Women’s Fitness Expert: What You NEED To Know About Dieting & Exercise | Dr. Stephanie Estima

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - DOAC

Dr. Stephanie Estima challenges harmful fitness myths, advocating for sustainable health over weight loss. She shares personal and professional insights on women's hormonal health, body composition, and the dangers of extreme dieting. The episode emphasizes building strength, bone density, and self-worth beyond the scale.

Key takeaways

• Dieting to be 'skinny' harms long-term health
• Muscle gain improves metabolism and confidence
• Hormonal health is key for women's fitness

Transcript preview

I want women to stop being losers. And so I am on a mission to really undo the genuinely terrible advice that most women have been given as it concerns their health and their fitness. So we're going to talk through some actionable strategies on how to build a body that has curves, more of an hourglass figure. But Stephen, if I can be very honest with you, I am pissed off because we've been sold a lie that our worth is the number on the scale. And I've seen tens of thousands of thousands of patients over my 20 years. and right now a lot of online dialogue is I want to be tone I want to have the Pilates body be as small as possible so this is where I get a little fired up because I also have personal experience struggling with my own weight and my own worth I was trying to become what I thought was the right thing and I had massive problems afterwards so I am gonna be very transparent and honest with you the pursuit of skinny is a bad thing with devastating consequences like you're gonna end up with bone disease like osteoporosis So there's lots of things on the desk here in front of us that I'd love to go through. We've got these five fitness myths. Yes, so one of them, for example, is a lot of women are scared to consume more carbohydrates because they think it's going to make them fats. But we need carbohydrates for our mood, our sleep, even performance at the gym. And then there's also women are scared that if they're lifting heavy weights, that they're going to start looking like a bodybuilder. But that's almost impossible. 97 to 98 percent of women don't have the hormonal environment. And then we've also got these archetypes here. So there's four archetypes that women identify themselves in their fitness journey. And the most common woman that I see, skinny fat Sophie. And we'll talk about what this means. So let's talk about what the women listening should understand about hormones. How do you think about fasting in your menstrual cycle? What are the specific issues that mother's face as it relates to fitness? I mean, there's lots of things that I'd love to talk about. 100% 100% that makes me so excited. if you follow a show will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know and the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so much. Dr. Stephanie Estima. Why is it you do what you do? Like ultimately what is it you're trying to change in the world or what impact you trying to have and who are you trying to have it for? Well, I am on a mission to really undo the genuinely terrible advice that most women have been given as it concerns their health and their fitness. And what I mean by that is for the vast majority of health and fitness goals, for women, It's about becoming skinnier, it's about losing weight, it's about dropping a dress size. Stephen if I can be very honest with you, I want women to stop being losers. I want them to stop trying to lose all the time. And instead what I would love for them to do is to shift their focus from losing and focusing more on what they have to gain. So how much muscle can they gain, how much bone density can they gain, how much capacity from their joints, their tendons, their ligaments, can they gain? Can they work towards building a body that they love and trust and enjoy living in? Why do you want that for women? Specifically this losing gaining thing? We've been sold a lie that our worth is the number on the scale, which is by the way, you know, when you're weighing yourself, this is really just a reflection of your relationship with gravity, no more, no less, no less, right? we are told that when we fit into a certain dress size that we are now worthy that we will somehow have arrived that is not the full experience of being women women can be strong women can be capable women can be competent and you can't do that when you're starving yourself when you're over-exercising and you're not prioritizing your recovery or treating recovery like it is something that you have to earn. So are you saying being skinny is a bad thing or I'm saying that the pursuit of skinny at all costs is a bad thing. So right now a lot of online dialogue is strong is the new skinny. I don't want to pit those two things against each other, but I do want to, like if you are obese, you are much better not being obese, right? But it is the pursuit of skinny at the sacrificial altar of everything else. So if you are somebody who values being slim, the likelihood that you are going to pick up heavy weights or weights that challenge you with enough effort and intensity is going to be lower. The likelihood that your bone density is going to be sufficient over the arc of your life is going to be lower. You are going to likely under-consume calories. If you are someone who thinks that they've won because they can fit into, you know, you're 40 and you can fit into a size, whatever dress. But when you're 65 you have osteoporosis, you have a osteoporosis, you have a one you've been tricked. Tricked by who? A society that tells us that our worth is solely based on how small we are. And who are you? Like in terms of why this matters so much to you as Dr. Stephanie, what do I what context do I need to know that? Because I can see you're a little bit pissed off. Yeah, I am pissed off in a loving way. Yes. I will say it that way. I have professional experience. in this and I also have personal experience in it as well. I have an undergrad in neuroscience and psychology from the University of Toronto. When I was pursuing that I became a fitness instructor, a personal trainer, so this was very young I started having my first exposure to seeing firsthand how people were setting goals for themselves and having a difficult time achieving it. Went on to the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in Toronto Canada and then I was in I've been in practice for 20 years. So I've seen tens of thousands of patients over my 20 year tenure and the same pattern kept showing up over and over and over. And then personally, I also, you know, just being a woman living in this society grew up also struggling with my weight, trying to control my what I ate, trying to do lots and lots of cardio to keep my weight down into what I ate, I thought was the ideal body type. I competed in a figure competition, which was really the first moment for me where I really felt like the science failed me because I had followed everything to a T. Do lots of cardio, restrict your calories, you have to earn your recovery. The day that I got up on stage, I was 11% body fat. So just for context, women have about 10 to call it 13% essential body fat. I was 11% body fat. I was 11% body fat. beneath that then you start to get into a lot of trouble. So I was right at the bottom range of that. Most women, a healthy body fat percentage is something like, call it 18 to 25 percent. I had lost my period for two months before, I think it was two or three months before I stepped on stage. I ended up with hormonal issues, my period, I had, it took a long time for that to regulate again. I gained all the weight back that I had lost and I felt like a total failure. and I felt like the science had failed me. And it caused you a lot of pain. I hated myself. Like full stop. I looked in the mirror. I hated what I saw. I would pinch, I would pick. I was like I wish this, I wish that, I wish I wish. The other thing I'll say is the weeks before I stepped up on that stage, people were coming up to me and showering me with compliments. People were like, oh my God, you look amazing what are you do you look amazing what are doing what are doing. What are And so I think it's I think it's so confusing for women. Maybe we lose the weight or we we go on this health journey which is often just code word for getting smaller and we we get showered with these external compliments and at the time I was starving because I was not eating I was completely overworked. I wasn't sleeping and I didn't have my period like I was not the picture of health but everybody was telling me how amazing I was we hitch our worth to what the outside world tells us rather than thinking about who we need to be and how we need to show up for ourselves first in order to be able to give to everybody else but also just unhitch ourselves from other people's expectations of us. And for the women and for all the people I guess that have clicked to listen to this conversation right now, what are they going to leave this conversation with specifically and how is that going to impact their life? So this is for women and the men who love them. So this is for everyone. I think for women, maybe you have been doing like the good girl thing like I was doing, you're doing the things that you thought you should have been doing, but you still don't have the dream body or the body composition that you want. We're going to talk through some actionable strategies on how to do that. I think if you're in midlife, so you're in your 40s, your 50s, and maybe you're finding that you used to do those strategies, and now, and now, not working for you as well or as much as they once did. We're going to maybe break a little bit of your paradigm in the way that you think you're thinking about health. And how old are you? I'm 48. I think it's important context. Yeah. But you're also a mother? I'm a mother of two, yeah. Of two. Mother of two and then I have a step son as well. Okay. So there's lots of things on the desk here in front of us that I'd love to go through. They're all things that really, really interest me. We're all fitness myths in this envelope here that will reveal at some point and these archetypes here. Yes. Where do you believe the best place to start this conversation is? I think that maybe we can talk about the archetypes because I think that it sets the stage for allowing women to identify themselves in their fitness journey however that is. Okay, my first overwhelmed Olivia, this woman wants to do the right thing. Okay, So she is on social media and within a couple of minutes of going on social media she sees someone saying plants are trying to kill you. Olivia you should never have plants they're terrible for you and she keeps scrolling and then she comes upon someone else who says actually plants are great for you they have lots of fiber they have lots of phytonutrients etc so she's like oh okay that's weird let me look up some fitness and then same thing with the fitness some people say you don't want to get bulky So you need to do light weights high reps and then there's other people that are like that's not true you can as long as you're bringing the muscle close to failure you will build muscle So she's getting the I like to call it in phobicity It's like so much information it's too much information that she ends up getting you know it's like analysis paralysis and this woman I have a soft spot for her because she just is so scared to start something else and fail at it because she doesn't want that to reinforce her own schema, her own perception of her being a failure. So she doesn't do anything. When we think about overwhelmed Olivia, we don't want to get her A to Z, we don't want to get her all the way to her goal. We just want to give her a couple of quick wins to start, right? Get her just A to B. We're just going to get her walking. She's just going to have a goal of racking up five to 7,000 steps in a day. She feels like she's a winner in some vertical of her life. And then you're more things with her as she goes along. The second one is probably my favorite. The most common woman that I see, Skinny Fat Sophia. So the technical term for skinny fat is T-O-F-I, thin on the outside, fat on the inside. This is a woman who doesn't present as obese, but her body composition. She's starting to see a loss of maybe bone loss, a loss of muscle. This is a woman who doesn't present as obese, but her body composition. She's very afraid of heavy weights. maybe I'll do some Pilates, some yoga, maybe a walk, right? She also collorically restricts as well, right? So this woman is like personally she's my favorite woman because when we start giving her a little bit more food and we start giving her just a little bit heavier weights than the two pound weights that she's been lifting you know in her Pilates class and by the way I don't want Pilates people to come for me I love Pilates but it's just not the main strategy for muscle building. I love Pilates I do it twice a week it's fantastic but this woman when she starts eating a little bit I all this is what she always says to me I can't believe I'm losing I'm losing I'm losing I'm losing weight by eating more what is this trickery what is this magic so I love this woman because when we get her to see the light it's actually just it's just a beautiful thing to have all her schemas sort of rearranged in terms of what she thought was possible for her okay this subject to fat and they say Stephanie I would love to lose some some belly fat because I'm skinny fat or maybe I'm just you know I just have a bit too much weight on me what is it you say to them you can't actually spot reduced what does spot reduce mean so someone wants to reduce their belly fat you can't just target belly fat so the way that you're gonna reduce overall at aposity in the body is you're gonna be strength training which we've talked about but you will probably also need some kind of deficit. So when we think about that very famous somewhat oversimplified calories in calories out, so you want to be thinking about how am I going to create a deficit. So I'm either consuming less calories on the calories inside or I'm eating the same but I have more output. So I'm doing more cardio or I'm doing more weightlifting or I'm doing more walking or I'm doing something where my calories out surpass my calories in. Is there an easiest way to do that? hearing that you know just eat less is quite I hate it it's it's yeah not great yeah and it doesn't it doesn't work in the long term either yeah you can temporarily reduce your food but at some point your hunger hormones and your body is just gonna drive you to consume more calories I often find when women are like hey I just want to I want to build muscle and lose fat or if it's just hey I want to lose fat I personally find it easier for women specifically to do more on the calories outside so not so doing more exercise more daily movement. I think that the calories in is totally doable, people do it all the time, I just find it's hard for most women to stick to long term because then they have to, you know, they got to measure, they got to do all the things. So if you can figure out what your maintenance calories are and then you can surpass that with maybe more walking or something that's not going to ratchet up your hunger hormones or your cortisol levels let's say, I think that's often I think it's a healthier option personally because you're also, because you're also, because you're also making sufficient substrate, sufficient calories so that you can actually build, you know, you can build muscle, bone density, collagen, etc. So that's our skinny fat Sophia. Up next, I was this woman, I sometimes still am this woman, Exorcist Emily. So this is just a funny word to really describe the intensity that this woman puts out at the gym, right? So this woman you have no problem getting her to the gym. She is the woman, she is the woman, the squat rack. There's no problem getting her to the gym and getting her to work very difficult, like very hard. What her issue is, and this was me for years, is that she still has some of the skinny fat Sophia attitude towards food. So there's a mismatch with her between how much effort she's putting out with her exercise program and how much energy is coming in with her food. She's still under eating because she's scared of gaining weight. I was you know had the hoodie on wearing the earphone like nobody talked to me with my big earphones on this was for me after I was going through a divorce with my I had very young children at the time they were five and three so I was I was grieving that and I was still adhering to this idea that I had to punish myself that I was gonna go to the gym and crush it and then follow that with insufficient calories afterwards because I still had that well I can't eat a lot I'm gonna gain weight So Exorcist Emily, we love her. And then the pinnacle, if you will, is the dialed in Diana. So this is the woman who has maybe made peace with some of her deans, enjoys movement, knows that it's a way for her to tend to herself. You know, food is not a punishment, it's not. She doesn't restrict calories because she ate too much. She fuels to nourish her lifts, to nourish her recovery. and for pleasure. Because I think a lot of us, a lot of women have forgotten that food is pleasure. It gives us joy and happiness. My sourdough bread in the morning gives me lots and lots of pleasure and I will not give it up for anything. So this is sort of the, this is where we want every woman to be able to get to. We want her to dial in both her exercise program, her nutrition program and to give herself some effing grace with her recovery. You can swear. Yeah, her fucking, her fucking, her fucking, with her recovery. We just got demonetized. Okay. Okay, but I guess so we're trying to get everybody to become dialed in Diana. Yeah and also just know so if you've been listening to these descriptions like oh I got a little bit of the Exorcist Emily I got a little bit of that rage or grief or something but then I also sometimes have analysis paralysis like you will also oscillate through them and that's completely normal as well. Yeah. When you were talking about Exorcist Emily that was not a it wasn't a light season of your life was it was it was very dark and it was the lifting that got me through it truthfully. Yeah, it's you know sometimes when we think about resistance training it's literally training your resistance. It's not a question for you know if something bad is going to happen it's just a it's a matter of when. So I think something you know voluntarily putting yourself in a situation where you are making yourself uncomfortable you know going to the gym and moving your muscles to failure is not you know it's not fun. It can be quite intense, but it does train your resistance, your grit, your mental capacity to withstand, you know terrible things. So by the end of this conversation everybody listening is going to be a dialed in Diana. I, that is my dream. Okay, let's do her. First we should start with debunking some of the myths. Yes. We've got six myths in this little envelope here. Okay. So the first one is carbs. all the ladies who are listening, we have to heal our relationship with carbohydrates. You can restrict carbs temporarily and for certain populations that's a wonderful idea. If you're a woman that has a type 2 diabetes or PMOS, something like that, a temporary clawback of carbohydrates is fantastic for improving insulin insensitivity, glucose disposal, um, but diets like a low-carb diet or a diet, which I am a big fan of for certain populations and even for a temporary amount of time. I think what a lot of women did with the carbs is once they started losing weight on a keto diet or a low-carb diet, they said, oh you know what the problem is? It's the carbs. I'm never going to go back. And the problem with that is that if you were sick you had a bacterial infection, you went to your doctor, they did a swab, and they're like, you know what you have a bacterial infection, you have a bacterial infection, for antibiotics, right? You're going to take it for the next 10 days and then you'll come back for a checkup and we'll see how you're doing. You do that, you follow the protocol, you take the medication. I don't think anybody listening, or at least I hope anybody who's listening is not going to come to the conclusion at the end of those 10 days. Do you know what I need to do to do that? Do you know what I need to do that? Do you know what? illogical conclusion that you should never have carbohydrates ever again. And for women, what I noticed, so I'm sure we'll talk about my first book, The Betty Body, I advocate for a lower carbohydrate, a higher protein diet in there, but for a transient amount of time, right, until you achieve the goal of, you know, reversing metabolic issues or losing some weight, etc, improving your period. That's another thing that we actually see is mensse. cycle regulation, but if you stay here too long, your thyroid, like so many women. What's the symptom or the consequence of your thyroid being malfunctioning? Yeah, I would say you're always cold, so your hands are cold, you're always cold. You might have very, very heavy bleeding, so your menstrual cycle during your bleed week, so that first three to seven days, let's say, when you're on your period, hair shedding. So hair starts to actually fall out. Hair is not necessary at all for survival. So, so, you don't have sufficient calories or a sufficient balance of macros your body is going to sacrifice the things that don't matter at all to your survival and a lot of women will start to say hairs shedding comes out the classic sign is the lateral third of the eyebrow we start to see the lateral third of the eyebrow start to fall out as well. What you mean the lateral third outside third of the eyebrow? So the tail for most people at their eyebrows starts to get really sparse and thin as well. So there's lots of signs and symptoms but we need carbohydrates if not for the thyroid but for our mood our sleep even performance performance at the gym in the vein of transparency and honesty I don't always get to eat before I train but on the weekends when I do and I have some bread and I have some omelets or I have what my breakfast and I go and train fantastic performance enhancer a lot of women are scared to consume more carbohydrates because they think it's going to make them fat and this is really really comes down to this CIM or carbohydrate insulin model of obesity, which has kind of largely been like disbanded. There's not a lot of evidence to support it anymore, but there's a lot of people online that will scare you and think, well, if you have carbs, your glucose levels might spike. And that, you know, the way that it's often presented is that is the worst thing that ever could happen to you. But there's such a thing as too many carbs. Correct. Yes. I think that the problem is not that the problem is not that the carbs were the carbs were the of the overconsumption of fat, the overconsumption of total calories. So it's defined by calories here? Yes. Okay. Yeah. What's the next one? What's the next meth in your folder? Oh, this one, I love this one. This one is women getting bulky. Women are still scared that if they engage in a