Kerry Reller 0:28

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kerry Reller, and

Introduction to Corry Matthews

Kerry Reller 0:33

today we have Corry Matthews coming all the way from LA. Welcome to the podcast

Corry Matthews 0:38

Thanks so much for having me

Kerry Reller 0:39

Yeah, so Corry has a different perspective than we normally do on a podcast. Sometimes we have a lot of physicians, and so this will be a nice change of pace, So i'm so excited that you said yes. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do, because everybody needs to know your background

Corry Matthews 0:56

So

Corry's Background in Fitness and Nutrition

Corry Matthews 0:56

I primarily work with women on their fitness and nutrition. So I have been in this industry, I joke now, I'm like, "Since 1996," so it's been 30 years this year. But when I was in school, I just fell in love with how the body works and moves, and how with proper exercise and nutrition, everything about the body can change. And so over the years, I have worked with the military. That was one of my very first things out of college that I ended up doing. I was young and newly married and ended up in Okinawa, Japan, and I had OBGYN saying, "We need a program for our military service members that are pregnant. Not the family members, but we need them combat ready. Can you get them combat ready?" And so it was like, "Okay let's figure this out." And that drove my master's in sports medicine, just really figuring out, how can we do this? How can exercise and nutrition play in? And then over the years, I've just really loved everything about it. I owned two nutrition stores, so all the supplements, and just wanted to help people understand those. And then when I hit my 40s and woke up one day and was 25 pounds overweight, and I knew everything about fitness and nutrition, and I said, "This is a whole new ballgame for me." And I said, "There's gonna be a lot of women." And sure enough, women that I had coached in my 20s and 30s started reaching out to me and going, "We're 40 now. What do we do, and how do we do this?" And I said, "There's gotta be something different." And when I went to my doctor, and this was nine years ago, so I went to my doctor and she said, "You're just getting older. Your hormones are fine." And I'm like, "But I've got 25 pounds of body fat, and this doesn't make sense." And so that's when I really started diving more into the nutrition aspect of all of my training and said, "There's gotta be something going on here." And then really realizing that some of the foods that I had been eating, just as my hormones were starting to shift and change just enough, wasn't balancing everything. And so a year later, I went back to that same physician and I said, "Okay." And she did all my numbers, and she goes, "Okay, well-" Your blood pressure's a little better, your cholesterol's a little better. She's like, "But I'm most curious about the fact that you've dropped 25 pounds of weight in the last year, so what did you do?" And then I was explaining to her the changes that I had made in my nutrition and said, "It's not always just healthy nutrition. Sometimes when women hit 40, things change, and everything that you've been eating before..." And I like to say this comment that I hear so many, as women will say to me, "I haven't changed my eating. I haven't changed my exercising. Nothing I have changed is different, and so I don't know under- I don't understand why things are changing, why I don't feel like myself, or why I'm gaining weight all of a sudden." And I'm like that's because your hormones are changing. And so your body is changing, so it's having an impact on everything else." And so now it's just my mission to help women understand, especially from the fitness and nutrition aspect. And I like to be a place of reason, 'cause I feel like if you spend five minutes on social media, you're gonna have 500 tips that you should probably be doing. And some of them are just some random tips that don't work, and some of them actually have merit. But I think women are so overwhelmed today in terms of what do they actually do?

Kerry Reller 3:54

That is so true. I feel like it's like a fire hose of, or whatever, some sort of hose that's spraying you of all this information that you can find, and really we have to decipher through it of what's gonna work for, each person individually. And you mentioned something like, you know, the doctor said, "Oh, you're fine. Everything's normal," and we hear that all the time. And, one of my things is also to change that narrative, right? Be a person or a physician who's actually listening to the patient and seeing what's going on. And over we hear the same story of, what you said. Basically, everything is, good, but, why do you feel like the way you are? Like, nothing has changed. It's a common thing. It's nice that, I think, people like you and some other, I don't wanna say influencers because even their f- whatever their possess- pro- background is really getting this word out, right? And I think that's important as well. And, your excellent background in exercise science and y- you didn't mention it, but I think bodybuilding as well, and then training the military, I think is, very uniquely approaching this subject, I think, differently than from my perspective where, they think doctors don't learn anything about nutrition. Guess what? I think we learn even less about exercise, right? So I think it's we're trying to change all of that because we realize how important it is. It's wonderful to have you on today. And when the woman is saying, "I'm doing everything right," "Why isn't it working anymore?" what are you hearing from your, patients, clients in their 40s? What are they, looking for? How do you help them?

Corry Matthews 5:14

I think number one

Why More Exercise Isn't Always Better After 40

Corry Matthews 5:15

is when we were in our 20s and 30s, it was exercise more or do more cardio or do more strength training. And I think the hardest thing, and even for me, this was a really hard lesson for me to learn, is that because everything is going on and women are feeling stressed out about everything, they try to over-exercise. And sometimes I have to just tell women, "You have to pull back a little bit. You can't keep doing the stuff that you're doing." 'Cause a lot of times they'll say I was doing everything, and now I've added more cardio, and I've added more sessions at the gym." And I'm like, "What if we pull back a little bit?" So I think there's so much truth to walking became such a big deal, and now you hear everybody like 10,000 steps a day. The reason why walking became such a big kind of exercise that women in our 40s and 50s are focusing on is because it pulls back just a little bit. It's not as stressful on the body. It's not as stressful on the joints. And then there is that whole we do need strength training. There's the whole, any way you look at it, you know, in science and medical research, you'll understand that the body is-- obviously it starts to break down as we get older. So we have to maintain that muscle. We have to build up those muscles so that they pull on the bones so that our bones stick-- don't get frail. But the thing is, again, we're overdoing it. We're making it too hard. And I like to, with my bodybuilding roots, I kinda go back to you need the basics. You need... do some squats. You need some pushups. I love Vonda Wright. She's a big-time orthopedic, and she talks about every woman should be able to do 11 pushups. Like real pushups. And I kinda tell women that's kind of the standard. If you can do pushups, that's a full body strength exercise, and so we're focusing on that. But I try and pull people back. So when we start with exercise, I look at them and go, "Okay, can we get three days a week in the gym? And then other than that, can we walk? Just to see how we start to feel." And a lot of times women will say, "I didn't want to believe you, Corey. I didn't think that was gonna happen, but now all of a sudden I feel less puffy." Or they'll say, "The scale dropped." And I said yes, because we stopped beating our body up. We gave it a little bit of reprieve, and we backed up a little bit to just give it a break." Because you're hearing that exercise more and eat less definitely doesn't work. Obviously, you know this, I'm sure with all of your patients that you're seeing. It just doesn't work as we get older

Kerry Reller 7:29

Yeah, no, I totally agree with that as well. But you mentioned, the, the gym component and going back to the basics, and I think that's a huge comment, right? You're seeing a lot of patients or pe- I don't know what you wanna call them, patients or clients, whatever, that are kinda over-exercising, right? You're kinda more working with these high-achieving people, it sounds like, that are really doing that. Sometimes I have the opposite. They're still t- we're still trying to get them to move at all. But, back to the basics, right? Like you said, start with walking, right? So that's excellent, right? They may not... I might have patients that are not doing anything like that, and then there's the other set where you kinda, like you said, need to pull back, and I think that's very true with kind of overdoing it with, HIITs and, stream running and doing more cardio, like you said. And as, we learn now, I think strength training has become more and more important. Bondy Raid's an excellent source for that. And I think you kinda nailed that head on, so I am totally in agreement with you, so you also mentioned You had lost 25 pounds and one thing that we think about, or we're getting better at, is not just focusing on the scale. Can you tell us more about how you approach that with the, scale, maybe body composition or anything like that?

Midlife Weight Gain and Body Composition Changes

Corry Matthews 8:41

Yeah, so and mine was really, it was the body composition that had changed. And, What I saw in that 25 pounds, and it was really body fat composition that had changed. Because if you think about it, I think so many women, we start to shift, and especially when we say we gain that weight, it's usually in the midsection, right? So many women are complaining about the midsection. And so I remember my business partner has her PhD in holistic health, and so I remember after talking to my doctor, it was my 40th birthday that I'd gone in and had all my hormones tested, and she's like, "They're normal." And I remember leaving that day with a prescription for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicine because I was just I was like, "I can't handle this. This is my livelihood. This is what I do." And I remember going and calling my business partner and talking to her about it, and she said, "It's gotta be our hormones, and it's gotta be what we're doing." And so from that point, what I did is we went basically back to school. We found anybody that would talk to us, any OBGYN, any nutritionist registered dietitian, about what changes with the nutrition, 'cause why is it all the healthy foods that we've been eating, are being different. And so we basically created our 21-day nutrition reset, which focuses on specific foods. And I tell people, "I'm not gonna sugarcoat this." Literally, when I talk, start talking about this, it is the foods that I have found now with working women over the last nine years that are the most inflammatory. Now, not all of these are an issue for women, but some of them are. And so when we look at it, and you're probably gonna shake your head and go, "Yep, this is what I tell people all the time," but so first step is we remove alcohol and pork and red meat. So there's this tie if you look at a lot of the research that shows that the xenoestrogens and the tie-in with all of those, and if your body is digesting alcohol, it can't release the excess estrogen in your body. So if you're making your liver work over hard, then it can't control anything else going on in the body, and it can't metabolize it. And I tell every woman, "We're just gonna do this for 21 days. It's a reset that we're gonna do. We do it every three days. So after we focus on alcohol, pork, and red meat, then we move on to sugar." And I want them no more than 20 grams of added sugar a day. So we start looking at, "Look at your ketchup bottles. Look at your salad dressings. I want you to look at where all this added sugar is being." It's so many times people look at their peanut butter and go, "Oh, my gosh, I didn't know that the second ingredient in my peanut butter is powdered sugar." And I said, "Yep, that's why." Then we start to move through, and this one can be controversial, but the next one is I have them look at their grains. And we remove their grains, and it's again for two weeks. So we take out their wheat, their corn, their oats, and their rice. But at the same time I'm saying, "Okay, look, we can put in lentils. We can put in sweet potatoes. We can put in chickpeas." So all of these really good healthy foods. And so what I'm starting to have them do is just remove the most inflammatory foods. Down the road we take out dairy. I have them pull back out on dairy, on all of these things. And then after we've done these three weeks of removing all these foods, usually what I find for most women in their 40s, one of these foods is not their best friend. It's not agreeing with them anymore as their hormones are changing. It's causing inflammatory response in their body. And so then I usually will ask them, "What are you missing the most? Like what did we take out that you're like, 'If I could just have cheese back on my salad,' or, 'If I could just have my glass of wine.'" Then we start-- we try and put that back in and see what happens. How do you feel? And most people are looking at weight, and I have a symptoms chart that talks about do you feel all of a sudden more brain fog? Do you have more hot flashes? For me, I know when I was going through perimenopause, and I will say I'm two years post-menopause now, and because I took care of myself in perimenopause, I hit menopause and I was like, "Holy wow, this is amazing," because now my hormones are kinda just level. It's not doing this like in perimenopause. But I know for me when I was in perimenopause, if I had sugar, if we went out to dessert, had dessert with dinner, I was gonna wake up at 3:00 in the morning full-blown hot flash, throw off all the covers. And I started to realize that my body just couldn't handle the sugar as all of my hormones were navigating. And so it's really looking at how do I do that with women, and how do you see if there are inflammatory things? I developed an allergy to corn when I was later in life, and I didn't realize that by removing corn out of my diet. Now I realize that when I have corn my stomach breaks out like I'm an adolescent teenager or something if I have corn. So just really weird responses. But i- it's helping women bring them back to more of the basics again of food because we're focusing on if you remove all the excess dairy and if you remove the alcohol and if you remove all the sugar, what are you left with? Really good basic nutrition. And then they start to see after three weeks they feel better and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I don't feel so puffy," or, "I don't feel so inflamed." And Obviously there's probably some change in the scale because you've been eating better for three weeks. So a lot of times, unfortunately I wish we could get women out of that scale, but that scale still drives it. And I ask them what else are you feeling? Like, how do you feel better about things?" And so it, again, just brings it back to those basics of starting to find out, and then maybe there is something that doesn't adjust. But for example, if a woman says, "I really need my wine back." I say, "Okay, great. Let's try your wine, but I want us to think about wine as we put it back in as it's sugar. So think of it as dessert. Think of it this way. So how about we pair your wine with a really great piece of fish or chicken and a nice serving of vegetables and your glass of wine?" And so we look at it differently, and I say, "Let's not just have the wine two hours before bed and drink the whole bottle, but how can we approach it more healthy?" And because they've taken that reset, then it's easier for them to go, "Okay, I understand this, and I can change things." And it's kind of step by step so they see how their body is changing versus let's throw every single thing on social media at my body and then get really frustrated because I tried seven different things and it didn't work, but now I don't know which of the seven things didn't work or which actually did work

Kerry Reller 14:40

So when you're doing this elimination type thing, are you doing like one thing for one week and put it back, or you're, for the 21 days, or are you continually taking something new out?

Understanding Food Sensitivities and Elimination Diets

Corry Matthews 14:50

So for the 21 days, every three days we take something out, and they keep it all out the entire time

Kerry Reller 14:56

And then you add back.

Corry Matthews 14:58

Yeah

Kerry Reller 14:58

I think those are, those kind of I guess elimination-type diets are definitely things that we use for, people especially with gut issues that need to figure out kind of what's going on. But also you mentioned, inflammatory and all these other side effects, and it's good to do those things with a very good diary of any other type of symptom that you're feeling because, I don't like to remove things like permanently if, that it's really not sustainable for the person. Like you said, you're giving them back, right? So I think, that's a, it's a good approach as well. It's maybe different than other people do, but I think that, in trying to figure out how your body responds to certain foods is important, and you mentioned very key ones, right? Alcohol. Many people in this, this category that you're focusing on use alcohol as that, ah, relaxing, maybe it was a hard day at work, whatever, stressful with the kids. It's very common, right? And unfortunately, alcohol, we don't really know, if even a little bit is okay, right? So people can feel not so great on it, and it definitely isn't good for sleep, so no wonder maybe you were waking up in the middle of the night. I know your e- your example was with sugar, but, with hot flashes and things like that, so that could be affecting you a little bit more. Sugar obviously I think is another big one to be taking out, and I think everybody's maybe not taking it out completely, but seeing how you respond to it, right? And as you mentioned reading the labels is super important in general because you're getting a lot of sugar everywhere, and if you're not reading a label, you have no idea, right? Peanut butter really doesn't need to have sugar. My kids have no idea that doesn't, and they still like it. It's amazing. But the... And then think the other thing you mentioned was the grains, and we do... I don't know if there's great research yet, but there's definitely been an increase of people who really are affected by gluten. Now, some of the things you mentioned weren't actually gluten products, but some of them were. That's something to really get an idea of how you respond to that too. But it's interesting as your approach is more about, that menopausal, perimenopausal woman and their hormone changes. But I do I think it, it's it's interesting and valid to see how your body responds, so it totally makes sense. What are your comments though on, on protein? I think you you didn't... You mentioned taking out a couple things and then maybe adding lentils back, which have some protein, but what do... How does your approach to

Protein Intake and Balanced Nutrition

Corry Matthews 17:16

So it's funny because I've been telling people-- for 25 years I've been telling women to have protein. It was when I had my nutrition stores, it was one of the very first things I would come in and look at women's diets, and I'd be like where's the protein? You need protein in here." And I try and keep it really simple. I think at the scientific level, if I want to... People have no idea how much protein to have, and so they're really confused by this. And what I have found over the last 25 years is if I can scientifically look at it, if I know what your lean body mass is, your actual lean body mass. So if I get you on a scale, and we can tell your body fat is this, and your lean body mass is this, I like one gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass. So that looks like if you have a 140-pound woman, and she has 110 pounds of lean body mass, so the bones, muscles, organs, and tissues, she needs about 110 grams of protein. Not the sheer volume of protein. I feel like this protein maxing is going around, and everybody wants protein, and I find myself in the last few months telling women, "You still need carbs. You still need vegetables. Stop throwing protein into everything. And just 'cause it has protein doesn't mean it's good for you." Some of the crap that people send to me, and they'll be like, "I don't understand why I feel awful." I'm like you added all these protein supplements and stuff in that they're just full of crap." So I'm a huge proponent. People-- the number one question I always get when people find out that I'm a nutritionist, they're like, "Are you vegan?" And I'm like, "No, I'm not vegan." But I also want sustainable, responsible resourced proteins. So I'm a big proponent of fish organic, grass-fed, grass-finished poultry, eggs even protein shakes can come in there if you need protein shakes 'cause sometimes it's just harder. I know recently with the whole GLP-1 craze and people figuring out that they can't do stuff, I've been talking to a lot of women about whey isolate protein powders and how those can be an easy way to get protein in when you're feeling like you don't wanna eat anything. It's one of the things that I learned years of working with the military and working with moms that would bring in their 16-year-olds, and they're like, "I don't know how to get more calories in my 16-year-old, and how do I do this?" And so if we do a liquid protein, you can sometimes get that in, so when women are talking about that. But for the general purpose, I always just tell women, if you can aim for 100 grams, it's really simple and easy, and that looks like 25 grams with breakfast, lunch, and dinner and then in your snacks if you have that extra protein in there, that works. But when people are talking about their plates, I always tell them, "I want you to have protein as a quarter of that plate. I want you to have a quarter of that to be some sort of complex carbohydrates," because unfortunately, every woman always thinks, because of everything that they've heard, cut out all your carbs. And then the other half of that being vegetables so that they have this really well-rounded plate that they can put in there. And for my clients that are really struggling with weight loss or other things like that, I'll tell them, "Okay, so don't change the way you're eating. Just simply eat your protein first." If you eat your protein first and your vegetables first and then eat your carbohydrates last, that's just gonna change how you feel, and you're gonna be more satiated 'cause you ate your protein, and you'll probably eat less calories. So it's... Unfortunately, that weight stigma is always there, so if I can change that narrative with the proteins and the way that people are looking at things, then it, I hope, makes it for a more well-rounded, healthy perspective on food so they don't have such this negative diet mentality around it.

Healthy Goes in First: Building a Balanced Plate

Kerry Reller 20:44

I noticed your, one of your philosophies are that healthy goes in first. So how does that, how do you look like that with a plate? Would you say the protein is the most healthy or

Corry Matthews 20:53

I'm hoping that they have vegetables on that plate too. That's always the hard one. So I really do want half that plate to be really good, healthy vegetables that are in there. So for me, I have a family, and so our typical is a quarter of that is protein, a quarter of that is complex carbohydrates. My kids are competitive soccer players, so they probably have a lot more carbohydrates than my husband and I. And then half of that plate is vegetables, so trying to get that in. But if they eat, I think, what was it? The last twenty-something years everybody has said, "When you go to a restaurant, make sure you eat your salad first before you have anything else." There's still some great science behind that. If you're getting the fiber from the vegetables in your salad, that's gonna help in terms of how full you feel. If you go straight for simple carbohydrates, you're probably gonna feel more hungry, and you're not gonna feel as satisfied as quickly. It just gives it a little bit of change of perspective. If they don't wanna change any of the food that they're eating, what if we just changed the order that we eat it in?

Kerry Reller 21:51

Yeah, I think, even just satiety of the foods like you mentioned, if the way that you do the food pairing. And I know there's a lot of more data and hype on, the food pairing and s- order based upon, the glucose response too. So I think I kinda the satiety one better too. My one of my dad's trick was always eat his salad first or fill up on the veggies and that kinda thing. Or if he was still hungry after he ate what was on his plate, he would eat the rest of the salad. But that doesn't work for everybody. I really do understand that. But that was his always tip, even to patients, and he was he's a physician too, but he wasn't, in nutrition or anything in that space. But he's like, "Just eat a big salad." I'm like, "It's not that simple," but it's still good, right? I think that's really important. And then, going out to eat is definitely more challenging depending upon where you are going, of course. Sometimes they give you that carb right there in front of you, and it's tempting, right? But if you can, once again, start with the salad and wait on the carb you could have both, right? Maybe just say, "Don't take away the bread basket. I'd like to see if I'm hungry enough to eat it later," or something like that. But yeah, I do like that, the food order idea, and sometimes, I try to eat like that myself too. And, leave the carbohydrate for last 'cause I'm not winning any races these days. But so that, your healthy goes in first is mostly, I think, what you were pointing at it was the plate, right? And what's on that and maybe then adding back these other things that you might have had eliminated before, like the glass of wine or something like that. Is that more what you had in mind with that?

Corry Matthews 23:23

Yeah, because it's really-- And that's based on when I add foods back in, what does the person really want? Because maybe they can keep a lot of those really healthy choices. And I will say, once most people have done that, some people will get to the end of the three weeks that I work with them, and they'll be like, "I don't wanna add anything back in 'cause I feel so good." I'm like, "Nothing we took out has to be put back in. You can get calcium from other sources. You can get great complex carbohydrates from other sources. We didn't remove any vegetables, so you're eating plenty of those. There's lots of protein that you can do." And a lot of times people ask me specifically with the red meat and pork, and it's just one of those I say, you know, there's so much steroids and growth hormone in the cattle industry, so if you're gonna put red meat back in, can you just do grass-fed, grass-finished, or choose an organic source? And again, that plays into do they have health factor, risks factors? Do they have high blood pressure? Do they have high cholesterol? Like what does that look like? But then when people are like, "Okay, I put my beef back in and I chose a healthier choice of cut of beef, and I feel amazing," I'm like, "Yeah, it's still a great source of protein." It's just, your fast food hamburger patty is probably not the best for you

Kerry Reller 24:32

Yeah, d- I... Fast food hamburger patties is definitely not where you're gonna get most of that stuff, and most likely, like you said, they have those extra hormones involved, for sure. So with your expertise as a former bodybuilder and everything how has your definition of being fit kinda changed as you've gotten a little bit older?

Redefining Fitness for Strength and Longevity

Corry Matthews 24:50

It's really about being able to do all the things that you wanna do in life. And for me now next year I'll be 50, and I'm looking at, what do I want the rest of my life to look like? Because these days we are living so much longer, and I want to function and be able to do all the things that I do. I recently, four months ago, had spinal fusion surgery, and that was the result of a injury that I suffered in bodybuilding. It was a herniated disc 20-plus years ago. And then over the years, and, all the estrogen changes in my body, I was diagnosed hereditary with osteoporosis and just debilitating back pain for the last two years. And to finally, even with everything that I had done with my health, to realize that some things come up like that. So I wanna take care of myself as best as I possibly can. So for me, that's what I'm focusing on. And so when I talk to these women about their goals, and I think there's a lot going on, say, in social media, it's not for women especially about being smaller or tiny these days. It's about the longevity of where we're looking at and what we wanna do. And so that for me has changed. It's not about I want to... With bodybuilding, it was all about a certain aesthetic and how you looked, and now it's, okay, I don't wanna be overweight and be carrying lots of excess body fat. And, there's this vanity metrics that goes in, I think, almost everybody. But I really wanna be strong. I wanna watch my girls grow up and get married and have kids, and I wanna be the grandma that gets to hang out with them and enjoy that. And when I talk to women these days, that's where we're really focusing on, is that longevity aspect

Kerry Reller 26:31

Yeah, I agree. I think your definition of, fit is being able to do all the things that you wanna do later in life or as long as possible, right? So that might look different than I don't know, some crazy deadlift that you did as a bodybuilder or whatever that

Corry Matthews 26:45

Right

Kerry Reller 26:47

with, right?

Strength Training, Walking, and Exercise Snacks

Kerry Reller 26:47

So what is training... I know you mentioned three times a week, but how, what does it look like now compared to... n- you don't have to compare it to the bodybuilding. I don't think most people listening to this are gonna be wanting to think about doing bodybuilding. But how does it look differently now?

Corry Matthews 27:02

So I do four days of strength training 'cause I love strength training. I just, I feel good. It's the endorphins and the rush of it. So it's four days of strength training. I walk if, I have my watch on, so I probably look at, I walk about 10,000 steps a day. That just happens to be what I do. I take... I have a nine-year-old dog that we walk in the morning, so it's slow, but it's-- it just feels good to walk her in the morning. And then I walk every night after dinner. So that for me, I know there's some running jokes and people have probably heard, they can listen to this, the, the fart walk or the gas walk or whatever, where, you'll find yourself, you're walking and you're farting and you're burping and whatever. But just, the insulin response of just walking after dinner. And I know in the very beginning you mentioned that you have a lot of people that maybe aren't even starting. So I just recently, and I it's funny that we mention this 'cause two days ago I posted on my website. But I had a client of mine, and she had moved overseas, and she was homeschooling four kids, and her husband was military, and they were just so busy. And she's like, "Cory, I just, I can't exercise. I don't know how to do this." And I said what about an exercise snack? Because you don't have enough time, and you're really busy." And so I created a guide that was really simply, do you get up in the morning? Are you making coffee? What are you doing when you're making your coffee? And she's like usually I'm just standing there looking at the coffee, waiting for the coffee to be brewed." And I said, "What if you did squats? Just no weight, no nothing. You can be in your pajamas, whatever, and you just did some basic squats while you're waiting for your coffee." And she's like, "Okay." I said, "And then the next day, how about you just use your counter and you do some, push-ups on your counter? And then the day after that, you could just maybe do some crunches on the floor." And she's like, "This is so simple." And after two weeks, she's like, "Cory, I feel amazing, and I'm working out maybe five minutes a day in terms of what I'm doing." And I recently went on Fox 5 in New York City talking about the exact same thing. What if we just started really simple with the basics? Because a squat is full body, a push-up is full body. If you can do a basic crunch, it's full body. But just start somewhere because I can see the flip side. You have the women that are so overwhelmed because, they're doing too much, and we need to pull 'em back. But if you don't know where to get started and somebody's saying, "You need to lift weights three times a week, and you need to walk 10,000 steps," they're looking at what's the point of even starting if I can't get there?"

Kerry Reller 29:22

I love the exercise snack concept. That's one of my favorites. I think it's great. You can, brushing the teeth is two minutes long. There's a lot of things you could do there, squats, calf li- or calf raises, anything. So it's, it... I think that's a great place to start as well. Think, the, the movements that you've suggested are important, right? Pushups, you're kinda pushing up off the floor. These are the basic functions of life that we should be able to do. Squat, you gotta get on a toilet, you gotta sit in a chair, right? So those are the good ones to start with to add, right? To do as those snacks until you're more comfortable or find more time or whatever. Maybe that's all they can do, but, I think that's a great place to start. yeah, is there anything else that you'd like to share with the listeners today about a specific topic? You've, we've got a lot of nutrition. We've talked about fitness, but anything else?

Why You Shouldn't Wait to Prioritize Your Health

Corry Matthews 30:10

I find in my work with women, there's a lot of women that reach out to me, and they say, "When I lose the weight, when I get healthier, when I do this, then I'm gonna do this." And so my biggest mission, what I've been talking to women, is saying, "Please don't wait." If there's something about your health that is holding you back, please find somebody that can help. Talk to your physician, talk to a health coach, a nutritionist, a personal trainer. But I have worked now with women, and I would say over the last 10 years especially, working with women that are hiding because of weight or hiding because they're afraid they're gonna have hot flashes in the boardroom. And I just... The women that I've gotten to see that change their life and get healthier, the things that they go on to do is absolutely incredible. So I don't want them sitting on the sidelines and not taking care of their health or thinking that fixing their health is gonna be so hard that it's why even bother starting with it. So I think it's especially important, with having a physician on here go talk to your doctor. Reach out to them about steps that you can do to feel better so that you can live, and I like to say thrive, in the best life possible

Kerry Reller 31:29

Yeah, I think that's an excellent message. I think also, a lot of people say you're gonna wait on Monday, wait till the Monday. Don't wait, just start. I think that's important. But definitely those bigger steps of, if you're not sure about your health or what's going on, go get some lab tests. Get some numbers. Talk to a doctor. If your doctor may not be listening, find another doctor. I think that's a good message too. I think a lot of people are learning these, learning nutrition, fitness, like treating patients in menopause. We didn't really get much training in school for, menopause in this age group because of, we're not gonna go into that today, but like the, the historical studies that have been done, and I think that's changing a lot. So as long as someone is up to date, they're going to be realizing that. And I know we didn't talk about re- hormone replacement therapy, there are options out there too for that. And I think we don't want our, we don't want our patients or clients to be having osteoporosis. They don't want that extra weight. They want to feel good and live long and healthy, like you said, and I think asking and getting help is a great message for sure. where can people find you or work w- or work r- if they wanna work with you? You mentioned also you had some news sources as well, so where can they find you?

Corry Matthews 32:40

I think the easiest way, and I always make a joke of it, as long as you can spell my name, 'cause I know it's I grew up with a hard last name, and then I didn't realize that so many people are like, "Oh, is Matthews with one or two T? And how do you spell it?" So I say, "As long as you can spell Corri Matthews, you can find me." So if you just put in corrimatthews.com. And no, I'm not the person from Boy Meets World, 'cause if you put me and you put Corry Matthews, you're gonna get me and Boy Meets World. And y- I tell people the running joke is that show came on when my husband and I first started dating, and I was like, "Hey, if we ever got married, that would be my name." And so years later, here I am. And if Boy Meets World, you're probably right in this demographic, talking about perimenopause and menopause. But if you go to corrymatthews.com, it has everything about what I do with bodybuilding, but then it also has my fitness nutrition website, which is called strengthandgracefitness.com. But Corry Matthews for everything social media and website, and you'll find all the free resources. And i- if you left thinking, "Oh my gosh, I don't even know," like she mentioned all these things to remove, on my website I have all these recipes. So there's over 150 recipes that are just free. You just go click on them, and you can download them and try all these recipes. If you've been thinking, "Hey, maybe I wanna remove gluten out of my diet," or, "Maybe I wanna do something without dairy," there's lots of free resources there to try.

Kerry Reller 33:59

Nice. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. And I definitely get the Boy Meets World reference. I'm in the pat- and in the population as well.

Corry Matthews 34:06

Yep.

Kerry Reller 34:07

funny. All right. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Stay tuned next week, everybody, for next week's episode. Take care, and Get Healthy Tampa Bay

Corry Matthews 34:16

Awesome