Women Connect

Alicia Birky, physical therapist: The CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. Moderate-intensity exercise is when the activity feels somewhat challenging, but you can still complete it without stopping. 

This 150 minutes also includes strength training twice a week. Strength training doesn’t have to involve dumbbells. It can be bodyweight exercises, resistance bands, or machines at the gym. If you're exercising in water, you can use the water’s resistance as well.

If strength training is new to you, don’t start with a 30-minute session. Start with 10-15 minutes, and track how you feel in the days following. Make adjustments as needed. 

Start light – aim for 12-15 reps of each exercise. Listen to your body and pay attention to how you feel. You should feel tension in your muscles, but it shouldn’t hurt your joints. 

Deborah Willcox, Chief Clinical Dietitian: Fiber has so many health benefits. It supports gut health, reduces bloating, and can help lower cholesterol. But as adults, we often deceive ourselves about how much fiber we eat. We need at least 25-30 grams of fiber a day, and many of us are not meeting our fiber needs. Fiber-rich foods include fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. Include the skins of produce for extra fiber.

Melissa Hernandez, MD: Incorporating superfoods into your diet is also important. That includes foods such as walnuts, olive oil, salmon and blueberries. Blueberries contain natural antioxidants, which also have anti-inflammatory properties. 

Insulin resistance is when cells in your muscles, fat, and liver don't respond well to insulin, leading to excess sugar in the blood.

Melissa Hernandez, MD: One of the easiest ways to determine if you have insulin resistance is by checking your fasting blood sugar. If the fasting blood sugar is greater than 100 mg/dL that is considered impaired fasting glucose, which is a risk factor for developing insulin resistance. 

You can also check your A1C. An A1C greater than 5.7% suggests insulin resistance. This means there’s too much sugar in the bloodstream. Having more muscle mass helps decrease insulin resistance, while having more fat cells can increase it.

Deborah Willcox, Chief Clinical Dietitian: The Keto diet gives me pause as a dietitian, mainly because I’ve seen so many people affect their cholesterol levels and heart health by following a high-fat diet. I recommend working with a dietitian or healthcare provider if you're trying to cut back on carbs due to diabetes or other health reasons. 

Melissa Hernandez, MD: Typically, intermittent fasting involves eating within a specific window, like from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. or noon to 8 p.m. The data shows that intermittent fasting doesn’t significantly affect weight loss—many people end up eating more calories during that window. But it has been shown to improve longevity. By giving your body a break from food constantly coming in, your cells have time to perform cellular cleanup, which helps eliminate free radicals and reduce inflammation. That can enhance longevity.

Roxanne Wayne, MS, LIMHP: Many of us have heard that our gut is like our “second brain.” What this really means is to be mindful of what you’re eating and listen to your body. If you're eating a lot of refined sugars or processed foods, it can affect your mental health, potentially contributing to things like mood swings or irritability.

Here’s the why: When we eat a lot of refined sugars or processed foods, it can disrupt the balance of good bacteria in the gut, leading to inflammation and other gut issues. This, in turn, can affect mood and mental well-being.

Check out this article for more information about balanced diets and how they can improve your mental and emotional health.