Hannah Aylward (00:00.182)

So if all we’re doing is eating as little as possible, as much cardio as possible, you’re truly setting yourself up for a weak body that can’t do the things you want to do as you get older. Not everybody has to be a bodybuilder, not everybody has to power lift and deadlift the heaviest weights they can. But there is more to muscle building than people who haven’t experienced it can understand. And I think it’s important for you to find the avenue that you like and you enjoy because having muscle is important and it doesn’t happen by accident.

Hannah Aylward (00:35.619)

Welcome to the Nutrient Dense Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of HAN. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative health care. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else worked.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out, and I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now, let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting.

Hello, hello, my dears, and welcome back to another episode of the Nutrient Dense podcast. Today we have Ashley Van Houten on the podcast with us. We’re gonna be diving into some what I find and think are really important topics like muscle building, and I really want to get into kind of shifting the perspective away from or the mindset away from training to be skinny versus training to be strong. So I think this this conversation is going to be really juicy to dive into.

But Ashley is a health coach, a speaker, a podcast host, and author of one of the only nose-to-tail organ meat-centric cookbooks in existence called It Takes Guts. Her new book is called Carnivore-Ish, and she created and co-hosts the Muscle Science for Women podcast, which is downloaded more than two and a half million times, where she interviews some of the leading minds in exercise and nutrition methodology and overall wellness and discusses topics relevant to health.

and muscle building. She’s developed a range of coaching programs and workshops aimed at improving physical strength and a deeper understanding of our bodies and optimal health, including muscle science for women. Welcome to the podcast, Ashley. We’re excited to have you. And thank you so much for having me. And and you know, my podcast has lots of experts, including yourself, right? Because you’ve recently been on it. So that’s how you can tell I run a good ship over there. Cause I’ve had you as a guest recently. So there you go.

Hannah Aylward (02:43.299)

Thank you. Yes, we dove into all things all things gut health. And of course I love a book that’s called It Takes Guts. There you go. There you go. Synergy’s a lot of yes, a lot of synergy for sure. So yeah, give us a little bit of kind of, you know, background into how you got into all of this work. And I know you’ve been coaching women for a really long time. So what kind of led you into all of this? I’ll try to condense it as much as possible because otherwise I’ll just go down like rabbit holes of my childhood. But I I think I just basically have

always from youth really been attracted to muscle both on other people and on myself. I think I don’t know. I had older brothers and I grew up I you know I was born in the 80s so I grew up with all the like nineties blockbuster movies like Arnold Schwarzenegger and like you know American gladiators and stuff. And so there was like and we’ll talk about this there are trends there are bodily trends that happen and I guess I was just growing up during a a time when muscle was really in and I

I always was fascinated. I like the look of it, but I also have always been fascinated by what human beings could accomplish. So I’ve just always been attracted to strength. And I’m not a particularly skilled athlete in the you know, general sense. I I played a little bit of sports here and there, but I really didn’t find my footing until probably university age, when kind of CrossFit was coming online. And just sort of fitness and athleticism for its own sake was something that I sort of found that I was like.

pretty, pretty good at. And that led me into a whole array of other things and you know, competitive bodybuilding and all kinds of other stuff. Wow. But basically as I was doing this stuff for fun, because I just liked building muscle and kind of change my body and seeing what I could I could do. I was learning about this stuff and getting really interested in it. And I was trying to figure out a way that I could like work, do this stuff for a living, get paid to do the stuff I’m already learning about. And so there was, there’s quite a bit of

time in there that I won’t get into where I was kind of trying to like do a bunch of things. but I was in the sort of publishing industry and I ended up writing for some health magazines and I got to meet some really cool people and get to learn from some really cool people. And that sort of led into the podcasting arena. And then I got into health coaching. So it all just sort of kind of steamrolled where I I was like, I’m learning this stuff for myself. I’m really passionate about it. I want to help other people. I’ve always been especially passionate about teaching women.

Hannah Aylward (05:10.266)

about their capabilities, about how they can understand their bodies better, because in the fitness world we’ve really done a disservice not teaching women how their bodies work and and just having fun with it and being strong and realizing how strong you actually are capable of being. And so yeah, and I mean I’m still having fun with it. I’m still learning and it’s a great time and I’m happy and and glad to be doing what I’m doing. Yeah. It’s so amazing. I think it’s a really beautiful

perspective shift for women to more so think of like exercising or working out as building strength and longevity. That’s how I choose to see it. But it took me many, many years to see it that way. Cause there were a lot of years of undernourishing, over-exercising, and really just trying to like burn it all off. Like I would eat a meal and I would try to just burn it off, which led to a myriad of health issues, physical and mental. And so switching my perspective from like

I want to be strong and I want to build strength versus I just want to like burn calories was huge for me and something that I’ve carried forward with me for many years now. And it my relationship to my body is just better with that perspective. My relationship to my health and my own strength is just so much better with that perspective. So yes, I would love for you to kind of touch on that. Cause I do think I don’t know when it starts. If it’s like diet culture, it’s a very young age where it’s just like be like skinny equals good, you know, skinny equals good enough. And for me.

I was definitely raised in a household where it was like you wanna be skinny. Like skinny, which is like, I don’t know, kind of such a charged term, even. Like I don’t even want to like use that term, but sure. It was just like skinny is good. And if it my mindset was if I am if I can be skinny enough, I’m gonna be loved. Like I know that that sounds really intense, but that was kind of what it came down to. And if I could just lose a couple pounds, then I would be good enough. Meanwhile, I’ve always been in a thin body and I am thin, a thin person, but it was like

Just this mental thing. So it was I would love for you to kind of touch on that. And for for anyone that that resonates with, it’s like, how can we how can we see this other side of like fueling ourselves in a more positive light? I love sort of both parts of this question. And I think what you just shared there kind of hits the nail on the head too. This entire podcast we could talk about diet culture and wellness and fitness culture and how it hurts women. But I think

Hannah Aylward (07:35.472)

What we could say here is that it’s still it’s so insidious and it’s so also subjective, where you as you said, you walk around in this very conventionally thin body that so many women would just like die to look like you, and you’re still thinking, I need to lose a couple pounds so that I can feel better and people will think I’m better or prettier or I’m can be more loved. So it’s it doesn’t actually matter what your body looks like. It doesn’t matter that number that we all grew up saying, if I could just stay.

110 pounds or 120 pounds or whatever, it the ma it doesn’t matter because no matter what, it’s about the sort of judgment and policing and value placed on women based on what they look like. And so even when we go through trends, like you’ve seen trends of, you know, there’s there’s a muscle mommy trend, there’s like having this this big strong butt that got really cool. There’s a curvy trend that happens, there’s a body positivity plus size. All of these things happen and it’s still just.

Placing what we look like front and center. So that no matter what, we are not winning. And we’re always comparing ourselves to other people. And we’re always comparing ourselves to airbrushed, fake, you know, versions of other people that aren’t even the real versions of themselves. And so, you know, again, we could dive into this so, so deeply. But I think the second part of your question, like how to even think about beginning to overcome this stuff, especially when you’ve been taught it for so long.

One of the things that I really try to do through education and coaching, and I and I think more women are starting to do this in the fitness space, is teach the idea that of course health is important and fueling for nutrition and longevity is important. And that’s full stop, that’s true. But it can it’s not necessarily the most pervasive argument when someone is deep in their insecurity and they’re just this

strong desire to look better, be smaller, whatever. But I think that if we can switch a little bit more to positive goals that are not purely aesthetic, I have found in my experience, and this is true with me and also with so many people that I’ve coached and worked with, that real confidence comes from competence, competency in something. And so when all we do is train to be smaller or train to lose weight or train to lose fat.

Hannah Aylward (09:55.401)

And there are there’s a time and place for that for some people. I’ve certainly done it in the past as well. But if that’s all you do, it’s not that fulfilling, it’s not that fun, it wears you down, it’s miserable. Even if you want to lose a couple pounds, if you pick a strength goal, if you pick a skill that you want to acquire, if you, you know, have a goal or a race or something that you want to do and you’re learning how to do something and you’re learning how to feel your body in the process and how your body works and you’re getting stronger and you

can suddenly do a pull up after six months of training or you can do whatever it is, you start to build, it’s not like an overnight thing, but you start to build this confidence in yourself and this awareness that there is more to you than just what you look like. And then this wonderful bonus often comes, I find working with clients that when they’re working so hard on this goal, three, six, whatever a year later, they look back and they’re like, wow, I like, I look really good. I’ll like

I took this picture and I like I look so much better in my clothes and all this stuff. It’s this wonderful kind of consequence that comes as a result. But if if we’re only focused on what we look like, we are literally dooming ourselves to never be happy because there is no end game, there is no perfection, and the fitness culture won’t allow that anyway. And neither will our brains. So we have to kind of find some other avenues to to, you know, understanding our self-worth and

That we’re more than just what we look like. Yeah. Beautiful. My drop. There you go. There you go. My drop for that. If only, you know, 16-year-old Hannah could have like really thoroughly understood that sooner than she did. You know, it it does. It breaks my heart to to look back on all of it. But I I do feel happy that there is kind of this movement towards like, yeah, strength and muscle building and all of that for women versus just like literally trying to be the smallest version of yourself that you

could ever be. And for me, exercising and specifically strength training, I so I danced for a while and I did like dance cardio and I ran and I did a lot of cardio, which I which I do love because I love like blasting music and just kind of like going going hand on to it. Yeah. But then I really started getting into strength training actually when I had an injury and I like I don’t know if it was it wasn’t quite a fracture. I like rolled my ankle really bad in this dance audition. And then the strength training is actually what like pulled me out of this injury.

Hannah Aylward (12:11.293)

And that’s when I was like, whoa, this is really cool. And I did a combination of yoga and strength training. And it was like I started feeling so much better. And then I was like less weak, like literally just less weak. And I think that started to prevent injury from happening. And then I was like, this is amazing. And then I got really hooked on it. And I feel like too, if we’re talking about body composition, I mean, muscle is like so important if you want to optimize body composition and if you want to be able to like eat.

You know, a cookie and then not yeah, like eat more and eat these things. And I feel like as I’ve built more muscle, I don’t I don’t see those things on my body the same way as I would have before, which is also interesting. It’s like I’m almost exercising less, just a bit like more smart or strategic, I suppose, like and and shorter. And then I’m like, I can eat these things and it’s like not a big deal, you know, whereas before it felt like I had to like burn off all of the calories ever.

Yes. You are nailing a couple of really important points here. I’m a big fan of, you know, a lot of another thing about diet culture is like how little can you eat and still function? And in the strength world horrible. Awful. In the strength world, it’s more like how much can you eat and still kind of maintain whatever body composition it is that you’re you’re going for. And there are a couple sort of universal truths here that we I think don’t think about when we’re we’re looking at how we want to exercise. And one is that

muscle aesthetically, most women, and we all have different opinions of what the ideal toned or, you know, lean or whatever body type curvy that we’re looking for, that looks different to you and me and to the other person, whatever. But it’s pretty universally accepted that to some degree, the muscle underneath whatever your body fat is is what’s kind of giving you a lot of this like fit, healthy shape that you like. And so that’s why so many people who do this really extreme sort of fat loss

never really focus on building muscle, they might get down to a size or a weight that they like. And then they look in the mirror and they’re I don’t I still don’t really like this because they maybe don’t have that foundational muscle that gives them sort of the look that they’re that a lot of people are going for. I don’t think there’s too many people I’ve come across that are like, I don’t actually want to look like in any way fit or toned or muscular. That again, it’s a wide ver like variance, but like most people want to have some muscle and look like they have some muscle.

Hannah Aylward (14:32.291)

So that’s a big thing. And then the importance of strength training, and however you want to do that, there’s a lot of different ways you can approach it. It is so important because, to your point, it’s absolutely helps prevent injury. Women also, unfortunately, some physiological differences that we have is we naturally have much less muscle than than the average man. And so we start out with less. And if we want to

live a vibrant life and be injury free and be pain free and be able to do things, whether that’s dance, fitness stuff, or just get our groceries, go up the stairs, get up off the toilet eventually. We need to have muscle. And so we need to like be building this over time. You can’t think about this when you’re 65. I mean, you can still start building muscle when you’re 65. You can at any age, but it’s better to start before then. And having this muscle is going to help prevent things like sarcopenia, muscle wasting

These are real issues that women encounter, not when they’re 90. Like this stuff happens in their 50s and 60s. And we also are much more prone to osteoporosis, which is, you know, bone density issues. And this is partly just a physiological thing. It’s partly our diet because we are eating less protein, we’re eating less, you know, dairy, things like that that can help. We can, you know, get into the diet stuff later, but also because we do less weight-bearing stuff gen generally, stereotypically.

So if all we’re doing is eating as little as possible, as much cardio as possible, like you’re truly setting yourself up for a weak body that can’t do the things you want to do as you get older. So not everybody has to be a bodybuilder, not everybody has to power lift and deadlift the heaviest weights they can. but there is more to muscle building than I think people who who haven’t experienced it can, you know, understand. And I think it’s important for you to find the avenue that you

you like and you enjoy because having muscle is important and it doesn’t happen by accident. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So talk to me about you named some of these huge benefits of like building strength and building more muscle. Talk to me about like what are all of these health benefits? When I’m when I’m in the gym, I’m thinking like insulin sensitivity, I’m thinking strength and and osteoporosis and

Hannah Aylward (16:46.923)

And preventing some of these things. And then you hear, you hear, and you can correct me on this. I think it’s like once you hit 30 or 35, you start like losing muscle rapidly or more. And I’m just like, my gosh, I gotta start doing the squats now. Yeah. I mean, the best time to start doing this stuff is like yesterday, 10 years ago, and the next best time is literally right now. I mean, we kind of just d did cover it. I mean, really like having a consistent muscle building, muscle maintenance kind of approach and plan.

Is going to keep your body healthier for longer because it allows you to do the things you need to do. You need muscle to do everything, not just the impressive stuff that you see on Instagram or TikTok, but the again getting up off the floor when you fall, getting off the toilet, picking up your kid, putting stuff away, cleaning up your house, whatever. You need this muscle. And the people who hit 40, 50 and start having.

a lot you know, the back issues and like twinges here and there and sort of constant pain and like all of these issues. There’s a maybe if you look back, there are some things that they could have been doing more proactively and preventatively to create a body that is robust and strong and that can carry them through. I literally just did a podcast episode with my co host recently that was talking about really longevity is a important conversation and I know that sometimes people in their twenties, thirties, whatever, like don’t really want to have it ’cause they’re like, look

I got a while before I have to worry about being old. And that’s true, but also it sneaks up on you. Okay. As somebody who is in their early 40s now, it sneaks up on you. So you really don’t want to think about you should think about it, right? It doesn’t have to be ev you know, everything that you think about and everything you do in the gym, but like you should be thinking about longevity. And so we just did this episode that was thinking like, what do we envisioning decades ahead? What do we wanna be doing when we’re seventy five and eighty?

Yeah. What do we want to be doing on a daily basis? Okay, so now let’s work back the decades and say, what should we be doing now consistently? So think about that. Do you want to have grandkids? Do you want to travel? Do you want to go hiking? Do you want to bike around your neighborhood? Do you wanna be a super fit person? Whatever it is that you wanna do, like these are the things you should really be thinking about now. And again, I just mentioned like the the muscle wasting, the bone density, these are massive, very common issues for women. And

Hannah Aylward (19:07.543)

These are things that don’t just happen when you hit 60 and realize, I have osteoporosis. They’ve been happening. It’s been happening. And it’s been happening because you’ve been under eating and not protecting your body with healthy muscle. Mm-hmm. Do you think that under do you see women under fueling and undernourishing as like a consistent pattern? Yeah. I mean it’s it’s interesting too, because in the in the little bubble that I’m in in the fitness industry.

you know, I tend to think that some of these things are are starting to go away and that they aren’t as common. And I think maybe they aren’t as common as they used to be. but it is still a very pervasive thing because again, women are sort of always being judged harshly based on what they look like. and even when the trends change, there’s still always this like even when, you know, curvy is in or whatever, strength is in, it’s still like, yeah, but you better not show a role. You better not have any visible cellulite. You better not, you know,

And it’s all just sort of at the whim of whatever, I don’t know, the algorithm is telling us that day. So there are definitely still women not eating enough. And I would say one of the biggest things still, which I find so hard to believe, but it’s just because my personal journey was so different. They’re not eating enough protein. And you may hear some dissenting opinions online about how much protein you need. I’m more on the higher end, and I know there are some people who will tell you like it’s nuts to say that.

The average, you know, 150 pounds, say woman needs to have 150 grams of protein, maybe not 150, but certainly not 45 totally a day. You know, and and I think again, so much of it is just a misunderstanding of data or information that’s coming in where r RDA, like recommended daily amounts of things, are to literally keep you barely alive. Do you want to build muscle? Do you want to look good? Do you want to change your body composition? You’re gonna need to do better than the bare minimum of what’s being asked of you.

especially if you want to build muscle, because building muscle is incredibly difficult and requires a really sustained approach of proper fueling, proper training and proper recovery. So if you’re eating, you know, 40 grams of protein a day and just doing cardio and that’s it, y there’s no way you’re putting muscle in your body. It’s not gonna happen. so yeah, I do see I do see a lot of women still either not eating enough, period, or definitely not eating enough of the right things.

Hannah Aylward (21:31.691)

Yeah. And and in general, do you recommend or like your philosophy is kind of one gram per pound? Yeah, I would say generally speaking, it’s about a pound per lean, at least lean body mass and or ideal body mass. So there’s there’s some flexibility here. Like again, it doesn’t have to be super razor’s edge black or white and you’re gonna have to adjust. The big thing that I kind of do with my clients is personalized nutrition approach where

If anybody tells you, if anybody comes on a podcast or online or whatever and says, this is exactly how you should eat, this is the right way, everything else is stupid, they’re trying to sell you something. I mean, we’re all, I guess, trying to sell you something, but they’re really, it’s not accurate because we are so individual. Our goals are different, our backgrounds are different, maybe health issues that we’re dealing with are different. There’s so many elements going into it that you can’t say, like, this is exactly how you should eat and it works for everybody. But with that said,

A general great kind of starting point is like if I’m a hundred and forty-five pounds and I maybe I want to lose 10 pounds, like being around 130, 130 grams of protein per day is like a really nice number. And again, if you go a little bit higher, great. If you go a little bit lower here and there, fine. But if you’re consistently coming in at like 75 grams, 60 grams, whatever, and then you know what else is probably making up for those, that satiating, healthy.

bioavailable nutrient dense protein that you’re not eating, probably carbs, probably fat, maybe some like processed food that’s not doing anything for you. Yeah. That’s another great thing about protein. There’s like so little downsides to eating healthy, you know, whole protein. it’s very satiating, it’s very nourishing, it’s very bioavailable in the body, especially animal based protein, which we can get into if we want. but yeah, it’s really important. Yeah. And it’s a great starting point, like around, yeah, pound per ideal body weight.

Yeah. We say kind of in general, and it is, it’s totally should be like customized to the individual based on, yeah, your activity levels, what you’re doing, your goals, all of that. We say like on average, a hundred grams of protein for for a woman, which is typically much more than they come in eating. Sure. You know. So sometimes, you know, my team will be like, We really need this person like one thirty or we need them like one fifty, even or whatever. But I would say on average,

Hannah Aylward (23:55.935)

It would just be a good for a good exercise for anyone listening who like isn’t really just even like aware of what they’re eating. Like start doing and and you don’t need to count everything. Personally for me, I can’t do that. It it just doesn’t support me. But it’s like yeah, it’s just too stressful. But having some concept of like, okay, cool, you know, a turkey turkey burger is gonna have like 20 grams of protein, 25 grams, like a piece of salmon’s gonna have like 25 grams. Like,

Palm of your hand, like old school stuff, like look for a piece of protein, the palm palm of your hand. And just getting an idea and feel for how much you’re eating on a daily basis. And you may very quickly realize, this is like f 60 grams. This is like 50 grams of protein. So, you know, slowly working your way up over the course of a couple of weeks to getting closer to that like hundred.

I would say it changed it my body feels night and day different when I actually hit my my protein like needs for the day. Yeah. so just a good exercise for anyone that’s listening who’s like, this is maybe more important than I thought it was. Yeah. I would say that the most life-changing thing that I have I have had reflected back to me from clients over and over again are the ones who came in eating very little protein and then they ended up eating again more. Even if you’re like you said, if you’re hitting a hundred.

consistently, you’re probably doing better than the vast majority of people. Maybe said it is like night and day, the difference in my energy, yes, in my mood, how I’m functioning, how I’m sleeping, how I can perform in the gym, all of those things. it’s really crucial. And another element too, and I hate to kind of harp on this, but as we get older, we actually need more protein, generally speaking, if we’re trying to especially build muscle, but even if we’re just trying to like maintain and promote

Good health because one of the fun things that happens as we age, you you mentioned, you know, we’re losing muscle. We also we can break down the amino acids and protein less efficiently. So we may need, and there’s no kind of exact science here, but you’d need a little bit more to kind of get the same benefit. So again, you don’t have to be like,

Hannah Aylward (26:00.939)

a 75 year old eating like four steaks for lunch. But like it’s I think a lot of people think, well, you know, I’m not like training super hard anymore. I’m not like competing in my thing anymore. I’m just kind of hanging out. I can really like cut down the protein. It’s like probably not a good idea. Hmm. Yeah. I wonder if that’s because as we age, stomach acid levels decline. That could very well be a which is what we need to actually break down protein. Like that wouldn’t surprise me, you know.

That’s interesting. Yeah, ’cause that happens kind of naturally. Yeah. Interesting.

Hannah Aylward (26:34.157)

We are big fans of eating enough protein over here on Team Han. Protein is essential for muscle repair, a strong gut lining, balanced blood sugar levels, and so much more. For most of our clients, we like recommending around 100 grams of protein per day to start, and adding in a good quality protein powder can be super helpful for hitting those numbers. It’s an easy add-in, you can throw it into a smoothie or even add it to oatmeal. Choosing the right protein powder can feel so overwhelming.

Half of them are full of fillers and crap ingredients, and the other half honestly just taste bad. Equip protein is one of my go-to recommendations for our clients and one of my personal favorites. We love it because it only has a small handful of ingredients. It’s 100% carefully sourced, real foods, no additives, allergens, chemicals, fillers, or other junk. It’s gluten-free and it contains 21 grams of protein per serving. Equip’s Prime Protein also offers

a complete amino acid profile. It’s also independently tested to make sure that the protein powder is free of harmful amounts of heavy metals and toxins like glyphosate, which is honestly super hard to find. Equip prime protein is a grass-fed beef protein. So it is animal based, but it’s dairy free, unlike whey or casein protein powders. Grass-fed beef protein is packed with collagen, gelatin, and micronutrients that your body needs.

We also see that it’s typically much better tolerated in our clients with chronic gut and digestive issues over something like a plant-based protein powder. In addition, some of their flavors do contain natural flavors, but they’re distilled vapors from natural and organic compounds or fruits like vanilla, coconut, and strawberry, and are processed without any chemicals, fillers, binders, or artificial ingredients, which once again is incredibly hard to find. Personally, I buy both the chocolate and the vanilla.

Flavors of the Equip Prime Protein, but honestly, they have like so many other incredible flavors out now. If you’re interested in trying out Equip Prime Protein, you can use the code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC at checkout for 15% off. And we’ll pop that code in the show notes of this episode for you as well. So once again, you can go to equipfoods.com, choose the flavor of protein powder that you want, and then use code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC for 15% off.

Hannah Aylward (28:50.935)

So how do we actually get this much protein in? So this question, it’s funny. Like I I have such a hard time with this because I look, I have my own struggles. Trust me, we all do in our our health and wellness journey. I’ve got lots of struggles. And getting enough protein has just never been one for me because I’m such a like meat eater. And as you can tell based on like the cookbooks, like I’ve just always been that that’s never been a point of contention for me. And I realize that that’s

I’m a bit of an outlier because I do also feel that like the low protein, plant-based, yep, vegetarian stuff is very, again, strongly marketed to women. And that’s another way that we’re sort of I don’t want get too like insidious about this like conspiracy theory, but it’s like sort of another way that we’re like telling women that you’re not doing things right and that you need to not like I don’t know, like eating meat is somehow masculine or something bizarre like that.

so I’ve always really just like not had a I find it so easy. I’m getting like too much protein some days when I’m not paying attention to it. With that said, I think that the vast majority of us eat animal protein, right? There are that’s pretty well accepted in the Western world. Most of us are omnivores to a certain extent, even if we’re just eating, I don’t know, eggs and fish and whatever it is. And so some ways to kind of do this is to build every single meal around protein first. Yeah.

And that includes snacks, because oftentimes we like let our snacks be just some like little carbs here and there, a handful of nuts or whatever. Always protein. Always start with protein. And I tell people this sort of in a joking way, but you know, for people who eat ’cause they’re bored or eat ’cause it’s their hello, I’m speaking to myself. If you’re not hungry enough to eat a piece of protein, you’re probably not hungry. You probably just want a snack. So because it’s not oftentimes it’s not the most you know, delicious thing on the plate. Like

I love a steak, I love a chicken thigh, I love eggs, but like people like to go for their carbs, they like to go for their fat whatever. Like always start with protein and then if you’re finding that you’re just kind of like not quite getting enough, subtly you can incorporate like if you normally have two eggs for breakfast, like have three, throw a dash of egg whites in there. you can incorporate, obviously, I’m kind of the animal protein person, but there are legumes, there are

Hannah Aylward (31:10.53)

you know, nuts and seeds, there is tofu, there is all kinds of plant-based stuff that you can incorporate. I wouldn’t use that as my like main source of protein, but you can absolutely kind of beef up, no pun intended, your salads or your breakfast or your shakes or whatever with stuff like that. So just make your like the protein piece just a little bit bigger. Add an extra a little extra ounce, a couple more bites of salmon or chicken than what you’d normally be eating. and then you can do fun stuff like make

I don’t know, protein ice creams and like smoothies that are delicious and little Greek yogurt bowls with like fun stuff in it. It doesn’t all have to be just this functional food that you kind of have to choke down. but people joke about I’ve seen things on Instagram and stuff where it’s like, does there have to be protein in everything? Like, do I have to put cottage cheese in like every single thing I make? Like, no, you don’t. Yeah. But, you know, if you’re making, if you’re somebody who likes to make your own little dessert or your own little like snack after dinner or whatever.

If you’re putting more if you’re putting protein and stuff, it’s healthy again, it’s satiating. Yeah. So one of my issues with snacks and treats is that I could eat an entire pint of ice cream and I’m hungry a second later. Like chips do nothing for me. I need to have something that’s a little bit more substantial. So if you kinda always have a little bit of protein in whatever you’re eating, it’s gonna keep you fuller longer and then it it adds up. So Yeah, what I’d say. Yeah. So important for blood sugar stabilization too. And this was something I think that

Some women don’t fully like understand. So it was like you you have these cravings and then you crave like carbs and sugar, right? Or chips or whatever. Like I do, I do love a chip. I love a chip. So you’re a salty, not a sweet. Is that is that what I’m hearing? I used to be sweet and then I think I’ve reached such a point of burnout that how am I just crave salt? Like I sure like as my life evolved, because I used to crave sweets and now I’m like I could pass, I would rather have like a salty chip. And I

I could totally eat a whole bag of chips, like no no question. and I would and it’s just like there’s something about the crunch that it’s so satisfying. The like salty crunch. I hear it. I want chips now. Now you’re you’re like getting me into it. Okay. Like the l and like crackers, like I do really love it. And I have gone through so many different variations of my health journey, but what we don’t realize is it’s like we have these cravings for sugar and carbs and then it’s like we eat that and then we’re not satisfied, right? So it’s like it’s like eating the protein.

Hannah Aylward (33:34.475)

you have fewer cravings. You have fewer cravings for other things. And to me it it made my health journey and like my body journey just like easier because I wasn’t fighting my own biology and like feeling like, my gosh, I really want this ice cream or whatever. And I can’t have it because I’m counting my calories or I’m trying to restrict or whatever. Meanwhile then I’m eating enough protein and I’m like, I’m not as snacky. I don’t yeah. I’m not thinking about it quieted my food noise a ton. I used to

think about food nonstop. Like it was like I couldn’t wait to eat my next meal because I was eating so so plant based, you know, which is like the plants are great for the gut microbiome. All of that, I’m a big fan of having it all. Like we want some we want it balanced. But it’s just interesting because I’m like, I wish more women understood. I’m like, no, if you eat protein or even like front load your protein a little bit, you’re gonna have fewer cravings throughout the rest of the day. Your your body journey and your body composition goals and your and all of that it’s just gonna get easier, you know? Yes.

And another thing that that I mean, cravings can be caused by so many things, as I’m sure you know. but one thing that we don’t think about because we can’t see it is that sometimes cravings are caused by micronutrient vitamin deficiencies and things like that, where your body’s like, you need to go eat XYZ because there’s some calcium in it or there’s some B twelve or something, right? And animal protein is

Really, really again, nutrient dense, not just in it it’s protein and amino acids, which are important, but all of these like just little vitamins and minerals and micronutrients that are just humming along in our bodies that we do not think about until suddenly something goes haywire and we can’t even function and we go get a blood test, and it’s like, you have very low iron, you have very low magnesium, you have no vitamin A, K, whatever. And it’s these things we take for granted.

that we could spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars supplementing with pills that aren’t gonna work as well as eating a couple ounces of steak or dare I say liver every couple of weeks. It really makes a massive difference. And again, it’s it’s something that it’s it’s it’s it’s sneaky because we’re thinking it’s our brain. We’re thinking, we’re weak. We just can’t stop doing this. There’s something wrong with me. And it’s like your body could be just crying out for some little tiny nutrient that you aren’t even aware of.

Hannah Aylward (35:54.608)

Yes, beautiful. And that kind of like leads us to perfectly into this next little bit that I wanted to cover with you, which is this the the organ meats, right? So we we are fans of like beef liver and stuff on on my team. We use them quite a bit and they’re full of like, yeah, different B vitamins and vitamin A and all these things that like the thyroid needs and energy production and all of that. So talk talk to us about

organ needs. Like, do you think that more people should be eating these more consistently? What are the benefits and what what do they provide for us? Well, yes, I do think everyone should be eating more of it. I wrote a whole cookbook about it. So and that that could, I mean, we could go in a whole different direction with that. If you’re if people who are listening are interested, I have a cookbook, I have podcasts, I can send you links. I have a free ebook that folks can check out. Yeah, perfect. I’m not trying to tell like

Plant-based eaters that they need to eat heart and kidney. I’m not telling omnivores that they need to eat, you know, liver every day. I’m not one of these kind of extreme people that you see on social media just being nuts and eating like raw liver for clicks. Like on a cutting board. Yeah. What I’m saying though is that again, for the majority of us who eat animals, we have accepted that that is a healthy and natural thing for human beings to do, which it is.

And we could talk about the ethics and the sustainability and all that all day long. But at the end of the day, organs are the most nutrient-dense part of the already healthy animal that you’re eating. And before we had Google or, you know, TikTok to tell us what to do, when human beings went out and hunted, they would hunt an animal and they would eat the organs first because they understood that it was the most nutritious part of the animal. And so

If you are looking to eat nose to tail, to respect the whole animal, to make use of everything, if you want to eat less meat but get more benefit from it, organ meats are a great option. if you just want to address again vitamin and mineral deficiencies, I mean this is really a very, very effective way to do it. Some of these organs are so nutrient dense that you’re you literally can eat a couple ounces of them three every three, four weeks.

Hannah Aylward (38:05.051)

And you are going to notice a difference. And the reason I literally started writing this book is because I, you know, I come from sort of an ancestral health kind of primal, whatever background, which whether you like that or not or think it’s trendy, it’s really just about eating real, unprocessed food, ideally local, whatever, that kind of thing. But I was eating a really healthy diet and I really didn’t have any like major health issues to speak of at the time. I was really taking care of myself.

And I started eating liver and it felt like I was taking like a super pill. Like that I noticed a difference that I did not expect to feel at all. it’s really, really impactful. And I just saw such a difference in my own performance that I was like, wow, I think more people need to know about this. And eat even in our culture specifically, because in most cultures still you can look

all over the place in South America and Africa and in Asia and all of these places. This is not a a novel thing at all. People always make use of the entire animal. It’s really only in a very privileged and I mean, honestly not to be too like yeah nagi but wasteful society that we can say like, yeah, just like I’m gonna eat just cut this little piece off here and I’m gonna eat it. The rest of this is disgusting and extreme and how could you eat it? we’re we really have a disconnect, I think, from the type of food that we eat. And again, this isn’t to judge, I’m not saying

You have to do it and whatever. I just think that people to kind of just open their minds a little bit to the idea that some of these foods, they they certainly are not extreme and they can be economical. It can be, you know, help with sustainability. It can help with your health. A little bit goes a long way. And they can also be delicious if you know what you’re doing. I really, I really believe this. I’m not blowing smoke. You can really eat organ meats better and you can enjoy it. It’s good, I promise.

And do you and do you kind of put it into other blends? Because you’ll see these like ancestral blends that you can purchase now at the store. I think it’s like force of nature or something. Like do you recommend, you know, people masking it a little bit if especially if they’re first starting out? Yeah. I have some some recommendations. So I think the very first thing someone should do if they’re like, Okay, I’m I’m open minded, but I’m scared and I’m not gonna go to the store and buy liver just yet. I think that you should go to a restaurant and you should have a professional make something for you.

Hannah Aylward (40:23.4)

Because then you’re gonna know how good these things can actually taste. If you’ve ever had tongue taco, if you’ve ever had bone marrow that’s roasted, if you’ve ever had foie gras. Like again, I I get it, like I I get it. But if you have a professional make something for you, you will be shocked. You will be shocked that these things can taste delicious. And you don’t have to think about, you don’t have to look at it being prepared, you don’t have to think about it. And the worst that happens is you try some liver pate on a piece of toast and you’re like, mm.

Okay, maybe not for me. You tried it. You got to try it and you had an experience and maybe you try something else. So I say have a professional make something for you. And then of course the next step up is exactly what parents have been doing for their kids throughout time is just hide a little of those vegetables, right? You just hide a little bit. So you can buy a lot of like grocery stores or butcher shops and things, you can say, I want my ground meat and let’s do like a three to one ratio of like ground beef to ground heart, ground org, whatever.

and you can do it in a way that it’s absolutely masked. you’re not gonna taste it if you get the ratios right. And then you can also you know, put it into meals where you’re then masking it further. so I would definitely suggest that. And then the third suggestion, I could keep going, but the third kind of main suggestion is don’t go for the strongest flavored organs right away. Like again, you see these people on social media and they’re like eating a raw

Buffalo liver and you’re like, that’s a bit much. Like let’s start, let’s take it down a notch. So things like heart, is a muscle meat. So it’s literally like the muscle, the steak, the whatever ground beef that you’re already eating. It’s a muscle. It’s just a different muscle. And it’s a more nutrient dense muscle, super high in coQ ten, which is a really important antioxidant, B twelve, all these other things. so you can again maybe have somebody else do it if you’re scared, but like get some chicken, get some chicken hearts. So smaller animals are gonna taste less

strong than larger animals. So the heart of a chicken or a lamb is going to be probably more palatable to you than the heart of a bison or a cow. So get some small animal organs, chop those suckers up, mix it up in something you already want to eat. chicken hearts are delicious. It’s like literal like little nuggets of like dark chicken meat. It’s really so yeah, so those are some like dip in your toes and suggestions that I have. Yeah. No, that’s good to know. Do you how often do you eat

Hannah Aylward (42:46.28)

Like these organ meats. When I was writing the book, I ate a lot. now I’ve kind of eased up, but I you know, I would say that a a nice sustainable pace is because again, people I think assume that I’m eating it every day and I’m absolutely not. But we have organ meats. We incorporate organ meats into our meals probably maybe three to four times a month. And that’s including our kids. Our kids eat liver, our kids eat cod liver, our kids eat chicken liver, they eat chicken hearts.

I made beef heart jerky the other day with a dehydrator. It’s just beef jerky. Wow. So and it’s you know, kids don’t know what’s gross because no one’s told them that things are gross. My four year old, his favorite food in the world, I kid you not, are canned sardines, like full fish sardines. That’s amazing. To the point where even I’m like

Really? Like do I have to smell this sardine for like the fifth time this week? He loves them because he wasn’t he wasn’t taught like, this is a weird thing to like or this is gross or whatever. He just ate based on what he liked to eat. And there you go. He eats sardines and I have to clean him up every day after dinner. But so good for you. It’s good for him. Yeah. So good for him. And I wish I wish I could eat stuff like that. I have a friend who does

Maybe it’s not sardines, maybe it’s anchovies and she’ll like an anchovy. Ooh, I love an anchovy. And maybe and maybe an anchovy sardine like mix where it’s like a she’ll make it like a tuna salad, basically. And she’s like, Yeah, you just mask it. And I’m like, I don’t know. Can’t do it. Can’t do it. That’s fair. That’s fair. But you can mask it. Like you don’t have to Yeah. Nobody has to eat them, but it I think that again, just kind of opening your mind to the idea that it’s not extreme. Just because it’s unfamiliar doesn’t mean it’s scary and doesn’t mean it’s bad.

And I think one thing about our culture that we do have a problem with is things that are new we see as potential. And maybe that’s just a biological thing, right? You see things as threats because you don’t understand them or because they’re new or they’re different. And I have said, and I said writing this book that being open minded about trying new like cultural cuisines and trying new dishes, all that has done for me has given me like more joy and more pleasure and more health. And the worst that could happen is that you try something and you don’t like it and you’re right back where you started.

Hannah Aylward (44:57.662)

But the best that could happen is that you try something and you love it and you learn about a new thing and you try going to new restaurants and you maybe find some different like dishes to make at home and then suddenly you’re feeling a little bit healthier because you’re eating this stuff instead of this stuff. I mean, there’s really it’s like such a win-win scenario to just be open to these new things. And then if you’re open to a new little thing like trying a new dish at a restaurant, what else might you be open to that could expand your life and expand your world, right? It’s just like it’s sort of like a metaphor for like other things, just being willing to

Step outside your comfort zone is almost always a good thing. It almost always gives you a reward. Yeah, absolutely. I was literally just last night watching Anthony Bourdain No Reservations. Yeah. And he was in Sardinia because I I’m going and traveling there in a few weeks. And like they are eating everything. You know, they’re eating the whole thing. And it’s like the heart and the liver and the this and the that. And it’s just like that’s how they’re doing it. And in in these other areas of the world and how they have been for really long time.

time. So it’s so interesting that we’re having this conversation now. And I’m I was like literally just watching this. Like, wow. Okay. Well if you’re going in a couple weeks, I encourage you to have some professional sardinians make you something delicious and try something new and report back because you might find you get some new favorite dishes while you’re I will try. I will try. I I find feel hope in you eating them a few times a month and and getting like

A smaller dose a few times a month and still gaining big benefit from that. That’s amazing. You don’t need to be eating them every single day. Absolutely. I mean, literally a couple ounces of liver gives you more than your daily requirement for things like iron, copper, selenium, folate. So again, really important if you’re somebody who wants to have a baby is having a baby. I mean, people will tell you this is an again, another rabbit hole we don’t have to go down, but

the fear around what you are supposed to eat and not supposed to eat during pregnancy. I have spoken about this because I think it’s a very I understand the fear and I understand the the absolute desire to keep yourself safe when you are pregnant. But the disservice that we are doing to women saying like, hey, if you’re, you know, have cravings and all you want to eat is like Cheetos and and ice cream all your pregnancy, that’s what pregnancy is. But if someone says, Hey, I’m really craving some like fresh sushi or like some liver pate and they’re like, my God, no, don’t.

Hannah Aylward (47:19.326)

You’re gonna kill yourself. These are like the most literally the most nutrient dense foods in the world. And again, it’s like this cultural disconnect. Like, do you think people in Japan don’t eat fresh raw fish that they would normally eat just because they’re pregnant? Of course not. I ate again, don’t follow, don’t follow what I’m doing. I’m just telling you, I ate so much sushi when I was pregnant because I craved it. And you are much more likely, statistically, to get things like salmonella like E. coli, these things that are very dangerous when you’re pregnant.

From things like peanut butter or ice cream or bagged salads. gosh. These are things that no one tells you not to eat when you’re pregnant. But you have a higher statistical likelihood of getting sick from those than you do from, you know, quality, fresh sushi. But we say if you eat sushi, you must hate your body and your growing child. It’s wild. Yeah. anyway, I went off on a tangent there. But yes, like liver is so nutrient dense that you you wouldn’t almost even if you even if it tasted like chocolate ice cream, you wouldn’t want to eat it every day.

a couple ounces like every few weeks is plenty. Plenty. Yeah. I think that’s wonderful. Wonderful to know because I do think you start to see this stuff on social media and it’s just like everywhere and it’s so much and it’s like every day. And then people are eating raw eggs and liver and this and that. And you’re like, okay, well, I kinda wanna enjoy some other food too. Yeah, it’s a little nuts. Yeah, but can I have some of this as well? You know? And I think even even the pregnancy comment, it’s like,

W I think we’ve just focused so much on like what to not eat versus like what to get in enough of. And it’s like it’s really just such a mindset shift. It’s like instead of not eating this, it’s like, Am I getting in enough of this nutrient dense food? Am I getting in enough strength training? Am I getting in enough sleep? Am I getting in enough nourishment to support my body versus just like like take it out, take it out, take it out, take it out? It’s like

Women are just constantly told it’s like less of this, no to this, no to this, be smaller, don’t eat this, don’t eat that. Shame, shame, shape. It’s like my gosh. Yep. And there’s also like the issue of like information overload too, which we can get. And I’ve touched on this. I have a sub stack ’cause I wanted to s get away from social media a little bit and like do some good more meaningful. You know, I mean, I’m still on there or whatever, but I try to find my ways. And I talk about like I’m asking people like, How do you deal with this onslaught of information? Because

Hannah Aylward (49:35.698)

I I try to be like a conduit for my clients and for people to be like, let me help you. Again, you never have to take exactly what I’m saying as the gospel that you have to do, but to try to like it you gotta find people you trust and you gotta kind of parse it out instead of just whatever comes up is sort of the thing. A real light bulb moment for me when I was pregnant with my first child, I was listening to a ton of podcasts, I was doing all the research I could possibly do. And they happen to be plant-based nutritionists and they were saying, you know, if you’re pregnant.

If you can help if you really can do it, if it’s not like a religious or like really strong moral thing, it’s really recommended that you eat a little bit of animal protein because it’s just so good for you and it’s so good for the developing fetus. And I’m thinking, okay, so we’re plant-based experts are telling pregnant women to eat animal protein in pregnancy because it’s good for the growing baby. But when you are not pregnant, get out of here. Like we don’t care about.

you optimizing your health. Like it’s just so crazy to me. It’s just crazy. So anyway. Yeah. I think it’s very important for fertility. And yeah, it is, it’s it’s a very heated topic, you know, and I understand the like nuance and and ethical thought and all of that. I get it. I mean, I think I I have been vegan in in this lifetime. It didn’t last too long. It was probably like six to eight months. And I just thought I was doing the best thing I could be doing, you know? And then very quickly

I my body just was not doing well. And I I felt like one day I woke up and I I don’t know how to explain it other than I tried to like drink a sip of water and it felt like my whole every tooth was like a cavity. And it felt like I couldn’t even drink water and I couldn’t and it kind of happened like it quote unquote happened overnight, but it like obviously slowly happening and I just felt so frail and I was I was very thin, like I was

Way too thin. I lost my period for two years. I got my first panic attack. And there was like a lot contributing to all of this. But then I was just like, I remember going into this like crunchy health food store in the area. And this woman was just like, Honey, you need a steak. I was like, what? And she was just like, Do you eat me? And I was like, no. And she was like, you need a steak, you’ll be doing cartwheels down the street. That is what this woman said to me. And she was like in her 60s and like working at this like, yeah, earthy, crunchy, like health food store. And I was like, okay. And then I

Hannah Aylward (51:58.214)

I my friend and I got burgers and it was like I had a moment. I was like, I don’t I feel like bad eating this burger now. Like it was like all this so much like chaos in my brain. And then I ate this burger and I was like, I’m you have life again. Yeah. Whoa. Like I mean my body was just not it was just breaking down. I mean, good for that lady. It’s the thing is it it is such a personal it is such a personal

topic and it is so charged. And the reality is that it’s hard for all of us to really take in is that no matter how you eat, there is death involved. And that sucks. And like there are very few people in the world who love the idea of killing animals. You know, it’s not nice. But the reality is if you are eating vegetables and fruits that come from a, you know, a farm, there are animals being killed for that to happen.

The reality is that unless you’re eating all vegetables and animals from your backyard, they are being shipped to you in a in a boat or a truck that is contributing to greenhouse gases and environmental issues. There is no sort of more most superior, you know, kindest diet. The best you can do is do is eat a diet that’s best supports your health. So you can be the healthiest, most robust version of yourself, and do that in a way that within your budget and your abilities,

is as local, is as sustainable, organic, humanely raised as possible. And if that means eating, you know, less meat, but you’re getting eggs from your local farmer, if you’re getting this meat that was humanely raised, you know, if you’re getting local vegetables like the you we want to aim for that as much as we can and also realize that none of us are perfect, that death is a part of this, and, you know, we just have to do it in the the way that makes us feel

The best that we possibly can. It’s it’s not easy. It’s not easy. If it was easy, we’d all be perfect and perfectly healthy and you know, there’d be no problems. Yeah. No, totally, totally agree on that. So I think it would be helpful for the audience too. Like, like walk us through what is what is a day of eating, what does it look like for you? Hmm. Well, it’s, I mean, it’s

Hannah Aylward (54:03.43)

evolved a little bit over the last couple of years, I would say probably I feel like maybe a lot of people changed their diet a bit when the good old pandemic hit and we were stuck inside for a couple of years. But having kids has has changed things for me. It also happened like the confluence of like the pandemic. I got pregnant for the first time. it really changed my personal sort of behaviors and work. And I wasn’t traveling and I wasn’t like prior to this, I was doing like competitive bodybuilding competitions. That’s whole other story.

Yeah but like training much harder, actively trying to build muscle. I was much stricter, I guess we should say, like pre 2020. And I’m really actually now that I have my second and last child who’s a year old, I’m starting to come back out of a little bit of an interesting period of my life and and dedicate a little bit more time to my own health and finding out now in this phase what is best for me. but ultimately I just

I’m I’m also one of those women who has to worry about eating too much versus not enough. I’ve never been somebody who like forgets to eat and doesn’t eat enough. If anything, I I just eat too much because I eat for fun and I eat when I’m sad or when I’m happy or when I’m bored or when it’s around. And so that’s kind of just always been my thing. but going back to what we were talking about, I think it’s just I’m I’m, you know, usually eating three meals a day. I usually have a snack. They always have protein in them. Breakfast is almost always like eggs, eggs.

Maybe some sourdough, maybe some oatmeal, maybe some Greek yogurt. and then lunch and dinner are some variation of like I don’t eat as much vegetables maybe as a as a lot of people do. And we could I mean, listen, I’m a work in progress. I’m not perfect, but some kind of vegetable, salad, rice, some kind of meat. I do eat a lot. I live on the east coast of Canada, so I get a lot of really great fish and shellfish and seafood. So I love all of that.

we have a farm that’s like 45 minutes away that we go to literally like twice a year and we will get six months worth of. I’m really into like game meat as well. So we eat like a lot of venison and elk and bison and you know, things like that. And so it’s always just and we’re we’re not fancy either. You’ll see with the cookbooks, like I am not a trained chef. I’m not really interested in becoming one. My husband is also very kind of like basic. We have some things that we like to repeat.

Hannah Aylward (56:24.938)

but it’s always sort of the same basic idea. And we’ve got like a slow cooker, we’ve got our sheet pan, kind of put some vegetables and some meat on there. Yeah. we kind of do and I think there’s there’s some benefit to this is another issue that I see with some of my clients, even some of my friends, where we think that every meal has to be like an Instagram worthy, perfect.

this color and this color and this much starch and this much this and this whatever. It’s like sometimes it’s just a meat and a vegetable. And sometimes you put a little sprinkle of something on there. And sometimes it’s a piece of toast with a egg on it. And you know, it doesn’t have to be fancy. And I think there’s something probably really beneficial about it’s great to have a variety of foods and it’s great to eat seasonally. But there’s also definitely a benefit to having your like half dozen kind of basic meals that you sort of repeat and make little adjustments to.

I think there’s been studies that show that that actually also really helps with body composition maintenance, even fat loss. So like the the decision fatigue and the work that it takes to constantly come up with new and exciting meals. there are ways you can adjust, you know, your your average everyday meals to kind of spice them up or make them interesting. But having kind of just this basic, it doesn’t have to be exciting, it just has to be nourishing and and taste pretty good.

And just hit it on repeat, you know? I think my goal right now is to stop having my like little night nighttime snack because my thing is I put my kids to sleep and then I have like finally some peace for the first time all day. And I’m like, I want to just watch Netflix and eat a snack. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah. But when you do it every single night, it can be a bit of an issue. So like I said, I’m not perfect either. I’m a work in progress, but I will say that at the end of the day, if you take nothing from this other than try to eat protein every time you eat.

You’re winning. Cause that that really has helped like the ups and downs of like two pregnancies and breastfeeding and all of this stuff and like everything that I’ve ever gone through, like what has kept me more on an even keel than like having to like gain and lose and like get off that roller coaster is like I always eat enough and I always eat protein. And that really has like saved me on a number of occasions. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think I I personally can feel the difference just in my body. Well, yeah, when I just focus on getting in enough protein, it’s like

Hannah Aylward (58:33.928)

It’s night and day difference. And my periods are less painful. My sleep is more sound. My skin is clearer. I mean, it’s it’s amazing what it can do. Yep. and I think simple simple is great. I mean, I love like baked potato salad protein. I do like that all chicken thigh. Yep. Yep. I do like I love turkey burgers, grass fed like grass fed beef burgers, whatever. I’ll do like taco, just like protein. I really do try to center it on around the protein. For me, it is harder.

But the protein is harder for me. I like could be plant based, except my body just like falls apart. So I like meat, but it’s just like to me it it you have to prep it a little bit more, it feels like. So I recommend to people I’m like prep one to two proteins for the week. So you just kind of like have them and then throwing together rice or like a salad on top of that is like easy, you know? So kind of basing it around that I think is a really, a really good call. And then when if someone is looking to build muscle mass and and

You know, build strength and all of that. I mean, what are we looking at there? Is it 30 minutes three times a week? Like what does that look like? So again, that’s that’s quite bioindividual. It really it does depend on a lot of things like your current so it’s things like training age, which is have you ever worked out before? Or are you completely new to this? Or have you been training and you took 10 years off to have kids or whatever it is? That makes a difference. How old you are makes a difference, what your diet is, any kind of like you know, possible ch

physical issues or sicknesses that you’re dealing with all of these things have something to do with it. But I would say one of the biggest pieces that we are missing. So you don’t have to work out, I will say you don’t have to work out five, six, seven days a week to build muscle. Absolutely not. Two to three days of strength training a week is is excellent for most people. And you also need that recovery time built in, which I think people don’t don’t often respect enough. It’s that whole like I’ll sleep and I’m dead, but

you wonder why you’re exhausted and always sore and not actually building the muscle even though you’re working so hard. It’s because the recovery is when you are actually building the muscle up. When you’re in the gym, you’re making yourself weaker. You’re you’re breaking down muscle fibers. You’re kind of creating mini injuries. And then when you go eat properly and you rest, that’s when your body is like knitting itself back together to become stronger for the next time you go to the gym. All of those pieces are crucial and we have to treat the recovery piece as important as the working out piece.

Hannah Aylward (01:00:55.724)

but the other thing that I will say that I think one of the issues that I I don’t wanna seem like I’m like harping on on women, because but it’s just that’s who I coach and so that’s what I see and I do see it as a bit more of s something that women are doing in the gym than men, because men tend to over inflate their abilities and work out d like pick too heavy of a weight. Whereas women tend to maybe not be working hard enough.

and just because you’re tired, like if you’re running on the treadmill all day or if you’re doing like a I don’t wanna say anything negative, but like a sixty minute like hit class or whatever, just because you’re exhausted doesn’t mean you’re building muscle necessarily. Yeah. when you are doing weight bearing exercise, so if that’s strength training in some form, you need to be working near failure.

Frequently. So that doesn’t mean that you have to go into the gym and whatever you lift, you have to do it once and then it falls out of your hands and you fall over and you pass out. But if you are doing 10 reps of something and the ninth rep looks pretty much the same as the first rep, it’s not heavy enough. You need to work harder. Yeah. See? You’re making a face like uh-oh. And it’s very easy because it’s hard. It’s hard to do. And that’s why most people aren’t doing it because it’s very challenging and it’s hard work and it hurts a little bit.

And you can do this safely and you can do this intelligently, but you need to be working to a point where your body is forcing itself to adapt. Yeah. And so if when you’re going, if you can kind of just go through the motions and you’re sort of on autopilot and you’re just listening to your podcast, you’re not really paying attention, you are not working hard enough. That’s the thing. And again, if you’re a newbie to it, if you’re relatively new and you’re just starting out, you will get some really quick gains and you maybe don’t have to go like what I’m saying. But once you hit the I’ve been doing this consistently for six months, a year.

when you get into the decades, like some of us who have been doing this, you can maintain to a certain extent. But if you’re trying to build muscle, like I cannot impress upon people enough, the people who are worried about getting bulky or built, you know, getting too jacked or whatever. Like it is so hard to put on muscle. You most people can’t do it when they’re trying. So you are not gonna accidentally get too bulky. so again, it is kind of a long-winded, you can tell I’m very like passionate about this stuff, but I would just say that

Hannah Aylward (01:03:09.532)

If you only have two days a week to work out and to to strength train, great. But when you’re in there, like be focused, be paying attention and challenge yourself. Again, be safe. Don’t, you know, go crazy. Don’t hurt yourself. But challenge yourself. It should be hard. You should be working. You should be making some faces near the end of those those reps. You should be wobbling. You should be heart you should be breathing. if you can just kind of breeze through this stuff, you’re not building muscle. Yeah.

No, it’s a good reminder. Mm-hmm. I know. Unless you can do it in other ways, right? Like you said, you can just like beast yourself on a run or like cardio because you’re used to that kind of discomfort. You just have to get used to this new kind of discomfort and really kind of like have some fun with it, right? Yeah. No, I will say last week I was doing these side lunges and I was like, I I can’t even get through this set. My muscles were like starting to like fatigue so hard. I think just like the muscle group I was hitting and I was like, yeah, that’s probably what I should be feeling.

more frequently. Sure. but I was like, I can’t even get through this and I was sore for days. and when I’ll when I’m like doing arms, my boyfriend will be like, Hannah, like you are this is too easy for you. You need to pick up the weight, you know? And I was like, okay, I’m just scared. But what another I I like I feel like I could talk about this forever because I think building strength is amazing. And I want every woman to feel that way. And it and it doesn’t have to be this like I’m yeah. I think there’s like

a balance if it’s like I’m totally only doing cardio or and then it’s like I’m doing like really, really intense CrossFit. And it’s like you can actually just do like strength training for 30 minutes three times a week with a good muscle load, like a weight load and feel great. You know? So there’s kind of this middle ground and I think it’s just like it’s changed my life and I I love it. And I think it’s so important as we get older as well. So I yeah, I could just kind of like go on and on and on about it. but but yeah, I would f I honestly forget what I was initially gonna say with that. But it’s just

I think side lunges are hard. That’s what you were saying. The side lunges. I was They are my that’s what I was saying. I was thinking, you know, I just went to PT because I did get a little injury. And, you know, most of what I learned from this physical therapist was like, I need to strengthen my core. Like how this how the strength prevents the injury. And if I’m sitting at my desk all day and I’m a little hypermobile and I’m bent forward at my computer, it’s like that’s what’s gonna tweak my back and then pull on and create this like sciatica flair.

Hannah Aylward (01:05:33.416)

And a lot of the work that we did was actually strengthening my core so the body’s not overcompensating in these other ways. So that to me, I think is also so valuable as we like try to prevent injury and also just like feel good, you know? It’s like thinking of strengthening like now I’m like, I need to do more core exercises. It’s like the planks and the bird dogs and the this and the that every single time I go to the gym now because it’s keeping my me feeling good versus like giving me.

It’s like it’s like helping my like sciatic back pain situation that I have, which I just thought that was really just so interesting to learn because it wasn’t really because she was like, you’re flexible. Like you are, you can, you’re, you can touch your toes, like you’re very flexible. You need to strengthen and stabilize. And I was like, Yes, This is actually such I’m and I’m glad you touched on this because this is actually such an important point. One one entire program, two programs really, but one program that I created with my my partner.

muscle science for women, the flagship program is a it’s a very holistic, well-rounded program aimed to help women build muscle, get stronger, learn about nutrition, all these pieces. But one of the things we touch on, and this is something that I really feel like is lacking in the industry, is teaching about women’s physiology. And it’s teaching the ways in which we are all the same and then the ways in which we are different and how to approach training and nutrition through that lens. Because on one hand

No, we don’t need pink dumbbells. No, women don’t need to do high reps because we’re women. Muscle is muscle. The muscle on you is the same as the muscle on that bodybuilder. It’s muscle fibers are the same. You just maybe have less than the bodybuilder. I have less, whatever. But it grows and reacts the same way. But there’s a lot about our female physiology that is different. We are we tend towards more hypermobility, hyperlaxity issues. So you’ll see women sometimes doing like, you know, back squats and they’re just

bouncing off the bottom and it’s like painful to watch because I’m I’m you know, and then there’s men who can like barely get into a squat, right? So we’ve got this hypermobility issue. we have our skeleton is literally shaped different, which means that some of the movements and some of the exercise machines and some of these things are going to impact us differently because we have a different angle of our shoulders relative to our hips and all of these things. Those are all things that like just little tweaky things that could make a difference.

Hannah Aylward (01:07:50.818)

and then the core thing is huge because pelvic floor health, which is connected to the core, is incredibly important and pelvic floor issues are very pervasive among women. And not just when you’ve had a baby, although that is absolutely a a major turning point for a lot of women because it’s just the pressure and the the trauma that you go through in your pelvic floor when you have a child. But if you have kind of chronic gut health issues and maybe you’re always constipated, maybe

you are a strength training person, you are lifting heavy weight all the time and you aren’t breathing properly and like there’s so many issues that can impact your pelvic floor, which of course is very directly connected to your core, and all of that stuff that’s going on in the trunk, in the canister, it absolutely impacts your ability to, I mean, move properly. there’s sexual function issues.

there’s digestive issues, and then your ability to build strength, your ability to manage injuries or avoid injury. so there’s like these little things that again, no one is teaching women. No one is teaching women that there are these things that are different and this is how you incorporate and understand that when you’re trying to do your training or trying to get healthier. so it’s not anything to be like scared of. It’s not this thing like w you know, I think a lot of us grew up

Learning that like we have periods and it’s the worst, and then get ready for menopause and it’s all just doom and gloom. And we are more complex. There is a lot more to be dealing with, I think, generally speaking, than men have to deal with. But there are advantages too, which we don’t even have to get like the estrogen is very like muscle protective, and there’s there’s so many things that we can do. We have more slow twitch muscle fibers, we can lift higher percentages of weights at higher reps than men can. We don’t fatigue as easily. We’ve got a lot going for us.

But we need to like know these things and understand how they work. And it goes back to what I said at the beginning of confidence making you confident. And when you understand what your body is doing, you don’t just immediately go towards blaming yourself and saying, I’m weak and I suck at this and I’m never gonna get fitter and I’m always gonna look this way and I’m always gonna feel this way. When you understand your physiology and you can use it and work with it instead of working against it, everything changes. It’s so important. So beautiful. And that’s what I want for.

Hannah Aylward (01:10:06.616)

Every woman exact exactly that. It’s like stop stop how how can we stop fighting our biology? And it’s like we have to like muscle through it all, I guess no pun intended. Yeah. Which is kind of like like push through it all, but not in a good way. You know? Like we’re fighting our body versus like getting our body on our side and working with it and kind of understanding it. So I think that’s so, so, so beautiful.

Okay, so how can people connect with you further if they’re interested in learning more about muscle science for women and also eating nose to tail and all of that? Yeah, so the podcast is muscle science for women and you can listen to that wherever and you can check out Hannah’s recent episode where she did a wonderful job teaching us about gut health. But you can listen to the podcast. you can find me on Instagram. That’s basically the only social media place that I can get onto because I just can’t deal with anything.

else understood under you can find me my my handle there is the muscle maven and then my website is just my name it’s ashleyvanhouten.com and I have some free ebooks for both of the cookbooks you can you can also buy the cookbooks there. Amazing you can talk to me you can reach out to about I do some one-on-one coaching and then I also have a number of programs so if you just want to like learn more and talk about options I’m here. Amazing thanks so much for coming on the pod Ashley

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense podcast. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and come back next week for a new episode. See you then.