How to Support Your Metabolism in Your 40s and 50s

< Full Episode

Transcript: How to Support Your Metabolism in Your 40s and 50s

Season 11, Episode 19  | September 30, 2025

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Welcome to Life Time Talks. I’m Jamie Martin.

And I’m David Freeman.

And in this episode, we are talking all about metabolism in your 40s and 50s. And I’m just going to flash us back for a little bit. We were talking a little bit about AOL, messenger.

Yes.

What were some of the other things we talked about? I mentioned IQ, if you remember these things.

We were talking just the great times as far as how we have best of both worlds with technology, as far as being outside as well so, like, all the nostalgic vibes.

So if you are pre-technology or that generation that bridges the two, this episode is for you. We are talking, like I said, about metabolism in our 40s and 50s. So often, when we think of metabolism, we think of fast metabolism or slow metabolism. Or we think it starts to slow down when we’re older, that type of thing. But it really is affecting all of us all of the time. So in this episode, we have one of our go-to guests back. Hello, Sam.

Hi.

I want to say the golden guest. Can we say the golden guest at this point? Because —

Sounds like a golden girl.

I know if I ask Sam that question, she’s probably going to say, it depends.

[LAUGHTER]

No. But no, it’s awesome to have Samantha back. So for everybody who has yet to hear from Samantha, Samantha McKinney is a registered dietitian. She’s also the national program manager for nutrition, metabolism, and weight loss at Life Time. She’s been with Life Time for 13-plus years in multiple roles, currently on a team that leads nutrition programs and supplements for Life Time members, helping to optimize what we’re talking about today, metabolism results from the inside out. So welcome back, Sam.

Thank you. Always happy to be here. It’s so fun chatting with you guys about some of my favorite topics. So just appreciate being here.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, we’re going to jump right in on that topic. We are talking metabolism. Let’s just ground in what metabolism is so everyone has that same definition as we get into this conversation.

Yeah, kind of as you alluded to, a lot of times people like to simplify it of, I have a fast metabolism or slow metabolism. And they just think about calorie burn. Like, how many calories a day do I burn? And that’s obviously a crucial component. But essentially, to nerd out, it’s like the sum of all the metabolic functions in your body at a given time.

So when we’re talking metabolism, we’re really talking about your overall health. We’re talking about your endocrine function. We’re talking about your hormone signaling. We’re talking about your body composition, all of these things wrapped up into one. And of course, yes, it impacts your caloric balance and your caloric burn. But it also impacts how you feel and how you function every day.

So it’s this broad term with a lot of complexities built into it, which is why I think this topic ends up being so important for people. Like, how do I support myself, my caloric balance, my health, how I feel, how I function? Especially as I get older, I’m starting to feel changes. That’s usually what we hear.

Yeah, and coming right off of that, as we continue to age, when you think of the 40s and 50s, that’s what we’re leading into, what’s starting to happen to individual’s metabolism?

Sure. I was so tempted to be like the golden years, kind of, but not quite yet. Yeah, so a couple of different things can happen. Obviously, women go through menopause, right. That’s something every woman goes through.

And obviously, we’ve had different episodes and articles and everything on all of the details around menopause. But that’s essentially when a woman stops ovulating, and her ovaries go on a permanent vacation. They’re retired. And so again, that normal monthly cycle ceases and is gone.

With men, it’s a little bit more gradual, but it happens around the same life stage. And some people will call it andropause, which is basically this slow down and this cessation of what people would think of as reproductive hormones. So testosterone starts to decline and all of that.

And there are major impacts that men still go through. It’s just the main difference between men and women is that, when you’re talking about these specific hormonal changes with men, it tends to be more gradual. And women literally fall off a cliff with it and just feel it a lot more, I would say, urgently or severely or more, I would say, short-term, fast, rapid changes that happen — not to say that women also aren’t experiencing some of the gradual changes concurrently with that. All that happened just from getting older and all those other facets of metabolism as well.

Yeah, and just to even pause on that for a second, speaking specifically for women, I mean, a huge topic of conversation in our culture right now is perimenopause and what’s leading up to menopause. It’s like that one year without having your cycle, right?

Right.

And that can last for what, up to 7 years, for 7 to 10 years?

Sometimes longer. Yeah, it depends on the woman, for sure.

OK. And in both cases, whether it’s menopause, andropause, how does that impact metabolism? What’s happening there?

Yeah, a couple of things. So number one, I would say inflammation. So we hear this buzzword oftentimes of like, we think of inflammation. And there’s a lot of different ways that you could explain what that is. Inflammation by itself acutely is a good thing.

But when it starts to happen chronically, the way that I describe it to clients is that think of acute inflammation when you get hurt or you’re sick or you’re injured is, you’re turning on a gas stove full throttle to address something, and then you shut it off. Chronic inflammation is when you have that gas burner on at a one or two at a time, and you’re just letting it burn.

So that starts to happen, and you start to, due to some of these hormonal changes, experience more chronic inflammation. And chronic inflammation will impact every part of your body. It will impact your brain. It will impact your mood. It’ll impact your joints. It’ll impact everything. So inflammation is one piece.

I would say secondly is really talking a lot about your body composition and your muscle mass. So what starts to happen is, if you are not intentional about maintaining and hopefully even gaining lean body mass, by default, you’re going to lose it. And the loss of it accelerates with every passing year or the rate of loss, if that makes sense.

So if you’re not intentional now, and if you’re listening to this, and you feel like your 40s and your 50s are far away, you can lay a foundation now to help yourself sort of sail through this part of life a little bit easier. Now, that’s not to say it’s too late to start.

If, let’s say, you’re listening to this, and you’re like, oh, gosh, I’m 55 or older, there are still things that you can apply. But if you lay this foundation of supporting your lean body mass, your body composition, that will help a lot. Because once you start to lose muscle, everything starts to fall apart with your metabolism, with your independence, with how you feel, with your overall health.

It starts to impact your blood sugar control, which we’ve talked a lot about. And once your blood sugar is off your energy levels go up and down. Your cravings are everywhere. So you can’t untangle everything together. But I would say the two major things that it goes back to are the hormonal changes on menopause and andropause, chronic inflammation, and the need to maintain your body composition and your lean mass.

Yeah, let’s go to unpacking now how we can be proactive. Because I think to the point of as far as knowing hormonal changes are going to be coming, we know that healthy aging is what we desire. We understand body composition is going to change now. If we can be proactive — I know we can say, all right, start to lift weights, probably do x, y, and z. But what are some proactive approaches to the people who are listening so they can get ahead of the ball here?

For sure. Well, I would say, yes, we talk about lifting weights, eating protein. I would say lifestyle-wise, but if we’re talking about tracking things — I almost want to tap on that for a second.

Yeah.

So many people monitor their weight, and I understand that. It’s probably one of the most easily accessible measures of what your body is doing, at least externally. But if you start to actually look at it a layer deeper, people have to start looking at their body composition, the actual breakdown of their lean tissue versus their fat mass and even their water balance.

And at our Life Time Destinations, we do have scales that can look a little bit deeper than just scale weight alone. And that can be super helpful. What I really love about that is you can start to actually look at, what are the total pounds of skeletal muscle mass I have on my body right now.

I encourage clients, even weight loss clients — that’s if they hire me for weight loss, we maniacally watch skeletal muscle mass. And we actually try to gain it, even if, in their minds, I’m trying to lose weight, because it’s that critical for their metabolism and essentially what their end goal is. They just don’t really oftentimes realize it until they start to see and experience the changes that happen from that.

The next one, I would say, is other things to do and monitor is really looking at comprehensive blood work. Honestly, I think anybody over the age of 30 should be doing comprehensive blood work at least every 12 months. It’s so, so crucial. There are different things to be looking at.

Your blood sugar control is one of them, and what you get run at a standard physical usually is not going to be enough. You’re not going to get the full picture, I should say, of being able to proactively address a brewing problem, because nobody wakes up pre-diabetic. It can take decades to get there.

It’s often a decade before that things are starting to happen.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yes. So you need to start looking at, what are fasting insulin levels? What is your fasting blood sugar trend? Yes, your A1c matters, but there are other things that tie into it that can be earlier indicators that you could be like, wow, if I stay on this trajectory, I’m going to be in for a world of pain down the road.

Another thing is starting to look at lipid metabolism. So people often when they think metabolism don’t immediately start thinking heart health and cholesterol. The reality is that similar to the other things we talked about can’t untangle your heart health from every other facet of metabolism.

Because if you start to think about what this really is, it is the health and the integrity of the inside of your blood vessels and the linings. And there are changes in metabolism that can dramatically increase in speed that move you towards heart disease as you get older. And heart disease is the number-one killer across men and women.

And that’s something that I find sometimes younger, as we’re talking proactive, I find — this isn’t everybody, but usually people in their 20s and 30s, they almost feel invincible. That’s an old-people topic. No, you can actually start to develop plaques whenever you’re younger. And so it’s starting to look at things like ApoB. That’s one metric to start to look at ahead of time, to see if that is something that you need to address and consider for your lipids as well.

And then from a performance standpoint as well, most people, as they get older and want to support their metabolism, they want to be able to work out and move and do the things that they love to do as they get older. You should be monitoring your VO2, your VO2 max. It’s such an important one. And I think that sometimes, people don’t realize that the math is there.

But if you have a low VO2 in, let’s say, you’re early 40s and you do nothing about it, you will not be able to do what you want to do in your day-to-day life when you’re in your 70s and 80s. So that 40s and 50s transition right there, you’re still in that phase where you feel good, and you can move, and you can really push yourself. And there’s so much that you can address, and you can actually get better in your 40s and 50s than you were in your 30s if you actually start to implement certain tactics and things, too.

So I know it’s all over the place there, because you can look at it from the exercise side of things. You can look at it from the body comp side of things, blood work. There’s a lot that you can do. You don’t have to do it all, right?

Right.

But I think what I’m trying to do is encourage people to be like, you have to proactively address your health, or else, by default, it’ll decline.

Yeah. Well, just thinking about — we were talking a lot today about our 40s and 50s. But thinking about our 30s, you mentioned muscle mass being so important. And even just naturally, like how we’re built as humans, if we’re not maintaining or working to build muscle, it starts to naturally decline in our 30s.

It does.

And so it’s really something — again, to your point, laying that foundation early is so critical, not to say — again, you can still do it. It’s never too late. But we’re set up for better maintenance down the road when we have that foundation earlier.

So really, when people are talking about supporting their metabolism in their 40s and 50s, there’s usually just a couple of things that they mean by that. Number one is they want to like how they look. They want their clothes to fit well. They want to feel good, and they also want to make sure that they can do the things that they ideally want to do physically.

And that’s when people are like, I want to support my metabolism. It’s that. It’s let me live my life, and let me look a certain way and feel good in my clothes. And there’s just so many things to unpack there and be able to dig into and address to help ensure that that happens to the best of your ability, but you just have to know what signs to look for.

Well, to that point, I mean, I think one of the things that I hear — I’m a woman in my early 40s, and I’m having a lot of conversations with women in my life right now who are of similar ages. We’re talking a lot about that aesthetic piece, and I’m hearing a lot of people talk about, this is the first time I’ve been dealing with that lower belly fat or pouch that — I haven’t had that before.

But what is going on there? There’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve tried everything. And I know there’s obviously hormonal changes happening in our body, but what is that about? I mean, because that’s something from an aesthetic standpoint that is hard for a lot of women to deal with or process.

Yes and I would say this kind of goes a little bit back to the perimenopause, menopause, and even andropause that we were talking about earlier. With men it’s more gradual with women. Like I said, it’s that kind of cliff that they fall off with their hormones. But what ends up happening is when you have those changes, you do have that inflammation that starts.

And in women, it seems like overnight, I’ve got this belly fat and that wasn’t there before. And the things I used to do to address it just aren’t working anymore. With men, it’s a little bit more gradual. We can start to see if they’re not careful, and if men aren’t really proactive, you’ll lose testosterone over the years. And as that happens, we start to see the growing of that visceral fat.

That is scary fat. We need to be addressing visceral fat in both men and women, because it starts to release its own inflammatory compounds. And people even start to refer to it as an endocrine organ. Because of those compounds it starts releasing, but they’re all inflammatory compounds, so it ends up being this like vicious cycle that not only drives people nuts with how they look, but it drives people — their health in the wrong direction, too. For your literal health span, it needs to be addressed. So what to do — it depends.

[LAUGHTER]

It depends on the person, but there are some commonalities. So you keep hearing me talk about this word “inflammation.” We talk a lot about an anti-inflammatory diet. And what does that mean? And what you eat goes way beyond what your caloric balance is.

Now arguably, your caloric balance is one of the most important things to address. But what you’re eating and whether or not it’s contributing to inflammation for you or not is crucially important. This is where nutrient density is critical. You could have two identical diets of the same caloric and macro breakdown, but one could potentially be promoting inflammation. And the other one could be helping calm it.

Now, that’s not the root cause, but it is a controllable factor into what your chronic inflammation levels look like. So to your point, Jamie, of what can be done, well, it depends. For certain people, they need to concurrently with all of this explore, hey, is HRT something for me? Do I need to look at how to maybe soften this change a little bit and try to maintain that? But that would never be instead of nutrition and lifestyle factors. It’s always “and.”

It’s a both “and.”

Yes, it always is. So an anti-inflammatory diet — you hear that as a buzzword. Essentially, what that means is getting rid of really common allergens, trying to eat as close to unprocessed as possible. How close to nature looking can my plate get? Can I minimize things out of packages with long ingredient lists?

That’s probably oversimplifying it because, again, food companies have actually found a lot of great ways to have certain package processed convenience foods where — which, from an ingredient standpoint, might not be bad. But the prevalent amount of processed foods is still a concern for a lot of people. But yeah, so looking at those aesthetics and your body composition, I would say addressing your nutrition is key. You can’t not do that, and you have to fill in certain nutrient gaps, too.

I just want to talk a little bit more about the caloric demands in the body because I know that’s really something we will talk about a lot, like your calories count, how much are you having and all that. But I think we should delve into that a little bit deeper if we can because we talk about quality over quantity, which you’ve just addressed a little bit, too. But why does that shift? Why does the caloric demand potentially change in this life stage?

It actually doesn’t change that drastically. It’s more like your body’s overall cascade and chemistry and symphony of hormones and endocrine function changes more than your actual caloric demand.

Got it.

Your caloric demand oftentimes changes with body composition changes. So as you start to lose muscle, that’s where the caloric demand changes. But again, if you think back to what we talked about earlier, if you’re maintaining muscle, your caloric — yes.

And so what really matters, and I think what people struggle with, is they get so honed in on calories, 99 times out of 100 — maybe 9 times out of 10, so it could be 90 out of 100, most people can achieve the appropriate caloric balance for them by eating the right foods and hitting their protein targets. There’s always the occasional one-off person where we actually do need to track because you might be under eating or overeating.

For the majority of people, if they can get their protein right, their calories fall into place because it’s so naturally satiating. And if you can get your protein right, you’re getting so many nutrients and so much blood sugar stability and so much, I would just say, a calming sometimes of those blood sugar ups and downs that contribute even more to the inflammation. And if people can get their protein targets down, that can literally change your life, truly.

And just speaking to the protein as far as how that helps contribute to protein building blocks for muscles to grow, recovery coming from sleep, so on and so forth. Let’s talk about the lean body mass. I know you were talking about — or skeletal muscle mass as well. The higher that is, usually that’s going to be a plus for metabolism.

And as we continue to age, we start to lose muscle mass. So being proactive, you spoke to it from a nutrition standpoint — exercise, lifestyle factors. Now when we start to put all those pieces together, it’s more of now the listener. OK, I know that this is what I used to do at the age of 20 and 30.

And to your point, you said earlier, it was working. Now my lean body mass is still relatively in a good spot. But now, how can I address it? Because it’s not working like it used to. And I know I use the nutrition exercise lifestyle pieces. So something declined, whether it is higher stress levels. Something is off.

So what do you think is — obviously, you talked about hormones, but if we can go a little bit deeper on that piece. Because I speak for myself, for example. I look at the lean body mass. And I’m looking at, all right, why is it so much harder now at the age of 42 than it was at 32 or 22?

Yes, so it goes a little bit back to and ties in some of the pieces we had talked about earlier. It’s like, yes, the hormones. But it’s almost, the older you get, the more diligent you need to be about how often you’re following up on that. So you might need to be testing your testosterone free in total every six months or so. Whereas before, it might have been every couple of years because you were a little bit more in a — I don’t want to say less fragile, because that sounds a little bit — but you were in a more stable state.

Things weren’t declining as quickly. So even a couple hundred point drop in testosterone for a male can make a huge difference in your ability to maintain your strength, the results you get from your strength training program, even if you have progressive overload, the overall maintenance of your skeletal muscle mass. So sometimes, you just have to test more often and address it more aggressively, if that makes sense.

And this alludes to what we talked about earlier, is the earlier you start, the better it is. So I would say, too, don’t want to make David blush. But you’re over 40, and a lot of guys would love to look the way David looks over 40.

She made my day.

Well, it’s because you have been living a healthy lifestyle for how long? This isn’t new to you. So if somebody’s first walking in to this type of lifestyle at the age of 40, there’s so much cool progress they can make. But they’re not going to look the same in a year as David will, for example.

And you’re so attuned, you can see, hey, this is getting harder. But you’re already steps ahead because you started so much —

Earlier.

—if that makes sense. So I would say, those subtle changes in hormones, or in the case of women, those abrupt changes, being on top of it is super helpful. But again, it keeps going back to this inflammation. You just have to get more dialed in, but that doesn’t mean you can’t live your life either.

And what I have found is especially when you’re younger, because your body is a little bit more primed to have a, air quote, “better” metabolism, it’s a lot more forgiving with your choices. So as you start to look at, OK, what am I doing for nutrition? What am I doing for exercise? all of that, the focus on consistency is important.

And most people that are struggling — I cannot emphasize this enough — that I have worked with in this population, they are not hitting their protein targets, unless they’re maniacally on a strategy. I say all the time, you’re never going to accidentally hit your daily protein targets.

Right, it has to be really intentional.

Yes, you have to think about it every day. You have to build — and again, this doesn’t mean that you should be in this protein prison trapped in your head. But you need to build habits in order to get yourself to land on those protein targets.

And you absolutely cannot neglect strength training. There is no supporting your metabolism in your 40s and 50s if you’re not hitting your protein targets and not doing progressive overload with strength training. Those two things just have to happen. And then the last thing that I would say that is a huge pivotal, impactful lifestyle piece is sleep.

So people, as we get older, start to see more interrupted sleep, and that will start to disintegrate everything. It starts to disintegrate your appetite regulation, your blood sugar control, your hormone cascade. It can hasten or accelerate some of the imbalances there.

And then there’s obviously other lifestyle things to talk about with like, what specific foods can help? How much alcohol are you drinking? All those types of things wrap in. But if you have to boil it down, the top three that I would always say is protein, progressive overload, strength training, and prioritizing your sleep. There are no shortcuts for those three.

Right. And if people have been listening to this podcast for a while, you’re going to be familiar with this. These recommendations — these are things we talk about as very fundamental to a healthy way of life, regardless of what age or stage that you’re in. But again, to that point, you can always start these things and start wherever you are.

I will say — and this is, again, I have been coaching for decades at this point. And I want to emphasize this enough. To your point, Jamie, I think most listeners probably have heard these things. That’s not earth shattering or new. What I find is that there’s this weird psychology of people being like, yeah, yeah, but what about — and then they ask about something fringe.

I’m like, that “what about” doesn’t matter until these things are down. And when I work with people — just every single day I talk to people, I’m like, how do you get that much protein in? How do you do that? How do you aim for that 1 gram per pound of lean body mass as a minimum? That’s the minimum.

And you have to work at it, and you have to address these habits. And I had already said this, but I want to say it again. There’s no shortcut. The tweaking around with your time-restricted eating window by a couple hours isn’t going to do much for you if your protein is not dialed in.

Your exact macro balance — yes, that can make a huge difference, let’s say, between protein and carbs. Still, doesn’t matter if your protein is below where it needs to be. That has to happen. And to that point, your protein is fuel. Your exercise is the stimulus for your body to change.

Because if you actually in your mind are thinking aesthetics for your metabolism in your 40s and 50s, you have to be doing progressive overload because you have to be strategically breaking your muscles down and refueling it with protein. Or they will not get stronger.

They will not function the way where you could be active and independent and mobile and all of these things that make life life without doing those things. And you won’t look the way you want to look in most cases. I don’t want to assume everyone’s aesthetic goals, but there’s enough commonalities there usually, where most people want — if they work for muscle, they want to be able to see it a little bit.

So those things are crucial. And so yeah, I agree, Jamie. Most people are like, yeah, I know but — I’m like, yeah, but you can know. But if you’re not doing, it’s not doing anything for you.

Yeah.

Right.

Yes.

So let’s say that people do know, and they are doing these things right. And you mentioned, what are some of the other lifestyle factors then? OK, I’ve got my protein. I’m doing my strength training, progressive overload, and I’m sleeping well. But I’m still —

—rare to get all three of those.

It’s rare. But let’s say they got two of the three. And they’re like, OK, I’m working on the sleep. I’ve got the other two down. You mentioned alcohol, other nutrition choices. Those aren’t fringe things, necessarily. But what are some of those other things that can complement those foundational things?

OK, so what I will say is first, before deep diving into that, I do want to give a couple of tips on sleep.

OK.

So sleep — seven hours I would say is bare minimum. Everyone’s got a little bit of a slightly different sleep need that they need to hit. As you get older, because your body is going through some of these changes, you got to be dialed in with sleep. So there’s 8,000 different sleep trackers that you can use on the market. Some people, that stresses them out. For some people, that information is empowering.

You got to know yourself and figure it out. But there’s some really cool data there. But what I would say with sleep is stop the late-night scroll. Be really diligent about your light hygiene. And I joke around. I’m a real person when it comes to coaching. You don’t have to be a weirdo about it.

But in your mind, try to get sunlight in the morning. Try to start to dim things in the evening and get rid of that blue light in the evening. It can make such a difference. But the reason I wanted to chat on that is most people are magnesium deficient, and they’re not taking enough chelated magnesium in the evening. That can be life changing as well.

I know I said that about protein. But most people are not hitting their optimal magnesium targets. And so that’s one of those core supplements that you should be really addressing and making sure that you’re repleting because it’s not just for sleep, but it’s also for your hormone balance. And even in men, it can be a rate-limiting factor for testosterone production. So you need to make sure you have enough magnesium for all of these things, so it’s tied to all of that.

But it also ties into some of the other lifestyle factors you were alluding to, like, for example, alcohol. People don’t realize, a glass of wine or a cocktail in the evening will destroy your quality of sleep that night.

Absolutely.

It, for sure, will. So even if you feel like you slept well, you’re actually probably a little sedated. But the metabolic changes from that sleep were not as restorative, because you had alcohol. That doesn’t mean don’t ever drink. I have alcohol sometimes, too. But you’ve got to be mindful of how chronic this is for you, so alcohol is a huge one.

The other thing in women is if you start to think about hormone production, premenopause is happening from your ovaries. Well, whenever your ovaries stop, what usually takes over — because it’s not like women go to having no hormones, although it feels like that for a lot of people. But essentially, what takes over hormonal production in women is the adrenal glands.

Now, your adrenal glands are in charge of your body’s stress response. So you start to look at, what stress levels that are controllable am I putting on my body? And alcohol could be one of them.

But for women, too, stress management is key — well, men and women, of course.
But stress management is key because right now, the little, tiny walnut-sized organs that sit on top of your kidneys that are largely in charge of your body’s stress response — if you can control something to chill out that stress response, it’s going to make a massive difference, too. So that can be super helpful as well.

The last thing I want to touch on — and again, might sound basic, but unless you’re doing it, you don’t see the transformational piece of it — is fiber, truly. So getting 30-plus grams of fiber per day — you might need to track your food for a couple of days to see how far away you are.

You might want to use a fiber. Like, I love LTH Shift. It’s one that’s carried at Life Time. It’s a great product where you can just add it to a daily shake, and it’s giving you soluble and insoluble fiber. It’s a prebiotic. It helps support your gut health, all of that. But getting your fiber in can — I think it’s this unsung hero for hormonal health. You need fiber, and you need to be eliminating regularly for your hormones to be balanced, too.

Right. And just to make sure I’m — like, fiber helps to gather some of those excess hormones or things and escort them out of the body, right?

When you think about globally, when I talk to people about hormones — because these changes can start to happen earlier in your lifespan, but they become noticeable around menopause and andropause. If you think about hormone imbalances, there’s usually a couple problems. Number one, it’s either you’re not producing enough, or you’re not producing the right types. So it’s production.

Then there is conversion. So hormones don’t usually just get produced, and then they’re done. They usually go from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. If you just do an internet search for hormone cascade, you can start to see these really complicated charts.

So you could have a conversion issue, and then you might have a clearance issue, clearance and elimination. You need to eliminate hormones once your body’s done using them, and fiber is a critical piece of that. So we sometimes see people, when they clean up their diet, when they implement a program such as LTH Detox, they increase their fiber, they increase their protein, they calm inflammation, one common thing that we have seen anecdotally, especially women going through that, is they might get their monthly cycle a little bit earlier.

Or for a couple of women, not to scare them, it’s come back. And they’re like, what’s going on? I’m like, well, actually, you’ve now supported your hormone clearance. And this whole symphony of what — is what’s going on. It might be surprising, but it’s actually an indicator of health.

More in-tune than out of tune —

Yes.

— than we — yeah.

And I say all of that because I think people always want to look for, what are the fringe things to support my metabolism? And they don’t realize the absolute dynamite power of just consistently really dialing this stuff in, I mean, truly. And until you do it and feel it and see it for yourself, you’re like, wow!

And then you notice it with your peers. I’ve seen this with my clients in their 40s and 50s. They’re like, I feel like I look and act 10 years younger in terms of my ability than a lot of my peers. I’m like, well, you are because you’re actually addressing your biological age. Your chronological age might be the same, but your biological age is way younger. And that starts to become more evident the older that you get.

Yeah. I just love the art of words that you both had just now. You got the escorting certain things out of the body, the symphony of how all the changes are happening. So let’s take a moment for the art of words.

So with words, you’ve actually did an article within Experience Life that was titled “What’s Different About Weight Loss After 50?” And you hit on a few things when it comes to cutting calories and how that becomes less effective as a strategy with losing weight as we get older. Is there anything else from that article that you want to tap into for this episode?

So I know that we talked about caloric balance. I don’t want to say that that’s not important, because it is. It’s a huge determinant of your body composition. What I want people to understand when it comes to getting older and controlling your calories — ideally, you want to get to the point where your habits control your calories for you, and you’re not calorie controlling to hit certain habits.

And the reason that I say that is it sounds subtle, but it’s actually a massive difference in what’s going on in your day-to-day lifestyle. Because if you are, in your mind, cutting calories, that usually means, OK, I’m a little hungry. I got a hankering for something. I’m not going to do it, because I’m watching my calories. I got 150 left for the day, whatever it might be.

Usually, when you’re doing that, there are gaps in your nutrition. If you’re having cravings, or you’re feeling hunger, there’s something that has been left unaddressed. And if you just simply cut calories by muscling through it, you’re actually adding more stress to your body because you’re not listening to the clear signs that your body is giving you. So you’re adding more stress.

And again, if you really want to get into the nerdy part of it, is there is a hormone called Sex-Hormone Binding Globulin, SHBG. And if you are under chronic stress or chronic caloric deficit that you are forcing, SHBG goes up. And think of SHBG — and I’m not pointing this as the thing. I’m just highlighting this of one of a thousand examples I could give. All right, I want to make that —

Great.

I want everybody leaving this being like, I got to monitor my SHBG. Maybe, but it’s not the thing. But I’m just trying to help you understand how impactful some of these habits are. So think of SHBG as a sponge, and it binds up the available hormones you have in your body.

Because if it perceives chronic stress, if it perceives a caloric deprivation, what your body is intelligently designed to do is make sure that you can’t reproduce in a stressful environment because our bodies are programmed for survival. That’s just a fact. So what happens is, is the hormones that you’re trying to address and address your metabolism and feel good, the ones you got left — you’re now getting them all bound up so they’re not even available for use in your body, because your body is in this stress response.

So that’s really where I want to emphasize, is sometimes people hear these basic things. And they’re like, yeah, but — and they want to continue doing. Something in their minds is more aggressive because they think more aggressive will work. Well, then what ends up happening?

They end up sitting down with a coach, with a trainer being like, the things I was doing, I’m doing them harder. And they’re still not working. I’m like, yeah, you got to do things differently, and you got to do things quality focused.

Right, that makes sense. Oh, there’s so many factors here.

[CHUCKLING]

So many things.

Yeah.

The one thing I do want to make sure we touch on, too, is we’ve talked about nutrition overall. We haven’t really touched on supplementation beyond protein, so let’s make sure to get into — there are certain supplements that can support metabolism as we’re getting older — aminos, collagen, digestive enzymes.

Yes.

Can you just dive into those for a moment?

Absolutely. Supplements can be so transformational for your overall health. And again, when you’re taking quality supplements, like I said, LTH is the ones that I recommend because I know where they come from. I know that they’re tested. I know that they’re trusted. I know that you can take them every day, and they can make a meaningful difference.

So assuming we’re talking about quality supplementation in the right forms and the right doses, there are certain key things that can be awesome, especially during this stage. So number one, we’ve talked about protein. If you’re not hitting your protein targets, I’m famous for saying, I’d rather you hit your protein targets with protein supplements than not hit them at all.

Because people will say, well, I want to do it with food. I’m like, then do it. In the meantime, I need you doing protein until you can figure out how to do it with food alone. Honestly, you got to fill in that gap. Now, for some people, when they hear aminos, they’re like, well, what’s the difference between that and protein?

An essential amino acid supplement, like LTH Rally, it mixes super easily with water. Those are the specific amino acids that have to be obtained from diet or supplementation. And I do look at this as one of the healthiest hacks and cheats that you can do because you can easily add it to your workout water. And it’s giving your body those protein building blocks that I was talking about without any meal prep.

It doesn’t have the creamy texture of a shake, where maybe you’re prepping something. It’s literally something that you add to your water that can help fill in and, I’d say, patch up some of that breakdown that happens from exercise that we want. We want the breakdown from exercise, but you got to patch it up and get stronger. And that’s there right then.

Yes. The other thing is, right now, I feel like creatine is having a moment. And I’m so glad because within LTH, creatine has been having a moment for three decades. We’ve been huge fans of creatine this whole time. So creatine monohydrate is probably one of the most well-researched supplements out there.

It’s safe for most people outside of certain kidney conditions and things like that. But for the average population, creatine — what it does is it actually helps your body, your brain, and your muscles generate ATP or energy more efficiently. So you get more out of your workouts. You get more out of your day. You get more out of your cognitive function by making sure you’re sufficient in creatine. And it’s flavorless. It’s tasteless. You can mix it into any liquid.

So, so easy. So even just those things I mentioned right there, I will say, can make a massive difference. But then there’s other things that you can do as well. We’ve talked at length about magnesium. Most people are not getting enough minerals in their diet.

When people say, well, can I get magnesium for food? I’m like, you should. But you’re never going to really fully relate to optimal levels. Because what depletes magnesium? Stress, sugar intake, caffeine intake, alcohol intake, I would say heartburn medications, lack of blood sugar control.

So we have so many factors against us just draining us of magnesium. Just take your magnesium. LTH makes one that’s called Chill. It’s a magnesium chelate. It’s a magnesium malate form, so it actually can also support your body’s ATP production as well.

And then one of our newer products is LTH Dream, which has three different forms of magnesium that you can take in the evening as well, for relaxation as well, too. So there’s several different forms of magnesium. They all have slightly different benefits, but you need to be getting enough magnesium in as well.

And then the other one that you mentioned was digestive enzymes. I’ve got a little anecdote on digestive enzymes. But as we get older, this is one of those other changes that happen. Your body naturally loses the ability to break down foods really efficiently.

So digestive enzymes — what they do is it helps take the foods that you’re eating and break them down into their elemental form so you can absorb all these nutrients. We’re talking about, there’s a natural decline in digestive enzymes. So if you just repeat what should already be there with LTH Digest, for example, that helps you break down carbohydrates, proteins, and fats more appropriately, you’re going to assimilate and use these nutrients your body so desperately needs a little bit more.

And what people don’t realize is, especially if you’re really addressing your metabolism in your 40s and 50s, and you’re ramping up your exercise, what happens is, if you’re frequently doing high-intensity exercise, one of the enzymes — they’re called proteases. They help you break down protein.

What happens is they actually go to the sites of repair in your body when you have high-intensity exercise, and it can impact your digestion because it’s getting diverted away from your digestion. So it’s like, the more active and the more athletic you are, digestive enzymes can actually make a huge difference.

So I just had an anecdote of a client of a trainer, and I was working with a trainer on the client. And this client wasn’t in her 40s and 50s. She was in high school, but she was stuck at her 200-meter breaststroke for a long time. And basically, she was working through a couple of things.

I go, hey, this is a perfect candidate for digestive enzymes. I think she’s actually not repairing the way she needs to be, and it’s impacting her digestion. It was one of the main changes she made, and she just got D1 qualifying times with that change. So again, I know that that’s not directly relatable to your 40s and 50s, but it is because you’re losing your digestive enzymes in your 40s and 50s. So it’s a really cool thing to cycle in.

That’s awesome.

Mm.

Yeah.

So many good tips and tricks and things that we can do to just help ourselves as we’re in this phase of life. Again, it goes back to consistency, creating the habits in many cases.

If you’re listening to all this, and you’re like, oh, it’s so much, and I know that there’s all this stuff I have to do, start first — like, literally, go to Life Time. Go to somewhere that is going to keep you motivated to stay active and exercise, truly. Get plugged into a class.

Do something that is going to get your body to be challenged, and start with protein. Those two things will build the foundation for you. Then start to, one by one, layer on all this other stuff that we talked about, too.

Yeah, and those like one habit can cascade to another and create good things and both for good and bad. But we want to focus on the good here.

And don’t skip them. You can’t skip them.

No skipping out.

Yes.

No skipping out. All right, so we hit on a lot of things. You just wrapped us up. You know where I want to go with it?

I always do, yes. Go ahead, David.

Well, it depends.

It depends. [LAUGHS]

No, OK, so we got our mic drop moment. When it comes to training, and we talk about low-intensity training, whether it’s a walk, walking up a hill, whatever that means based off of one’s heart rate, can you talk about how teaching the body how to utilize fat as a primary energy source is key within metabolism as well?

Yes, so even for people that do not have body composition goals — we don’t ever want to make that assumption — it is more stable and less, I would say, stressful for your body to be a natural fat burner, right. So even the most, let’s say, elite athlete that is lean has thousands and thousands and thousands of calories stored as fat.

That’s what you want your body pulling from throughout the day for daily energy. We are very sedentary nowadays. So our bodies start to shift to be more, by default, carbohydrate burners instead of fat burners, especially if we’re eating a lot of carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates, added sugars, lattes, all that type of stuff, and if we’re stressed out.

So think of the average person maybe working an office job, maybe not eating the best, and maybe not moving. Their body is now shifting to burning carbohydrates more preferentially than it should be. So we talk a lot about daily movement. Focus on getting that daily movement.

You’re sending a signal to your body, hey, burn — pull from my fat stores. It’s a lot more stable. It’s a lot less stressful for your body and your metabolism. And when you are doing your training, generally speaking, the majority of it should be at an intensity where you don’t feel like you’re keeled over.

Because sometimes, people think, I got to work harder. I to work harder. I’m like, no, you got to your body to have that smart metabolism that David is talking about. And so really, where you want to spend a lot of your cardio time is at this intensity where, yes, you should and can get your VO2 max tested, get your heart rate zones, and get a really prescriptive plan.

If you’re not there in your journey yet, what you want to do — spend the majority of your time at a heart rate zone or at an intensity where you feel like you could converse with someone. You’re just not super excited to converse with someone, because it takes effort. You’re like, it’s not — you’re not lollygagging.

Like, you’re moving, and you’re sweating. And your heart rate is elevated, but you can talk and in more than just phrases. You can talk in sentences, but you’re a little bit — like, your breathing is heavier. That’s sending a really good message to your body of like, hey, burn fat consistently. And it carries that message over.

And then every once in a while, for most people, one to two times in a week for 10 minutes or so is whenever you might do —

High intensity.

— high intensity as hard as you can go with recovery as well. But yeah, David, to your point, I know you’ve got a ton of passion around this, which I agree with. It’s knowing your VO2 max and being smart with your cardio.

The one thing that is super valuable for all of us is our time. And are we using our time efficiently? And if you can figure out how to get the most out of the time that you spend exercising, for most people, that is well worth it.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, personally, one of the things that has been most effective for me is really doing the heart rate training and knowing what my zones are. And it’s so interesting to see, I’ll do my VO2 max test to start. And then I’ll test it six weeks — even six weeks later or eight weeks later after doing a program and to see the shifts that happen, the way your body can change even that amount of time in terms of how it’s using these fuels differently over time and with training. I’m actually in that program right — I’m on that right now. And it’s like —

People get surprised to see — because you’ll have a couple of, I would say, personalities of people. There are some people that have been working so hard for so long that they get their test back, and they realize that they have just trained their body to just burn carbohydrate immediately. And their prescription, quote unquote, “for exercise” to make their metabolism better is to slow down. And they’re like —

It feels counterintuitive. It’s so hard. You’re like, oh, you got to scale it back a little. Oh, OK.

And then on the flip side, there’s people that are like, no, I’m active. I’m like, no, I understand you’re active in terms of you’re up on your feet, but we gotta ramp up your intensity a little bit and get that engine going. But I love that you’re monitoring that because, again, it can be doing — in your 40s and 50s is, I think, one of the first times in our lives, we notice the slowdown. And we notice the health impacts.

And so people are super motivated. And I can’t emphasize enough, you’re still in this age range where you can set yourself up for an amazing — not to be gruesome, but back couple of decades of your life. You can completely change that while still really enjoying this entire period. But time is still of the essence. These basic things we’ve talked about have got to be addressed, or else the outcomes are going to be very different.

Awesome.

That’s awesome.

Well, Sam, you always bring great information to us. We want to make sure that our listeners and viewers can follow you, obviously, past episodes of the podcast. Be sure to check out Life Time Talks in our archives. You have articles on Experience Life, and you’re on Instagram at @coachsam.rd. Anywhere else you want to point people?

That covers it. I feel like that’s great.

Perfect. Well, thank you for coming back, once again.

Thanks for having me, guys.

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