Susie Pettit: Oh, listeners, hello and welcome to the Love Your Life show. It is me, Susie Pettit, your certified life relationship and wellness coach. And yet I bring a really big expert on the show today, a repeat performance—we’ve had her on before and she was so helpful. You guys have said you’re still doing the things she talked about in that first episode. And so I wanted—I’m like, let’s get more. We women can want more. Let’s do it.

And so we have Megan Dahlman back on the show. She has become the sought after trainer for women over forty who want to feel their physical best for years to come. She has a degree in exercise science and a certified strength and conditioning specialist. She has an uncanny ability of taking complicated aspects about our body and making them simple, doable and sustainable. She did that on this show today. So if you’re feeling confused about like, oh my gosh, what should I do? Or there’s so much information out there, or how do I live to be my strongest, best awesome warrior self? Like this is the episode for you.

Megan is amazing at this. She has online training programs and courses where she gently leads every woman she interacts with and coaches through this process with. She has just such grace and patience. I love talking to her. This conversation felt like a warm hug. And her mission is, you know, just one that speaks to my heart. It’s to help every woman, no matter their age, feel strong, pain free, and confident in all aspects of their body. Did you hear that? No matter their age. So that mindset that’s like, oh, this is just because I’m getting older—listen in. She’s got some specific tips and support for us. Um, thank you for being here, listener. Let’s go.

Megan. Okay. Listeners of the Love Your Life show, I have a repeat treat. Look at me rhyming. And I have Megan on the show today. I, I, you know, welcome, Megan to the love of your life show. I continue to hear from listeners about how helpful the information you shared on our last conversation about like, mobility and feeling better in our bodies and our sore shoulders and sore hips and all that. And I will link that below if someone somehow missed that episode. But how that really helps them a lot. And I just want you to know that, you know, it just shines on. So thank you for coming on here.

Megan Dahlman: Well, thank you for having me back, Susie. It’s always such a joy to talk to you and you just radiate joy. And we were talking about the weather right before we hopped on, before we hit record. And I’m like, just in this miserable, like down like winter here and you’re in lovely Australia at the moment. So I’m, I’m absorbing your joy.

Susie Pettit: I’m bringing you the sun from the southern hemisphere and summer to your winter. Yes it is. It is nice just to love your live show. That’s what we’re trying to do, trying to figure out how to love our everyday lives, not just the lives on vacation, but that like sitting at the desk feeling all creaky and cranky. And so I wanted you back on to pick your brain a little. For all of us who want to continue living, or maybe live a little more. So feeling strong and mobile in our body. Yet I hear from lots of people that they feel overwhelmed, um, stressed, not sure where to begin. And so maybe they’ll start one thing and stop and start and stop. And I’d love it if you could just help us, you know, talk to that listener who wants to stay strong and mobile, you know, midlife and beyond, but feels confused and overwhelmed. What do you think she needs?

Megan Dahlman: Yeah. You know, I actually had a conversation with someone just yesterday and she was telling me all the things that she had tried. You know, she’s like, “I’m doing barre and every so often I’ll do like a Pilates class and I’ll try some yoga. And then I have my physical therapy exercises.” And really, that was her frustration too, is she was like, “I feel like I have all this information coming at me from all these different directions, and I don’t know how to put it all together. And I don’t know what’s the most important thing for my body right now.”

So, so I think sometimes it’s helpful to, to step back and think, well, what does your body need the most right now in this phase of life? And there’s several aspects of your fitness that are the most important. And then we can ask, well, are all of those types of exercises going to fit the bill for the things that your body needs right now? So the things your body needs most, um, for your, your overall fitness is, is we do need cardiovascular health. We need muscular strength. We need flexibility, joint mobility, we need balance, we need coordination and we need power. So those are six different pieces of health.

And if all you’re doing is working on flexibility, you know, a really important component of your fitness—if all we’re doing is working on flexibility or joint mobility, and we’re never working on muscular strength or cardiovascular health, it’ll always feel like something’s missing. It’ll always be like, “I just don’t feel like I’m as fit as I could be.” Or if all you’re ever doing is cardio and you’re not working on your balance or your muscular strength, once again, it will feel like something’s missing. So we just want to make sure that the, the routine that you decide to commit to or the first step forward is pointing you in the direction of, let’s make sure that each of these components of your fitness are being met so that you can be as strong and fit and confident as, as you can be for decades to come. And so those are kind of the, the different components that matter the most. And some of some popular workouts out there will fit that bill and some, some don’t. So it’s helpful to kind of understand, well, what should I even be training? And then that helps to remove some of the overwhelm.

Susie Pettit: Oh my gosh, that’s so helpful. Like I was writing those down real fast. I was like, oh my gosh, yes. Because I know like that just gives us sort of a lighthouse to like aim towards those six things. And when I think of myself in my past, it like there are some—I was definitely like cardio was basically all I did. Like, really like, I mean, sure, like, because I ran and did my Jane Fonda step aerobics on videotape—yeah, aging myself here—like every other day. And so sure, like I’m getting some balance and whatever in, in that, but mostly it’s cardio and it’s so interesting. Like I’m thinking of a pie chart. If I had a pie chart, it’d be like ninety percent cardio. And, and just having those six things there to look at and to see where, you know, no, we don’t need to be perfect in all of them, but to at least consider them. I love that I’m like, okay, conversation over, let’s go.

Megan Dahlman: It’s really, it helps to simplify it. And you’re right, it’s like your North star and, um, I, I was a cardio queen too, and I think so much of us were like coming out of the nineties and the early two thousand. It was like for, for many of us, fitness was all about maintaining good body composition. Like that was kind of a lot of us women. That’s kind of all we really did fitness for, yeah, was to not be—

Susie Pettit: To look a certain way.

Megan Dahlman: Yes, to look a certain way. And so we all gravitated towards the thing that said it burned the most calories. We were kind of calorie driven when we were choosing our fitness. And so that’s why so many of us women flocked towards cardio because it seemed to—we know better now that it’s not the best method for fat loss, but it seemed to be the right thing to do to just not be overweight. Mhm. But we didn’t realize that in that process, we weren’t doing enough for our muscular strength. We were barely working on our joint mobility. Um, coordination was not getting—unless you’re doing Jane Fonda, I gotta tell you, like those, some of those aerobics classes—

Susie Pettit: I know.

Megan Dahlman: —will really work your coordination. I did a Zumba class one time and I felt like such a fool in the back of the class. And I’m like, oh boy, coordination here, this, this is really targeting.

Susie Pettit: That’s so good because I was—when I was writing that down, I was like, oh, coordination, I do not have. But you’re right. When I was doing that step thing, I—yes. So there you go.

Megan Dahlman: It can be trained. Yes. It can be a really important piece of our fitness and then power too. So like, especially as we get older, when you don’t have some of these—if all you have is a strong heart, mhm, cool. Your heart muscle is really strong. You’ve got a really strong cardiovascular system. You go get your blood work done. Your cholesterol numbers are great, triglycerides are great, but you have no muscular strength or your joints don’t have flexibility, or your balance is poor, or you lack coordination and you’re really clumsy, you are at such greater risk of injury, catastrophic injury, losing your bone density. I mean, all of these issues that now as women in midlife are suddenly aware of, and we’re like, “Oh my goodness, I really do need to be doing more than just one thing.”

Susie Pettit: Mhm. Well, and to speak a little to this body composition and, you know, what we look like, I, we are a culture that puts a lot of emphasis on women and how they look. And so I, I, I know all of us out there, most of us are still like, “Yeah, well, that is a consideration when we’re thinking of our fitness.” Like what gets us—it’s all, to me, it’s all sort of like mixed in and I have to like separate it out and just, you know, be like, yeah, no, you’re exercising for your mental health and you’re exercising so your kids like, don’t have to get you up off the toilet every, you know, like that, that sort of stuff. But I think it’s helpful to just as we reach midlife, to rethink some of the ways that we were thinking that skinny or looking a certain way is the most important versus, you know, I’ve heard Doctor Vonda Wright say strong, not skinny. And I think the next generation coming up is doing a little more of that.

But for us to what you were just speaking of is, you know, maybe our heart looks good, but I think some of us are like, “Yeah, well, we want—we still want to look good in our clothes.” But if we’re, if we have one little tumble or we catch the stair a little bit wrong and we go down on our wrist and our wrist isn’t strong and we break our wrist or we go down and break our hip or we, you know, that’s where the trouble comes in. So it doesn’t really matter if we look good in our little white capris. It’s, it’s like one hundred percent.

Megan Dahlman: And I will say too, that in the pursuit of true fitness, like if you really are pursuing all of those six aspects that we were talking about of like being as fit as you possibly can be across the board—guess what? Your body composition is going to follow suit. It, it’s—

Susie Pettit: For sure, yeah.

Megan Dahlman: The other—it doesn’t work the other direction. If all you’re caring about is just how you look in your clothes, it doesn’t also check the boxes of being as healthy and fit as you can be. You know, you, we now live in a world that you can just take medication to lose weight. And we’re, we’re seeing that just by doing that, it doesn’t automatically make you a really healthy person. But if you go the other direction and say, “I am going to pursue all of these, like my fitness routine is going to cover the bases and I am going to pursue and be as healthy of a person as I can be,” nine times out of ten, your body composition is going to improve as well.

Another question I really love asking women, especially at the beginning of their fitness journey, is especially when their—one of their goals is to lose weight is to improve their body composition. One thing I ask them, especially if they’re struggling, you know, and they’re not seeing the scale move—yeah, they’re getting frustrated about it because it is one of their goals. I say let’s fast forward six months from now. Okay, so let’s say you’re doing all of these things. You’re following your program, you’re being consistent. Let’s say that you improve your strength like crazy. Let’s say we get rid of a ton of the pain that you’re dealing with on a daily basis. Let’s say that your mobility improves a lot. You have way more confidence as you go throughout the day. Let’s say that all of those blood markers improve. You go to the doctor and your doctor’s like, “Wow, your blood results came back,” right? Let’s say your bone density improves. You’re no longer osteopenia or osteoporosis like you’re—you you see those numbers improve. So across the board, everything improves. And yet your scale number is the exact same. Mhm. Would it still be worth it?

And when you put it in that perspective, for a lot of women, it’s like, “Oh, you’re right. My health, my fitness is about so much more than just how much body fat I have.” And so it’s helpful to be okay—that can be one of your goals, but let’s also make sure that you have some other really valuable health goals for yourself along the way.

Susie Pettit: Well, and I—this is how it all goes together. Like, you know, like you’re saying all, all these six pieces go together, but it’s also our physical health goes with our mental health. Because I do feel that as we’re growing up and maybe getting out of our twenties when we’re like, it’s only cardio and I need to look good in that, you know, those pants, we also were growing up in our mindset and being like, wait a minute, is it all just about the pants? Doesn’t it matter if exactly as you’re saying, like if I’m sitting in those pants, but everything’s aching or I’m sitting in those pants and my numbers are sky high? Or I’d like to just be widening our lens of what health is. And then also mental health. Like, are we really defining ourselves barely just on a number on a scale? Like, could we just stop doing that and just say that that’s, that’s one, you know, factor. That’s one metric that we can look at, but maybe we can get more into our, you know, mature and more supportive thinking where it’s like, I’m so much more than a number on the scale and what, you know, I’ve been trained to believe from the beginning. I really—

Megan Dahlman: I know, appreciate that, yeah. And I’ve, I’ve heard the phrase from a lot of women, and I’m sure you’ve heard it too, where they say, “I feel like I’m just falling apart.” You know, “I feel like I’m falling apart.” And when you dig underneath the surface of like, well, what does that mean? It probably—sure, they might have felt like they’ve put on, you know, five, ten, fifteen pounds in the last few years and not really sure why—I haven’t done anything different. But, but usually it means so much more than that. It feels like as you go about the day you’re, you’re not as confident in how you move. You feel like you’re more fragile. If you move a certain way, you might throw your back out or like your knees are now hurting and you’re hesitating to go ride your bike with your kids or your grandkids.

You know, your mental health might be your, your mood. Like you’re saying, just your mental health just feels depressed and discouraged all the time. And that’s closely connected to the way you feel about your body. You don’t have confidence in your body. And so I think when we—sometimes when we say something like, “I feel like I’m falling apart,” when we go inside and really break down what that means to you personally, usually it’s, it’s more than just “I’ve put on some weight.” Mhm. There’s other things in there that make us feel like I’m falling apart.

And what’s cool is that those—many of those things have—once you nail it down of what do you mean when you say that, many of those things have very clear solutions and that’s what I love helping women with. It’s like, oh, your back hurts. Okay, cool. That’s one of the ways you feel like you’re falling apart. Great, let’s go pursue some solutions for that. Your knees hurt. Okay, let’s fix that. Your, your mental health—okay, let’s work on that. So we tend to get in this like fuzzy area where all we know how to do is just say, “I feel like I’m falling apart,” and we don’t know what to do about it.

Susie Pettit: Mhm. Which is why I love listeners of the show. Like people clicking on the show are looking for that, like, because they’re really, it’s like a pivot in the road. I see where you can have your knees hurt. You can have, you know, you can gain like an extra five pounds overnight. And you’re like, ah, did I get that from breathing? You know, all these, and you can think one way like, oh, this is just aging. This is what it is, okay. And you can find people that are going to support you in that thinking, and we’ll all just get together and complain about it. Or you can go another way and be like, no, this isn’t how I’m going to age. There are different ways of okay, my knees are hurting. Let me figure it out. Let me listen to that show with Megan and see like, how do I get my knees to start—stop hurting?

Or another thing you said that I know many people are not aware of is that once you get that first diagnosis of osteopenia or osteoporosis, you can reverse it. I’ve—people have—like it is something it’s not just like, oh, you have this and now you’re destined for life to have frail bones. Like there are things we can do. Knee pain—there are things we can do. Um, I really appreciate, you know, you bringing this, this openness and like, yeah, we can do things with this. So, so can you with your, um—I’m just trying to see if we’re frozen. Oh, you can still—

Megan Dahlman: Okay. There we go. Yep.

Susie Pettit: With your expertise, can you like, can you speak to the listener who specifically—like we have these six things maybe like I’m thinking, where should she start? First of all, look at her pie chart. Like, where is she overly heavy and try to look at some of those other things. But, but what if—could you do a little, um, yeah, where should she start for, like, something like flexibility? The ones that I’m thinking people are not doing so much. I guess flexibility they might be doing in yoga, but power, power balance, yeah.

Megan Dahlman: Yeah. I think one thing that’s helpful to look at is like, all of those are pieces of movement. Those are all different ways to move. And so if you’re not moving at all right now—like if you’re like ninety to ninety five percent of your day, if you’re, if you’re very sedentary—don’t worry about the chart yet. Like we can get there. Just start moving somehow in a way that feels familiar. So if you start moving in familiar ways—trying to learn something new, that’s a barrier. That’s—it takes a lot of energy to learn something new. So it’s okay to pull out something that you’ve maybe done before. Or usually the easiest way to get yourself going is to just start going on walks. It’s one of the simplest things to do. Start going on walks. Like just start moving.

So if you’re doing nothing, that should be your number one goal right now. Don’t worry about anything else. Just see if you can start doing something active each day for like ten minutes. That’s it. Don’t—don’t give yourself this lofty goal of, “Okay, I’m going from nothing to like sixty minute workouts every week.”

Susie Pettit: I do all these things that I’m doing, right? Yeah.

Megan Dahlman: Yeah. That we instantly will get overwhelmed by that and, and instantly feel like a failure because that’s just too much. So we just need to get you moving somehow, every day a little bit. Then once you have that in place and that ball is rolling and you’re like, “Okay, now I’m, I’m someone who just moves every day,” let’s get a little bit more specific and strategic about what it is that I am doing.

So we look at something like walking. Walking is great movement. You can walk briskly and you’re going to increase your heart rate. It’s great for cardiovascular health. It gets some of those lower cardio zones. So like zone one, two, three—like we’re going to hit those. That’s great. Couple things that walking doesn’t do though is, is work on your muscular strength. When you first start walking, you’ll be working those muscles more than you, just than you had been. So you’ll probably feel stronger already. But there’s comes a point where it’s not going to check that box very much. Mobility—it’s not going to work your joint mobility as much as you need, um, balance, coordination power.

So we want to start moving in the direction of let’s do a simple fitness routine that does like lower body strengthening, upper body strengthening, core strengthening. And that’s a great place to start with the strength piece is like, let me pick one lower body exercise, one upper body exercise and one core exercise. And a good lower body one is just working on squats. You know, just find a chair and try to sit into the chair. But like, don’t like lean into it—like just brush your bum on the bottom of the chair and stand back up and do that ten times. There’s a lower body. Go into your kitchen, put your hands on the edge of the countertop and do push ups against the countertop. There’s an upper body exercise. For your core, a really great core exercise—one of my favorite ones that checks off a lot of boxes, that’s actually going to check off the coordination box too—are bird dogs. Have you done bird dogs, Susie? You know what I’m talking about.

Susie Pettit: Yeah.

Megan Dahlman: Okay. Yeah, they’re a silly name, but—

Susie Pettit: I don’t quite get why they’re called bird dogs. But I—

Megan Dahlman: I think so—I had a bird dog like a dog that was actually—he was a Beagle. And so he was like actually a pointer. He was a pointer. And that’s like when they stand like they’re pointing at a bird like point forward and backward. I think that’s where it gets its name from. So essentially, the bird dog, you’re on your hands and knees and you have the opposites lifted and you’re holding steady. And that’s a really good core exercise. You can do it standing if you need to with your hands on a chair. Um, but that’s true. There you go. So lower body, upper body, core.

Got, we got coordination and balance on one of those, that bird dog that hit that, um, and I love doing some stretches for, you know, upper body, lower body stretch, like a good upper body stretch. You can go into a doorway and have your arms on the edges of the doorway, like the door jamb and step your chest through. It’s a great mobility stretch, lower body. A great lower body stretch is to just do a hamstring stretch so you could sit on the edge of your chair, extend one leg out straight and get your hamstring. And so now we’ve—we’ve done a little bit of flexibility work, coordination, power.

Susie Pettit: Yeah, I have a question. I’m like a student here. I have a— Question. Yeah. Flexibility—like if I, um, am sitting on the couch reading and I’m just feeling a little tight, and then I’m like, oh, I’m going to stretch. So I’m totally cold. And then I sit down and stretch and it like—first of all, is that just bad? Second, I’m tight. But I then tried to like hold it. So for some reason I feel really good, like when I do that hamstring stretch or when I straddle out like I used to in like gymnastics and try to lean forward, um, and there’s a point when I do that and I feel like so rickety, and then I sort of just hold and try to breathe and loosen my muscles and lean in. But I honestly don’t know if I’m doing damage or—

Megan Dahlman: Yeah, no, that’s actually a really good question. Um, so there are two different styles of stretching. Stretching, period—if you’ve never stretched before, you rarely do—any kind of stretching is good.

Susie Pettit: Like, okay.

Megan Dahlman: Do anything, okay. But it is helpful to know that there’s two different kinds of stretching. There’s static stretching and dynamic stretching. So static stretching is like a sit and hold style stretch. Dynamic stretching is where you’re kind of moving through the stretch. Think like yoga moves like you’re, you’re doing something where you’re kind of like pressing into the stretch and then easing back off of it, pressing in and easing back off. Dynamic stretching is actually the more effective one for improving the length of your muscles. So actually becoming more flexible, improving your mobility around a joint, um, dynamic stretching is better. It’s also better when you’re stiff. Because it’s going to create a little bit of a pump in your muscles and in your joints, where it kind of pumps the fluid and helps kind of lubricate a little bit better.

So if you are sitting, you haven’t done anything, doing a dynamic style stretch is really great. So if we take—I use the doorway stretch as is an example for the upper body. If you just stand in the doorway and like, press your chest through and then back it off, and then press your chest through and then back it off. It’s almost like you’re creating this like pump that’s going to turn what might be a familiar static stretch into a dynamic stretch. It won’t feel quite so stiff.

Susie Pettit: And trying it tonight, yes. Thank you.

Megan Dahlman: Yeah, yeah. And so the other components are coordination and power. Now power is one of those things—it is really important as we get older, um, and what power is basically—I know it sounds confusing. We all like picture like power lifting, like Olympic lifting. We’re like, oh my gosh, do I have to take this giant bar and like fling it over my head to do— power training?

Susie Pettit: Schwarzenegger so—

Megan Dahlman: Right. So what power essentially is, is your ability to contract your muscles strong, but also fast. So if we were to take like a squat, you sit slow into the chair and then you stand up slow and controlled. There’s not a lot of power there. But if you were to sit low into the chair and then jump up— that would be power. That’s where your muscles are contracting quickly. And when your muscles are able to do that, they’re less likely to get injured in a lot of everyday movements. Mhm. There’s a lot of times where like, maybe you’re walking on slippery sidewalk and your foot like slides out to the side. Your muscles need power in that moment to contract really fast. And when you don’t have it, that’s where we get like, “I tore my muscle, you know, I, I pulled him—I pulled my hammy.”

Susie Pettit: Yes.

Megan Dahlman: It’s just—that’s what’s going on is that those muscles didn’t have power. So the best times to train power are when you already have a good strengthening base. So if you’ve already been exercising and doing the other components of your fitness—like the five other ones for like three or four months, and you’ve got a pretty good base going, then we can introduce power. So power is one of those things—we can wait till the end to start to introduce it. We have it in mind, it’s something that we do eventually need to work on, but we might not work on it right out of the gate. And that’s okay. So those are kind of the big, the big picture components. and we can do, you know, train the big picture components within ten minutes a day.

Susie Pettit: That’s so great. Yeah. You’re making this really simple and I’m hoping the listeners feeling encouraged and like taking notes and just being like, “Yeah, I can start with these like three things right now.” Yes. Um, can you just give us like one or two examples of how for that listener that has been working for three or four months and has that base, like what are one or two things she might do to add power in?

Megan Dahlman: A great thing to do is what I mentioned is like kind of like squat jumps. Squat and just doing it faster. Mhm. Um, I love doing lateral skater hops. Those are really good power and balance. They kind of—my favorite exercises are ones that like hit multiple things at once. So the skater hops are power and balance.

Susie Pettit: That’s a motion my body isn’t usually taking like side to side versus front to back.

Megan Dahlman: Yeah, exactly. I’m glad you mentioned that because you’re right, it’s a motion—moving laterally is a movement that we don’t train enough. And that’s usually the directions we get hurt when we’re suddenly having to like quickly step sideways or catch ourselves, like I mentioned, like— the side. That’s where something can get pulled. So hopping side to side, maybe where you like, try to leap really big—like once you feel like you’ve got good balance, now you try to make that leap a little bit bigger and you try to stick the landing really well. That’s a great example of power training.

Another one that’s really fun is if you do have access to a gym and they have medicine balls. Those are really—so those are the big weighted balls. Those are really fun to slam around.

Susie Pettit: Oh okay.

Megan Dahlman: And bring it over your head and slam it down on the floor really, really hard. Oh fast. That is good power training for your entire body. So your whole body is having to like, power up.

Susie Pettit: Or power down your core. Okay.

Megan Dahlman: Your core, your legs, everything is like pulling fast contracting at a fast pace. So power training gets to be like really fun. It’s fun type of training, um, but it’s the kind of exercises like, I wouldn’t do that with you until I knew that your technique was really great. You’ve got a— good base and— um, I can confidently, I know you can do it without hurting yourself.

Susie Pettit: Right. Well, and I guess that’s one thing I really want listeners to hear and that you’re really good at, because sometimes they might hear, you know, the, the Instagram post or the, the, you know, clip somewhere that’s like go to the, you know, strength training. Women that are older need strength training. So let’s go to the gym and it’s like, let’s throw a medicine ball around. And then they’re like, wait a minute, I just injured myself and I can’t move for three months. So that’s—

Megan Dahlman: Yeah, that is— you start small and you gotta ease into it because, you know, we can take bone building, for example—like improving bone density. We know that strength training is really important. Impact is really important. So both the resistance load and the mechanical load of impact, those are really important for building stronger bones.

But when you’re working on like building stronger bones, you need to remember like, oh wait, you also have muscles and tendons and ligaments that are undergoing the same amount of impact, mhm, um, if you go straight into really hard pounding impact stuff. So you really cannot go straight into like the the heavy jumping or heavy lifting that is ultimately very, very good and healthy for your bones and your muscles. You have to ease into that properly. Your tendons are not twenty year old tendons anymore. And you know, your—your technique matters more now than ever. Also your muscle fibers, they just take a little bit longer to heal. You know, when muscle fibers—

Susie Pettit: Definitely notice.

Megan Dahlman: —in your twenties, they might have taken like twenty four to forty eight hours to heal, your muscle fibers now might take seventy two hours to heal. And so things just take—it’s just a little bit of a slower, steadier forward progress. So progression—like easing in slowly, building up—is important now more than ever.

Susie Pettit: And yeah, and I—I really appreciate you speaking to that. And I think a lot of listeners are just in that overwhelm and that confused place of like, “Wait a minute, I know I should be doing this, I know I should.” And so then they’re either not doing anything or they’re getting in and doing too much. And I just want to direct listeners to your Instagram and your videos because they are really helpful and your programs to get started, um, in that slow way is really helpful.

And that when we’re feeling this confusion to have like—confusion is such a wasted energy. And it was a thought coach. I’m always like, we’re, we just need to decide something. And if today just listening, you know, and for my, my listener, that’s the little planner and got their sheet, it’s like, get out your calendar and just say, like, for this month, I’m doing these three things that Megan just told me about, you know, the, the lower, the upper and the core. And I’m going to start walking, you know, that’s the first week and then I’ll start walking and, and just the building. So permission to build, take the confusion out of it that you don’t, you’re not doing too little. You’re not behind, you’re not like, oh my gosh, I need these fourteen hundred exercises at the gym. It’s just the starting of the slow and moving in it. Yeah. Can you speak a little as to when you hear people getting started, what you see any of like the big psychological barriers being like there’s—

Megan Dahlman: There’s hundreds of them. There really—

Susie Pettit: Are. It’s so—I know, like getting those heads.

Megan Dahlman: I know the psychological barriers are, are huge. And I think the biggest ones, especially as women in midlife get into is, um, we want to do things really, really well. We, if we commit to something, it can sometimes take us a while to fully commit to something. Um, we like to do our research, we like to make sure it’s the right thing. and, and ideally, you’re not jumping straight into something. Maybe you’ve planned ahead and you’ve thought it through and, and so you’re very intentional about what you are going to do.

But then you come into it with this perfectionist mindset of like, “I have to do each piece of this perfectly before I allow myself to progress onward.” And so one of the biggest struggles that we have is getting stuck in this infinite loop of starting.

Susie Pettit: Mhm, yeah. Always starting like letting never—yeah, yeah.

Megan Dahlman: Like always stepping onto the first step and then never getting up to step two because we feel like, “I didn’t do step one good enough.” And so, “I’m just going to stay here at step one until—” until— “—it feels perfect.” And I will say right now, it’s never going to be perfect. And the—the goal is to start with step one being easy enough, that being—that stepping up to step two, you’re not in danger because you move to the next step, you know, we can keep you progressing onward. And that’s what I say to everyone in my program. Like, don’t get stuck on a day—like if you missed a day, just water under the bridge. Just move forward because we will just get stuck in this loop of feeling like I have to check off every box before I move on.

Or maybe you got to the end of a program and you’re like, “Okay, I’m looking at the next program, the next step in the progress. But I look back over the last thirty days and I—gosh, there’s so many things I feel like I could have done better. Um, I always think that I could have done that so much better.” And so you’re like, “So I’m going to go back and do it again.”

Susie Pettit: Yeah, yeah.

Megan Dahlman: No, don’t do that.

Susie Pettit: Yes.

Megan Dahlman: Keep going. Don’t do that. And—and this is where the nature of this is just looking at our insufficiencies and our failures, essentially, of all the ways that we didn’t cut it, you know, all the ways that we didn’t do it good enough. And thinking that way is always going to prevent us from progressing forward. Yeah.

And so if you get to, let’s say, a thirty day program—most of my programs that I have are thirty days. Most of the women that get to the end and would say, like, “I didn’t do it good enough,” usually might have missed like three, four, maybe five days along the way. Like, okay, you missed five days. That means you did twenty five days.

Susie Pettit: Yes.

Megan Dahlman: The last time you did twenty five days, that is still considered consistency.

Susie Pettit: Yeah.

Megan Dahlman: Like that’s still—like, chalk that up to you to victory.

Susie Pettit: It’s like it’s better than no days. That’s the—yeah.

Megan Dahlman: one hundred percent.

Susie Pettit: Newton’s law, like a body in motion, stays in motion. A body at rest stays at rest. Like we need to keep going. I really appreciate that.

Megan Dahlman: Yeah. Keep the momentum going. And one like mental mindset shift I think is really big breakthrough for a lot of women is when it comes to our health and fitness, we always feel like, “Well, I’m trying, I’m trying to eat better. I’m trying to exercise more. I’m trying to move every day. I’m trying.” We use the word trying a lot and with “try” it kind of gives you a pass fail grade. Like, “I tried to drink all my water today.” Did you do it? No. Did you do it? No. Like, right? Yes or no, you know, it’s like yes or no.

Susie Pettit: Yeah.

Megan Dahlman: But instead of saying “I’m trying,” say “I’m training to do that.” You know, “I’m training to eat better. I’m training to exercise more. I’m training to be more active every day.” That has such a different connotation. It almost like assumes that you won’t do it right at first, right?

Susie Pettit: Yeah.

Megan Dahlman: It assumes that you’re an apprentice and you’re learning. Yeah. And—and so I think—

Susie Pettit: Training feels like empowering. “I’m trying,” it’s like, yeah, well, watch out because you’re not going—we know you, you know, like that.

Megan Dahlman: You didn’t do it.

Susie Pettit: Yeah.

Megan Dahlman: You messed up again.

Susie Pettit: I love that.

Megan Dahlman: And so just coming into your journey with that different mindset shift of like, no, it’s not a trying or not trying thing. It’s a “I’m training to do this better,” and then you can start to see those little victories as proof that you are improving. And that’s the momentum that will keep you motivated and keep you moving forward.

Susie Pettit: I love it, thank you. This seems like a good place to wrap up with. I think you’ve given lots of listeners things to do. You’re—you have so many resources, um, where would someone go? I will put it in the show notes, but I’d also like them to hear it through their ears if they’re like, “Megan, Megan! Help me.” Yes, I want help you because you are so encouraging and supportive and helpful. And it is—it’s just like we just have to get started wherever we are. And that’s what I love about your work and why I love having you on the show, is that you really can meet people if they haven’t walked at all. There’s no shame if they’ve been doing their stuff. You know, their Jane Fonda, they’re still doing it from the—you’re right there. And you’re like, “Yes, let’s add in some dynamic stretching.” That’s—yeah. So where can they find you?

Megan Dahlman: And one of the best places to just keep getting some free resources is my weekly newsletter. So it’s just called Weekly Jumpstart. It’s just to help jumpstart your health. Each week we send out an issue on Tuesdays and Fridays. The Friday issue is called Just One Thing. So it’s like gives you one exercise to try, um, and really that’s all.

Susie Pettit: Yeah. Okay.

Megan Dahlman: Yeah, yeah. Just go to weeklyjumpstart.com, okay, um, sign up for that. And, and I just give you simple tips like this, teach you about midlife health specifically. It’s for women in midlife and it’s just some fitness nutrition mindset tips. And then on Friday, it’s just one or one fitness tip on Fridays. So that’s the easiest thing to just be like, “I am so overwhelmed with all the information out there.” We make it really simple. You can read it in three minutes, um, so that’s the best place to go.

And then if you’re not already following me on Instagram, definitely do that. Just find me Megan Dahlman. Um, my name is my handle. And every day I’m posting just some easy little exercises that you can try. Just little tips and even mindset coaching that—that I think would really, really help inspire you each day.

Susie Pettit: It’s really, yeah, it’s a really up—like when we’re looking at social media, like Megan is uplifting. I always feel better when I look at and see your posts. So thank you. Yes. Thank you so much for coming on and helping us all. And I am—I’m really quite sure that whoever is listening and maybe started feeling a little overwhelmed and frustrated is now like they have something in a direction they can go and, and feeling more encouraged and that they’re not alone out here. We’re all, we’re all doing this. So thank you so much, Megan.

Megan Dahlman: Thank you so much for having me, Susie. Really.

Susie Pettit: Thank you for listening to the Love Your Life Show. If you want to hear more from Susie and support the show, be sure to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Also, leave a review and share this podcast with friends and family. Go get em, Warriors.