Done with Dieting Episode #57: Women’s Hormones & Weight Loss with Jade Teta

Hold onto your hats, everyone, and be prepared to be blown away by my guest today. Dr. Jane Teta has been a huge influence on my own journey and many of the concepts that I teach her on my podcast, I learned from him in today’s episode, he shares so many valuable takeaways that I am so excited to share this episode with you, because I think you are going to want to listen to it a few times, just to make sure that you’ve gotten all of the hidden gems.

So, let’s get it.

You are listening to the done with dieting podcast. The podcast for women in midlife, who are done with dieting, but still want to lose weight and feel good in your clothes. You know that diets don’t work long term. But you feel like there’s this secret that everyone else knows that you just haven’t figured it out yet.

I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman. And I’ve helped hundreds of women get off the diet roller coaster change their relationship with food, exercise, and their bodies. Through this podcast, my goal is to help you too.

Welcome. Let’s get started.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to episode number 59 of the done with dieting podcast. I am so incredibly excited to share today’s guest with you.

So, today on the show, I have Dr. Jade Teta. And he is an integrative physician and author and an expert in the realm of natural health, fitness, metabolism, and self-development. He has spent the last 25 years immersed in the study of strength and conditioning, emotional hormonal metabolism, and the psychology of change and success.

He runs both Jade Teta, LLC, and next level human that combine his medical and fitness knowledge with his expertise in self-development and mindset change. Now, you don’t know this, but Dr. Jade Teta has had a huge impact on my own journey. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you will hear through the interview, how much of an impact he’s had on you and the teachings that I’ve been sharing within my own practice.

See, Jade was my first coach and he’s the one who actually helped me out of my “eat less, exercise more, and hormone imbalance.” So, of course, I needed to introduce him to you. So, please welcome to the show, Jade Teta.

Elizabeth: All right, everyone welcome Jade Teta to the show. Welcome. I am so excited to have you here today.

Jade: Hey Elizabeth, thanks for having me. I’m honored to be here.

Elizabeth: So, we were talking before we started recording and I have to tell everyone, I probably am going to put it into the intro to that I am such a fan of Jade Teta because he has been instrumental in my journey. One of the stories that I tell all the time is how I had a come to Jesus meeting with myself.

And one day I was like, look, Elizabeth, you cannot keep over exercising and doing this restriction and binge thing. We need to figure out how to work with your body and enter Jade Teta. So, you have been so huge in the change that I made because I was one of those women who was using exercise as a form of calories in versus calories out.

I was only thinking about calories and not the quality of my food. And you know, all of those things that go into women’s bodies. Well, first of all, let me back up a little bit and introduce yourself, introduce folks to what it is that you do and how you help your clients.

Jade: Yeah. Well, I guess, you know, it’s interesting. I guess I’m known as the metabolism guy, which is interesting. But what’s even funnier than that is I’m kind of known as the female metabolism guy. And that is a funny story on how I got there. But I got there just because, you know, in the health and fitness world, I’ve been personal training since the age of 15 and you see mostly women not men.

And when I was a little bit younger and a little bit more young and dumb, so to speak, I thought that women were just like men. And then, everyone should train the same and exercise the same. And what I saw was that there were a lot of women struggling. Especially, women in the age range of 35 to 55 years old. Struggling with the kinds of things that I was promoting at the time.

And it really sent me on a journey to figure out what are the differences. And at that time, you know so I started doing this work. I would say, well, I graduated medical school back in 2004. And around that time, all the legislating bodies and the people who make recommendations around research, they were talking about the fact that we did not have good research for women.

Meaning that most of the research on women was extrapolated from young college aged men. And by that time, I had already been well-versed on this problem. And so, because I was ahead of the curve and learning everything I could learn about the way female hormones impact things like hunger, and energy, and cravings, and mood, et cetera.

I started to be able to get results for the female clients I was working with that other people could not. I mean, I think one of the things we have to understand is that when you look at male versus female, we know they’re not the same. It’s sort of a “no, duh.” But the issue is how are they not the same?

Well, when you look at estrogen and progesterone, not that men don’t have estrogen and progesterone, but they are very mostly dominated by testosterone women. These two hormones make a profound difference in the way women react to exercise, and react to diet, and react to lifestyle.

And so, when you start to understand things like estrogen and its ability to sensitize the body to insulin. And its ability to block cortisol and progesterone’s ability to calm us down. Especially, when I say us, I mean, men too but definitely women, calm us down and also guard against stress. You start seeing that the fluctuation of these hormones, not just month to month and a younger woman.

But also, year to year and decade to decade as a woman ages. These things are playing a very pivotable role and most people are not and have not been talking about that. Right up until today, and I guess, one of the things that you know, you and I probably see it. But then, I’m sure you’re happy about it and I am as well, is that that is starting to change. It is just now starting change.

I released a female only program about five years ago called metabolic renewal. And I had no idea that this particular program was going to be so huge. But the reason that it has done so well is because women are incredibly hungry for this information. And this information is incredibly empowering. It really is the difference between spinning your wheels and getting real results.

The fact of the matter is the health and fitness industry is not aware largely of the differences between men and women and the new science of metabolism. And by the way, this new science of metabolism is true for men as well. It’s just that women have a more sensitive and refined metabolism. And that makes sense because they are the gender of child bearing.

And so, they are a little bit more sensitive to stress. They are a little bit more resistant to insulin at certain times of their menstrual cycle. A certain life stages like menopause do change the female metabolism pretty dramatically. And these are all things that we need to be very clear of, clear on, and be aware of if we’re going to be able to get our female clients and patients of that results.

And so, that gives you an idea of what I do and what I specialize in. I am the female hormone guy. I really wish that more women were doing this work because I realized it’s kind of silly for a man who’s never had a menstrual cycle to be talking to women about their menstrual cycle and their hormonal stages.

But hopefully, that explains a little bit of why I’m in this field and doing this work because there just are not a lot of people doing it, male or female. And so, I got drag kicking and screaming, so to speak by my female clients telling me, Jade, you better figure this out. And then, when those female clients and personal training became female patients in the clinic, it became even more apparent that this was important.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it will. And it’s so interesting that you say that because I remember when I was introduced to you, I was really resistant in seeing a young white man. I was like, no, I don’t want to go that route. And so, I ended up joining one of your ex-wife’s programs and that just was not right for me. So, I was like, well, I guess, I have to trust that he’s the right one for me. And you were.

Jade: And you know, what’s wonderful now is that you know women like yourself and your professionals like yourself are really picking up the mantle. And I really am. I agree with you. I don’t think that it should be men necessarily speaking to women on this. Just so happens that there’s not a lot of women doing it yet.

So, I’m incredibly glad that women like you, professionals like you are picking up the mantle and really speaking to women. Because it really should be women talking to women. You know what it’s like to be a woman, you know what it’s like to feel the things that women may feel. In different life stages and different hormonal stages during the month. I simply don’t.

And so, what you’ll get from me those are you listening. You’ll get the science from me, and you’ll get an awful lot of clinical experience. But what I can’t speak to is the actual feelings and frustrations that a woman goes through. Because obviously, I am a man, and I can’t speak to women in that way.

And so, I am incredibly glad that so many people are now starting to learn of this information. And you know, flattered that they’re picking up some of the information from me as well.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So, let’s go back to some stuff that you said in that intro, which was amazing, but there was a lot of information there. So, specifically, let’s talk about estrogen. And you had said that estrogen, impacts our insulin levels. Yeah? Can you talk a little bit more about that and why that’s important?

Jade: Well, let’s talk like, yes. Let’s absolutely, talk about that. And let me just go back slightly to the question of hormones in general. Because I oftentimes say that there are two things required for sustained fat loss. And I am using the word sustained and fat loss purposely.

Those two things are a calorie deficit, which for those of you who are nutrition savvy, that just means you need to have an energy deficit, right? You need to be able to have the body go, okay, I need some energy. Therefore, I’ll take it from my fat stores. So, that is required.

Now, the other thing that is required is for lack of a better term. And I don’t like this term, but we really don’t have a term for it. I would call it metabolic hormonal balance. Now, when most of the time when women hear hormonal or hormones, they think estrogen and progesterone.

And those hormones do matter, but actually believe it or not, they’re probably the least important in this discussion. But I will tell you that they do make a difference and the reason they make a difference because they impact either directly or indirectly, the major hormones that are most important.

So, what are the major hormones that are most important? Well, insulin, leptin, ghrelin, CCK, DLP 1, GI eight. For those of you who are not scientists and don’t want a ‘biochem’ lesson, the best way to think about the hormones that I just mentioned, they are mostly hunger hormones.

They are controlling on some way shape or form the brain chemistry that controls hunger, energy, and cravings. They do things like balanced blood sugar levels. They determine whether we feel satisfied from our meals or not. Whether we’re more likely to store fat if we have energy excess, or whether we’re more likely to burn fat, if we have energy assists.

And estrogen and progesterone impact these things. And so, when we think about insulin, insulin has certainly been something that I’m sure most of you listening have heard something about.

And insulin is the hormone that really helps get the cells of the body fed. It’s primarily stimulated by glucose. And when we take in too many carbohydrates, or too much sugar, or foods that are very high in calories like combinations of starches and fat. We can get into what we call, insulin resistance.

And when you’re insulin resistant, the best way to think about this as you can be resistant to insulin in different tissues. If you become insulin resistant in the brain, while insulin is a hunger hormone. So, if you’re resistant to its action, you end up being more hungry. If you’re insulin resistant, it means that you’re less likely to burn fat in calorie deficits and more likely to burn muscle.

If you’re insulin resistant, you’re less likely to build muscle and more likely to store fat and calorie excess. And so, insulin is a very important hormone, but you cannot really separate it from calories. And so, the reason I’m going through this a little bit of this diatribe right now is just to get you to understand that calories and hormones are inseparable.

It’s wrong to think of them as separate. It’s wrong to think I’m going to take a hormonal approach and not a calorie approach. You are always doing both. So, that then gets us to this idea of estrogen and progesterone. And I have a very simple way that I like to teach people about estrogen and progesterone.

They are non-identical twins sisters is the way to think of these two hormones. Most people who hear this analogy, they will immediately understand estrogen and progesterone. Now, they’re not identical because while they do some things, they also have different functions. They’re twin sisters, because they are relying on each other. For estrogen to act appropriately, it needs progesterone and vice versa.

So, the estrogen sister, she is very athletic and entrepreneurial. She likes to take risks. She is very dopamine driven, very ambitious, very focused. She’s also really serotonin driven, meaning she has a lot of self-confidence and she’s nice and relaxed. She feels good in her skin and she wants to attack life. Right? So, she’s like one of these people, that’s just like, I’m just going to attack life and everything’s going to work out.

So, we all know that people like that can sometimes get in trouble. So, progesterone keeps tabs on her sister. Progesterone is the more worried one, the more laid back one. Whereas estrogen is out wanting to do marathons, and Met cons, and you know, orange theory, and all this kind of stuff.

Progesterone more wants to do like Tai Chi, and take a nap, and do some very yin restorative yoga. So, progesterone is really keeping estrogen in check. And estrogen is also pulling progesterone along. So, they are very functional together. But once they start to dominate, you get in trouble as a woman.

So, let’s go through briefly the menstrual cycle really quickly. And again, I apologize that this is a man discussing the menstrual cycles where you women. But hopefully, it will be educational for those who don’t necessarily know this.

During the first half of a woman’s menstrual cycle day, one is bleeding. Okay. So, through the first half, the week of Menzies, and then the week leading up to ovulation, we call this the follicular phase, estrogen dominates. It’s almost as if estrogen wakes up early and goes out to play and her sister is still sleeping. There’s very little progesterone there. It’s about the same amount of progesterone that men have in their body.

Now, after ovulation, the follicle that the egg was developing in that release the egg becomes what is known as the Corpus luteum. And that becomes the source of progesterone. So, after ovulation, estrogen and progesterone are now playing together. But progesterone typically dominates in the second half of the menstrual cycle.

So, what’s interesting about this as both estrogen and progesterone help protect a woman against stress. But estrogen alone helps women remain more insulin sensitive. So, what’s that mean for you all when you’re dieting and exercising? It means diets will be easier. Your hunger, energy and cravings will be more stable and more under control. And estrogen is helping do that.

Now, in the second half of the menstrual cycle, when progesterone starts to dominate. It starts to make a woman more insulin resistant. And there’s a very good reason for that. When you become insulin resistant at the level of the liver and the muscle, you have extra glucose floating around in your blood and extra fats.

If you went to a doctor, they’ll measure fasting blood sugars, or fasting blood glucose, and they’ll measure triglycerides. Both of these go up when progesterone is around slightly, and you become more insulin resistant. Now, you might think this is a bad thing, but it’s actually a really good thing because progesterone remember.

She’s future oriented. She’s the sister that’s saying, Hey, estrogen, we better be careful, we might have a baby coming. We need to save extra food in our pantry. That’s one of the reasons why progesterone starts to make the female metabolism a little bit more insulin resistant.

And so, what do you do as a woman with this information? What it tells you is that you may benefit. And I say, “may” because we are all very different. There’ll be different reactions that you may have as a woman. And you kind of have to go by the way you feel because believe it or not, there’s no real good way to test these hormones, despite what you’ve heard.

I’m talking about Dutch test; I’m talking about red blood labs. I’m talking about any way that you measure these hormones. They’re not great ways of determining what your hormonal balance really is. And that is important to understand, but you can read the biofeedback of the body and look and see how estrogen and progesterone are influencing the female metabolism.

So, you may want to, during the first half of the menstrual cycle, live your lifestyle one way. Exercise a little bit more, eat a little bit more, be a little bit more focused, and ambitious.

And then, the second half of the menstrual cycle, you may want to be able to calm that down a little bit. Focus a little bit more on relaxing, and walking, and extra naps, and extra time in bed. And you may find that this is a really excellent way to begin to work with how estrogen and progesterone impact the body.

Now, I’ll say one more analogy here, and I know I’m talking a lot, but I want to just make sure everyone understands. There’s another way to think of these two hormones is like Joan of arc.

So, Joan of arc, she was a female warrior, so to speak. She wore a suit of armor. She had a shield, and she had a sword. So, think of the suit of armor as estrogen. Think of the shield as progesterone and think as the sword as testosterone.

Now, during the first half of the menstrual cycle, she’s just wearing her suit of armor. So, she doesn’t have as much protection, but she’s not weighed down as much with a shield in her hands. So, she can kind of do more.

Now, in the second half of the menstrual cycle, right after ovulation, you start seeing the shield come up with the armor. Now, what’s interesting just as an aside by the way. At ovulation, testosterone jumps up to. And that’s partly to pair ovulation with libido. So that a woman will be craving sex and wanting sex. So, that makes sense, right?

The metabolism is really, really smart. So, it says, okay, turn around ovulation. Really kicked testosterone up to increase libido. So, a woman is more likely to engage in sex and enjoy sex so that she can essentially, hopefully appropriate cause that’s what the metabolism is doing anyway.

But as Menzies comes around, what happens is the armor and the shield get taken off. Now, the sword is still there. This is another reason why it’s sort of an unmasking effect, women can also see an increase in libido at Menzies as well. But now imagine how exposed you are as a woman, right at Menzies. When estrogen and progesterone fall off and your metabolism is looking for a lot more male than female at that time.

In fact, this is a mini menopause and a young woman who menstruates right at menstruation, that is very similar to menopause. If you get pre-menstrual syndrome, that’s very similar to peri-menopause, actually. So, every month a younger woman is essentially going through a mini menopause. And if you don’t have estrogen and you don’t have progesterone, then you are way more sensitive to stress and you are way more insulin resistant because of the lack of estrogen.

And this is why many women at Menzies will do good all month long, and then overeat enough just during that one week to not see any results in their physique. And so, what we now have is the following three things that I taught you and then I’ll shut up here.

One, there’s a particular time of the menstrual cycle. That is a perfect time to do more, eat more, train more. That’s at the beginning of the menstrual cycle when estrogen is dominant. There’s another perfect part of the menstrual cycle where it’s more easy to relax. Mother yourself, take it easy would be the follicular phase when progesterone is dominant. The second half of the menstrual cycle.

And then, right at Menzies is the part where women have to be most careful to overdo it, to not overeat. And this can be hard because this is the exact time when most of them do tend to want to overeat and do tend to get cravings. And so, I’ll stop right there, and we can go into any questions you have. But hopefully, this gives you a really good understanding of what is happening.

Now, keep in mind, none of this is going on with a man. Men are just testosterone throughout the month. Right? Now, they do get a little bit of an increased testosterone in the morning, and then it peaks off over the day. But in general, testosterone remained static and a man the entire month.

So, you could see the differences that these things are fluctuating. And each woman really, when you think about our menstrual cycle, I’ve done thousands of tests looking at women’s menstrual cycles. And you’ll see that each cycle is kind of like a fingerprint. It’s very different depending on the woman.

So, hopefully I didn’t confuse everyone to put everyone asleep, but that’s a good way and I think good cursory way of sort of understanding how these hormones are impacting things like insulin, exercise, nutrient intake, et cetera.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And so, you have a really good visual around this, where it’s like a quadrant system. So, we talk about calorie balance being you’re eating and your energy output. And historically, what we hear is if we want to lose weight, we eat less and we move more.

And what I hear you saying, well, what I know that you say is that we can’t always just eat less and move more. What we need to do is actually bounced between eating less, moving less which is the progesterone phase, the second half of the cycle. And eating more, moving more which is the first half of the cycle, which is when estrogen is more dominant, right?

Jade: Yeah. That’s really well said. And you know, these terms eat more, exercise more; eat less, exercise less. They’re kind of semantics in a way. But the reason I talk about them is because we’re all familiar with eating less, exercising more which would be the diet or way of looking at things. And we’re all familiar with the eat more, exercise less which is the couch potato way of looking at things.

Now, a lesson in metabolism it’s critical. It’s especially critical for women in my opinion is that the metabolism is nothing but a sensing and responding apparatus. It is sensing and responding to stress. And the one of the biggest hidden sources of stress for the metabolism is the gap between calorie intake and output. So, I have my hands up here and I’m showing with my hands on small little gap and calorie intake and output.

So, as this gap increases, the metabolism starts to feel stress. Now, you can measure stress hormones would you want it to, but you’ll feel this in the way that biofeedback signals are talking to you. Things like sleep, hunger, mood, energy, and cravings, libido, all these things will go out of check. They will become out of control.

You won’t be able to control your hunger. You’ll feel driven by cravings, et cetera. And this is because this calorie gap is getting too big. Now, the metabolism does well with two types of stress. Short, extreme, very short, extreme things, right? So, just be like you know, fasting for a day or doing a very short super-intense workout. The body does well with that. It creates an adaptation signal.

The other thing the metabolism does well on is very gentle prolonged things. Like lots of relaxing, walking leisurely or leisurely walking. You know, long restorative yoga class is not power yoga. This would be yen yoga, Tai Chi, thermal challenges like hanging out in a hot bath or sauna therapies and things like that. Both of those kinds of stress do well.

But as soon as you start to increase that calorie gap for too long. What I would call, long duration or moderate intensity exercise or dieting. Right? This would be like running on a treadmill. This would be like creating a 30% calorie deficit for very long periods of time.

Then, the metabolism says that’s too much stress for me. I just measured this calorie gap. And now, I’m going to do everything I can to shut that calorie gap back down to take that stress away. And what it does is make you more hungry, make you more craving, oriented towards highly palatable foods. It slows metabolic rate. It causes changes in thyroid hormone and other hormones.

And you end up going from an eat less, exercise more approach to an eat more, exercise less approach. This is what is happening with most men and women ping pong in back and forth between these two. You may have heard the term yo-yo dieting. Well, this is part of yo-yo dieting.

Now, there are other ways to escape that. To narrow the calorie deficit down a little bit, so the metabolism never gets stressed out. You can eat less and exercise less, or you can eat more and exercise more. Now, eating less and exercising less. It’s very much like our hunter gatherer ancestors; you did not see them running marathons. You didn’t see them doing sprints every single day. You didn’t see them doing CrossFit.

They go for very long walks, evolutionary anthropologists and those study in current day, hunter gatherers. The women average about 12 miles daily. The men average about 15 miles a day. Okay. So, they’re moving an awful lot. Actually, I’m sorry, it’s 12,000 steps, not miles. So, 12,000 steps for women and about 15 to 20,000 steps for men. Okay.

So, this isn’t a huge amount of movement by the way. And then, it’s very, very little on the food aspect of things. Because if we’re all living in a hunter gatherer wilderness setting, if we all decide to go do that, you’re going to be hard pressed to find 2000 calories in a day. Lean animal proteins and vegetables don’t have a whole lot of calories.

Now, in the modern era, we can get 4,000 calories in one sitting if we go to the cheesecake factory. So, this is the big difference. So, eat less, exercise less is a lot like hunter gatherers. If you want another visual for eat less, exercise less, think of the elderly Parisian woman on the streets of Paris who wakes up every day, goes up and down her four flights of steps walks. To get her groceries walks, to get her baguettes does is moving a lot.

But eats basically what she wants, but she’s a taster not an eater. So, rule number one with eat less exercise less has to be a taster, not an eater. And rule two with eat less, exercise less is a mover, not a sitter. Making a distinction between moving and exercising. So, be a mover, not a sitter and be a mover not necessarily an exercise. Right?

So, you’re moving a lot, you’re eating very little. And by the way, when you’re not exercising a ton, guess what happens? Your hunger and your cravings because you’re not stressed out, tend to go away. And this is why a lot of people will report when they cut back on exercise, and they just go on a vacation, or they walk a lot that they actually end up losing weight.

And they’re shocked by that because they’ve been thinking about this all wrong. You cannot live and eat less exercise more indefinitely. Now, eat more, exercise more is the athlete. This is the female athlete. If you want to know what female athletes do to look so good, they don’t eat less and exercise more. No athlete does that. No athlete eats less and exercises more.

And think about that for a minute, isn’t that what all of us want to look like? We want to look like an athlete. Well, they don’t do eat less exercise more. They eat more and they exercise more. Your average female athlete is definitely eating more and exercising more than your average female dieter.

And so, now we have four different what I call metabolic toggles that we can choose from. Eat less, exercise less; eat more, exercise more; eat less, exercise more, the dieter; and eat more, exercise less, the couch potato. Now, none of these things are wrong, but I’ve just educated you hopefully on the fact that when you eat less and exercise more and eat more and exercise less, you create a calorie deficit, a calorie gap that is pretty big and can stress out the metabolism.

And isn’t it funny that the couch potato and the dieter both have problems with hunger, energy, and cravings. They both are hungry all the time. They both are having cravings all the time and they both have inconsistent unpredictable energy. So, moving from those two toggles to eat less, exercise less, or eat more, exercise more for the majority of the time.

Then, every once in a while, jumping back into eat less, exercise more, and now it works for you. But you don’t want to do it for longer than 7 to 14 days. And then, you go back to either eat less, exercise less or eat more, exercise more. And this works with estrogen and progesterone.

In fact, as a woman, you may even want to tailor this based on your menstrual cycle. Eat more, exercise more during the first part of the cycle. I will eat less exercise less during the second part of the menstrual cycle. Now, that’s not something that you have to do, but cycling the diet in this way will work well for women around their menstrual cycle. And it actually works fantastic for men as well.

So, asking me, well, Jade, I’m on hormone replacement therapy. What about me, I’m on birth control? What about me, I had a hysterectomy? I don’t know when I bleed. What about me? Well, it does not matter necessarily that you’re not knowing when you’re menstruating but cycling the diet this way is a far better approach. Some research hints at that. We need a lot more research, but my clinical experience tells me this works better for most women.

So, again, I’ll stop there and see if you have any questions about that, but that is the way to be thinking about these different metabolic toggles. And hopefully, it opens up a new thought process for most of you listening to this.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Well, and I love how you just explained that. And I want to go back to the fact that, you know, so many of us, I think it’s just the American way or maybe it’s just the way that the brain thinks it’s like, well, if some is good, then more is better.

So, when we’re talking about the deficit between eating and energy, then we immediately think, well, if I have a deficit of 250 calories well then of course, a deficit of 500, 750, 1000 is going to be better. And I love that you pointed out there that creates stress in the body because it’s something that I don’t think that many of us feel.

But going back to the estrogen and progesterone, that if you are paying attention to how your body feels, and you’re feeling low, and not like you want to hit it hard at the gym. So many of us see that as a moral failing and feel like we should be able to push through it. Right?

Jade: Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things that is I just think is amazing about women. I can go back to my mom, who’s my best friend and my sister who just does everything in the family. One of the things I’ve realized about women in my career from working with women is they are always doing everything for everybody. It seems like they are just nurturing, nurturing, nurturing everyone else. And they’re amazing at it. And of course, it’s a beautiful thing.

However, women who are struggling with diet and exercise have to realize that by putting all their energy out for other people and not taking care of themselves. We know what this. This is the cliche saying, it’s the airplane oxygen mask, right? You have to put your mask on first before you help others. Otherwise, you’re going to pass out.

And I think a lot of women are not realizing that more is not better, better is better, smarter, better. And especially, as we all aged men included, but especially women because they go through some of these hormonal changes a little bit ahead of men and perimenopause, menopause, male it will be andropause.

You start to see very quickly that if progesterone isn’t around to mother estrogen, then the woman has to become the mother of estrogen in a sense. And she really has got to start taking better care of herself. And this doesn’t mean, cause I understand it’s like if your identity is wrapped up around nurturing other people, which for many, many women it is, it’s not to say don’t do that anymore.

It’s just to say, take a lot some of that energy and start to nurture yourself as well. And especially, if you have younger female children or that are watching you, isn’t that an amazing way to educate them. And if you have younger boys, isn’t that an amazing way to help them learn? And my mother taught me this that we need to be in support of women because they’re doing so much of the day to day that keeps us all sane, and healthy, and feeling loved, and feeling like we matter.

But they’re sacrificing a lot of their own you know, mental capacity. And that needs to begin to change. And hopefully, this begins to explain, why? What a lot of women, I think don’t understand is that one of the things I often say, and it gets an eyebrow raised when I’m around women is that an extra hour in bed is going to serve you better than an extra hour in the treadmill. Most of the time for women who are overdoing.

Now, let’s be real. There are certainly people who are couch potatoes. Who need to move more. And there are certainly women who are more athletically driven and chronic fighters who need to move less. And we can get into that briefly. And I will write here just briefly, if you are someone who is a couch potato, and you just like, Jade, you know, I’m not moving at all. You don’t need to go.

First of all, be gentle on yourself. This is a really tough world we live in. There’s a reason why you feel drained and want to eat chips and ice cream on the couch every night is because you’re pouring energy into everything else. So, you take a little bit of that energy back for yourself. You simply move away from junk food and towards salads, salads, salads, salads.

A salad means anything that is mostly vegetables and lean proteins. Make a salad anywhere. And you start walking. You don’t need to do resistance training. You don’t need a ton of exercise. You just start with salads and lots of walking. I guess that is eat less exercise less, right? That’s the place to start.

And then, as you get healthier, and more fit, and you start seeing sleep hunger, and mood, and energy, and cravings, all starting to regulate. Then, you can add more if you want. Now, if you’re on the opposite side of the extreme and you’re doing eat less exercise more and you’re not seeing the results for it.

Then for you, it’s simply about bumping up your calorie intake a little bit more and dropping down your exercise perhaps a little bit more to get that calorie deficit. A little bit less stringent, a little bit more narrow. And believe it or not, despite going from a 50% calorie deficit to a 30% to 20% calorie deficit, you will actually start seeing better results in that case.

So, it’s really about the Goldilocks effect, not too much, not too little, but just right. This is how hormones work. This is how life works. And this is what I think most women want to be focusing on if they’re wondering how to balance this equation out.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And I remember when at the point that I got connected with you, I had started doing your program. And I remember I got injured and I was like, okay, now is going to be the time to know if I can trust myself. If I can trust that my hunger signals are actually going to go down because I had a voracious appetite before that. Like I was eating everything just because I was running for an hour a day. And then, going back to the gym for another 45 minutes and lifting freaking heavy.

And so, under your program where I was just doing 20 minute metcon workouts and then walking. Even then, I couldn’t walk with an injured ankle and my appetite just went down and I was like, oh my gosh, this actually works.

Jade: Yeah. You know, I have a study that will drive this home that I always like to tell people and it speaks to just what Elizabeth is pointing out to all of us. It was a study done on women in the age range about 45 to 55. So, these are perimenopausal menopausal women.

And they basically told these group of women, Hey, we don’t want you to change your diet at all. Keep eating exactly how you’re eating. All we’re going to do, wouldn’t do an exercise intervention. And the exercise intervention was running on a treadmill, jogging on a treadmill. And they had several groups.

Group one did 30 minutes of jogging, five days per week. Group two did 45, 45 minutes of jogging, five days per week. And group three did 60 minutes of jogging five days per week. And that’s a lot of activity, even if you’re in the lower group, 30 minutes of jogging five days per week. I think a lot of us would agree. That’s a lot, right?

And most of us would probably think, well, if that’s the case, these women definitely got results, right? They must have lost weight. Well, some did about 25% of them lost weight, but not as much as would have been predicted. But then, what was really interesting was the other 75%. 50% of those women in that study lost no weight at all. And another 25% actually ended up gaining weight.

So, this is striking 75% of these women who were told to jog on a treadmill five days per week, either 30, 45 or 60 minutes a day for five days per week, did not lose weight. And 25% of them actually ended up getting fatter.

So then, the researchers went back and looked and wanted to understand, why? Well, even though they told these women don’t change your diet, guess what happened? They couldn’t help it because that amount of activity opened up that calorie gap stressed out the metabolism.

The metabolism said, I need to close that calorie gap back down, so it constraint metabolic rate. And it also increased food seeking behavior and eating. So much so that some of those women would have been better off not doing that exercise at all. Think about that, they got fatter as a result of doing more cardiovascular exercise.

And this is because for a lot of women, their overeating habit is directly related to their over-exercising habit. And I have seen this in my clinical career over and over again. I’ve been talking about it long before that study even came out. Because I can guarantee all of you listening to this have either seen this in a girlfriend, seen it in a sibling, or seen it in yourself. And it is directly related to all the things Elizabeth, and I just taught you about.

And so, the fix is not more is better, better is better, smarter is better. Smarter means closing down that calorie gap, making walking your priority and not power walking either. I mean, leisurely leasurely walking, slow walking. You do not want to get your heart rate up. That stresses out your metabolism. Walking sensitizes the body to insulin, lowers cortisol. And this has dramatic impact on hunger, energy, and cravings.

And so, this is where you want to begin thinking. And by the way, those of you listening to this podcast are new to me. I’ll give you a little cheat sheet here. I know Elizabeth knows this and people laugh at me for it. But there’s a, an acronym that I use called us, “SHMEC” sleep, hunger, mood, energy, and cravings. S H M E C, sleep, hunger, mood, energy, and cravings. If your SHMEC is in check, that means that your metabolism and your hormones are balanced and happy.

And you’re going to be far more likely to get in a calorie deficit and stay in a calorie deficit. If your SHMEC is out of check, this is a good indication that you are doing something that is stressing out the physiology. Either not getting enough sleep, exercising too much or too little, eating too much or too little, and yes, emotional stress, and those kinds of things.

The problem though is, is that most people think that stress is emotional. Most of the stress that we are under, we don’t feel at all in our body. We can be incredibly happy and be incredibly stressed out. And then, for those of you who have had children, you know what this is like, right? You could be incredibly happy and joyous, even maybe it’s the culmination of a lifelong dream of having children.

Yet, you just were robbed your nutrients for nine months by a baby. Gladly so, right? You know, and obviously you’re gladly doing that. But that is the pleading you’re sleep deprived. And you’ve just entered a realm, a life that while you thought you may have understood what it would entail and what it would be like, there’s no way to quite understand that.

I had a fraction of a glimpse of what this might be like when I got my little puppy. Right? And it was agonizing. I could not believe how hard it was. Right? And then, my mother and my sister are like, yeah, now multiply that times a million. And you know what it’s like to have a baby.

And they might be smiling constantly about, I was happy that I had a puppy. I was also stressed out, exhausted, sleep deprive, hungry, and getting fatter as a result. And so, stress is not just emotional. And we need to understand that if we’re going to get control of this.

Elizabeth: Okay. So yeah, let’s talk a little bit more about stress. Because many of the women who are listening today are probably in menopause. So, they haven’t had a cycle for at least a year. And so many of my clients when I talk to them, I ask them, are you stressed? And they’re like, I don’t feel stressed.

And so, I know that your advice is to do leisurely activities, which is the things that you’ve been talking about tai Chi, as well as walking, and hot cold baths you advocate, and all sorts of other techniques. What are some of the things that women can use outside of that to lower their stress?

Jade: Yeah. So, first of all, you will feel stress if you remember SHMEC. SHMEC is the way that you feel stress, it’s the best way. If your SHMEC is out of check, you are under stress. So, that’s the first thing that I’ll say.

Now, the other thing is, is that the best way to control stress is indeed the things that you’re thinking but not to the degree that you’re thinking, right? So, diet and exercise are perfect to control stress. You know, nutrients like zinc and selenium and these things in high quality nutritious foods help the body be less reactive to cortisol, help the thyroid gland do its job.

So, nutrition is critical. But too much nutrition and too little nutrition are both a problem. So, you need to get that right. Exercise is critical, but too much or too low is a problem. So, you want to really be getting SHMEC in check. That’s how you know when you do that by using the Goldilocks rule. Not too much, not too little, but just right.

And there is some trial and error there which we can talk about how to manage that here in just a minute. But there are other ways to deal with stress. Now, when you think about stress, the way you want to think about it is you want to think about why would the body be under stress in the first place?

Well, the metabolism’s job is to make you survive, primarily to reproduce. This is both men and in women, right? So, wants you to survive. So, the metabolism is always trying to get you back into balance. And so, again, balance is another word for the Goldilocks zone. So, everything you can do to balance things out.

Now, think about this, you’re go, go, go. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, I got my career, I got my kids, I got my exercise, I got to do this, and all of these things that you’re throwing on your plate. And then, new year’s comes around and you’re like, oh, I need to add this, this, this, this, and this and this, this. This is a stress. Any kind of self-editing, any long to-do lists, be beating yourself up. Any time you have a big list of things to do, you are adding stress on the pile.

So, what I would say to this is you need to balance, work, and output with rest and recovery. And so, that means sleeping. Right? That means prioritizing sleep. Not getting up at 5:00 AM, so you can do a workout, but instead sleeping longer, so you can reduce stress. Taking naps, if you can’t sleep, right?

Sleep is one of those things I can hear a lot of you now saying, but Jade, I’m telling you ever since perimenopause and menopause, I can’t sleep the way I used to sleep. Then, you take naps. If naps don’t work, you do meditation. And then, on top of that, you do everything else that I would say causes in a relaxing our experience, woosah, right? Like, relax.

That’s going to be things like meditation, massage. You could do massage at a spa, you could do foam rolling, you could do any of those kinds of things. This will be creative pursuits. These things really do a great job painting, playing music, even they’ve even shown doodling and coloring with crayons, and adults can lower stress hormones, pottery, any of that kind of stuff creative pursuits.

Listening to music, spending time in nature, it’s really interesting. Just being in green settings as humans, lowers stress hormones, spa music at the end of the day does this. Hot and cold therapies, a hot bath, can do the sauna therapies can do this.

One of the things that is taboo, especially for a man talking to women is sex and orgasm. These are huge for men and women both to relax. And we all know that’s like an orgasm, right? It is an all type experience. It’s very similar to exerting yourself going up a mountain, and you get to the top and you look over this beautiful landscape, and you just sit there and feel this rush of relaxation come over you.

More activities like that is what you want to be thinking about. This happens with connection to family members as long as they’re not stressing you out. It can work with pets as long as they’re not peeing all over the floor. Anything that you can do to give yourself that awe experience. Awe and ah, right? It’s these types of experiences and we have lots of these things that we can do. Facials, manicures, and pedicures, like all of this kind of stuff. So, it really does become about treating yourself to relaxation more, if that helps.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And you know, I think that again, one of the things that I hear women say all the time is that they don’t feel under stress. And yet, stressing out about the number on the scale isn’t helping their pursuit of losing weight, right? Like, when we’re sitting there looking at the scale going, why aren’t you lower and getting stressed out about it? It’s counterproductive.

It’s very counterproductive. And it actually, it’s on my Instagram feed today, I just highlighted a study that basically showed that really when you think about reducing stress, the best way to think about it is pick a few things to really focus on. And only a few things, one to three things, not a whole list of things to do. And not a bunch of things that you shouldn’t be doing that you can beat yourself up about.

And so, you won’t really be thinking about, let me just do the things one, or two, or three things we call these Keystone habits or trickle down habits that I can do that will make a big difference. In the study that I highlighted today, it’s just the idea of this one study showing that if you just tell people to eat more fiber and protein, they accidentally create a calorie deficit. Because they’re so full, because fiber and protein are really great at controlling hunger.

And this is great for vegans and vegetarians because they can take a more fiber based approach. And for a people who are meat eaters because they can take a more protein based approach. Ideally, you would do both. But part of the idea of taking the stress off is not doing things like stressing over the scale and all that kind of stuff. But rather focusing on a few things that you can do in your life that are easy.

Like, I oftentimes talk about eating soup, salad, scrambles, shakes, and stir fries. Right? I talk about these S’s, soups, salads, scrambles shakes, and stir fries. When you do that, it’s our fiber and protein based foods. Especially, if you try to keep the fat and carbs a little bit lower, nothing wrong with fat and carbs by the way, it’s just that those are what adds a lot of the calories. But like that’s an easy thing for people to do, right?

Oh, soup salad, scrambles, shakes, and stir fries. I can do that. That’s one thing to focus on. Oh, 10,000 to 20,000 steps per day, cool. I do those two things. And then, I don’t worry too much about much else. And I will say something about the scale, the best way for men and women too, because you do want to be paying attention to what is happening with your body. Not only do you need your SHMEC and check, which tells you about hormonal balance. But you do want losing fat, which tells you whether you’ve achieved calorie deficit.

In fact, losing weight is the only way to know if you’ve achieved the calorie deficit. You cannot predict calories to that degree from individual to individual based on basal metabolic rate and all these things. The only way to truly know, because the metabolism is so adaptive and reactive, the only way to truly know is if losing weight.

And the best way to assess that in my mind to make sure it’s fat is a waist measurement. If you just take based measurement, usually in the research, this is under the smallest portion above the hip bone but below the rib cage. So, the anatomical waste. This area is not a very heavily muscled area.

And if you want to stress about something and I don’t think you should, but if you want to, if you’re going to insist that you measure something, this is probably the best way to do it. And it should be something just to guide you. Remember, weight loss, not linear, predictable at all. It is up and down. Two steps forward, two steps back, it really depends. You can gain and lose, you know, the three pounds of water in a day based on the amount of soda, the amount of carbs you eat, and things like that. So, you need to be thinking about this over time.

What I would say though, here is very critical. This is where it becomes the motherly role, in mothering yourself. If that is stressing you out and making you beat yourself up, then don’t measure at all, right? Then, just basically use some other thing. You know, I have found that working with women, they tend to have different orientations.

Some like the scale, some like the circumference. Many of them just like their skinny jeans and they buy on a pair of jeans. Some of them that we have now things that allow us to do selfies that are really, really useful especially when you’re working with a coach. Because we all know what it’s like waking up one day and feeling fat. And actually, not actually being fat, our brain can play tricks on us. Then, we look backwards, we’ll go, oh, I actually am making progress.

And so, I would be thinking deeply about these things. And also, just getting your mind wrapped around the idea that this is going to take time. One things I’ll say about change, and I’ll use harsh language here, I’m doing it for a reason, but you literally have to murder your old self.

And I use the term murder because what I’m going to jump out at you. I literally mean your old identity has no place in the new lean fit identity that you’re trying to achieve. And what a lot of people do is they go, well, I’m just going to add on things to my old identity. It’s like, no, you have got to kill that old identity and create a new one from Roundup.

I talk about this idea of faking it until you make it versus be it until you see it. Faking is not what you want to do. Faking means that when Elizabeth is watching you or I’m watching you, you’re doing it. But as soon as you go home alone, you’re not doing it anymore.

Being at it and seeing at it means you’re doing it whether we’re watching you or not. You are being a new human. You have killed and murdered your old identity and now you are becoming a new identity. And in order to do that, you want to be thinking about all the ways, habitual ways of thinking and behaving. And if you have these habitual stress patterns about looking at the scale, and stressing about exercise, and this and that, then you need to take a step back and go, what can I do?

And most people certainly can eat 90% of their food in the form of soup salad, scrambles, shakes, and stir fries, and walk 12,000 steps per day. You don’t need to be a gym rat to get these things done. And I would say if a lot of women entering perimenopause and menopause, that idea that they should be doing more and eating less is part of the problem. It’s the exact time where they should be being smarter rather than trying to work harder.

Elizabeth: Well, and this goes back to your comment earlier about the oxygen mask analogy, which by the way, I hate that analogy. Only because what it says is we need to put our oxygen mask on first, so that we can help others. And I believe that women need to take care of themselves because they’re freaking human beings and they deserve to be taken care of. Right?

Instead of I exist to serve other people. And that ties into what exactly you just said because so many women our age believe that they need to serve those people in their lives, and they’ve done it to their own detriment. They’ve done it so that they no longer have boundaries. They no longer have a sense of self. They don’t know what they like. They don’t know who they are as a person. And what you’re saying is so 100% on point that we need to create boundaries if we actually want to exist in this smaller body. Right?

Jade: Yeah. One thing I’ll say about the oxygen mask thing, think about what it teaches your children, your significant other, your coach. And by the way, whether you’re a coach or not, whether you do this work or not, you’re always coaching and inspiring some people. What happens is the real power of the oxygen mask is when people watch you put yours on and protect yourself. That teaches this to do the same.

And if you’re always coming to their aid, they never learned that. So, 100% sometimes it’s appropriate. In fact, sometimes it’s the best gift you can give another human is to put your oxygen mask on, sit still, look over at them, and go. All right, come on, put it on, I’m not always going to be there for you.

So, this is it in a very important point you bring up because this is what I mean by killing the old habits. You got to look at how you’re enabling your old patterns and how you’re enabling other people. Because let’s face it women more than anyone else have an awful lot of people around them, that subtly undermine their efforts. Not on purpose, not because they’re mean, not because of anything else. But the question goes back to what you said.

If someone is undermining your efforts, ultimately in the end, whose fault is that? It’s yours. That’s a very harsh sort of way of putting it, but you’re the only person who’s going to be able to take control of those things, and you can do it with love. And if you, do it with love, without anger, and bitterness, because let’s face it. The more you give to other people and the more selfless you are, the body and protective mechanism.

So, bitterness is a protective emotion that will build up over time. And so, what you want to be thinking about is you want to think about not doing this with bitterness, but thinking it love. And what that does is inspire other people to learn to be the same thing. And wouldn’t that be an amazing world, if we all learned to take really good care of ourselves, so that when we really needed help, then it wasn’t draining, but it was an honor to help. And that’s the way that I think you want to be looking at this for all of us, men, and women.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So, it’s really interesting that you’re bringing this up because I did want to talk about your next level human aspect. Well, at this point, we’ve been talking about old Jade Teta, right? From years ago, and all of this stuff that you’ve perfected and really taught for years. But you’ve recently transitioned into another aspect, which is more general life. Is it coaching or what is it?

Jade: Yeah, for lack of a better term, I guess you could call it life coaching. It’s really the idea that we humans have four jobs that we almost do. We have to earn a living. You know, so managing, earning, saving finances. We have to attain and maintain health and fitness. We have to manage personal relationships. And then, perhaps most importantly, I think it’s most important. We must attend to our own personal development.

In my mind, we are here for three reasons and three reasons only on this planet and that is to learn, and to teach, and to love. And so, if that is something that resonates with you, then learn to teach and to love means the foremost I have to work on my personal development. Learn the lessons, and break the patterns, the old family traumas, and all the ways of habitual ways of being. So that once I get those lessons, I can begin to teach them to other people.

And then, I can begin to love. And by love, I mean, share my unique purpose with the world. Every one of you listening, Elizabeth, there’s never been anyone like you on the planet. There never will be again, same for me, same for everyone listening. That’s a pretty amazing thing to me because what essentially says is that each of us humans has a unique gift.

We have unique pains, unique passions, unique superpowers, unique people that have heard us and helped us, right? A unique personality and perspective on life. And all of those things together make up a very unique spiritual fingerprint that allows us to bring a unique experience to the world.

And for me, I have this thing with the next level human. I say, if I’m not here to help, then why am I here? What am I actually really doing here? And it goes back to that other thing we talked about because if you’re here to help, you must first help yourself. You must get really good at these four jobs. And talk about stress shield. When you look at the research and this is partly what I want to begin studying in the second half of my life.

I want to look at how purpose this humble recognition that I have a unique gift that I can bring to bear on the world. And that I choose to do it is the greatest stress shield of them all. Do you want to talk about how to handle stress, then have a strong, why? Understand your purpose, understand why you’re on the planet. And this really came out of my own pain, my own traumas when I was a kid, my own pain around romantic relationships.

We all have these things. There’s not a human on earth that doesn’t have deep wounds. It’s like, I almost feel like as humans as we live, there are just certain things we have to deal with. We got to deal with betrayal, we got to deal with illness, we got to deal with death, we got to deal with loss, right? We got to deal with these things.

And then I go, well, what’s the point of this? Well, the pain is to teach us, to point us to our purpose. There is no better a way to show up in the world than to use your pain and not pass it on. But rather to teach the lessons that you learned from it. A lot of people they’re in pain and we all know people like this, and no judgment cause I was for a long time, but we have pain, and we pass it on to others.

The idea of the next level of human is that I will take my pain, learn the lessons, and never pass it on to others. You know, one of my favorite quotes is a quote by Ben Offer. And he said, I don’t know if you guys know who that is but he was a clergy at around the time of the Nazis. And he was one of the few Christians in Germany who stood up to Hitler and it was an ended up being before.

One of the things he said was “the purpose of evil is not to hurt you; the purpose of evil is to make you do more evil.” And so, when we pass on traumas and our pain, that’s what we’re doing, we’re perpetuating that.

So, to me, the idea of the next level of human is to use your pain to heal others. If you want to know a shortcut to purpose, simply find the same pain that you struggled through in other and seek to heal it in them. And you will find that in this roundabout weird way, you actually end up healing yourself as a result.

But first things first, you’ve got to get control of these four jobs. You have to begin to take care of yourself first. You can’t let other people drain your batteries. And this may sound like we just dovetailed into the level of “woo.” But I’ll tell you what? This has everything to do with health and fitness.

If you cannot attach your health and fitness pursuits to something other than vanity and a six pack abs or a small waste. You’re not going to be able to sustain it. It needs to matter for you. It needs to speak to the best of you. It needs to be something where you go, I pursue health and fitness because it helps me be better than I could be otherwise. And that’s a really powerful place to come from.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I love exactly what you said. It reminds me of my coach and mentor says something very similar in that when we are all here, we were created, we did not create ourselves. So, so many of us beat ourselves up for why did I do that? Or why am I like this? Or have so much judgment on these different aspects of our personality.

And When we really think about it, we did not create ourselves. We were created, God and the universe created us. And it’s our job to revel in the beauty to discover what it is that it is us and to really just, yeah, just explore that and share it with the world.

Jade: Yeah. One thing I’ll say about that I’m an agnostic person, so I don’t necessarily come at this from any religious perspective. But let’s just assume for a minute, play a game, and assume, there are spirit guides out there, or there is a God, or let’s just assume that that’s going on. How would a God or spirit guides or some other rural be communicating with us as humans for us to get the lessons?

Well, probably recurrent patterns, right? The same things happening over and over and over again with different people. And so, for me, one of the things about next level human and getting to purpose is look for those patterns. You show up in the same way with every romantic partnership you’ve ever had, it’s not them, it’s you, right?

If you have the same problem with siblings. All siblings are the people in your life, or you run into the same issues with your coworkers and everything else. The problem is with you. Now, no judgment there, right? The point is, okay, well, if the problem’s me, then what do I need to do differently? How do I need to learn?

And the first step is awareness, perception seeing the world for the truth of things. And then going, how am I going to break these patterns? I had to go through this and let’s face it. It’s not a judgment. Most of us our whole lives we will be struggling in the adolescent mindset. The point and I call that the culture level mindset.

Look at me, you know, tell me I’m special. I want this too by the way, it’s not a judgment. I’m just like all of you, it’s just natural to being human. But to move from culture level to next level is just going, you know what? Thanks, I’m a human and I’ve had rough times and I’ve made mistakes. But I also have a choice. I can learn the lessons and I can show up differently.

And one rule here is I have a rule with this because I went through some difficult times in my life. And one rule as I have started to go, you know what? I’m a different human. One rule I have for myself is never, ever, ever engage with someone who sees you a way that you are not or no longer wish to be. And I’m adamant about that.

So, if you want to be different, you have to take responsibility for being different because no one else can do it for you. Do not expect people to notice you, to care, to take on this job at all. It’s completely up to you. And you will inspire others, it’s really interesting how this works. In the beginning, everyone will be a little bit upset with you. And the reason, why? There’ll be upset with you is because they’re used to you. Humans don’t like change. So, you changing makes them feel unstable.

However, if you do it with love, create really firm boundaries, most of those people will come back around and they will eventually be inspired by you. Now, that’s not the goal necessarily, but it is the best way to teach. I think that goes to your whole issue with the airplane oxygen mask. It’s like, you cannot make it your job because think about it, it’s some people you put your mask on, and you try to help them, and they just keep pulling it back off again. Sometimes you just have to be like, you know what? It’s on you now. Right? It’s on you.

And then, there’s some people who will reach over and try to pull yours off. That’s where you got to be like, Nope. Now, I’m going to sit somewhere else that will not allow that. And it’s hard. These are very difficult questions. Some of us go to therapy for questions like these, we spend an awful lot of time dealing with this, but this really is where I think the rubber meets the road so to speak in personal development. You must combine personal development with health and fitness.

If you don’t, you’re never going to be able to make the changes you want. It doesn’t matter, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re religious, or philosophical, or whatever it is. You can have an honor code related to your religion; you still need to create one for yourself. Your religion, your values aren’t necessarily going to create boundaries for you around this stuff.

So, you’re still going to have to show up and create strong boundaries. And this has everything to do with stress management. In fact, it’s the most important aspect of it.

Elizabeth: Yeah. It’s fascinating to see how our relationships with others, our relationship to money, our relationship to ourselves, our relationships with the world around us is really what allows us to take care of ourselves or not. And you’re absolutely right. I mean, everything that you’ve talked about today has been on brand. Well, you’re my teacher.

So, of course, it’s been on brand for everything that I’ve said. But yeah, for everyone listening, everything that Jade has talked about has probably felt very comfortable for you because it’s stuff that we talk about all the time.

Jade: Well, I appreciate you so much Elizabeth. Well, thanks for being my teacher as well. Right? We’re all learning and teaching each other and that’s what makes us so wonderful.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So, tell everyone how they can work with you, if you do work with individuals, or if you just work with groups. Tell everyone how they can find you so that they can learn more.

Jade: No, I don’t currently take patients or clients. I’ve been mostly writing and building programs, which allow me to reach more people. But you can follow me and work at Jade Teta on all the social media. I spend so much time on Instagram right now, just because it’s a really nice place to teach. And not all of us love social media, I don’t either, but it is a nice place to teach jadeteta.com is my website. And I have a podcast called the next level of human. That goes into a lot of the metabolism stuff, a lot of the mindset stuff. So, a lot of what we talked about today, you’ll get on that podcast.

Elizabeth: Well, thank you for taking the time and sharing your wisdom with everyone. I really appreciate it.

Jade: Thank you so much. Thanks everyone for listening.

Oh, my goodness. I hope you loved listening to the podcast episode as much as I enjoyed it. I love how Jade breaks down very complex ideas into really great analogies and just explains the science-y stuff so that we can understand it.

Now, a few takeaways that I wanted to go back to where one, what he said at the end. That we cannot look at our health and weight as silos. That if you want to be successful in developing and maintaining those new habits, it’s critical that you burn it down and become someone new. I know that that’s totally scary, but that reason that we are, the weight that we are is because of how we think about ourselves. How we think about food and how we think about the world around us.

Number two, you need to have periods of high activity and low activity. And of course, pay attention to how your body feels and honor that. And then, if you haven’t heard me say it, hopefully, you’ll have heard it from Jade, manage your stress. This could not be any more important for women between the ages of 45 and 60. You may not feel stressed, but if you’re doing too much, you’re stressing yourself out.

So, thank you for being here today. That’s all we have for you. I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll talk to you next week. Have a great week, everyone. Bye-bye.

Hey, thanks for listening.

If you’re done with dieting and would like to work with me as your coach, I’d like to invite you to reach out to myself and my team to ask about programs and pricing. Go to elizabethsherman.com/contact to get started today. I can’t wait to hear from you.

See you next week.