Dealing with a Tummy Tyre!

Or kind of our spare tire, why we get a spare tire around our abdomen. So many ladies come into me and into my gym and go, oh my gosh, you know, how do I get rid of this spare tire around my waist? This never happened.

When I was younger, you know, I never had this. What has happened? Well, there's a few reasons.

There's not just one reason. So I want to have a bit of a chat today about why we carry a spare tire as we get older. There's a few reasons for it and quite a bit we can actually do for it.

So let me just get into it. So the bad news is that the average woman over 50 years of age in our society, in Western societies will gain an average of about half a kilo a year over the age of 50. Not a great thing, but you know, there's so much that we can do about it.

So don't despair. Spare tire can be due to so many things. It can be due to our genetics, it can be due to the food and alcohol intake that we have.

It's a slowdown with our metabolism as well. So that tends to slow down when we get to a certain age. Our sedentary life is part of it.

Post-pregnancy, we can have bloating and inflammation as well. I don't know about you, but if I eat way too much fruit, I can go up two dress sizes in the space of half an hour. So that can alter things.

It can be stress as well in our lives and also the way that we carry ourselves, our posture and how strong our abdominal muscles are to actually hold in all the abdominal content. So I'm going to address all these things one by one today. If you have any questions along the way, please feel free to ask me and I'm happy to answer them to the best of my ability.

So the first one, I want to talk about genetics. So sometimes when you, particularly if you're losing weight, people will say to me, why is it that the abdominal kind of area is the last place to lose weight? Well, genetics can play a large part in that, in that if great-auntie Maude and great-auntie Joan and your mother and maybe grandmother all carry their weight around the waist and that was the last thing to come away when you lost weight, it could be the same for you.

Because when we actually happen to lose weight, and many women, everyone really, will hold on to weight in certain areas that may be that your bust line comes off last or your waist comes off last. But for many of you, that will be the last thing to come off as you start to get more toned up and start to slim down, that can be the last part of your body to go. And that can just be a genetic thing, we can't do anything about that.

So don't focus too much on that today, we'll move on to the next one. 

So food and alcohol. So it is amazing how many women, as they get older, drink alcohol.

Many of my friends love gin, they love all that sort of stuff. And so you have a gin or two every night, and that is adding so many more calories to your waistline. So have a think about really everything that goes into your mouth, not just food, but also drink as well.

And if we're also dehydrated and we're not getting enough drink of normal water, water's great for our body, then we also, being dehydrated will also make us want to reach out for food more. You know how many times that you may be a bit dehydrated, but you're so hungry, so you'll go eat something instead of simply having a big glass of water, and that may well take away that craving for food. So but every time you have alcohol, think about the amount of calories that go in.

And I can see my friend wandering around behind me, it's all good, so that's Simone. And so yeah, so just have a think about everything that goes into your mouth, and how many calories that actually puts into your body with each thing that you take. Cut down on highly processed foods.

So if you think about trying to have as things that are as close to how you would grow them or take them from life as you can. So if you're going to get a potato, then as much close to what you would get in nature as you can. So if you are going to buy food from the supermarket, we always know that the outer aisles are the ones where you get all your eggs and produce.

Or unfortunately, they also put the chocolate right beside that, so kind of steer clear of that. But if you can get food as close to its natural state as what it would be as normal, that would be wonderful, because then you're staying away from highly processed foods. So highly refined foods that have already been through lots of processing, like your white rice, white bread, things like that, that convert straight into sugar.

So being able to go for your brown rice. And even in fact, I've recently read that rice, when it's been cooked and cooled down and re-warmed up again, loses a lot of that high glycemic ability. So you're actually taking in far fewer calories.

So there's some really interesting things that you can read up on about processed foods. We need healthy fats, and you would have all heard this, such as avocados, coconut oil, organic foods, and meat and fish all from the wild. So if you're buying your meat, it's great if you know somebody that's on a farm where they can tell you, yep, this is going to be your whole half a side of beef.

And you know that it's all grass-fed cows, and it's really healthy stuff. They're not giving them unhealthy stuff, so then that doesn't go into your body. So perfect if you know somebody.

But if you know of a really good butcher that you know where the meat is sourced from, that is also wonderful as well, because you know you're getting meat without all the additives. Full fat as much as you can. So don't go diet and stuff.

I never go diet drinks, particularly. They have so many other things in there, but any diet yogurts or anything like that are not ideal for you. So go full fat, as much as it can be in the natural.

If you're going milk, for example, milk comes from the cow with a layer of cream on top. I used to, as a kid, go stay on my auntie's farm where they used to milk cows every day. And when we poured out the milk, that milk had a creamy layer on top.

And as much as I hated it, I can see now that it was a really good thing for me because that cream is coming straight from how it's meant to be made, not through a whole lot of processing. I would never touch skim milk. That's my choice, but I would go full fat with everything.

Full fat butter, full fat Greek yogurt, full fat milk. So try and stay as much as you can how nature intended it to be

And the other thing that I do with my food is we've started to do some intermittent fasting.

And so we have really, I don't do the five days on, two days off, but I'll go all night now and go into the next day and not have food until 16 hours of fasting. So if I eat, say, at eight o'clock at night, then I'll go till eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 12 o'clock the next day before I eat something. I've got eight hours, a window where I eat pretty healthy stuff still, but I've got that eight hours, a window where I do eat.

And then you've got all that time for your body to rest and recuperate. So 16 hours where you're not putting food into your body, you can drink still, but you're not putting food into your body. And hence you can actually, it's amazing how many more, less calories you take in when you're doing this sort of thing.

So it's a great way to just getting some extra, extra, less calories. Now metabolism, it will slow down as we go to our metabolism does slow down, but I want to remind you that the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn for a longer period of time. So if I do right now a strength training session and I do my strength training session for 45 minutes, say for example, as compared to doing some cardio, say on a treadmill or on a bike for 45 minutes, I'm going to burn off my calories for a lot longer period of time than I would doing strength training than if I'd just done cardio.

So for many of you out there who lose weight, I think you're looking at the scales and you're looking at the scales probably way too much because scales do not tell you how much fat you've actually burnt off. And so we're aiming to in life is to get rid of the fat, but not the muscle. You want to retain muscle at all costs.

So if anyone told me that they want to lose some weight, I would suggest to them that they keep going with their strength training because you want to retain that muscle. That muscle becomes your fat burner. It's really important to keep going.

You do not want to lose that. So our metabolism will increase quite a bit when we have some strength training on board and start to build up some muscle. Sedentary, so those people that are more sedentary, as we get a bit older, we're often in jobs where we are, well, not all of us, but some people are in jobs where they're sitting for long periods of time at the desk station and then they may go home and do their activities where they're on, do some scrapbooking or whatever it is.

So you're sitting, sitting, sitting, and the thing is there, you need to move. So probably if I was at a desk doing work all during the day, I would stand up, move around, and then come back and sit down. There's so many things you can do at a desk and maybe I need to be doing a Facebook Live on what you can do at a desk, at your work desk, because there's so much to talk about there.

Now, post-pregnancy, that can be, pregnancy can create some problems with many of us. I, myself, carried four very big babies, so, well, big for me, I was only about a 55 kilo lady at the time and I was carrying, yeah, eight and a half pound babies, and that is quite a bit. And my body, with my first one particularly, couldn't deal with that, so I ended up with an umbilical hernia, so my lovely belly button I'd had my whole life, I have not had for the last 25 years, I have an umbilical hernia in the place of a belly button.

And so when you have things like that occurring, or if you have a cesarean, you actually, because they cut through into your abdominals, then some of the nerves get cut, they innervate into that abdominal wall, that when you work it is going to pull that abdominal area flat again. So because we have nerve deactivation in some areas there of our abdominal wall, and particularly me with my umbilical hernia, then you'll find that your abdominal wall will not activate to the same degree as it did when, before you had babies. So that can cause a bit of a problem there.

And we all get a bit of a separation of the six-pack muscles, so the rectus abdominis separate, to make room for the baby as it grows, so if that doesn't come back into place again, that can also cause some deactivation of how we would normally work that abdominal area to get it flat again. And also as a result of that coming apart and not going back together, some women can get vaginal prolapses and abdominal hernias, and back pain as well, and there can be more of a potential for urine incontinence down the track. So in a moment, at the end here, I'll show you a great way where you can lie down on a bed or the floor, and simply pressing down is a gentle but effective way to help get those lower abdominals to go back into shape, or just to start to get firmer.

Yeah, so pregnancy can cause a few issues, but hopefully as we go along, as you go on through life, you can start to really activate and get whatever areas you can of that abdominal area going well. I find that my abdominal area works far better above my belly button than what it does below my belly button, and I would put that down to my umbilical hernia, which I will get fixed at some stage. 

So bloating and inflammation.

So the core muscles do share the nerve pathways as a small and large intestine, so therefore any stress that's in the intestines will shut down those core muscles. So if you're trying to work on your abdominal area and trying to get that firm, if you have internal inflammation ... Hi Penelope, great that you could join me today.

If you have internal inflammation there happening in your bowels, that can actually shut down that nerve pathway to where you're trying to get those abdominal area flat again. And so by dealing with that inflammation, you actually can do a lot to helping that abdominal wall do what you want it to do, which is retract again and become flat and do what you want it to do. So you need to be looking at gut health as well.

This is another thing that I'd like to talk about soon because gut health is huge. Gut health is all those microbiomes that cause your body to be healthy. I think for many of us, if we looked at ...

I'm not just talking about abdominal bloating today with the inflammation that happens there, but if you looked at your gut health, and that's easy enough to Google, but gut health is essential for good health. So I look at a lot of people these days with just different illnesses that come on, and you kind of think, wow, how did that happen? And if you look at gut health and the microbiome, if we have a healthy microbiome, then we can fight against all sorts of diseases.

But if we have eradicated a whole lot of our microbiomes that normally live there but are not there anymore, then there's things that will come against us that we just can't fight against. So I would ask you today, if you really want to look at great health, really, all overall, sorry, I'm a bit tired today. We had big winds last night that blew over my kayak even.

Can you believe that? In my yard? It took my kayak and chucked it down the yard, so it was quite incredible.

But if you look at your gut health, you can do a lot to increase just general overall health but also to help that inflammation that you may have happening to be reduced. Things like sauerkraut, at the very simplest, Greek yogurt, full-fat Greek yogurt. If you take that every day, that really helps to get that gut microbiome really a lot more healthy than what it would be if you weren't doing it.

But there's so many things, kombucha, there's so many things that you can be doing. So look up gut health and you'd be amazed at what happens there with how you function in life. There is a tribe in Africa, and it starts with K, I can't remember the name, but they had a look at their gut microbiomes there, and they were so healthy.

Obviously no obesity there, but also they had just about every type of microbiome that we would hope to have they had in their gut. And they looked at the sort of foods that they ate. So they would forage for roots that have wild berries and a lot of wild meat.

They found that in the seasons of the year when the berries kind of went and they couldn't get as many berries, that their gut microbiome was not as good just on the meat. But adding the berries and the roots, they had a wonderfully, wonderful gut microbiome. So yeah, so it's as easy as that.

So boost your microbiomes. And if you want to know more, Google up microbiomes. But if you ask me to, I can do more of a talk on that as well.

But yeah, so fantastic to learn a bit more about how our body functions from the very internals. I'm also a nurse. So I get great joy from this as well as being a strength trainer.

I love learning a bit more about the body. 

Now stress, when our body's under stress, the adrenals secrete cortisol. And then the cortisol floods the body with glucose, so sugar.

And then we walk around all the time. If we're under stress a fair bit and we're not addressing that stress, we walk around a lot with this increased levels of glucose in the bloodstream. And then that causes us to feel hungry all the time.

And this is a mechanism we would have had back in the day when we had to fight the mammoth coming for our tribe, you know, when we needed that extra boost of glucose to be secreted into the bloodstream so we could get that boost of energy we needed to either run or fight that big animal. But these days, many of us will walk around, and you would have heard this I'm sure before, but you would have worked around, hi, Judy, good to see you. I'm glad to have you join me.

I can't see you actually, but great to have you join me today. And so it's fine in the day when we only needed a short spurt of stress hormone to be released. But these days, we don't need cortisol the whole time.

So if we walk around all the time with cortisol elevated in our bodies, it can make us not sleep. It can make us gain weight because when we have it there, we want to eat more. And this is all a thing to keep us safe back in the day when we were in tribes, but we don't need that in this day.

So I would ask you, if you have stress and you know you're under stress, you're not sleeping well, you just feel like, wow, this is all too hard, then yeah, I would really be dealing with stress. There's some great apps out there. You would have all probably seen the Calm app.

There's also one, if you've got a faith in God, there's one called Soul Time, which is wonderful as well. So there's wonderful apps out there. Sit and meditate.

Go off to a quiet spot at the beach or in the bush. I love the bush and the beach or anywhere where there's a stream or some water running. And take time out for yourself.

Self-love. Take time out for yourself. You would be amazed at what slow breathing does too.

If you focus on your breathing, it has been shown to decrease the cortisol as well. Hi, Rosie. Decrease the cortisol as well.

So it's wonderful if you can just take time out. You see, even if it's only five minutes, I've got a wonderful little app that I bought that just shows a ball expanding as it expands, I breathe in, as it decreases, I breathe out. And it's just like a two or three minute thing you could do at your desk wherever you're at.

So simply slow breathing, taking a breathing where you focus in on the breathing, coming in and you're filling up your lungs with air and then decreasing and letting that air go out again can just be such a wonderful thing. So rather than buying tablets for stress, you actually can deal with your stress by simply focusing on your breathing or looking at nature, looking at that tree and how it moves around in the breeze and the leaves and the birds that fly in and out of it can do amazing things for yourself in the way of stress. You will feel great.

I love it when I go away on a camping overnight trip because I come back so relaxed and I go, I need to do this more often. I usually don't, but I need to do that more often. But we can be doing stuff for ourselves in the comfort of our own home, simply here, breathing in, breathing out.

So and I was going to say also with stress, things like night shift. Now I've been a night shift worker for years and I often wondered why I could not get my weight down. I could not get my weight down because when you look at it, my body's under stress.

Every time I go on to night shift, I'll get you to do that again, Simone. I've got my friend over here just help me out because Facebook Live is still quite new to me. But yeah, so if you're on night shift or something like that, your body will be under stress from the whole time you get there because remembering that our body goes through between 2 a.m. in the morning and 6 a.m. is when our body regenerates. So the cells regenerate. It's time for everything to restore. And if you're on night shift, you don't have that restoration time or you start work at 2 a.m. in the morning, you don't have that restoration time. So our bodies actually go through a lot of stress when we work shift work. And the sad thing is, but there's good things I'm sure, but the sad thing is I went to hear a talk recently about sleep and the importance of sleep and I asked the guy who had come from overseas. He was an expert in the field of sleep.

I said, does a shift worker like me hold out much hope? Then he said, unfortunately, not at this point in time. He said, because you have to work those hours and that's when about 4 o'clock in the morning is when we have to ramp up, get everyone's jobs done and take everyone's blood pressures and everything has to be done ways and everything like that.

So he said, unfortunately, you're more at risk actually of cancer, having a car accident on the way home, marriage breakup, dah, dah, dah. But that's where if you're a shift worker, even more so on your days off, take time for self-love. Carve out some time, eke out some time for yourself.

It's really important. And so, thanks, Rosie, I'm glad you're enjoying it. And I just want to ask if anyone has a favorite app, if you could just type that in because it's really great for us to share information.

I've learned a lot of stuff. I have from one of my ladies in my group is really into gut health and she shared so much about gut health with me. But if anyone else has a favorite app that they find for de-stressing, for calmness, we would love you to type that in so you can share it with us.

That would be awesome. And the other thing I want to talk to you about is posture. So a lot of people, hi, Glenn, good to have you join us.

So a lot of people, we don't hold in. So when we are walking along, try not to slump in your chair when you're at work. I know that's hard when you're at work on night shift like me.

But also when you're in a chair, try and hold yourself back. Try and hold yourself upright. If you sit on a football at work, that's fantastic because you've got to hold yourself upright or you'll fall off.

So working on core muscles to bring things back into shape. So our transverse abdominus, our TBA, is like our corset. It actually sits behind that front pack, that six pack at the front.

It sits behind that and actually wraps itself right around from one side of the spine right through the abdominals and right around to the other side of the spine. So it pulls in our abdominal contents and that does act like that corset. So it holds in all those abdominal contents.

So if you're not working on your TBA, your transverse abdominus, then you're doing yourself a big disservice as well because things will just hang out rather than pulling in nice and tight. So that's one of those ball rollouts I showed in my last Facebook Live. I would have done, I'm pretty sure, some ball rollouts.

[00.23.40] practical demonstration

But otherwise, ask me specifically if you want me to show you some stuff and I can show you some stuff. But one thing I want to show you right now before I end is a great way if you need to work your lower abdominals, I want to show you a great way that you can actually be working them without any stress to you. You don't need any equipment or anything like that.

So I'm going to just grab my phone right now. Don't forget, this is still all new to me. I've only done a few Facebook Lives now, so hopefully it'll all work out okay.

So if you can get down on the floor, get down on the floor. Now, I'm on my couch, actually. I'm going to push myself.

I'm going to go down the floor because it's just a bit hard. So I'm down on my floor and I'm going to get my friend actually to hold my phone. It's a bit hard.

So I'm just going to get my friend. Thank you, Simone. So I want you to go down the floor and if you can just come, yeah, actually, can I turn it around?

Okay. So guys, I just want you to be on the floor and in fact, I'm going to go a bit to the side. Sorry, I wasn't planning to do this.

So what I want you to do here is I want you to pretend there's a sponge under your back or you can put some fingers under your back and all I want you to do here, take that out of the way, I want you to press this belly button right down into the floor and hold tight. So you should feel all these lower abdominals kind of around your belly button and below. Pressing down, pressing down, allow that to go.

So then I can feel this gap under me again and I'm just going to press down again to the floor. I'm going to press this down nice and tight and I can feel and I hope that when you guys do it at home, you can feel all these lower abdominals right around your belly button and below and probably on either side of your belly button really working. Hold down there for about 10 seconds if you can.

And now if you find that too easy to do, you can, you can actually press down and lift up a leg. But what I don't want you to do is lift up that back. So I want you to keep the back pressing as you lift up.

Okay? So you don't need to lift up far, just lift up a leg off the floor, don't need to lift it high and then have a rest. Still with that back pressed down the whole time.

If you want to make it even harder than that, most of you probably won't want to do this. But if you start with your legs up in the air, I'm pressing down my back and tapping on one foot down, other foot down, one foot down, other foot down. Okay?

So those sort of things are fantastic for you because that will really help your lower abdominals work. There's so much more you can work with the TVA, so the transverse abdominus, and then there's things like ball roll outs. If you hold in a plank, that also works, but there's so much more you can be doing rather than just planks.

So if you wanted to know more on working that TVA to get that abdominal area pulled in tight, just let me know at the bottom and I'll pop you one through during the week. But thanks for joining me today and I look forward to seeing you next time, next Thursday. Sorry, we're a bit late starting today, but around one o'clock we'll be doing another one.

I'll promote it beforehand. I don't know what I'm doing yet, but if you want to know more on gut health, want to know more on activating that transverse abdominus so you've got a nice flat abdominal area, please let me know in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. Thanks for joining me today.

I'll see you next time.