that’s gonna help you and your well-being it absolutely is non-negotiable and you should not feel guilty for it. Now that’s
being said if we have maybe 30 minutes if we have 15 minutes it’s still something so anything you do is better than nothing so when I look at I guess the hierarchy as you mentioned when you said protein and fiber I actually went my brain went resistance training protein and fiber
Jess Spendlove (45:20.077)
Wow, there we go guys, there you’ve heard it there.
Ange (45:22.867)
Yes, yes. And why? Because all the literature that I’m looking at now as it starts to get better in our population that I’m focusing on, obviously with females over 40, because there’s not a huge amount of evidence prior to the last couple of years. So we’re starting to get more clarity on this particular age group. But that being said, irrespective, there’s so much data out there to support and even more, it just keeps getting better in terms of that confidence of being able to say the mechanical learning of resistance training.
Jess Spendlove (45:34.771)
last three years.
Ange (45:52.803)
that might be weights, that might be any type of resistance that you’re pushing and pulling against, moving your body in that way that’s in a challenging manner, is just so, it’s not just about weight management, it’s about muscle being an endocrine organ. It has communications with so many aspects of our body that help our wellbeing and our reduction of lifestyle diseases. So resistance training, absolutely minimum, if you can, twice a week. You can just focus on whole body. So you can get through your entire
and any muscle group that you can choose to do in that timeframe if you did it twice a week with a day off at least in between. So give yourself a bit of recovery and rest. You might need a little bit more rest as you start to age. I’ve noticed that I need a little bit more warmup, a little bit more rest in between sessions, but we do want to be doing it at a challenging stimulus. I think there’s a big sort of fallacy that everyone said, you know, you don’t have to lift heavy. And that’s true in some instance, but the constant, when I look at what happens and the response to muscle protein synthesis, as we start to age, we still respond.
but in comparison to our younger counterparts it’s like a blunted response. So we’re still getting the effort, it’s still actually doing something but we need more intensity unfortunately and we’re looking at that 60 to 70 percent out of 100. So six or seven out of 10 if I’m looking at rating of perceived exertion. So we’re really challenging ourselves in terms of how much we’re lifting or we can also use one to three reps in reserve. So you know you want to put that weight down after you
you’ve done it you could only maybe get one or three more reps out and you would be cooked. So that’s the level of intensity I’m talking about when I’m doing resistance training. Now unfortunately some people aren’t that confident in a gym and so they might do things like Pilates or maybe some bodyweight exercise and if that’s where you’re starting at that’s totally fine because it’s probably still challenging for you anyway. But once you outgrow that and the aim is to then continue to build on that and be consistent so please be consistent twice a week that’s the minimum that I would recommend. What I love you to do through
four times yes but that’s okay if you can’t but definitely work on progressively overloading what your capability is and at one point you will probably outgrow things like Pilates and you’ll have to graduate into doing things that are a little bit more challenging from that resistance perspective. If I could throw in there as well in terms of bone mineral density, multi-directional forces are very important about holding the integrity of the bone so that’s where like I said we don’t generally see things in like if you’re a runner and you just want to run in the same direction all the time we’re not getting that
Ange (48:22.473)
multi-directional loading and I’ve actually had quite a few women come into my clinic with prior to they’ve had stress fractures and then they’ve gone in got their dexers and now they are osteopenic and they hadn’t realized and so a lot of us are just generally fixated on cardiovascular activity and don’t get me wrong that’s amazing but you only had a minimum amount of time please get resistance training in twice a week. Now we can add in and again I’m talking about minimal time so if you the smaller time you have the higher intensity we’re going to need to go to
the maximal effort out of what we’re doing. So this is where zone 2 probably isn’t going to cut it. We don’t even really know what zone 2 is. For some people that could just be walking or lying down on their bed. But for other people it might be really challenging. But I think because we don’t have an idea of exactly what that is, we’re going to need to push ourselves a little bit and this is where maybe some interval training comes in because the capacity of our body to do that really challenges the mitochondria in our cells and that actually improves. So if we can get higher intensity with a minimum
amount of time if you’ve got 10-15 minutes that’ll do it like I’m happy with that sometimes I even tack that on to the end of my training session so I don’t have to do another whole session on top of that so where you fit that in is entirely up to you but it can be done but the I would say the smaller time frame you have try and go as hard as you can because of the effect of that within reason obviously risk management for injuries do it under supervision and you know get got some guidance within that but that’s really where the literature is sitting at we can’t just kind of dilly-dally anymore we need to be putting in a bit
more intensity and effort and the least time we have the more intense that should be.
Jess Spendlove (49:56.11)
And is that like a Tabata style or is that like, you know, minute on minute or 30 seconds on 30 seconds off? mean, I guess again, depending on your fitness and what you’re doing and is that rote, erg, treat, yeah.
Ange (50:08.723)
Yep, type of exercise. Yeah, yeah. Look, it can be anything that really gets your heart rate up. So I would probably if it’s true type of hit type style, I wouldn’t do any more than 30 seconds like you try and gas yourself out at 30 seconds. If you’re going pretty hard, you want to stop at 30 or you’re looking at the clock going, this is the longest 30 seconds of my life. So by the time you sort of warm into that, it’s about 10 seconds in you hit your peak. That’s going to be around about that sort of 10 seconds and then you’re probably falling off the cliff. And then the 30 seconds is done. And then you might need the rest of the 30 seconds and maybe another minute recovery after
that before you go in again. But again it could be for someone depending on their age and ability level it could be you know you’re jogging outside and you if you don’t have you know access to equipment that you could use to get your heart rate up you could be just going like light post to light post jogging and then walking from light post to light post or tree to tree. Another I guess example is burpees everyone’s favorite exercise right but again high level you could do up downs as a regression of that you could even do mountain climbers
you know there’s so much you can do body weight wise just in a little bit of a circuit. what chapter gpt is great for just to google that sort of stuff. What can I do depending on what equipment, where you’re at and you know what you’re able to do as well. So yeah start there that could be like I said could be easily done in the comfort of your own home if you wanted to or you can just step outside and do it there so that’s the intensity factor. The weights you might need a little bit more resistance whether that’s bands or you know home hand weights and stuff like that as well. I’ve set my mum up with her hand weights and showed her ways in which
Jess Spendlove (51:13.805)
Give me your ID.
Ange (51:38.527)
to do resistance training around her home as well so it’s easily done.
Jess Spendlove (51:43.134)
Wonderful. I think it’s been an eye-opening phase. think any transition gives you more understanding of what your clients go through. So yeah, it’s been an interesting transition in terms of what’s easy for me to keep doing and then what is…
required more effort and more flexibility. I like to talk about it as a rhythm. Where is my rhythm? My rhythm used to be morning every morning and now it is wherever the opportunity is. I think that is a really good way for people to think about it as well. Quickly before we talk supplements, weighted vests, thoughts?
Ange (52:26.303)
Look, it’s had its moment, hasn’t it?
So I love weighted vests for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it made people realize that things need to be challenging. And up until then, maybe walking was fine, but you put a weighted vest on and my goodness, I’ve actually got one back behind me. Everyone fell for the craze. When I looked at the research behind it, it’s not going to improve things like bone mineral density. It’s how you use it as well. So I actually was finding, and again, I love to try anything once, give it a crack. So I started
walking with it to make my walks a little bit more challenging because again I wasn’t getting to the gym as much and that intensity just wasn’t quite there and I did find over time it probably wasn’t amazing for me and I just wasn’t enjoying it. So I tried to keep it around 30 minutes so again if I only have 30 minutes I increase the intensity and I use it for walking. I would never run with it because I’m very mindful in terms of joints and things like that that you don’t want to be doing anything under load and under velocity at the same time and so I wouldn’t do it with those types of things but I have
worn it particularly if you are I had one of my friends who was training for
Hike and so again, it’s all about what it is that your goals are, know What you’re using it for so rucking is obviously something that they do in like terrain to get used to carrying a pack when they’re Going to be doing their hike. So in that respect, I understand why it’s there I don’t advocate for people lifting weights with it on I think that’s kind of really dangerous Firstly, I’ve seen that happen. I’m like, why would you do that? So I wouldn’t I wouldn’t do it in that respect, but I gave it to my mom to increase her body weight exercises
Ange (54:06.369)
such as lunges and squats. And so what I liked about it was the even weighted distribution. And so it added a little bit of element there, but again, you’ll hit a sticking point. Like it’s just, if you’re already lifting heavy in the gym, it’s really of no value or use, I believe, and it’s not gonna improve your bone marrow density. It’ll just increase the intensity of the exercise itself. Yeah.
Jess Spendlove (54:26.101)
Love it. Supplements, you we’ve spoken a little bit about prebiotics, we’ve spoken a bit about proteins and the different types and the benefits. What other supplements are worth considering or should be considered in this phase?
Ange (54:40.979)
Yeah, I love it. I’m a big advocate for creating monohydrate. think the more research comes out about that, the more
it gets better. And it’s for what reason though as well because I feel like creatine definitely in the sport specific related realm have been used in high power sports and so often women have shied away from that. But actually as we know beautiful paper by Abby Smith Ryan looking at creatine across the female lifespan as we age, pregnancy, postpartum it’s actually even more important for us to get creatine and we have around about a 70 to 80 percent less of storage capacity compared to males. And also we don’t eat as much of those
creatine containing foods which is a lot of the animal-based proteins that we spoke about so we might get a little bit from that but it’s really not the level that we can actually obtain from our food as well so supplementing with that actually helps it helps to restore obviously the creatine phosphate system which will also help if you are lifting in the gym it’ll help to you know increase your effort and ability within the gym but now hopefully we’re looking at some more studies and literature that will support the notion that it does help our cognition at higher dosages though so whilst we would kind of
a baseline daily dose of about 3 to 5 grams or if you want to get a little bit more specific it’s actually 0.1 grams per kilogram so you can get a little bit more specific based on body weight and then that would be your daily dose but after which I think and I often recommend this for my females particularly if they’ve had a really shitty night’s sleep and they feel like you know I know for me that actually feels like I have a hangover when I don’t sleep and I don’t drink as we mentioned last time so I feel like I’ve had a hangover when I don’t get enough sleep and
I double my dose on a day like that and that’s a few little tips and tricks I tell my clients to do. Now I’m giving it to your audience as well so just maybe on those occasions to increase the dose because obviously when we’re pushing you know 10-20 grams it might be a little bit more gastro intensive and people might not tolerate that as much. So jury’s still out yet we can’t say with definitive evidence that it’s going to you know help prevent dementia and things like that but it hopefully will actually increase the energy ability of our brain to be able to kind of process and use that a little bit better particularly helpful when we’ve got things like
Ange (56:48.115)
brain fog and stuff like that when our estrogen receptors in our brain are you know taking a little bit of a pause in that perimenopause transition.
Jess Spendlove (56:55.809)
Yeah, I’m planning to do a deep dive on creatine. I mean, it’s everywhere, but yeah, I haven’t done it dedicated and it needs it. And I might even do it off the back of this episode with you. I feel like it’s a good kind of continuation on other, I guess, micronutrients or supplements in this space that are worth the time and energy and investment.
Ange (57:19.028)
Yeah.
Omega 3, again, it just keeps coming up and I think it’s just one thing that we just can’t eat enough fish. I’m sorry, like if we all did eat three to four times a week and that’s probably not even enough. Like I was taking a fish oil plus eating tuna most days and I did my Omega 3-6 ratio test and that was still not fantastic. I thought, my gosh, what am gonna do? How can I take something that’s gonna get me there? Recently I’ve switched over to a liquid-based form of Omega 3 and I think the absorption’s a lot better,
to understand as well once we saturate the cell we don’t need as much in terms of the amount so you know we’re starting to aim for that two or three grams of EPA DHA and then after which we can drop back to one after about eight to twelve weeks in terms of saturation point so it’s just so fantastic for everything anti-inflammatory wise I just love it something like I said that I just do as a staple so that and creatine I think are my two big sort of broad general ones in terms of staple I again obviously with the microbiome fiber supplements and the protein powder as well they’re in
other two that I kind of regularly use and rely on. Interestingly in the population that I’m working with, myo-anositol has come up quite a bit. Now we traditionally have used this scene or seen it in lot of research with PCOS and also looking at things such as blood glucose management but as we’ve started to see as we start to get older that insulin resistance and the ability of our bodies to process glucose is a little bit more affected and a little bit more sensitive so I’ve noticed with taking again another fertile gut products called gut plus hormones
My own acetal is the kind of the therapeutic dose at about two grams. It’s between two to four grams but I started taking that and
Ange (58:58.687)
pretty quickly noticed a change in my waist measure but also my energy levels. So it kind of helps again, you need Cecilia on the podcast so don’t quote me on this but it kind of how I understand it is that it helps to unlock glucose or help to send it to the areas where we can use glucose which is obviously our muscles and so it helps it helped me get a little bit more energy out of that. So I take it on a daily basis there’s a little bit of vitamin D in there as well and that in combination like I said with the Omega-3 is really good that you know vitamin D is so wonderful.
we need to check our vitamin D status because that’s such a co-factor for so many other things and also things such as iron and calcium as we have already mentioned you know you’re at risk of iron deficiency and that could manifest in things like just feeling tired and terrible all the time and you know checking your iron stores is really important. 30 % of women are actually iron deficient that’s crazy and like I said the impact of that in terms of that risk factor increases if we’re getting more irregular menstrual cycles in that period.
menopausal transition so please check that. And calcium as well just from a bone health perspective so as we start to drop in terms of that estrogen you know as we start to hit menopausal years and that kind of estrogen starts to flatline a little bit more our calcium needs go up so they go from a thousand milligrams a day to 1300 milligrams that’s a lot to try and get through dietary wise but I’m starting to see like said women in their 40s coming in with osteopenia they’ve had their dexar that’s shocked them you know it’s really important that we get that in but getting it in
maybe again not from that supplemental form possibly if you need a top up but really you know about 500 to 600 milligrams of calcium spread over the day much similar to how we do protein little drip feeds as well but also calcium and iron compete with each other for absorption so it’s really interesting about you know like i said you can i know with the world of ai at the moment you can go and chat gbt a meal plan but who’s going to connect the dots when you’ve got multiple things going on and you know you want to be addressing all these different factors you need people that are aware and looking at these
types of things overall as a general base. So there’s a few things there maybe to consider. I wouldn’t recommend supplementation unless you’ve got blood work to actually tell you and indicate and give you some directive guidance as to what you’re doing with that. But as we have always said, food first, supplement second, right?
Jess Spendlove (01:01:14.285)
Do you have a favorite product or two in terms of a hack? mean, one of the ones I come back to quite a bit is the Rockabee 30 gram protein smoothie, just because it’s 30 grams of protein. The calcium is like 833 milligrams. That’s probably one of the, in terms of the hierarchy and the factors, for me, that one has really stood out as something that’s great in this space.
Ange (01:01:41.137)
It absolutely is and it’s so convenient as a breakfast if you’re working out the door. Yeah, absolutely. I love that they’ve come out with Fit Milk. So it’s now. Yes, yes. So I love it. We couldn’t get it for a while in Queensland, but now it’s back, which is awesome. But there’s also Paws Plus that has that sort of similar type of dairy. So it’s double the protein. And obviously, when they concentrate that they double then the well, or close to double the amount of calcium, which is so awesome. So any of those, like I said, high protein products. Same with the yogurts as well.
Jess Spendlove (01:01:43.743)
everywhere.
Ange (01:02:11.101)
So I particularly love Farmers Union. They’ve come out with a I just recently ate and I posted on my Instagram the other day, but Guts good so they’ve got Goss they’ve got prebiotic as well as probiotics in there and The protein content is high. It’s 10 grams per tub and also the calcium is around 400 milligrams So again way lots of bang for your buck when it comes to these types of products The other ones really convenient is Fodbond’s bars. So I have to shout out to them my god, and they’ve come out with the two new elevators
I’m not a caramel person, I’m not really fudgy person but there’s no back end after taste, it’s obviously really good on the gut. 15 grams of protein in a bar and it’s whole food ingredients. There’s not a lot of products out there because I actually just like literally just cracked it one day. think something switched in me where I started to look at all these foods and the labels and the ingredients that were going into them. like that is it. Now I make every muesli bar, every muffin and where I can for my kids.
Jess Spendlove (01:02:41.485)
I like the caramel.
of you.
Jess Spendlove (01:02:52.941)
Yeah.
Jess Spendlove (01:03:01.697)
Woo!
Ange (01:03:10.911)
and really just source really whole simple foods because what we can create, like I said, if you do have the time, I recognise people are time poor, but if you do have the time to go back into the kitchen and find a joy and a love for that again, you’ll notice that you can eliminate a lot of these emulsifiers, a lot of these preservatives that we literally don’t need and we don’t know. I mean, Dr. Felice Jacar with the Monash Institute looking at gut and the relationship with the brain.
Jess Spendlove (01:03:36.074)
The intestinal, intestinal permeability, everything we talking about before in terms of compromising the gut, yeah, it’s, that’s another, another solo, you’re revealing all my future solo episodes, but the next one I’ve mapped out is I’m actually, I’ve done a bit of planning at the moment. He’s not all protein is created equally. And that’s what I want to talk about. Yeah.
Ange (01:03:44.841)
Yes is!
Welcome.
Ange (01:03:54.887)
I love it.
Ange (01:04:00.579)
absolutely is yes and you know the whole food first and you know where we can yes we fill the gap with the supplements but honestly we just need to be getting getting like we have to keep it simple it doesn’t have to be complicated and the more we rely on the supermarkets and the processed foods and the packaged stuff you just don’t know what’s going in that and we don’t know the effect of it from a long-term perspective anyway so I just say keep it simple
Jess Spendlove (01:04:19.895)
Look, we’ve gone completely over my time frame, but that’s fine. Everyone’s going to be loving this episode. Just to wrap it up, is there anything you’re seeing in this space that’s interesting, controversial, some myths that are getting busted? We had a quick chat before, which I think would be, yeah, interesting to mention because other people might be seeing it.
Ange (01:04:41.491)
Yeah, look, I think there’s a lot of debate about whether you train fed or fasted. My argument always is to the fact of, are you training? So firstly, let’s do that first. Whether we argue about whether you should be eating before or after training, it really shouldn’t be an argument in general. The consensus is that people want to make sure that they’re always fueled to do training. And some of the literature that’s come out actually has suggested, and I have on occasion, when I’m looking at individual clients have suggested to have protein before training with a bit of carbohydrates and then also chase it with protein.
after as well. So I think when we’re looking at sport specific nutrition it depends on the intensity type of training that you’re doing, whether it’s carb depleting or the rest of it. So that is an individual factor that I think we need to consider. But the essence of is if you get up first thing in the morning and you train you’re not feeling like you don’t need to eat food or you’re pretty full, you don’t feel like you want to eat anything, you can absolutely train. It is not going to be detrimental to your results. As I mentioned the hierarchy, the mechanical stimulus of exercise itself is going to win no matter what. The holes then
come if you don’t eat adequately over the whole day but we have 24 hours to make up for that so if you’re not eating like I said directly before or after training it’s okay you’re not gonna die you’re not going to deteriorate our body’s pretty bloody amazing but as long as you’re focusing like I non-negotiables three main meals these types of things making sure our proteins and our fibers are there but overall if you are eating pretty well during the day it really doesn’t bloody matter and I think it needs to be an argument we need to squash as well and just you do you boo from that
Jess Spendlove (01:06:10.744)
Yeah.
Ange (01:06:11.325)
Do it.
Jess Spendlove (01:06:11.691)
And it’s like, is this what we’re really worrying about exactly? Because it’s, you training or are you eating out all weekend or how many glasses of wine? Like, what are we like, what are we actually talking about? Let’s get the big picture. So I think that’s a great place to wrap it up. I did have a note, which I just circled much earlier on. I, I normally ask people what are three things that help them stay at the top. But because I’ve had you on before and I’ve asked you that I would actually like to swap that out with what are your
top go to CBF meals.
Ange (01:06:45.998)
I love-
ready for that question too. And I was like, oh, now you’ve flipped the switch on me. Okay, so bachelor’s handbag. So this is the barbecue chicken. I like the Lillardale one just from a flavor perspective. So I do that with a mountain bread wrap. So the right mountain bread wraps, the square ones and the kale slaw. And I have managed to get this to a fine art, but I can put half a bag of kale slaw in that wrap and not have it split. So there is your challenge.
Jess Spendlove (01:06:49.261)
you
Thank
Jess Spendlove (01:06:56.557)
Thank
Jess Spendlove (01:07:02.006)
you
Jess Spendlove (01:07:15.767)
you
That is them, I always split them.
Ange (01:07:20.871)
I’m a little bit addressing too, so that yogurt stuff, I mean, I don’t do heaps of it, but like I said, that is my Friday CBF meal. Like literally, it is one of the best ones I fall back on. The next one is always a tuna rice bowl. And what I’m loving at the moment is the wholesome or simply wholesome. I think it is the grains and legumes. So these are ready made grains and they have like lentils in them. They’ve got different, if you didn’t like ancient grains, I’ve got a few different packets, but they’re already cooked. You do not have to cook it. So I get half a packet of that and I
Jess Spendlove (01:07:28.171)
Yeah.
Ange (01:07:50.757)
put it in a bowl and I get my tuna tuna and then I get maybe another legume so maybe some of the snack time the edgles snack time beans if there’s not a huge amount in there if I’ve gone mostly with grains put that in there obviously the pre-packaged salads and just whack all that in there and together and mix it all around other than that I do have to say a family favorite night is the grilled
burgers so you can get them at Coles now and we can do our own grilled at like on a weekend so it’s just a quick easy meal it’s delicious but then I can build that with like a high-fiber roll and put extra salad and pickles and just make it exactly how I want to so I kind of do that and that’s kind of a takeaway option that’s still kind of the best but my kids now actually prefer it so yeah that’s kind of my dream
Jess Spendlove (01:08:15.629)
No, really.
Jess Spendlove (01:08:38.135)
So it’s the padding, is it? You can get the, yeah. okay. Yeah.
Ange (01:08:39.613)
There’s the patty, actual grilled patty, they’re like the beef burger patty. So there’s the Wagyu one, which is a little bit higher in terms of fat and calories. So I always go with this, just the traditional one. They come in two or a four pack and I just wait for them to be on sale, put in the freezer and whip them out on a burger night.
Jess Spendlove (01:08:54.217)
Love that. well, so much value, so many recommendations. All the links will be in the show notes. We’ll wrap this up and.
wealth of knowledge, no doubt you’ll be back again and yes everyone head over, Andrew’s Instagram, websites, programs, there’s just so much value. You’re a gem, thank you for coming on, thank you for sharing and thank you for helping you know my audience, the people who tune in, the women but also the men who are either
You know, we’re all ageing. You know, this information really is relevant across, you know, our lifespan, but also maybe understanding what’s going on with their wives or partners as well. So there’s just a lot of application in this episode. But thank you for your time. Thank you for your expertise. Thank you for your passion and care and everyone else. I’ll be back again next week with a solo episode helping you all not only reach the top, but sustainably stay there. Thanks, Ange, and I’ll see you all then.
Ange (01:09:54.207)
Thanks.