Krisna Hanks, from dance to dynamic health coach

Nigel Rawlins: Welcome Krisna to the Wisepreneurs podcast. I'm really pleased that I could get you on Krisna, could you tell us something about your early days because you were a professional dancer, so tell us something about that.

Krisna Hanks: Absolutely. So I had a, when in the dance world is a pretty long career. I was around 33 years. I started dancing professionally around the age of 15. I was very lucky that this brilliant choreographer moved to my small town in Illinois and started a professional dance company that was Pamela Bedford. That was my first dance experience. The shortened version of that long career was that took me to Chicago. I danced with a company there called, Akasha. I was seeking other adventures in the dance world. Ended up in New York City and finished off my career with a couple decades in the Netherlands working with a host of different choreographers, Lisa Ross Marcus to the Dutch National Opera, and many others in between. And it was a fabulous career.

Nigel Rawlins: So what made you move to the Netherlands? Actually I'm in Tucson, Arizona, but I lived, yes, close to two decades in the Netherlands, in the Amsterdam. And I was with someone else at the time. And we had both been looking for more challenges in our work environment and we both experienced different things. I took some auditions while I was there and one job led to another. We ended up not being together. But I stayed in Amsterdam and finished off my dance career there. And then actually from my dance career, I went immediately into executive coaching with a company in what was based in Amsterdam, the Benelux area. That was my ease outta my dance career into officially being a coach.

That's fabulous. No, that, that's why I checked the time I thought Amsterdam, it's midnight. So Tucson, Arizona. So how long have you been there?

Krisna Hanks: Will be two years in November. And previously we were in the San Francisco Bay area for about 13 years, couple years in Pasadena, Los Angeles area, and now here in Tucson. Hot Tucson. Hot. Little bit like Australia.

Nigel Rawlins: We're in Autumn here, so it's got down to eight degrees centigrade. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. So you had your dance career and that came to an end. So how did you then get into your executive coaching? What did you do?

Krisna Hanks: Sure. I think maybe it's good to back up just a little, I think as a yes. Even though it was a primary job as a professional dancer was dancing, being on stage, working with companies, productions, tours, all the kinds of things. But any professional dancer must throughout their career also be doing other things, which I for lack of a better phrase to it, meaning you are probably teaching some form of dance.

I taught. Dance, Iyenga Yoga, I choreographed for other people. I was also a personal trainer and I had all the certifications around that. Iyenga Yoga, Pilates, so you're constantly building other skills and tools along the way. And that is not just because dance is not one of those professions that pays extremely well also that it has a finite end, meaning you will not dance forever.

And this you're wanting to build your skills along the way for that whenever that day comes. How I wove into executive coaching was a firm that was based in the Netherlands was incorporated within their executive coaching, a physical component. A vocal component as well as a just creative communication component.

So my skills as having lots of movement experience as well as vocal experience just transferred really nicely into that field. And obviously I got some additional skills along the way, certifications in that. But it, it was a sort of perfect fit. And it was a very interesting, because your company is really focused on women.

We were a company of women, but doing a lot of courses for, primarily for men. So it was a very interesting dichotomy within the corporate structure. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Nigel Rawlins: that sounds fantastic. So you were doing multiple things. That means you had to cope with all that. So physically how did you cope? How did you look after yourself that you weren't exhausted all the time?

Krisna Hanks: I think something that I grew up with is, for lack of a better word, discipline, , my dad was a basketball coach. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and they were extremely different. My dad, obviously being in basketball was very fitness, exercise orientated.

My mom did not like group things. She did not like that kind of thing. She was very creative in terms of amazing seamstress cook so I had these sort of two. Role models in the house. However, our household always revolved on if you wanted to go do something, you needed to do X, Y,Z before you could do that.

Oftentimes that would be helping in the house doing some kind thing outside. My dad in his early days was would go exercise as take us with as well that we were ingrained that there were a structure of things to do before you wanted to participate in the thing that you were wanting to do.

So I've always had that bit of discipline in there. Obviously with a career in dance, you must be extremely disciplined around your exercise, around your nutrition, getting good sleep, all of these things we talk about in the aging component that you're, you have to do to survive. When you're a professional dancer if your body, if your machine isn't working, you are not working, and that means you're not being able to pay your rent or you're not even able to do the thing you really love. So you learn to appreciate that you need to take care of it. And that I think carried me certainly and still carries me. It's no secret I'm 65 years old and I am still very disciplined about how my day goes, how my weeks go, whether they're super busy or they're a little bit quiet. I still get up at quarter past five in the morning and I'm not working out at that time, but I am doing some things.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay. I'd like to talk about your routine a bit later. So let's start going into, that's morphed into you becoming a health coach. And working in that area. So the physical has been part of your life. So how long have you been in this business of health coaching?

Krisna Hanks: I would say since right around 2010, specifically doing health coaching.

That's always been a part also of the physicality. We owned a Pilates studio and anytime you're in the fitness business, you're at the same time also doing some type of health coaching. It might be less formal than that, but people are always wanting to know your opinion about what do you think about these foods?

What's your opinion on this strategy when it comes to, whether it's even talking about the sauna and the cold plunge, the various things that, that come across your desk from any health and wellness, as well as what do you do for stress, right? That's a hot button topic. So your coaching at the same time, especially when you work one-on-one with individuals. Because as health is not just one piece. Exercise, yes, is a component. And I would even segment exercise. There's your structured exercise and there is how much you break up your sitting time. I think those two buckets as we age, need equal Im importance. But then there's the nutrition again, the sleep, how are you managing your stress?

Those, all those pieces and that you osmo by osmosis are working on when you're coaching someone one-on-one.

Nigel Rawlins: Wow. So what does it entail being a health coach?

Krisna Hanks: Great question. So I think that also, just a little bit how health coaching has really come to the forefront. I also worked as a work site wellness consultant, helping companies develop their employee health programs. That's a little bit more, on a broader scale, but I think the real reason health coaching has come to the one is that our medical system is failing many people and we have stepped in to fill the gap.

There's been within the medical system, what we call disease management, right? You've had people helping you manage your disease. As more and more emphasis has come to the forefront about that, it would be much better to prevent or help people stay healthy than wait till they get sick and manage their disease.

And the health coaching has come into the forefront, this fact that we just have a lot of people that need more help. And obviously the medical system is not really doing that in a very strong way as the, let's say that way. And I saw that through my executive coaching. I saw that as a Pilate studio owner through the work site wellness initiatives that I was doing, that people need more help and they need to be able to see the full picture it's all those components that we've already mentioned talking about nutrition, stress, sleep, right?

Your exercise component. Are you even spending time in nature and getting good sunlight though, all those kind of things. And I, I saw a need to kind wanna be able to help. That with that whole picture. And that was my desire to go more into the health coaching to see there's also a big need for it.

I don't know how it is in Australia, but certainly in the United States we're one of sickest nations, at the moment. We have only 12% of our population, of our adult population is metabolically fit. That is a a shocking actual number. And we could talk about metabolic health if you want.

And that just figures like that sort of say, okay, how can we help people and how can we help them before they get sick? And that was my sort of passion of wanting to go deeper into the health coaching field.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay, let's talk about metabolic health and what that means cuz I think people are starting to hear about it.

But un unless they've got an idea of what is is this specifically for women or for men? And I would probably prefer us to talk about women because I think the blokes have plenty of what I call 'em bros out there talking about men's health. But I don't hear a lot about practical stuff for the women.

And and obviously my interest here is because I work with professional women who want to be self-employed or who are self-employed is keeping their ability to think and work and produce quality work. And part of that is looking after their body and obviously their brain. So let's talk about metabolic health.

Krisna Hanks: Absolutely. And then I'd love to come back to that. One point that about women is, I think many of the women, unfortunately particularly any of the women over 40 have spent a lot of their time taking care of other people, whether that be children or a partner or now we see many women having to take care of their parents.

They have relinquished taking care of themselves. And it's not a judgment. There is no guilt about that. It's just way life came. And one of my things I hope to inspire people is, and I use this a lot on my hope coaching field, is to say, when you're in the airplane and things go wrong, what do they ask you to do?

They ask you to put your oxygen mask on first so that you could not only take care of yourself, but you're able to help others. You cannot help others if you don't breathe. So that was just a little side point I wanna make, and I think it's really a hope that women can feel inspired to say, you know what?

It's okay for me to prioritize my health. And I shouldn't feel guilty about it, and I just should feel good and start to build confidence in that way. And I think a key to that confidence piece is understanding metabolic health, because again, I think women and certainly in the dance world it's all about your weight or your scale or a lot of things about your size and metabolic health just opens up a whole other spectrum of what it means to have your metabolic processes functioning optimally.

There are five markers and depending upon which organization you adhere to, some say, If you have two or more of these in the suboptimal direction or three or more, that doesn't really matter. But those markers are waist circumference, blood pressure, blood glucose, fasting glucose, and two from the cholesterol panel, the triglycerides, and the HDL.

And again, you notice there's nothing in there about weight. There's nothing in there about BMI. There's nothing in there about total cholesterol. These are five markers that are very indicated of really a bigger picture of where do you sit on the blood sugar insulin spectrum, meaning are you insulin sensitive or are you going in the direction of insulin resistance?

A big piece that's very simple for many women to track is a waist circumference, right? You just need a tape measure. And I see this really beneficial to help people also be able to distance themselves a little bit from the scale. Because scale is not necessarily the only piece of evidence to show you that you are healthy and it's maybe even a poor metric at best.

And however, with circumference does give you an indication of how are you doing when it comes to visceral fat. And we know that visceral fat or that fat around our organs is the most deleterious to our health as we are aging and being able to say, Hey look my pants are starting to feel a little bit looser.

And understanding that you're really making strides forward in improving your metabolic health. And we know, talk to any health coach very many men are much quicker to see this scale move. Women, it moves much slower. And again, that's generalizing. But it is what we see in our practices.

And you can pretty much ask any health coach that's what we see. And we really wanna start from helping to build confidence, understand they're improving their health, even if that scale doesn't move right away.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes. I think that's a critical thing. And I did, as I mentioned earlier too, that I had worked with men in the past, but many years ago with there used to be a program called Gut Busters in Australia.

And yeah, some of those guys could lose their waist, know, their waist measurement would come down in six weeks. But women, it could take, and this is the scary bit, it can take a year or more. So let's talk a little bit about insulin. What do we be mean by insulin resistance?

Krisna Hanks: So basically insulin resistance and and yeah, obviously I'm not a chemist or an endocrinologist or anything like that, but insulin is really like the key to your cells.

It's the, I like to call it the bouncer to deciding whether glucose is going to go in or not allowed in much, like you would if you go to the disco, alright? Is the bouncer gonna let you in or out? And insulin resistance basically means that the blood glucose is not able to get in the cell.

It's locked, it's shut. And once you're moving towards the latter stages of insulin resistance, you're basically becoming diabetic, right? There's all stages of insulin resistance. Whether this is actually accurate, but some say it takes maybe 10 years for that to become really diabetic, that you go through these various stages of insulin resistances in some parts, but not all the body.

And then till eventually your full-blown diabetic. So obviously you would want to be sensitive, much like we want people to be sensitive and not resistant. And that's an important piece to understand that it was a great question because many the, in the medical system focus only on blood glucose, right?

We have fasting glucose tests we do, which is just a 24 hour snapshot looking at your blood glucose. We have the hemoglobin A1C test or as we call an America HBA1C, which is actually very good test, at least is showing you more of a three month average of how your blood glucose is doing. And I recommend to many people to do that, but we don't talk enough about insulin.

And I think the ultimate person that I have learned a whole lot, not only from his podcast, but his book is Benjamin Bickman. Who works out of Brigham Young in Utah and wrote a beautiful book called Why We Get Sick and what we can do about it. And he goes really into the details of the relationship between our health and chronic conditions and blood sugar and insulin.

And I think if anyone who works with me, at least they have a really good picture of what's going on there. And I think part of what a health coach does is we try to help educate people, empower people to be able to make good decisions for themselves.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes. Now that's an interesting point you made there too, that it can actually creep up over a number of years.

And I think that's especially for mature women, if you are 50 years old or you are 60 years old and you, are feeling well or fuzzy headed, or you are not happy with the way you are progressing. You may have an accumulation of, I don't know, issues that need to be found and need to be dealt with.

Is it too late if you are 60 years old and you are not healthy, that you can do something about it?

Krisna Hanks: I think you can turn things around at any age. Obviously if you have a very serious medical condition, that we're talking about is a whole other story that is something to be worked on with a medical profession.

And again, we make a real distinction in coaching is we educate, we empower, we give you the tools. We do not prescribe, treat, or professionally give you medical advice. We are coaching and supporting you to make the best decisions for you. That said, when it comes to much of our health, we can make changes at any stage.

I have worked with individuals who've had HBA1Cs again, that hemoglobin A1C, that blood sugar test that shows you your three month average in the nine the diabetic range and they have lowered it, right? And it all depends on how much time are you willing to put in. How patient will you be and how willing are you?

We call this in the coaching world, readiness to change because if you're not wanting to change and you are not willing to experiment with some other ideas, it's not gonna happen. And that goes back to the mental piece that you were talking about. And it can be very hard to change, especially as we mature we've done these things, the same, maybe our parents did them the same, and we just continue feeling that's the way we're gonna hang on to.

However, I've seen amazing changes from many people. And I wanna say I focus a lot on the older people above 40, 50, 60 and above. I've had some I work with some 70 plus year olds and I've seen change on a dramatic scale with them as well.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes. That's so important.

Alright let's think about a typical person who comes to you for health coaching. Where do you start and what are the, say for example, if they're very wise and they know it's going to be a two or three year? Do you get clients who will stick with you for a couple of years? Do they stay that long?

Krisna Hanks: Yes. In different ways. In different ways. So let's say your first and foremost, what happens from the coaching standpoint is, a little bit of what I just described in there is that the individual needs to understand that this is not medical advice. That we work from a position of what does the individual want to work on.

And in a way that is it's very empowering also for me because people are at a place where they would like to have a partner in change. I think of the coach as being your, we're your support partner, we're your accountability partner, we're helping you open your eyes to seeing and hearing other information.

We're helping you work through what it is that you would really like to teach to a newer level in that way. So generally someone will come with something that they would like to improve on. Yeah. That could be nutrition. Obviously I'm a low carb ketogenic nutrition coach. That's my focus.

That's where I've seen the best results. I recently did Dr. Georgie Eve's mental health and ketogenic nutrition course. So I see also improvements in brain health. I've had individuals come to say I'm feeling brain fog. I'm feeling tired. I don't necessarily have much weight that I wanna lose, but I would like to just have more energy, feel better in that way.

There are individuals I've worked with who they've got little bits of information, but they can't seem to put it all together. Figuring out what type of exercise might be the best for them. How can they structure that in their busy life with travel and different things. So individuals come generally with very different goals.

Obviously the women have different goals than the men. Some are similar. But I think what the coach really does is we help them figure out that it's not just one thing, right? In fact, sometimes it turns around. I've had people come to me really for nutrition advice, but then what we see is the, what is the biggest component that's interfering with their being successful is stress and sleep.

And then we we, we adjust. That's what you do in coaching. You always work with that present moment where they are. And say, okay, let's talk about sleep hygiene. What are we doing in terms of our devices? Are we getting regular sleep? Are we getting any natural sunlight? Andrew Huberman has some

Nigel Rawlins: yes. That's incredible when you think about it. So let's go on to I don't like the word diet because when we talk about the word diet, people think, oh, I've gotta restrict my food. I think we really mean nutrition. So let's talk a little bit about this cuz you hear people say I've gotta go on a diet.

But what I think we mean is you need to look at the nutrition that you are eating. So there's vegetarianism, there's veganism, there's the keto diet. There's high protein low fat diets, Mediterranean diets. You have a particular one that you prefer. Could you talk about the keto diet?

Cuz we know the brain actually likes ketones and that could actually help with the professional women that I'd like to work with. That they wanna keep their cognitive abilities as, as sharp as they can. So let's talk about that.

Krisna Hanks: Absolutely. And I'm wholeheartedly agree with you. I think diet is it's a scary thought for many women.

And again, I really try not that I don't work with men, but I think diet has been something that for decades women have struggled with. Lifestyle. Nutrition. I like to say when we talk about nutrition, they say, think of your nutrition as fueling yourself for performance.

It's not about a punishment, it's not about a reward. It's about what's gonna give you maximum performance. I think it's Ted Naiman who said, start eating now the way you'd like to the rest of your life. And I sincerely believe that is true. Trying to figure out what really sustains you, and particularly from a nutrition standpoint, and again, I've seen this again and again with the women I work with, is they've been hungry all the time, pretty much.

They've been starving themselves. They've been counting calories, they've been on diets. And, while they even might be overweight or under fueled, they're, in many ways their cells are starving because they've had so little nutrition. So that was a little sidestep. Where I stand today as a 65 year old, soon to be next month, 66 is I've changed, right?

Just have to look at my blog or anything that I post, 20 years of vegetarian and then, and I didn't go into the vegetarian route from a philosophy I first went into it, I thought it was perceived as a healthy diet. And in some ways in the beginning, any time you switch up your diet, you're gonna see some good changes.

And then a lot of other people were doing it around me and it seemed to work. And until it didn't, and that until it didn't was towards the end of my dance career and who knows maybe this very strict dance career, the fact that I was experiencing hormonal changes it just failed. And it took me about two years.

It took someone else being asking me the critical question, but have you ever thought about your diet as being your joint problem? I was having severe joint issues, swelling problems doing sort of simple things. So it caused me to wake up and say, hey, diet is really powerful here, or nutrition, however we wanna call it.

And until then I had just thought it was just something that you made to, keep you moving. I didn't really make that relationship to longevity wellbeing, right? Obviously we think more about that as we age, right? I was in my forties and mid forties and you just start seeing different things coming across yourself in your own body.

And that's subsequently my own personal experience made me wanna do a deep dive in what are all these choices? What about what is the really the benefits of vegan, vegetarian? And then the work of Gary Taubs was really the game changing and seeing that it doesn't have to just be about weight, but when you've got a high consumption of carbohydrates and sugar, you're gonna have some fat storage issues.

And many of us women who experienced premenopause, menopause, postmenopause we're having all kinds of hormonal changes. And if we're adding to that with a high carbohydrate and sugar consumption, for me it was a game changer to see this is not really a sustainable path. My first foray was more into just going low carbohydrate, definitely low sugar comes along with that, because body sees them both the same.

And then you start adding things in, right? Fish, the animal products. And then fast forward to these last few years, I've just seen from a cognitive capability, from a muscle maintenance capability that having more meat, more protein, and we can talk about protein specifically if you want to a little bit.

I function better. I see my clients function better, both from a cognitive as well as a physical standpoint. And I think that's what the research is also showing us, is that we have for too long, particularly females, eaten too little protein. And I find the best way to get good protein is to consume animal products, whether that be fish or the four legged ones. And I also see better results with people who do that.

Nigel Rawlins: Let's talk about how much protein we actually need. More so for women than men. I think, as I said, I think most men are being covered by heaps and heaps of gym guys out there. How much protein do women need.

Krisna Hanks: There, there are mixed opinions, but all coming to the range. I would say first and foremost, anything above the recommended daily allowance, which is really the bare minimum of protein. And I saw recently not recently, a few years ago, even Kaiser Permanente, which is an in, in a healthcare company in the United States, pretty conservative said even maybe even doubling the recommended daily allowance would be a good for older adults.

But we go from out that area of 1.5 grams of protein to two grams of protein. Some people say per kilogram of lean body mass, right? Yeah. You wanna have kilograms of grams. And that way some people will say you could even use that per pound of body weight but I think that 1.5 to two grams of protein, right?

It's a pretty good range. If someone is not very active, they probably should go to the lower end, right? Of that. Someone who's super active, maybe even professional athlete is doing more than that, or someone who's also trying to recover post-surgery or they've had some deficits to, to supplement with.

But I think that range offers a good perspective. Now there's some interesting work from Don Layman PhD who's been researching muscle protein synthesis. He works with a woman name is Gabrielle Leon. And they have some good research to say that there's about a 30 gram of protein per meal threshold that we need to hit that 30 grams in order to stimulate what's called muscle protein synthesis.

Again, I see that beneficial. I try to achieve that, particularly in the first two meals of the day. It seems that the earlier we call that in the coaching world, front loading, not waiting till the dinner time to try to get all your protein. As we age, we're a little less efficient at processing protein, but I say for many women, that's a great starting point.

If you even try to strive for that 30 grams per meal at breakfast and lunch. And that's for many women, it's gonna be a huge job. One thing I mentioned to you that, lovely, I miss her a lot. She was a brilliant mind in the low carbohydrate community.

Her name is Adele Height. She was a registered dietician, all kinds of other degrees after her name. And she said, many women think if they eat two eggs, they're just eating gobs of food. And she said, I would probably say you need at least four eggs, right? Knowing that one egg is only six grams of protein, right?

That four, you just got 24. I encourage women to just take their time, be patient, just try to increase it. Anything a little bit above what you're doing right now is probably a good thing.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes. Isn't that incredible? Look two, two eggs is just 12 grams of protein. And we're talking about having 30 grams , three times a day.

It depends on your weight. So if you are maybe a 50 or 60 kilogram person, so a 50 kilogram woman say 1.5 grams is 75 grams a day. And I guess the other issue that I know about is that as we age, we're losing a lot of muscle from about the age of 40. And that's a concern too.

So you gotta keep packing the protein in to start, hopefully stop losing it. And then also because as we age our protein metabolism is deteriorating. So if you have more, so what should they be eating?

Krisna Hanks: Absolutely. Great question. So just as a side note, there's only two ways to build muscle. And that's with the exercise and with nutrition, right? So if you are skimping and cutting short on your nutrition, meaning your protein, you are missing out on one of those levers. And I know Peter Attia talks about that that you are not really pulling on that nutrition lever. You're only maybe relying on your exercise lever.

And we can talk about that. I definitely am a huge proponent of strength training for women particularly, right? And that doesn't mean you're gonna bulk up, it just means you're gonna help to maintain some muscle mass. But yet how to get, let's see, even 30 grams of protein per meal. So for instance, a breakfast.

You could definitely go that eggs, right? But again, you're gonna have to go maybe for four eggs, right? And a piece of meat. Or you, if you don't want that many eggs. Let's say you do three eggs, right? So you've got 18 grams of protein there. You're gonna need maybe a little piece of leftover meat from the last day.

Maybe some people enjoy some bacon, although bacon doesn't have a whole lot of protein, or maybe you have a little bit of yogurt with it, right? Some good old Greek yogurt that has a pretty good high protein quantity. For myself, my usual breakfast is Greek yogurt. I'll put a scoop of collagen peptides on it because that gets in extra ten grams and protein on it. Throw few walnuts, maybe a little bit of full fat cream on it. And I've got my 30 there. And that's pretty standard, especially during the work week. Do much more of the scrambled eggs on the weekend. And yeah, I'll have four or five and some other little piece of meat with maybe with it.

Krishna Hanks: For many women, I think lunches where they struggle. I work 40 to 50 hours a week, my husband is Dutch and he makes these great Dutch meatballs can generally get me in that it's definitely over 30 grams of protein.

So some leftover meat, maybe a boiled egg on the side, or we do these things that are we call 'em egg casseroles. Looks like maybe a quiche but without the bread it's just eggs and sausage and whatever we've got in our fridge to throw in that. If I'm really in a pinch, I'll use some of the meat sticks that are out there.

There's a couple good brands of those. Or in Australia, do you do the Biltong? Do you do the South African?

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, I think it's more popular with men than women. Yeah. But yes, it's something that they need to have a look at.

Krisna Hanks: For my executive women, I really try to encourage it because they travel a lot. They're good quality meat sticks these days. They're even at wagyu and grass fed and every imaginable. We've gone way beyond beef jerky. We have much better things these days. But most of those have nine or 10 grams of protein with it. The evening meal is the easy one. That one, most people don't have a problem then, that is if you are eating animal products. One of the reasons I moved away from veg, if you're a vegetarian and you're trying to get good, solid protein, that's a whole other conversation about bioavailability, plant products and animal products.

It's much harder if you are in that way to get that. If you're eating animal products, fish products, whether you're having shrimp or steak, lamb, beef it's very easy in the evening meal to find that. And that's one of the things I find. I call myself more meat centric these days in order to get that protein, I rely heavily on animal products.

Nigel Rawlins: And the other thing about keto diets, aren't they high fat as well? Or is that a not so important anymore?

Krisna Hanks: Absolutely. So for many people, they might even understand that the ketogenic diet has its origins or popularity in as a treatment for epilepsy.

Originally the ketogenic diet was prescribed four individuals who were having seizures, and they found that a very high fat content, and in fact some of the more, and this was really only done in a clinical setting, could be as much as 90% of your nutritional consumption being fat. Our brain seems to really like fat and it likes ketones.

Right? And fat, if we go back to the blood sugar piece, right? So there's three macronutrients, carbohydrates, protein and fat. Carbohydrates are non-essential. Meaning if we don't eat them, we won't die. However, if we don't have protein and fat, we will, right? Carbohydrates are really only as a fuel source.

But fat is very minimal effect, something no effect on the blood sugar insulin component, thus it seems that our brain operates pretty well in that. There are divisions within the ketogenic diet. You have, the extreme, what I told you about 90% ketogenic diet. You have, I believe it's called the classical, which is more in that 75% fat I believe in, don't quote me on these percentage, but, and then you had the modified Atkins, which was a little bit lower on that.

And then when we have what we're considering calling ketogenic diet now, and that would be really where your carbohydrate consumption is probably in that range of 20 to 30 grams carbohydrates per day total. Many people, I'm doing keto or I'm doing that and they're consuming like a hundred grams or 200 grams of carbohydrate.

No, not really. And there are many people who will say it's not really ketogenic unless you are seeing ketones being produced in the body. How do you see that? You have to measure them. Whether you're doing that via stick like Keto Mojo or, you have also the ability to see that in your urine.

Although there's some discrepancy about that. Is that just the excess that you're getting rid of? But you also have it by judging through the your breath right, of the Ketogenics monitor. So there are those spectrums of are you really having ketones being produced in the body?

And for many people they may not even understand. You have two kind of fuel sources. You can either be using glucose or ketones as a fuel source. And what we're using is a little bit of lingo in whether you're in the low carbohydrate world, it's something we call fat adapted.

And that's what I hope my clients become. And that means you're, you can use either one of those fuel sources, you can use blood sugar and you can use fat and you can move easily back and forth. And I think the key to that is how do you know if you can move back and forth? I would say very simple, that you can go from meal to meal and not be stressing about being hungry.

And I think that's one of the biggest benefits from whether you call it low carbohydrate, whether you call it ketogenic or just you're minimizing your sugar and carbohydrate consumption. You are not hungry all the time because you are what we call fat adapted. Your body can sometimes use fuel on your own body as a fuel source.

And maybe that's something we don't talk about enough, let's not make people be hungry all the time.

Nigel Rawlins: That's the secret. Don't feel hungry. So yeah, carbohydrates can make you feel hungry within half an hour. And plus brain fog. Let's get into strength training now.

I think a lot of women are concerned that they're gonna get muscular, but as we get older I can tell you now, I've been trying to do strength training for five years. I can just maintain, I can't grow muscle at my age. I'm 67. I'm maintaining muscle, but it's a struggle. And I work out six days a week and I walk, but gee, at my age and being male, it is difficult to grow bigger muscles, not like the young ones.

So women obviously are concerned if they're 50 or 60 years old, they're going to end up muscle band. Let's talk about strength training for women and the benefits.

Krisna Hanks: We know as we age, we just, by the pure fact of us gaining years on our on that number, we're going to lose some muscle mass. And I think back to those two levers, it's strength training plus your nutrition combined that have the greatest benefits. I only started doing real serious strength training at the age of 60. So almost six years ago. I had always done Pilates. I done a lot of yoga. I've done I hiked, I swim, I walked, I did a lot of different movement modalities. I danced, obviously. But serious strength training, I think is a necessity for those of us 50 and above and many, I think younger people should start doing it as well.

And because of what you just said, if we don't, we're gonna lose it. It is that use it or lose it. And that needs to be, and I think where women feared about the whole bulking up, if you are doing it sensibly, whether you are increasing your workouts or you're wanting to up your weight a little bit, you can modify strength training to make it fit exactly how you want to, right? Just because you start to do strength training doesn't mean automatically, you're gonna be able to compete in the CrossFit games, next year. There is that extreme if that's something that you aspire to do. However, I think there's a minimum you need to do just to maintain.

You can do low weights with more repetitions. You can do just strength training, just your own body weight where you're not even using additional weight on that. There's, even a piece of a home equipment these days called the X3, which uses what he calls variable training, right?

It's a great form of home resistance training in that way. Pilates is great for muscle maintenance. I think where it misses , unless you're doing it really intensely and vigorously, is it doesn't increase the weight, therefore, it can be hard to keep ahead of the muscle loss game.

You might just be still a little bit in the deficit in that way. And I think it requires though, especially for those of us older women, you need a good trainer or you need to do some good, serious studying yourself of learning good technique. I think it's great to do things like Pilates before you do strength training because you've got good posture, you've got good body mechanics.

You're, you are aware of what you can and cannot do. You cannot go from zero to a hundred, but I think doing that at least a couple times a week should be part of your routine as part of a, I call it the aging investment plan.

Nigel Rawlins: Definitely an investment. No, it's taken me nearly five years. I did body weight training for about three years, and then I got the X3, like you mentioned, which you can do six days a week.

But again, posture is everything. Yeah, good training and that's very important. But that's the best thing that's ever happened to me, along with walking as well. But for women I think it's a bit tougher using the X3 cuz the bands, they have to modify the bands a bit and probably nobody knows what we're talking about, but yeah, they need to get some help.

Would you suggest maybe going to a gym to start with? Engaging a personal trainer?

Krisna Hanks: If it's in your financial capabilities, I think it's always great to start with an experienced trainer. Especially if you're new to it. I think for many women, the gym is intimidating that they go in and not quite sure what to do and or if they've had any injuries in the past that they're a bit fearful of it.

And you can eventually maybe move on to your own type of training. I think that's a great way, if that's in your budget. I think it, it, first and foremost is to start to watch some videos and look at different people, there's so much information out there. I know it can be overwhelming.

That's also an addition, just like you would if you were trying to figure out what your nutritional path is, do your own little bit investigation on that. And then also trying to say maybe there's some little pieces of this that I learned from someone else that I can start to practice and try to improve on my own.

We have, a small little weight place that we can work out here, also in our house we also work out at a gym facility. So I think it's flexibility and also for women figuring out small routines, especially if you work with any corporate women or people who are in, is what can you do in 25 minutes, 25 or 30 minutes that you don't have to go to the gym and spend two hours.

Getting yourself some routines that you can do in different sort of timeframes in that. And not forgetting though that, and that nutrition piece is equally important if you are not getting enough protein, still, you're really doing all you can on the strength training , you're missing out on a huge component of being able to maintain that muscle mass.

And I think the other piece that I see with not only just feeling that your muscles are at a better quality, is confidence, right? And for whether you are an entrepreneur or whether you are just running your household, anything that helps you build confidence that can be just learning a new type of movement modality, right?

That is a win when it comes to your health.

Nigel Rawlins: That's fantastic. At this point, is there anything else we need to point out to women to have a look after themselves? Because what we're really talking about here is when you are 80 years old, you've gotta be able to get out of a chair.

And walk across the room. You've gotta be able to do your shopping, you've gotta be able to carry your shopping. You might think now or you might want to go on a holiday and climb up hills, but you've gotta start now cuz otherwise we are deteriorating as adults. So what else do we need to consider?

And then I want to talk about how people can get in contact with you and get your advice as a health coach. So is there anything we haven't covered that we should? I think the, in terms of the aging piece is little bit back to what we said about prioritizing your health. And not feeling guilty about it, that, , we encourage people to get their finances in order to do all of that. About making sure that you've got things in order, whether you have kids or you don't have. But we haven't encouraged them enough to say on a daily, weekly basis, spending time investing in my health is part of that investment plan. And it does need some changes. Certainly what I'm focusing and spending time on now at 65 is not what I was doing when I was 45.

Krisna Hanks: And I think focusing on trying to stay strong, mentally and physically is a key component to trying to age with a little bit of vibrancy. I think it's also important to give people that space and open the door that it's okay to reinvent ourselves, right? Whether we feel we need to go take some lessons at the gym to understand how to maintain some of our muscles, or we need to strengthen our mental capacity.

Sign up for a language, right? Take a language course. If we're needing to improve our, nutritional sources, we need to maybe seek out a health coach or to think that it's okay to reach out to people. Everybody knows their doctor and their dentist. I would like to say there's three other fingers on the hand.

Who else is on your team? Maybe you need, like your entrepreneurs, you would, maybe they need an executive coach. Maybe they need a health coach, a therapist, a body worker, seek out other people who can make your aging process feel like you've got a team. Get your team together.

And I think sometimes that requires just going back and putting your, put yourself in a risk, but calculated risk position. Take some chances.

Nigel Rawlins: That's brilliant. Okay, so let's talk about how they could contact you. I'd highly recommend that they did if they were looking for a health coach. I have been following you, I have been following you on Twitter and I did read some of your articles thank you.

I think you have a lot to offer and I think, this podcast is gone very deep, so there's a lot of gems in there. So how do they contact you?

Krisna Hanks: Absolutely. First of all, thank you very much for the honor, the privilege to spend some time with you. And I so wholeheartedly appreciate the work you're doing for women, whether they're entrepreneurs, they're still working at it's a much needed service.

Krishna Hanks: Thank you. Thank you. So you can find me. I'm Square One Wellness everywhere. And what sort of took that with the idea of try to bring things back to Square one? Let's start simple and try to focus on making health a priority. At Twitter, I'm Square one. The number one wellness on Instagram, exactly the same Square one Wellness website is Square One Wellness. And on LinkedIn, I am just my name Krisna Hanks.

Nigel Rawlins: So I'll put all these in the show notes so people can click on the links and all that. But that's fabulous. Thank you very much, for joining me today.

Krisna Hanks: Absolutely. It was been my honor.