Highlights from interviews 11–15 on bodybuilding, fit after 40, Superwoman Syndrome and more
A few years ago, I hosted a podcast called Health Matters. It was a show for women who wanted to improve their spiritual and physical health.
Every week, I featured a new expert. These experts provided insight into their specific field of expertise.
Today, I share highlights from interviews 11–15:
- Fit for Freedom with Laurie Graves.
- The Bodybuilding Approach to Health and Weight Loss with Summer Breskow.
- How to Avoid the Superwoman Complex with Nicole Swiner.
- You Can Be Fit After 40 with Liz Faison.
- 3 Biggest Mistakes that Keep Christian Women Overweight with Cathy Morenzie.
Fit for freedom with Laurie Graves
Laurie Graves kicked off the next set of interviews. She’s a NASM-certified personal trainer who works with contestants and former contestants from NBC’s The Biggest Loser and ABC’s Extreme Weight Loss.
Laurie lost 90 pounds and has kept it off for over 10 years. But it wasn’t until she got close to the end of her weight loss journey that she finally got quiet enough to hear that God wanted to lift this heavy burden off of her. And He wanted to give her peace. He wanted her to love her body.
She went on to explain how we crave what the world has to offer instead of receiving the peace that we’re told we can have.
The only way to get back to the truth is to rediscover who we are in Christ.
And there’s really only one way to discover who we are in Christ and that’s by spending time with the Father, in His Word, through prayer, and to really seek Him.
Laurie shared with us her prayer before mealtime: “Lord, will You be glorified in this choice?” and then pray, “Lord, will You be glorified in this portion?”
The bodybuilding approach to health and weight loss with Summer Breskow
Summer Breskow was once 295 pounds and very miserable but she has since lost over 140 pounds. She accomplished this by focusing on macros — fats, carbs, and proteins.
She explained that she used MyFitnessPal to help her with the math of figuring out how many of each macro she should be eating each day. It’s a free app for your phone or desktop that helps you log your food. It will tell you how much fats, carbs, and proteins you’ve had all day long and it’ll help you create your menus.
How to avoid the Superwoman Complex with Nicole Swiner
My next guest was Nicole Swiner, a family physician, wife and mother of two. Nicole talked about the Superwoman Complex.
She explained that in her research for her book and in dealing with patients like herself who were working moms or at home taking care of the family etc. she actually came across the term Superwoman Syndrome.
It came out of the notion of women going out into the workforce in the 1950s and 60s, just after the war, becoming a little bit more career-oriented either by force or by choice and then a couple of decades later realizing that these women were carrying a lot of weight and burden on their shoulders.
Not only now are they stepping outside of the household and holding down full-time jobs and making waves and moving up the ladder at work but then they still had to come home and do the usually conservative, typical ideas of a woman and a wife and mom.
They had to balance those two worlds and realized that they weren’t doing that great of a job. Many were dealing with medical issues that came out of dealing with the amount of stress of having to deal with both worlds.
The fact that we often feel that we have to be perfect in all realms ends up damaging us in multiple ways.
Nicole suggested two steps:
- The first is to recognize that you’re overwhelmed.
- After you take that assessment then, you need to put your words into action.
You can be fit after 40 with Liz Faison
Liz Faison and her husband started Fit for Christ because being fit is not only physical but spiritual and emotional. They noticed a huge gap in the personal training industry when addressing the total wellness of a person.
Liz talked about three things a woman over 40 can do daily for better health:
- Get up in the morning and drink 2 cups of warm water.
- Strength train.
- Get enough sleep.
She then talked about time as being the biggest hurdle most women have in getting fit. And the second is feeling like we’re being selfish in taking care of ourselves.
3 Biggest mistakes that keep Christian women overweight with Cathy Morenzie
Cathy Morenzie, a noted personal trainer, author, blogger and presenter, has been a leader in the health and wellness industry for nearly 30 years.
Cathy talked about why she thinks the issue of weight loss seemed to be especially challenging for Christian women.
She explained the 3 biggest mistakes that Christian women make:
- Stinkin’ thinking.
- Surface scratching.
- Auto-piloting.
And she gave strategies to overcome these mistakes.
That wraps up the highlights of Part III of interviews with health experts. Although the podcast is no longer available, if you’d like a copy of any of the full interview transcripts, please send me an email.
This has been an excerpt from the Health Matters Podcast, believing that prayer and Bible study are to the spirit what exercise and healthy eating are to the body.
Blessings on your journey to health.
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