Is Your Exercise REALLY Hormone Balancing? This past week some questions have come up in our community and I want to address them here so you understand the difference too. Before I start this episode about hormone balancing exercise vs traditional exercise, a couple announcements! Shout out to aerobicqueen for this comment in iTunes: This is my favorite health related podcast because Debra uses science based information and is extremely easy to like. I’m a health coach and know how much misinformation is out there and how much work it is to weed through it and Debra does a great job at that. You can trust she knows what she speaks of! I do wish the podcasts were a bit longer though. I hate to have to stop my workout to find another. Lol! I’d love to hear your input on that! We’ve purposefully kept episodes all between 25-30 minutes so that we can give you an episode with the best of the information without taking a lot of your time. It does fit right into hormone balancing fitness prescription, yet tell me what you would like!  A quick announcement too that the 28 Day Kickstart is open when this podcast airs, for two more days. When it’s closed it’s closed and we can’t change that date and time. Purchases made after 11:59pm MST will be refunded or you can apply it toward another program. If you want live coaching with me during that month when food is everywhere and exercise may get the squeeze, get registered! This could be your healthiest holiday season! Have I Taken For Granted You Know This? This is a regular question when I’m a guest on podcasts or summits or on a panel. So it’s one I may take for granted you already know the answer to. Let’s make sure that you do! The biggest key difference in the traditional approach to exercise and hormone-balancing exercise is that you choose and adjust your exercise program based on your hormone status.  A trainer asked me yesterday about having her clients do their workouts at 9 or 10pm if that’s the only time they could do them. The answer to that is no, no, and no. Absolutely not! Hormone balancing exercise isn’t about a “quota” of exercise used to burn calories. This isn’t a matter of – if you don’t burn the calories then you can’t lose weight. Unfortunately, that’s so backward it is a perfect example of what NOT TO DO! But unfortunately, even this question from a trainer who said she was focusing on women in midlife and older reflects the default to years of conditioning that just getting exercise is more important than hormone balance. There’s more to this too.  Injuries and Illness When you get sick or injured, what’s your first thought? For women who are in the middle of a perfect storm of hormone chaos and stress with busy lives – the first thoughts are: Oh, no! I can’t exercise I’m going to get behind! I’m not going to be able to exercise therefore I won’t lose weight! It’s like this inconvenience disrupting the path to exercise and weight loss (or stress reduction). In fact, injury and illness are related to your hormone balance, too. Women who get “itis” injuries like plantar fasciitis, tendonitis, or carpal tunnel don’t put together that the breakdown that allowed that to happen is related to hormones. Illness is your immune system depleted – it’s not exposure alone, right? It’s about you, not that aggravating seatmate on the plane with the sniffles. These are clues about what’s going on with your hormone balance too just like belly fat and hot flashes are clues. They too leave clues about how to adjust exercise to get better results. And that’s not just go hard with your upper body while your foot is hurt. Hormone Balancing vs. Traditional Exercise Hormone balancing exercise measures first what’s happening in your body. Every system from your endocrine (hormones), to digestion, elimination, cardiovascular, skeletal, muscular, gives you messages about how it’s working. You can’t train your muscles or cardio system at the expense of the rest. They work in unison.  Trad