Ep.88 There Is No Magic Pill: Getting Fit in Your Fifties and Never Looking Back

When Kiki Hurwitt's wellness and emotional health were not where she wanted them to be, she chose action over surrender, embarking on an incredible quest toward fitness that transformed her life. Have you ever considered that maybe your greatest victories lie ahead, no matter your age? 

Kiki's candid discussion on her battle with pre-diabetes and high cholesterol opens a window into the power of determination and how visual affirmations, like progress photos, can radically shift self-perception. She embodies the spirit of the fearless warrior in all of us, proving that midlife can indeed be redefined.

True health goes beyond shedding pounds; it's about nurturing strength within. Join me as we unravel Kiki's steps to success, which involved meticulous attention to diet, understanding the essentials of muscle maintenance, and the surprising mental marathon of reverse dieting. We also discuss the common dietary misconceptions that trap so many women.

Kiki, alongside her coach Michelle MacDonald and inspired by the journey of Joan MacDonald, brings to light the life-changing benefits of personalized fitness guidance.
But what's a hero without her tribe? Kiki's story takes on a new dimension with the unwavering support of her family and an online community that became her fitness fellowship. 

From the shared triumphs with her bonus daughter to her husband's own remarkable weight loss, Kiki paints a vivid picture of how communal strength can be the wind beneath our transformational wings. And as she shares under the banner of @thelykkeviking on Instagram, we see a life teeming with self-love, positivity, and the thrill of chasing new horizons, no matter the season of life.

Find Kiki Hurwitt at:
https://www.instagram.com/thelykkeviking/

I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
https://www.fasterwaycoach.com/?aid=MicheleFolan

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mfolanfasterway@gmail.com

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Transcript

Michele Folan: 0:07

Health, wellness, fitness relationships and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, michelle Fohlen, and this is Asking for a Friend. Welcome to the show, everyone. As I have mentioned, in 2024, in addition to interviewing experts in midlife health and wellness matters, I am also inviting women on the show to share their health and fitness journeys. These are peers with whom we can all identify. I want to share their stories. What was the defining moment that pushed them to embrace making some changes? What was the process and what impact did it have on their lives? These stories are both motivating and inspiring. In 2020, at the age of 50, kiki Hurwit said enough is enough. She took the leap to making some big life changes that she now boldly shares with others in hopes of encouraging them to do the same. Welcome to Asking for a Friend, kiki Hurwit.

Kiki Hurwitt: 1:28

Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. It's such an honor to be here.

Michele Folan: 1:33

It's nice to meet you. As these things go, it's just funny how you connect with people, either it's through social media or a common connection, and for you and I it was both. You have inspired me a lot. You have a great story, but before we jump into things, I would love for you to just introduce yourself and tell the audience a little bit more about you and where you're from and family and all that good stuff.

Kiki Hurwitt: 2:01

Sure. So I'm 53 years old. I live in just outside Burlington, Vermont, off of Lake Champlain. It's a pretty up here. I've got three kids, two step kids, bonus kids I call them because they're pretty fabulous, I like that and my son is squeezed right in the middle. Their ages are 29, 27, and 25. And I live in Vermont with my husband and my amazing golden retriever, Bear, who everybody sees on Instagram, who works out with me and walks with me. But my story, I mean just you prefaced it all really well I'm going to be 54 in a couple of days, on New Year's Eve.

Michele Folan: 2:37

Happy birthday.

Kiki Hurwitt: 2:39

Thank you. I started my transformation journey, if you will, a few years back and started it as a result of being inspired by the beautiful Joan McDonald who's trained with Joan on Instagram, and I was in a mental place of feeling like there's no way I could ever gain my health back. I couldn't lose weight. Menopause felt like this, just death sentence. Everything started to change. I had some really poor health markers, I was pre-diabetic, my cholesterol was quite high and I just felt doom and gloom. I was very depressed. I was in a career that was totally misaligned and I needed to make some serious changes. And Joan really inspired me.

Kiki Hurwitt: 3:23

She was that shining example out in front of me of here's a woman in her early 70s at the time who had completely transformed her life and had gotten off of medications and was doing all these incredible things. Like I think the video I saw of her originally was doing unassisted pull-ups and I was looking at her back going, man, she's ripped. And beyond that, she was a truth teller. I knew she was a truth teller. I knew there was no kind of gimmicks or quick fixes, so I went down a rabbit hole. I now work with her incredible daughter, michelle McDonald, who is my coach. She's your healthy hedonista on Instagram, and I've been a part of the Wonder Women transformation program for a little over two years now and it has totally changed my life Learning about macro nutrition, learning how to lift heavy weights, learning how to really take care of myself, mind, body, spirit, all of it. It's been quite a journey and I'm super grateful.

Michele Folan: 4:25

I'm glad you brought up Joan, because I haven't interviewed her yet, but her show will proceed, yours. So the audience will have an introduction to Joan, because I too find her very inspiring and part of my own mantra of hey, it's never too late to get your shit together, that's right.

Michele Folan: 4:50

Kiki, to your credit. Sometimes it takes us feeling not so great. We get, maybe, bad news at the doctor's office and we're just in a slump, and sometimes it's those key things in life that say, ok, I'm the one that's in control here, and it sounds like you did the same thing. And one thing I love about you you're very open about sharing your before and after your transformation. Tell me a little bit about that, because that had to be pretty encouraging for you to start seeing some results with what you were doing.

Kiki Hurwitt: 5:31

One of the things that we do in our coaching program with the Wonder Women is we take progress photos. We take them weekly. It's the commitment I've made to this process, to myself, to my coach, my accountability to my team and, oh man, total honesty. Michelle, I cried. Taking these early on I thought, oh my gosh. And my coach. I remember her saying to me Kiki, you've got to get out of a dark corner in your basement Because I would take these like hiding in the shadows, like nobody should see this. This is terrible.

Kiki Hurwitt: 6:03

But what started to happen in that process was not just the physical transformation in. Yes, I saw very incremental, small changes starting to happen on my body, week after week. But I started to feel different and my husband described it to me. It's like somebody turned on my light for the first time. I turned on my own light. How about that? Turned on my own light over time and through this process. You can see that physically in the photographs. Sure, my body is getting more toned, I'm getting more lean, but way above and beyond that and deeper than that, is a light that's coming on in me because I've started to show up for myself, I've started to put myself first, I've started to say I matter, that I'm worthy, that I can do this, that I can prove to myself that I can do something hard, learn something new, that I can be an advocate and have agency over my health. All of that was so empowering.

Michele Folan: 6:56

Did you find too, during that time where you were empowering yourself, that you were becoming overall just a better mom and better wife?

Kiki Hurwitt: 7:05

Absolutely, I would say. This journey and putting myself first, learning how to do that, has cascaded into every area of my life business, family, friends, all of those things have gotten exponentially better. I've gotten better and I think the old me would have said I don't have time. I don't have time to invest in this, because everything else is more important. So I will put everything else first, which all of us tend to do, a lot of us tend to do. What I've learned is that putting myself first, filling my tank first, gives everybody else a better version of me. I'm happier and more joyful and more present. I'm just a better version all around.

Michele Folan: 7:52

I can see where we all kind of get stuck in that rut of putting everybody else's needs first, and I think that's one of those great epiphanies of midlife and being 50 plus is that we start to realize, oh my gosh, I have let myself go, not just physically but mentally, and to get that back can be hard, because it's a real paradigm shift in how we have managed our lives with having children, families and all those other responsibilities. I do want to back up a little bit, because you were talking about macro nutrition and we talk about protein all the time on the podcast. But macros go way beyond just protein and I'd be really interested to know how you got started with macros. What did you use to track your macros and what did that look like? What did your macro nutrition look like?

Kiki Hurwitt: 8:51

So, starting out working with the Wonder Women, all of our macro nutrition guidelines were programmed by my coach, so she was giving me the right proportions of protein, carbs and fats to incorporate into every meal. And she doesn't give them to you by the day. She gives them to you per meal. So the reason being making sure that I'm eating adequate amounts of protein consistently throughout the day and not just protein, but my carbs and fats too and having that just really well balanced throughout the day. In the beginning of my journey with the Wonder Women, I was in a cut phase, meaning a diet phase, so I was creating a caloric deficit with the work I was doing in the gym as well as what I was doing in the kitchen. So we're in a fat loss phase. It's a very delicate balance and it took about seven months total in that diet phase and then they put me through another phase of increasing my calories, which was a real difficult mind shift especially as a woman, I think to say wait a second, you just got me to lose all this weight and now you're asking me to eat all this food Wait, this is so counterintuitive. But the reason for that is they want you to eat as many calories as possible, like at your macros, as high as possible without gaining weight, and so we needed to know what that new set point was. We've cleaned the furnace. We've got her working really well. My metabolism is firing. I've done a lot of work internally.

Kiki Hurwitt: 10:17

The biggest growth period for me was in this reverse diet and now maintenance phase, where I was completely terrified of eating all this food. What I learned is that I could eat way more food like 1,000 more calories a day kind of food at the end of my cut into the top of my reverse and not gain a pound. Wow, what happened was my body, my musculature, really developed during that phase. I show pictures very openly on Instagram at the end of that diet phase where I was quite slim to where I am today, which is a few pounds heavier, not anything dramatic but my muscletone is way more defined and I am stronger. My metrics in the gym, my performance in the gym, is much, much stronger, which is exciting, really exciting.

Michele Folan: 11:09

We've talked about this as well, about Ozembic and people using that for weight loss, and I want to say kudos to your coach for ensuring that during that cut phase that you were getting enough protein, because we all know that when we lose weight without eating enough protein, you're losing muscle and fat too, but you're losing muscle and that's really hard to get back. First of all, I just think that's great that sometimes that coaching is so important. I know people often want to go it alone, but it really does help, right. I mean to have someone hold your hand through that process. An expert.

Kiki Hurwitt: 11:56

Yeah, I truly believe that if I had tried this on my own, I would have gotten confused and I would have stopped trusting the process, because there was a period of time where I was gaining weight in my diet phase and my coach was like just hold on, just hold on, your body isn't trusting you yet. And it was like magic Seven weeks later I hadn't lost a pound and then suddenly things started ticking down and just the whole process of learning to trust my coach and trust an expert because I wouldn't have been able to do this on my own, I didn't have the knowledge and I needed that education.

Michele Folan: 12:31

You know, think of. We've eaten a certain way for years and years and years. It takes a while for our bodies to adjust to a new way of eating. And here's something else too Diet sometimes can have a connotation, but there is that phase of this program where you are in a calorie deficit, but it's a calorie deficit based also on the time that you are spending in the gym or working out or doing your cardio or whatever. Tell me honestly, how much time were you spending exercising and working out? Wasn't like hours and hours and hours a day, was it?

Kiki Hurwitt: 13:15

No, no, it wasn't crazy at all. I'm lifting back then and still five times a week. My lifting sessions vary from an hour to 45 minutes. Right now they're at about 45 to 50 minutes or so. In the beginning my cardio varied. It was probably four times a week maybe 30 minutes of cardio, which meant getting my heart rate into a good fat burning zone, but nothing crazy. And then on top of that I've been really diligent about getting my steps in. So just walking to the mailbox, getting you know just everyday activity averages between eight and 12,000 steps just depends. But I think the key here has been consistency.

Kiki Hurwitt: 13:57

And the other thing I want to just mention for anyone listening about the word diet yes, I was in a diet phase, but what I think is really important to note is that when I initially started tracking my food before working with my coach, I was actually under eating. I think a lot of women do this. I was probably averaging around 1000 calories a day, which is way under eating. I needed to go into a surplus. So I would say that my diet phase of this journey was in a surplus, to where I had been Interesting and what had happened was I would drink coffee all day long. I mean, my adrenals were fatigued. I'm sure there's lots of other things that were happening. I would start eating, you know, two in the afternoon, yeah.

Kiki Hurwitt: 14:41

And then I did intermittent fasting for a period of time. I don't know how long that lasted, maybe a year, but I would, you know, eat in a four hour window and I probably had, I don't know, maybe six, seven, 800 calories. I mean, it was just not healthy. And so, learning to eat consistently throughout the day, really balanced, nutritious meals five times a day, my body was like Whoa, this is magical. Yeah, you start feeling better, physically, mentally, my emotional state just felt more even and everything felt better. So when I say diet phase, I don't want your listeners to think that I was in some kind of extreme state without knowing fully, because I hadn't tracked my food for very long prior to starting with the Wonder Women. But I was under eating in that period of time and probably a long time before it.

Michele Folan: 15:34

I think a lot of women under eat and they don't realize it.

Kiki Hurwitt: 15:39

Yeah, we're scared of food. We've been taught to be scared of food.

Michele Folan: 15:42

And it's no indictment against any woman and how you eat. That's just kind of what comes intuitively to us. But there is that midlife brain fog that we all have at some point, and some of that could be just we're not getting enough of the right calories during our day. Yeah, I do have to ask you this you have mentioned that you stopped drinking alcohol. How important was that to your success?

Kiki Hurwitt: 16:10

I think very important More so probably, I would say, for me personally to my mental health.

Kiki Hurwitt: 16:16

I was one of those people that I've been using alcohol unconsciously for decades to numb, to just sort of I deserve a drink on Friday afternoon or after a really busy work day, or because there's a holiday or a family event or what have you.

Kiki Hurwitt: 16:36

My decision to stop drinking purely was an experiment to see how I would feel, and I just never stopped, because my answer every day when I woke up is do I feel better? Yes. Am I grateful for not having the 2am shame game? Yes. Do I feel more mentally clear? Yes. Did I sleep better? Yes. Do I have more energy? Yes, all of that I just kept asking myself, and I was tying back to having a few glasses of wine which I used to feel like, oh, it's nothing, it's not doing anything to me, when in fact, it was having a major impact on me and, working with my coach, she wasn't going to tell me I couldn't drink, but if I did choose to have a drink, I needed to put it in my macros as the app that we use to track our food. I would need to record it and quite simply didn't want to do it.

Michele Folan: 17:26

It's like oh, but I want pasta tonight yeah.

Kiki Hurwitt: 17:32

So I wasn't going to trade that, for it really was an experiment. And I'm now 28 months of no alcohol and I feel so much better without it, so much better.

Michele Folan: 17:45

Did your husband also quit drinking, or does he still have cocktail?

Kiki Hurwitt: 17:49

He does not drink a lot, very rarely. I mean, I would say, if he has a beer a month, I would be surprised. So he's never been a big drinker.

Michele Folan: 17:57

All right. I always like to ask that question because that comes up occasionally in conversations with friends. Is that well if you're not drinking? Is that hard when your husband's still drinking? And yeah, at times it can be. Yeah.

Kiki Hurwitt: 18:11

Now, when we go out and he'll have you know, his favorite drink is a Negroni and I'll have myself some water or my Diet Coke and it's all fine.

Michele Folan: 18:19

Good. Did you encounter any obstacles along the way, Like did you ever want to quit or did you feel like family and friends were being supportive?

Kiki Hurwitt: 18:30

So from the beginning, I've always had a lot of support from my family. My bonus daughter, claire, is 29. She's an online fitness coach, extremely knowledgeable, and she really helped to jump and start me and get me into the fitness mindset and knowing that I could do this work. The thing with Claire is I refused to track my macros. I thought that was crazy, that was restrictive. I wasn't going to do it. Then, when I started working with the Wonder Women, it was required and I was like, okay, I'm not going to mess up this chance to work with this incredible coach and team. I'm going to learn this. And that was a game changer.

Kiki Hurwitt: 19:08

I always had a lot of support from my family Absolutely my friends, I would say, as lovely as they are. I think they just didn't understand what I was doing and kind of thought oh well, she'll be back soon. She'll be. You know, this will be over soon. And I would, early on, get questions of like, well, when are you going to eat normally again? Or when are you going to start drinking again? The answer is I do eat normally. The weird things I used to do, I don't do those anymore. I don't drink alcohol. So there were those obstacles early on, but now we're all fine. My husband, about seven months into my journey or so, came into the kitchen one morning and said he hired a coach.

Michele Folan: 19:48

Oh really.

Kiki Hurwitt: 19:49

And my mouth felt dropped on the floor because I never, ever said a word to him about you should do this too. You should track your macros. There was none of that. He was so supportive in watching me weigh my food, learn macros. We built a gym during COVID. In our basement we had a spare room and we just kind of cobbled it together with things we found on Craigslist and whatever, and he watched me just absolutely learn cry in the gym multiple times like really feel defeated, I can't do this. He cheered me on. He was awesome. And about three months into my journey he said you know what you look better? And I was like, okay, well, thanks, I haven't lost much weight at that point. And seven months in, he said you know what you look? Totally different. Oh, wow, and that was really kind of the turning point. And then he decided he needed to have this experience too, and so together we've lost 107 pounds. Wow, he's feeling great and it's been such a joy and fun to do together.

Michele Folan: 20:52

I never asked you this, but how much overall weight did you lose?

Kiki Hurwitt: 20:56

I lost 47 total Wow.

Michele Folan: 20:59

Okay.

Kiki Hurwitt: 20:59

Yeah, I had somebody say to me recently you know my before pictures I didn't look that bad. That's not the point. I was medically unhealthy, you know. I think I looked like a very average woman. I think the thing I noticed the most is how just down in the dumps I looked. I had no light in my face, I was just doom and gloom and I was probably I don't know if I was hungover when I took the picture, but I sure looked like I was. But a lot of people comment that my body wasn't super fat or anything. Well, and I'm not here to fat, shame anybody. I was absolutely unhealthy, being on the verge of meeting insulin and very high cholesterol. Both my parents died of diabetes. I wanted something different for myself.

Michele Folan: 21:43

Yeah, great story. How important has the camaraderie and the sisterhood been for you with your success in the program.

Kiki Hurwitt: 21:56

This is probably the single biggest surprise to me for any of your listeners. Just to reiterate, this is entirely online. I found the Wonder Woman. I found Train With Joan scrolling through Instagram during the height of COVID and thought I am not a group activity kind of gal. So we'll see how this goes.

Michele Folan: 22:15

I'm not sure, I need this.

Kiki Hurwitt: 22:17

What happened was I was part of a cohort of women. We were all in the trenches together just fighting it out and learning and growing and struggling and having no idea how to do a deadlift or you know, whatever we're doing. So we started our Instagram pages privately to share with each other. Here's me in my basement doing my deadlifts and you know I was crying doing this thing, but I got better and like cheering each other on and so on and so forth, and then it's just evolved and grown over time.

Kiki Hurwitt: 22:45

But the community of women and the sisterhood I have found in this community is mind blowing, absolutely mind blowing, completely unexpected, and I treasure it more than I can even describe to you. It is everything. These women are dynamic, they are really intelligent, they are shining examples to me. They keep me motivated and inspired. I'm watching this transformation work, like we talked about a minute ago, cascade into every area of their lives. Yeah, I mean my friend, susan, who I know, you know, just did an incredible one woman stand up show she's always wanted to do their reaching for goals they never thought they could achieve. We're all kind of helping each other. Just lift each other up and do stuff and it's magical, magical community.

Michele Folan: 23:38

Two things about that. Susan Geedy has been a guest on the podcast, and I think the title of her episode was it's Never Too Late. She is all that in a bag of chips. Yes, she is. She's an incredible woman. Talked to her last week on the phone. Yeah, she's great.

Michele Folan: 23:57

But I want to talk a little bit about the sisterhood and camaraderie and the support, because this is something overall. I think, as midlife women, we all need to support each other. Leave the ego, leave the jealousy, leave the judgment at the door and cheer each other on for those successes, because we need to be doing that. I think we're actually probably better at it than we give ourselves credit for. But that's part of this podcast, kiki, is that I want people to see women like you who are stunningly gorgeous, by the way, thank you. But you've got a story to tell and I think that the way you put yourself out there is tremendous and I want other women to see that. So thank you for sharing that. I would love to know is there anything you would have done differently through this journey?

Kiki Hurwitt: 25:00

I mean, I always say I would have started earlier, but you know what should I put up? No, I think it's been perfectly imperfect and it has just been the most mind-blowing, unexpected thing in my life. I wouldn't change a darn thing, I really wouldn't. I feel like I've shown up and invested in friendships and the community and participated in ways that I didn't imagine myself doing or being interested in.

Kiki Hurwitt: 25:31

And to your point about midlife women cheering each other on, there is some magic that happens when we do that for each other, when we put down the ego, when there is genuinely no jealousy but genuine desire to see you and my community do all the things you want to do. And if I can help to cheer you and lift you and support you in getting there, I'm going to do that all day long, you bet. I mean we have gals on my team that you know are getting ready to compete in bodybuilding competitions. That's not my personal jam. I will show up with pom-poms and signs and like, yeah, let's do this, let's just absolutely cheer each other on. Whatever the goal is, being a part of that energy is pretty powerful.

Michele Folan: 26:19

Love it, but is there any advice or encouragement that you have for women who are frustrated and aren't feeling comfortable in their bodies? How would you recommend they get started?

Kiki Hurwitt: 26:33

First and foremost. I think it's easier said than done but finding a place of self-compassion and love for ourselves. It was a really important part of my own growth and it still is. It's something I continuously have to work on. But I think I used to look outwardly and say, okay, if I can just be XYZ number on the scale or if I can just achieve whatever promotion in my career or all these external things, then I'm going to feel great about myself.

Kiki Hurwitt: 27:04

And the fact of the matter is I would get to whatever goal on the scale by starving myself or doing you know whatever quick fix diet. I'd still feel like garbage. I would get the promotion. I'd still feel like garbage or not great, or you know, the elation would last for a half an hour and it's gone. And when we show up to start loving ourselves first and filling that cup, it comes from a different place. And then the journey just becomes easier because we are applying that self-love first. And I'm not here to say that that's easy, that's work. It was work for me and continuous work. But it's coming from a different place and I think that's where mindset comes in right, where we are really doing the inner work and the exterior is just following along, perfect.

Michele Folan: 27:52

Perfect words.

Kiki Hurwitt: 27:54

I don't know. I hope that makes sense.

Michele Folan: 27:55

But and it does make sense because I think, as we approach this process of bettering our health, we got to get the mindset right first. Yeah, it's tough to get all the other stuff right if your mind is holding you back and just accepting that there is not perfection. Let's not go for perfection here. Let's get started Right and then be realistic in your goals too. Kiki, I know I'm never going to look like you, but I know what my baseline is and what I think I can achieve, and I think that's fair right. I think there's a way to approach it and not set yourself up for disappointment.

Kiki Hurwitt: 28:41

I totally agree, and I think, more than just how I look, the thing that excites me the most is how I feel. Yeah, it truly, truly is a game changer, and I will tell you this too. I always was fixated on a number that, in full transparency, is way lower than where I am today, and I don't know if this resonates with you, but I grew up in a time where skinny was that was the thing we revered the most being skinny and I was a model. Way back in the early 90s, in the kind of the heroin chic era, I was 103 pounds. On a shoot in Milan and I was called fat by one of the art directors that was there, and then I didn't belong on that shoot because I was so heavy. I was 103 pounds. I'm about 118, 119 today. Okay, 103.

Kiki Hurwitt: 29:36

So for a long time to kind of extract that number in my head was always like oh, I'm fat. If I'm that, it's completely bananas. But it was etched into my brain as sort of a I'm not good enough because I'm not lower than that number, which is again bananas. You can say bullshit.

Michele Folan: 29:54

You're allowed to say bullshit on this podcast.

Kiki Hurwitt: 29:57

So as women, we have these experiences where we just kind of come up with these arbitrary numbers where, oh, look great, if I can get to whatever, if I can get to 110, I'm going to look great. I feel so much better at 118 when you know where you kind of I fluctuate one or two pounds here. I feel so much better at this weight and having muscle on my body and not being super, super skinny. Having muscle and strength is like a game changer. I feel healthier than I've ever felt.

Michele Folan: 30:30

You and I talked a little bit about this before we start recording the benefits of what you're doing for your body today is going to be so beneficial 20 years from now? Absolutely. You know my mantra and I don't have to repeat it because everybody's going to get tired of hearing me say this, but this isn't about being 53 or almost 54. It's really about 25, 30 years from now, and you have done yourself a great service by doing what you've done.

Kiki Hurwitt: 31:03

Yeah, somebody asked me recently when I'm going to go back to normal and I said well, this is my new normal, this is normal. Yeah, I'm going to continue to lift weights. I'm going to continue to learn. You know I have other goals. I want to. You know, maybe I want to learn a new language, maybe I want to start a new business. I mean, there's all kinds of things that we can continue to do as we age. It's not a game over. And to your point, this what I'm doing today is preparing me for 20 years in the future and hopefully more.

Michele Folan: 31:31

Yeah for sure. I do want to ask you is there one important pillar of self-care that you live by every day?

Kiki Hurwitt: 31:40

There are a couple. One of the things that really keeps me on track with my self-care is preparing the day before or even a few days in advance. That's a good one and what that looks like is I do track my food. I use an app Sometimes when I'm on vacation. It's not perfectly tracked, it's a little more intuitive and that's fine, but it gives me a baseline and a guideline of what I need to fuel my body properly and to feel my best. So I try to do that in advance. Again, it's not perfect, but I do try to go in and plan a few days of meals in advance. I meal prep on the weekends. Generally, my husband and I will kind of share those duties. We'll plan all our proteins, our carbs, our fats and then it just makes it easy through the week.

Kiki Hurwitt: 32:22

In terms of other self-care, I really have been working hard the last few months on my sleep routine. At my age, being post-menopausal, my sleep has been a little erratic, I would say for a few years. It's taken a toll. So I've been working with a nutritionist and we have been really dialing in that sleep routine. So that's been a big piece of self-care for me that is working. I feel better because of it, and what that looks like is taking away all my electronics and putting them aside. You know a good hour before bed, maybe doing some reading, maybe taking a bath and really just winding down, allowing my mind to get quiet. I make journal a little bit and that's been really, really helpful, so that's a big part of my self-care routine.

Michele Folan: 33:08

Oh, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, oh, that's good stuff. All right, I have to ask you Do it. I think it's learning another language. Who knows, maybe what's next for you, what's on the horizon in 2024 in regard to your goals?

Kiki Hurwitt: 33:25

Oh gosh, so I've never been a big resolution person. Last year I picked the word for 2023 to be permission. Give myself permission to be very uncomfortable, stepping into uncomfortable places, trying new things, growing in the gym. I did a few photo shoots, I did some girls' trips. We did just giving myself permission to live and be uncomfortable and grow. My word for 2024 and kind of goals wrapped around that. My word is expression, and what I mean by expression is just giving myself permission to express myself the most authentically. One thing about showing up on Instagram it's been this really interesting, I guess, experiment of allowing myself to just be free and share some stuff that's edgy, some stuff that's really raw and vulnerable, and express myself really authentically. I don't show up there with any pretense. I just show up with kind of it's not glossy, it's not perfect, but it's just me putting down the self-judgment and expressing myself fully.

Michele Folan: 34:38

Wonderful. I love it. I would also like for you to share where people can find you.

Kiki Hurwitt: 34:43

Thank you. Yeah, so I spend most of my time. I wouldn't say most of my time. It makes it sound like I spend the whole day there. I know what you meant on social media time. I am mostly on my Instagram and you can find me at the likey Viking on Instagram and lykke is LyKKE and then Viking and lykke just means joy.

Michele Folan: 35:06

Okay, I did not know what that meant and I appreciate you sharing that because I'm like what is likey Viking.

Kiki Hurwitt: 35:14

Lykke is a Scandinavian word for joy or happiness.

Michele Folan: 35:17

It all makes sense now. Thank you for the clarity, kiki. I appreciate it. Yeah, you are delightful. Thank you. I'm so pleased that we were able to have this conversation. Kiki Harwit, thank you for being on Asking for a Friend.

Kiki Hurwitt: 35:31

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Michele Folan: 35:43

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