Michelle MacDonald 00:00
I wanted to kill myself.

Michelle MacDonald 00:03
An eating disorder is like being in a relationship with the most abusive person you can imagine. You literally. You get up and you’re afraid. You’re afraid because your history is that within two hours, you’re going to be damaging yourself. You

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 00:21
both are strong icons.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 00:24
If a woman is just getting into her 40s, what is the number one thing that you would tell her about drinking? You have to get clear around your why and understand that for most of us, it’s going to be a journey if

Joan MacDonald 00:38
you don’t put the effort in and consistency, I don’t think you’re going to get the results, or you’re not going to get them when you think you should.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 00:44
The single most important thing a woman in her 40s can do to transform her body is to be consistent. This is going to make us a little unpopular. From the evidence that I have seen, there doesn’t seem to be sex differences through or for trading. There’s no statistical difference between how a woman the rate at which a woman gains muscle, even in menopause. I know this is so hard to hear. I’m really glad to hear you say this.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 01:19
Michell and Joan MacDonald, welcome to the show. All done well said. Thank you very much for thanks for having us. You both, from my perspective, are strong icons. You show the world what is possible as women, who shall I say, are over 40.

Michelle MacDonald 01:41
Just keep going. I’m age positive. I love saying I’m I’m one month away from being 55 which is literally true, extraordinary, and you’re almost a

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 01:52
Incredible.

Joan MacDonald 01:52
which just seems like a far fetched thing. I don’t feel like I’m 80.

Michelle MacDonald 01:57
You have longevity in your side.

Joan MacDonald 01:58
Yeah, I do on both sides. So it’s good. Joan, nearing 80, you started training at around 70. Yeah, I was close to 71

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 02:08
whereas many women, I would say, in their 40s, are

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 02:14
scared to train, or definitely are afraid because they don’t think it’s possible.

Michelle MacDonald 02:21
Oh, and or they’re still living under that old rubric that lifting, lifting weights, building muscle, will make you manly and boxy. That’s still very pervasive. And I think we’re seeing a return to that right now, which is very alarming. And I think it’s really important that leaders, I’ve said this so many times, that female leaders make it fun, make it sexy, make it cool. To be in shape, and then we support there with the evidence which you’re doing. Look at your lab markers, like, what tests should you be getting done, like a DEXA scan, BMI, where you’re looking at, you know, are you thin, which might lead to frailty in 20 or 30 years, educating people around that, or are you having sufficient muscle, and are you doing things to support that muscle? And so being science based, evidence based cool, having real people living, living and walking the talk, showing that it is great and fun to be in shape and you don’t look manly. I mean, you hardly look like a guy. I hardly, I’m

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 03:15
still, I’m still trying now, still trying to get jacked. Michelle, you both have various histories. So when did you start training? I’ve

Michelle MacDonald 03:28
been at Alex my entire life, but I would say with weights, now that I know what I know is a CSCS, purposeful, intentional training, progressive overload. All of that really started in when I was 39 when I when I did my first competition. So it was like, Oh, this is what you’re supposed to do when you go to the gym. And why do I see that? Because in three months, my body looked like it had never looked before, and I’ve always been on the smaller side of things. So I’m sitting at I weighed myself this morning. I’m doing a photo shoot on Monday with Paul buchetta, I was 114.5 pounds. I’m at the end of
a cut. I normally sit around 120 at five foot two, while way back in 2010 when I started at 39 I was averaging 104105 pounds.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 04:17
Wow, that’s very light. 104 huge, pounds, 105 pounds at five foot two, yeah, if a woman is just getting into her 40s, what is the number one thing, most important factor that you would tell her about training I get a coach?

Michelle MacDonald 04:39
I would agree with that, yeah, I’m not going to want to transform their body if they want to transform rapidly. As you know, as a physician, getting getting the right help can really accelerate that now, then the question is, well, how can you tell who’s legit? Who’s legitimate or not? I always say, look for, look for the outcomes that you want, similarities to where you currently are. Or then make sure you can talk to them right, like go online, DM them, talk to them to make sure that it’s real. I know Joan, Joan’s image has been appropriated. And as you know, people think it’s really easy to track down these things and get them to take it off their website, or take it off their Instagram, even it is you, it was like playing whack a mole. So you really do want to do your due diligence with socials and just track that the person in the image actually is the program. Yeah, but, but to get to the actual point, what would you say getting started? What would you say? How does a woman in her 40s get started, or

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 05:39
one that wants to transform, if

Joan MacDonald 05:41
you really want it, you you get someone like Mitchell in your corner, and she doesn’t take anything or give me any more leeway than she would anyone else. I had to toe the line. I was dragging my feet a lot of the times, but I knew that she could do it with others, so she can do with somebody else that she doesn’t even know. She should be able to do it for me, it’s

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 06:07
probably even more difficult to do it with a parent she probably knew than she would be on one of her clients. Would you say that if you were to pick and again, everyone makes this dichotomy. Is it diet? Is it exercise?

Joan MacDonald 06:22
It’s everything, everything combined. You’ve got your sleep, you’ve got your food, your protein, the macros are great because you’ve got the three things that build your body, which is the protein, the carbs and the fats. And they’re in different portions for different people, because your body is different. We’re not all built the same, and we don’t all have the same needs. But that means the mindset, mindset, the meditation, is really great, like you want to be able to calm yourself and meditation, why? Because you can’t be living off your nerves all the time.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 07:02
You mean, the and I’ve read bowls and 1000s a day is a no go,

Joan MacDonald 07:07
but then you could maybe handle that, but the average person can’t. And like I said, we’re all built different. We are all are going to have different outcomes, but you can normalize it. I guess in a sense

that you put the effort in, you’ll get the results if you don’t put the effort in and consistency. I don’t think you’re going to get the results, or you’re not going to get them when you think you should. I

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 07:34
like that, and if I’m hearing you correctly, what you’re saying is the single most important thing a woman in her 40s can do to transform her body is to be consistent. Michell, just curious.

Michelle MacDonald 07:49
Yeah, I think I wish I could say that there’s one thing, because if you’re doing something consistently, but it’s the wrong thing, then you’re not going to go anywhere. And I think Mom was trying to allude to that, as well as it’s, there’s, there are a few pillars that you want to get ticked off, or if we’re talking about major transformation that is sustainable long term, for most people that are getting started that their their ground zero is, oh, my God, I am literally turning into what I thought 40 would be when I was 10, Right? When you’re 1040, is like, are you still alive, right? Well, when you get 40, you’re like, wait a minute, I still feel like me, but what happened to my body is that overnight, like overnight? What happened to my body? Now, I know as a coach, nothing happens overnight, right? Because I track data all day for my clients. Like, Oh, okay. Like, what’s going on here? And I go and look at their macros, or I see that cardio was missed, or whatever, right wasn’t tracking what gets what gets measured gets managed. And it’s like, let’s, let’s dial that back here. So for gals getting started, I think number one, if I was to say, what is the number one thing, if I’m thinking of not just like losing 10 pounds now, but the long term, you have to you have to get clear around your why and understand that for most of us, it’s going to be a journey, right? Like, is your WHY originating in your your true self, or is it a why that you’ve appropriated from external factors because you’ve never really been trained on how to be thoughtful about your core values and who you are, and is your life aligning with that, your husband, your wife, or whatever it is, your career, your geographic, you know, settlement, know, your why shift it if necessary. And we’re so lucky now that there’s podcasts that you can tap into where people are, you know, really deep into it. And I thinking of like Ed mylett and Brendan Bouchard and Shetty. And, I mean, there’s some really top ones where you can tap into that. There’s even apps for that, for that. Now, in communities, figure out your Why look at this not just as an esthetic outcome. I think esthetic hooks are great, especially for women, because it gets us started, and that’s okay, like, use vanity, right? I want to. Look good. I want to fit into my like, size two or size four. Like, use vanity headphone with that no shame, but long term, to make sure you’re making the right choices, this will help your health outcomes. What are your labs? What should your labs be now? What tests should you get done now, like a DEXA scan to check your BMI, looking at that. What should I be prioritizing now, so that when I’m 70, if we future pace, I’m still healthy. So this is where you would have information, where you’re not just choosing I want to be a size two, but I want my muscle mass to fat ratio to be here, so that when I’m 80, my metabolic health is great, right? I don’t have type two diabetes. I don’t have osteoporosis, right? My cognitive function, cardiovascular health

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 10:45
is great. So that makes a lot of sense. And I bet, as you’ve become more mature, right, by the time you reach your 40s, you then have to reorient yourself as to the reason, as to why, because, when you’re in your 20s, the why, you could look at a push up, and you would probably get biceps. I mean, your body’s a lot more malleable, but it becomes, in part, less so, at least, that’s what I’ve seen in my clinical practice. But if they can orient themselves to a way of thinking about health, which is what you both have said, and then executing the next right thing, which in my mind would be, believe it or not, if I had to pick diet or training, I would pick training first. Obviously, you want both. But in my mind, if that woman wants to transform her body and she is in her 40s, she has to be doing some type of resistance

Michelle MacDonald 11:33
training. I’m not going to disagree with you, and I’ll tell you why, because if we can get a woman focused on getting stronger, then the things that you have to do, build muscle, train with intention, get recovery in, eat to support muscle growth, it covers everything else. So I would agree with you,

Joan MacDonald 11:55
all leads to health. Yeah, all leads to health. So

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 11:59
you’ve been an athlete and a trainer. For how long I

Michelle MacDonald 12:02
would say the trainer? Bit like coaching, as I would say I’m Coach before I would be a trainer. Started when in my 30s, I was started. This always surprises people, but I was a yoga champion for Canada.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 12:18
I’m actually not surprised everything. Okay?

Michelle MacDonald 12:23
And people say, really, there’s, there’s competitions in yoga, absolutely like that part

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 12:27
I’m surprised about, but the fact that you were a yoga champion, yeah, because you’re talking about mindfulness, and obviously there’s this bi directional relationship between muscle and mindfulness. I’m,
I’m not totally shocked by that.

Michelle MacDonald 12:39
Oh, there you go. Usually people are totally surprised by that. No, but I did coach people. I coached advanced, advanced yoga. I coach teams to compete. So I first started and then as a yoga teacher as well, I noticed how much mindset played into things, and whether or not somebody was genetically gifted definitely came secondary to their mindset. And I think Charles glass, he’s one of the greatest trainers out there, said that in an interview. Like, what’s most important, like in bodybuilding, because he’s coached a lot of chances, is it genetics? Is it diet? Is it the progress? Like, it’s mindset, becausepeople get into it, and then when it gets hard, that’s when you really see what you’ve who you’ve got in

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 13:21
front of you. And if you can accelerate putting them in that place of hard then you can change things very quickly, right? So if someone is risk adverse or doesn’t tolerate doing hard things easily, if you put them in that place quickly, then I think that there’s a better chance of moving them off the axis.

Michelle MacDonald 13:42
And Mum, for sure, exemplifies that grittiness, right? Very gritty. And I think that’s the secret to her success. And she has decent genetics. You know, when I saw her triceps coming in and her delts coming in at year two, year two, and it takes time, right? At first, it was fat loss, right? And yes, there was muscle built. But I think it was year two, two and a half, where it was like, Oh my God. And I said,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 14:07
71 this would be

Joan MacDonald 14:10
like, 72 Yeah, right. And it was

Michelle MacDonald 14:13
when I took you shopping at Forever, forever. 21 she was taking me here for young kids and like, nothing’s gonna fit me, because she’s still that mindset that people do and they have massive weight loss. They still see themselves as being a size, I don’t know. I think you’re up to

Joan MacDonald 14:29
16, close to 16, between 14 and 16,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 14:33
right? Your size? Your size? Yeah.

Michelle MacDonald 14:37
Point two pounds away from the 200 with a 39 inch waist, which has its metabolic risks, as you know. And but there she was in there, and she put on this little strappy top, green top, and it had great, what we call em bodybuilding dune lighting, because it’s direct overhead lighting, not not pretty for the face, but your muscles pop. And I said, Mom, stand there. There, put your feet here, press your hands against your thighs. And I took a shot, and I posted it, and I showed it to her, and she was like, her jaw hit the ground. She’s like, That’s me. I’m like, Yes, I didn’t, you know,

Joan MacDonald 15:11
I had never seen my back before, and that that’s, that’s something that is a great shot. If you can get someone to take a picture of your back as you’re training. It’s a motivator. Like I couldn’t believe how developed it was.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 15:27
That’s me your 70s, which this is a very important conversation for women to understand that you can build muscle and get stronger at any age and build visible muscle. It might it was a surprise to me longer, but it is absolutely possible. And I would ask if you were to say your top three exercises, and these are very challenging questions, but here’s why, the goal of this podcast in particular is, how do we pave the way for women in their 40s and beyond, who are interested? How do we provide them with an invitation to move from interested to action oriented?

Joan MacDonald 16:10
One thing is, Do not be afraid of the gym, because no one else is really paying that much attention to you until you start doing really good things, like when you start actually training and making a difference to yourself, like you can feel that you’re getting a little stronger all the time, if that’s why the buddy system is great too. But I didn’t have people paying attention to me until they could see my they were looking at me from my back, and that’s boy, you should see your back. How much, how well you you’re you’re developed in that thing. People are encouraging, right? Yeah, they’re encouraging. They’re
encouraging you at the gym. And they are always surprised when an older person comes in and actually does something, and not just they’re there to not there to judge you. Yeah, they’re just not going to judge you, because they, they, they’re admiring

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 17:09
you. Was there a moment before you stepped into the gym? And it’s, it’s interesting, because by this time, you’ve already been, you know, a fitness professional in multiple domains. So was it there an ease to going to the gym where you feeling like maybe I

Joan MacDonald 17:27
had to talk myself into it. I went past that gym for almost a year and a half before I finally got up enough nerve to go in and ask questions. And I only saw one part of it. I did. There was a downstairs as well, but upstairs was more. Cardio was mostly.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 17:47
Cardio was that filled with women. Yeah, I mean, it’s true, right? We’re seeing that ship now.

Joan MacDonald 17:53
There was men and women. I didn’t know about the men part, like how that was gonna go, because, you know, my generation women were not really welcomed in a gym, and therefore you avoided them if you were the average person. Yeah,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 18:12
was that something discussed? Was that a is it a known thing? For example, women of your generation, would you guys talk and say, You know what? Now we’re, we’re gonna go for, I don’t know, tea and

Joan MacDonald 18:26
toast, I place. I would play some kind of sports. I wasn’t a real big sporty person, but I like I thought I liked the idea of sports. I like to be able to participate. I’d like to be able to learn something. So I did several things. I played lob ball that this was in my late 30s, early 40s, that I was doing this stuff. I went bowling like that was an acceptable sport for a woman. I tried lawn bowling, I loved it, and I did stained glass, and I did a lot of things that I that I’ve always wanted to do, and never even tried it, but I was curious about a lot of stuff, and if you don’t try, how you gonna know if you like it or not? How do you know it’s gonna work or not? You got to try. That’s one of the things I would tell someone, if wants to do anything, give it a try.

Michelle MacDonald 19:27
I think in my family, we were very sporty. Because my my father, he was really into sports. My older brother was the king of the of the of the kids. He was a top athlete, usually the captain of the team, the pitcher, the center and hockey. So you’re very, very sporty. So I think there was a big drive. Certainly, I was really pushed by my father, not he didn’t push, push me, but as a young girl, wanting to please Daddy, I wanted to become a jock. And so that was my I was a real POM boy. And I think. Rubbed off
on you a little bit too. You would come to my games and you played law ball and whatnot, but when you first started at the gym with me, you know? So, so I was heading to Mexico when I saw it really hit me, because I wasn’t I was only seeing mom a few times a year. It really hit me that mom’s health was at stake, and she was was heaving and puffing coming up the stairs. Were you in Canada, or were you we were in Canada, but I was leaving for Mexico. It was in my husband and I made the move. I was
actually back, and I would come back again relatively quickly after that incident where mom told me she her doctor was going to increase her blood pressure medication for a powerlifting week. So and then I took mom back to Mexico. But that moment when she when I saw that how unhealthy she had become, she’d been overweight, but the extent really hit me. And there had also been several times when I noted that she seemed very depressed, like I would call her on the phone and it would just be like, Oh,
nothing’s here. And just really down. You know, it was strained between mom and dad. My dad’s passed away now, but it was strained. It wasn’t like this beautiful retired life that that they had been hoping for, which is another issue, like a reality, even gals in their 40s like, Oh, this isn’t, this is this isn’t how I thought it was going to be. So there she was unhealthy. Her face was different. I mean, she was 200 pounds, right? So she’s like 132 right now. And if you’ve and lifted 70 pounds, you

Joan MacDonald 21:30
know how heavy that weight is, I’m probably five two and a half.

Michelle MacDonald 21:33
I think you’re five one now. No, I’m always going stand up straight. Your lumbar spine is gonna get
crushed.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 21:38
So you were almost 200 pounds, yeah,

Joan MacDonald 21:40
yep. And I did get up to 205, at one point,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 21:43
and this was in your How old were you at that time?

Joan MacDonald 21:47
I was 70, yeah, because I didn’t, I didn’t start with you until I was almost 71

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 21:53
Yeah, and you felt that she had hit a low point, that for me, was a low point mentally and physically. But you were, but the

Michelle MacDonald 22:01
blood pressure medication is that I didn’t even know she was on blood pressure medication, and she was definitely hiding that she said she wasn’t. But I’m like, I’m an expert in my field. I pump out radical transformations in a ridiculously short period of time, and then we maintain those radical we build on them, right? Like this is your radical and I always say to my girls, like your your your after picture is going to become Mark my words, in a year, it’s gonna become your before. And I know right now you think that’s impossible, but this is gonna be before. So that’s what I do. That’s what I’m known for him, and I was like it for me, it was also a realization. And you’re right. It is challenging for family to help each other in this space. And I’m sure even for medicine, it might be the same, like the knowledge is there, but people won’t execute on it, versus if they were paying somebody. But I like, I’m like, I have to, I have to do this. I literally called upon, like Tony Robbins would say, all the forces of nature, whether it’s God, whether it’s my expertise, whether it’s my subconscious, my husband, who is a great regulator,
he really calms people down. I said, give me the strength and power to help my mom and I had my Friday Night Lights speech with her. I sat her down at the dinner table, and I’m like, Mom, we gotta we gotta change now. Otherwise, you know, in probably two or three years, you’re gonna end up in a nursing home. You could have a stroke, you could lose the function of your mind. You saw that happen with with with Dad, how radically you decline when you start having these major health

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 23:36
What did your father pass away from

Michelle MacDonald 23:40
complications from a fall, so he become quite frail. He broke his hips three times, and he fell down going up the stairs. Had pooling of blood in the brain. He wasn’t found for likely four hours. Mom was gone, and so that he was ended up in a in a in a facility for I think, two or three months, and he declined rapidly after that. But it was it never himself. He was almost like he had dementia, because the the pooling of blood had affected his brain capacity. So I said to mom, like, you’re and that was pre covid. I mean, I see that all the time when covid was happening, if mom had not been in shape, she was a
perfect candidate, because we know obesity increases the comorbidity for death from covid, as well as many other things that were a high risk factors, like dying from a heart attack. So I told her, I’m like, I’m not going to be there in the nursing home wiping your bum, because there’s things that you can do now, and that’s what a coach does. I think it’s a difference between a coach and like a therapist. Like we actually are going to say those hard truths, and we’re also going to give you a strategy to get out of it, like this is the hard truth in two to three years, it’s it’s a nursing home. You might lose the function of your brain. Strokes are serious. A lot of times you can’t recover from them. And there’s things that you can do now that will give you incredibly radical outcomes, and it’ll. Solve for your life problems, like you’ll have energy, you’ll be able to go on things independently, you’ll be able to lift your suitcases up. And she, she went for it, and I have a group. I said, I have a group. Oh, my God, I can’t believe like this. Would have a group. That’s the other thing that I always mentioned when I talk about these radical transformations. It’s a contain. It’s a container, right? So when we’re going to take someone through this transformation, we do it in a container with other people. And there are certain non negotiables that you need to do to stay on the boat. And those non negotiables come from experience where I see it’s all pattern recognition, right? If somebody does these things, their risk of failure is guaranteed. If they do these behaviors, their risk of massive success is guaranteed. So as the expert, I have to say, these are the non negotiables. This is the behavior we want to reward, and this is where you’re going to find resistance. And the moment you find that resistance, you flag it.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 25:59
And I would say that probably your practice as a coach has changed over the years. I can only speak for myself as a physician. You know when you are new to medicine or probably new to coaching, yeah, you kind of are, like, I got this. And then as you go through person after person, there ends up being this evolution of what becomes effective, yeah. And when you started, so you started roughly. How old were you when you said, you said, in your mid 30s with yoga. But when you

Michelle MacDonald 26:30
started coaching, coaching would be in 2012

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 26:34
so I would be 42 okay. And during that time, when you started coaching, what were some of the things that you were doing then that you probably have now changed

Michelle MacDonald 26:48
almost a little over. My dietary recommendations have changed considerably. What were they when you started? I found some old diets that I used to give it Well, number one, how I did it was, was different as well. I always, I always coached macros. But when I first was into bodybuilding, I was taught almost like a point system. It’s like, so Weight Watchers kind of, but more if it was, If weight washers was bodybuilding, you know, so So certain carbohydrates would would be in this bucket. So starches, right, would be in this bucket and and then vegetables would be in this bucket. You’d have your, like, super low calorie, like, this is basically free, like, your Iceberg lettuce and celery, cucumber, college, yeah, so

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 27:34
it’s all macros. It was very low nutrient

Michelle MacDonald 27:36
density, yeah? Well, not Yeah, we are supposed to, because he’s trying to build muscle, yeah? So we’re trying to, we’re trying to, I call it, bodybuilds are great at manipulating mass. We can gain tissue, we can lose tissue. We can gain specific kinds of tissue, we can lose specific kinds of tissue. And we
can do it on a deadline, right? And the protocol depends on what’s in front of us, what you’re willing to do, and the timeline. And it’s like, we can, we can do this, but this is what it will cost, right? So it started like that. It evolved into macros, especially with using the app my macros, which I love because I’m a chef, and you can create your meals that both satisfy your macros, which should be tied to your health and physique outcomes with I’m a foodie with satiety and enjoyment, right? So it doesn’t have to be egg whites and a scoop of peanut butter. It could be my first show I did filet mignon with a red pan sauce and some sauteed Shirataki mushrooms.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 28:38
When I started dieting, it was, you’re gonna laugh. You might you might not. Crystal Light. I don’t even know if they still have Crystal Light. Yes. Wait. Are you ready for this? I don’t think I’ve ever tried to use it. Okay, won’t judge you. Crystal Light on frozen, somewhat thawed, broccoli. Just go with me. Or this is college. I’ve never talked about this before. I’m gonna go. Wait, wait, I gotta share now. I’ve just because I like making you guys look sick so frozen, you know, partially thawed, broccoli esque on a skillet with like, lemon Crystal

Michelle MacDonald 29:14
Light. There’s probably a teenager listening to this, going, That sounds amazing.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 29:18
Do not do this. I’m not recommending anyone do this? Don’t do that with because they didn’t have all that, the stuff that they have now and the knowledge that we have now. We know

Michelle MacDonald 29:28
we’re so lucky. Boiled Ninja creamies. Oh, my God, boiled chicken.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 29:31
I was a boiled chicken girl. I would travel and like, rubber boiled chicken. Oh yeah. I was like, Is this a hockey but wait, I don’t even have hockey. Totally, totally with I would also do the white rice. So zero nutrient other we’re like, yeah, five ever nutrients were a little bit barely, and whatever nutrients were in that chicken cooked out, definitely cooked up, except for the macro of protein. By the way, when you flash freeze, you blanch it, and you destroy a lot of the nutrients. And it could have been cauliflower. Maybe it was cauliflower with or cauliflower rice with a tropical mix. I mean, it was my rendition, yeah, of Hawaiian rice, disgusting, very low nutrient density, and I was hungry

Michelle MacDonald 30:18
and chiity, low pleasure, and it leads to binge behavior, right? I or unsustainable?

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 30:24
Yes, and I want to talk about eating disorders, you know? I want to touch on it and just this eating obsession when I so I am not a foodie. I have become much more interested in food because we cook at home, but I’ve become much more interested in the nutrient density, right? Yeah,

Michelle MacDonald 30:46
beautiful language, super important. However, I’m not

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 30:50
letting you off the hook on this, because I spend easily four years of my life super obsessed and focused on food. Yeah, hungry. Very restricted. And, you know, you might find me, you know, going off the deep end. And my deep end might be weird for some people. You know, I love trail mix, and I love to dried fruit, whereas I know that in the past, you have struggled in a similar way, and I, I do want to get down to the nuts and bolts of, you know, the three best exercises for women, because I’m going to, I want to test my knowledge, but before we do that, I do want to hear your experience, because obviously you are someone who stays in great shape, and that requires knowledge of nutrition, and that requires consistency. But it probably has not always been as easy as it is

Michelle MacDonald 31:43
now. Yeah, for sure. So you know it’s, it’s, it was so long ago. I am almost 55 but I was very, very, I was a very sick young girl. I always, I always think of my wasted youth, because now that I’m almost 55 when I look at a 16 year old or even a 20 year old, I’m like, Oh my God, you’re so perfect. Look at your skin. Do you know how beautiful you are, or smart you are, or how much potential you have? I want to caveat that, because we’re more than just a pretty face, but it’s just more that when you’re young, when you’re 16, there are so much else to be pouring your energy into, besides self immolation, self
flagellation, and that’s what the eating disorder is, and especially for women, you are wasting so much energy that you could be pouring in to developing your skills and your experiences. So yeah, for me, it started off from sports. I was a 16 year old. I was in a small town, 16,000 people. We had a coach. But you know, the coaches that the coaching that woman got, that girls got, at that level in Canada, they’re not top coaches. Educate, nutrition education has come a long time, and probably mindset coaching. I mean, I don’t know what’s happening at school these days, so, but you know, hopefully it’s evolved. But
there was no coaching around nutrition. So I wanted to be a I wanted to make it to regionals. I was a track and field athlete. I was a hurdler and a high jumper, and it looked like the thin girls were faster. There’s also some pressure going on behind the scenes, you know, as there always is in high school, like being cool, and what were the cool girls doing? And I had overheard a girl in our small circle of friends, she was a competitive figure skater, so figure skating, gymnastics and dancing, those three are rife with eating disorders. And so she had told us, oh, I’ve discovered this thing. You can eat this, and then you stick your finger down your throat, and you don’t have to, you know, don’t have to pay for it. And at first, when I heard I thought, wow, that’s ridiculous. But then later on, it stuck with me. I was in avulnerable state. I had no coaching. And when you’re young, you know it all, and you don’t talk to people and ask questions. Now we have social media, but that could be really dangerous. Now, with these online groups where people are teaching each other how, how to be unhealthy, basically, I just
starved myself. I just would stop eating. The coach of me knows now, calorically, what I was doing, I was having Horlicks drinks with that. They’re like a drink with milk and malt, and they’re actually like, think about like a hot it’s like a hot chocolate, so calorically, maybe around plus the milk, like 202 50 calories. But I thought it was nothing, and I was still under eating for my size and my energy expenditure. And then I would, I would have a cookie, right? And so that store, I tried fiber pills, and
that’s how it started. And then it rapidly escalated. I went away to a to a camp. I worked in a camp for boys, actually, and it escalated there again, just the pressures of i. Uh, the so the social changes that were happening, trying to navigate the politics of being, you know, a 16 year old, 16 and 16 and just not having, there’s no mentorship, no access. Back then, it was really different. You know, we don’t have, like I said, access to these amazing podcasts and apps and whatnot. So that it just escalated very quickly, and I was caught in a cycle of, like, basically starving myself, and I would be successful. I got all the way down to 88 pounds, and I can’t I’m like, I would have to chop off a leg to be 88 pounds. Now I can’t even imagine how I did it, but I I was, I was just lost, and I was very functional. Bulimia is very easy to hide. You look like a normal weight, usually, but it’s a terrible battle inside. And so that was all the way until I was 30, when I found yoga, and yoga really, and yoga became, you know, why did I create the framework that I did when I started coaching, it was always heavily in mindset. It comes from yoga in my own journey, right? So understanding when your nervous system is not regulated, being skillful and having strategies in place before you get dysregulated, how to drive a wedge into triggered behavior. Have pleasurable alternatives that can calm you down. Because usually when we’re doing some kind of a soothing kind of a soothing behavior, whether it’s alcohol or some video game or something that’s distracting you from achieving your goals or being who you are, you’re trying to soothe you’re trying to calm down your nervous system, but you’re doing it in a way that has long term negative consequences. So I brought that into my coaching, and I would always say, like, you know, you go to a bodybuilding event, and you’d see, you’d see girls bringing bags of candy, and, you know, they would not even last from the morning show to the evening show. They get on to the evening show, and they would have huge distinction. They’d have alcohol backstage, and you’d see people a week later in the gym, and it looked like they never lifted the barbell in their life. It was insane. I’d even see guys suffer from that, so making sure that my offer was always different from that. Like, listen, I’m here for long term health for you, right? We’re gonna, we’re gonna be very competitive on stage, but even leading up to an event, I’ll start coaching mindset. All right, so what’s working for you now? What is your why doing this and trying to create a long term trajectory and coach the mindset

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 37:32
so you suffered from anorexia, bulimia, the combo,

Michelle MacDonald 37:36
yeah, bulimia is you often both you starve, and then you binge, and then you say you’ll never do it
again, and for

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 37:41
almost roughly 50 it’s like yo yo dieting on steroids. 15 years. Yeah, 15 years. Well, in university,

Michelle MacDonald 37:49
I try to kill myself. So the first year I lived off campus, I lived with a gal who I switched school to the last minute, probably, I drove my dad nuts. I was into McGill University. I was on the dorm ready to rock and roll, and then I got it into my head in August, again, the young people were so full of passion, but we make strategic mistakes, and then we have to learn from experience. But I switched schools, so I didn’t I was too late to get a spot on campus. I was off campus. I live with a gal who had a graduate boyfriend, so she was gone, so I was all by myself in the basement. I mean, it was just a recipe for disaster, because, again, I was also young, so I was in accelerated learning, went to a went to a special school for bright kids, and I was in university at 17, so I was young, socially awkward, already had an eating disorder, had no support for it, and I’m living off campus in a house by myself, where the ability to binge without repercussions nobody nobody could see, nobody could Hear, and really you’re it’s like being in a relationship with the most abusive person you can imagine. You know an eating disorder is like being in an incredibly abusive relationship with yourself. And when you, when you think about the terror and the trauma of being in an abusive relationship with the partner, and you think of how traumatizing that can be when it is in yourself. You literally, you get up and you’re afraid. You’re afraid because your history is that within two hours, you’re going to be damaging yourself. And without being graphic, I would, I would be bulimic seven times in a row. So within three hours, I would force feed three to 5000 calories into myself. It was not pleasurable. It’s literally like force feeding a foie gras duck. I would purge I would say I would not do it again. I would do it again within 20 minutes, and it would happen so many times that I wanted to kill myself. Yourself. So that was probably like one of the big moments where Mom, mom came and I called, I said, I think I’m going to kill my I think I’ve killed myself because I swallowed like a bottle of Tylenol, which probably wouldn’t have killed myself. It would have just completely destroyed my liver. But that’s how bad it was. Then I became functional. So I didn’t cure, right? But I came functional, meaning,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 40:25
so did you? Did, Joan, did you I was

Joan MacDonald 40:27
not aware. No, she Yeah, she came. You came. I came. Oh yeah, yeah, I came. Holy, yeah. And

Michelle MacDonald 40:34
she knew I was ill because I I was in therapy when I was at private school, right? So, but, yeah, I took, you know, I don’t want to say you can’t help people that have disordered behavior, whether it’s alcoholism, but

Joan MacDonald 40:53
you know, it’s, it’s, they have to want it the same as with, do

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 40:56
you think, and you’ve been coaching for a long time? Yeah, first of all, there’s a lot of strength in that story, and I do think that a lot of young women go through that in some capacity, maybe not as I’m sure

Michelle MacDonald 41:09
it’s a spectrum. It happens on a spectrum. Yes, it happens a lot more than we think, yes, yes, I agree.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 41:15
I think that story is really important, because I am sure that a lot of women are suffering, probably even more so now with these eating disorders. Again, I don’t have statistics in front of me, yeah, but

Michelle MacDonald 41:28
we’re still very the rise of social media, I think actually we’re seeing a rise with eating disorders. In men, they’re actually rising up now, but I don’t know that in women, that they’ve significantly increased. But when it comes to transforming your body. What I want to be clear is disordered eating takes place on a spectrum, and we don’t want to over label eating disorder when it’s I think Tony Robbins talks about this right, like everything it’s so much can be, can be trained or changed when we frame it properly, and once we start labeling disorder on behaviors, it’s almost like it’s out of our control. We always want to keep that control, but know when we need to get expert help,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 42:17
that’s, I think, the biggest point, and be open if a coach

Michelle MacDonald 42:21
can take your money and they’ll and they say to you, listen, I don’t feel comfortable taking your money. I really think you should take this money and put it towards their therapy. Then take that positively, right? Don’t run and try to find another coat to coach you, because eating disorders, if left unchecked, can have really major repercussions, and the more you the more times you do something, the more it’s likely to become ingrained, right? And so you always want to think of that it’s it works to our benefit when we’re repeating a great habit, and it works to our detriment when we’re repeating a bad habit and getting away with it until we no longer can. So I think with with the eating disorders, just a lot of it is the frame really communicating with the people that you need to that can, you know, help you check yourself before you wreck yourself. And then, for me as a coach, it’s, it’s really about coaching my client towards, well, up leveling their why, right? So let’s start with the esthetic. Like I said earlier, no shame in that, right? But let’s start evolving that in talking about your health metrics, your longevity metrics, and then obviously, I’ve got to provide the protocol that makes it achievable, matches where the person’s skill and energetic levels are, and so on and so forth. So that’s that journey. I think it, think it’s very easy to get into this and obsess about macros. And I actually, I get in there and and I coach coaches. I say, you know, you’ve got to assess if this client needs to actually go on a treat meal, and they are specifically not allowed to measure something, and then

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 44:02
they’ve got a reward, a treat meal, a treat

Michelle MacDonald 44:05
me. I call it a treat meal, not a cheat meal, or I’ll call it a Social Meal. Go out and have a Social Meal. Can’t measure anything, and I want you to check in. How do you feel?

Joan MacDonald 44:13
Use this. How do you feel? How did it feel?

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 44:16
It becomes easier for people to go out and have a Social Meal and not think about it. If they are on a journey of body transformation,

Michelle MacDonald 44:26
it depends on the individual. So I mean that people are on a spectrum. And so some people, it is easy, and then other people, we have to give them those guardrails. They function better with it. Other people just don’t need it. They don’t want it. They don’t need it physiologically. They don’t want it emotionally, and they’re fine to have like, a high calorie day with very specific targets to hit. They’re the real type

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 44:54
A athlete. He does want to win a bunch of those patients in our practice. This so, so it

Michelle MacDonald 45:01
depends on, you know, depend and some and people change, like, right now with this person is being new, they might need to work on emotional regulation in chaos, right, and not having to, like, know, and nail everything. And then three months later, we’ve evolved, and we’re working on something else. So that’s also that nuance of Who do I have in front of me? Where are they on their journey? What am I coaching? And is this still in my lane, right as a coach, or now, do we have to, like, reach out externally to another expert? So, like, I hope that kind of ties off that, yeah, for me, it’s been incredible. And I say to gals that are still struggling, you know, I’m thinking about food too much, and I think there is a place for, you know, certainly in bodybuilding, I might ruffle some feathers here, but for GLP ones there, right? It’s properly used in association with all the other things. Obviously, in bodybuilding, you’re hitting that hypertrophy marker. But it’s a it’s a tool. So, you know, research based use it.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 46:03
I totally agree with you, yeah. And we use GLP ones and those types of medications in our practice, and we’ve been using them cut the food, noise, we’ve been using them easily 10 years, yeah. So not obviously, you know, GLP ones got approved for weight management. But prior to that, there were other medications, and we’ve used them in practice, yeah, yeah, because sometimes very appropriately used, yeah, yes, the food noise is real and it could whether it is a distraction for some for something else, it still impacts people so deeply that if you can remove that, it is like a breath of fresh air, and I do think, and thank you so much for tying that back. I do want people to hear that. Don’t wait if they feel like they need help, from a eating disorder perspective, if they’re a shame around it, or if there’s any of those things, there’s a ton of resources. Yeah. And again, it’s a spectrum, which I think it’s really, truly important.

Michelle MacDonald 47:02
And we in our journey, move through different pieces of it. So just being cognizant of that, being staying agile, what what you need, your needs and your experiences today should not and likely won’t be your needs and experiences in a future environment. And then we always aspire to grow. Have a growth mindset. I can’t do this yet. This is and don’t, don’t, don’t shame and Please embrace pharmacological intervention where it’s appropriate and where there’s research and the safety protocols have been in

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 47:35
place. Do you consider yourself now resolved or in a completion? Okay? Oh, yeah. So as you are coaching people, do you think the orientation towards health or towards nutrition? Is there a way to do it without putting people into this kind of obsessive way? Because what I’m hearing you say is that the eating disorder was a coping mechanism. It wasn’t directly related to the food exactly, but now, as we think about the world of health and wellness and nutrition, yeah, sure, and the use of GLP ones, do you think that as we start to reorient ourselves to nutrition, that it puts people at a higher risk, or is it? Does it become a higher risk? Have you seen that? You know, as women are trying to transform their body? It’s a

Michelle MacDonald 48:27
very complex issue. I’m glad you brought it up. As a coach, I would say number one, I have to provide a strategy that somebody can execute on, and I need to educate you on the pieces, the protocol that I’m asking you to do, whether it’s educating you without clobbering you over the head, educating you around the why that we’re choosing to focus on fiber or the why around we’re choosing to train this way or not train this way, or Why we’re doing the cardiovascular piece for now, for where your body is now, and give them choices so that they can make an empowered choice, right? Well, if we don’t want to do this, then can you get blood work done so we make sure we’re not getting deficiencies, right? So talking like that, giving them choices, creating space. I also have to be able to assess, you know, the fit of what it is that they’re asking to achieve with where they are in terms of their ability to regulate themselves.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 49:39
So before we turn the cameras on, we were talking about emotional and maybe it wasn’t emotional regulation, but it was more nervous system, nervous system regulation, which is tied into emotions, yes, and what you were talking about is, really, if you cannot regulate your nervous system, then it’s going to become much more difficult. People to make The Next Best decision, whether it is training or whether it is food, because, you know, we’ve all been in a very stressed state. Typically those decisions, if you cannot bring it down five notches, are not going to be good decisions. This all kind of brings things full circle, that while we talk about training and we talk about nutrition, we also have to recognize that there is a discernment component,

Michelle MacDonald 50:26
yeah, because, because, as a coach, that’s outside my lane to coach you strategy around an eating disorder, but disordered eating takes place on a spectrum, right? And so I’m not going to be a I call it a lazy coach and say, Well, I can’t I there’s nothing I can offer you, because you can’t control yourself around food, right? There’s definitely education I can do there. There’s strategies I can offer, but when it comes to an actual eating disorder that’s out of my lane, okay, right? And there’s that assessment that has to happen, and also great communication, because that is a different that is a different place. And from my experience, if I look back and think, if I had had great help, could I have shortened that window of time, and then what would great help look like, right? So could I have shortened that window of time of suffering? Gets us years back, oh my gosh, like I was not able to, you know, go out on a date without thinking about food and how I was going to go purge afterwards, like I just wasn’t present and it was just such a waste of energy. I think women are fantastic. We’re fabulous. We can change the world. We can create jobs for other people. We can shift legislation. We can have babies like there’s so much that we can do, and we’re really taking out a main, a major player that can contribute to society. When a significant portion of the population is wasting their energy with this immolation, like we just it, it needs to stop. And that’s, you know, what drives me, changing the narrative. It’s really changing the narrative, I say, around aging for women, but it’s really about, what does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be strong, right? What is masculine? What is feminine? How? What can we do now as Gen Xers, right, to change the narrative for the gals that are coming up behind us, right, the gals that are in their 10s and fifteens and sixteens right now,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 52:22
and it’s a, it’s an extremely important conversation, right? I look at my daughter, she’s six, but, I mean, she’s watching, she’s seeing just again, we don’t she’s not allowed on social media, per se. She’s also not allowed on electronics. You know, I recently took the kids to the park, and I decided that we should all do a push up challenge. You know, I don’t know if I’m a very popular parent, but anyway, I’m not. And, you know, out of all the kids, it was, I don’t know, five boys and my daughter, yeah, and did she? She she was the one who wanted to do it, and the boys were like, I can’t do that. So it’s interesting. It’s an interesting perspective, because I hadn’t really thought about it until now, as we think, Okay, well, what does strength look like? And if someone was starting on their journey, and let’s say they’ve got a great coach, and they’re lucky enough to be coached by you and you collectively, do you pick if you were to say, if I call my mom and we say, Okay, we’re going to give her three exercises that we want her to do that’s difficult, right? But are there three exercises that you feel as a coach, that everyone should be able to do three movements. Everybody

Joan MacDonald 53:47
should be able to do wall pushes, which is your you. You’re standing so far away from the wall, hands on it, like around this

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 53:57
area, so your hands are towards your push. Okay, push, put,

Joan MacDonald 54:01
push, push, like as if you’re doing a push up, but you’re doing it against the wall. Working with bands. They’re fabulous. I’ve had to do different exercises with bands. You can a small even a two pound barbell in your hand against

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 54:21
I love hearing you say that. And I want to talk to you about why love hearing against

Joan MacDonald 54:26
with the band in your hand as well, and you step on it, and you lift it up like you do a bicep curl. Bicep curl. That’s should be easy

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 54:38
for anyone. Okay, so we got two

Joan MacDonald 54:40
you could hold on to the counter like it’s assisted, but you can bend your knees like squat down, try to keep your back as straight as you can and squat down as far as you can. And you keep doing that, within a week, you’re going to change that.

Michelle MacDonald 54:57
We probably say squat switch. Sit it into a chair and get

Joan MacDonald 55:01
back up again. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. I know that a lot of people, you know, for older people, they have to, you know, have to hold on to both sides and rock until they get up. It’s very difficult for a lot of people, especially in that shape, and even if they’re younger, like before they’re 40, I know of girls that can’t even

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 55:21
do that, and it’s happening earlier, earlier. I do not believe that sarcopenia, which is, oh, it’s happening so fast, that’s right, yeah, 2016 sarcopenia, which is a decreased muscle mass, functionality and strength, is considered a disease of the older population. I do not believe that to be true. I believe that there are going to be phenotypes of youth starting, oh, yeah, way earlier decrease muscle mass, of strength and function. Yeah. Mitchell,

Michelle MacDonald 55:51
did you say? What are the three things people should be able or will know? There

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 55:56
are a handful of questions that we get from the audience. Yeah. And one of those is the three best exercises for a beginner, a woman in her 40s is starting. And again, I know,

Michelle MacDonald 56:09
yeah, that’s, I couldn’t give you a nuanced I have

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 56:13
a few answers you want to tell me what you think. Yes, tell me I think that one. But again, I mean, they’re obviously I need to be able to provide an answer. Just don’t

Michelle MacDonald 56:23
say everyone should be able to do 10 push ups, because you’ll, you’ll die on the cross for that. But

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 56:27
what I will say is that I’ll provide an answer because I can give you a thought process to why. Yeah, I think everyone should be able to carry, hold something and carry this functional movement. This would be, you know, a movement that I think that we do all the time, that helps with activities

Michelle MacDonald 56:46
of daily and stay independent. Yep, so feel carry. Yes, you

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 56:49
have to be able to do a carry. Now, if I were to pick my second best exercise, do I think that you have to do a push up? You don’t have to. It’s my favorite exercise because it’s just fun. Who doesn’t love to do sets of push ups, but you should be able to push. It could be a wall push. It could be a push up, but I do think that upper body strength, but I’m not tied to that answer of a push up. If I had to pick a third exercise, what do people have to do? I do think, from a value perspective, someone should be able to, and you guys, the coaches might all yell at me, but to put something overhead, you have to be able to
again, you know, I’m a trained geriatrician, which is, yeah, I know, of course I do. After seeing all of these people in nursing homes, we begin to think about as they’re going to physical therapy. What keeps them out of a nursing home? They have to be able to get up off the toilet, they have to be able to carry their stuff, and they have to be able to put stuff away. So my third exercise, again, you can pick it, but some kind of overhead activity doesn’t have to be a heavily loaded one, but those would be my things are brilliant. I want to hear

Michelle MacDonald 58:03
your dream. Um, you know, if I’m, if I’m talking from, yeah, I had Dr Stuart Phillips on my podcast. Stronger by design,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 58:10
I love Dr Stu Phillips. He’s back, won’t come back on our show, stews a good fight. I’ve known him for

Michelle MacDonald 58:18
years. I love that. And we had some tension, because I’m a coach and I’m I specifically about changing the narrative for women and and I’m like, we can do more, right? So I agree and him and I disagree I know. I’m like, I’m not gonna say go for a walk. I’m not gonna say pick up the pen. Well, how is that gonna help the type two muscle fibers? Yeah. So okay, do, but you are being called to action here. But I do agree that at a minimum, right two great, purposeful, intentional got to add those caveats in intentional strength training programs, and we can start low if we’re talking about getting people started. So then it would be like, Well, what should you be able to do? You You should be able to get up from the floor, unless you have a, you know, joint issue that prevents that from happening. But if you fall down, you want to be able to independently get yourself up

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 59:09
off so what’s your exercise? Let’s say they’re in their 40s, so they’re younger. Would it still be a push up, or some kind of

Michelle MacDonald 59:15
push for that piece you’re looking at, core strength, and you’re there would be pushing involved, right? So you got to push yourself to get onto your feet. There’d be knee mobility. So you’d have to train this is sorry, but the truth is, to get up off the floor, you’d have to train all of those different pieces to get you up off the

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 59:37
gotta give me three exercises. I gave you three, and I’ll say overhead press, and I’ve given you three. You three. You have to give me three.

Michelle MacDonald 59:43
Okay. Well, to just get to just be able to functionally get up off the floor, you

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 59:47
three best exercises, three beginner exercises for women. And we’ll just say 4040s, and 50s.

Michelle MacDonald 59:53
I’m going to caveat, and I’ll probably get Erin on the cross for this. I’m going to say, what should a strong 40 year

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 59:59
old? I love it. Well. Would there be, whether a beginner So, so

Michelle MacDonald 1:00:03
this is what you can aspire to and what you have to train for. So you have to do some kind of a squat or leg press

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:00:09
move. I was there the same movement. I was very curious about that, right? I don’t know the answer to that. So you think a squat or leg press, this is good. So if

Michelle MacDonald 1:00:17
you can put a barbell on your back, we have

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:00:19
access to like a safety squat, and you don’t have hip dysplasia, or during

Michelle MacDonald 1:00:23
we’re talking about, like, if you could do this thing and it these are real points for a 40 year old, by the way, a strong female, not only female, but a strong female squat, and you’re in shape, right? Because we’re not talking about total mass, but like, more lean mass, squat, your body weight. That’s going to be a shock to some people. I gotta I’ve got I’ve got a lot of fresh back from that, a strong, okay, we don’t care about this. People. I’m female. Do that. If you can’t do those things, you’re on a leg, press, then I would say we’re looking at, you know, including the sled for like, eight, okay, great for eight flat. Did you say sled, the sled, but, well, you’re actually pushing, okay, Hammer Strength, like 118 just, just sled alone, but you should be able to leg press for eight to 12 reps, double your body weight. Okay, you’re 120 pounds, 240 so the sled plus Mom, can do that math, the sled plus, right? That’s a strong average female. So, so periodize yourself to that goal. Should have one more. There’s two more, right? So that takes, like, care of the lower body, okay? The upper body again, this is the pull piece, right? So you should be able to lift off the floor, a strong female, 1.5 your body weight, pull off the floor. Pull off the floor.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:01:38
Would this be a strong deadlift? What kind of exercise, if

Michelle MacDonald 1:01:42
you don’t have back issues, and you could do a deadlift off the floor, or a baby and deadlift, or, like a belt squat machine, RDL, that would be pulling off the floor for eight reps. Now, that’s going to seem like a lot of weight for some people, but I have so many clients that are actually able to do that after a certain period of time. So somebody that was 120 pounds, you know, you’re looking at, sorry, I said 1.5 I take that back, one and a quarter times for eight reps. So somebody that was like 100 pound, 100 pounds, they’re going to be able to lift 125

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:14
pounds. And this exercise would be the

Michelle MacDonald 1:02:18
belt squat. You can do a bell squat, Romanian deadlift, okay, right? Yeah, safe. That could be a deadlift or a barbell, Romanian deadlift. So those would be the options. If you don’t have contraindications with your back and you might,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:34
yes, yeah, for

Michelle MacDonald 1:02:35
sure. If you can’t do that, then I would say, well, let’s move to because that’s your whole posterior chain, and there’s definitely a skill to that. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, I would definitely get some training to how to do that properly. If you have contraindications, then could you do a T bar machine where your chest is supported for that, you know, probably we’re looking at half, you know, a third to half your body weight. So working yourself towards being able to that pulling motion with that’s your back, your arms, your in, your your lower back would be secured. So I would be very specific to that. Why that’s important, again, very functional. Your back is a woman, your back, the back side of your body, your back, your glutes, your hamstrings, can really put a lot of mass on and if we’re talking about aging. Well, we want to have a decent amount of muscle mass. So where are you going to put that on? It’s not, probably not going to be your pecs. It’s probably going to be the back side of your body. And we see that when we do the before and afters, the back side, we see all this muscle over the course of a year. And it’s really exciting. It’s easy to see. It gets you, you know, hooked into your why? Like, why am I doing all this stuff? It’s working. When we think of the typical, if I think of baby boomers or older, and I think of their posture, right?

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:03:49
I’m not a baby, right? She’s terrible. Yeah, no, by the way, for those who are listening strong back,

Michelle MacDonald 1:03:55
you want to hit the 80s with really strong back, strong glutes. That’s going to be how you’re moving forward. So that’s your your lower body. That’s the pull piece. Either it’s pulling including your your legs, or it’s pulling just the back only. And then there would have to be, I would want to have that push piece in there, for sure. So making sure

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:04:16
that that’d be a sled push, or any kind of push, it

Michelle MacDonald 1:04:20
could be a sled push. It could be, I’m not going to say probably three years ago, I would say every woman should be able to bench press. But with my clients, majority being in their 50s and seeing the amount of shoulder and elbow and inflammation issues, tendinitis cropping up, I’m like, Ah, you know what? Sadly, I’ve got to take that off the table, so making sure that you are training your your pecs in your front delts. And I like functional movements, like the sled push if you have access to it. But if you have something like, like mom said, like an incline, push up and bringing that incline down if you can. Do that push I take overhead, pushing off just because it’s

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:05:05
I have. So there’s a lot of injuries, but a lot of clients, you make a really good point, how do we, you know, and I’m probably wrong on that there, there has to be a way to be able to get stronger in that plane. Yeah, you usually, usually,

Michelle MacDonald 1:05:19
like, a flat press or a machine press. I’m getting really strong with that. So in the old days, I would have said, with the bench press, you should be able to bench press like for eight reps, half your body weight.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:05:28
But we don’t know where anyone came up with these numbers, do we? Oh,

Michelle MacDonald 1:05:32
I’m giving you those numbers as a coach, right? A strong female, and what I see my average client being able to achieve, no matter if she’s never weightlifted before in a year or two, where we can get her to that’s what I’m seeing across the board, like I’m seeing girls in their 60s being able to hip thrust 225, pounds. And I like the pushing piece, because your triceps, your pecs, those are important, especially when we think of getting up off the

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:05:56
floor. Can we talk about glutes? Are we always gonna talk about glutes? I love blue because I don’t have any. And I would like to know for myself, this is true. I’m asking for a friend who’s sitting in front of me, who’s sitting next to me, he is me. Are there certain exercises that are the best for building your

Joan MacDonald 1:06:13
glutes? You have great glutes. I like the frog.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:06:16
One good. I do that one.

Joan MacDonald 1:06:18
Do you? Yes, laying your glass down, face down. I get

Michelle MacDonald 1:06:23
that one. People are like, I feel so embarrassed at the gym. It is a goodie. Okay,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:06:29
wait, so this is not the frog pump. Is this where you’re laying on your back?

Joan MacDonald 1:06:32
No, because this is when you’re laying on on a bench, on your face. I’ve done that and you lift the barbell with have not to arch of your feet.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:06:42
Carlos is fired. Carlos Mona, my trainer, he’s fired. I’ve never done

Joan MacDonald 1:06:45
that one. It’s, you can really feel it. I’d

Michelle MacDonald 1:06:48
sit with Brett on this one. I mean, he, he’s just studied this so much. I usually make the barbell hip thrust, or the glute machine hip thrust in my most beginners, that will be the one lift I I really try to make sure we that the coaches are putting that in so we have a bunch of programs, and the hip thrust will be in there. The only caveat would be somebody at home, but didn’t have access to that, we’ll still do like a dumbbell hip thrust.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:07:12
Couldn’t you use bands and tighten the bands on both sides of a bench and then use them? Can?

Michelle MacDonald 1:07:17
But there’s a journey that a woman in my experience, and I can only speak for my bubble, right? There’s a journey that a woman goes through where, and I think my mom’s video that made it on to it

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:07:27
was like the Google, you know, he sent it to us. We’ll post that. Yeah, she was on like the Google,

Michelle MacDonald 1:07:35
no, the YouTube, and YouTube year, wrap up. And it was her hip thrusting 200 pounds for, I think it was 12 reps. And as a coach, she had never barbell hip thrust before, but I saw her, I said, try this hip thrust. And her movement patterns were great. And so I said, I said, let’s, let’s work on this. And within, I think a week or two, I was like, let’s keep putting weight on. Let’s keep putting

Joan MacDonald 1:07:58
weight well, yeah, yeah, where they’re egging me on. We were like, those

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:08:03
are good friends, you know.

Michelle MacDonald 1:08:05
But she didn’t know the weight she was using. And when I said, Hey,

Joan MacDonald 1:08:08
she’s putting it on, I’m not gonna be seeing what it is, she was shocked.

Michelle MacDonald 1:08:12
And so a lot of us, again, women, were so we’re so ingrained that we’re not strong and and we lack that confidence going into the gym. And there’s so much empowerment when you put those big, big girl plates on the 40 fives, and you can walk into a gym and you can move that weight. And so that’s part of that mindset journey that I like to coach. And it’s a very safe movement. It’s a very short range of motion. There’s not a lot of skill involved, honestly, and if there’s gluten machines now all over the place in gym. So we can always do that if I really feel I want to pull back on any skill aspects to that lift, to be able to to be able to acclimatize being strong safely. And we know from research that is as effective as a squat, and a squat has much more difficulty when it comes to skill and injury risks. And injury risk, I still think I coach a lot of gals from zero to hero with it, and it can be done, but there is more skill required from the coach, especially online, however. So glutes for me, hip thrust. Love it. That would be my my number one

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:09:21
good. I love doing this. We I always have that in my program, so this is good to know. I guess I have to rehire my my coach, my trainer. But you said something that I want to just pause on, and that is moving safely, and that exercise and training is a skill so important. How do women in midlife, take care and prevent injury. Are there ways in which totally easy?

Michelle MacDonald 1:09:49
Okay, in the modern era, it’s so easy you’ve got a smartphone videotape yourself if you’re in a fussy gym, you can either change gyms. There are stealth ways. You can videotape yourself now with your watch. Put the phone on, put a magnetic piece on it, go put it somewhere. Be totally unobtrusive. I always just say, switch gyms if you can, but you can videotape yourself. And why is that important? Because you can see right a lot of times on YouTube. I think Jeff Knipper is great. Yes, Jeff, Jeff,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:10:16
I’m going to the gym. Yep, and I have bad form, or I don’t really know necessarily what I’m doing, and I want to hire somebody not but let’s say I’m traveling and I don’t want to get injured, okay, if I’m going in there, is there a weird machines that I can that’s what I was going to ask these machines. Or are there common mistakes that you see when women come to you that they do that put them at risk for

Michelle MacDonald 1:10:41
injury? Yeah, absolutely so. Number one like use machines. If in doubt, you don’t have time, you’re already making 50 decisions in life. You can’t go on YouTube and look at a shorts by Jeff Knipper on how to do a lateral raise. Then go do a lateral raise machine. You’re so locked in that you really can’t screw around with your movements. Such good advice. If you have the scope, you know, to hire somebody that is tried and true. For example, they have clients that are your avatar. They can literally tell you, Oh my God, this was me five months ago. I’ve learned so much, right? So if I am a great coach, somebody’s gonna tell me, and I have pride in this. I’ve learned more from you in three months than I have with my trainer for the last 10 years. I’m like, then I done my job, right? So if you can hire somebody, if you’re really proactive, videos that you can watch on YouTube, video to yourself, how does it feel? In general? Slower is better. So slow down. The negative. Introduce pauses. Know where you are if you are a beginner. So that means coming up to you and saying, Wow, you are so good at your training. Are you a coach? Are you a trainer? If they’re not doing that, and I get asked that all the time, then just slow down. Slow down the negative, which is when you’re lowering the weight generally, right? Slow that piece down, because that allows you to lift less weight, but get yourself to approximating failure. That just means, like nobody should be talking to you, you can’t talk to anybody during the last couple of reps, right? So slow down the negative. You can lift a lighter weight, so even if your form is a little bit off, it’s probably not going to impact your joints negatively, but you’re still able to push your muscles to where there’s enough stress to drive the adaptation you’re looking for progressive stimulus, yes, yes. Very, very important, right? And then how are you feeling? Right? So if you’re doing an exercise for your quads, like a squat or even a hack squat, which is a machine, and you’re feeling it in your back, that’s a red flag. You should not be feeling it in your back. Something is going wrong, right? So either you have an issue that has to be dealt with medically that you didn’t know about, and as we get older, there’s, you know, and if you have been dieting your whole life, maybe you have osteopenia, osteoporosis. Maybe there’s a lot of women have a issues around their lumbar spine when they hit menopause, just with age, not eating properly, they’re not treating properly. Do you have disc generation issues? It’s more common than we think, right? So that’s not just your form like, maybe that’s something that has to get investigated properly. Hopefully they have an amenable doctor for that. Or it’s your form, right? And could you use a belt? Right? So my gals that do tend to are more prone, especially gals that travel a lot and are sitting down or are working and sitting down and don’t aren’t able to stand up and work. There’s some great I love the and I’m not sponsored by them. I love the Slim itum Pro trainer. I’ve had to use it. Oh my gosh. It’s a really great training belt. You’ll see it a lot in IBB, MPC gals, bikini gals, but it actually is, like, a really decent amount of support. It’s relatively comfortable. It has like, a it’s wide, and it has a tie piece, and then it has a Velcro piece, right? And the support through the obliques in the back is considerable. It’s not like a belt that you’re clunking on. You can wear it under, under something as well as over. It’s just comfortable and functional. And so I would say, and I’ve told my clients that if they’re if they feeling that they’re back. I say listen for the this week, I want you to wear the Pro, the slim Tom pro trainer, just to be on the safe side, and then make sure you’re doing some extra core work, like a McGill sit up, bird dogs, anti rotational things like a pale of press.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:14:35
Let those are great exercises. Let’s touch on core. Yeah. Are there? Number one, why should we do

Michelle MacDonald 1:14:40
core for your six pack? Because your core, if you have ever hurt your back, your core, is everything. It’s so preventative and an important part of transferring power from your lower body to your upper body, it affects your posture. For women as well, I would tie core into pelvic floor health. They’re very knit. Together, and that’s one thing that we face as we age, whether or not you’ve had kids incontinence and

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:15:06
prolapse, so, and none of those are fun or sound fun, and they contribute a balance, yes, so. And when I say not the core exercises, but if you’re a woman, yeah, pelvic floor issues potentially, see pelvic floor specialists, core exercises, yeah, are there a handful? Because you’d mentioned bird dog, Pavlov, press McGill, sit up. Yeah.

Michelle MacDonald 1:15:29
I think, I think most CSCs are going to say, especially with that avatar, the 40 plus female, where most of us aren’t coming into our 40s, trained on core strength. Your your, those are the basics you’re going to be wanting to do, properly executed dead bugs. And there are, there are advancements in dead bugs, like dead bugs kill me when I pull my navel into the base of my spine and really keep my lower back down on the floor, and I’m mindfully moving. I mean, 30 reps and I am cooked, like cooked. I would also say, have pride in cooking yourself, right? Which is like, getting to that lactate threshold burnout sooner rather than later. If you’re somebody that’s like, oh, I can do like 50 of them, you’re probably not doing doing them intentionally. There’s mind muscle connection. There’s opportunity there that you can take advantage of. And so just staying super humble and trying to use the appropriate muscle more, and usually it’s going to be slower movements, and really feeling the muscle as you’re doing it, versus the body is so efficient. If it’s if it’s if you tell it, just, I want you to do this thing, it can figure out how to do that with minimal exertion, and it does that quickly, like within a couple of weeks, you’re being efficient. You’re doing more. But are you necessarily using that exercise for what it’s supposed to be doing, which is targeting your core in a kind of multi movement way?

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:17:01
Yeah, bringing this back to presence, which being present at training, right? Totally makes a ton of sense when

Michelle MacDonald 1:17:08
so and dead bug, okay, right? And there are advanced dead bugs, so you can do the simple dead bug, if you’re

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:17:14
having that bird dog or dead bug, sorry, bird dog. And then you guys very good. You know, I put bird dog in our book. So good. It’s a great one. But anyway,

Michelle MacDonald 1:17:24
and you can do it like from plank, right? So your plank opposite legs up, that is like, that gets the fascial sling, the cross body fascial sling, which you’ll find, a lot of people find one side. They’re like, Oh, I can do it on one side, but on the other side there.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:17:39
Did you have women in your programs and when you’re coaching them, and just in general, do you recommend that they do those exercises every day?

Michelle MacDonald 1:17:49
I don’t think you have to do them every day. I think when you’re learning them, it can be really smart to get more frequency. So several times a week, dosing them in three to five times a week, but small doses, and learning the movement is key. And then once you’ve got it, like, I like, three times a week. I know Hattie loves to program some core as a part of her pre workout. She’s really big on that. So whether it’s like a payoff press, you can do kneeling pay off press. You can do a one legged payoff press. You can advance all of these. You can do them with weight, with bands, so paleo crest, some kind of a side plank, all the way up to a Copenhagen.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:18:28
Why side plank? Because you had mentioned anti rotational movements. Can you talk to me about why
that’s important? Why side planks important? Why? I guess you could use a rotation. And is there a
reason choppers, yeah, which hoppers that you want that kind of anti rotation, rotation movement.

Michelle MacDonald 1:18:48
It’s so important to transferring power from the lower body to the upper body. And so if you’re an
athlete, obviously that’s so important, whether you’re playing soccer or volleyball or whatever you’ve got
to you got to be able to transfer that lower body power. But for functional movements, for just aging,
well, that’s where you’re going to reduce your your

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:19:06
fall risk. Yeah. And you know, do you know Gunnar Peterson? I don’t. Should I know that person? He’s,
he is amazing. He’s like, the energy Peterson, yeah, our under Peterson will link it. Hey, Gunner, you’re
due on the podcast too. No pressure. But he talked a lot about, he’s like, Gabrielle, you have to have
rotation and anti rotation movements in there. I’m like, why? He’s like, I don’t know, when you can’t get
up and you twist, you don’t want to, I don’t know you can put your back. I was like, Yeah, you know, that
is a really good

Michelle MacDonald 1:19:35
point. And there’s so many different ones you can do that are fun. You can do like, side I like side plank
to bed at Clam. Nice plank that’s so multifunctional. I wish it’s a little bit more advanced. Pay off presses
done properly. Are great. I love doing single leg. Like, it’s such a challenge. And so the kid,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:19:51
I don’t think I’ve ever done a single so what she’s doing I don’t have, and that’s,

Michelle MacDonald 1:19:58
yeah, the core is back. Back. People think your six pack. Now the core is going to be when we think of
like stabilizing force, it’s going to be your bag, your obviously, your TVA, your central abs and your
deep sorry, your obliques. And then you also have the glute muscles are involved in that as well. So
when I engage my core and I brace for a heavy lift. My glutes were involved my back

Joan MacDonald 1:20:24
like, squeeze your guts, squeeze your glutes. I

Michelle MacDonald 1:20:27
wanted to add that in too, because it’s it is important. And I do see anecdotally. I do see with my clients,
no engagement of their core and their glutes together is hard. I when they’re walking away from the
camera, they’re setting up their camera, they walk away, or they’re walking to the equipment, that’s
when I see it. I’m like, they’re just no no core.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:20:51
How can you tell? Is it that they’re Yeah, they’re abdominal. Because if someone is going to videotape
like, we should do a challenge, which, by the way, I don’t know exactly when this comes out, but we
have not announced it yet. Drumroll, I’m trying to see if I’m getting the like, don’t talk about it yet. Yeah,
am I? We applied and got a national holiday for November, which is going to be, this is probably
confidential. What is it? But it’s national muscle health month.

Michelle MacDonald 1:21:20
Oh my god. I totally love that national muscle health

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:21:25
month for November and states green question. Texas is its own country, but it’s national. I love that
so. And I don’t know where this fell into this, but we were talking about glutes. And you know, as
women are learning to train the importance of muscle and

Michelle MacDonald 1:21:44
moving well and moving, moving well moving, because you can have muscle, like I said,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:21:48
but then, oh, the glute. So how do you so if someone sets up their camera, this is for national muscle
health month, because it’s, really should be national glute month, but it’s not. It’s globally a muscle
health if someone sets up their camera and they want to know if they are engaging their core in their
glutes, should they be feeling their glute on each step, could they see if they are not engaged visually,

Michelle MacDonald 1:22:14
you’ll be able to see it. So it’s very easy. So if you’re listening to this and you’re like, I I want to, I want to
see just video to set your camera up and just forget about it. You got to forget about it, right? Because if
you’re thinking about it, then you’re not going to get what’s really happening and see how you move.
Your glutes are the biggest muscle in your body. They should be. And when you are propelling yourself
forward, they are a big part of that, however they should be. However I see the vast majority of my
clients, and we videotape. All my clients are videotaped. That’s our kind of standard. Do

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:22:52
they put? Do you then put into a program, or you just watch it visually, like a program that analyzes
angles and gait?

Michelle MacDonald 1:22:58
And no, we don’t do that. I do think that is really great, but we literally they when you apply to work with
us, we ask you to submit three videos so we can analyze and put you in the right docket and just kind
of know, all right, this is what we’re what we have to trade. Have you

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:23:14
ever wrote someone back and be like, Dude, we’re not talking about those kind of videos. No, no one
ever

Michelle MacDonald 1:23:20
did that, although although I have had gals, because it’s hard to get in, I’ve had girls actually talk in their
videos. I’m like, oh my god, I love you. That’s that, that grit, that mindset, is awesome. But so if you’re
walking away and you’re How do you know you’re not engaging your voice? Well, obviously you have
to be wearing some kind of a tights where you could see, but you’ll really see as you’re moving that
there’s just, for lack of a better word, like it’s flaccid. If you’re using the muscles, there’ll be a
contraction. And so what it should feel like is, if a gal can do a Romanian deadlift, I would say, well,
your glutes and hamstrings when you’re walking should feel like the top third of Romanian deadlift. So
think of how it feels during the top of a Romanian deadlift. Or if you can think, if you’re able to jump
right? So just think, how do you jump? Like, that’s how your glutes should feel. You can’t jump with your
glutes relaxed. You just that is one thing that I have not seen mastered. You actually have in like, you
know, use them several times, and they’re just, they’re engaged, they’re toned, they’re engaged. They
should be. I’m so lucky. I lived with my husband, and, you know, he’s a six time champion, and I just, I
look at him, his glutes are never off. They’re never off, they’re always engaged. They’re part of how he
stands and moves and his abs as well. Do

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:24:35
you think that’s a male, female thing? Because I look at my husband and he’s the same way.

Michelle MacDonald 1:24:39
No, I don’t, and the reason why is because, with the opportunity of working with some high level
athletes, including my poor friend, Hattie, so she stayed with us, and she’d be like doing the dishes in
her bikini. Same thing never, they’re always, they’re part of how she stands, how you’re stacking the rib
cage over the the hips, if you’re not using the. Glutes, you’re going to be off. You’re either going to be in
severe anterior tilt with your abs not engaged, right? Because if you’re in extension, you’re not able to
lock your abs in. And as I said, the core really is from your, you know, your front side, your lats, all the
way down and more back muscles into your glutes, or your in posterior tilt, which

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:25:20
a lot that’s probably easier. A lot of people are more Are they more posterior, tilted?

Michelle MacDonald 1:25:26
I see both, okay, kind of evenly there. I see it both, but you’ll be able to see it anyways. It’s a fun
exercise to do. And then can you train it? Yes, you can absolutely train that. If you become, if you train
your RAs, your reticular activating system onto this idea that you can master that as a woman, you will
master it. And if you look at there’s so many female athletes, but particularly in bodybuilding, and it’s
why I do love bodybuilding, because, and I see this with my clients, it opens the door that you’re
allowed at whatever age you are, 40, 5060, to really deep dive into how to run your rig so your body’s
your rate, how to friggin run that rig. Here’s the blueprint. Everything’s a learnable skill. You can learn it,
and you’re allowed to get crazy with this, like, obsess over it, dive into it, because there are so many
positive health outcomes. Again, you can do all the weightlifting you want to, but that doesn’t mean
you’re not going to have dowagers back if the other not what it’s called, dowager’s back, if the other 23
hours of the day for the back, okay, you’re not engaging.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:26:29
Is there a standard amount of and I know this is nuanced, so I’m gonna be okay with this. But for a
woman who is starting a resistance training program, should that be a minimum of two days a week?
Should be three days a week? Again, I understand it depends on how the training program is done, but
from your perspective,

Joan MacDonald 1:26:50
four days a week, three of weight training and one of yoga. And anyone says Yoga is a sissy thing.
Doesn’t know how to do yoga. It’s not It’s it. You have to really train your body, your balance and
everything. And I have very poor balance, but I’m working on,

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:27:15
I was in my undergraduate. We worked on some of the first post menopausal women’s studies, nice
and the exercise. So there was a series of studies. It was post menopausal women, and then it was a
combination men and women. Might not be in that order. It’s probably a combo of men and women.
First, the five days a week of resistance training was yoga. They use yoga as the resistance training
component. I’m sorry, it wasn’t five days a week. I think it was between two and three days a week. But
the resistance piece was yoga for the beginner, which is interesting. I thought that was really
interesting. Do you feel that there’s a sweet spot for women in their 40s as to

Michelle MacDonald 1:27:56
like so yeah. Again, the site, the science says the evidence says that two times a week is a great
starting point of intentional training. And I think it’s, you know, is it the 150 minutes of heart exercise?
And that’s not just resistance training that could be cardiovascular training, but 150 minutes a week,
and then two resistance trainings a week? However, in my experience, I think, and this is the mindset
piece, getting great outcomes that you can see and feel in three to four months, that’s going to be
probably one of the biggest hooks. And that doesn’t mean you’re training every day, but it means, you
know, four times a week for 40 minutes, really purposeful training and making sure that you’re sticking
to the same program for enough time that you’re able to actually progress ability, range of motion,
weight, right, is key. So not switching from exercise to exercise, but really progressing. So I do think
you know, and then you’ve got, you know, your food has to be

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:29:00
and I do want to eat. I do I want to touch on that. Does it matter the age? So let’s say you guys are both
different generations. For Joan, you started with two you started with four days a week. One of those
days was yoga. Do you find that in like another generation, earlier generation would get the same type
of benefit, but what you change is maybe the weight or, you know, how do we think about, if
somebody’s listening to this and they’re not glad you asked this question, how do we think about
scaling?

Michelle MacDonald 1:29:32
I have always trained the individual so and I and if there’s one message I would want to impart the
audience where, where I have had success with women, it’s you train the individual. You don’t train the
age. You don’t you don’t train, yeah, you train the individual. So mom’s program only started to differ
from, say, Wendy’s program when there. Um, when she had a shoulder injury, right? And we had to,
she fell off her bike. She probably already had arthritis in the shoulder, fell off her bike, and then that
turned into a lot of inflammation, lesions, which ultimately required her to have a surgery. So taking
those overhead presses out became key. So you look at the person that you have in front of you. If I
think of somebody who’s very obese, to where mom was when she was 200 pounds, I had to think of
the weight on her lumbar spine, from her TVA, from her, her sorry, her transverse abdominal muscle,
having to hold on to all of that visceral fat, which is the truth, right? And the strain that would cause on
her back. So I put her on the leg press. She’s secure. She’s locked in. It’s very simple to execute.
There’s no strain on her back. We’re going to train her leg strength. So I really think of the individual,
don’t get too caught up on your age, other than being sex formed, sex, no, we know that. There’s no,
absolutely no difference. And I think Dr Lauren Colenso, simply, I

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:31:03
would agree with you, this is going to make us a little unpopular, but from the evidence that I have
seen, there doesn’t seem to be sex differences through or for training. It is a good foundational program
that is individualized for that person. Is a good foundational

Michelle MacDonald 1:31:21
program based on skill level, yes, contrary indications based on like injury. There’s no statistical
difference between how a woman the rate at which a woman gains muscle, even in menopause. I know
this is so hard to hear. I’m

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:31:34
really glad to hear you say this. You know, there’s

Michelle MacDonald 1:31:36
just not same thing with weight loss. There’s no special meno diet. There’s no special mental training
program. You can’t adjust your program based on what you want to amplify. And male bodybuilders do
this too. You have a weak chest, you’re going to have to, you know, rotate in more, more chest training
frequency. So, same thing. But the actual training program, progressive overload, sufficient volume,
mechanical load, like it’s the same and there is so much scripting going on, so just being aware of that
and and just because something sounds sciencey or somebody is an expert in something doesn’t mean
you’re not being chilled. So that’s difficult to navigate, but it’s challenging. It’s challenging, but there
should be a red flag if somebody has special knowledge that major bodies

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:32:22
aren’t aligned with Yeah, it’s very challenging, but the good news is having good training programs and
good nutrition, whether you’re in Harry menopa, simple menopause, male, female, yes, before we go to
our strong seat, Questions, which will be in the Super caster section, which are going to be super fun,
lots of Supers. I want to touch on nutrition. And I just want to understand your principles for body

transformation. If we were to pick, let’s say, weight loss. How do you guys think about nutrition for
weight

Michelle MacDonald 1:32:58
loss? I think that one’s pretty simple. So I mean, you have to be in a deficit. That doesn’t always have to
be from food. It can be from managing your neat cardiovascular, you know, expenditure, but you have
to be in a caloric deficit. So if we’re talking about food, specifically, number one, you can’t play around
with your protein. You want to have that make sure you’re prioritizing protein in your meals. I prefer to
have people dose their protein out in all of their meals. So every meal is protein centric. It’s great for
satiety is a big one, because satiety equates to adherence, right? You want to eat foods that don’t
digest immediately and leave you reaching for food you know in an hour, otherwise you’re not going to
maintain your caloric deficit and muscle mass, right? So we don’t want to just lose weight, and this
comes into the effective use of a GLP one, right? If we’re just focused on the scale, then we put
ourselves at risk of bone loss and muscle loss. We don’t want to do that. We want to make sure we’re
getting our money’s worth, right? We want to actually gain muscle, maximize bone mineral density and
and have that favorable muscle to fat ratio. And you can do that. It’s not that hard. So muscle proteins
got to be there, preferably, dose it throughout the day. I’m a big proponent. Keep it super easy. You
know, I tell my clients, what’s your ideal weight that you that is healthy to maintain for your size?
Probably it’s what you weighed in college, or something like that. I agree, super easy. And I just say,
like, hit a gram. Just hit a gram. So if you’re if you were 120 pounds in college, you’re 160 pounds now,
aim for 120 grams of protein. Split that up in your four or five meals a day, and you’re golden. And I
think mom now, right? Like, there’s so many options for protein. It’s not just chicken and salad.

Joan MacDonald 1:34:48
Yeah, it’s easy when you have the protein powder, these good protein powder, about the creamies. Oh,
what’s a creamy what? It’s like ice it’s like an ice cream. But, you know, Ninja. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they
have a

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:35:03
ice cream, yes, protein show. Yeah. I’m waiting to see if my neighbor can actually get that to work.
Well, which he says it’s amazing,

Michelle MacDonald 1:35:12
yeah, oh my gosh. I gotta get it down to San Miguel. She’s a ninja creamy. Oh,

Joan MacDonald 1:35:17
I love making them. Make it

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:35:19
with whey protein. What do you make of it? I make it with whey protein. Okay, I’m gonna buy one today.

Michelle MacDonald 1:35:25
Oh, they’re insane, yeah. Oh, I’ll let you know. What is the one that we have? It’s It’s amazing. Literally,
you freeze your your protein shake in these little containers, 24 hours, you run it through the machine
five minutes. Sold. It is so, I mean, there’s just, there’s no excuse. Oh, they’re, they’re so great. Yes,
low calorie or calorie free, seasonings, condiments, if, if you’re, if you need to have that flavor profile, if
that makes you happy, there’s so many options now, there’s just so much that you can do. There’s
baked things that you can make now, there’s bars available. I see things like fair life out there. Now, I
was traveling and I needed protein, and they I saw the fair life. I’m like, That’s brilliant. I love seeing
that. We’re seeing more protein options for mainstream people, instead of all this protein empty foods
that you’re used to seeing so and then fiber, you know, I got to talk about that. I tell my gals, like, aim
for that 25 grams of fiber if we’re doing it. Doing a cut where, I’m going to be honest, if we’re bringing
carbs down, because you’re you started with low calories, which is often the reality of older people.
They’re just not eating as much as they should be for their size. But we have to drive that fat loss. We
might have to bring carbs down to a place where, how are you going to hit 25 grams of fiber. So that’s
where we’re supplementing it in with fiber. But ultimately, if you can, you want to be following a diet and
being a deficit where you’re able to hit that 2520 to 25 grams of quality fiber. And you do that by eating
a variety of produce and whole grains, if you can, if you can digest that, or tubers, if you if you can
digest that, legumes, if you can, I’m a I love chickpeas and lentils. They’re the two easier legumes to
digest, versus like a black bean and eating the colors of the rainbow, which is easy, right? And so you
know, one week you’re having tomatoes and greens, and the next week you rotate in some red
peppers. Then the next week you switch your greens from green beans to say broccoli or peas, so you
just easily rotating it in. Keep it simple, right? If you’re going to execute on this

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:37:36
less restrictive than previously thought, Yeah, talk to

Michelle MacDonald 1:37:40
your girlfriends join a group of people that can, oh, I’ve got this great recipe. It’s four ingredients.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:37:46
I do have a low carb bread pudding, which is, oh, that’s

Michelle MacDonald 1:37:50
almost like an oxymoron, yeah, you can come

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:37:53
over it is and, well, I’m obsessed with it. So basically, we tried, over the last two years, all these
different recipes. Yep, and you know, this was one. So what’s the CC

Michelle MacDonald 1:38:06
or the secret? Does it have promotion powder

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:38:08
in it? Well, well, it you might not like the secret. I’m not going to tell you, but you can try it, and then I’ll
tell you. Okay, it’s amazing. Bread Pudding. My house. I love. All right, bread pudding. Oh, my house
tonight. I love apples. If you come later, you will meet some gremlins. Are those? Is that your new
children? Oh, yeah, no, they were born gremlins. They just became my children. Yes, okay, Michell and
Joan. I am so grateful and just delighted that we were able to sit down and have this conversation. You
both are just incredible icons. Thank you so much.

Michelle MacDonald 1:38:47
So honored to be here. Thank you. I hope we gave some actionable takeaways for the people listening
and just I’ve always been in awe of what you’re doing. I think you really helped put protein and focusing
on building muscle on the map, so keep doing what you’re doing. Thank you so much. You.