Proactive vs Reactive Wellness with Ahna Fuhlmer

0:05
Welcome to the SYNC Your Life Podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Swisher, certified personal trainer, nutritionist hormone health expert and girl mom. I believe all women should be able to understand how our bodies are designed to feel. And I teach you how to sync your lifestyle to your cycle to reach maximum energy. You deserve to feel your best and this podcast is going to teach you how. Let’s dive in!

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This podcast is sponsored by the SYNC Digital Course, to take the free hormone imbalance quiz to see what your symptoms could mean about your health. Visit sync.jennyswisher.com That’s sync s y n c dot Jenny swisher.com.

0:59
Welcome friends to this episode of the SYNC Your Life podcast. This has been by far one of my favorite interviews that I have done with my new friend Ahna Fuhlmer She is the author and owner of leading DIY lifestyle blog Hammers N Hugs where she inspires women to reclaim their hearts and homes with DIY tutorials, renovation ideas, healthy living and creative family fun. As a dual certified nurse practitioner with specialties in adult Critical Care and Family Medicine. Ahna is passionate about teaching research based strategies to prevent disease and promote healthy transformation through her virtual fitness and nutrition program. This interview is one where we really vibe on a high level, we have a lot of the same beliefs as it pertains to nutrition, especially for women. So I know you’re going to listen to this and you’re going to come away with tangible practical steps that you can apply for your life and you’re going to learn a lot. So let’s dive in. Okay, everyone, I’m so excited for this podcast episode with Ahna Fuhlmer, my new friend. She’s joining us from Pennsylvania, we’ve just covered your credentials. But I want to make sure that we touch on just your backstory and all that kind of stuff. We dive in so on, tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you not only from the perspective of your career, but also outside of that?

2:14
Yeah, who am I? Question? I asked myself that a lot. So my story is kind of one of those that has a lot of twists and turns. I am a nurse practitioner by trade and education. I started out in nursing. I have two masters, my first I got from Hopkins in adult geriatric critical care. And then my second master’s is in family medicine. I worked in the emergency department for 10 years. During that time, I also was privileged to help to hospitals start up stroke programs from the ground up. And then I served as the Assistant Medical Director for those programs. And one of the things I fell in love with in that role as an assistant medical director was I kind of became a spokesperson for our community and all over to speak on disease prevention, specifically stroke prevention. And certainly that rolls into cardiovascular disease. So really, you know, cardiovascular health, and how to actually live well. And it was, it kind of was a breath of fresh air. For me, I enjoyed it so much. Because in the ER obviously we are preventing worst outcomes. So you are stabilizing your dispositioning, there’s very little time to truly teach preventative strategies. But I found it was really life giving to me, I enjoyed being able to tie in my knowledge of disease with my years and years of personal experience in disease prevention. So during this whole time on the side, my husband and I were renovating houses, we would live in them for two years, fix them up. My husband is a a computer programming teacher and football coach. So we both kind of like entered this DIY world on the side, fell in love with it. And at one point my husband jokingly said, I was sharing some sort of irritation with emergency medicine because even before COVID We were tired and exhausted. And so you should make your millions blogging and I laughed and I first of all said what is a blog? No lie three years ago, I had no idea what a blog even was. What I didn’t understand is that every time I would Google how to install backsplash for example, it was taking me to somebody blog, where they would share their tutorial. I didn’t understand that. So I loved this whole concept of you, me and I can just digitally scrapbook what we’re doing and make money potentially. He’s like, Yeah, so that was three years ago. I just fell in love with it again. It was kind of digitally scrapbooking what we were doing, but what happened is suddenly I had this virtual presence. I had no social media before I started blogging. I still wouldn’t have it if it wasn’t part of my virtual business. But it opened up this whole other world for me, because one of the things that I had wanted to do for a long time is a classmate of mine from college, created this incredible fitness and nutrition program, it was all virtual. And many times I thought I would love to coach for this program, but I had no virtual presence. So you, it’s really hard to coach for virtual program, if you have no virtual presence. Well, suddenly, I did. Long story short, it has just become this whole new thing in my life, which has been amazing. I left bedside medicine a year ago now. And I am full time blogging and sharing my personal and professional experience to help men and women but women especially live well across the entire person off five dimensions. And I believe that is emotionally, mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually. And all the things that I share on my website, hit one of those dimensions of living well, I believe the DIY world home decor, people are like, how does that fit in. But the fact is, is women especially if we’re not happy in our homes, it’s going to affect us emotionally, mentally, and definitely socially. And we’ve all seen the importance of social well being since COVID. And then obviously, my fitness nutrition program hits a lot of those other dimensions as well. So that is how I got to where I am right now, in a nutshell, a little bit of a lot going on here.

6:36
That’s awesome. But it’s very similar to my story, honestly, because I yeah, I always tell people, like if someone would have just told me in my teenage years that you didn’t have to necessarily choose a track in your giftedness, but find something that you love and use your giftedness and your talents there, like I would have saved me so much energy, because I mean, of course, it’s a journey for everyone. But you know, I look at kids we know now that are kind of entering those college choices and all that kind of stuff. And I’m thinking to myself, like, know yourself, right? Like if you know yourself, if you can do that self growth, and you can understand what you know what your giftedness is, and you can take that and apply it to whatever makes you happy, as opposed to making it fit into a silo of a subject or a career. And like

7:19
safe safe. Yeah, it’s like you don’t have to necessarily go into a career. That’s that nine to five job and you’re guaranteed a check, because in 10 years, you might be miserable. Is it worth it? Right? Absolutely. No, it’s Yeah, yeah, for sure. Agreed.

7:33
So I think we share that in common. And I think it’s, I love women that are just empowered to be themselves and who are like, you know, I do a little bit of everything I do. I do the DIY, I do the fitness and health, and that’s easy, because that’s who you are. Right. So yeah, but I think it’s interesting that you kind of went from this like emergency room, you know, day in day out lifestyle. Do you mentioned, you know, sort of a, I like to call it like reactive medicine, right, like, absolutely. But in retrospect after something has happened. And now I’m assuming what you’re doing now is really geared toward preventative right, like really proactive health. So tell us about that journey and that transition and kind of what your life looks like then on a day to day versus what it looks like now work? Yeah.

8:17
Well, one of the things that was very pivotal for me, there was so much that went into the transition between bedside emergency medicine and fitness, nutrition coaching that I do now. One of the things that really helped sort of change that course is my personal life started to mingle with my professional life. And what I mean by that is this, my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 29 years old. This would have been about six, gosh, maybe even seven years ago now. And she ended up dying at the age of 34. So just two years ago, and it really struck me how, you know, it’s one thing to see suffering on a daily basis and, and trauma. I mean, just the amount of things that Emergency Nurses especially in emergency medicine providers, see and have to stuff down and leave it work before you go home. It’s significant. But for many of us you learn to compartmentalize, you know, if that’s at work that’s within the white sterile or not, so sterile walls of an emergency department, and then you kind of leave work at work and what was really hard for me in that last year of her life is they started to, to merge and suddenly every cancer patient that I saw, I saw my best friend and I I’ll never forget there was one patient that I had, they were like the same age, the same story. And I just remember I had to go back to the bathroom and I just lost it because it’s like suddenly these two worlds were colliding. And it just felt very felt very helpless, it felt like why am I, I felt like I was spinning a wheel in a never ending manner. It’s like this is I’m not really helping people. That’s not true. I was but in my heart, I felt like, like this person does not need another blood pressure medicine, they need education, like I’m putting a band aid on a gaping wound, and I and that was appropriate for the ER. But it wasn’t my heart. And I was just feeling very, I think bogged down by this feeling of I’m tired of just practicing rescue medicine, when I really want to help people prevent being here in the first place. So I think that was a part of there was a lot but that made it personal in a way I had never experienced before. And wanting to help people prevent some of the suffering of chronic disease, not necessarily cancer, you can do everything right and still get cancer, right. But that was a little bit of some of the more personal story that helped me in that transition. And in terms of what practically it looks like, I work way more now than I ever did. I worked in the hospital. You know, the entrepreneur world, as you’re well aware, is never ending hours. That’s one of the things that it’s that double edged sword, it was nice to be able to swipe into my job in the ER, swipe out, I wasn’t on call. You know, my hours were very cut and dry. And now you can kind of endlessly work. So it’s finding that healthy medium that I’m sure so many women have now more than ever can relate to the work from home men to for that matter. Learning how to shut it off is something I am not always good at and getting better at.

11:46
Yeah. Well, that’s the one thing I love, though, right is like they always say, yeah, if you do a job you love and you don’t feel like you’re working at all. And that’s it’s so true. It’s so true. And actually we I think we have the same struggle is how do I shut it off? Like how do I? How do I make space and margin in my life and prioritize my family and everything else when I have something that I’m so passionate about? Yeah. And that really just lights me up, you know? And so I totally, totally vibe with you on that. Because I I’ve had that exact same struggle before too. And it’s for me, it comes down to my calendar, like, right, I live by my calendar. And that’s how I tell myself like No, I’m not this is not my work time. Like this is my time to be present with my family or whatever. Right. But But anyways, so that’s interesting that you know, I think it gets when it comes to things like this, I think when I talk to people and even for my own journey, and I think about, you know, I just spoke with someone else who was former general practitioner turns like holistic wellness advocate. Now, it’s such a common story that I’m hearing. And I think that it’s it really does often come down to something that’s made it personal, right, like whether it’s a person that made a personal or, or something for yourself that made it personal. And so that connects us well into just thinking about, you know, I think too many people and we’ve had this conversation before, but I want to bring it to the podcast, like we’ve had this conversation before about. I don’t think people people don’t know what they don’t know. And so yeah, there are people that might listen to this. And this will be the first exposure that they have to the concept of integrative medicine, or functional medicine or proactive wellness, you know, and it’s something that unfortunately, in the last couple of years, in the middle of the pandemic we haven’t been addressing, right, there hasn’t been a lot of talk about supplements that you could be taking to improve, you know, your health and your immunity or nutrition and how that plays a role. So my question to you is for someone listening who’s thinking like, this is new to me, you know, what do you mean? Like, what would be their first step? In your opinion? What would be the first step in sort of transitioning to this approach of proactive wellness?

13:42
Right. One of the things that I always like to encourage people to is, it’s never all or nothing, there is very little in life, that is all or nothing, the truth is rarely found in the extremes, usually somewhere in the middle. And I think this is also true of medicine. So I want to be clear when we talk about integrative medicine, and I know that Jenny and I are on the same page here. It’s not the absence of traditional medicine, and it is not, and is not the exclusivity of natural medicine. So to be clear, integrative medicine is that concept of you may need that blood pressure medicine, I wish I had $1 for every conversation I have had around this very concept even in the ER, you know, you might need that blood pressure medicine right now. Because if you don’t take it, you’re going to have a stroke. And no matter what natural things you do after that, you’ve already had a stroke and now you could live with disability. So you may need that blood pressure medicine right now, but the goal is to get off of it. The goal is while we are stabilizing you with whatever you currently need to integratively bring into your life these natural strategies that help you become more sensitive from a metabolic standpoint and decrease your need for diabetes medicines or blood pressure medicines. But I do want to make it really clear because a lot of people don’t understand some of these terms that integrative is literally that it is integrating the knowledge that we’re blessed to have from all of these different fields, and making it work for you in order to help you live optimally, well. So that was a long introduction to answer your question, Jenny. But I think it really depends on what what somebody’s position is, how many medicines they’re currently on. It’s, it’s hard to say one specific thing. But the first thing that is so important for people to understand is that the old adage you are what you eat, is more right than it is wrong, doesn’t mean you are what you eat from a spiritual standpoint, from a, you know, value to humanity standpoint, but you are what you eat strictly in terms of physiological stamp point, nutrition is 90% of the fat loss pie chart, it is 90% of wellness. And that does not mean that you can get away with not exercising, even if you’re skinny, you still need to exercise for a lot of cardiovascular reasons. But nutrition is really the name of the game. And a lot of people understand that, but they don’t know where to start. And one of the number one things that I tell my clients that must happen out of the gate, is they need to start practicing the concept of whole food nutrition. And we’ve heard that term a lot. But the bottom line is it is food in its most natural state with minimal or no processing or modifying. And one of the tips that I give people is if you’re not sure what that means, most of the whole food nutrition will actually be in the outskirts of a grocery store. 90% 80% of what you buy should come from the perimeter and not the aisles. You can find organic natural food in the aisles. But generally speaking, you want to buy from the perimeter of the store, there’s actually very few aisles that I go down. And this term has been used in many, many ways, shapes and forms. But what I like to say is, if it is from the earth, or it can give birth, it’s probably fair game. What that means is it’s very likely to be all natural. However, don’t be confused. Just because it says organic on it does not mean it is healthy. Many poisons can be bought organically and they will still kill you. So it’s again finding everything in a balance but nutrition is the first place to start any eliminating the artificial processed foods from your diet. Our bodies were not designed to metabolize them just like a you know, diesel car wasn’t meant to run on gas like you need to fuel the engine with the appropriate material.

18:00
Yeah, yeah, so this is a funny story. But yesterday I made my little trip to target you know, my little solace moment of the week and little trip. My little

18:10
trip is like 10 minutes to an hour. Yeah,

18:13
you’re like I went for bananas and I came home with curtains I’m not sure how that play. Yeah, so my husband’s like he I walk in the door with like loads and loads, you know, bags of stuff. And yeah, I even said to him, I didn’t even get to the groceries like I’m have to do that another day. And so but I was looking at we have a one year old and I was looking at like snacks for her like things that would be easy to travel with. And of course, usually we put like blueberries in a container or she has like, you know, real food. But I was thinking I was looking at different. Now of course, they have all these like green free snacks and things that we can grab for her and knowing what I know now, which is you know, this has been a journey just like it is for anyone, like I have learned so much over the last 12 years or so. But now I’ve become like a an ingredient in an ingredient label reader. Right. And so it’s it, I’ll just say this, it is nauseating, to look and see what’s in our food. Like, and I don’t expect the average person to understand that or even know what to look for. And that’s something that we can talk about, but, but I just think that when you do know, and you start to look at the ingredient labels, there’s actually very, very little that is packaged that is acceptable from my whole food perspective. You know, we had an interesting instance where we have a next door neighbor who really likes to, I’ll say, gift candy to our family, they like to like bring candy to the to our daughters and Halloween. It’s a big deal. They want us to come over there and all that kind of stuff. And we’ve had to you know, after like the fifth time, we had to say like, look, we really appreciate, you know, you supplying us with the candy and give the girls a gift and they’re certainly like certain things in moderation are totally fine. Sure, but at the same time, like this is something that our family has chosen not to consume. And so in the future, you know, maybe just $1 would be great. Yeah, you know, like something else so but anyways, a couple things that came to my mind when you were talking is, you know, one thing we tell our children is if God made it, we could eat it. Right? Did God and I’ll quiz my kids, sometimes I’ll be like, did God make blueberries? And they’re like, yes. And I’m like, did he make Cheez It’s? They’re like, no. So it’s an easy quiz that you could do it for your kids. The other thing I always like to say to that I just wanted to add in here is like, I don’t think people understand when it comes to your refrigerator. You know, I’ve seen a lot of people, especially I lead online, you know, fitness and nutrition groups, and we always try to help people understand, Okay, we’re gonna clean out our refrigerator, we’re gonna clean out the pantry, like let’s let’s start at the beginning, eliminating the things that aren’t serving you and the foods that aren’t fueling you. And it’s always interesting, the number of condiments and just things that take up our ureter. And when I know that for me, like when I show a picture of my refrigerator, and I’m by no means perfect, so please don’t think that’s what I’m trying to say. But just on this journey of nutrition for myself, like a lot of times, I’ll post a picture of my refrigerator after we’ve stocked it. And the people that are in my groups will say, Oh, my gosh, it looks like your refrigerator is growing. Because I’ll have like I had a head of brocolli sticking out the top. Yes. Green sticking out of it. And it’s like the average refrigerator bought, by the way, as a side note is not made for a nutritious diet. Let’s just say that. Like there’s like a meter in and a dairy bed. Yeah. Where’s the vegetable drawer? Right? Yeah. But anyways, so I just want to say like, I don’t expect, you know, I know, for me, like, I think back to the very first day of just even thinking about changing our nutrition. When I think about my husband and I we did four rounds of the home workout program. And we got pretty good results, not great results, we had pretty good results from it. But we didn’t address our nutrition at all. And so after we did, I mean, this was like six months worth of physical effort, we decided to finally embrace nutrition. And I see that happen a lot where people are willing to start moving, but they’re not quite ready to receive nutrition. And when we finally did, we were like, you know, we were those people that were like going to the Mexican restaurant and we wanted fajitas with no vegetables. We just wanted the chicken, the cheese, the tortillas. We were eating hamburger helper, and we were eating a lot of packaged foods. And so when I say journey, I mean that’s yes, that’s where we started. We I mean, it was as small as it starts as small as eliminating what’s not serving you starting to learn, you know, what, what do these ingredients mean? A lot of them is very a lot of them you can’t even pronounce? Right. Like you can’t pronounce it. It’s probably something God didn’t make. And so that’s really sometimes it’s step one, right? Yes. And I’m going through Yeah, so yeah. So what I think too, is I want to talk and talk specifically about women as it pertains to nutrition. You know, there’s a lot of things out there right now, there’s a lot of things being discussed anything from the ketogenic diet to I know something that you advocate, which is intermittent fasting and low carb, right, low fat, low sugar, right? Like, there’s all these things out there. What do you think about all that? I’ll just, I’ll open it up. No question. I’ll let you just start.

23:00
Really, really wide net, she just kept just yes or no long do you have Yeah, I’m just kidding. I just want to touch on something you were saying about nutrition too, for for your listeners is, it is a journey and something that is so easy to, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. And I am constantly constantly pulling my clients back in from that all or nothing mentality and feeling like they have to go from zero to 100, all at one time. And what you don’t see is for so many of us, it wasn’t zero to 100, it was a really slow step by step journey. But we’re now in a very public position where we, you know, we have kind of created a new baseline. But for some of us that may have taken years to get to where we are. So I also want to encourage people listening, that it is it’s gonna take time, the whole process is going to take time, the results are going to take time. But if it is not sustainable, what is the point. So if you cannot sustain what you are currently going to do, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Sometimes you do have to take a hard left. But be intentional about that hard left, make sure that the drastic changes you are making. The goal is to settle into something that you can sustain. And I just want to throw that in there. I’ll give yogurt as the simplest example. You know, I had I had a client one time, she loved yogurt and she started from the like Yoplait which is just loaded with sugar if you did not realize that most of the the yogurts on the shelves are loaded with sugar almost like a dessert. She went from that to knowing that I was a proponent of Greek yogurt. I’m a huge Greek yogurt fan. And so she went straight from the yo plate type of to the nonfat plain Greek yogurt. And she’s like oh Just can’t stick. And you know, and the bottom line is this bad move, like the whole all or nothing, it is not going to work, you have to retrain yourself. This is just one little example. But it’s like not running at all to try to run and train for half marathon, you will burn yourself out. And it’s not sustainable. So my point is, if you’re the Yoplait, yogurt eater, this is nothing against your plate. By the way, this is just an example. But you know, if that is what you’re typically consuming, don’t swing like this to the other end, and then try to consume plain Greek yogurt, that’s not realistic, you know, go for the full fat, strawberry Greek yogurt, that is still going to probably be a big change in what you are used to tasting. So my point is, it’s imperfect progress one day at a time, that’s how you’re going to empower transformation, don’t do the full swing, you will not sustain your results, and you will burn yourself out. So I just wanna make that note. Just like when we train, you don’t train, you know, from zero to 10 miles a day, the same is true of nutrition, make those changes a little bit at a time. So in terms of diet, that actually kind of segways into a lot of the diets that you just talked about, again, anything that you are entering, that you cannot sustain, you have to ask yourself, what is the point? What is the point, if you don’t think it is sustainable, for example, eliminating entire food groups from your diet? I, we were absolutely meant to consume carbs, but you need to understand the right carbs at the right time for the right reasons. You know, I’ve heard it argued, and I don’t think it’s incorrect, maybe a little incomplete. But this concept that there is no such thing as a bad food. There’s bad use of it. And I think there’s some truth to that. It’s this concept of that even like you mentioned the candy, you know, give a practical example of within our home, we prioritize organic food in our home, if it is not organic, or all natural, then we don’t buy it for our home. Outside of our home. I don’t, I don’t make it a thing for our kids, when they go to friends houses and they go to grandparents family, they have never once heard me say don’t eat that. I still moderate it, I still want them to learn how to eat in moderation outside of our home. But I’m not putting a hard stop on outside of our house, you may not eat XYZ for us. We don’t. In our home, though. There are baselines put into place that I want them to be used to like this is how you eat day in and day out. And so it’s this concept of I don’t know that there’s a bad food, just bad use of it. And I think that’s also true of a lot of diets. There are some bad diets to be clear. But I think the point is, if it’s not something that you can sustain, then one what is the point? And two, if it’s eliminating entire food groups? I would argue there are very, very few people who should be on that diet. Certainly not to sustain it. Yeah, it’s the very, very rare, rare situation that that is that that is true. The third thing I throw out there too is Do you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing? Because this is another big thing that you know, I’ll hear I’ll hear somebody say that they’re doing a certain diet. And when I probed them a little bit with questions, I realized they cannot verbalize why what they are doing is benefiting them physiologically. It is this blanket statement of well, I lost X amount of pounds. And for anyone here, I’ll tell you right now, I’m not a fan of the scale, everyone should be throwing out their scales unless you’re pregnant or have one of a very few chronic medical conditions. But the bottom line is that’s not enough to just simply say, Well, I’ve lost X amount of weight, therefore it must be an effective diet is dangerous. And so you need to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. That was kind of a generalized approach to all of the different diets that you just threw out there.

29:08
But yeah, because I mean, we have the same same beliefs there. And but I think it’s interesting, because I was going to ask you, my next question was going to be about the scale. And I already knew, yeah, I already knew how you’re gonna answer it. Because we’re both. We’re both like, get rid of the darn scale. You know, like,

29:24
let me get up on my pedestal here for a second. Yeah, that’s right. Here we go.

29:27
Here you go, guys. There’s a fair warning that we’re stepping up on a pedestal fair. Okay. So when it comes to the scale, let’s just talk about it now. And let’s just address it because this is something that obviously there are people that swear by the scale, and they use the scale even as a method of tracking their weight. And then there are other people that are like you and I that are like, please get rid of the scale is driving you insane, especially from what I see with female clients. Yeah, can become an obsessive issue. I’ll just be honest and say, you know, in the last 13 years, I’ve had a lot of conversations with women who are coming to me ready to start their journey? Right. And they’re there’s a breaking point usually, right? Like the doctor has told them, they have to lose the weight or they can’t keep up with their kids anymore, or they’re going on blood pressure medication or whatever. And they finally draw on the wall dry Lula, they have finally drawn the line in the sand.

30:18
where mommy’s hard pressed to be granted people.

30:22
That’s right. That’s right. The fact that we are showered and dressed is a victory. So anyway, but you know, they draw the line in the sand and they say, okay, enough’s enough, I’m gonna reach out to this girl, right? Usually, they see me on social media or whatever. And they reach out and we have a conversation. And sometimes it feels like talking to a brick wall, because I can’t get them to dig into that, why, but that the why that is sort of underneath the weight loss, like so many women are caught up in the, well, I need to lose 20 pounds, or I really need to lose 50, like they have a number in their head that they’re shooting for. Usually, I’ll be honest, usually that number comes from maybe their high school weight, or their college or their, you know, pre baby weight, or whatever. And it’s like, we have got to as a female society, we have got to stop we have to afford maybe

31:10
their doctor, their primary care provider could have told him that to which is a whole nother, that is true. Another thing that

31:16
is true. So please step up on your pedestal and help me out here.

31:21
Wow, she just invited. That was that was a very trusting invitation. So one of the things that I really like to point out is that, you know, I want the measurement of progress to be one that is most accurately reflecting your health. Again, I am coming from a position of medicine and physiology and disease and my passion being disease prevention, and my clients. What I do in my program is, I am not the program you want to come to if you want to be ready for the cover of women’s health, meaning you’re not going to bulk in my program, you are going to learn how to reach a healthy body fat percentage and live there. And when I talk about progression and measuring it, I am all about measuring body fat percentage, because our body fat is the best indicator of our overall health. When we talk about a scale, the problem with a scale is that muscle weighs more than fat. And so you could be incredibly lean when it comes to body fat and be considered overweight. A perfect example of this that I use is my husband. He applied for his insurance as a teacher, he has great insurance and he asked to update it every year. And I had to laugh because I would this was like a year ago now I’m sure the same would be true if he did it today. But it came back and he was overweight. And almost in the they have like those little BMI categories. It was like overweight, almost in the obese. The man has 4% body fat like he’s like Chris Hemsworth type of skinny slash lean and muscular and the whole concept that he was actually considered overweight for his medical health insurance. And he has 4% body. But there’s just a perfect example of where the scale is so inaccurate. It’s, it’s hilarious, really, that we use it as a measure of health and an indicator. So the point is this, when we talk about losing weight, it is too vague, it is not specific enough. And what I encourage my clients to do is measure body composition. Body builders are familiar with this, although a lot of body builders are also very unhealthy in their approach, and a lot of them will admit it, why very few can sustain it or do it naturally. But body composition is fat plus lean body mass. This is a medical equation. And it is fat plus lean body mass. lean body mass is like organs, bones, everything outside of your body fat percentage, unless you are like a professional bodybuilder. Nobody cares about lean body mass, like I don’t care about your organs way right like whatever. What we care about is fat. So for the purpose of this equation, body composition is the number on a scale it is what you weigh. But body composition equals fat plus lean body mass. So what we want to change is that body fat portion of the equation, there are certain percentages that you want to target. It is different for men and women women are designed to have more body fat than men in order to live optimally well. And so I’ve actually created on my blog, if you if you search body fat percentage and Jenny I can send you this link too but I created because as I was having this conversation with clients, I realized I need an objective scale something that people can see with their eyes to understand how this all pulls together. So on my blog, there is a way for you to measure your body fat, you use a body caliper, it’s like $12 on Amazon. And you pinch different sections of your body and skin folds. And then what you do is you find yourself on this body composition scale that I have created, it’s a graph. And you find where you land based on your current body fat position, there are five points on this spectrum. I have simplified it these numbers are not random they are based on from like the American Council of Exercise, American Heart Association. Okay to be clear, I did not come up with these myself. These are based in literature, but there’s obese, overweight, fit or what I term healthy body fat percentage, lean, and extra lean. And on their scale I talk about based on professional and personal experience, people, people’s characteristics and lifestyle traits based on these different points on the spectrum. And there’s things that people have never really thought about, and I’ll give one example of this is, you can be at a healthy body fat percentage, especially as a woman, and not have a six pack. And people are a little shocked by this, especially women, because they say in their head, they think because of society and what they have seen in TV, media, social media, that in order to be healthy, I have to have a ripped six pack. Abs are not natural for women, we have to work with them. It’s something our society has determined as an aesthetically pleasing, aesthetically pleasing thing. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s work for women to have a six pack is not natural. Abs are aesthetic, not essential. core strength is essential. They’re not the same thing. You can have a strong core and not necessarily have ripped abs. So that’s the fit. That’s the Fit category. And there’s different things that I talked about there. Lean would probably be somebody like you and I Jenny who are doing this for a living the Lean category I these are like high performance athletes tend to live lean, they might live slightly extra lean, extra lean as your body builders, people who are living in such a way where they are tracking food, they’re very intentional, there’s lots of strength training, very few women should actually be living in this category, or they’re going to experience other hormonal, hormonal issues. But 75% The last number that I saw 75% of American adults live on the wrong side of the spectrum. Yep, they’re overweight and obese 75%. And the number for our children is rising. Yeah. So the point is, when I encourage my clients to measure body fat when I want, when I tell all of you listening, to stay off the scale and measure body fat percentage, it is not only because like Jenny said, the scale has become an emotional and mental burden. It is truly a terrible reflection of progress. And overall health. primary care providers should not be telling you to measure your progress by weight. If I could change one thing in medicine right now, that’s what it would be, we should be taking truncal measurements, we should be measuring your waist, your hips, this is a better indicator of your disease risk. So this body fat percentage thing is a huge deal. This is what you need to be measuring and understand it from a physiological standpoint, not just an emotional one. And stay off the scale. I’m giving you all the resources, no excuses, absolutely love you listening.

38:42
I mean, first of all, that’s brilliant. And we’re gonna have to make up your blog in the show notes for that, because I think that’s just such a perfect way for people to measure the time. I used to work. Obviously, we owned a gym for a few years, and I would do the body fat calipers on people. And yeah, just explain to them, you know, this is this is a true sign of your overall health, like we are not, the only reason we’re going to hop on the scale is so that we can gauge what your body mass is. Right? Right. But you know, I think that’s, that’s beautiful to have that calculation for people to follow. I had a couple of thoughts that came to my mind. The first thing is, and this is just for our listeners, you know, the one thing that I see most frequently, especially when women start to work out, okay, so when they start to embrace some sort of fitness regimen, whatever it looks like, they they sometimes will get discouraged in the first week, because they’re coming back to that scale. Yeah. And because of water retention, and because of the fact that they’re their body is not used to exercising, so it’s retaining that extra water and the muscles are working. There’s a little bit of natural inflammation that’s happening as a result. And so they step on that scale, and they’re like three or four pounds heavier in the first week, and they just are like mortified, like, why am I even doing this? I’ve been working my butt off and I’ve gained weight. And it’s just another way of me proving the point that you cannot be using the scale. The second thing I want to be saying is that especially as it pertains to hormone health. I know for me personally, my weight can fluctuate. I mean, first of all, I don’t I haven’t stepped on a scale. I was thinking about this when you were talking, I think it’s been like six months, at least maybe the last time I was in the doctor’s office, honestly, the only time I do yeah, yeah. But I remember thinking like, I used to track it, I used to track it a lot more regularly. And it was a total waste of my time, because it would literally show me I could be five pounds heavier two days before my period start. And I think that’s actually pretty common for women to gain three to five pounds right before their period starts. So if we haven’t already convinced you, please let let us know we are happy to continue our soapbox moment, but get rid of the scale, you know, or or only use it to gauge that body mass. The other thing that I want to say too, and this kind of goes back full circle to how we started, is really uncovering the why. Because you know, if we think about that woman that I was mentioning, who says she’s got it in her head, she wants to drop the 20 pounds. Yeah, that number is not going to motivate you to keep showing up you think it is. But it’s not like it is not going to be what motivates you to keep going, what motivates you to continue your workouts? What motivates you to continue eating the big green salad for lunch instead of the sandwich right? Like all those things, what’s going to motivate you is understanding why you want and or need to lose the weight. It’s not about the weight. It’s not about the number. It’s about what is it that you need? It’s funny, because one of my favorite things that I say to people, a lot of people will come to me and they’ll say, you know, like I said before, it’s about the weight, right? I’d have to drop the pounds, or I have to drop 30 pounds. And my first response back to them is well, how do you feel? Yeah. And that’s where that’s what I want to hear like, okay, so you’re Oh, and then they start to tell me, Well, I don’t sleep very well. And I really have low energy, and I’m not able to keep up with my kids and all these things start to come out. And I’m like, Okay, well, I want to help you get healthy, so that you can feel that’s right. Yeah. And it’s about that. It’s about how we’re feeling how we’re showing up in the world how we are. Yeah, and so our of our overall energy. But the thing is, like, if you’re stuck on that number, girlfriend, you are not, it’s not going to bring you back, right. And here’s another thing, this this is something that I actually was just thinking about crafting a social media post about this, because when I did so long story short, when I started my fitness journey, you know, 12….. 12 or so years ago, I was a certain like, of course, at that time, I was new to the whole concept. So of course, I stepped on the scale, I wanted to see what I weighed and everything. And at my last doctor’s visit, which was the last time I was on a scale, I weighed the same amount as I weighed before, like, if you look at my before photo 13 days ago, if you guys could see I’m going to make a post about it. I’m going to show those pictures. Yes, I am not. Those are great posts. Yeah, those are because here’s the thing, like it’s not about the before and after photo, I’m not somebody that even posts stuff like that very often.

42:52
But so I love them. Yeah. But for them to be clear, I love before and afters. I’m like yes,

42:57
before I like to tell them before and during before and during

43:00
is great, but you’re much more politically correct.

43:03
So that’s just I mean, like, you can see in those photos like, yeah, the transformation that’s happened, right? Like I by no means have a six pack, but I just the lean muscle and just the body tone. And so if I would have been hung up on my weight and scale like I would have stopped a long time ago. So okay, I think I think we’ve beat the dead horse.

43:25
Well, and to your point to your point, what I love about those side by sides is you can be the exact same weight. I have a client who she was devastated. And again, this is the mentality of the scale. She was absolutely devastated because she weighed the same amount as when she started my program. But she had lost 20 inches. Yeah, and gain muscle. And I it boggled my mind, that you would feel so down because you’re the same weight. And she looked phenomenal. So it’s to your point, Jenny, forget the number. Forget the number try to fight society’s just obsession with a number on the scale. It’s changing. But for those of us I would say that are 30 or older. You know, that’s going to be a battle for the rest of your life because it hasn’t changed fast enough. But to your point the why is is essential and I would encourage anyone you know, listening that does Jenny’s program or my program to have a specific goal a very that is not weight based that is not even inches based. What is one non scale victory that you want to celebrate? By the end? I want to have more energy to play with my kids. I want to be able to lift X amount without pain. I fill in the blank whatever I want to able to play basketball with my grandson have something that is not it’s non scale, because that will be much more motivating in the end. Yeah, anyway, wonderful. Yeah.

44:49
My grandma used to say she was a she was a cook. She loved to bake and cook all the facts like all the gravies and all the things and she used to say she used to say, well, no one’s gonna weigh me in together. Get the casket like, no one’s gonna wait, you know to like when Sunday when it’s my last day on earth, he’s gonna weigh me right like, right? matter, it doesn’t matter. So, okay, so Okay, so that brings me to one. One other question as it pertains to nutrition. I just I’m interested in your perspective. Yeah. So when it comes to tracking, are you a fan of tracking food? Are you a fan of like, what side? Do you lie on? Are you a macro person or calorie person or neither? Like how do you approach nutrition and tracking if you do at all,

45:28
I am a huge fan of tracking food. But that is one of the elements that is sort of that hard left that a lot of people need to take an order to think less about food down the road. I always tell my clients that my goal is to help you think more about food initially, in order to think less about it long term. I want you to feel food freedom and not weighed down by food literally and figuratively. So initially, I think anybody who has not in their life regardless of whether you have body fat to lose or not. And to be clear, I have clients who come to me who want to gain weight as well. So just that side, no skinny does not equal healthy. But the advantage to tracking food macronutrients specifically which are the building blocks of our body, protein, carbs and fats is that it is an education in how you’re fueling your body, and trends that you may not even realize exist. If you are not willing to spend time tracking your food, your chances of a sustainable outcome are much less I have clients who are very anti tracking food. And I will take anybody it’s your money. I’m here for you. It’s however much you want to put into into the program. But people who see sustainable results are the ones who have been willing to put in the work and tracking food as part of that. Now calories versus macronutrients. Again, it’s like people are super passionate and hardcore. The fact is, you still have to track calories to a degree you have to understand how much your body calories are energy. Everybody gets really uptight when they hear the word calories it is energy. So let’s use the word energy you need to know how much energy your body requires. And that is based on how much you are putting out there is your non exercise Activity Thermogenesis and that is your resting metabolic baseline. So that is me sitting here. Right now like my baseline is determined by a lot of different things you know, it’s determined by how much muscle mass that I have my age, my gender, etc. So, that is non exercise related that non exercise Activity Thermogenesis is how many calories I am burning, not related to movement.

47:51
Right just required what’s required,

47:52
just required to live in brief. As I’m sitting here right now, talking probably helps I like to talk I probably burn a little bit more. But then there’s activity, exercise thermogenesis and that is sorry, exercise activity. The bottom line is then there is the movement burning piece. Yeah. And that is where exercise comes in, and how much you are going to be able to burn off by exercise. So these two components result in your overall energy requirement. So when we talk about how many total calories or how much energy do you need in a day, that are those are things that we calculate, and we come up with a total caloric requirement, day to day, we do need in a sense a calorie number. So when I say I’m passionate about tracking macronutrients, it doesn’t mean that we ignore calories, calories are still a huge part of it. But calories are not all created equal. So the reason that I’m passionate about macros is that you could have a handful of pretzels and a sweet potato. And calories are the same. You could even argue that you know, they’re both generally considered a carb, they both have about the same amount of calories, but the nutrient density of those two things are totally different. So when we talk about tracking macros, what my clients learn is that there are the macronutrients the proteins, carbs, and the fats. But then there are the micronutrients that kind of are like that extra pep in your step if you will, and they really help determine which foods I should be prioritizing within those macros. Carbs are one of the best examples that I can think of. I am a huge fan of carbs, we were meant to consume carbs, but high nutrient density carbs, lower nutrient density ones on occasion, but your baseline high nutrient density, carbs are a lot of vegetables, oats, a lot of greens, fruits, and there are so many micronutrients that your body loves and needs in order to function optimally well, that come from those carbs. So I am a fan of tracking macros. And our bodies require certain gram amount based on the fats, carbs and proteins. But then I like to take it a step further and you know, really help my clients understand the micronutrient component of those foods and people realize under eating, yeah, because it’s not just about the calories. It’s about all of these little micronutrients that we were meant to be consuming, in order to help our bodies function optimally well, and prevent disease. So my clients end up eating more, most of them end up eating more because of that, I’m like, you’re not getting enough micronutrients. Yeah, you need all these nutrients in these carbs that you are that you are not getting. But it’s not sustainable. Right? It is not sustainable food logging is exhausting as a full time job. And when we look at that body composition spectrum, people who are living in that lean, extra lean category and living healthily there, some people are there genetically, and not healthy at all. But people who have made intentional changes and are living there. Most of them have logged food at some point, know what they need to consume on a regular basis, the actors and actresses, but actors, especially that you see in that extra lean category, I guarantee you, they’re tracking what they’re eating. So you know, it’s kind of one of those things where it’s, if it’s your job to be super cut, and extra lean, I guarantee you they’re tracking what they’re eating, because we all have to none of us can you speculate it in our heads all the time. But it does not need to be for life, but a period of time so you can establish a new baseline.

51:40
Yes. And I always I tell people, the same thing. I say, you know, two to three weeks of tracking your food, you will get such a better idea of where like those little handful of chips out of your kid’s lunch that they didn’t eat, right? Or the little things that you’re picking up on contribute to just this excess. You don’t need that again, you know, like you said, I always think I don’t want to throw weightwatchers under the bus. But I’m just gonna say I at one point, I was working with somebody who had been a longtime Weight Watchers, client clients, and she really struggled. Because to her, it was all about points that were assigned to foods. And so you know, she was like, Well, I remember standing in line with her at Macalester deli, this was like 10 years ago. And she said, Well, I can either have the it was some sort of like chicken cranberry salad for lunch. Yeah. Or I could just have a cup of soup, but I could have the brownie. Yeah, I’m thinking like, that is the problem with calorie thinking versus, you know, macro and micronutrient thinking, it’s not the same, your body needs those nutrients in order to thrive, right. So I think the way you just described that is perfect. And I just want to throw in sort of a personal personal anecdote for myself. I’ve been somebody who, you know, I’ll say, five, six years ago, I was very diligent about tracking until I really got into the groove of knowing what my body needed, and kind of was able to visually plate my food, you know, like, I knew how much my body needed. And so I stopped tracking. And toward the end of last year, I started to notice my energy levels, I was starting to notice some crashes, like late morning, and I was starting to notice like, I was hungry when I woke up in the morning, and just little things like that. And I thought, I know this. I mean, first of all comes back to self awareness, which we could talk about that forever. But, you know, for me, it was like something it was like my, my check engine light was flashing like, something’s off like you’re not you’re not fueling right. And so I reconfigured, and I was like, Okay, let’s see, like, and obviously, I’m in my late 30s, I’ve been having some hormonal changes. So I factored that into the equation. And just in the last five and a half weeks, I have started tracking again, I increase I increase my protein, I increase fat a little bit. And the results are incredible. I’ve no idea from a scale perspective what they are, nor do I care. Yeah. But for me, it’s a matter of, I feel so much better. Like I have so much I don’t I don’t feel like I have to like run to the refrigerator to eat in the morning. Because I’m so hungry. I’m not crashing late morning. And so I can tell that difference in my energy, right? And so I’m coming back to tracking I’m coming back to say, okay, like I’m reassessing and re evaluating and I’m saying, How can I make some changes? And yeah, some some women, I think a lot of women actually don’t realize that a lot of your lack of energy could be from not eating enough. And you touched on that, but I just want to say it again, most the time, if I had $1 for every time I had a client say oh my gosh, I feel like I cannot eat this much food. Like you’re telling me that I need to be eating I will never get results if I eat this many Yes. And it’s like no, your body requires that food and I actually my functional medicine doctor that I was just had an appointment with virtually last week. We were talking and I was telling her about how I had increased my protein and my fat and I was struggling a little bit with some digestive issues like I felt better, but I was like man, I feel really full which was a good thing because I wasn’t painful. But she she suggested these sort of digestive enzymes to help break down those proteins and stuff like that. And so I’m learning as I go, but I’m learning so much about just Yeah, self awareness, understanding that your energy could be related to your hydration level, it could be related to your nutrition and what kind of micronutrients you’re getting. Yeah, so I love all that. Okay, so

55:16
And there are seasons, there seasons, I think, if you don’t hear anything else, you know, hear that from both Jenny and I that are genuine me that there, there are seasons for all of us. And, you know, even two of us who have been doing this a long time who are very knowledgeable. If I want to cut more body fat and I for just strictly for aesthetic purposes, to be clear, then I have to track I have to because I have to in order to actually be able to to dial in. But what we want you to avoid for those of you listening is that yo yo lifestyle. And that is the problem is when it’s like you go all in you track you eliminate, you do all this stuff. And again, that body spectrum that I’ve talked about on my blog, you go from the overweight point, to the Lean point, and you skip too quickly over that healthy fit body fat percentage. So I also want to throw this in there for people listening. And this is why I’m so passionate about measuring body fat percentage is I tell my clients that based on the research, psychology has shown us that the average person needs 10 weeks to establish a new habit in their life as baseline 10 weeks food tracking for 10 weeks sounds like a really, really depressing thing long term. However, in order to dial in and keep yourself accountable, I tell my clients, I recommend all of them 10 weeks, they do my six week round, and then I tell them to stick with the program for one more month. That’s not my number, and then they can peace out whenever they want to. But for their sakes, 10 weeks is what it takes. So I say that only just to say I think one of the reasons that people get so exhausted is they go all in 200%. And then they skip right past that healthy body fat percentage. And they skip right to lean, and they’re exhausted. They’re spending hours in the gym, they’re render eating, they’re getting the results, but it’s not sustainable. So you need to learn to live in that healthy days. That’s right. Before you move on, and allow yourself to stop there for a little bit. You might not have cut abs yet. That is okay. Don’t even try to get cut abs until you have learned how to live in that healthy body fat percentage for at least at least 10 weeks. And then you’ll have the seasons like Jenny and I where you can you know, you can cut a little bit more you can not, you know and yeah, come December, I’m a little less cut than I normally am. But start, right, you can start fluctuating a little bit, but you’re living in a healthy body fat percentage and preventing disease. So stay there first, and then the seasons are you’re just a little more resilient.

57:54
Right? Well, it starts with awareness. And so, you know, for someone listening who says, That sounds intense, like that sounds like a lot, right? Like, just know that we started this disease

58:05
and having multiple medications.

58:07
Absolutely. You are. Absolutely. So everything is hard, you have to choose your heart. Right, right. And so but all of us start somewhere. And so, you know, we’ve said it 100 times, I just want to reiterate, you know, take the small steps, eliminate what’s not serving you decide what’s feasible for you for moving your body every day, and start to learn it’s listening to podcasts like this and others and certainly, you know, if you’re listening to this and you have special circumstances, whether it’s maybe a history of of obsessive eating or binge eating and things like that, like that’s very real to it’s very real too. So we of course want to encourage you to work with your, your doctor specifically on your needs. But I all I know is that we could talk forever. For so I feel like all we’ve done is really touch on nutrition. And so we came from we came across this I was on Ahna’s podcast. Well, we were like okay, clearly we need a part two. So we’re gonna need to do a part two level, because I would love to talk more specifically, just about we have a lot in common as it pertains to not just our passions in life and who we serve. But also, we both are adoptive mothers. Yeah. And we have stories there. And that’s something that I really want to showcase here on the podcast in the next few months. So we’ll be hanging on back then to talk about an entirely new subject. But before we wrap up today, can you just tell us where can people find you? What would you like to point them to today your website, etc.

59:31
Yeah, so my website is sort of my my home base, if you will, and it is Hammers N Hugs calm that’s Hammers letter N hugs.com. And on there, you’ll find all kinds of resources. I have a free Seven Day Fat Loss accelerator course that touches on all the nutritional strategies of my program. For anybody interested in you know, it’s like I say there is no one size fits all. You there are people I can think of my own clients that I would refer to Jenny’s person program and that I’ve referred to other programs but if you’re specifically interested in you know what we do in my program there is a a tab there you just scroll on the homepage and I would love for you to sign up for that and you can do that at your own pace but otherwise social media I’m I’m Hammers N Hugs or Ahna pretty much all over all over the world wide web.

1:00:24
When I first met you I thought that was your last name. I thought I thought you were like Ana hammers and hugs and I was like so my

1:00:31
Facebook I need to change it I’m a good business strategy or not, but it’s Ahna underscore Hammers N Hugs right personal profile because again, I had no social media before blogging, and people literally been cameras and hugs is my last name, which is hilarious. It’s Boomer. It’s not nice, but

1:00:47
that’s so funny. Awesome. Well, thank you, Ahna, for being on here today. I know people Yeah, thanks, Jenny. I will link everything up in the show notes for every one so make sure you guys check those out. But until next time, we’ll see you soon. Take care

1:01:09
Thanks for listening to this episode of the SYNC Your Life Podcast. Hope you found value from today’s episode. If you did, please share it out to your friends or leave a review. Remember your cycles are your superpower and by aligning with them, you can live your life with all the energy you need to be a mom, Wife, Daughter and friend to those you love. Until next time!