390: Permission to Pivot: Building Strength, Skills, and Self-Trust in Midlife w/ Steph Gaudreau

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:01
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast. I am your host. Courtney Townley, I’m so happy you’re here, and I am thrilled to welcome back a very special guest today. Steph Gaudreau, Steph is on a mission to help athletic midlife women build strong bodies and fitness that lasts for decades to come. She is a strength and sports nutrition coach. She is the host of the Fuel Your Strength podcast. She also happens to be a BJJ Black Belt.

Courtney Townley 0:28
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale, health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:56
It’s been six years since I last had Steph on the show. So this is long overdue, and I’m really excited to dive into this conversation, because in it, Steph really shares her evolution as a coach, as a business owner and as a woman. She is also very generous in this conversation about her expertise on strength training for women and her own journey with learning new skills as a form of self-care and growth, we’re going to discuss everything from permission to pivot in life to practical tips around strength training and nutrition for women in their middle years, this conversation is packed with wisdom for anyone looking to make bold moves in life, build strength that lasts and expand their capacity for growth through learning new skills. So if that sounds good to you, stick around, because that’s where we’re headed. Let’s get to it.

Courtney Townley 1:48
Steph Goudreau, welcome to the grace and grit podcast.

Steph Gaudreau 1:54
Thank you for having me.

Courtney Townley 1:56
Thanks so much for being here. How’s San Diego

Steph Gaudreau 1:59
The usual?

Courtney Townley 2:01
What is the usual for people?

Steph Gaudreau 2:03
Well, I’m bracing for normally, by this time in the summer, it’s pretty hot, and it still isn’t and I am terrified that when the hot weather finally comes, it’s just going to be continuous through November. So yeah, bracing for it. But you know, we we do live in a pretty amazing climate, so I can’t complain compared compared to other places in the country.

Courtney Townley 2:24
I’ve never been royally hot in San Diego, but I’ve also not been there at all times the year. So I’ll just take your word for it.

Steph Gaudreau 2:30
We’ve got times where it’s over 100 and that’s even fairly close to downtown, you know, not out out, but yeah, yeah.

Courtney Townley 2:38
Well, you’re, I’m welcoming you back to the Grace and Grit podcast, because you were actually here in 2019 Can you believe is that long? No time flies so so fast. Time flies so fast. So there’s a few reasons I wanted to have you back on the show. Like number one, I’m always looking for guests who obviously have nuggets of wisdom to offer the audience, but also have some examples from their own life about giving themselves permission to evolve and grow, and I definitely have seen that exemplified through you. So I’m excited to talk about some of that.

Courtney Townley 3:12
Obviously, I want to pick your brain around strength and nutrition, specifically for kind of midlife women, and what they’re getting wrong and where they’re confused, and just helping to give them a little support on that front and then also the power of learning new skills, because this is also something I think that you exemplify really well, and it’s something that I often talk a lot about with my clients, because there’s this mentality at midlife that we’re like too old to take on new things, which is crazy. And so I want to dive into all of that with you. So I hope that sounds good, because that’s where we are headed.

Steph Gaudreau 3:43
I like it a nice, a nice mix of things. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 3:46
absolutely. So let’s start with your evolution, because I think it’s a great way to introduce listeners to you and to your work who may not know you or be familiar with you, maybe just talking about the work that you do in the world today and how you got here?

Steph Gaudreau 4:01
Yeah, okay, I’ll try to make this say

Courtney Townley 4:04
I know that’s a lot of questions. I do get that.

Steph Gaudreau 4:07
So I currently coach women over 40 in strength training and performance nutrition. I podcast, you know, do everything associated with all of that, but at the heart of it all, I’m coaching virtually most of the time. So that’s kind of what I do. But how I got here is kind of a twisty, long road. I started off as a food blogger when I moved into working full time as an entrepreneur, and then that quickly evolved into also including things that were related to strength training. And I was also strength training at that point, and had been. So that’s always been a through line throughout everything I’ve done, but it started off food blogging, and before that, my first career was as a high school science teacher. So I taught high school chemistry and biology for 12 years prior to then leaving the classroom and then going into kind of the virtual classroom in what I do today.

Courtney Townley 4:56
Yeah, so those two, like, pretty. Pivotal moments, right? Like, moving from science teacher to food blogger, right? That was, that was a pretty big transition, and then again, moving from food blogger into the work that you’re doing now. Like, did you rumble with giving yourself permission to make those shifts? Like, did you kind of delay the decision because it’s something you wanted to do, but you also maybe didn’t feel ready to make it 1,000,000%

Steph Gaudreau 5:25
I’m a I’m somebody who will, I’ve got two speeds. I’ll either mull on something that I know I really want to do, yeah, but I maybe don’t have the guts to do it right away. Yep, oftentimes there is some amount of strategy in that. And I’ll, I’ll mention a couple things regarding that, but the other way I do things is just, I will just do it. So if I know it feels right and I’m ready, I’m just gonna go, I’m just gonna do the thing. So I say most of that, though, is it’s probably about 80% just absolutely make myself sick with thinking about, should I? Shouldn’t I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t I, and then I’ll finally do it, and I’m like, I should have done this a long time ago, and I finally rip off the band aid and do it. It’s about 20% of the time. I’ll just jump in. But with leaving teaching, for example, I knew about two years prior that I wanted to try my hand at being an online entrepreneur, yeah, before I ever quit.

Steph Gaudreau 6:24
So my food blog goes back to 2009 I mean, we’re talking about I was putting recipes on a blog, and that turned into my first blog in 2011 and so I didn’t I had two years between when I first started stupid easy paleo, and then I actually left the classroom. It was almost two years. And in that time, I was preparing, right? I was taking courses, I was learning, I was doing recipes on the side, on the weekend, when I whenever I had time, yeah, and seeing was this actually something I wanted to do? So it was. And then I had to ask for a leave of absence for my job and actually do the thing. And that was a whole process. I had to write a petition to the school board. I worked for a very large district in in here in Southern California, and it’s not like I didn’t know anybody on the board. I had to write a letter. I had to get my principal’s permission. A whole bunch of things went into that actually happening, and they granted me the leave of absence for a year, and I I said, okay, at least I have a fail safe I can come back. Yeah.

Steph Gaudreau 7:24
So that was a whole thing, and it really took a while, you know, when I rebranded from stupid easy paleo to my name now, which is just Steph godrow.com and I decided I was going to move into more of a performance base of nutrition that was less attached to any one dietary way of eating. That change was a couple years in the making as well. Yeah, and so some things, I feel like, yes, preparation and planning things out and deciding, moving, switching a business over, there’s a lot of steps, there’s a lot of things to consider. And part of me thought, Okay, I just need to make sure this is really what I want to do. And part of me was afraid of what would happen, what would happen if I changed things and I moved in a different direction? And for a long time, not a lot of people know this, but for a long time, I actually had two websites. I had both of them. I had stupid easy paleo and I had Steph godrow, and I was trying to post on both and keep them separated. And I had two Instagrams.

Courtney Townley 8:31
You were doing a lot of work, yeah.

Steph Gaudreau 8:33
And I just kept thinking how split I felt, yeah. And I’d say, Does this go here, or does this go there? And certainly, depending on the person and the businesses they have, and if they’re completely unrelated, it might make sense to have them separated. And but at the end of the day, I was like, This is me trying to separate myself into two entities, and I just need to put it all together. So I tried to do it separate for a while to see if that was the right step for me, and it ended up not being.

Steph Gaudreau 9:02
And so in a way, did it probably, I don’t want to use the word set me back, but did it delay the thing that was probably inevitable? Yeah, but it taught me a lot at the same time. I, you know, I learned a lot of things from just the process of, well, managing two main, major social media accounts, and creating content for both and trying to keep them from merging was just not practical. So yeah, a lot of times I will just really noodle on things, probably too long, until I feel like I have the like, okay, it’s become unbearable now, and I’m gonna make the decision,

Courtney Townley 9:42
yes, I can totally relate to that. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, because, like with the science position, your science teacher position, you really kind of used it as a bridge job to kind of dip your toe in the in the waters you were really interested in, and you did it in a really safe way. And then I hear with, like, your jump. Stupid easy paleo to the strength and nutrition work that you’re doing now, you were willing to experiment with what worked and what didn’t, and eventually you cut loose stupid easy paleo. Yeah, yeah.

Steph Gaudreau 10:11
We set it off into the sunset. You set it off.

Courtney Townley 10:15
I love it. So what would you say to a woman who might be listening to this who is really feeling compelled to move her life in a direction that she’s given a lot of thought to, and she’s just in that position of, there is always uncertainty. We don’t know how it’s gonna turn out. Like, what would your words of wisdom be to that person? Yeah,

Steph Gaudreau 10:36
I think that was something that I really relied on the people in my life that knew me well and I trusted the people I would go to for advice and bouncing ideas off of and really thinking about and kudos to all of those important people for reminding me that there’s also a good side to the what if coin, and our natural human tendency is to think what’s gonna go bad, what’s gonna go wrong, And what, you know, what could I fail at? And that makes sense.

Steph Gaudreau 11:04
We have a negativity bias, and it’s kept us alive for all of these millennia, years, yeah, and there’s a lot of supersist but at the same time, sometimes that negativity bias and our fears and those sorts of things will keep us from making the decision, because we forget about all of the potential good things, yeah, that could open up to us. I would say too, it’s important to think about your values and what is what is fundamental for you as a person. And oftentimes, core values don’t shift all that much, but you might not have really sat down to think about your core values in the context of making something like a career move or a change in your relationship, or any other big change that you’re thinking of making in life.

Steph Gaudreau 11:49
And so thinking about you now, you as a 20 year old, probably you were thinking about things through a very different lens, and a lot of times we don’t take the time to re assess what’s important to us based on our life, sort of now or where we want to go with things. And so we’re very stuck in the past and not so much thinking about the present or what would serve us best now.

Steph Gaudreau 12:14
Yeah, and then I would say also who, who is the person I want to become? What kind of person do I want to become, in this way, sort of an identity focused decision, if values focus doesn’t resonate as much as sort of, well, who’s the person I’m trying to become with this decision, and does it match? Do I have a really, I guess I would say idealized version of that, or am I thinking about it more realistically, because we are all drawn to things that are very idealized and sound perfect, but also considering, along with the decision, what are some of the challenges that could come my way and if I am driving toward a different identity or a different piece of my identity, also thinking about the things that potential could potentially go wrong, and Making sure I’m not just thinking about when it’s perfect or this is the perfect outcome, so it is kind of both right.

Steph Gaudreau 13:06
I said earlier negativity bias. We don’t want to only live in that, but we also want to think about what is aspirational, or what are we moving toward, and thinking about here and now and where we want to go with things, not just what I did 20 years ago. I think that’s I think that was really helpful for me in a lot of ways.

Courtney Townley 13:22
I love that. What do you think the cost would have been to not give yourself permission to pivot?

Steph Gaudreau 13:30
Ooh, I think I would have kept wondering. What would have happened, yeah, what if I didn’t, what if I didn’t take the chance on me? And I do think that that not knowing, of course, we always have, we can’t do everything right. And so we have FOMO Yes. We also have the joy of missing out on things that we don’t want to do yes or we know are just not interesting to us.

Steph Gaudreau 13:56
And so I think there’s that element of Yes, I don’t want to miss out on the things that could be for me. But also, I also, I can also think that I don’t need to try to do everything in my life. And I think when those two things, you have a clearer sense of, if I don’t do this thing, I’m going to maybe feel like, what it what could have happened? Yeah, what if, and having the fail safe of being able to go back to my job. So they hired a year long permanent sub. Okay? That helped massively.

Steph Gaudreau 14:27
So I think having fail safes, or having safety nets, if you can, can give you the courage for that. And so that, that gave me the opportunity to say, I don’t have to wonder, what if I can go try it? Yeah, I think if I had to be quite honest, I think if I had had to make the decision between quitting outright and losing my the ability to go back to my job and not, you know, staying with what I was doing, I probably would have kept going and kept teaching. Yeah, yeah, because it would have been two. Scary for me. So I think the cost of not making the decision decision would be in the wondering, what if, the thinking, What could I have created with this thing that I’m feeling really called to do?

Steph Gaudreau 15:17
And I do think sometimes we don’t value that as much in society thinking about, you know, we’re always talking about being productive, and certainly, as a business owner, you have to think about being productive. But it was more this idea to go create something in the world. And I think that’s very valuable, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t always have to be a hard like, numbers crunching sort of thing. Like, I would lose out on this income, or I would lose out on on whatever. You know, I think for me, it was I had a vision of something I thought I could do, and could I do that thing? And that challenge has always kind of kept me going.

Courtney Townley 15:53
Yeah. I mean, you come across to me as the type of person who, no matter what setting you’re in, you’re probably going to rise to the occasion and continue to grow. But there’s also an element in what you’re saying where it does sound like it would have stunted your growth on some level, to not go out and create and pursue these things that we’re pulling at your heartstrings.

Courtney Townley 16:11
But I also think it’s such a great reminder that you’re giving listeners that there are ways to do it that don’t feel as risky or terrifying, and a lot of times we aren’t discussing those, because what we see online is people overhauling their life or making these massive changes. And while that absolutely can work for some people, for other people, it completely like jacks up their nervous system to the point of almost feeling paralyzed because it is so terrifying. So maybe just looking like having like you had mentioned, friends and family helping you to explore options and have those, those levels of support there.

Steph Gaudreau 16:46
Yeah, there was a workshop I went to a long time ago, and the woman’s name is Rhonda Britton. And the thing I took away from that workshop that I still talk about with some clients is this idea, I’m a very risk averse person, to be quite honest, in most cases, but a lot of us think of we have a comfort zone, and we’re either in it or out of it, and there’s no in between, right, right? So you have this thing that’s terrifying to you, and then you have this thing as where you are right now. And so you think, Well, of course, my human brain is trying to, my lizard brain is trying to keep me from being too stressed out or feeling too anxious or the fear is just too great, and so I’m going to stay where I am.

Steph Gaudreau 17:26
And I think there is something incredible about your comfort zone. We should have demonized that. And so that kind of goes to your point of like, if I feel like this is going to blow up my life, and I’m worried to the point that I’m feeling sick about it, and it doesn’t feel good, you know, it doesn’t feel like, Ooh, this is exciting, and I get to try this out, it feels like I feel like I’m in imminent danger, and it’s not going away. That’s probably not the most drastic step that you could take. Like, what’s a smaller step? And so this idea that she, I learned from her, is that there are levels between, there’s leverage, levels between the comfort zone and the thing that you feel like is going to make you want to die because it feels too scary.

Steph Gaudreau 18:05
And sort of when you step outside of that, and nudge outside of that little by little, by taking smaller steps, you then kind of expand your your comfort zone expands basically your tall your tolerance for those scary things gets a little bit better. And then you’re you’re still moving forward toward the maybe the big, scary thing that you want to do.

Steph Gaudreau 18:23
So I think there’s absolutely something to be said for being strategic, making smart decisions, taking smaller steps, creating sub goals, doing things little by little, doing things on the side, and not to get caught up in things like hustle culture or bro culture, people who are like, just quit. And it’s like, well, it’s not quite that easy when you’re middle aged and you’ve got a lot more responsibilities or things you have to you have to consider in this big life altering decision that you’re about to make, it’s okay, absolutely, to take smaller steps and chunk it up.

Courtney Townley 18:59
And that’s fine, too. There’s nothing wrong with that, and just segwaying into the work you do now. Like, I think that’s especially true too of women who maybe understand the value of something like strength training, right? Like building a practice of it, starting to dip their toe into that pool, but also just feeling completely overwhelmed by maybe the types of things they see online, or the level of leanness they think they need to attain, or whatever the case may be. So let’s talk a little bit about the work that you do now, because I think it’s so obviously, so relevant to my audience. But the first thing I want to ask you is, like, how do you define strength? Because you promote strength, how do you define it?

Steph Gaudreau 19:39
Well, I think I would say, in a physical sense, right? It’s your ability to create force and move an object or move yourself against the ground, and you’re carrying that object or whatever. So it’s a physical expression of being able to move something because you’ve created force so that. Definition, unless you’re a physicist or a nerd, probably doesn’t excite you. You’re like, Oh, I’m going to create force and move a heavy object. Like, oh, that’s

Courtney Townley 20:09
I like the physical exploration.

Steph Gaudreau 20:14
You know, I think what we consider strength as a concept, and sort of how we talk about it more loosely, is our ability to interact in the world, if I’m being more conceptual, like doing things in the world that we have as a goal and allow us to live in into a bigger expression of ourselves. And that might sound kind of esoteric, but love it. For some people, strength is the ability to hike up a mountain and do a hike that they’ve always wanted to do, and certainly there’s endurance to that and all sorts of things that we know. But you know, building your strength might be an important piece of that.

Steph Gaudreau 20:48
For other people, it might be signing up for an event and training for that event. Maybe it’s not even a race, so it’s just a casual 5k or something where there’s a reason for you to train your you have to be able to move your body, and being able to do that with strength, integrity in your tissues, so you don’t increase your risk of injury, and you’re able to complete it and ultimately feel like you did your best. And that, to me, is, is what that physical manifestation of strength.

Courtney Townley 21:21
I love that so much. And I love, I love the way you said it initially, which is to live into a bigger expression of ourselves like that is just that’s so good, because it is. It’s not like strength training just to strength train. It’s strength training because there’s so much possibility and expansion on the other side. Absolutely. Yeah. So I love, I love that so much. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about, like, why strength training, specifically for the midlife female population, is especially potent.

Steph Gaudreau 21:51
Yeah? I mean, I, I, I’m always trying to be mindful of, I think you said this earlier, right, where we always think we’re too old, it’s too late. We can’t make a change. And so I think about that, and to kind of reverse engineer it is like we’re going to start with the idea that there is very good news here, and that is, I love. It is that it’s never too late. It’s never too late to increase your strength, to build muscle, to improve your power, to have better balance, right? All, of these elements that we know are so important, so it’s never too late.

Steph Gaudreau 22:24
And that should sound like a great thing, because it’s like, okay, we’re not yes, we want to acknowledge that if we don’t train our muscle, we don’t build muscle, we don’t increase our strength, that we will start to see those things decline as we age. And we know that older people move less and meet the exercise guidelines less than younger people. We have that data.

Steph Gaudreau 22:48
So we don’t want to focus too much on the fact that we could see declines in muscle mass. We will lose power. So you might feel like you can’t move as quickly. Your balance might deteriorate. We don’t want to focus too much on the negatives, but we want to also acknowledge them and say, but hey, these things can happen, but we can absolutely do something about that. Yeah, and that is lifting weights at least a couple times a week, right? So two times a week is our exercise minimum guidelines, doing some resistance training, and then, of course, doing the cardio aspect as well, right for conditioning, and so we have better endurance and stamina.

Steph Gaudreau 23:25
So it’s really important, because midlife, we’ve got this. I mean, this time is crazy. Oh, I feel like no one talks about this. You know how how hard it is. And I’m thinking of even my clients. Okay, so, for example, my clients are mostly in their 40s and early 50s. Yeah, some of them still have little kids, and I’m talking two years old, five years old. Some of them have kids that are about to graduate and leave the house, so they’re about to become empty nesters. Several of my clients are caretaking for their parents or other older adults in their life who need care. I and and some of those parents or family members are they’re caring for as a result of things like fall and fracture, yeah, so they’re seeing the first hand, you know, impact of that.

Steph Gaudreau 24:12
We have changes in Job, we have the political scene, we have finances, we have the menopause transition, you know, potentially affecting our sleep and our energy levels and symptoms that get in the way of us doing the things that we we know we want to do, but it’s hard to do it. So we’re moving less. And it’s kind of a time for a lot of people that’s a bit of a perfect storm.

Steph Gaudreau 24:36
So with strength training, and you kind of mentioned this too, it can be overwhelming. Of how do I get started? Do I need to be in the gym six times a week? And I will hear people like, how do I lift six times a week? And I’m like, you don’t? You know? Yes, please go you could, if you wanted to be a bodybuilder, and that was you were advanced, and you know, you’re doing a body part split six times a week.

Steph Gaudreau 24:55
But for most people, let’s start at a realistic level. Yeah. And that might even be once a week to start, you know, how do we start smaller and build up over time? So resistance training twice a week, getting a, you know, relatively full body workout doesn’t have to be anything that’s super overwhelming, but just we’re getting the sense of what that feels like. Yeah, we’re getting to know things like, how do I know that was a hard effort? Or, how do I know I’m moving my body in a way that’s efficient? You know, we don’t want to be too scared to move, but we also don’t want to be reckless. So do I need guidance from a coach? Do I need a program to guide me?

Steph Gaudreau 25:34
And I can tell you, for my midlife clients, the last thing they want to have to think about is programming is what I’m gonna do when I get to the gym, because if I can’t close that loop, and I’m trying to think about it myself, and I’m also like, pick the kid up at the end of the school day, I’ve got to send that bill out for payment. I have to make sure to check in with my mom. You know, like all of these things, my boss is on my on my case for stuff. We’re just balancing a lot. And if there’s anything that’s going to fall to the wayside, it’s going to be the stuff that takes too much decision making in the moment.

Steph Gaudreau 26:07
So yeah, having even a simple program, even if you’re a beginner, or even if you can get in for a few classes with a trainer, you’re going to be set up at the beginning for more success, so that you do have a better shot of keeping going, because that’s what matters, right? We keep going with strength training. We adapt it to our needs, but we’re looking at the big picture, because it is so beneficial, not just for physical movement through space, but how we handle blood sugar in the body and how insulin sensitive we are. There’s benefits for cognitive health in terms of exercise and strength training for mood, right? It goes, it goes above and beyond.

Steph Gaudreau 26:44
And it is also not just about sport, which I happen to really love, and that’s my own bias. But I have a client who sent me a picture, and it was a picture of her trunk. And I thought, why is she sending me a picture of her trunk? This is so weird. And she said, I lifted the 40 pound bag of cat litter and carried it from the store to my trunk and from my trunk to my house, and I didn’t need anybody to help me, yeah, right. And so that’s, that’s freedom, that’s independence, right, quality of life, those sorts of things day to day.

Steph Gaudreau 27:13
So I think that’s what I would summarize as my, you know, TED talk on that, you know? Yeah, I work with a lot of women who are pretty far advanced along in their strength training, and I’ve been lifting for 15 years. But at the base of it all is like, how do we help people get started and find ways to keep going and not going? Yeah, and not conceptualize it as like a seasonal I’m gonna do this because I Well, I’ll say something on that and say it, but like, a seasonal thing that I’m gonna like do once a year, and then I’m gonna stop, you know, I’m gonna do it for a couple months. Extrinsic reasons for starting an exercise program can be a very common entry point for people. But at some point, if you wanna make it something you do more consistently, it’s like, how do I move past that? Just like I’m doing it for someone else, and think about, why am I doing it for me?

Courtney Townley 28:10
I think that’s really powerful. On that note, I want to ask you, because I know, over the years, this has come up so much in conversations with clients that I just don’t enjoy strength training. I just don’t enjoy being at the gym, right? And we you and I both know that finding joy in the process is a massive piece of continuing the process. Yeah. And so what would your nuggets be to somebody who is maybe rumbling on that level that they just genuinely don’t enjoy it?

Steph Gaudreau 28:34
Yeah, a couple things on a conceptual level, and this kind of ties in with what I’ve just mentioned about extrinsic motivators. We tend to think that is either extrinsic or intrinsic, that those are the only two options. And so extrinsic is my doctor told me to exercise, so I’m doing it because my doctor told me, as an example, intrinsic is like, I love the feeling of moving my body. I am definitely in that other camp. You know, I’m further along, but people tend to think, Well, I’m not there, so I’m kind of stuck, yeah, and I hate doing this because I’m doing it for someone else, or some reason that doesn’t resonate with me.

Steph Gaudreau 29:11
So if we can develop a sense of and there are multiple steps along the spectrum between extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, sure, but the two that tie back to what I talked about earlier are things that resonate with the type of person we want to become. So do I want to become a fitter person? Do I want to become a runner? Do I want to become a you know, someone who is more fit in my day to day, or someone who lifts weights or my values, more values driven, and how lifting weights affords me the opportunity to do more of what’s valuable to me in my life and contextualizing that is very, very powerful. So that’s what I would say, on a conceptual level.

Steph Gaudreau 29:57
On a practical level, I. Want to know what does the program look like? If you’re like, I hate lifting weights and you’re in there for three hours and you don’t have the time and you constantly feel like you just can’t finish and it’s not working for you, we can find you another program that’s better aligned to your goals. Yes, is it the environment?

Steph Gaudreau 30:16
We know how important environment is for behavior change. If it’s a place where you don’t feel safe or welcome, or you’re constantly fighting for equipment, maybe there’s a different space that we can find. We can help you find that is more peaceful, or you feel safer, or you feel is more convenient for you. Some people love working out at home. Yeah, I have a lot of people who work out at home. Some people absolutely cannot stand it, because they’re like, I’ll just go sit on my couch.

Courtney Townley 30:44
Yeah, I get very distracted when I work out at home.

Steph Gaudreau 30:47
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, we have equipment here at the house. My husband uses it because he works from home. I lift, I lift outside the house. Yeah, I like to go to a place, and that’s my place, and I I’m like, I make the appointment with myself every week. I know the days I’m going to lift and I go and do the thing the style of training.

Steph Gaudreau 31:07
So for example, some people get introduced to resistance training and actually picking up weights in the context of something like a circuit class, yes, and over time, they become more cardiovascularly fit through that, but oftentimes it’s like the the rest is too short. We’re not maybe we see results at first, because we have that effect. We have like a we’re on train, and now we’re a little bit trained, and we see some progress, but now we want more. So we’re feeling like the modality of training doesn’t quite fit the goals.

Steph Gaudreau 31:38
So maybe we need a program that separates my lifting from my cardio, where I always feel completely drained and terrible after I train. And we look at your training program and it’s very high volume, and maybe you have sensitive joints, and it’s irritating the crap out of your joints. Well, can we put you on a lower volume program? Yeah, so I would want to know, like, what are the I was super curious, what are the things about the training that specifically you don’t like? Yeah, and then

Courtney Townley 32:07
I just want to stress really quickly before we go on that. I think this is such a important point to drive home with listeners, that the value of working with a coach or a trainer for a period of time is, yes, the programming itself. Because you mentioned that earlier, not having to do that mental work, but also being able to have someone ask these kind of pointed questions to make sure that this isn’t just like a 21 day or a 12 week thing, right, that this is we’re really building into your life a practice of strength training.

Courtney Townley 32:39
And so, yeah, I’m super excited about, you know, telling people more about your work, because I think that that is, you’re such a good resource for that. And and also, like people, you know, your coach checks your form and can give you a lot of information about nutrition, like, there’s just so many benefits. And working with a coach doesn’t have to be a forever thing, but it is something that can absolutely ignite your process and your practice in ways that nothing else can.

Steph Gaudreau 33:07
Yeah, 100% and I would say, you know, there’s definitely a proportion of what I’m doing when I’m coaching people that I’m watching their their videos of their dead lifts, or I’m such, you know, I’m asking, Hey, how many reps do you feel like you had in the tank there? If you feel good next week, what do you think about going up by X number of pounds, those sorts of things. But most of the conversations I’m having are around making fitness practices exercise a consistent, more consistent part of their life. I love that, or working through obstacles and challenges.

Steph Gaudreau 33:42
So I was mentioning one of my clients, her mom, fell and broke her hip, and unfortunately, eventually passed away from her, from her injury, you know, and she had to go back to the east coast and help take care of mom, and be there in hospice, and all of these things that we were talking through, you know. Like she was like, I feel pressure that I had to, like, get to the gym, and I was like, so we had to, we talked through those sorts of things, and ultimately helping people to to ride the wave.

Steph Gaudreau 34:11
I think of when life comes at you, and you’re gonna have times where things feel really smooth sailing and feel easy, and then you’re gonna have times where the bottom drops out and it’s like, yes, you might take time away, but how can we get you back sooner than if you were left on your own to feel like I messed this up and I ruin everything, and it’s like, No, you didn’t like, what’s the gentlest entry we can have you come back to and, you know those sorts of things, like troubleshooting life and all of the things that come along and and being there to listen, being there to also spot other things.

Steph Gaudreau 34:44
So a lot of clients having things like pelvic floor dysfunction, and I’ll see in their notes, like, Oops, didn’t jump today because didn’t want to pee in in my, you know, workout shorts. And I was like, somebody asked questions, right? Hey, tell me more about that. Like, what’s your experience been? And I’ve had. Had a couple of clients who have gone eventually to pelvic floor. PT, because I picked that up in their in their notes, yeah, and they’re like, I’m doing so much better. Yes, I didn’t know I could exercise without leaking urine, and now I am, and I feel so much more confident.

Steph Gaudreau 35:14
And so that’s the quality, the quality of life stuff, or the quality of not just exercise, but of how physical fitness and how movement can benefit someone in their life. And they’re not in the back of their head worried about, am I going to leak today when I do this thing and I’m at the gym and I’m going to get embarrassed and now I’m thinking about that thing, or it just ends up being something I want to avoid. So yeah, it’s um, it’s really working with the whole person. And I think that that’s one of the benefits of of coaching or or even a program on some level, is like, can you talk to somebody who understands, who’s going to hear you out, who’s going to encourage you?

Steph Gaudreau 35:53
And I think a lot of times, unfortunately, and I’ve, I’ve posted about this before, people don’t want to be made to feel bad, guilty or shameful because they they didn’t work out. That’s not what we’re here for. I know that’s not how you do things, but the fitness industry, unfortunately, has garnered itself a bit of a poor reputation of some of those cases where people are afraid they don’t want to be made to feel bad so well.

Courtney Townley 36:16
And I think people have been sort of conditioned to believe that consistency is like, always the same effort in the same dose, and it’s like, yeah, that’s so not what it is. No. So, yeah, really, great. Okay, I’m gonna pivot a little bit, because I want to get in some some knowledge from you about around nutrition, because women, especially, I think that we have been sold a really false bill of goods in terms of how to fuel the human body or how to take care of the human body on a nutritional level. So what if you could give a woman maybe, like, three big pointers around nutrition at midlife? What would those things be?

Steph Gaudreau 36:55
Yeah, if you are active and you know, you’ve got some kind of a performance goal. I think that’s kind of how I would come up, come at it, because that’s the world I’m in, yeah, but it’s important that we were relatively, you know, we’ve got a good match between our energy or our activity levels and our energy inputs. So we, you know, if we’re if we’re really active, we’re exercising quite frequently we are aiming for performance goals, whether that’s building muscle or improving our run times or whatever it is, is like we need some degree of matching up between our energy intake, how much we’re eating, yeah, and how much energy our body is putting out.

Steph Gaudreau 37:35
And for so long, the narrative is just like, eat as little as possible, be as skinny as you can. And in the performance world especially, this is a really, this is a really bad deal, because we increase our risk for things like low energy availability, of course, poor performance, like we can have health, real, actual health impacts to under fueling chronically, for, you know, for periods of time. And so, yeah, we want to have a better match between those things.

Steph Gaudreau 38:00
And I would say on the flip side, it’s quite possible that if you have other things happening, like maybe you have menopause symptoms that impact your sleep and your energy levels are super low, it’s hard to work out. You know, you need support in that area. It’s really important to think about, has my activity level changed, and then has my nutrition intake change to sort of, again, be more in line with that. And I think that’s sometimes those two things are, I see they’re widely mismatched with women in this age group, because we’ve either been through, like, all of the crazy diets, yes, you know, the 90s and like, stick, thin, supermodel chic, and then low rise jeans. And like, the whole like, we’ve been through it all. It’s been kind of wild. So we have all this diet, culture, history and things, and just be smaller and like, you’ll be better and you’ll be faster and you’ll be more valuable. And then that’s playing in our minds.

Steph Gaudreau 38:57
And then on the flip side, we’re, like, we’re really struggling to cope with some of these changes overall that can happen in midlife. And sometimes we’re we don’t have the awareness, or we’re not able to spot, like, where are there places that I could bring my energy intake and how much I’m eating kind of more in line with my current activity levels? Yeah. And so I think that those are two big areas that that are really impactful. I would say, of course, everybody’s like, she’s gonna say protein. Um, yeah, I know. I know.

Steph Gaudreau 39:29
Like, but yeah, it’s not like, a realistic amount of protein intake, especially if we’re more active and we are trying to build muscle tissue, we still need the stimulus of lifting. We’re not, don’t think that we can just protein our way to more muscle. If we’re not training, we really need both, but the protein that we do have is going to help keep us feeling fuller for longer, is going to help repair our muscle tissue and other tissues of our body, not just muscle. So getting a realistic protein intake that you can need to. Gain, I think is important. A lot of times people calculate, and they’re like, oh my god, how am I supposed to see

Courtney Townley 40:04
200 increasing by 80 grams overnight? Yeah,

Steph Gaudreau 40:07
yeah, it’s not, it’s not practical. So just kind of an honest assessment of that. And shooting, I would say, in the performance crowd, you know, for most people, is like shooting for a daily total that’s realistic for you, not stressing out about exactly how much you’re getting post workout and pre like, yeah, you know, like, at the end of the day, the most important thing with with that protein intake is getting a daily realistic target or total that’s going to support your your goals that you have there. And then the third thing I would say would be fiber.

Steph Gaudreau 40:39
Again, there people are like, Oh, God, fiber. But yeah, fiber intake around this time of life, especially, we know fiber is so important for health, it can lower disease risk. It can help feed the gut microbiome, although we need a lot more research in that area, but we have a sense that, like, if we can get more fiber for most people, and if we’re not getting it, increase it little by little, right? Keep an eye on our hydration, but we tend to eat better quality foods when we try to include more fiber as well. So can we get more fiber in our diet? And, you know, side note as things like constipation can increase with age, and straining can really impact the pelvic floor. That can be one that could be a side benefit as well. So, yeah, fiber intake.

Steph Gaudreau 41:23
And then I would also say the last one would be not trying to eat perfectly, because we have people that are like, okay, so I have to eat like on point, and I can never deviate, and I can never eat any food that I like the taste of, or they’ll say, but you focus on fuel, so shouldn’t I just eat all, you know, quote, unquote, like bodybuilder foods? And the answer is, No, we still food is more than fuel. Yes, that aspect is important, especially if we have performance goals.

Steph Gaudreau 41:55
But we want to think about food as cultural experiences. It’s travel, it’s connection, it’s social, yeah, it’s part of our ethnicity or culture. Food is fun, food is tasty, right? So we want, we don’t want to eat like a robot. You know, we have to also enjoy what we’re doing if we’re going to keep it going for a long period of time. So looking for ways to incorporate the things that we enjoy. Yeah, is part of it. We’re not here to suck all the fun out of your life.

Courtney Townley 42:26
Yeah, please don’t, because it won’t bode well for your overall health. That’s for sure, definitely Okay. Let’s talk briefly about recovery, because I think this is another area where, yes, at midlife, of course, we have hormones like, you know, sometimes a little or massively disrupting sleep. But I also think that it’s a phase of life that we enter, and we’ve built some really strange patterns around sleep, like maybe we’ve kind of thought of it as a luxury, or we just haven’t prioritized it, and especially in the realm of what you work on, which is helping people to improve performance, just that whole concept of the harder you train, the harder you rest. That’s a hard one for people to wrap their head around.

Steph Gaudreau 43:07
It is, well, when we were 20 and we were drinking Red Bull and sleeping for three hours or four hours and going to class or staying up all night, yeah, we could do that. We had more we had a we had a larger capacity. Yes, most people, I would say, not universal, but I say most people had more capacity to F around and find out at that point. And now we have a lot of things vying for our capacity. It’s like everything that is stressful and will drain our battery or our tank, and we just have a lot more things going out.

Steph Gaudreau 43:39
And so we have to think about, what are we putting in in terms of recovery, even in terms of just physical training, we don’t, we don’t see the benefit of the training when we’re actually doing the training. We have to, especially in the case of strength training, we’re, in a sense, breaking those tissues down a little bit in order to then recover from them and see the benefit of that, which we call adaptation, but we would call, probably gains or muscle or, you know, the benefit, the thing that we want from our training. So we have to think about rest and recovery.

Steph Gaudreau 44:13
And I think a lot of us, especially who are highly motivated, or, like, you know, just that, like go getter mentality, or we’ve had to be, and this is another side note, as women, you know, maybe you’re a single you’ve single parented, or you’ve had to be somebody who’s wearing a lot of hats. You’re doing more of the unpaid labor in your household, or you’re doing a lot of emotional labor for the people in your life, like you have a lot of things outgoing, and, you know, a lot of capacity being drained, and a lot of people have have kind of learned like that’s the normal, and have had to survive that way, or it’s just kind of become part of how they do things.

Steph Gaudreau 44:52
But then we kind of get to midlife, and we struggle a little bit to to recover. We’re not sleeping as well, you know, we’re finding. It harder to do some of these basics because we have so many things that are vying for our attention, and so we start to fall behind on things like recovery, but sometimes continue what we’re used to, right? This is the routine. It’s the habits that we have, and we’re like, I had to push myself really hard, and the only way I’m going to get better and build more muscle or improve my endurance is just by absolutely smashing myself, and then I’m not able to keep up with the recovery, so I’m going to continue to push even harder, because I’m not seeing good improvement. So we get into a bit of that loop. And yeah, it’s tough.

Steph Gaudreau 45:33
So thinking about for training like, how many hard sessions a week are you training? What can you sprinkle in in the in between that still means you’re moving but lower intensity. So maybe it’s moderate intensity that you’re doing cardio, or maybe it’s an active recovery day, or those sorts of things like strength training three foot two or three legitimately hard sessions in a row, especially their full body is by the third, second and third sessions, you probably aren’t gonna be able to perform as well in that session, right? You’re not gonna be able to train as well.

Steph Gaudreau 46:11
So think about if I took a day off in between of my full body workouts. How do I feel when I have that day off and I get in the next time and I’m like, oh, okay, well, I can actually progress the weights a little bit, or I can do a few more reps, instead of always feeling completely, you actually feel recovered, right, barely feeling like you’re surviving, you know? And I think that’s, that’s a big one. A lot of people will say I can’t finish the workout. And it’s a, it’s a sensible workout, you know, I’m just completely out of gas. That might be a case where we have to adjust the intensity. We have to give you another rest or recovery day in between, moderate your hard and easy days, like flow your hard and easy days throughout the week.

Steph Gaudreau 46:54
I think is a great one for women in this age group, where we’re just like, things are kind of, kind of all over the place and chaotic is like, instead of trying to do three hard days in a row, it’s like, can we go hard, easy, hard, or something like, hard, easy, moderate, right where we’re we’re riding the wave a little bit, and we’re giving ourselves a chance to fully, more fully recover before we’re going to ask a lot of our body. And we’re just not making ourselves exhausted for the sake of getting exhausted

Courtney Townley 47:23
Absolutely. And if you look at rhythms of the body, right, the heart rate, the nervous system, it oscillates. And so it makes perfect sense that we would get the most out of our training by oscillating our training as well. Yeah. Okay, I want to make sure I get to this before we get out of here. But I’ve long believed that our health and wellbeing is really an exercise of expansion, right, expanding the way we live and what we’re able to take on.

Courtney Townley 47:50
And I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that I definitely see you as an example of that. And most recently, you picking up the drums, which is a new skill set for you. I mean, it’s so great. I love that you do it so publicly, because you did really from the outset, right, like, as soon as you started practicing, you kind of started doing some posts about it. And anyway, I would love you to speak a little bit to that in terms of, like, what inspired you to learn the skill set of drums, and how have you stuck with it? Because inevitably, like everyone, you’re a beginner, and so we definitely have rough days.

Steph Gaudreau 48:23
Yeah, I think that there is a lot to be said about being a beginner. There’s a lot of benefits to being a beginner. And some people are like, Oh my God, a beginner. Being a beginner sucks, and I feel terrible. And there’s nothing good about this. I’m not good at anything yet. And I think again, looking at the other side of that coin and thinking, what are the great things about becoming a beginner?

Steph Gaudreau 48:43
Well, if I practice consistently enough, I’m going to see big progress. Yeah, I’m going to, I’m going to probably make a lot of progress in a fairly short period of time. I’m going to learn new skills, right? I’m challenging my brain, all sorts of things that you can you can benefit from by being a beginner. Yeah.

Steph Gaudreau 49:01
And the reason I picked up drums is because when I was in my early 20s, I wanted to learn the guitar, and I took lessons, yeah, and I was forced to read sheet music. And I cannot read sheet music like regular sheet music, not tablature, which is just kind of a map. So I was forced to read sheet music. Couldn’t read the sheet music. Eventually gave up and quit. I wanted to play Stairway to Heaven on my guitar, and just thought, oh, like the dream is over.

Steph Gaudreau 49:27
And then last year, I was watching YouTube. I got a video on my feed. It was something about a jazz drummer learns to play nirvana. And I was like, Oh, I love nirvana. This is my this is my era. So I watched it, and I just thought, I just kept watching more and more drum videos after that. And I thought, Okay, well, why not give it a try? I haven’t tried something new in a while, yeah, and I want to see if I can do it. And I would say the biggest thing that’s allowed me to stick with it is that within three weeks of getting sticks in the mail, I decided to find a teacher. Yeah. And so I had already started to develop bad habits on my own, yeah. And he was able to help me correct them pretty quickly. And then I had some structure.

Steph Gaudreau 50:11
So I think, you know, if you can have someone to help you, even if you’re not going in person, I liked the idea at the time of going and like, actually getting to play on real equipment and stuff. But yeah, somebody to guide your progress what you’re working on. They have a lot of people that do it virtually, too. So that’s cool. Over zoom, you can take instrument lessons and things like that, and that’s how I’ve stuck with it. I’ve also tried to make it really fun. And I have had times, to be quite honest, where I was like, I feel like crying because I feel like I’m not getting this, especially toward the beginning.

Steph Gaudreau 50:50
You know, there were some things that just really were difficult, but I just decided I’m gonna keep going, and I really tried to also include things that I found were a lot of fun. Yeah, so the things for me that were a lot of fun were like playing songs from my favorite music from the 90s, yeah, playing grunge songs, or I’m, I’m learning Stairway to Heaven, just on the drums this time, finding ways to that I could learn. So I learned off drum tab not, there’s no actual melodic sheet music for drums, but it’s a map of the of the drum kit, and that really works with my brain

Courtney Townley 51:25
perfect so you’re willing to, like, adapt to your learning style.

Steph Gaudreau 51:29
Yeah, I just tried to seek out what what would help me. And I also really if I were left to my own devices, I was doing an online course, and they had great content, but there was a lesson on counting subdivisions of music, and I thought, and I’m gonna skip that. I don’t like this, you know, quarter notes and eighth and 16th notes. And when I went to the first lesson, my drum teacher was like, and we’re gonna learn how to count eighth notes. And I was like, Oh, crap.

Steph Gaudreau 52:02
But if you think about it, drum, drumming is all about time keeping and so I’m glad he forced me to do that. Fundamentally, it was part of the curriculum. And he said, You’ve got to learn this. This is very fundamental, yes. And so when left to my own devices, I probably would have skipped it, because it was a little bit uncomfortable for me. But having a foundation, so having good foundational skills. Yes, super important. Yes, but yeah, having fun with it as well. And I decided early on that I was going to just share that. Always share things that sound really great, yeah.

Steph Gaudreau 52:38
And I do that because I think that’s important that we, we don’t always show the perfect stuff, because in other people who are like, Oh, I was thinking about that. Like, like, well, but she’s so good, and like, I’ll suck, yeah, no, I suck at a lot of things too. So, you know, but it’s fine. Like, you, you keep track of your your progress. And you know, with drumming, you have to record it. There’s, yeah, it’s the easiest way to see your progress. And so I think that has a lot of application to lifting. Application to lifting.

Courtney Townley 53:03
Well, I was just gonna say, like, everything you’ve mentioned, right? Like being a beginner, for people who are just getting into strength training, like that’s a whole they have to have that attitude of embracing the beginner mindset, being able to ask for help, like seeking out help, someone who can help you to avoid the pitfalls and not build bad habits, having fun building foundation, like a strong foundation. So this isn’t just a temporary thing, but it’s a long lasting thing. I think that it’s such a good example of that. And yeah, I love that you shared that, and I it’s great that I asked you about it, because it’s just it brings home so many things we’ve talked about here.

Courtney Townley 53:37
Yeah, okay, so for listeners who want to find out more about you and your work and you. I know you have a free offer, but you also have your podcast, and so I want you to tell them all the things.

Steph Gaudreau 53:46
Yeah, so my podcast is Fuel Your Strength, and that’s anywhere you can find podcasts. So we talk about performance, nutrition, lifting, recovery, all of those things. I have my FREE week of lifting. So you can check that out. If that’s interesting for you. There’s also a bunch of information in there, like evidence based things about lifting and training in our 40s and beyond. And then you can find me at stephgaurdeau.com is kind of the hub for everything that I do, and I’m most active on Instagram. So yeah, come hang out. Say that you saw this podcast and would love to know what you thought,

Courtney Townley 54:19
definitely. And for listeners, all those links will be on the page where this is housed, on graceandgrit.com

Courtney Townley 54:25
And yeah, Steph, you’re awesome. I just I enjoy time with you, and I just love watching you from afar, and I’m really glad we had this conversation.

Steph Gaudreau 54:33
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Courtney Townley 54:41
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self-care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.