If your fitness clients aren’t getting results, it’s alarming, right? You know that session or two, even a week or two of a plateau is normal, but it gets hard to come up with answers about why it might be true to calm your clients.  00:00 Unless of course, you start to second guess them. Are they cheating? Are they overestimating exercise they’re doing outside of sessions or underestimating caloric intake?  But none of these is the most likely reason your female fitness clients aren’t getting results if you’re working with midlife female fitness clients.   Look, there’s the easy stuff you can teach that anyone is teaching today about losing inflammatory foods. But the easy and obvious answer isn’t so obvious to many trainers.  So, here you go.  These three reasons have two things in common.   First, they’re all hormones. The second thing all three of these things have in common is… they all require adequate quality and quantity of sleep.  For midlife female fitness clients, that may be something they wish for but haven’t had in a while.   If you don’t know how to sequentially coach your clients on the solutions to better sleep, then I suggest you get my quick and dirty freebie. (LINK to new FMM sleep freebie-https://www.flippingfifty.com/sleeper 05:23 # 1 Cortisol   If cortisol is high (or low) there is either too much muscle breakdown or too little energy and the body and metabolism are slowing down everything.   Muscle breakdown and fat storage both occur far faster in the presence of high cortisol than do lean muscle gains and fat burning.  When even one night of sleep deprivation occurs, cortisol levels the next day work against your client’s goals.   06:12 #2 Growth Hormone  This hormone is key to growing lean muscle. The right strength training stimulus – you’re probably providing if you’re listening to this – is one way to boost it. In fact it’s one of the best. But did you know? Growth hormone is released during deepest cycles of sleep. So a woman who is having hot flashes, and night sweats and or has an old dog or a snoring spouse… is going to suffer. She’s waking up multiple times and never allowed into that deep sleep.   Other women have had insomnia for years. You know what happens for them? They just accept it. And they say, “that’s good for me” when they sleep for 4 hours straight or don’t wake until 4 even though they don’t need to wake up til hours later.  You can be a key turning point in them changing the story they tell themselves.  I met Jennifer when she was in her early 60’s. She’d had insomnia for decades. We tried everything, with some success. But finally, I said, let’s check with your doctor to see what would be the smallest viable sleep supplement with least side effects possible. With the help of that sleep aid, she changed her sleep habits, her relationship with bedtime, and lost 100 lbs.   12:13  #3 Testosterone   If you’ve got women in midlife still drinking wine, skimping on protein and doing cardio, they’re killing their testosterone.  It too is created during deep sleep cycles. Other ways of optimizing testosterone include the opposite of what I mentioned as saboteurs. That is, interval training, strength training, and high protein.   15:01 That’s it… 3 ways, or really one way to improve 3 hormones that will change your relationship with your clients and improve their results. Turn your business into a coaching business as well as a training business by leveraging knowledge like this. Resources:  Sleep Tips for Your Clients (new link..https://www.flippingfifty.com/sleep-fmm-specialist-opt Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist (https://www.flippingfifty.com/specialist) Other Episodes You May Like:  Why Some Women Struggle with Weight, Hormones at Menopause: https://www.flippingfifty.com/hormones-at-menopause/ Midlife Weight Gain Occurs Over Decades | The Misunderstood Delusion:https://www.flippingfifty.com/midlife-weight-gain/