The Whole Pie: Strength, Community, and Holistic Health for Women Over 40 with Whitney Woolever

Welcome to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast with Dr. Kerry Reller! This week I am joined by Dr. Daniela Crousillat to discuss Whitney's unique approach to fitness, focusing on strength training and overall wellness for women aged 40 and above. Whitney emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to health, encompassing sleep, stress management, and community support in addition to regular exercise. She shares insights into her gym's community-oriented environment, offering various programs and events that cater to women's specific needs. The conversation also touches on Whitney's personal journey in the fitness industry, the role of motivation and mindset in health, and the integration of innovative health trends like continuous glucose monitoring to enhance fitness results. The episode concludes with a discussion on the importance of community involvement and the various initiatives Whitney's gym undertakes to contribute to local causes.

Whitney is our head coach and accountability specialist. Coach Whitney might be one of the most caring individuals you will ever meet, but don't let that fool you on her toughness as a coach. She's been coaching for 10+ years and she loves helping individuals like you achieve extraordinary results you never thought were possible. She does this through extensive mindset coaching and helping you create an action plan that you can actually adhere to.  Coach Whitney is a great leader and we're proud to have her as our head coach.

0:00 Welcome back! Guest Intro
00:27 About their gym & community
01:48 Her Inspiration 
03:00 Moving to Tampa
03:56 The Whole Pie
07:00 Importance of Strength Training
09:30 Genetics
10:55 Client Success Stories
12:52 Mindset Coaching 
15:42 Workout for a Cause
18:00 Trends in Women's Fitness
20:18 Advice for Women Starting Out
25:00 Where to find Whitney 

Connect with Whitney Woolever
Website: https://www.foxfitness.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whit.woolever
Phone: (813) 803-5638

Connect with Dr. Kerry Reller
My linktree: linktr.ee/kerryrellermd
Podcast website: https://gethealthytbpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClearwaterFamily
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clearwaterfamilymedicine/
Clearwater Family Medicine and Allergy Website: https://sites.google.com/view/clearwaterallergy/home

Subscribe to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, iheartradio, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Pandora.

#WomensHealth #FitnessOver40 #StrengthTraining #WellnessJourney #HolisticHealth #CommunityFitness #HealthyAging #GymCommunity #Empowerment #Motivation #MindsetCoaching #HealthEducation #PersonalGrowth #LifestyleWellness #TampaFitness

Transcript

Kerry: 0:28

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Get Healthy Tampa Bay Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kerry Reller. And I do apologize if you hear any loud noise in the background today, because someone's working outside my window. But anyway, we have a very special guest Whitney Woolever, and hopefully I didn't butcher the name. And she is coming to us from South Tampa and going to tell us all about her business and who she is and what she does.

Whitney: 0:52

Well, thank you, Dr. Kerry. My name is Whitney and the kind of my elevator speech that I give to people when I talk about what I do. I specialize in working with women 40 and up in our gym in South Tampa. And so I would say to kind of describe our gym, we have a really great community of ladies, right? And we focus primarily on strength training. I would say Part of what makes us a lot different is that we focus on the whole pie, we call it. And so it's not just fitness, right? It's all of the, wellness things that it takes to be healthy besides just exercise. So it's, you know, working with women 40 and up, I've learned that a lot of the things that we used to kind of skimp over when we were younger, we can't skimp over them anymore, like sleep and managing stress and a lot of the things that go into that too. So yeah, that's a little bit about our gym. I would say the biggest thing that I love about our gym is just our community. Because it is just women. It gives us a little bit of a chance to really to kind of hone in on things that women need and that we may not feel as comfortable talking about in a big co ed box gym.

Kerry: 1:57

Yeah, definitely. I mean, women were unique and have different needs than men. So I think it's great that you kind of focus in on that. And then 40 plus women is once again, even more unique,

Whitney: 2:08

Yeah, absolutely.

Kerry: 2:09

definitely have different needs. So how did you kind of get in all this and what made you just choose to do this special population or whatever you want to

Whitney: 2:18

That's a great question. I actually run the gym with my husband, Jared. I got into exercise. Honestly, I didn't exercise much until like my mid twenties. I wasn't athletic. I guess I would call it right. I didn't play sports. I was pretty uncoordinated. But as I hit mid twenties, I started having some issues with back pain. And a friend sent me to a local kind of a bootcamp gym, and that's where I met my husband. That was, I guess, 12 years ago now. He started out as my trainer and I loved it so much. I started doing that kind of on the side and just learning almost kind of trading, right? I would come in and just interning, I guess you could call it. And then A few years after that, I guess I've been training full time for about a decade now. As far as how I landed working with Just Women we've worked with a lot of different people over my decade. Our first gym was co ed so, I mean, there were people of all ages and types and abilities and interests, and then we kind of ended up in the rehab field for a little while. And then, That brought us to Tampa. So we relocated about six years ago down to Tampa and connected through another fitness friend with Fox fitness. And that's the gym that we have now.

Kerry: 3:36

Tampa area in general, was it friends, family, or just the opportunity?

Whitney: 3:40

yeah, it was a really good opportunity. We wanted, honestly, we just wanted to move where it was warmer. And we had a friend here in Tampa, Becky. She's who we bought Fox Fitness from. And she was actually trying to relocate up north. So it was, it was really beautiful timing. Yeah.

Kerry: 3:57

Well, that is original. I was thinking everybody is trying to move, you know, at least during the pandemic and things like that, where it's warmer and we've definitely had a giant influx of people. I wasn't expecting you to say that someone was moving up north, but it happens.

Whitney: 4:08

You know, right. And that was right at about six years ago. So we love it down here at though. We love it.

Kerry: 4:14

And, you know, I've, I've been here kind of my whole life, but I was gone for a while and then came back to. So anyway. Everybody we're enjoying Tampa too. So basically you talk by this whole pie thing. Is that what you said? Whole pie. Yeah. So how do you work that into just being like a, not saying just being, but being like your fitness, gym and

Whitney: 4:33

absolutely. You know, a lot of it. Inside our gym, we obviously have our exercise classes, right? But we also do things like we have weekly office hours where clients can hop in and we can discuss. Sometimes we have a little mini lesson, right? It might be, Hey, we're going to learn about cortisol this week, or, Hey, we're going to learn about why sleep is important or how sleeping in the dark creates melatonin and melatonin is needed for sleep. And all that fun stuff that Really, really matters. So some of it's just conversations in the gym. Some of it's, hosting different opportunities for our ladies to come in and just ask Q and A to talk about what they're struggling with. Some of it's via newsletter. Some of it's, we try to actually do activities together. Like I want our clients to get outside. We live in Florida. That was like one of the best things to me about moving down here is it's nice year round and, and people spend more time outside. So we really try to encourage some of that, just leading by example. We do a little bit of coaching just on the other kind of pieces of the pie that I was talking about too.

Kerry: 5:35

Like, yeah, you pair coach with one of the clients or, okay.

Whitney: 5:40

So we have a couple of coaches that work with us. We have one who works full time with us, coach Claudia. So she and I actually do most of that working, checking in with the clients. We do an accountability program because obviously showing up is sometimes the hardest part, right? Once you're in the gym, you're guided and it's easier, but getting there can be kind of tough. And one thing that is important for us is for our clients to know that we know when they're not there. So we always have a coach kind of checking in with them too.

Kerry: 6:09

That's definitely I think unique with people contacting you when you're not going to the gym. I haven't had that

Whitney: 6:16

it

Kerry: 6:16

before.

Whitney: 6:17

matters, right? I want someone to, I want someone to holler at me when I'm not getting to the gym.

Kerry: 6:22

Yeah, I think that's awesome. And then so for these I guess mini series or workshops and things. Are you guys just picking a topic and discussing it? Or do you bring someone in like an expert speaker or

Whitney: 6:33

Usually we all pick a topic. We have a holistic pharmacist that works with us as well. So she's really helpful in just talking about supplements and some of the more medical side of things. We occasionally will have someone come in and talk. Occasionally I'll poll our clients and say, Hey, what do you guys want to learn about? And then we kind of work it from there.

Kerry: 6:53

That's really, that's really unique. I don't hear much of that. I mean, that they bring those kinds of things in. I mean, yeah, they'll bring like a wine night or a date night or something

Whitney: 7:01

And I mean, Actually tonight I think we've got probably 35 of our ladies getting together and we're doing like an ornament exchange party. So we do do some fun, like monthly activities.

Kerry: 7:14

Mm hmm.

Whitney: 7:14

We try to, you know, like a book club and stuff like that. So it's things that we can get together and socialize and have fun. But also learn something

Kerry: 7:22

Very nice. Yeah. You mentioned focusing more on strength training. So like Well, one, why do you think that's important? And especially for the age group of women that you're working with and two, how do you encompass that in the workouts and things that you do with your clients?

Whitney: 7:37

awesome. I love talking about this part. So one thing I really learned a lot when I first started working just with women is how I think there's a big disconnect in what the media advertises as good workouts for us women. But then there's a big disconnect there because they don't talk a lot about the importance of strength training as we age. Right. And when we hit 40, we don't want to talk about aging, but around that time, like our bone mass, our lean mass, all of these things just incrementally decrease as we get older, making strength training even more important. It's also just a longevity thing, right? We get a lot of people who come from other gyms where they worked out really intensely, six, seven days a week. And over time, if you don't balance that with some restorative stuff and even just some stretching and restorative movement here and there, like it takes a toll. So for us, it's longevity. We have clients that have been at Fox fitness at our gym for seven, eight years now, and they can do that because we're, balancing strength training, restorative movement, outside activity. But also just doing things that help them age better so they feel stronger. I think you asked me about, I forgot the second part of what you asked me. That's okay. It was number one kind of, I got it. It was how we build that into the workouts.

Kerry: 8:57

Yeah.

Whitney: 8:57

so our classes are 45, 50 minutes. The idea is kind of, you know, come in short bursts of energy, rest. So as I'm programming workouts, we do a lot of complex movements. Things that use multiple body parts at once. So it's just more time effective. But it's also just so that our whole body gets exercise. So it's not, I mean, you know, there are arm exercises and leg exercises, but I really try to do things that encompass both at the same time. Generally we set it up like circuits, but it varies. That's kind of the fun part too, is I want it to be fresh. So you're not coming and doing the same thing over and over and over again, because that does get a little boring. So generally we set it up like circuits.

Kerry: 9:36

Yeah. Okay. So back to the longevity part, I mean, I totally agree. These are the things I'm talking about with like my patients all the time, like we want to be able to get off the toilet. You want to be able to get off the floor, like all of these basic things, carry your groceries, walk up the stairs, right? So I'm always kind of trying to stress those things too. And the importance of muscle health and obviously for women in particular, when estrogen decreases, your metabolic rate goes down. So we're always saying, well, let's build up that muscle mass, really. And you know, we learn a lot of things from people that, we've studied in the research and everybody's talking about the blue zones lately and those people are physically active and with a community. So you're checking all the boxes here with it. And I mean, I think that it's great and that you really are focusing on that longevity piece and the importance of muscle and strength training. Cause I think that's mostly what everybody's researching now. And I think it's, what's going forward of the

Whitney: 10:34

importance of it I love, I love that we're, we're talking about that. That's important. I mean, I watched my grandparents start aging when I was 20 and that's part of another thing that kind of got me involved in the gym is I just didn't love my family history and I'm like, I don't want that for myself, you know? So it was, it was kind of motivating maybe not in the best way, but it did definitely change my life. For sure.

Kerry: 10:58

Well, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, people aren't married to their genetics, like they can figure a way out of it. I mean, it definitely plays a role, but if you really do change some of your like lifestyle habits, a lot of those genetic tendencies can be overcome. Yeah.

Whitney: 11:15

Absolutely.

Kerry: 11:15

Always trying to motivate people to be able to change those things.

Whitney: 11:19

Yeah, you can, right? You can.

Kerry: 11:22

Yeah. Do you have any great like client success stories where they had like amazing results or

Whitney: 11:29

Yeah. I mean, from a weight loss standpoint, we have tons, right? One of the things that fascinates me we we've really over the last few years, again, working with just 40 and up women specifically, and just Seeing how important it is to do some of these strength training things like one of my favorite success stories are the people who get off of medications that they don't want to be on? We frequently see people needing to adjust their blood pressure medications, eventually getting off of them, right? Which is great. People reversing diabetes. That's we have a couple of those really good success stories. I'm not sure if it's okay to share their names, so I won't. But you know, we have one client who She was prediabetic, was not quite on medication at the time but her doctor's like, hey, you know, this is, this is kind of your last chance, like, figure it out, or we need to do something about this. She was tracking her blood sugar and she was in I don't remember her exact ranges, but basically brought it from prediabetic back down to a normal level, which is huge, right? Because also because blood sugar plays such a big role in a lot of other things that were eventually going to be triggered for her. And it was really cool to, to see her shut that off.

Kerry: 12:41

Yeah. I think some of the best stories I have are obviously removing medications from people and getting them to better health. So they don't have to be, we're not like treating this disease. Now we're preventing it. Yeah,

Whitney: 12:54

And my goal with bringing on our holistic pharmacist is that I understand sometimes medications have a time and place and a lot of people come in on medications, right. And their big motivator is that they don't want to be on them anymore. So she's a great resource in helping us with that too, because like you said, with genetics, a lot of times just knowing some of those predispositions can be really helpful, but it doesn't mean that you're tied to that. So there's definitely time to reverse a lot of that stuff.

Kerry: 13:19

Absolutely. So I think in your website on Fox fitness, there's some things about like mindset coaching. How's that all involved?

Whitney: 13:27

That is involved. I honestly, I would say mindset is the most important part. We see you know, talking about the media earlier, we see all these things tips and reasons why it's important to stay motivated. But what I see people struggling with the most is motivation. And really, it's not motivation, it's mindset. And one of the things that I'm most passionate about is helping people see that. And helping them see that sometimes it's normal to not feel super motivated. But that's why keeping as many good habits in place as you can, kind of helps you right through that. And the more you are focused on a healthy mindset, the easier a lot of these changes are that people want to make. It's easier to exercise when you feel good about it. Right? If you hate going to exercise, you're not going to do it. But if you can either flip the script, like find a fun gym, find something that you enjoy doing. Or even it's just, even if it's outdoor exercise to kind of get you motivated, right? That helps too. So my job is helping people ask themselves the right questions to figure out those roadblocks when they come up. And I guess I call that mindset.

Kerry: 14:31

Absolutely. Is there a like difference or a fine line between, supporting them with their motivation and giving them tough love when they're in the gym exercising and then supporting, you know, their whatever emotional thing is going on as well.

Whitney: 14:47

Absolutely. I think it is a fine line. Because we do have such a great community and we develop friendships with our clients in the gym sometimes it's hard to give your friends tough love, right? So that's part of it too. But I think, over the years, instead of Approaching that like it's a hard thing to do it sometimes I like to reframe it as being helpful because I know how to talk to them. A lot of these clients like have been there with us since their kids were graduating high school and now they're finishing up college. And so we kind of know their life stages, right? And understand what's going on. And I think that sometimes people just need someone to care, right? And not just, Hey, you weren't at the gym. Like, Giving them a hard time, right? Asking them, why weren't you at the gym? Helping them work through whatever problem was in the way is way more impactful than making them feel bad about not going to the gym.

Kerry: 15:42

yeah, I like that. Definitely, you know, supporting the person is

Whitney: 15:47

And sometimes that's

Kerry: 15:48

in the right direction.

Whitney: 15:49

And that's just support, you know?

Kerry: 15:52

Sometimes I feel like I need the tough love part, but

Whitney: 15:55

Right. And we all do. We all do. I have three coaches in different areas of my life that give me tough love sometimes. We all need that.

Kerry: 16:02

sO I have another question, basically, in the sense of community, I'm not exactly sure where you guys are in South Tampa, but do you guys get into, like, the surrounding community a little bit or what do you guys do to

Whitney: 16:15

support

Kerry: 16:15

that

Whitney: 16:15

Um, Our gym is in South Tampa. It's the corner of Manhattan and Euclid. I don't know if you're familiar with there's the library right in the corner there. And our gym is right behind that. As far as supporting the community quarterly, we do something called Workout for a Cause. And so every quarter, we just are wrapping up at the end of December for Make A Wish. So every quarter we do a workout. We host a workout in our gym. We donate for each person that shows up. So we encourage members to bring other people from the community, the more people you bring, obviously it's good exposure for us, but it's also helps to raise more money for whichever charity event that we're that we're sponsoring at that time. We do a lot of fun raffle prizes. We have fun, right? And this quarter, I think at our workout, just the workout alone we raised like 1, 500, which is really cool, right? And then we also do Facebook check ins to sponsor and stuff like that. This Christmas, we're doing a food drive for one of the local organizations. It's called End 68 Hours of Hunger. Have you ever heard of it? Okay. I Love these people. So they send home backpacks with kids at the end of the day on Friday with food basically to last them until their next meal at school on Monday. And I believe they did the math, and that's 68 hours between those meals. So they kind of just help bridge the gap for kids at home. So we are doing a food drive for them for the holidays. So a lot of this is actually client led too. Our clients bring these to us and they're like, Hey, we'd love to, support x, y, Z charity. And that way they can give back too. I like, I think they like to take some ownership of that and it's pretty fun to watch.

Kerry: 18:01

That is so nice. I have not heard of the 68 hours of hunger, but

Whitney: 18:06

Um, I'm just gonna give them a little shout out, right? They've got a Facebook group, a Facebook page. Initially, again, we heard of them through our clients. We've only been here six years and we don't know everybody. So we'd love for them to just kind of lead the way and, and help us meet people.

Kerry: 18:21

Yeah. So are there any like trends or approaches in women's health and fitness that you find effective or some where the industry is going? Like, what do you think is

Whitney: 18:31

of the things that I'm really excited about are just tracking data on like sleep and continuous glucose monitors, things like that. I have found that really effective for people in helping them just learn about what foods or how food affects their body. One of the things we didn't use to talk about this much. Right. One of the things that we would always tell people as they're getting older is just eat less and exercise more. But there's just so much more to that. And I think it's really great that we're starting to kind of dive into that more as a society and just understanding, you know, okay, cool. I'm pre menopausal, but now what does that mean for me? Not just, well, you're just getting older. You just got to deal with it. You know, we're understanding like, Oh, looking at blood sugar and insulin and muscle mass and metabolism and how all of these things can help direct hormones and help them function more optimally. So, there's some cool stuff coming down and just getting back to the power of like sunlight. And sleep and some of the basic things that we kind of forget about.

Kerry: 19:37

I have fun with the glucose monitors with, you know, patients and myself. And I don't know if it's trendy or whatever, but I do think it's a really, really nice way to see what food does to your body and things like that.

Whitney: 19:48

We did a six month run with them and actually just finished up like last month. Just a six month trial period to kind of learn about it because sometimes people ask me about new data and I like to know, so it's pretty cool.

Kerry: 20:00

so you borrowed them or use them from a company or you guys work together. Okay.

Whitney: 20:06

used a company called signos.

Kerry: 20:08

I've heard of them. Yeah.

Whitney: 20:09

yeah. And they just, you know, they ship it to you, you questions and Yeah, they partner with you. It's pretty, it's pretty

Kerry: 20:15

Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's nice to, you know, doing it from your side, like meaning the fitness side, right? I'm doing it on the medical side and that's definitely,

Whitney: 20:25

how exercise impacts it,

Kerry: 20:27

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Whitney: 20:28

effects of exercise after you eat. Huge. Even just walking. Like, you don't have to go out and do much. Go take a walk.

Kerry: 20:35

amazing Yeah. Let's talk about that. So what, like the glucometers do and how does exercise play a role? So you just said something in particular, right, where if you eat a meal and then you exercise. What did you guys find?

Whitney: 20:50

drastically mitigate the spiking, right? So we played around, this was, I mean, it's kind of fun, actually. We played around a lot with the food timing, so fasting, you know, fasting blood sugar, all that fun stuff. We played around with the order of how we ate foods, so eating our vegetables carbs. Of course we did the reverse as well to kind of see what it looks like. We would walk right after you know, we have some equipment at our house. We do like a mini little kind of a HIIT exercise and just played around a lot with it. But I would say the biggest things, most impactful things that we noticed were yeah, exercising after you eat, even if it's like a 15 minute walk dramatically lowered how much our blood sugar would spike after we ate something that might spike it otherwise. And that's, Probably even better for my husband than it is for me. What really, really was impactful for me was eating vegetables first, then protein, and then my carbs. Whatever carbs they were, even if they weren't the best carbs, right? The healthiest carbs. Huge impact and not spiking my blood sugar as much. That worked really well for me. And I think that's what's also kind of neat too is people are so different. Right. And I have that data we know, you know, my walking and exercising was really good for me after foods. But it was even better for my husband. It's wild to see the data.

Kerry: 22:14

Yeah, I definitely noticed similar information. So you didn't bring them into the gym, you just personally use them?

Whitney: 22:20

This was just for us. Yeah. Now we do have clients who have also done this. We just use ourselves as guinea pigs. I

Kerry: 22:29

I thought you were doing a program with the clients.

Whitney: 22:30

got you. Got you. No, we, we have a couple of clients who are doing it, but we're just kind of connecting them with signos and letting them.

Kerry: 22:37

Yeah. I was wondering how you funded that, but because I don't think they would give a whole gym. Yeah. Well, so what do you have advice for women who are just starting out in the fitness, like as their fitness journey? What would you say for them?

Whitney: 22:51

I think my most important message is that consistency always trumps intensity, right? Especially as we go into the holidays. Something is better than nothing. Any day of the week. I have a two year old and a four year old. My four year old keeps peeking at me through the window over there. And some days, you know, I don't get the full workout that I want, but I get something, right? Even if it's 20 minutes here and 10 minutes there, a little bit of stretching, it all adds up and I think that as we get into the holidays, I was just talking to someone yesterday and she's like, Well, I have a lot going on this week, so I'm just going to start next week. And I hear that a lot. That's where the bubble up comes in, because there's always something that comes up and There's never a perfect time to start. There's never an uninterrupted moment where you just get to start the way you want to start because something is better than nothing.

Kerry: 23:39

I like that. And I definitely agree with the consistency and intensity thing. And I think I used to have a problem with that, right? I know it didn't count if it didn't sweat or something like that. And, and now I like to track things in an app, my workouts in an app, and I will include the stretch after the exercise, or maybe just a day of that in it. And I think, It makes me feel a lot better cause I'm getting more time in and I'm including it, but it's also, you know, it's super important and I've noticed like running and everything else that I do that the stretching part is so critical. So it counts any, any of these things do count.

Whitney: 24:16

right? And that's it too. It doesn't formal, you know, sometimes my workout looks different than I planned for it to, but that's just the way my day went. I know that, like you said it, you know, I feel better about it. And when you feel better, you want to do it more. So beating yourself up because your workout wasn't what it was supposed to be, is very demotivating. And that's kind of some of the reasons that stuff comes in, but the more we can make it make you feel successful and make you feel good, the more apt you are to do it again and over and over and over and over and over again.

Kerry: 24:46

And then you will be attacking them to get into the gym because they didn't show up. So they're going to be

Whitney: 24:52

And then there's that too, right? For me, my favorite thing is for people, you know, I don't, I don't encourage people to come to my gym every single day. Right. I want to see them three to four times a week on average. Sometimes more or less depending on what their goals are, but I want people to be doing outside of the gym stuff. Some people like to run. Some people like to bike. I like to paddle board and before I moved down here, I like to rock climb a lot. Not a whole lot of rock climbing going on here, but it's just being well rounded, right? Sometimes I like to do yoga a couple times a week and just give my body lots of different things that, that help it feel good.

Kerry: 25:26

Very good. So where, where can people find you one more time?

Whitney: 25:29

They can go to our website at foxfitness. com. There's we have a couple of promotions going on. Any current event things that we have going on are going to be at our website too. Or you can shoot us a text and. Get me that way. My number is 813 803

Kerry: 25:46

We'll include all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on Whitney.

Whitney: 25:51

This is so great. I see you having me and letting me blab a little bit.

Kerry: 25:55

of course, yeah. Lots of fun. So everybody tune in next week for another great episode. And if you need a primary care doctor in our area, I am accepting patients and I'm in Clearwater and Palm Harbor and like Whitney said, she's in South Tampa. Awesome. See you next week.