[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the So Here For It podcast. My name is Amy Mingin, and it is such a pleasure to have you here today. I'm going to talk all about how the female metabolism is completely different to the male metabolism and how science, in inverted commas, has got it wrong.
Now it hasn't really got it wrong. What I mean by this is a lot of women have been following the science that has been done on males, for the female body. That's what I mean by that. So, if you have been following a fasting lifestyle, if you have been following really specific workouts, if you've been following really specific diets for a long time and you kind of get results and then you fall off the wagon because it's too hard to maintain, this is the episode for you.
It really shouldn't be hard to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle. I want to start with that. Women can fuel themselves and maintain a really great healthy lean mass, so have a [00:01:00] toned and strong body, without being overweight. We can actually eat far more than what is this standard amount that they would say that's like the recommended daily intake.
In fact, the recommended daily intake, let's just start there. It's looking across a broad spectrum of people, often who are ill. It's not looking at your ultimate health. It's not looking for your optimal ranges of anything. And unfortunately, it's not really enough in order to help prevent any sort of deficiency.
So if you're currently looking at the Recommended Daily Amounts or the RDA of nutrients or macros or micronutrients, then please can you put that to the side and have a listen to what I've got to say today because this is going to blow your mind.
Okay, so let's get it started. How is a woman's metabolism different to a man's metabolism? It has everything to do with [00:02:00] hormones and the fact that a male hormone cycle happens daily. So their testosterone is higher in the morning and then it goes lower in the evening.
And that is about it. Sometimes, of course, they're going to have different neurotransmitters created, they're going to have the gut, digestive enzymes, like, it does still have an intricate link between their gut and their brain, and their stress levels and things like that, but generally speaking, men have a higher stress tolerance compared to women.
So I want you to remember that. They have higher testosterone, they still have a bit of estrogen in their bodies, is absolutely normal for a man to have a bit of estrogen, but generally speaking, their main dominant hormone is testosterone. And the goal for a man is to have that testosterone in its most active form.
The best way to do that is for him to lift heavy weights, to be purpose driven. So the thing that actually motivates them is that they're working on things, they work with their hands, they work with their minds. They're actually challenging themselves every single day. A man does really [00:03:00] well with his testosterone when he has things like that. He's doing hard things.
Now, let's have a look at the women. The women, for example, women have not just a 24 hour cycle. Yes, we have a 24 hour cycle, but we also have a monthly cycle. And this doesn't matter if you haven't started to bleed yet. So like a really young girl, a teenager, someone in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and even beyond menopause years, we still have a monthly cycle.
Like here's an interesting story for you. My daughter is 10 and she doesn't have her period yet, but she cycles with me. So I can tell by her heightenedness one week a month, I'm like, Oh, she's feeling a little bit upset. She's feeling a little more sensitive this week. And she cycles with my cycle. So she picks up very sensitively on my cycle.
So when my hormones are coming down just before my period each month, her [00:04:00] hormones are matching mine, even though she doesn't have a bleed yet. So it's very, very interesting. Good luck to my husband once there's, once there's two bleeding women in the house. No, it'll be fine. It'll be absolutely fine, but it's just interesting to watch this, where the people in our environment tend to mimic but also match what is going on with what's happening with us, right? So it's really, really important to surround yourself with people who are more balanced, who are less chaotic, who can co regulate with you.
Now when we think about the female cycle going across the month, let's start, the first week is like usually the menstrual week. Let's say that's your bleeding week. You might only bleed for three days, but let's give it a week. And then the next week after that, so I would call that one the winter phase. The next one's the spring phase. That's usually straight after the period, when most women feel amazing. So the estrogen, the progesterone is low at that stage, the estrogen is starting to rise, makes you feel really good. And the reason for that is [00:05:00] estrogen couples with dopamine and dopamine is our reward neurotransmitter, right? So we feel really good when estrogen's in a really good place. Now if estrogen goes too high, then that's when we can feel a little bit irritated.
So if you get irritable around your ovulation phase, we go into summer then. If you're irritable, then there might be a little bit extra estrogen in your system. So we might wanna have a look at like helping to detox that out of the body via the liver, via the gut, via the elimination organs. When you're in your summer phase, often people are still feeling good there, but perimenopause, that's when they notice a really big dip.
They like, fall off the edge there. And that part of the cycle can sometimes feel really, really awful, and there's more PMS there than in the late luteal. So we're in the luteal phase after ovulation. Follicular before ovulation. So that is, follicular is happening from period, from day one of your period all the way through to ovulation, and then luteal is happening after ovulation through to your [00:06:00] period again.
Now in the late luteal or your autumn phase, that's when you're going to naturally want to calm down. You're going to naturally want to just rest a little bit more, take it easy. That's often where women are going to get food cravings. Now the food cravings happens because there's a neurotransmitter change.
It happens because women are more stress sensitive and it happens because life doesn't stop. So what if I were to say to you that you could actually balance your hormones with your food and your lifestyle? Because it's entirely possible. You can balance so many things with your diet and lifestyle. Like, I use food as medicine every day of my life.
I had a bloating episode last night. My tummy was really sore. And all I did was get grated ginger and put it with hot water. So it was about a thumb worth of fresh ginger and hot water. And I let that sit for a good ten minutes. And then I drank it once it had cooled down enough. And the bloating went within ten minutes.[00:07:00]
But what do other people do? I don't know what other people do, to be honest. Maybe they're just put up with it. But I don't like being bloated, I don't like being in pain, and my gut is one of my sensitive spots in my system. So I've got to look after it. My tummy is my barometer, is what I say to people.
So if I've had something that has felt stressful to me, consciously or unconsciously, I don't judge the fact that I was stressed, I deal with what's happening in my body. And I use food as medicine. I use my lifestyle. I tune into my nervous system and that's, what's really, really important here. Your metabolism is going to be mimicking what's going on in your nervous system. What's going on in your gut and what's going on with your hormones.
Can you see how much more complicated it could be for a woman compared to a man? So a man's got like a couple of things that he thinks about, a couple of things that he focuses on, and he goes to sleep at night and wakes up and then he eats some food the next morning, you know, it's pretty simple for him.
I'm not saying that Men's health isn't complicated sometimes. What I'm [00:08:00] saying is it's much less complicated than a female metabolism. So when you are going and doing something extreme, let's bring this into like the actual picture of what I want to say here. You're going and you're fasting each day. Can you see how that is a stress on your body?
I know that if I wait too long in the morning and not eat my breakfast, I get hangry. It's like, I'm hungry and I'm kind of empty and I kind of just get a little bit crabby. It's just like, I get a bit short with people around me and it's like, I am happiest when I'm fueled. And use that as a mantra if you want to.
I'm happiest when I'm fueled. Because as soon as I fuel myself, I do the fuel before the coffee. That's the most important thing too, because we've got something in our brains for the hypothalamus and it's really, really sensitive to stress. The hypothalamus is like the controller. It sends messages into the pituitary gland, which then sends messages into the ovaries.
And if it's sending stress [00:09:00] signals, guess what happens? It sends your hormones AWOL. So if you're not having food, you can see how the hypothalamus is like stress alert, stress alert, no food coming in, we can't do this, and you can see where your brain might be going a little bit AWOL, your nervous system is going AWOL, therefore your gut is going AWOL, and If you're not using your gut enzymes, things start to go a little bit lower.
And that's where sometimes bloating can happen for people. So if you're waiting a really long period of time without food and then you have a lot of food, that food's going to sit there for a while to digest, right? Instead of just breaking your meals into three times a day. That's all you need to do.
And have a balanced meal using whole foods. So are you having some fiber in the form of vegetables? Are you having some protein in the form of animal protein? Are you having some carbohydrates in the form of a healthy starch? And what I mean by healthy [00:10:00] starch is like, is it in its whole form? Like a lot of people will say, don't eat white potatoes, but potato has been known, like a known fact that it is the most, the one that brings the most satiety, meaning it makes you feel fuller.
So I don't eliminate potatoes from anyone's meal plans. Unless it's absolutely necessary. Sometimes people have a lot of inflammation, and I might do it in that case. But the vast majority of people, if they don't, if they don't have a huge inflammation picture, they should be having a little bit of potato at their hungriest meal per day.
Because guess what? You're going to feel like you're actually eating something that fills you up. Stop just living on chicken breast and boring old salad. Or chicken and broccoli. I know that's been really popular in the past. I want you to fuel yourself, and I want you to fuel yourself so that you feel amazing.
And remember that it's more so about the balance and that the balance for you might be different to what the balance is for me. So if you're sitting there being like, well, tell me what, [00:11:00] what specifically to put on. Obviously, I don't know how often you're exercising, how hard you're exercising, what sort of stresses you have in your life, what sort of stress management you have in place.
Like, are you meditating? Are you getting out in nature? Are you speaking kindly to yourself? What is your relationship with food? These are all the sorts of things that I talk about with women inside Catalyst. We learn about our bodies, but also we learn about how it fits in with our natural cycles. We learn about what are the emotions that come up if food feels scarce.
That's the interesting part. I love to find out what emotional attachment each woman has to her food, because it's really, really vast. Sometimes different things come up. And the whole point of me creating Catalyst is so that more women can actually have a great, great relationship with their body, that they can actually love themselves, that there is time and space to have all types of food, just not all the time.
Does that make sense? [00:12:00] Like, I want you to still enjoy the thing at the birthday party, but then jump right on track the next day. I want you to know exactly what foods feel really great if you're lifting heavy weights that day. I want you to know exactly what makes you feel really good if you only want to eat lightly that day.
And I want you to feel empowered in your choices. Because no one ever needed to be on a diet their whole life. I'll tell you one more story before I finish up. My dear Nan, I have talked about her before on my social media. She passed away a couple of weeks ago. And it's been a really interesting process to hear how she was with her body. And to look at some of the very old photos. And I have a memory of what she used to be like. It's probably from when I was like eight years old. That's the memory. That's the picture that I have in my mind of what my Nan looks like. But to look at these photos, her weight [00:13:00] variation throughout her life has been massive.
And I can see that she didn't have a good relationship with food. I can see that she didn't have a good relationship with her body. I can see that she didn't have a good relationship with her inner critic. And it's up to me to be the chain breaker, right? It's up to me to go, you know what, for my daughter, I want my daughter to love her body.
I want my daughter to grow up loving food and having a good relationship with food and seeing food as fuel and a way that she makes herself healthy as opposed to, I have to have this to be skinny. Total different message compared to what we grew up with in the 90s, right? If you're a millennial, you know, you know.
My goal here isn't just to put another woman on another diet. It's to teach you the skills necessary so that you can love your body because I can guarantee you my dear Nan was still on a diet the day [00:14:00] she died. Her last meal, she even said, she's like, Oh, I'm going to let myself have ice cream. I don't want you to be in your deathbed before you let yourself have ice cream, okay?
Oh, that's hit my heart really heavy. But it's true. I want more women to be able to enjoy their lives without having this emotional attachment to their food. I want you to have a great relationship with yourself. And have a kind mind. Imagine speaking kindly to yourself. Imagine cheering yourself on every day. Imagine celebrating yourself because you got through a day and you had amazing energy. Imagine waking up feeling so motivated for the day and pumped that you get to do what you get to do. And you know exactly what you're going to eat. You know exactly how to eat. You know exactly what choices if you had to eat out at some stage, you know, you know exactly what to do, right?
I want you to feel empowered. I want you to feel great inside your body. I want you to love yourself. [00:15:00] So thank you so much for being here today. I hope that you got heaps out of it. If you haven't already, can you please rate, review, subscribe to this podcast so that I can reach more people just like you.
It means the world to me that I get to speak to you every single week. It is incredible. I love this podcasting journey. As you can tell, I'm here every week. So I will see you on the next episode and have the best day.
