Introduction to Women’s Health and Fitness | Triage Thoughts Ep. 207

 

In this episode of the podcast, we are joined by our Head Of Women’s Health and Fitness Dr Nicola Flanagan. This episode is an introductory episode to the topic of women’s health and fitness.

Transcript

The following transcript is AI generated, so apologies for any errors.

Paddy: What is up guys? So today we are back again. No, Gary, today he just didn’t show up you know. He just doesn’t like engaging with the podcast. He hates you guys, right? It’s just, I have to, unfortunately, let you know. But fortunately enough, we are joined by someone who is much more educated and much more, let’s say, a death discussing the topic at hand today, which is, what kind of female fitness, right? There’s a lot more to it. There’s a lot more nuance we’re going to go into.
But female fitness is onomatopoeic you know. It kind of rolls off the tongue nicely. So we’re going to title it that. But today we have Nicola, doctor Nicola. She is our resident doctor and our resident female specialist, I suppose you’d say, women’s health specialist, women’s body composition specialist, just specialist in women. And we’ll get Nicola to introduce yourself in a second.
But I just want to say before we get into that, today’s episode is a little bit of an intro episode to this kind of series that we’re going to run on, again, this female health female fitness, whatever you want to call this stuff, right? And the reason we’re going to do this intro episode is, well, first of all, there’s a lot to the schools. As you’ll see over in the coming episodes, there is a lot of nuance with this stuff and there’s a lot of you know stuff that you have to dive deep into. And if you don’t have the requisite background knowledge, you’re always going to be left, wait, what do they mean by that?
Or how does that relate to this other thing? So we kind of have to build your knowledge over the next few episodes before we can really get into the nitty Gritty stuff, right? So with that in mind, this is an intro episode. With all intros, we want to have an introduction. The introduction today is to doctor Nicola. So who are you? What do you do? Who is Nicola?

Nicola: Well, Paddy, thank you for having me on the podcast. So yeah, my name is Nicola, and I’ve been a coach for the last couple of years.
Originally, I was in person, personal training, and then I moved to online with triage back in July. Because I started as a junior doctor, down here in Waterford. So I’m currently on my surgical rotations and with Triage, I suppose I’m mostly focusing on women’s health, women’s strength training and nutrition. And I suppose this is what we wanted to do. The podcast about because I think that there’s a lot of noise recently about women’s health.
And I think it’s something that’s being kind of thrown around a lot. And there’s still a lot of misinformation going around. And so I was like, Paddy said, is we want to get some background knowledge on women specific issues, women health, women’s health, different life stages, and build on that over the next couple of weeks. What I suppose, what I primarily wanted to focus on on this episode is I suppose talking about the differences in these life stages because I think you know from talking to friends, family, they’re like, well, what is the difference between men and women you know?
Why are we there is no difference? Like why are we kind of almost regressing when we’re talking about this? And I know me personally, when people used to bring you know differences between men and women, I nearly get defensive about it you know. It was nearly something that I would find sexist. I’d be like, there’s no difference. I can train just as much as a man, and I can do whatever. But really, I think that’s actually quite counterproductive to ourselves and to our physiology because there are some key differences.
And like I said, big life stages that women go through. So I think, yeah, it was definitely doing a disservice to my old self. And to the women around me by kind of having that attitude towards it. So yeah, mostly that.

Paddy: And then and then also this is the thing about the female fitness stuff. First of all, there is no real right and wrong with health and fitness in general. There’s obviously shades of gray. There is better, worse.
But it’s a really hard landscape to navigate. Purely because you can often find yourself in a situation where you think you are doing the right thing or you think you’re in a, let’s call it a frame of mind where you’re like, this is, you know, this is the frame of mind that I should be in. And it’s not necessarily entrenched. It’s not like, oh, this is my last stand. This is the hill I’m going to die on. But you can have a more, let’s call it emotional reaction to something when you hear something initially.
But like you said, as you actually learn a little bit more, you start thinking a bit more deeply about this stuff, not to say that, you know, if you have a certain position, you don’t think deeply about this. So you start learning more that this, certain beliefs can actually be unhelpful in the grand scheme of things. They might be helpful in dealing with certain issues, like if someone said to you, like, oh, women shouldn’t train because, you know, that’s for guys. You know, it’s like, it’s helpful to have the position that you previously had, where it’s like, there’s no difference between men and women, women can do everything that men can do.
But then in other things, if we ignore any differences, you kind of get left without actual solutions to the problems that you’re facing. You know, it’s that difference between like an equality and equity you know. It’s like, we actually want to build something here where you have access to the resources that you need. I have access to the resources that I need, and then we can go from there, like we’re actually more on a level playing field as a result of that, because we actually have equal access to the knowledge that is helpful for us as individuals.
And obviously, that broader category male female, not so binary, but male female that we fall into you know.

Nicola: Absolutely. And I suppose that that’s the big thing that there are such key differences in our physiology. And I think it comes down to more than talking about equality. And I think it goes back to even how we were taught in school. Like a lot of the my clients that come to me have never tracked their menstrual cycle, wouldn’t know how to go about that, don’t know what hormones are involved, don’t know about what different stages that they’re in.
And just their cycle comes once every month. And they don’t really understand how they can manipulate, just say like PMS symptoms, how they can manipulate their kind of training and nutrition to help with their bloating. To help with to change their training throughout the month, the nutrition. And they come to me and they have not a clue about it. And then once we start to implement a couple of strategies, they really notice a difference in PMS symptoms.
They understand their cravings more, why they get mood swings at certain times of the month, why they get more water retention, et cetera. So I think going back to school, we never were thought about this stuff. We were never thought about the menopause, perimenopause, post menopause, and I know in all kinds of saying to me recently, she’s like, what’s all this noise about perimenopause? You know, she’s writing that age yourself. And she’s like, you know, why are people talking about this now? Like, this is the first thing that I’ve heard about it.
And you know this is a woman you know in her 40s. So I think, yeah, it goes back to a lack of education and kind of taboo subjects, really.

Paddy: Yeah, and this is like hugely endemic in more, we’ll call them conservative societies. And that would be Ireland, especially like the two of us are Irish. I know we have a lot of listeners from around the world, but especially in Ireland, we come from that more, we’ll call it regressive Catholic ideology of like, let’s push all this stuff like previously like women weren’t even allowed in the church if they were on their period.
Like, you just that you’re dirty, you know, that’s not sinful, per se, but it’s like, that’s, you know, you’re not supposed to be in the church there, you know? So it’s like, it’s all about brushing it under the rug here. Let’s not talk about that. Let’s not even look at that. And as a result, the society as a whole, but especially the people that need the education that wanted because it’s pertains to their life, they have a huge deficit of knowledge here, you know? And that’s kind of what we want to talk about throughout this whole podcast series is that’s actually answered these questions.
Let’s actually put it down the foundations in this episode and kind of the next episode as well. So you have this understanding and then you can actually start realizing this stuff because like you said there with your clients and like I’ve had a lot of clients in the past as well that have never looked at this stuff you know. I didn’t even know to look at this stuff. They were just like, oh, this is just something that happens. It’s not that case that’s being a bit like hyperbolic, but it’s like they just know, oh yeah you know, it’s roughly a four week cycle or something like that. And that’s it.
It doesn’t enter into our mind that this is going to affect their training, their diet, their ability to do stuff in the world that they want to do. It’s like, oh, that’s just something that happens because they still are in that mentality of like, let’s just brush that under the rug. Let’s not talk about it. But I have a number of Muslim clients, and it’s especially in that culture as well, because again, if you had a fundamentalist like Christian person, it would also be very similar where it’s like, you know, let’s push that under the roof. So if you have a more conservative Muslim society, you also have that kind of like, let’s not talk about that stuff.
So it is one of those things where if you haven’t ever looked at this stuff, you’re going to have to get a lot of education to actually bring yourself up to a standard where you’re like, okay, I can actually see how all the puzzle pieces fit together now on how this actually fits into the broader picture of what I’m trying to create here. So maybe we can go through the kind of life stages here. And then we’ll kind of bring it on to certain we’ll just mention them in this episode, but we will be going in more in depth in future episodes.
We’ll come into some more like, again, female specific issues, because I know a lot of people, like I’ve had a lot of clients, I know Brian deals with a lot of clients with this stuff in terms of nutrition. But there’s a lot of women out there that have very specific female specific issues that can actually be helped with changes in their diet or changes in their nutrition. And you don’t even need to go to a doctor and that’s not to say don’t go to the doctor, but it’s stuff that you can actually manage or potentially I hate the word fix.
With nutrition or training adaptations, or it’s something where, okay, I’m actually going to have to manage my training around this issue that I have. So we have to be aware that, first of all, there are female specific issues that we need to educate ourselves a bit. So we’ll go through the life stages. We’ll go through some, we’ll just touch on some specific issues. And then we’ll talk about maybe the history, how things have changed. And then we’ll go from there. So what is the story here?
As far as I’m aware, look, guys and girls, we’re the same, you know, pretty much indistinguishable up until let’s say 12, you know? It’s like, you know, they’re pretty similar. You have a guy in a race, you have a girl in the race. They’re sub 12. Pretty similar results. You know, you’re not going to be able to tell a huge difference. But is there a difference before that? Should we even think in like, oh, in terms of, let’s say, training, nutrition, I intend anything in that sort of pre, I should say, pre puberty stage. Is there anything that we would be looking at in that stage?
Sorry, do you mean in terms of like in terms of like, you know, I don’t know, is there anything that would be like, oh, there’s something to look out for, you know, women have specific issues here that are just knocking and catered to because I know they’re deaf and they are in terms of the education front because, you know, that’s when you get a lot of your, we’ll call it like sex education and stuff like that. So I know there’s a deficit there, but is there anything else?

Nicola: So I think, yeah, I always go back to education wise, is that like you’re saying Ireland is very conservative.
So it’s left us in a huge, I suppose knowledge deficit for when we get older, but at that age, it’s still so important about education around the menstrual cycle. What you’ll find about that age is that young girls start to drop off from things like sports, things like PE, they pretend that they’re sick, when really they’re on their period, they’re uncomfortable. So I think more education at that age will have a better retention of girls in exercise in sport.
But at that age, what kind of nutritional and training things should we be looking at? It’s really like I suppose what kids enjoy if someone’s around the age of 12, like I would just encourage them to partake in exercise that they enjoy, have more education around the menstrual cycle, and then you know at that age, you’re really starting to see a lot of patterns of disordered eating. I suppose mostly in young girls. You know, you have the influence of social media. You have the influence of magazines.
And you have a huge influence from your parents, from your older sisters, if you’re at their mom is checking themselves in the mirror if they’re the way that they’re talking about dieting and weight loss can really roll off on that younger age. And you see that quite often in the hospital as you see girls that might be 12, 13, that are coming in with anorexia, bulimia, and a lot of that, I suppose it’s multifactorial.
But it really starts in a young age and can be down to simply just from body checking, watching older women, body check, you know, the fronts of magazines and you’re seeing celebrities and uncomfortable positions you know, coming out of the water on the beach and like she gained 30 pounds. So it starts really at a young age, but in terms of, I suppose specific recommendations. It is what a child enjoys.
And it’s just trying to get them into sport into nutrition and to fitness because I suppose now a lot of us think of nutrition and fitness as something that aesthetic. And something that’s why that’s the main driving force, but really like we need to be doing this for ourselves for our own health. And so we need to, I suppose, redirect the energy from taking away from the power of aesthetics and putting it more towards health.
So I suppose that that’s where I would be going with it with kids.

Paddy: Yeah, a 100%. I’m in complete agreement. You just need to get those good foundational habits, good nutrition habits, just some sort of exercise paradigm. It doesn’t need to be like literally, like you said, what does that child enjoy? Maybe they enjoy, you know, rollerblading, how can you facilitate that? They maybe enjoy GAA or something. It’s like, how can you facilitate that? Obviously, there’s a huge gap here in terms of access in terms of socioeconomic status, where you live, et cetera.
But there’s usually something that you can find that your child enjoys that will get them in some way active. And at the end of the day, you could literally do something like, oh, I’m going to bring my child there for a walk. That is still activity that does contribute to better health. So it’s like there is always something that can be done. Now, again, that doesn’t ignore the potential barriers in the way of that, like you might say, oh, I’ll just go for a walk or whatever. You might not have the time to go for a walk. You might not even have the fitness yourself to go for a walk. But, you know, stuff like that, we have to try to encourage that wherever possible.
Then we get into the kind of teen years into early 20s. This is where like in my opinion, a lot of, first of all, like you said, women drop off the health and fitness radar. Now, this, let’s just think about this because I know we want to go on to like how it occurred over the last few years. But in the previous years, it would have been a case of, okay, I used to play football or whatever as a child, or even just during a break on yard or whatever.
It’s like, oh, I play football, I’d go around running, skipping, or whatever it is, there would be some activity scheduled into the day, you know? After that, like you said, people start dropping off. Women specifically start dropping off a much higher rate than guys seem to drop off. Like I seem to keep this board up for a longer period of time. Now, this could be, like you said, due to menstrual discomfort. You know, something like that where you’re like, oh, I don’t feel great in my body. Maybe they also have some sort of dislike of the way their body looks or moves or whatever it is you know.
But then also, we have to acknowledge that there is also cultural things around that, you know, like women might be expected to do more. Like if you are in a family of 5, let’s say, you know? And there’s two older daughters. Those two older daughters are actually asked to do more around the house. Like it’s almost like, oh yeah, you’re a woman. So you do the housework. Whereas the guys are like, it’s kind of facilitated to go, oh yeah, you’re a guy. You just, I’ll bring you to football training there or rugby or whatever it is. And that’s not always the case. Without those play into it for a large number of people you know.
And then also some of the hobbies, the interests of women are not really as well catered to in the society that we currently live in in terms of this, whatever you want to call it, western society. So as a result of that, women kind of drop off all hobbies at this stage you know, which leaves them in a position which we ideally don’t want, which is, you know, they’re kind of just left at home. What do you do when you’re at home? You’re kind of bored. You’re like, okay, am I eat some more? And then also when you flicking through social media, you get it exposed to all of these different beautiful bodies and beaches and Bali and whatever else.
It’s like, there’s a lot going on in these kind of formative team years you know. So what should we be thinking of here? What’s going on?

Nicola: Yeah, so I suppose this is when I’m girls really start to drop off with sport with exercise. And a lot of that comes to you know we’ve come through puberty now where hormones are all over the place you know. Maybe we’re starting to be you know attracted to other people. And like you said they’re a huge part of it is actually the way that their body looks during exercise.
And it’s not just you know the male gaze or male pressure like. I remember in school and we had MP, the bleep test. And girls had a pact to drop out at like level 7 or whatever it is. So you’d see literally ten girls just stop at this one specific level and that they were not going to go any further you know. So this is when you’re really starting to see kind of body dysmorphia kicking and social pressures and how a woman should look when they’re exercising.
You know, you’ve laughed, then you’ve mixed with this is when they’re really susceptible to things like skinny teas and all these kind of detoxes and really low restrictive calories. Even though when you’re 16-17, generally people are very slim at that age, but it’s just kind of never enough you know because they’re still seeing bodies of older women that are completely developed. And they want to emulate that. But how do we get there?
Like I suppose I’ll just drop to really low calories. But they might not even verbalize. They might not know about calories at this stage and be like, okay, I’m just not going to eat a lot.

Paddy: Yeah, and that’s the thing as well. There’s a component of this where obviously we can help here in terms of what we do in terms of educating people about nutrition and different things like that. But it is societal pressures, but also it’s not just society, you know, like people say this like nameless, faceless society.
It’s also an internal pressure. These women are feeding it themselves you know. And that can be a good motivating factor for some people, like it can issue the thing where it’s like, okay, actually, I want to look and feel a certain way, oh, when I do these activities, I actually look and feel a certain way so I’m going to keep up these activities. So it can be a positive force, but unfortunately, a lot of the time, it’s that very negative destructive force where it’s like, okay, I don’t really know what I should be doing in terms of exercise or nutrition. So I’m going to over exercise.
I’m just going to do a lot of exercise or I’m just not going to exercise because I don’t like the way I look when I’m exercising. I’m going to wear really baggy clothes, so people don’t look at my body. Like you said, that could be somewhat towards the male gaze, or it could just be like, I don’t feel comfortable with being perceived in general. I don’t want people to even think I exist you know. But then also we have the other side of it where, again, you could be over exercising. And that’s not good either. And then on the nutrition front, it’s also, again, you generally see one or the other where someone’s like, I’m going to retreat from society.
I’m not going to look at society. I’m going to stay at home. I’m not going to be active and generally when you’re at home and have a lower activity level. It actually makes things worse because then if you’re whatever, let’s say, again, one of ten girls, they’re probably between like 50 to 70 kilos. It’s like, if you’re a 50 kilo woman, you’re overall calorie expenditure just as a baseline is probably not that high. So it is actually very easy to accumulate more fat and overeat if you are just sitting at home.
You don’t have a high activity level, and then all of a sudden, you know, you’re at home, you’re eating more because it’s very easy to overeat when you’re just sitting at home. And even if you’re at 70, you know, I was like, it’s still, your baseline calorie needs are probably still not as high as someone else’s. And that is another thing as well. Like you go out to a restaurant or something, and it’s like, oh, I’ll have this meal. And that meal is just designed for this average place, you know? Like, I literally, like my girlfriend is only about whatever, 55 kilos or something, and I’m like a hundred kilos. So we get the same plate. If we were to the same dish in a restaurant, we get the same plate.
She only eats about half of that. I get to eat the other half of it in case anyone’s wondering. But you know what I mean? It’s like, they’re not designed specifically for us. And again, going back to that first conversation, we were talking about where it’s like, okay, well you know, we should have equal sized plates and everything. I actually think that’s what we should have. But it actually can be harmful because now all of a sudden you’re kind of left in this social paradigm, especially in cultures like the Irish culture. Or Arab cultures as well, where it’s like, oh, you must finish your place, and you’re supposed to finish your plate.
There’s starving kids in Africa. That’s what we were all told when we were growing up. It’s like finish your plate. And they all of a sudden, we’ve got loads of different factors that are playing into social pressures or whatever that are playing into either making you over exercise or making you overeat and under exercise, you know? So in my mind, at least for women, for guys as well to an extent, but it’s a little bit easier to navigate for guys just a little bit more clearer paths, if I can even speak.
But for women, it’s very hard to navigate the situation. And as I was saying, we can play a role in terms of providing good exercise guidelines, providing good nutrition guidelines. But even with that, it is still far less effective than you’re going to see from this skinny tea or this detox tea because all you’re going to see is some whatever Z list celebrity micro celebrity or whatever, and they’re going to be like, oh, I use this to lose 5 pounds in two weeks or whatever it is you know.
Oh, that’s exactly what I want. That’s exactly you know I want to lose 5 pounds or whatever it is you know. And that’s unfortunate because that marketing is very, very persuasive, especially when you don’t have the requisite education, the knowledge level to go, oh, this is actually what good nutrition is. Like you said, they’re going to go on this like 500 calorie diet and they’re just like, oh, I heard MyFitnessPal is good, and you’ll see them basically be competitive with themselves, being like, how low can I actually get my calories?
Like how low can I eat on a given day? You know? And this is especially true for certain subsections of women where they find themselves in these like negative social groups. You know, this is what they, at least from research I’ve read, you know, like you put people in these situations, especially women, but they have like eating disorders, and they start encouraging each other you know. It’s like, that’s actually like they basically make it worse for each other and you kind of have to separate them if you actually want resolution, which is a little bit different than what you would think.
You’d be like, oh, they have a common ground, like they can discuss this stuff, but unfortunately, it becomes almost competitive. It’s like, oh, well you know, I lost this much this week, or you know I only weigh this much now you know. All I’m able to survive on 300 calories per day or whatever, you know? So there’s so much going on in these formative years. And unfortunately, this also is the years of your life that are supposed to set you up for the rest of your life. This is where you’re supposed to be getting your education. This is where you’re supposed to be building bone mineral density.
This is where you’re setting your physiology up for your 20s, your 30s. You’re more reproductive years and all that kind of stuff. And it’s like, this is a huge issue that if we don’t actually address it, which is what we’re trying to do with this podcast, it just kind of gets swept under the rug, it’s like, oh yeah, we know Sarah and the road. She has something going on. She’s getting a bit skinny these days, but you know that’s just not saying anything to it. Let’s not say anything about that. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her. Just brush it aside you know. And it’s like, it’s not really good enough.

Nicola: Absolutely. Definitely. And I suppose, you know, on the topic of marketing there, like marketing these days is just fantastic, you know, I mean, it’s really kind of I suppose focusing on that kind of scarcity mindset or, you know, the culture of kind of never being enough. And they really pry on women’s insecurities. A lot of this kind of weight loss marketing is directed towards women. And it focuses on what you should be and what you’re lacking and how that marketing is going to get you there.
So you know what I find particularly with clients coming to me is that there’s a lot of women who have been trying to diet for like 20 years. You know? And then they come. They’re looking for not necessarily looking for a quick fix because they know that they’ve been trying to diet for so long. What they call them and I’m like, okay, let’s take things easy for a few weeks. Let’s get you into place where you’re kind of really eating better. Eating good foods will focus on high protein complex carbs, eat it like exercising, and all the rest.
And they often are kind of like, what’s the calories you know? And how quickly should I be losing weight? And I’m like, listen, you’ve been trying to diet for 20 years, okay? Let’s take a step back. Let’s get you into a better routine before we focus so much on again, just like trying to be smaller. So yeah, with that age, definitely, I think, you know, things really kind of start you know kicking off then. And there’s, I suppose a lot of, you know, we are talking about internal pressures.
And I think a lot of the between marketing that we see a lot of the cultural influences. I think it’s not just about other people putting that on you like you were saying. It’s a lot of, I suppose, like, you know, internalized objectification or internalized misogyny again about like what a woman should be like and what they should do, how they should train, how they should eat. And they’re almost self projecting it onto themselves and onto other women as well.
So it’s not just all about, you know, this is, this is what the patriarchy is done you know. It’s a lot of, yeah, like I said, I thought it was internalized, objectification, more so than anything.

Paddy: Yeah. I always think it’s kind of lazy. I don’t mean that to anyone who actually does say it, but it is kind of lazy to just go, oh, it’s the patriarchy’s fault. That’s basically just giving us all the power. That’s literally just saying I’m not like, oh, I always have literally all the power I can literally through my actions through my words, completely influence your thoughts, your mentality, whatever.
I’m like, just give yourself more fucking credit you know. You have the ability to rule yourself, you know? There’s definitely a lot of hurdles on there definitely is traditionally for sure. There have been more and more barriers, but you still have that power in your hands. And I find it very anti resilient, if you will, to be like, oh, it’s the patriarchy, you know? And it’s like, yes, that is a component. And it’s played into it. But it’s not the solution.

Nicola: Definitely. I think as well when you talk about that, a lot of guys get really, really defensive.
And I think you know people our age you know, they don’t think of the way you know kind of the patriarchy. But if you step into rural Ireland, if you go into the hospital and speak to half of our patients, you’ll understand that this is still really entrenched in society. And it may not be in your you know 20 something year old male group. But it’s still so you know widespread in society you know.
I know we’re going to talk a little bit about kind of women’s kind of sports through the ages and kind of what you know fitness looked like for our parents age versus now. But it’s still very much in society, even though it might not be directly in your friend group. We have a lot of patients and I’m on the colorectal surgery team now. And you know it’s people that have had big surgeries for their rectal cancers. They’ve stoma bags, so now they need to learn how to manage them.
And I don’t know how many, how many older men you’re teaching them. Well, I want to teach them how to do that. But they’re like, you know, you need to learn how to empty the bag and they’re like, sure, why would I learn? The wife will be doing that for me. And they were like, no, no. You need to learn how to do this. So it’s still just completely entrenched in society, I think.

Paddy: Yeah, and again, it is one of those things where it’s like we can, again, ignore this, or we can go, okay, this is a problem. How do we come up with solutions for this in the future? And again, it comes down to better education.
And then better societal education in general. This stuff, unfortunately, and fortunately, to some extent, it doesn’t move very fast. Like we wouldn’t want it all to just fucking change overnight because that leaves us on very unsteady ground, like no one knows what the fuck’s happening. If society is just shifting day to day, but at the same time, it’s like some of these things are clearly very negative in terms of what women have to experience and have traditionally experienced you know. But I mean, look, we’re in our 20s now. Okay, we’ve gone through these formative years. There may be good.
They were maybe bad. Maybe you got some fucking awful marketing. Maybe you got some good marketing. Maybe you found yourself on the path. What are we looking at after this? Let’s go through the kind of life stages and the different things that are potentially going to come up for women throughout the next few years. And then we’ll kind of go into, well, maybe you want to do it while we’re doing it, maybe touch on any specific female issues that might come up. They might have come up during teen years, for example, you might be diagnosed with PCOS or something or you might have endometriosis.
You might have a few different things that can come up, but let’s just say, okay, we’re kind of moving through it. We’re kind of going through the life cycle stages, I should say, what’s going on? How does that influence all this stuff?

Nicola: Yeah. So I suppose separating it out, I suppose, into the reproductive years, and then I suppose that the perimenopause menopause are talking specifically about the reproductive years and the menstrual cycle, like we were saying like in school, we’re not really told how to track, we’re not tired about very basic level you know, what the fluctuations and hormones are, but we don’t know what that means for us and how that might affect us.
And then I suppose specifically to nutrition and training. There’s a lot of studies that are coming out at the minute. Well, there’s not actually a lot of studies. There’s a couple of studies that are coming out at the minute about how you know the menstrual cycle and how that might affect our training. And I suppose what’s happening now is that the menstrual cycle is such a minefield in that it is there’s so much not only variation between women, but variation between cycles for the same woman.
And so when we’re a lot what’s happening is people are seeing studies and they’re saying, okay, so during the follicular phase, you should be doing strength based training and you should be doing HIIT training when you’re on your period. And they’re trying to kind of, I suppose, really rigidly put in different stages of your cycle, what way you should be eating, what way you should be training? And they’re completely exposed, like, extrapolate in the information and being like, even though there might be slight benefits in implementing these practices.
It’s complete like, I suppose extrapolation of the evidence. And when you hear people who are actually researching in this area like Kelly McNulty from the period of the period, she’ll take these meta analyses and say, okay, you know, so what we’re saying is there might be a small benefit of doing just say hit during your period. There might be better increases in strength gains you know during kind of the late follicular phase.
But there’s so much female variation that this is just a general guideline. The best thing that you can do is track your own cycle, track your strength increases and track your symptoms. But like I said, what we’re seeing is people just taking that evidence and just kind of running with it. And it’s kind of, it’s kind of a double edged sword because I think a lot of people are getting excited about it and they want to know more about women’s health. And they’re like, I’m going to put this information out here. I know about women. And I want other women to know about this.
But really, it’s often not that helpful you know. And I think like rigidly you know, getting women to train and eat during different stages of the menstrual cycle might not actually be that helpful having these kind of blanket recommendations. So I suppose what I always say is get people to track themselves and not kind of be so based off of these studies that are showing kind of like marginal gains you know.
The most kind of specific recommendations are based on your own cycle and your own tracking. Rather than studies that have so much variation between them.

Paddy: So this is the thing as well. First of all, for years, women were treated as a confounding variable in studies. So they just weren’t included. You’re like, oh, well, I don’t want to have to deal with, like, I’m doing a research study on, I don’t know, the best, most optimal training program, like, oh, these women over here, they have this cycle.
So, you know, they might have, if I measure them on this week, they might have good results if the other performance could be all over the place. I’m just not going to include them. And that was the way like science was done. Fortunately, you know, first of all, if you realize that that’s unethical, especially in the medical context, because you’re like, well, women take drugs as well. So if you’re just prescribing drugs that have only ever been tested on men, we don’t know what the book is going to happen, but also in the stuff that’s related to the training and stuff, it’s like, when you’re actually not getting the full picture here, you don’t actually know what’s going on.
You’re trying to make evidence based recommendations, and you can only ever make evidence based recommendations for a 50% of the population because you’ve only done it in met you know. So it’s great that they’re including more women in this stuff, but again, when you actually get that onto a practitioner level, it can be very convoluted because you have a lot of inter individual variability. You have differences between even yourself where it’s like, oh, you’re one month versus the next one, could be completely different, you know?
So it’s like there’s so much variability that goes on. But there’s actually better skills to learn to deal with that stuff you know. We always talk about what’s called auto regulation you know. It’s like, okay, let’s actually track it. You feel perform, look, all of those different things. And then let’s actually modify our maybe our training intensity on the day. The amount of volume we’re doing in a given workout, the amount of volume we’re doing that week you know. Different things like that. We’re auto regulating based on the feedback that our body is giving us you know. And that’s a much better way of going about it.
However, it doesn’t have the same marketing appeal where it’s like, oh, well, based on the most recent studies on female population here, what we should be doing X modality or protocol at this time. And also, it has a great marketing ring to it where you can say, oh, we are going to periodize your training to your period. It has a great marketing ring. You know, it’s like, oh, periodization, period. Oh, it’s like, yeah, cool. We’re very scientific, you know? But unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, you’re much better off just auto regulating.
You’re much better off actually just learning to listen to these signals, but unfortunately, that actually requires a bit of, first of all, knowledge of what you’re looking for. But then also, you actually have to kind of spend a period of time actually tracking this stuff you know. It’s not like I can just go, boom, overnight, we know exactly. We have got one month data even. I know exactly what’s going to happen. Because I’m sure you see this with your clients as well. A lot of my female clients, they will have a lot of variability. They’ll be like, oh, it’s not as perfect four week cycle. Some of them, they’re like clockwork, literally they’ll be like, set my timer and be like, okay, cool.
Literally, I know exactly you’re on day 25 here, you know? Like, some of them are like that, but a lot of the time, it’s all over the place. They might have one cycle is 28 days, one cycle is 35 days. You know, but there’s some relative consistency to it, you know? And then especially in the populations that we deal with, because, you know, people come to us when they have different issues, you might be like, oh, I had a period, three months, no period period, 6 months period. You’re like, how are you supposed to understand what’s going on with that? If you are in that kind of oligomenorrhea stage where you’re like, I don’t like, I don’t have a regular cycle.
So how am I supposed to use this research here that has been crafted this perfect idea of cycling? And I was like, you’re not able to use that research. But you still are able to use the tracking your body, tracking what’s going on, auto regulation, how do you feel? How’s your performance going? Okay, let’s actually start using that data to inform how we actually train, you know?

Nicola: Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose that that’s a point that I like to drill home as well is that you know it’s not good practice to completely change someone’s training just because they’re a woman you know like.
They’re still fundamental things that we need to keep in programs and like you said like autoregulation is key. And then so this between the menstrual cycle and then you have a performance on a contraceptive with just brings in a whole other minefield into studies and then what you see then is that studies are mixing women that are on the oral contraceptive pill and not. And again, just the information. The quality of information just varies so, so wildly.
And then even within the oral contraceptive pill, you have 20 plus different types, not just the oral contraceptive, any kind of contraceptive. But yeah, so it’s just a minefield of information. And I think, yeah, the best thing that you can do is track your own symptoms and your own month. And whether that’s your natural cycle, whether that’s your own oral contraceptive pill, whether that’s you have one of the implantable devices, I think that’s the best thing that you can do.

Paddy: Yeah, and this is the thing like. I’ve seen so much data because obviously like three years I’ve had loads of female clients and it’s so interesting to see the differences, like our client will be like, oh, I’m on the copper IUD or something. And it’s like, okay, I’ve had 20 clients that have been on that. And this is the general response that they seem to get the next few weeks. This is things that I might even speak, things that you might experience, things that we might expect, and then this individual just performs completely differently than all the last 20 individuals that I had.
So it’s like, you have to just be very, you have to treat yourself as I was going to say an experiment, that sounds a bit wrong. But you have to treat yourself as I don’t know what’s going on until I actually start tracking this stuff until I actually start listening to my body until I actually learn about myself you know. You’re basically that N equals one. There’s only one person that matters when you look at all this stuff. And that is you. Well, we can have good general frameworks, and that’s what we’re going to talk about on the whole podcast series.
There’s still the issue of you need to look at this on an individual basis, you know? What’s the next then? Are there any specific issues or is there anything else you want to go on to maybe perimenopause, menopause? I don’t know.

Nicola: Yeah. So even in those reproductive theories, you have your pre and postnatal and how that’s developed over the years you know before you know being pregnant was an illness and you should lie in bed and you shouldn’t move a muscle and you should eat for two.
And you know all this misinformation. And that throughout the years and how much you know that has changed. And I suppose the view of pregnant women and pregnant bodies and breastfeeding and all the rest. But now we have a lot more specific recommendations that we can make. And I know we’ll go into more detail about that and one of the next podcasts. But why I want to just go through all these kind of briefly is because, like I said, I think sometimes talking about women’s health, it can be like, what is the difference?
And we do go through so many different life stages. So like I said, between the pre and postnatal, then there’s the perimenopause menopause. So it is important to know about these distinct different types before we can actually inform our practices.

Paddy: Yeah, a 100%. So if we won’t get into the pregnancy stuff today, because it’s a big old can of worms to get into, even pre post during everything.
But then after that, what could possibly happen next? Really, there’s not another life stage.

Nicola: Yes, absolutely. So then, so then we’re hitting, I suppose, into our 40s, we’re hitting perimenopause, and then menopause, I suppose, being you know an exact point in time, and then post menopause. So perimenopause, I think, like I was saying earlier, it’s something that’s really only you know being talked you know, a lot of more about now.
And I suppose, again, culturally, that’s going back to the menopause is seen as something that’s really taboo. Women still don’t like talking about it you know because it’s seen as something you know that their fertility is gone and back in, I suppose, however many hundred years ago, it was seen that women were now defunct you know. And this is where I suppose the idea of witches came from was women who were now what we know going through the menopause, they were caring for younger children and they were giving medicinal products from there and knowledge of being you know a lot older and wiser.
And then they were suddenly seen as witches you know. And I suppose that’s where that term comes from. So it’s a huge amount of taboo in that area. But I think it’s fantastic now that we are talking about it, and there’s a lot more information going into it, particularly the perimenopause and sort of setting yourself up for post menopausal age. And you know it’s something that you know I suppose I talk to even my mom a lot about.
My mom who’s, you know, in her late 60s and is a complete menopause denier, you know, and it’s just like, she’s like, I don’t believe in this menopause thing. Do you know what I mean? And she’s just like, I don’t believe it’s a thing. She’s like, I didn’t get any symptoms, nothing, nothing. But again, it’s completely counterproductive because like she yourself would have like osteopenia, like these changes have in fact happened. And I suppose for anyone that doesn’t know.
When you kind of hit perimenopause you start to have you know anoglatory cycles, your hormones are kind of going up down every sort of way, oestrogen starts to decline. Which will you’ll see things like a redistribution in body fat. So just like before, where you might have been holding most of your body fat in your lower limbs, you start seeing more kind of visceral fat distribution around your midsection like men.
With that decline in estrogen as well, as a protective effect on your bones on your heart. So this is when things like osteopenia, osteoporosis start to kick in. And this is I suppose where I’m coming back to that we need to start thinking about our health and fitness at a way younger age. And not just when things start to go wrong, like, you know, fractures due to osteoporosis, like one and two women, 50% in women, over the age of 50, will suffer a fracture and osteoporosis related fracture.
And I suppose it’s no good to start thinking about these things when it’s happened. And we need to start thinking about it before we start hitting our 40s. And I know that people don’t go into the gym. They don’t wake up in the morning and say, hey, like, I’m going to go like, you know, decrease my osteoporosis risk. But it is something that we need to know about that we can that we can start implementing this stuff but a way younger age that it’s going to have such a payoff like later in life for like, you know, a fit, strong, healthy body.

Paddy: Yeah. And again, like, in my family, like there’s so many women, and that sounds a bit weird, but like I have so many brothers, I have three sisters, like there’s so many women in and around my family because we just have big families, right? So a lot of my nieces, nephews, that doesn’t make sense. One of my nieces, like I have a lot of female nieces that make sense, obviously. But I’m like, you guys need to be doing stuff. I’m trying to tell them. You need to be doing this stuff because yeah, okay, cool. It’s fun and all to be like, oh, I want to build my booty or I want to get a little bit stronger.
I want to lose some fat or whatever, but it’s like, you have to also be thinking down the line, because as we talked about in, I think it was two or three, maybe 5 episodes actually ago. We’re talking about like the death risks, like all the things that people die from. It’s like one of the major killers is like, you have a slip, you have a fall, you break a bone, you break a hip, maybe, and then all of a sudden you’re bed bound, you lose a load of muscle and you’re dead within a year, you know? And you’re like, oh, well, the fall didn’t kill you, but the consequences of that did. And again, then it’s like, okay, well, you know, how could we prevent that?
And unfortunately, it starts 40 years ago. You’re a 60 year old who fell, and it’s like, you needed to be doing some sort of weight-bearing exercises, some sort of resistance work, either running, whatever. Before that, so that you had the requisite bone mineral density so that this wasn’t an issue when you were 60, but unfortunately, that’s a hard sell when you’re, again, like you said, getting up in the morning, you’re not really motivated to train today, and you’re like, oh, that’s a problem for future me you know. I’ll think about that in the future.
But unfortunately, you’re going to think about it in the future when you have a low bone mineral density and the issues start coming about.

Nicola: Yeah. Well, that’s a huge thing. And it’s something that you know that we see so commonly in the hospital as well, is that you know people are coming in with fractures like you were saying, they’re bed bound and they’re such a high, morbidity and mortality associated with that. The people don’t see. They think you know, okay, break bone you know. It’ll heal. I’ll just be on crutches for a few weeks.
But when you’re at that age and you know when someone who’s in their 70s, 80s comes in and has a broken bone when they leave, it’s like they’re confidence is not. Their mobility might never return to what it was before. Their quality of life you know obviously is impacted by that. So a lot of these things that we don’t really think about and only until it’s way too late.

Paddy: Yeah. Anyway, so look, we want to keep this going because we’re going to cover this stuff in depth.
I’m aware that we’re getting stuck into the weeds now and it’s like we actually want to save some of the good stuff for later on you know. So menopause, it happens. It’s a thing. We’ll cover it out in the future. Now, let’s move on to this. Well, I suppose we could touch on any female specific issues that maybe you want to touch on, maybe just briefly mention some things. If you have anything that comes to mind, I know we have podcasts planned that’ll go in depth to this stuff. And then I do want to get onto this kind of transition through the years, the last you know whatever you want to call it the last hundred years, I suppose, of women in sport and fitness and all that kind of stuff.
And then we’ll kind of finish up on that. Outside our bubble talk, because I want to finish up on that. So any specific issues that women are going to be dealing with that we might be dealing with or we might be dealing with that doesn’t even make sense, Patrick, that we are going to discuss on this podcast.

Nicola: Yeah. So I suppose, while we’re still on, well, we just touched on kind of menopause while we touched on pre and postnatal, again, something that we’re starting to talk a lot more about and I was pelvic health.
And one thing that whether you are a female yourself, a female who trains who’s had a kid or not, or if you’re someone who’s training women, I suppose the importance of this subject.
And I know it’s something that might be uncomfortable for a lot of people to talk about, but actually putting something about whether you know if someone’s like, had a child, or even if not, if to say if you’re an oriented continence, you’re in your attention, anything is something that they suffer with, to put that on a screening form you know, with the client, and I suppose, this might be something that someone seems like minutia, but it’s like so many times with clients of mine that pelvic health was never discussed, and then subsequently, it’s something that really affects their training sessions.
I was training a lady back when I did in personal training, in person, personal training. And I had just taken her over from another trainer. And I remember bringing her over to the TRX and I think I was trying to get her to do squats. And then she started jumping. Don’t you enjoy when I was like oh no, you don’t have to do like jumping squats and she was just like, really? And I could tell by her reaction, you know, that there was something else going on. And I was just like, she was like, oh, you’re the last guy, you know, had me doing jumping squats.
And I was just like, all right, and after three kids, how do you find that? And she was like, not good. She was like, guys, don’t understand these things. You know, and for her, what this meant was she was, you know, running to the bathroom during sessions. She was always making sure that she was wearing, you know, black trousers. And I suppose the implications of this is that, you know, someone might have anxiety going to a training session. They’ll probably never do that session on their own. And there’s a way higher drop off, right?
For something that, you know, could have been screened so easily on the questionnaire. And I know for a lot of women in that age group, it’s something that, you know, they’re like, I have my Kegel exercises. I know I could go and do all this. She was just like, look, I’m just dealing with it. And, you know, it’s fine. I just want to avoid that. So that is one thing that I think can affect women’s quality of life so much. Another consultation that I had recently was for it’s not just something that affects like older women.
It was very young girl. You know, who’s on medication, essentially for an overactive bladder. And again, unless we had screened for that, you know, I would have been trying to get her to drink like three litres of water a day, you know, wake up, like smash 500 mils. When that’s actually completely inappropriate for her. So it’s something, again, it’s a small detail, but it affects so many women. And for something that is just as simple as throwing it down on a forum and you know trying to broach this up, the subject can make a huge difference.
So there’s between pelvic health, how we ask is another huge one.

Paddy: On the pelvic health one, because I do want to actually emphasize that this is something that you’re going to see from teens to whatever, 90 year olds you know. You might be listening to that going, yeah, cool, cool, yeah. If I have a mother or three kids, something I look out for, but you could see this in your 20s. You see this all the time as well in sports like CrossFit, you know, where women will be doing like a deadlift or something and they’ll pee a little, you know, or power lifting happens as well.
And it’s like, okay, what’s actually going on there? It’s like, oh, there’s something going on with the pelvis. And I’ve had clients like that run the gamut between people with, you know, very, we’ll call it loose pelvic floors, where it’s like, you know, they don’t have as much control as they’d like. And I’ve also had the opposite where they have a tighter pelvic floor, and they’re having issues with, you know, the muscles pulling and pushing different things, you know, I shouldn’t say like that. But it’s pulling on like the urinary tract urinary. The bladder, all that kind of stuff, and it’s like, okay, well, how do we deal with this? Like, if you don’t screen for that, you don’t ask them.
Like, you’re not going to know what’s going on. They’re going to be like, oh, well, I can’t really do today’s session because X, Y, Z and it’s like, oh, well, what is the actual issue? It’s like, oh, you can see that I have planned here. I have these jumping jacks and medicine ball slams into deadlifts. And whatever else. And it’s like, they don’t want to do that because they know they’re basically going to piss themselves at the end of that session or during the session or they’re going to be running back to the toilet and don’t want to have that conversation with you unless you actually dig a little bit deeper you know. So there is a huge amount to this.
There’s also relatively weird things that can occur if you don’t really understand, well, maybe if you do understand pelvic floor condition like, I had a client before that literally no joke orgasm when they did knee raises or hanging leg raises, you know? And it’s like, if you don’t know what’s going on there, it’s like, oh, what the fuck is it? What’s happening you know? So you’re going to see these things if you’re a coach yourself, or if you’re a woman yourself, you might experience these things and all of a sudden you’re like, oh, how do I respond to this in the gym? Like, what do I do?
Whether it’s like, again, you have to do your Kegel exercises or you just have to avoid certain exercises, or you have to do some sort of pelvic floor conditioning, whatever it is. This can affect you throughout your life.

Nicola: Absolutely. And I suppose that that’s the other thing is that it’s not only trying to screen for, you know, if it affects women, if it affects your specific client, because likely like, again, pelvic health is so taboo that even putting that on your screening for might for that woman later in life, it might make them more open to seeking health about pelvic floor issues if they arise.
So it’s just about I suppose kind of breaking those barriers, breaking that stigma, and then later on, you know, let’s say you’re training them for a year and then maybe they become they have a kid and then suddenly they’re having pelvic floor issues. They might remember that time that you had that on your screening form and that you might have an understanding of what’s going on and they might come back to you then as well. So I suppose it’s there’s so much to it and it’s multifactorial. And again, it’s something that is so small.
But I think that needs to be kind of, yeah, drilled home. A 100%.

Paddy: What’s the next issue?

Nicola: Next issue. Let’s go. So IBS definitely. And I think people are probably sick to the teeth of hearing about women in IBS. But I think again, if you’re a coach, it’s even just knowing how to adjust exercises if your client is struggling with IBS and that’s like exercises where you might have them lying on the front doing lying like or if it’s things like hip thrusts, that if they’re having IBS symptoms, having like a heavy barbell on their hips, again, this is just another barrier to exercise.
So it’s about screening for these things. It’s about checking in if they’re having those you know, whether it’s kind of like bloating, whether it’s cramping, whether it’s diarrhoea, constipation, if they’re having stomach issues, and knowing you don’t have to be an expert in any of these things you know, but it’s knowing how to screen for them.

Paddy: So this is also the beauty of the health and fitness world. You might not be an expert in something, but you know there’s someone else in your circle that is, and you can go, oh, I’ll refer you to that person, you know? It’s like, that’s why we built a team.
All the coaches at Triage. Its like, we built a team because I’m not an expert in certain things. Gary’s an expert in that. Cool. I’m like doing a consult with Gary. Or Brian’s an expert in that, oh, I do a console with Brian you know. So you need to build that network if you’re a coach yourself. You definitely need to build out that network. But if you’re an individual yourself and you’re trying to deal with this stuff, again, you might have a coach, they might not be an expert in this stuff, don’t be afraid to reach out to someone else and ask for their opinion, their advice, whatever.

Nicola: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
But yeah, just knowing what to do and knowing how to refer, knowing how to adjust exercises, knowing how to adjust nutrition. And I suppose asking questions in the right way sensitively and giving, I suppose women enough room to back out of a question as well. So if you are asking about pelvic health, you know, giving them an opt-out. If that makes sense.

Paddy: Oh, a 100% like. You don’t want to make it uncomfortable for people.
And that’s unfortunately, I think, especially because the fitness industry is largely a male dominated industry. So you’re like, well, I don’t want to talk about this with my 30 year old client. You don’t want to talk about your 20 year old client, your 30 year old client or 40 or 50 or 60 year old client. You don’t talk about it, saying you’re like, oh, I’ll just you know, I won’t touch on it. Where in reality, you should touch on it. If they’re not willing, they’re not receptive to that discussion, but that’s okay. At least they know that if the time ever comes, you’re willing to have the discussion you know. And that’s the main thing. So what’s the next issue?

Nicola: Those are the two, I suppose main ones at different subsets of that you know, like you’ve PCOS, you’ve amenorrhea, which is huge. You know, endometriosis, a lot of, I suppose, kind of more kind of medical issues. And yeah, I suppose they’re all kind of more subsets, but I think like things like IBS is like the main one that we’re hearing a lot of it. Yeah.

Paddy: And the thing about it is, especially with the IBS, well, actually, a lot of the issues that women face like, there are differences in terms of like, I actually did my dissertation from my undergraduate in sex differences in inflammation and depression between men and women, obviously, you know, and like some of the stuff you’re seeing, like you see in that when you’re actually like really dig into the research and you’re like, Jesus Christ, we’re basically two different species here, you know? And it’s like, there’s a reason why it’s more common in women. There’s reasons for why certain issues are more common in women. Or other issues are more common in men.
And if you understand that stuff, it actually gives you so much more, I don’t know what the word would be, leeway to actually implement change in your life. You know, you’re like, okay, I can actually, this is not something that I have to face alone. This is something that other women experience, you know, this is something that has solutions to it, or at least protocols we can engage in that can manage this, you know? So the way we start with that conversation is by having that conversation. And again, that’s what we will do in future episodes.
We will actually dig into this stuff because even though some of these things are more medical in nature and it’s not like you can just endometriosis while there are certain exercise things we should be looking at, certain nutritional stuff. It’s not like you can just fix this. Magic it away with nutrition or training, but having said that, you should still be aware of, okay, well, what is endometriosis? How does that affect me? What are the likely complications with this? How could I potentially at least manage this in whatever capacity with my nutritional interventions with my training?
How do I do all that stuff you know? You don’t need to have a medical degree or anything to understand this stuff or to act on this stuff. But again, we need to have that understanding as a starting point, right? So look, we’ll get into a load more issues in future episodes. But I do want to just round that this episode kind of finish up on it. Well, there’s kind of two things you want to finish up on. Excuse me. This is the kind of women in sport and fitness over the years because this is it has obviously changed you know. I remember obviously I say obviously, I was born in 1992.
I’m an old lad, right? I’m getting on in years. I’m in my 30s you know. But I remember when I was growing up, I saw guys exercise, didn’t really see women exercise, you know? I saw women exercise in schools, you know, like I lived beside a school or I lived beside of school, I should say. I saw women exercising at school. I was a secondary school. And then I didn’t really see them exercise after that. You know, you might see one or two, like I remember sort of like, you know, Sonya O’sullivan or something, you know, being like, oh, like, you know, do some running.
But that was kind of it. You know, you didn’t really see athletic bodies. You didn’t really see people, you know, pushing sport and stuff. And that might be just, you know, from a marketing perspective, like they just weren’t showcased, you know, on the television or in ads or whatever else. But I don’t think there was as much activity or activity, I suppose, is the wrong word, but it’s also the right word. There wasn’t as much women in sport and activities back in the day, you know? And that’s obviously changed a lot over the last few years.
But let’s, you know, let’s start wherever you want to start, whatever year you want to start, because all of history, so we can start in the Paleolithic times if you want. But let’s talk about women in sport and fitness and how that has changed over the years.

Nicola: Yeah. Yeah. So I suppose when you look out onto the gym floor now, there’s still a disproportionate amount of men to women. And you know it’s supposed to understand that. You do need to reach back. I think it was like 2012, it was when women were allowed to boxing in the Olympics you know, which is so recently.
You know, I think we were talking about before, how, you know, women weren’t allowed to do marathons because they thought that their wombs were going to fall out, that they shouldn’t do impact exercises that they shouldn’t do contact sport because they were going to, you know, hurt their reproductive organs. So this is something that, you know, as I was being ground through society through the ages. And then when we go back to even like our parents age, and, you know, the kind of exercise on tape and you’re doing, you know, like the step aerobics.
And so that was the now, the new standard of exercise that women were supposed to be doing, like a mixture of that, a mixture of yoga, Pilates, you know, gentle exercises. And now, I suppose what we’re seeing is, is a lot more women in the gym, which I suppose is, which is absolutely amazing. And I think CrossFit does a lot to thank for that. And I suppose Instagram is like a double edged sword with regard to that because it is given a lot of women, I suppose, easier access to the gym.
It’s a lot easier to be able to follow someone and see what they’re doing and being able to replicate that in the gym. But I suppose we have now this whole other area era of body dysmorphia and this other thing that we are pushing towards you know. If you’re like a 90s kid, like myself you know, we grew up looking at, you know, Kate Moss and we grew up looking at the Victoria’s Secret Victoria’s Secret supermodels and that was our standard of like what a woman should be, what a woman’s body should look like.

Paddy: 2000s Tumblr aesthetic you know. Skinny legs, thigh gap.

Nicola: Exactly, exactly. And how that’s changed to know your I suppose like, you know, maybe more of a Kim K body type or like, you know, the strong not skinny mantra, we have just, I suppose, replaced these body ideals in a lot of way, in a lot of ways. And, you know, a part of that is, you know, productive and the other, another part of it is counterproductive.
And I think what we were talking about before is that like I like to separate kind of women’s fitness into like a couple of different worlds you know. And one being this, I suppose, fad dieting worlds. That’s full of like skinny teas. You know, IV, vitamin drips, and, you know, low carb and like, you know, weight watchers and like extreme diets, which take up like the majority of the general population like, let’s be real. Like, um, and then you have, you know, the whole the rise of the fitness influencer.
And they’re doing their bits on Instagram. And it’s like, follow my workout and, like, get ready for the gym with me. Um, and showing their, like, you know, perfect days. Um, and then you have like another subset of people that, you know, know what they’re doing in the gym. And I kind of like split that again into like two different sections. So people don’t know what they’re doing in the gym. And half of them have a really positive influence. They’re putting out really good information.
So if you’re following someone like, you know, like Meg squats or Katie crew, they’re really like approachable fitness influencers that are putting out, again, like really fantastic information. But then the other side of it, and like both men and women who know what they’re doing, but are just like bashing everyone else, essentially, and saying like, you know, those booty bound workers are stupid and like cardio stupid and like you should train like this and you need to train heavy.
And you need to, you know, whatever. And again, we’re just, you know, taking, instead of kind of building, they think that they’re kind of building women open. Yeah, women can be strong and absolutely. But I feel like it’s just kind of redirecting the idea of the ideal of what women should be and just, again, just pushing it back. You know, like regressing in a sort of way and saying, actually, women should be training like this. Women should be doing this. And I think I find it kind of like regressive.
And I’m really, when people start, you know, going on and like giving out about like booty bounded workouts or giving out about influencers. I’m just like, you know, who is this actually benefiting? And I think you can you can talk about how these things aren’t beneficial and how there are better ways to train and better ways to do your nutrition without kind of slamming someone else down.

Paddy: Yeah, like we’re a pretty modality agnostic here you know. I’m like, I just want to see people exercising in some capacity.
And you see this all the time where people are like, just in the general fitness industry, we’re like, this is the only way. This is the way we should do it. If you don’t do it this way, you’re fucking stupid. What do you even do in blah, blah, blah, blah. And that’s just not helpful. And you do, unfortunately, see that a lot marketed towards women because I don’t know what it is, but it seems to be this kind of appeal to authority almost. That’s the wrong kind of fallacy that I’m talking about, but it is kind of appeal to, oh, I know what I’m doing. What you’re doing is stupid. You should feel bad.
And then when they feel bad, it’s like, now come to me because I’ll actually I’ll put you on the path. I will show you the way and that’s how they’re getting their clients. And it’s not necessarily bad. Like it is bad because it’s bad. But it’s not necessarily bad because that individual then starts exercising. The reason it’s bad is because that might not be what that individual enjoys. That might not be what our individual actually wants you know. Like you see all the time, like the vast majority of the health and fitness content on Instagram or whatever is produced or that is produced for women is like, oh, this is how I train my glutes.
This is the exercises that I do for my glutes. This is how I grew my glutes. I can 5 inches or whatever it is you know. And some of it’s positive. Some of it’s good. But what if you’re just an individual? It’s like, I’d actually just like running. I just want to know how to improve my running. You know, the vast majority of the content is just not being produced for you. And it’s very hard to then just be like, all right, what do I actually what should I be focusing on in the gym? What should I be focusing on with my nutrition?
These people are all talking about these low calorie diets or these people who are talking about I should go on a bulk and like you know it’s like there’s so much noise, so much confusion and it’s unfortunate and I don’t actually think it has gotten better. That might be a bit of a controversial opinion. I don’t know if you agree or not but I don’t think it’s gotten better. Like I actually think it’s like we’re in the same like I was just disgusting with you that like you can go to the British Museum and you can see like you know one of the oldest medical textbooks and libraries they’re in cuneiform and everything I don’t know if you can read cuneiform you know.
But like one of the oldest medical texts in the world, they’re talking about like you know female like reproduction, female things and how do we deal with this issue and all this kind of stuff and I’m like we basically do the same kind of thing in this day and age you know. I like to think that at Triage we don’t but you know this is what the health and fitness world does is like here’s this random thing that we’re just going to say oh that’s how we deal with this and it’s like that’s not actually helpful you’re just dictating what this woman should want or what this woman should do and you didn’t even listen to them.
You never actually went in and got like what’s the actual goal? What do you as an individual want? Now I do think certain subsections of the health and fitness world have gotten better at this, but I also think unfortunately they fall victim to that kind of what would you call toxic positivity where it’s like okay that’s actually listen to you. Let’s have a bit more emotional intelligence here. Let’s actually talk to the individual in front of us but then unfortunately a lot of those individuals go into this kind of you should have unconditional acceptance of yourself.
And as we were kind of discussing before the podcast, that can lead to a situation where if you feel like shit like imagine you are that you know 15, 16 year old, a woman and you’re kind of like, I don’t like my body. I don’t like who I am. You’re still trying to figure yourself out. And this person is telling you to just unconditionally love yourself you know. You’re perfect the way you are. That’s not really helpful. Well, you might think it is how folks are like, oh, you’re going to teach them how to love themselves. Like if they feel like a piece of shit you know, and you tell them that, this is as good as it gets. You’re perfect the way you are.
Where did it go from there you know? You want to actually help them deal with the things that they have going on. You want to actually help them rather than just building this kind of like, oh, you should love yourself. That’s not actually helpful, even though it sounds compassionate.

Nicola: Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, it has just become a minefield of people who are you know pro diet, anti diet, and you shouldn’t diet and then people are like, no, it is okay to die. And it’s hard to know what to listen to. And like you’re saying so much noise on social media.
And like we have to remember a huge part of this is like clickbait as well. Like a lot of the stuff that is going off on Instagram that is going up on TikTok. It’s trying to get people to share and to like it. So whether it’s like you know just, oh, follow my workout or whether it’s like you know kind of love yourself. They’re just trying to get people to have that instant gratification. And you know following random workouts from random people, that’s not really going to help you at all.
Okay? It’s going to get you into the gym and it’s going to get you exercising. And that’s amazing. That in itself is a good idea. It’s a good stepping stone. But like in the long term, they’re just trying to get you to click onto the page. They’re just trying to get you to like the workout, share it, particularly if it’s like aesthetically pleasing. And then a lot of, yeah, like you’re saying a lot of this stuff with like you’re saying like toxic positivity. Like, no, it’s fine.
Like just try your best, like just, you know, do this, everything’s fine. And they’re asked to like come a certain point where you’re just like, no, I’m actually going to, you know, kind of try a little bit harder. I’m going to like do this for myself. I am going to put more of a focus on my health. I’m going to try and train a little bit harder. I’m going to, you know, try and improve like these are all these facets of health. And I’m not just going to say like everything is blanket fine.

Paddy: Yeah, 100%. And this is also just to finish up on this.
In our little bubble you know, when we look at individuals, we follow certain individuals. But like you said earlier on, when you’re interacting with the general public, the beliefs that they have, the knowledge that they have about these different things, whether it’s just female health in general, or it’s exercise in general, or it’s nutrition in general, or it’s exercise or nutrition for a subset of whatever it is. It’s actually very poor. And we kind of get lost, especially in the fitness industry, where it’s kind of just this like circle jerk where it’s like, oh, I just want to put out content to impress my following and press to my peers and show, oh, I actually know this.
So if I have knowledge on this stuff, I’m like, we all fall victim to it because we want to see knowledgeable to our peers. But it actually isn’t helpful in a lot of cases you know. And it does, like it has this kind of bubble effect where you only listen to the voices in your mobile and it’s like, oh, I think that industry is getting better because of this. When in reality, it’s like if you actually look outside that level, I can speak outside that bubble, you realize you’re like, okay, well, actually the vast majority of people are not in good health. The vast majority of people don’t know what to do.
The vast majority of people are actually exposed to really fucking shit information. Like if you just go down to your local, whatever, Tesco or whatever store around you, pick up a magazine, that’s for women you know, whatever it is you know. You look at that, there’s going to be all these random fitness health, nutrition advice. You’re like, what the fuck is going on? Like I remember when I was trying to learn about this stuff like I was going to even speak today. When I was going to the local library, I just want to learn about nutrition and different things like that, or I’d go into a bookstore or get a nutrition book or even just getting magazines like men’s health and all these different things you know.
And a lot of the stuff was actually just pure fucking crap. And me as like a 15 year old, 16 year old, and I’m trying to learn about this stuff. The information was so bad, but I can imagine if you’re a woman, it’s even worse. But also, I remember distinctly thinking, because a lot of the content that you’d find just in a library or whatever is dictate or dedicated towards women because it’s like, this is an easier market. We can sell to these women. We can sell this fat last night.
We can sell this, whatever, because, you know, like you were talking about, you know, you have these clients that come to you after 20 years of back and forth dieting, like, I always call this the health and fitness merry go round, you know, and they literally are around and around like, oh, they do this diet to do this detox. They do just whatever. And then they step off and, you know, they’re in the exact same place that they were at 20 years ago, you know? But also, this goes to the kind of approach that we take, you know, they step off that health and fitness area around and they’re dizzy. They’ve been around that a few times. So what we really need to do in that initial stage is actually create some stability.
We need to just get some basic, good habits, and then we can start really going towards a specific goal when you’re out of it. Like, I couldn’t tell you the amount, and we will talk about this when we’re talking about like amenorrhea and different things like that. But I couldn’t tell you the amount of clients that I’ve had that come to me and they’re like, I have an aesthetic goal. I have this certain goal. I want to reach a certain physique. And we get them out because they come to me because they have ammenorrhea or something. We get them out of that. We get them some more food. We get them more realistic exercise patterns or whatever. And then they’re like, Jesus, I actually don’t want that you know.
I was looking for that for the last 5 years. And I basically died in myself into this amenorrhea state, but it wasn’t actually something I wanted. I wanted to feel strong. I wanted to feel fit athletic, whatever it was. And once we get to that, I actually don’t want to change my body composition. They might want to change it a little bit. They’re like, oh, I wouldn’t mind growing bigger glutes or my shoulders or whatever, but it’s not like this obsession towards getting leaner, you know? So you kind of have to step back and it’s unfortunate that, unfortunately, that’s not what the vast majority of people are exposed to.
They’re exposed to this crash diet, lose 15 pounds in two weeks, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know?

Nicola: Yeah. No, I mean, like once you step outside the health and fitness world, things do start to get wild. And I don’t know how many, you know, consultations that I had with people, particularly when I was working in the gym. They’re like, yeah, I want to lose weight. And I’m like, okay, this is mostly going to come down to your diet. And they’re like, what? You know, like, what do you mean? A conversation that I had with someone yesterday in the hospital, she was just like, oh, you know, I want to lose a few pounds.
And she’s like, what should I do exercise? And I was just like, yeah, I mean, you’re mostly going to look at your diet you know, kind of what you’re eating. And she’s like, oh, really? Like, what? Low carb you know. And the conversation just, you know, like you can imagine just spiralled from there. You know, like I had a client once. And again, like, a woman who, you know, had like a big corporate job. And she was, you know, was carrying a good bit of weight in her 40s.
And she was quite reserved about what she was eating you know. I’d be trying to, she definitely wasn’t going to use MyFitnessPal or anything like that. So I’d be like, you know, maybe if you can maybe do a food diary for one day or if you can send me photos, I tried a couple of different techniques and she was just quite like reserved about, you know, what she was eating. And then I was like, okay. So like run me through like what you ate today. And she was like, oh, no, no, my diet is good. My diet is good. I’m snacking on apples, you know?
And I was just like, okay, okay. She’s like, yeah, yeah. Just constantly snacking on apples. And I was just like, okay, how many you know how many apples are we talking here? Just constantly. I’m just always snacking on apples. And I just won’t say your name, but I was just like, you know, if you’re eating like you know 5 plus apples a day, you’re trying to lose weight, you’re 5 foot 6 woman. I was like, you could be eating like a third of your calories just on these apples a day and she’s just like, what?
Just completely like new, you know, just like and I think just, yeah, the quality of information that’s out there is terrible. And once you actually start talking to people outside of health and fitness, like you start to realize how much room for improvement there is and like public health measures in schools in workplaces.

Paddy: Yeah, there’s a lot going on. Luckily, we have just started a podcast series on all of this stuff.
So in the coming episodes, we will dive deeper onto a lot of the stuff that we brought on in this episode, but also a lot of stuff that we didn’t cover in this episode because there are certain things that they kind of just need an entire episode on their own. Some things you know, you kind of need to build that knowledge as we said. You kind of need to just like we did with this episode, just bring awareness to a few different topics, make a note of, oh, this is a thing. This is the thing. But then there’s some things that we need to actually build some knowledge of what the physiology is. What’s actually going on? Why do you have a menstrual cycle?
What’s actually going on? Like you said, you don’t get that education. Well, in Ireland, you didn’t anyway. You don’t get that education of like, well, what do these cycle why is it happening? Well, what’s going on when it’s working correctly? What’s going on when it’s not working correctly? Do we actually have any levers to pull in terms of influencing that stuff? Which we do in a lot of cases. But again, there’s other things as well, like we said, there’s certain medical things where we don’t have as much leeway in terms of what we can do as coaches or as individuals, a lot of them are in the medical sphere, but we do still have an impact with the dietary stuff, the training stuff, or the issue at hand, might impact on what we’re doing with all this other stuff.
Like we just touched on, you know, like you could have endometriosis or something, you could be like, okay, well, what does that actually mean for my training, you know? How do I actually alter that, you know? But anyway, we’re going to wrap that up here. It was a pleasure having you on, Nicola. You do have coaching spaces available if people are interested you know. So if you’re enjoying this stuff and you’re like, oh, I want someone to help me navigate this stuff and Nicola is the woman for you. The doctor for you. You hate being called doctor, but doctor Nicola will sort you out.
But also, if you’re interested guys, we do have content in the coaches corner. We do produce content on our social media because always posting stuff about female specific stuff. So if you’re not following there and you want to learn more about this, the links, et cetera, are all in the description wherever you’re listening to this on. The links are there somewhere. So follow us social media. We do have stuff in the coaches corner on this stuff. We will have stuff in the future about this.
But the main thing that you can do if you want to learn more about this is actually just subscribe to the podcast because for the next maybe ten, 15 episodes, we’re going to be talking about this stuff. So do you have any parting words to Nicola? No, just keep following the podcast. Fantastic. Anyway, peace out guys.

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