Meet Julie. Shes a 59-year-old small business owner (her business is dog walking), and before she started working with us, she had high blood pressure, a few pounds to lose, joint pain, and struggling with menopausal symptoms. Fast forward to now, and her blood pressure is normal, she fits into her old jeans again, she doesnt have any joint pain anymore, and her menopausal symptoms are gone.
How did she do it? Thats exactly what well cover in this article.
Youre going to learn:
- What Julies life was like before her transformation
- What Julie tried before to help her with her goals (and how it was working)
- The exercise strategies that she used to lower her blood pressure, get rid of joint pain and lose weight.
- The nutritional strategies that she used
- The supplements we recommended
- What results she achieved
- The obstacles she faced along the way
- How her life is different today
And if you want to hear Julie tell her own story, check out this 9-minute video:
Of course, if you want help with your own fitness, we have a special program called The Menopause Makeover. To see whether you qualify for the program, just fill out the application form on our home page (and yeah, if youre a guy who wants the menopause makeover, you can respond to this email as well. After all, the first 3 letters of menopause are men )
Julies Life Before
Julies been quite active her whole life. In her 30s, she played softball and badminton. In her 40s, she ran a few 5Ks and 10Ks, but fast forward to menopause, and she gained a bunch of weight. Not a whole lot, but more than she wanted. Enough to not fit into her favourite jeans and clothes. Along with that, her blood pressure went up (it was around 140/90 mmHg on average), her joints (knees and lower back) started to hurt, and despite being in late menopause, she was still feeling the symptoms (night sweats, fatigue, and mood changes).
As a result, she was feeling in her words crabby and cranky, which was affecting the people around her (her family).
Factor in the back pain, and between that, and her mood, she didnt feel like going out much with her friends, and being social.
What Julie Has Tried Before
Because Julie wasnt happy with how her body was doing, shes tried a bunch of things, like:
- Calorie counting. But, as shell admit she likes beer. So shed be in a caloric deficit, get hungry, binge, forget the deficit, and her weight would always go back up. No bueno.
- She has a dog walking business, so she walks 10,000 steps per day 6-7 days per week, no matter what rain, shine, heat, cold, ice, etc. But despite that, she still couldnt fit into her old clothes, her blood pressure was high, and her knee and back hurt.
She didnt want to go on medications for either her blood pressure, weight (Ozempic), menopause or joint pain, and despite being active her whole life, shes never stepped foot inside a gym before.
But what she was doing obviously wasnt working, so she decided to do something shes never done before hire a personal trainer.
Shes seen some of my posts on the app Nextdoor, started receiving my newsletter, liked what I had to say, so she bought a package of personal training sessions. We paired her up with her trainer, Steven, and off they went.
Julies Exercise Strategies
Weight loss is a lengthy process (generally 1 pound per week, if theres good compliance). Blood pressure normalization is a fast process (one British lady who read my blood pressure book commented on Amazon that her blood pressure went from emergency high to normal in a matter of 1 week of following the advice in the book). So at first, the program that Steven created for Julie was oriented towards blood pressure reduction.
It worked great. In a matter of one month, her blood pressure went from an average of 140/90 mmHg, to 120/80 mmHg. Mission accomplished. And they were now free to work on the fat loss.
Theres a specific way to exercise for blood pressure reduction, which is different than bone density, which is still different than diabetes, etc.
So Steven had Julie follow the blood pressure reduction exercise guidelines that I talk about both in this article and in my book (if youre searching for it on Amazon, just copy and paste High Blood Pressure Reversal Secrets).
Just a few of the highlights that of Julies exercise routines, and the thought process behind them:
- For the strength training portion, some of the exercises used were hip thrusts, lat pulldowns, incline pushups, cable rows and others.
- She was strength training twice per week, and doing cardio 3 times per week.
- For the cardio, the machine wasnt important, so whether she wanted to use the treadmill, elliptical, bike, swim, etc. didnt matter. What mattered was the duration and the pulse. Her minimum pulse was 122 beats per minute, and her prescribed duration was 30-50 minutes.
Again, the rationale behind all this is outlined in both my article and my book.
There was a lot more to it than that, but these are the highlights of her program.
However if you just read about the exercises, youd miss the secret sauce of the exercise program the progression model, and the workout-by-workout adjustments that were made based on Julies progress from the previous workout, energy/fatigue levels, injuries, and more. After all, no exercise program should be a static program, where youre doing the same exercises for the same weights, sets and reps every single time. An exercise program should be dynamic, intelligently, purposefully, and systematically changing the exercise variables workout-by-workout to move the client forward as opposed to haphazardly changing the program whenever you feel like it, without rhyme or reason like a lot of personal trainers do.
Julies Nutritional Recommendations
At first, Julies nutritional recommendations were oriented towards blood pressure reduction. The cool thing about high blood pressure is that you can normalize it without weight loss. So Stevens recommendations at first were to have one of the following foods with each meal:
- Watermelon
- Melon
- Cucumber
- Celery
- Beets
- Garlic
- Spinach
- Sardines
- Dates
- Sun-dried tomatoes
- Dark chocolate
- Brazil nuts
Why these specific foods? Because theres more than one way to lower blood pressure. You can increase potassium (so some of these foods are specifically high potassium foods, like dates and sun-dried tomatoes), you can increase magnesium (so some of these foods are specifically high magnesium foods, like dark chocolate and Brazil nuts), you can increase omega 3s (so sardines and salmon are examples of high omega-3 foods), you can use diuretics (so foods like watermelon, cucumbers and celery fit that bill), or you can make someone smell so bad that annoying people dont want to be around them, lowering blood pressure that way hence the garlic recommendation
Basically, each of the foods in this list was selected because it lowers high blood pressure by one or more different mechanisms.
After Julies blood pressure normalized, it was time to turn their attention to her body fat. There are a million ways to lose body fat, and weve used different strategies with different clients. After all, as I always say, nutrition must not only fit a persons body, but also their personality. For instance:
- With Stellis, all that I asked her to do was have a serving of protein with each meal, and stop eating when she was 80% full. And as a result, she lost 6 inches off her waist at 83 years old. I didnt tell her what not to eat, or how many calories to eat, or anything more complex than those 2 things.
- With Liz, her trainer (Davin) had her eating a serving of protein with each meal, and eating 2 meals a day instead of 3. And she lost 24 pounds.
- With Miriam, we simply had her rate her hunger on a -10 to +10 scale. And if she was in the pluses, she just waited until she was hungry to eat and she lost 15 pounds, despite working 4 jobs, and raising a rambunctious 3-year-old. Again, we didnt tell her what not to eat. We just had her wait until she was hungry to eat.
the beauty of simplicity.
Anyways, the overall message is that theres more than 1 way to get the job done.
Since Julie wasnt opposed to counting calories, thats what Steven had her do for the first 6 weeks, just to develop an awareness of how many calories she was eating. After that, he had her do a modest caloric reduction of 400 calories, and after 6 weeks, she dropped the calorie counting, and started more intuitive eating. Which worked for her wait until you see the results later in this article.
However, Julies goal wasnt weight loss. You can lose weight by losing muscle. You can also lose weight by losing bone. Neither one of those is desirable. So Julies goal was fat loss. And the 2 keys to losing predominantly fat when youre in a caloric deficit are:
- Adequate protein
- Strength training
The strength training, you already know about. As for the protein, Steven calculated Julies protein requirements, and together, they figured out what foods that she actually likes would get her to her requirements.
Julies Supplements
For Julies high blood pressure, Steven recommended magnesium glycinate one of the most common, and proven recommendations for high blood pressure.
Julie also had osteopenia (a stage before osteoporosis), so Steven recommended Type 1 collagen or collagen peptides. Thats one of our most recommended bone health supplements, and the one that I recommend in my book, Osteoporosis Reversal Secrets.
Julies Results
And now, its the time weve all been waiting for Julies results. Theyre nothing short of impressive!
- As you know, her blood pressure basically normalized in about 1 month (from an average of 140/90 to 120/80).
- She lost 9 pounds of scale weight. But really, when you lose fat and gain muscle, what really happened is she likely lost about 14-15 pounds of fat, and gained 5-6 pounds of muscle.
- She lost 5.5 cm (about 2.25 inches) off her waist.
- She lost 30% of her belly fat (from a skinfold of 37 mm to 26 mm)
- She lost 29% of her love handle fat (from a skinfold of 28 mm to 20 mm)
- Her leg and hip strength improved tremendously. Her hip thrusts went from 53 pounds, up to 163 pounds. Thats a reflection of her butt strength.
- Her upper body pushing strength more than doubled from a bench press of 28 lbs., up to 58 lbs..
- Her upper body pulling strength increased by 60% – from a lat pulldown of 50 lbs., up to 80 lbs.
And these are just the highlights. She had lots more improvements in other areas as well.
Julies Obstacles
We wish success was a straight line, but realistically, I tell my clients that progress is like the stock market in a good year. For the most part it goes up, but theres the occasional blip downwards.
In Julies case, she didnt see much weight loss for the first 4-5 weeks. She saw fat loss, but her weight was staying the same. And although she intellectually knew this was going to happen, she spent decades putting emotional energy into the number on the scale, that it was a bit discouraging to not see that number move, at first.
Although that was somewhat by design. Because if youll remember, we wanted to get the easy stuff done first blood pressure normalization. So blood pressure normalization was the priority first, before fat loss. High blood pressure is a higher risk to a persons health than a few vanity pounds. She wasnt morbidly obese, so we tackled the bigger risk first. Once that risk was reduced, we set our sights on her weight and body fat.
And once we did, her weight started to drop nicely.
How Julies Life is Different Now
Now that Julie is leaner, stronger and healthier, how is her life different today? Quite dramatically. The effects arent just physical. Theyre social.
Before, because of Julies back pain and not-so-great mood, she didnt want to go out with her friends. Now, shes up for it, because she doesnt have back pain anymore, and her mood is better.
Speaking of her friends, shes getting lots of compliments on both her weight loss, but also how strong she looks. After all, when she lost weight in the past, she didnt look good because the focus was weight loss, and not fat loss. So she did it the wrong way no strength training, and not enough protein. Now that she did it the right way, shes not just skinny shes lean.
And along with that, when she tries on her old jeans, they fit her great now.
Overall, were very proud of Julie, her work ethic, and how much progress shes made. If you want help with your own fitness, we have a special program called The Menopause Makeover. To see whether you qualify for the program, just fill out the application form on our home page (and yeah, if youre a guy who wants the menopause makeover, you can respond to this email as well. After all, the first 3 letters of menopause are men ).
