Nikki Foley: All right, Kinsey, let me lay this out. Your health is an asset.

And I was recently, as I was kind of preparing for my whole series that we’re conducting right now on health and wealth, I was looking up some statistics. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so the CDC,  reported that “90% of the nation’s $5.3 trillion in annual health care expenditures are for people with chronic and mental health conditions.”

And so, I bring this up because I know that the insurance companies that I work with on the health side and just in general understand that keeping people healthy can be significantly less expensive than treating somebody when it happens and once they get sick. And so these companies invest heavily in preventative services and programs.

And I actually know Minnesota does a really nice job, especially for once people continue to age. And with Medicare, most companies offer their preventative–like workout facilities–complimentary as part of their Medicare Advantage or their Medicare Supplement plans. There’re all kinds of incentives within employer group health plans. And so you see this every day, about how people are investing in the preventative.

So I ask you as an expert in this area, why shouldn’t we think about our own health in the same way, as something worth investing in? Before there’s a problem!

And I’m putting you on the spot right away out of the gates here!

Kinsey Diment: I love it throw me in the spotlight. I’ll take it because this is something, it’s the whole reason that I am in this space now. And first of all, thank you so much, because I love these conversations like I love this whole series you’re doing because it really is we are very lucky to live in the day and age we have of modern medicine that can help us with all these chronic diseases once we are inching into a disease state, so thank goodness for all of them.

But the issue becomes we get access to these when it’s not too late, but we’re already either it, for example, diabetic, we’re already pre-diabetic. And then we start getting help. There’s nothing really leading up to before we’re starting to inch into the disease state. So to me, that’s where things like all of these beautiful lifestyle levers that we have available to us become the things that I believe we’re starting to talk more and more about.

 But to me, that’s really where the proofs in the pudding that these are the things that help us to. Prevent getting into that disease state in the first place? Because, yes, thank goodness we have those ones were there. But what if we didn’t need to get there before we started taking care of ourselves?

When it comes to health, nothing is it might feel like it, but nothing really happens overnight. Everything that’s going on in our body, whether it’s chronic disease, whether it’s struggling with obesity, whether it’s osteoporosis, whatever the case may be, we don’t just wake up one day and suddenly we’re in this state. It’s something that’s very progressive. Over a long period of time, often it’s pretty silent. There’s changes that are small enough that maybe we don’t really realize it until one day we wake up and we’re like, “Whoa like something’s different” or “I’m feeling sicker” or “That wasn’t there before.” But in actuality, these are things that have been very insidious over the years, and these are the things that i get really excited about because they’re available to us always and they’re right there. I think one of my biggest passions is shifting the narrative that fitness and health are these sort of like abusive, we have to like punish ourselves in order to feel good. When the truth is that the research shows, and I found time and time again with the people that I work with, a little goes a really long way. So I think people are shying away from something that keeps them out of this disease state altogether because they’re thinking, well, you know, like my quality of life will decrease. When in fact, when we’re eating to support our machine, and I’m not talking about a restriction. In fact, generally it means more robust nutrition than a lot of times we’re even eating. A lot of people are actually under-nourished. It means moving our body, not five days a week, but even just lifting weight two times a week. It means trying to move more throughout our day. So these little things that when you can compound them over time, make these big differences that keep us out of that disease state altogether. And that can start at any point. But that to me is why this is so important, because I think we have grown into a society that’s become really good at dealing with something when it’s upon us. And we are starting to become, I think people are starting to ask different questions, which are what choices can I make now that keep me out of this state. And that’s what’s really exciting to me because it is so available; unfortunately, it’s not always going to be like a snap of your fingers and that quick like quick change that we’re hoping for. The quick fix! But there are things that we can implement without having to sacrifice things that we love to do so that to me is really what I’m excited to talk about today which is just little changes that can have huge benefits because those numbers that you shared at the beginning it gets even it gets even more intense when we look at like post-retirement and we start to see what amount of our retirement is going into healthcare, the amount of people who have to pay for continuous medication. It’s just, it ends up being quite a chunk of that pie we’ve worked so hard for. So to me, I’m really passionate about giving all of these opportunities that are also a lot of times. Either free or pretty low barrier to entry so I hope that answered your question

Nikki Foley: Perfect so perfect. Welcome to Paladin Financial Talk. We have just heard from our guest today. Our featured guest today, Owner of Fit After 50–or excuse me Fit After 40.

Kinsey Diment: You can be 52.

Nikki Foley: Well this is what we’re talking about After 40 Owner of that, Kinsey Diment, is joining us, and she has done a fantastic job of setting the tone of where we’re going today. And as I’ve been talking about in the last two episodes of this series, prevention is such a key piece and what we want to do today with Kinsey, is talk about the management of our health and how prevention of these diseases can really have significant health benefits. And then what I want to do from the financial perspective is make sure that we associate the financial benefits as well.

So let’s do this, Kinsey. I’m so excited to have you here with us today. So as we had done a little bit of conversation ahead of time, you know that we’re in a five part series where we’re talking about health and wealth. And we just believe at Paladin Financial that these two are deeply connected. And sometimes it might feel like a stretch. But I know that with staying healthy and helping those. Be preventative instead of reactive along the way, that we are also going to ward off some of the financial risk that come along with this as well.

So when we talk about this, it’s increased medical expenses that could come along, earlier than expected retirement if you don’t have the health to be in the workplace, caregiving needs, and that might be, you might be listening to this conversation and you understand it, our listeners, but they may need to be sharing this information with others because of the role they would have to play as a caregiver. And all of this can lead to lost income. And so when we talk about health, it’s so hard to untangle the financial piece of it because they go hand in hand. And so hopefully that gives some perspective of where we’re coming from as a financial organization and why we think it’s important to talk about this.

Well, Kinsey, let’s talk about you. As we get into this, I want to give a little bit about your background, but then you’re going to have to in the gaps if I miss some of the big ones.

Kinsey Diment: Okay love it.

Nikki Foley:  Owner and head coach of Fit After 40. And some of the things on your resume I’m going to list here, I’m going to read them so that I get them right. 1) personal trainer 2) 250-hour yoga instructor 3) group fitness coach 4) mental toughness and wellness coach and 5) now menopause coaching specialist. And so I want to read those, and I wanted to point out all the different hats that you’re wearing because I think it illustrates the diversity. I may hear yoga, and that may speak to me here. While somebody else might hear the mental toughness or another hears menopause, and so I think it’s really important to know what you are covering and probably a lot of these interact together is my guess.

And so you specialize in the changing of people’s needs, fitness needs and midlife and kind of beyond. So whether I said 40 or 50 to begin this, it’s all we’re in midlife plus is what we’re talking about.

Kinsey Diment:  Exactly.

Nikki Foley: And what I really–what I did here–when I was, you know, looking at your resume and talking with you, that you’re incorporating the body and the brain. And I think that’s such a key piece.

And then just teaching clients why they should do something and then how to do it themselves.

And so those were pieces that stood out to me.

But I know you probably have lots more that you could brag on yourself about. But what did I miss? What do we want to share with our listeners about you?

Kinsey Diment: I mean those are all my big like certifications and things that I’ve gotten. You accumulate a lot over 12 years in an industry, and it is interesting to see how they’ve all kind of tied together and grown in one into the next. I think you did a really lovely job of kind of lacing together my overarching theme which is it kind of ties back to the why is this preventative which is one thing that the medical industry again kind of misses out on is treating us as a full system our health and wellness, our body and our brain are intrinsically connected. When our body is unwell, our brain is unwell. When our brain is unwell, our body is unwell. So this is really vital that we are keeping thinking of ourselves systemically. We are even like seeing now that things like Alzheimer’s are getting spoken of as type three diabetes because of insulin resistance in the brain. And that’s something that we see when we’re talking about a lot of systemic things in our bodies as well. So those to me, when I talk about body and brain, they go together and it all. We want to think of our whole system as benefiting from the things that we’re investing in. And this day and age in my life, I’m very passionate. Fit after 40, 50, 60, 70. I had a woman be like, I saw that you didn’t have 70 on there. Can I still come in? I was like, heck yeah, girl. I just ran out of space on my website. We’ll talk about that later. But the point is, is that this population to me is a really exciting population because It’s not that we need to be treated differently. In fact, when you and I spoke earlier, one of the things that I think is kind of misunderstood is that ideally a lot of the principles that I use in training my 40, 50, 60, 70 year old clients are the same principles I train my 20 year old clients in. It’s just that as our bodies get older, there’s a lot less wiggle room for things that actually work. We also have a lot less time. So I really want to make sure that what we’re doing, what we’re choosing, like you said, when I think a lot about when you said. I forgot how you put it but taking care of our whether we’re taking care of someone who’s sick or we’re getting to there’s a lot of that sandwich culture when we’re in our 40s 50s 60s we’ve got teenagers or even 20 year olds who need our assistance we’ve got parents who are starting to ale so there’s this big there’s so much going on we’re probably at the top of our careers or we’re starting a new career you know there’s so many things going on that In our twenties, maybe we loved fitness and we were able to work out six days a week and eat however we wanted. And it was great. And our bodies are very medical, like metabolically robust at that age. That’s just what they’re meant to do. As we start to get older, we want to be a little bit more specific. And the best part is you don’t have to shoehorn six workouts a weekend. You get to do really two solid strength training sessions. So that has become sort of my passion is what we can do. For the least amount of effort with the most amount of return and that’s kind of what this middle population really has been an exciting journey for because there’s so much we can do without that overhaul and that’s kind of where when you mentioned the different sort of certifications that I’ve acquired, those things all kind of play together. It’s always so funny when I come on podcasts and they, someone mentions the mental toughness. That was something I took like when I was in my twenties and it was called mental toughness now, which is such like a 2010s like jargon. It’s the like go hard or go home type thing. And now I think of it a lot more like it shows up as resilience and not that we’re like no pain, no gain. It’s like, I woke up. I’m kind of tired i would be i’d rather be anywhere but the gym kind of like what your friend was saying we’re like I’m tired of working out like can i just i just want to have x y and z but we show up anyway yeah that to me is it’s more mental resilience and the cool thing there is that mental resilience that we develop in our program and this is agaInBody and brain a slightly more elevated sense is the mental resilience we build in the studio in the gym shows up outside so maybe it goes to the mental resilience it takes to care for an ailing parent And then having to rush home and take care of our family like this is really transferable. So there’s just so much overlap between those two, whether it’s health, whether how it shows up in and out of the studio. So that I would just say you did a beautiful job. And that’s just sort of my ethos overall right now, as it as it is in this part of my journey.

Nikki Foley: I love it. And Kinsey referenced a conversation that we were having with one of the friends that I have about how peptides and GLP-1s and Botox and the world that we’re living in sometimes well there’s shortcuts and how do we feel about that. We’re going to come back to that at the end because I always like to hear an expert’s perspective on that.

But i think you have led right into where i wanted to go first, and when I think about the questions that I ask guests that are here, I try to think about my people around me. So my dad, as an example, has been a farmer his whole life. And if I said, Dad, you know, I think that you need to start lifting weights and working out. He might look at me and be like, well, what do you think I do all day when I go out to, you know, pitch the hay and whatever else that he does. And so I try to be very broad in my perspective.

But my question to you is, is it ever too late to improve your health? And I think that I need you to say, well, working out is one piece, but think about the lifestyle people are living as well. But I’m putting you on the spot telling you kind of, as I try to think through all the people in my life, what if I said that to them and how would they feel? So I’ll let you take this because I’m sure you have lots of great perspective.

Kinsey Diment: I love this and I’m going to try not to, all of your questions are so good. And I’m like, I could talk for hours, but I won’t. So the big first thing is that simply, no, it is never too late to improve our health. And that actually has been proven time and time again, even just looking at something. That’s been studied pretty significantly, which is loss of muscle. That’s something that can result in frailty. When we start to look at fall risk as we get older, that can be some pretty harrowing statistics. One in four adults fall over the age of 65 every year. 20 to 30 percent of adults over 65 who break a hip die within that year. So this is that frailty epidemic that we can talk about. However, the two biggest issues there is that we have lost bone and muscle mass if we haven’t been doing something to. Prevent that loss those both peak at age 30. So by the time you’re at 65 that’s 35 years to really see that drop off but just in this example there have been copious studies that show any time that you decide to start a progressive weight training program they have seen adults in this population, not just build new muscle mass. And granted, it takes more time as we get older mechanisms, slow as we age, but they can exceed the amount of muscle mass they had in their twenties at age 60, 65. You can actually go above bone. We can build up to the amount of bone we had at our peak health. So if we peak at 30, we can work up at any age back to that bone health again, very progressively. But that to me is. Thrilling. We see the same when we look at like brain health and regenerating. Neurons within the brain. So we see that these things that we actually thought just because they slowed meant that we didn’t have access to them anymore. When, in fact, now we see studies show time and again that we actually do through, again, these lifestyle measures have access to rebuilding and actually finding in some cases and actually with a lot of women I work with right now, more health, strength, vitality in our 60s than we did when we were even younger. The second part of your question, I’ll just kind of like tease on because. It’s the like what would so-and-so say if i told them and that’s like a whole other conversation because i have my parents are wonderful my mom at 68 started strength training with me and already she’s seen huge strides in strength she’s lifting much heavier she’s feeling much better in her body she’s seen bone density go up muscle mass go up my dad on the other hand so far hasn’t really wanted anything to do with it and that is just a whole other conversation of i like to always say that like When it comes to talking to family, one of the best things we can do is lead by example. So especially if maybe we’re in our 40s, 50s, 60s, and we still are lucky enough to have our parents around. One thing that we can do is show them through example by we start to move our bodies and we start to fuel our bodies. And we start because that’s another thing, too, when we talk about metabolic health, which is a whole other big conversation when it comes to nutrition. That’s something that we can adjust at any age too and see huge benefits from that as well and again I always just like to caveat that with I’m not ever going to tell anyone to restrict a lot of times it actually means like incorporating more food more protein more whole foods so but even that we see that metabolic health can come around especially when we have that strength training and nutrition element and again that’s at any age that’s it’s been one of the coolest parts of this particular studio is seeing those developments for women of all ages.

Nikki Foley: Just your conversation and statistics that you started with there, that you really can regenerate and get yourself back to levels that you knew at a much younger age. Like that’s enough to make me motivated to be like, Ooh, tell me more. And how do I get there? And so for some people that might be something that they needed to hear to get them excited about what we’re going to talk about today. So as we get into some of the details, which health habits have the biggest long-term impact for our listeners?

Kinsey Diment: Okay. I love this one. I’m going to give a soft answer first because without it, nothing else exists. And that is consistency. And it’s the one that nobody wants to hear because it’s not a sexy topic. It’s not a one and done or a 30 day challenge, but you could have the perfect workout program, execute it beautifully. You could eat a perfectly crafted nutritional. Dietary guide you could get your sleep you could deal with stress and then if after six months you give it up and never come back And there it goes. Long term, it’s gone. So I always like to start with picking things that are really sustainable and picking goals that are achievable one at a time, which we can talk about a little later. So that’s my like just quick, like softball answer that nobody wants to hear. And now I’ll give the answers that are a little bit more tangible. So the first one is movement in general, more movement. And that I love to start with because it costs no money for most of us. We’re still. Gratefully that’s accessible to us and I’m talking like movement throughout the day it could be more walking it could be there’s something called neat which is non-exercise activity thermogenesis it accounts for up to when we use it a lot 30 of the amount of essentially calories that we burn throughout the day. So it can have a really big effect on stabilizing blood sugar, seeing that metabolic rate come up. And that is as simple as like increasing our step counts or fidgeting at work. But for all of us who got yelled at in class, turns out we had really high NEAT. So take that. It’s, you know, parking a little bit further away from your office. It’s all these little choices to be more mobile in a body that. Was designed to be mobile and now lives in a life that is very sedentary. So our environment is a big piece of what’s made us so chronically ill at this point in our lives. Our biology demands a lot of movement. We’re bipedal. Our ancestors moved a lot. And now the majority of us, if we think realistically about how much time we’re on our feet, it’s pretty sparse. We drive to the office. Eight to nine or eight to five. I don’t work regular hours. I work at a gym. So nine to five, I guess would be what a normal person works. I guess you’re sitting for most of it. Then you’re driving home and probably our after work activity is sitting because we’re tired from work. So there’s just so much benefit from just even one thing that I like to. Offer people our steps because i feel like that’s something tangible and again kind of low barrier the majority of us average americans get around 3 500 to 4 000 steps a day if we can increase that over time gradually to even just 8 000 steps a day there have been again study after study that show 30 to 40 percent of all cause mortality go down or we see all cause mortality go down by 30 to 40%, which is substantial. We also see decreases in chronic pain. It can be incredibly helpful for blood sugar regulation, and that’s just walking. So that’s always my first one. If I’m like, if you take nothing else away from this, just find ways to move your body a little bit more. My next two, and I’ll just say them and I won’t give you my big soapbox would be prioritizing protein. And I mean, quality protein. I’m not talking like protein pop cart. Tarts and like the protein popcorn and the whatever this like protein craze has brought up. No, no, no. I’m talking like good sources of protein and then strength training because muscle is now been studied and sort of recognized as the organ of longevity. And a lot of our vitality as we age, especially into those years when we think of them more as our like retirement age, come as a result of having a body with high quality muscle on it.

Nikki Foley: I always like to give resources when something comes up. And have you read the book? It’s called The Comfort Crisis. I think it’s an orange cover.

Kinsey Diment: No.

Nikki Foley: It goes along with your first point of movement and how our bodies are designed to move and do incredibly hard things. And we’re living in a society that… We’re living in a society where everything is it’s at our fingertips. You can push a button to have something delivered to you and so forth, and how our bodies are still living in much earlier times when it is ready for action. And so you have to create environments where you put yourself into that, and so for any of our listeners and Kinsey since you haven’t read it, you should read the Comfort Crisis. It’s one of those books you don’t have to read every single word, but reading it to the point where you get the understanding, you will come back to it over and over again. Something you know pops up that’s a little bit hard, you’re like “oh my body needs this, I need to do it even when I don’t want to. Yes!

So what are some of the realistic goals for someone midlife and beyond. So it sounds like steps with something that you know, pulling from your last question, but give us kind of your perspective on that.

Kinsey Diment: Yeah, I think, so I like to think of, and it shouldn’t be as revolutionary as it is, but in a quick fix society, it kind of is. I like to think of health as our lifelong goal. So I like to think of, I encourage my clients to choose one, maybe two goals at a time that feel nine to 10 out of doable, and then try to really nail that. For like four to six weeks and by nail it i don’t mean perfection i mean like if your goal you’re at 4 000 steps you want to get to 8 000 for four weeks we’re aiming for 5 000 steps five days a week and we’re practicing not getting all up in arms when we don’t do it we haven’t failed we’re probably just busy we can try again tomorrow the nice thing about that is that it allows us to not overload ourselves And it allows us to actually cement these habits because by the time we’re ready to take on that next goal, this one we’re kind of doing like it’s a no brainer. There are so many days that I don’t want to go to my workout. There’s so many days, most days right now. I’m pretty busy, but. I brush my teeth every day. I go to my workout three days a week. I just don’t even think about it. It’s a no brainer for me. And that’s a big piece of with my clients with the fitness piece. I would love for people to get to a part or a point in their life where they’re comfortable showing up to themselves for themselves rather. So the strength training piece is one. That i actually think is more realistic than we think because again i think for a really long time we’ve thought of fitness as something as like we are all or nothing we’re in or we’re not i have been in this field for so long and the amount of times i’ve seen people come in so motivated they’re so excited they’re coming in five six seven days a week they’re doing it they’re feeling good and then either they injure themselves Or they miss a day and go, I’ll just do it again tomorrow. And then they miss another day. And then suddenly tomorrow becomes a month, three months, three years, because you’re tired. That’s not something that’s sustainable, right? That goes back to consistency. So when I’m talking about strength training, which is what I try to encourage all of my clients to prioritize two strength training sessions a week. Because maintaining our muscle is the thing that is going to be benefiting our health down the line when it comes to, again, that vital aging. And there’s so many ways that muscle helps. I’m happy to talk about it, but it is like I do whole muscle and menopause workshops that are like 90 minutes long because that’s how important it is. But in just two workouts a week when they’re well programmed. We can see up to 80% of the benefits from strength training. When you do three, you see up to 90. So with two, you’re just getting 10% less and you’re still getting 80%. And this is something that I’ve seen work for many of my clients, especially when they’re early on. And that I think is something too that is kind of cool about fitness. Early on, like you mentioned with the book, our bodies want to move. So even just a little stimulus. Our bodies want to adapt. So we start to see these beautiful benefits and the plus side is it gives our body time to recover as well as we’re not burning out or injuring ourselves because we’re building it up in a realistic, sustainable way. So that I would say from the strength training. And then in terms of nutrition, because I just like to give sometimes people have different things they pull from. I always like to say a realistic goal for nutrition. Start by prioritizing protein. The best thing to do is just take a quick little audit. How many grams of protein am I eating right now? It doesn’t have to be a full food track. I hate food tracking. I just don’t do it. Just see like for three days how much protein you’re getting because it’s probably less than you think. And then just try to start getting up to 100 grams of protein or up. Higher protein breakfast that’s another really great small goal first eventually you’ll be doing that without thinking about it and then you can go on to something else but just starting with something that you can actually succeed in so that we’re training ourselves to trust ourselves to change a behavior because to me that’s what it’s about it’s not about changing our bodies it’s about changing our behaviors we can change your body in 30 days but when we change our behavior that’s where we see the health outcome

Nikki Foley: So I think you’ve answered that next question that I was going to ask is where should somebody start? You did fantastic. So what I’m going to recap, and if I don’t have this right, you know, make changes to what I’m saying.

Changing the behavior is where you would start, and you mentioned the strength and the nutrition. And if you can, just get yourself two times a week on that strength training and aim for protein if we’re talking about nutrition. And i heard you say 100 grams but even if you don’t get to 100 grams, focus on your breakfast as a starting point because it’s easy to get really high protein in that breakfast

Kinsey Diment: Yep, and it matters the most too in that little window because that’s going to be when we’re breaking our fast. Protein breaks down to those building blocks, the amino acids. So when we can get that coming off of a fast, our body is really ready to utilize them. And as we get older, that’s one mechanism where we become a little bit slower and less proficient at utilizing nutrients. So that’s a really nice sweet spot of like. Breaking our fast, which is breakfast with that protein.

So, okay. Breaking the fast. Everybody can remember that break fast. Breakfast.

Nikki Foley: Okay. So I’m going to remind our listeners why we’re here today and why is a financial podcast talking about health and at this level. And our goal of this conversation again is to ward off some of the health and the financial risks, such as increased medical expenses, earlier than expected retirement, lost income.

And so what I’m going to ask Kinsey next is give us some real life examples. You are working with individuals, you know, midlife and beyond every day. Give us a couple of examples of where you have seen somebody reduce their health care costs just because they took some steps that you’re suggesting today.

Kinsey Diment: Yeah, it’s it’s pretty cool. So I have two clients in mind who spring right to mind. The first one was a client who we started working together a few years ago and she was pre-diabetic. And when you’re diabetic in most states you can expect to spend about sixteen thousand dollars a year that’s just for that right and then all the other systemic effects that come from having chronic inflammation that go along with that so chronic pain sleep disruption sleep apnea all these things that come down the line which i have don’t have the research on but you can see how that would stack because generally one illness begets many others and she was she was on the search. Like she, she, she always would come in and she’s like, I don’t know how I, I don’t know how I got this. Like I, she didn’t feel like she was a person who should have been pre-diabetic. She did all quote unquote, the right things. She was restricting. She had dieted for many, many years. That’s why I say quote unquote dieted for many, many years and was a runner. And what had happened was Chronic dieting had really wreaked havoc on her metabolism and created pretty severe insulin resistance from years of yo-yo dieting. And then the running compounded that. Unfortunately, running is not a way that we can build muscle. It’s great for cardiovascular health. But as a result of chronic dieting, her muscle mass had really significantly decreased. She was just suddenly in this sort of like metabolic maelstrom. And she started really gently. She just started with me focusing on. Movement. So we started strength training because she was starting to have some pretty chronic pain. So we started strength training at that two times a week. And once she was probably about three to four months in, she started sort of towing the line, asking me questions about nutrition, specifically protein. I always like to start with fitness because nutrition, especially for those of us who have been sort of swept up in the yo-yo dieting era of the 80s and 90s, it can be really tangled into the sort of like self-identity piece as well. And talk about throwing money away. Like that is a whole other industry that just like will. Will bleed you dry if you let it because it sets you up for failure it tells it tells you it’s their fault and then you have to buy more of their products so i don’t know how much money she spent on just that now she’s in treatment for this so we just started upping her protein and I’m not a nutritionist so we just i shared the resources i had i shared her with a health coach that i have and work really closely with and by about a year’s time her numbers had dropped significantly and she was out of that pre-diabetic space And it was just from lifestyle because she didn’t want to take any medication for it. She wanted to try to do it her own way first. And that was a really big aha moment for me because. You know you study this and you see the numbers and it’s one thing to read about it and read other case studies and it’s another to see someone in front of you making choices that are really uncomfortable because that’s the other piece like it isn’t comfortable if you’ve come from a dieting background to start eating again so that like I just am so mind blown it takes courage to take care of ourselves a lot of the time and so that’s that mental resilience again that we talked about it’s those are some of my favorite moments the other and I’m just I’ll just share it and I won’t go into the whole story, but I have a woman who’s in her seventies and we’ve been working together for about a year. She’s pretty darn active. Like she likes to roller blade with her, her kid or her grandkids. She cleans up the Mississippi river once a week. So she’s, she already had activity under her baseline, but she took a really bad fall about seven months into working with me and went into the doctors. And we kind of talked about those stats early on and the doctors were gobsmacked they were like a woman your age should have broken a hip should have been immobilized and here she was with just an ankle sprain no broken bones she had a trip to scotland coming up in four weeks and was really nervous that she was gonna miss that and then she was out of her boot by week three and that to me is preventative so it didn’t I mean, when we look at, I think it says like one bad fall generally is about like $18,000 in a single hospital visit. There’s so many things and it depends on how long you’re there for. And then the checkup. So that can add up because a lot of these numbers, the CDC offers don’t offer the continuation. It’s sort of like the initial check-in. So that’s one, another one that I just think is so cool because the stats show that she should have broken a bone. It’s just 72 is kind of that age that, again, in a society that doesn’t talk a ton about movement, we just sort of accept getting old and frail. And she was a great example of that is a paradigm that doesn’t have to exist. So I mean, I have so many like those of women who just sort of are defying odds, but are actually just moving their bodies and making these small choices. Both those women just work out with me twice a week.

Nikki Foley: And as you were talking about them, what was going through my mind, and I didn’t even realize my next question actually plays into this, but I think about sometimes you can’t see things on the surface of what might be going on. And inside, like in that first example where she maybe was a runner and she had done all the things that were right, as you put those in quotes. And reality was she needed somebody alongside of her to tell her a different story and to help her understand how to navigate what she was going through and so that was my point i wanted to make is sometimes it’s easier with a professional alongside of you and either that could be from all different perspectives whether it’s motivational or tell you something that you can’t see or help you understand some of the terminology or things that maybe a doctor or a nutritionist or somebody else shares with you. And so it’s just kind of that there’s a lot of different ways a professional can show up and support you. So Kinsey, tell us a little bit about what you do. You’ve been using all these fantastic examples and how you’ve been interacting, but tell us a little bit more about what the day-to-day looks like if they were to partner with you.

Kinsey Diment: Yeah, absolutely. So, and I love what you said, because I do think that’s one of the biggest things is we don’t know what we don’t know. And I’ve… In my own business, I think all the time of the years that I try to do the business side of things without a business coach. And then how much easier my life got when I worked with someone who knew what they were talking about. Just years and dollars saved. And that’s how I feel about pretty much everything in the health space. No woman who’s shown up to work with me isn’t an expert at something they’re excellent at what they do they’re outstanding whether it’s no matter what they do they’ve excelled at but that means that they haven’t had time to learn this stuff and that’s where i come in so the way that i work with clients is right now i work in i’ve worked in this field for 12 years. What it looks like now is I opened a studio called Fit After 40. We have an in-person studio in the Twin Cities, and then we also have a couple online cohorts as well. I lived in LA for a long time, so I just had clients who wanted to keep working together. So I have some bi-coastal people who pop in for those as well. But what it looks like is the women that I work with, I would say probably 85% of them right now, we work together two times a week. The rest, we work together three times a week, but for the most part, especially in Minnesota, spring summer fall it’s so beautiful outside they get to go outside and then the winter they’ll probably come in but what we really work on is that we prioritize those two progressive strength training sessions and i keep it small group so it caps at six women so that women can actually learn form so another thing that i guess would have gone into part of my ethos behind this is that one of the things that I’ve noticed as being missing besides really understanding menopause and women’s health in general period and other discussion is that there isn’t a lot of attention to form in group fitness and that’s group fitness has a myriad of benefits it gets people excited to go they make friends it’s high energy it’s fun but after a certain amount of time Most people plateau and they don’t see significant changes, whether it’s body comp, whether it’s health goals, et cetera. Again, another whole big conversation. But one of the issues there is that we don’t actually learn how to move. And especially as we start to enter that midlife and beyond age, partially it’s that we don’t want to waste our time. So if we’re not moving well, we’re probably not working out the muscles that we want to be focusing on. We’re also probably moving. With incorrect movement patterns every single body walks into the gym with some sort of movement imbalance, right? We either stand with our hip to the side. We work at a computer all day We’ve had surgery on our knee whatever the case is There is something that is amiss along our musculoskeletal system that we need to smooth out and correct so that when we’re moving under things like squats and deadlifts, et cetera, we’re moving through them safely. And that’s another big thing too, is that we want to make sure we’re safe. Cause that’s a piece that I think can be scary sometimes to midlife and beyond populations is they don’t want to get injured strength training. And the cool thing is, is that strength training is really safe when it’s approached. Correctly and it can actually be really preventative for injury down the line so what it looks like if someone were to be in their very first month or two with me is that i start everyone at sort of a baseline we start at something called balance and stability training so what we’re doing is we’re working on kind of exactly what it sounds like part of our warm-up we’re really just drilling balancing that’s another thing we start to see decline as we get older in perimenopause it’s not uncommon to have dizziness or even vertigo as a as a side effect of So we’re just really drilling that balance because we talked about falls super duper important. Also, if we can’t balance, probably when we’re in a squat, something’s firing incorrectly. So we’re focusing on balance. We’re focusing on really drilling form before even getting them underweight. So I know, and more importantly, they know when they do start to add weight into their squats, deadlifts, presses, et cetera, they know and feel confident in how to move their body. I always like to kind of liken it to playing a violin. Where at least I don’t look at a violinist and say, I could do that, right? I know that work has gone into that. I know because I’ve tried. You learn first the finger placement, then you learn sort of how to squeak out a song, et cetera, et cetera. And then years down the line, you’re great at violin. Movement’s kind of the same way. It’s the exact same thing. It’s a neuromuscular response. So that’s kind of my approach early on. I am doing essentially the same thing of teaching you finger placements so that in three months after we work together, not only do you know you’re moving safely, but you know how to move your own body. So you know, oh, I need to drop my shoulder or, oh, my toes a little bit off, or I need to push down through my heels, activate my glutes. All these things a coach says to you over and over, you start to say to yourself so that. I love it when women stay. And so far, most of them have stuck around the ones who have had to leave because they’ve moved, et cetera. They at least know now what they’re doing, how to do it and how to do it safely. So that is, that’s a big piece of what I’m really proud of with this gym is because we treat each woman as an individual and we work with their body the same way you would get if you were working with a personal trainer. And then eventually you move proficiently enough that you can jump into the normal month to month workouts.

Nikki Foley: So much of what you said there comes back to confidence and confidence in what you’re doing in that moment. But there’s so much to be said for the confidence that you get from just the strength and what you are gaining overall that takes you into another part of your world, the confidence that goes with that. So, well, that is fantastic. Anything else you want to add about your services or what you’re doing that was perfect?

Kinsey Diment: oh i guess there is i also have a podcast fit after 40. So i love to share that too because that’s a totally free resource i am coming up on 100 episodes of that and there’s pretty much any question that i get asked in the studio especially of like how to get started the right way exercises you want to make sure not to miss 11 best standards of practice like all the little things and we even talk about if you’re more interested in learning about things like what is menopause and why, why is this happening? So we, and I’ve had some great guests on there too. And I look forward to having you on there eventually too. We need to figure out that time, but so it’s forward to that. Yes. So fit after 40 is the name of the podcast. And again, we can look that up by looking up.

Nikki Foley: Is it on your website as well? Because we’re going to put all of this in the show notes. So no matter what, I will make sure we have a link to your podcast. They can probably find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all the places. So, Kinsey, we will get that out there and make sure it’s easily accessible from the show website.

Okay, this is where we started our whole conversation, and it’s about… So peptides, GLP-1s, the good, the bad, are they indifferent? And how does that impact everything we’re doing? And so that was when Kinsey and I first started, before we turned on the camera and started recording, is it’s everywhere. It’s a conversation you can read about no matter what. I feel like no matter what place you go to, wherever you get your news sources, there’s going to be something about this. So what’s your thoughts?

Kinsey Diment: I’m laughing only because before I was like, this is a whole other episode. So I’m going to do my best. As you can tell, I’m a verbose person. So the like long and short, when they first hit the scene as accessible to general population, I was like, absolutely not. This is another one of those quick fix. What are we doing here? And then I started deep diving a little bit more because it became inescapable. GLP-1s, for example, have been around for decades and they’ve been used for diabetic patients and we create GLP-1s naturally. So peptides are things that we create naturally. So I’m much more open to it because I’ve also had a lot of clients. I have a lot of internal battles. I’m trying to figure out how to say this correctly. I think as a tool, they’re going to change the face of… The wellness industry. I think they can be an incredibly beneficial tool for people who experience weight loss resistance, or like I mentioned, clients who have chronically dieted and have sort of like wreaked havoc on our metabolism. It can be, especially as we get older, we can experience. Weight loss resistance there’s a really good book called weightless and i forget of the doctor who wrote she’s been working with patients with obesity for decades and she was kind of the first person who i heard on Mary Claire Haver’s podcast talk about it where i was like oh this is like this is an important piece of the health conversation and there’s a couple reasons to it one being that if it’s really hard for us to get our weight down there’s a lot of things systemically that come alongside of that piece, just in terms of overall health, whether we’re talking about heart health, bone health, musculoskeletal health, brain health. So we’re also seeing like anti-inflammation benefits from it. So there is a lot of good to it. It needs to really be talked about as it needs to be respected. I do not like that people have access to it just willy nilly. I hate that influencers can sell it. I think that is incredibly irresponsible. I think that’s going to be where a lot of people really. Get themselves in the weeds. Diet culture, as I mentioned, is a very insidious, nasty thing, and it can make us quite sick. So when we’re talking about just weight loss without the implementation of medical assistance, when we lose weight rapidly, whether it’s from restriction or chronic exercise, whatever the case, when we lose it rapidly, we lose 25 to 30% of our muscle, which takes a huge metabolic hit. That’s why we tend to see a lot of yo-yo dieting because muscle is our metabolic engine. It uses blood sugar and independent of insulin it increases our burning or our basal metabolic rate so we burn more at rest so when we leave a diet with less muscle it becomes easier for us to gain that weight back but not the muscle then we diet again we lose even more muscle so we’re losing this critical organ that i also mentioned is a big piece of healthy aging with glp-1s we can see muscle loss up to 40 percent if it’s not correctly paired with lifestyle That seems to be something that we’re starting. I never know like what people are seeing and what’s just my algorithm. Cause now my algorithm is starting to talk about what the woman in weightless called her GPS system, which is GLP-1 protein and strength training. So protein and strength training are the things that are going to maintain that calorically expensive tissue muscle while it’s possible to build. It’s hard to build. It’s, it’s something that takes a lot of work. So when we just lose it willy nilly, it’s a big climb back up and it takes a lot of time. It takes time. So, and then we’re talking about losing bone as well. So when we talk about it, we want to make sure we’re. Thinking about it as a piece of the puzzle, not the answer. And that’s where I think it trends right now and towards the bad. Because if I’m using a GLP-1 and not thinking about the long-term effects, suddenly now my body’s undergoing all these changes that are going to be really difficult to climb out of at the end. And also, I like to ask people, who’s prescribing you your GLP-1? Is it your doctor or is it you? Because a lot of times two people who are drawn to GLP-1s right now aren’t people who necessarily qualify for GLP-1s. And I say this all with absolutely no judgment. I have also been a woman in a society that has taught me my entire life that the shape of my body defines my value. And this is for men too. It’s a tricky world out there when we have capitalism and health sort of in the same bed together. So that’s why it’s such a big issue. I would say overall, I look forward to when this becomes less of a wild west, because I do think just with the world that we live in, environmental toxins are going to make it really hard for people to lose weight. I think we talked about the movement being different than our biology wanted. The food industry is different than our biology wants. So we’re going to have a lot of trouble there. Everything is different. Our machines are still back in like. The paleolithic ages right so the book yes exactly so there’s gonna be it’s it’s it makes sense that this has a role to play and i have worked with a lot of clients who are currently on GLP ones and are doing the other pieces. They’re prioritizing protein, which can be really hard at first when you lose that appetite and their strength training. And I have one in particular, who’s been really like watching her data and she’s been on it for like six months and she hasn’t lost muscle alongside of it. And that I think is. I’m always hesitant to tell people I would never tell you to weigh yourself for this. But if you do have access to something like InBody, not as like an end all be all, but just so you can see data trends of is my muscle going down as my weight and fat are going down. And that’s the tricky like that’s the trick to when you’re just using a scale like your weight might be dropping, but we don’t know what’s happening with the tissue inside. So I am. Going to hold a positive outlook because that’s just who I am and like I said I know people who are doing it in a way that’s supportive but it is something that I think really we need to pull back on how cavalier we are with self-prescription and buying from people who also sell us tennis shoes, you know, like it just, so.

Nikki Foley: You’ve done an excellent job of positioning it with balance and you have done, you’ve done well with that, but giving us the caveat of just proceed with caution and know what your sources are, whether you’re learning or you’re buying, it’s a really important to make sure you have awareness to that. One of the things that you had mentioned, and I’ll just ask you for just a quick explanation you mentioned the terminology InBody. I have from my experience know what that is, but somebody might not know what that is in relation to a normal scale will you just give something just a second on that

Kinsey Diment: Yeah absolutely, thank you, that’s a good point. InBody is a bioimpedance scale. So basically what it means is, when you stand–and they have lots of these like home devices which again I always say like don’t look at them as the holy grail they’re just data points but basically they are able to read the percentage of they take your weight and then they scan for the percentage of fat mass and lean muscle or in lean mass so like bone muscle tissue basically anything that isn’t fat tissue so the good it shows you what’s actually going on underneath the weight and that’s important for so many reasons but especially with this because you can see a lot of times we’ll see people when they lose weight pretty fast where their weight goes down but they’re fat, like the percentage of fat actually increases because they’ve lost muscle.

Nikki Foley: I thought it was important because I think it comes back to two points that we’ve made is 1), what’s going on when we can’t see it. And 2), having a professional alongside of you. And this is a version of having more information, but having somebody alongside of you that can tell the story and read the numbers. I thought it was worthwhile to call that one out.

Kinsey Diment: I love that.

Nikki Foley: Anything else that you’d like to add to the conversation or advice that you’d like to offer the listeners?

Kinsey Diment: Man, I feel like we gave you so much, but honestly, my takeaway, I hope is just be easy on yourself. You got a lot going on. Like I kind of alluded to, this doesn’t have to be a one and done thing. In fact, the best outcomes that I’ve seen have come from people, slow, slow burns, slow and steady. So I hope you walk away with. One thing today that you feel nine or 10 out of 10, sure that you can start, whether it’s the steps, whether it’s exploring strength training, whether it’s the protein. And I encourage you and invite you just to get courageous and try it out for a couple of weeks. Don’t add anything else. Just try that out.

Nikki Foley: You have been absolutely amazing. You’ve given lots of really tangible, easy things to connect to. I love that you were willing to share your podcast. So others, if they want to hear more from you, so Fit After 40, we’ll have everything on our podcast website. Any other recommendations for resources that you think people should look into?

Kinsey Diment: There are a lot of really good resources, both podcasts and books. One of my favorite is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. She has a podcast and a book called Forever Strong, which are, Forever Strong is a great blueprint of everything we talked about, but she’s worked specifically in populations for decades that are both patients with obesity and geriatric patients. So it’s a really cool, she’s the one who coined Organ of Longevity. I also really love Dr. Stacey Sims’ work. She has a couple of different books, Next Level and Roar. Next Level is specifically around perimenopause and both. Her work primarily focuses on the female body. It’s a little bit more on like the athletic spectrum, but it’s still a really good, it applies to everyone. And then Dr. Stephanie Estima is another woman I love. She has a podcast called Better with Dr. Stephanie, and she kind of has overall health. So a lot of the things we talked about, she gets really nitty gritty on and she’s been in the industry for a really long time. So whether you want to talk about like the metabolic health or she’s a chiropractic or doctor. Yeah. You know what I mean? But she, she’s, so she just did a podcast too on like bone health and how Pilates doesn’t beget muscle and bone and which is another, again, conversation. But I would say those three are three of my, my main, my main ladies.

Nikki Foley: And you gave one more earlier, Mary Claire Haver. Is that what it is?

Kinsey Diment: Oh, I’m so sorry. Yeah. Dr. Mary Claire Haver. Thank you. And she’s got a cut. If you’re want to deep dive in menopause, she, she’s kind of forefronted the conversation in a big way. So she’s a great. Resource both with books and podcasts

Nikki Foley: Well fantastic! Thank you for loading us with not just one but multiple people that you follow and that play along with the conversation we’ve had today. Well if I just kind of want to bring this back again. It’s a financial podcast, but why are we talking about all this. Well clearly you’ve given fantastic examples of how you can find ways to, you know, make sure we’re minimizing the chance of increased health expenses as you age by doing some of these preventative measures. You know things like early retirement can happen, things like lost income can happen, and so we’re trying to get three ten whatever steps in front of all of that so that we’re being preventative versus reactive and back to some of those conversations about even caregiving needs you come out of your normal role and you get into that can be a heavy lift on either side if you’re going up or down with having to care for others and so taking care of yourself as a key piece. Well, if you want to take the next step and hear more either from Kinsey, who has been with us, make sure you visit our website at paladinfinancialtalk.com. That is our podcast website. We’ll make sure we have everything out there. But if you want to set an appointment with us. You can do that on our website at paladinfinancial.com or paladinfinancialtalk.com. We have a 15 minute no obligation conversation that we offer. And then Kinsey, I’m guessing it’s similar for you as well. Like if they want to have a conversation with you by just going to their web, your website, putting in their information or calling you, that’s something that you’re, you’re willing to do in at least initial conversation with somebody. Is that correct?

Kinsey Diment: Absolutely. And honestly, let me give you my email too, because I believe the website just takes you to booking a session. So if you have any questions at all, I love to talk about this stuff.

Kinsey so that’s my first name. Kinsey@fitafter40.info and that goes right to me, and I love to hear from you and I will be happy to respond with whatever resources that I can help with

Nikki Foley: Oh, you’ve been fantastic. I can’t talk. You have been fantastic, Kinsey. We appreciate it. We’re willing and for being willing to share that email address as well. So whether it’s you’re looking to do something more on the financial side, go to paladinfinancialtalk.com. Or if you’d like to hear more from Kinsey, same place. We’ll make sure we have all of our information out there as well.

One of the things that we do as we do any of these series is we offer a complimentary download. And the complimentary download this series is “Reviewing  Health and Life Insurance Policies”. And it helps clients understand their options, especially as you get towards the Medicare age and timing decisions and how HSA accounts might go along with Medicare. And it just makes retirement health care part of the overall financial plan. So that is available on our website as well.

If you’d like to make that download, it’s an interactive flow chart.

Well, with that, continue to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

And thank you again, Kinsey, for being a part of this. Show we really appreciate you and with that we look forward to seeing everybody on the next episode

Kinsey Diment: Thanks Nikki, this is awesome, this was wonderful

Nikki Foley: All right, take care bye