From Paralysis to Powerlifting with Kim Rahir
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Cathy Intro:Welcome to Late Boomers. Our podcast guide to creating your 3rd act with style, power, and impact. Hi. I'm Cathy Worthington.
eWN Announcer:And I'm Mary Elkins. Join us as we bring you conversations with successful entrepreneurs, entertainers, and people with vision who are making a difference in the world. Everyone has a story
Cathy Intro:and we'll take you along for the ride on each interview. Recounting the journey our guests have taken to get where they are, inspiring you to create your own path to success. Let's get started.
Cathy:Hello. I'm Cathy Worthington. Welcome to late boomers. Today, our guest is Kim Rahir, a health coach for women who emphasizes rebuilding and reactivating muscle. Last year, she became European champion in masters weightlifting in her age and weight category.
Merry:And I'm Merry Elkins. Kim has an amazing story of how she came to this career, and you'll want to hear all about her story. I promise you it is quite unusual and sure to inspire you. Welcome, Kim.
Kim Rahir:Thanks for having me. I'm excited to get to talk to you too.
Cathy:We're excited to hear from you too. So please tell us about the path that led to where you find yourself today. We wanna hear how you went from a wheelchair to becoming European masters weightlifting champion.
Kim Rahir:Yeah. Well, it's a long story. It's a bit of a saga. I used to be a journalist, my husband too. We moved every 4 years from country to country.
Kim Rahir:I had 3 kids in the process. Process dragged them from country to country too. They're, like, citizens of the world. And I was sort of enjoying life when we got to Berlin, in the 2000. I had who had been working as a freelancer most of those years, had a full time job again and 3 kids, and I thought, yeah.
Kim Rahir:I had made it. I was raised you know, Germany was I don't know about today because I haven't lived there for for in a long time. But when I was raised, it was, like, socially still very, very conservative. And Mhmm. I was raised to believe that you could either be a mom and have a family, or you could either have a career.
Kim Rahir:But both, no way. And I had always wanted to prove that this was not true and that you could have it all. And there I was in Berlin having it all. And then from one day to the next, it was all taken away from me because I fell ill. I picked up my kids from school and realized while I was driving home, they're always seeing double, which is mighty scary.
Kim Rahir:Yeah. Can't sort of ignore your way out of that one. You know, when you have a little bit of a niggle in your right knee, you could say, oh, it's gonna go away. But you see a double, you know something's wrong in the brain. And went to hospital, spent 6 weeks there.
Kim Rahir:After 3 weeks, I was completely paralyzed from the hip downward. They knew it was something autoimmune, but they couldn't put their finger on it because my symptoms were all over the place. So, normally, you have either the eyes going crazy or you have the the paralysis, but not both. And, you know, they have, like, their definition boxes, and they need that for diagnostics. So I was spending weeks in the hospital not knowing what was really going on Oh.
Kim Rahir:Not knowing if I would be able to walk again. And, they tried all sorts of stuff, that they injected me with. And then one of those things must have worked because I started getting better. And I decided after a few months that this was an autoimmune syndrome, a one off that comes and goes.
Cathy:Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:And after a year of treatment, I was given a clean bill of health, and I was told I could live my life. And I was so happy. Mhmm. This had already changed my perspective, and and we can talk about that, you know, a lot. You know, when you're out of the equation from one day to the next, you learn so much.
Kim Rahir:I mean, it's painful. It was very scary, but I learned a lot. And then when I was told that I was fine, I was so so grateful. I said that this is the second shot at life. And then another year went by, and then I felt my left hand gone numb.
Kim Rahir:I knew this wasn't good. More tests. And they said, oh, this time it's different. This time it's actually an autoimmune attack on the white matter in your nerves. And if it happens again, it's MS.
Kim Rahir:And I spent a year hoping that it wouldn't happen again, and then it did happen again.
Cathy:Oh, yeah.
Kim Rahir:It was much milder. I only noticed it because I was doing a weird yoga pose on the bedroom floor.
Cathy:There's a
Kim Rahir:tingling in my spine.
Merry:You were still in a wheelchair?
Kim Rahir:No. No. No. No. I had I had learned to walk again.
Kim Rahir:My life had become totally normal again. No. I was actually doing a plow pose, you know, where you do this crew. You and I'd felt this tingling in my spine, and I knew this wasn't good. It was the 2nd relapse, so I was officially declared an MS patient.
Kim Rahir:And the doctor told me that I need a lifelong treatment, and I fought with him for I think for 45 minutes. It was interesting because he was not used to it. He was sort of just writing the prescription for this stuff that I was going to inject myself with 3 times a week while I was hang on. Can we talk about this? LifeLock treatment?
Kim Rahir:Are you serious? Telling you that the second relapse was so much milder, maybe I was getting better. Yeah. I know now that especially after the hospital experience where I was paralyzed and couldn't move, I didn't want to give my power away again. I want I didn't want to be dependent on some kind of medication for the rest of my life, injecting yourself 3 times a week.
Merry:Yeah. I wanted to ask you what was going through your mind when you were diagnosed with this.
Kim Rahir:I thought it was a really first of all, I thought it was a really low blow. It's like, yeah, this, you know, this one off, this one where I was better afterwards, and they said I was gonna be healthy and fine. It was just too good to be true, and now, you know, it's come back with a vengeance. It's also what I like to just the what I like to use to describe what I felt was, like, actually darkness. It feels dark.
Kim Rahir:Your your thoughts of of the future, they they are in you know, everything's in the dark because you don't know what's gonna happen to you. You have no idea. You could be become paralyzed. You could even become blind, and MS has so many different forms and shapes. You just don't know.
Kim Rahir:And that uncertainty is very scary. My kids, when I was diagnosed, they were, like, 15, 13, and 11. And Mhmm. I wanted to be there for them, and I didn't want them to see me in hospital beds all the time. And and it was very, very dark and and scary.
Cathy:Oh, that was kinda what your mental mental state was. So how did you take care of your mental health with that kind of diagnosis?
Kim Rahir:I I discovered mindfulness in meditation. I realized that looking ahead, looking at the future, looking at the big picture was super scary because of the uncertainty. Now when you think about it, it's actually the same for for anybody. Nobody of us knows what's gonna be tomorrow.
Merry:That's true.
Kim Rahir:But then when you have this this diagnosis, you know, like, you're really forced to realize that, all you have is today. All you have is right now. And I started, a mindfulness practice. I meditated. And also because I I wanted to spend time with my kids, I really focused on on being there for them every every day and always focused on what I could do in in the moment.
Kim Rahir:What can I do now? And it's something that I tell women 20,000 times a day now. Don't don't think, oh my god. I should have. Or don't say, oh, how am I going to?
Kim Rahir:Ask yourself, what now? What can I do now? That's the only thing that you can do, and and that's the one thing that will actually help you move forward and and make the most of the time you have.
Merry:How did that mindset change you?
Kim Rahir:Well, totally. Totally. I already, the first experience in the hospital had made me much more grateful for anything that I had. I remember one time while I was, still using a wheelchair, I was sitting at home and saw people walking outside in the street, and they were looking so grumpy. And I thought, how on earth can you be so grumpy when you can walk?
Kim Rahir:You don't even know how lucky you are. And I had taken that with me. I had really kept the gratitude, and I think I became a much cooler mom because, you know, I could not be bothered with all the stuff that I used to get worked up about. And I know that so many mothers think that, you know, the world will come to an end if they're not there the next day or if their kid has a bad grade in in a in a math test. So I became much cooler.
Kim Rahir:I think it was more became more fun to be around for my kids. That's good. And
Cathy:yeah. I And I appreciate
Kim Rahir:every day much more. Mhmm.
Merry:Yeah. Well, you haven't talked at all about weight lifting and muscle, and I would love we would love to know how building muscle is crucial for women's health in midlife and, really, all the time.
Kim Rahir:Yes. How long have we got? Yeah. Because Long
Cathy:as you want.
Kim Rahir:I'm so I'm so passionate about this.
Cathy:Tell us everything.
Kim Rahir:So when I got my diagnosis, my left hand is numb to this day, by the way. So there's, like, a bit of nerve damage in my spine. But, otherwise, I could still walk, something that I really cherished after having been paralyzed before. And I asked my doctor if I could exercise, and he was very noncommittal saying, yeah. Be careful.
Kim Rahir:Stuff like this. So he didn't want anything to do with this. But a nurse told me that, exercise is great for MS. It makes you fatigue resistant, and go ahead. And I had this urge, and I think it links back again to the traumatizing hospital experience.
Kim Rahir:I wanted to become physically strong. I wanted to go to the gym. I had been going to the gym before, but, you know, like so many women trying to create a certain body shape and sort of staying fit and just, you know, doing the gym because you have to. And this time, I had to order to go to the gym, and I wanted to become insanely strong. That was my desire.
Kim Rahir:Myself with a great book, looked out for form, like, tried to lift, like, very, very you know, with clean, super perfect form and and started lifting heavy. It was one of the first books actually that said women should lift heavy too. It was called lift like a man, look like a goddess. The book I
Merry:love that. It's so crazy.
Cathy:Gosh. Can you imagine publishing with a title like that right now? But I've been Oh, y'all.
Kim Rahir:They say I mean, it was the end of the nineties, and they I think they're a bit embarrassed. Oh my god. We would never use that title. No.
Merry:At the time like a man looked like a goddess.
Kim Rahir:Oh, dear. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. But it's a fantastic book. Uh-huh.
Kim Rahir:And I I started lifting heavy, and you get better and stronger so quickly when you really lift. And it doesn't mean that you have to start with lots of kilos, but if that's your intention and you challenge your body, you don't you don't dabble with pink dumbbells, but you do do the big lifts. Yeah. It has an effect on your mental health, and I think that's also one of the reasons for my my evolution. So I got better and better.
Kim Rahir:I got stronger and stronger. I had been told in hospital that certain reflexes that had disappeared from my nerves, that they would never come back. They all came back. My neurological checkups turned into 2 minute appointments where they said, okay. I see you.
Kim Rahir:Fine. You can go. Because I was just so fit and strong and and mobile, and everything was just fine. And we moved to Spain, found myself another neurologist. And after 3 years of injecting myself, we were going on a camping trip, and I asked him, can I stop the treatment for 2 weeks?
Kim Rahir:Because I don't wanna go with the whole apparatus and, you know, injecting your cell when you're camping. It's somehow and then take it on a plane because we're going to Canada. And he said, you know what? Why don't you just stop? If you wanna stop, I'm gonna support you.
Kim Rahir:If you don't wanna stop, I wanna support you too. Wow. And I said, hell, yes. I wanna stop. You know, injecting yourself 3 times a week, you know, what happens to your skin at the injection site?
Kim Rahir:It's absolutely horrible. And I had side effects, like, it's called, like, pseudo flu or something. You feel like you're getting the flu when on the days you inject yourself. So I was more than ready to stop. And it was quite, unconventional because usually when you start on interferon beta, you never stop.
Kim Rahir:And they're just too scared for you to have a relapse and and suffer damage. This guy, he was very up to date, went to, you know, all kinds of conventions in in the US, and he read a lot. And he said, we're not even that sure now that this medication is effective. So if you're gonna need something again, it's not gonna be this one, which encouraged me a lot
Cathy:because That's kinda scary.
Kim Rahir:Not even sure.
Cathy:That's scary because you've been injecting it 3 times a week for couple of years, right, at that point?
Kim Rahir:Yes.
Cathy:It's kinda scary to have him say, oh, we wouldn't even give you that now. It's like
Kim Rahir:Yeah. I I, actually, I found it encouraging. You know why? Because I was doing so well. And until the moment you stop, you don't really know.
Kim Rahir:Are you doing well because, you know, you're better? Or is it maybe really the medication that keeps you well? And when he said that they had doubts about the medication, I had more occasion to believe that it was actually me getting better. It was not the medication that got me better. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:And at that point, I also thought that I might have that I might be on to something. And I had been sort of a little bit tired of journalism for a while, and I decided I was gonna share this message with as many women as I could. Mhmm. Took all the, you know, the certifications and and the stuff that you need to to to coach properly, and, I've never looked back. And in the meantime, that was 2017.
Kim Rahir:Now we have so much research Mhmm. That actually shows how you can change your health, your life, how you can change so much influence, so much just by building muscle and becoming physically strong.
Cathy:Wow. It's,
Kim Rahir:it's like a one stop shop in my in my opinion. And the one problem, the only problem that we have to overcome is the narrative and that women don't relate that much to physical strength because we're not raised with that as an ideal.
Cathy:Right. It's tough. We Mary and I have interviewed a couple people on the on the subject, and we always wanna do it. And then we we something blocks me. I'm I don't have to speak for Mary, but something blocks me from actually doing it.
Cathy:And I have a daughter that's telling me all the time, you need to build muscle. You need to lift weights. What other aspects of health is building muscle improve beyond just physical strength?
Kim Rahir:Oh, it's everything. The big one, very big one, is metabolic health. Mhmm. It's something that we didn't know some time ago. But, you know, with diabetes on the rise and blood sugar management becoming a problem for so many people, The more muscle you carry, the easier your body will deal with sugar because sugar gets stored in the muscles.
Kim Rahir:Gets stored in the liver first, and then the more muscle you carry, the more sugar you can stock because it's gonna be that directed there as energy reserve in case you have to do something. It's it's really the size of your muscle is like the size of your sugar warehouse in your in your body. It's it's amazing. So if you have, like, diabetes 2 or insulin resistance or something like this, building muscle is is like your way to go. It's and it's so simple, and it's really very effective.
Kim Rahir:It's also very, very important for cardiovascular health. There's one thing that happens because if you have strong muscles, the contractions help the circulation, for example. And there's more things like certain proteins being released or produced that, help with cardiovascular health. It's, it's really that too. And then the big one, the one that I love the most, because I have really I'm experiencing it every single day, is your mental health.
Kim Rahir:And we have research on that too. Every symptom of mental health, depression, low self esteem, all these things, they get better when people train for strength. They improve. There's one one thing that, I I I still worry about or that I think a lot about because we have to find a a way to make this accessible. When people are, like, really low or depressed, they would benefit tremendously from training.
Kim Rahir:But you can't you know, someone who's low and depressed, you cannot go there and say, oh, no. All you have to do is lift because that's the the last thing that they wanna do. They are they they have so so so huge obstacles. You know? Yeah.
Kim Rahir:They just move the stuff. That's the They and then and if you say, oh, all all you need to do is exercise, like, you know, it's easy, then you make them probably feel guilty and worse. So Yeah. This is why I really say we need to start as small as possible. And maybe that's for you too, Kathy, because
Cathy:I was gonna ask you
Kim Rahir:make this big dis
Merry:How long do you
Cathy:tell people to start? Like, how many minutes of actual weight work do you advise people when they're just starting and haven't done it?
Kim Rahir:My my clients, they start with 15 minutes a day. Oh, 15 minutes. At all. And Yeah. Yes.
Kim Rahir:Yeah. And the effects are tremendous, and they don't have to go anywhere. They can do 15 minutes first thing in the morning in their pajamas. And I think this is really super important because when we say say it's January 1st. Right?
Kim Rahir:You say, okay. My big New Year's decision, I'm going to the gym 3 times a week. And you think you have made this one decision to change your life. What you've actually done is you have sort of condemned yourself to making 25 decisions every time you want to implement that. You have to pack your bag.
Kim Rahir:You have to pick a gym. You have to get into your car. You have to drive through traffic. You have to find parking space. You have to walk in there.
Kim Rahir:You have to go to the locker room. Then you
Merry:have to
Kim Rahir:walk onto the gym floor, which is already, like, super scary for so many women. Yeah. This is too many decisions, and this will build resistance and this external resistance, you know, like traffic and time and internal resistance too because it feels like just too much to fit into your day. Whereas when you can do 15 minutes in the morning in your pajamas, there's only one decision. Just one.
Kim Rahir:You know? Go and do it.
Merry:What's the best way to start strength training in midlife and or even when you're older beyond midlife?
Kim Rahir:I think the most important part is that you need to start where you are at. So it's not the same for everybody. You need a very thorough assessment of your strength and your mobility so you know how to challenge yourself. It must be challenging, but it cannot be overwhelming and cannot be, you know, you cannot risk to get injured. Because when you get injured, it takes much longer to get better when you're older.
Merry:That's what worries me be because I'm always worried. Am I lifting too much? Am I going to tear a muscle? How can you gauge that? Do you need to work with a trainer?
Kim Rahir:I think, you need a trainer, some kind of expert at least to assess you at the beginning just to make sure where you are at. What also happens, and we underestimate this, when we don't do certain movements for a very long time, and, the lifting movements that we want to do are everyday movements, like human very human movements, like pushing and pulling and carrying and things like that. And when you haven't done that in your everyday life, because everything is done for us these days, the connection between your brain and your muscle muscles actually sort of goes offline. The brain is ruthless. It's all for the brain, everything is a matter of allocation of resources.
Kim Rahir:So if you don't contract your butt muscles for 10, 20 years, that connection goes offline, and you will not be able to contract them, actually. We call this gluteal amnesia. Your brain is sort of Wow. Forgotten about this. You have to
Cathy:Brain forgot about your butt. Oh my gosh. You and
Merry:I said, this is my my channel. I know. I mean, isn't that crazy?
Cathy:Can forget about anything, right, which is what the muscle activation technique trainers tell you to to reactivate.
Kim Rahir:Absolutely. And I think it's and that's also where the danger of getting injured comes from because you see you have a visual impression of the movement, and you want to mimic it. Mhmm. But you do not have the actual connection, you know, with the from the central nervous system to the muscle fiber that allows you to execute that movement. So you're going to do something that looks like this because we're so good at mimicking.
Kim Rahir:That's what our brain does. It mirrors what we see, but it's not got the execution is going to be faulty, and that's when you how you get injured. You wanna try and do this thing, and and then you do something that's, you know, totally different, or you don't have the strength and the mobility. The the best example, for example, is back pain, lower back pain. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:Most of the time does not originate in the lower back. It's because our upper back is so stiff. So the mobility that's supposed to be up here when we do certain movements has to be compensated by the lower back because we're too stiff here, and it has to move much more than is comfortable. So, all these things have to be taken into account, and then you can build a program. And if you haven't done anything for a very long time, you wanna start with bodyweight exercises.
Kim Rahir:Like, you don't wanna do you can do wall push ups, plank progressions. You need everything to be scaled to, you know, your level of skill and strength and experience, and then you take it from there.
Merry:How did you start? What it what how much weight did you start with, or did you start with wall push ups?
Kim Rahir:I didn't. I for push ups, I I didn't start with full push ups. I had them, like, sort of halfway. You know, you wanna you wanna start like this, and then you take them down. I started somewhere here.
Kim Rahir:I started with deadlifts and squats, and I started with something like maybe 20, 30, 40 kilos. I don't know what that is in pounds now.
Merry:That's a lot. But That's like, what, £50, £60, 70?
Kim Rahir:Yeah. Forty kilos would be like £88, I think. Yeah. That's something in a dead lift you could probably do. Just, imagine you carrying a a toddler or a grandchild.
Kim Rahir:You know? It's still
Merry:pretty big. £88. Yeah.
Kim Rahir:Well, children are getting bigger too.
Cathy:Well, they get bigger every day. True. They get bigger every day. But but describe what a deadlift is for people that don't lift weights. It's
Kim Rahir:yes. So, you have a barbell with 2, plates on the side, and the plates on the side are mostly there to have the barbell at a certain height from the floor. Because if it's flat on the floor, it's even more difficult to pick it up in terms of mobility and flexibility. And then you position yourself, and you want to lift that bar from the lower position up to your hips. So you're just lifting it up until it's at your at the height of your hips.
Kim Rahir:And you wanna lift it with a very, very straight back. You don't you hardly move the back. You immobilize the back, and you lift it with your legs and with your butt. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:And they say the name comes from lifting dead soldiers off battlefields because you have to pick them up from the shore.
Cathy:That's why they call it dead lift. Oh. Mhmm. That's a vision.
Merry:How much weight did you start with when you started lifting?
Kim Rahir:I think that would have been about for deadlifts, maybe 40 kilos because that's the one where you can lift the most. And then for squats, I would have started with the barre, which in a normal gym is 20 kilos. And what I'm doing now, which is Olympic weightlifting, the bar for girls is only 15 kilos. So 20 kilos, that means that's, like, a 45 pound bar, and the bar for girls will probably be £35.
Merry:Mhmm. It's a lot. Well, how much weight can you lift?
Kim Rahir:You mean, like, right now?
Cathy:Yeah.
Kim Rahir:Okay. So my I have to I would have to calculate my back squat, because that you wanna hear that in pounds, and I'm gonna do that in a second. My back squat is about £170 that you put on your shoulders, and you go down and back up.
Cathy:Yes. But
Kim Rahir:what I mostly do now is is Olympic weightlifting, and that's that's something different. That is just 2 movements. 1 is the snatch, and 1 is the clean and jerk. And I don't know if you remember this maybe from Olympic games or watching it sometimes on TV. I watched that with my dad when I was a kid.
Kim Rahir:It's like, you know, you see, like, overweight, hairy men, and weird leotards lifting these things overhead.
Cathy:Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:And I just had a PT. I was working working with a personal trainer, and he asked me, would you like to try this? And I said, okay. Let's try it. Totally sucked at it because it's very technical.
Kim Rahir:You know? It's not only physical. It's also physics. You have to outsmart gravity. But I was hooked because it's it's explosive, so you can never be sure that you're doing the exact same movement, and you have to work on sort of getting into the groove, doing it over and over again.
Kim Rahir:So, you know, every lift looks as much as possible like the one before. And I loved it so much that I signed up for a pure weightlifting gym Mhmm. Where they only do that. And after 2 weeks, they said, hey, Kim. Nice that you're training with us.
Kim Rahir:Do you wanna compete? And I and I was 55 at the time, and I said, Compit, do you know how old I am? Today, I would never ask that again. Never. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:And they said, we don't care. We have other women your age, and they're competing. Of course, everybody here competes. And so, oh, okay. Okay.
Kim Rahir:Why not? Okay. Yeah. Let's do this. And I'm pretty sure in my thirties, I would not have said yes.
Kim Rahir:I would have thought, oh, this is another thing, another obligation, another stress factor, whatever, and I would have thought that it would be, like, cumbersome or too much. And, you know, when when you reach 50, you come a bit of an anarchist that you do a little bit more of what you Oh, fantastic.
Merry:Never too late. It's never too late for anyone to start lifting and to get strong.
Cathy:But as a
Kim Rahir:You don't have
Cathy:As a coach Sorry.
Kim Rahir:You don't have to lift the
Cathy:As a coach, how do you what how do you tell people that it's not too late? What are you saying to them? How do you make people understand that they could start, like even older women?
Kim Rahir:Yes. I just give them stuff that they can do. And I think this is this is this is really the crucial part. There are fantastic workouts on YouTube. They're great for programs that you can download.
Kim Rahir:They're not for midlife women. That's the problem. When you find the thing that's right for you and if it's there's sometimes there's, like, really stories that make even that make me wanna cry. I had a client who used a cane, a stick, to get out of bed in the morning. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:And now she's horse riding and and walking 10 k steps a day and stuff. And what do we start with? We just, you know, I put her on the floor and had her start moving her limbs just a little bit in in ways that would activate those muscles, that would awaken that memory between the brain and the muscles. You have to be patient, but you can do it. So and this is the same thing that I always say about motivation.
Kim Rahir:Motivation is totally overrated, and you cannot sit on your butt, a famous one that your brain has forgotten about, and and wait for motivation to come over you like the holy spirit. Action. Action creates motivation. I love that. I give them an action that they can do and where they are at with the the strength and the mobility that they have no matter how little, and we start from there.
Kim Rahir:And it becomes it snowballs because you start moving a little bit. You feel better, so you start more. Then you feel so much better that you want to do more, and that's how this works.
Cathy:Well, when the gym That's how
Kim Rahir:it's gonna work for you.
Cathy:The people. Good. From your mouth to God's ears. Thank you. But when you, went from the gym then to start competing and they talked you into it and you took that, leap of faith.
Cathy:Tell us about your experiences then competing in the weightlifting competitions. What were you Yes. Particularly, what were you eating, and how were you training for them?
Kim Rahir:Yeah. Eating is very simple. You want to eat a lot of protein, a lot of vegetables, and depending on how active you are, you will dose your carbohydrates. You know? There's nothing wrong with carbs if you are physically active.
Kim Rahir:So I eat a lot of protein, as as much vegetable as I can. And then, you know, on training days, which is most days, I'll have some whole meal bread and and and stuff like this to go with that. That's all. It's very simple. So I do not I do not eat or create gourmet meals.
Kim Rahir:It's all very, very sort of simple and plain. Doesn't mean that it's not tasty. But that my intention for the eating is to fuel my my workouts. That's that's sweets? I do I do eat sweets, but it will be it could be like a protein bar, for example, or some dark chocolate.
Kim Rahir:Sometimes sometimes maybe, you know, when I say cookie, you will think of these huge things that you have. Right? And, we have I would say I'll use the British word biscuit, so I sometimes I could have, like, a biscuit or something. But, you know, it's it's not it's not important. It's it's not something that I crave.
Kim Rahir:Let me put it like this. You know? And when I when I want something sweet, I I can have something, and I don't. I don't worry about it. Now my very first competition, it was so exciting.
Kim Rahir:You know, you get 3 attempts for each lift. So in in total, you get 6 attempts, 3 for the snatch and 3 for the clean and jerk. The emotions that were running through me were so strong that I thought I had to cry. I told my my coach, I wanna cry. I wanna cry.
Kim Rahir:It was no sadness or anything. It was just so powerful emotions that I didn't know, you know, where to leave it. And he said, don't don't cry now. You can cry later because, you know, when you cry, you sort of you you relax yourself a little bit, and you need a certain tonicity in your body when you go lift. And then it's scary, you know, because you have they call your name.
Kim Rahir:You have 1 minute. You go out there. The lights are on you, and you have that 1 minute to make the lift. You cannot go and say, oh, yesterday, I lifted this, or, oh, if I train a bit more, I could lift this. Or yeah, on a good day, I can lift this.
Kim Rahir:No. It's no. You have 60 seconds. Mhmm. And sometimes, you know, sometimes you have a bad day and you don't make the lift.
Kim Rahir:So you learn so much. You learn to focus on the moment, to, you know, really don't look who's watching or whatever. You focus on the moment. And then when you fail, you get 2 more attempts, and then you have to let it go. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:You have to be in the present moment. You cannot think about, oh, what went wrong with this one? And, oh, why did this happen? Mhmm. Forget it.
Kim Rahir:Such a
Merry:life lesson. Focus.
Kim Rahir:Absolutely. You learn so much, and you learn how to fail. I mean, you learn technically, of course, you learn how to fail so the bar doesn't crash on you when you don't make the lift. You have to sort of find you know, learn how to duck and dodge, but you also learn to just accept that this didn't go well. Let's try the next one.
Kim Rahir:Mhmm. Yeah. And you have to accept I mean, it's this is the 2 double edged sword. You have to be visible. So you have to wear this ridiculous you have to wear this ridiculous onesie.
Kim Rahir:That's the, you know, that's the the rule. And That's funny. And you have to step out there, and all eyes are on you. But that's great too because so many women say, oh, when you when you turn 50, you become invisible. Mhmm.
Cathy:Yeah. I think that's true.
Kim Rahir:Go on step on a weightlifting platform, you're very visible.
Cathy:Oh, I would say so.
Merry:Can you give us a couple of stories about specific client success stories? And
Merry:You don't have to name them. Just
Kim Rahir:give us some great stories. This lady I I just mentioned, and, to this day, you know, she she sends me messages regularly because she literally couldn't get out of bed. She was in pain. Her back was so so stiff and so sore. And she started moving very gently, that first on the floor, getting up.
Kim Rahir:And then the more she moved, the easier it became for her to also go walking and and to do everyday chores. She had become very dependent on her husband, and she didn't like that at all. And it took her about a year and a half. She lost t 10 kilos, like £25 in the process, and she really went from using a stick to fulfilling her dream her dream that you know, she told me that when she started was to ride horses again. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:And, you know, it's hard to believe in that when you see someone who's walking, you know, with a stick, but you made it happen. Try just, you know, moving, gently every day and showing up every day because that's that's the big one. Showing up every day is the big one.
Cathy:Showing up. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:Yes. And there was there was an there's another lady who's had also very impressive story. She had gained something like 20 or even £25 over a year with HRT that a doctor had given her. Apparently, that's what she said without really noticing that there were some red flags, and she shouldn't have been given that medication. And when we met, she was in the UK.
Kim Rahir:And in her region, pharmacies had just run out of that particular HRT treatment. And she said, okay. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe I should try something else. And she started working with me, and she stopped the HRT because it she couldn't take it.
Kim Rahir:There was there was none available. And she switched to eating lots of protein because she was one of those ladies, and that happens a lot. They say, I eat so healthy. I really eat very healthy, but I cannot I cannot lose the weight. What's going on?
Kim Rahir:And it's because we need more specific specificity in middle age. Just eating healthy is so vague. And many women end up eating too many calories because it's healthy and too little protein. Mhmm. Because we say meat and dairy consistency.
Merry:Are you talking about certain kinds of protein? Or
Kim Rahir:amounts? Talking about the the goal that you pursue with your eating. When you build your meal, what's your intention? Is it weight loss? Is it health?
Kim Rahir:Or is it pleasure? I call this the trifecta. Mhmm. And you can only ever have 2 of the 3 in your intention. So if you build a meal that you want to be healthy and pleasurable, it's not gonna be very helpful for weight loss because you're gonna eat tons of nuts and avocados and what have you.
Kim Rahir:You know? Yes. It's gonna be Yeah. It's gonna be delicious. It's gonna be healthy, but it's not gonna be very good for weight loss.
Kim Rahir:If you Tell us what
Cathy:what the tips are for how to build improve strength. What what should we be eating to build our strength?
Kim Rahir:Protein. Yeah. Protein and vegetables.
Merry:Yeah. Any any special kind of protein? What kind
Kim Rahir:of meat? Actually, no. It's I mean, the the best the bioavailability of animal proteins is the best for the body. That's what the body can absorb best. So that would be meat and chicken and fish and dairy and things like this.
Kim Rahir:If you don't want to eat animal proteins, you have to be even more intentional. Eat the right combos of of legumes and and grains and things to get there. You can get there, but it's gonna be so much harder.
Merry:Yeah. So changing the subject a little bit, but, you live in Madrid now. How did that come about? And tell us about that life experience.
Kim Rahir:Yes. So we were traveling around. You know, we moved every 4 years. My husband had the the steady job, and I was worked as a freelancer. And his assignments lasted for 4 years because as a journalist, you need to stay an outsider.
Kim Rahir:If you stay too long in the country, you start identifying the country with the people. And if you want to report on the country, you need to sort of keep your keep a bit of distance. So that's why people are moved every 4
Merry:years. Oh.
Kim Rahir:And I remember that in 2011, we moved to Paris, and we told our children that this was the last move, and we're gonna stay put because we wanted them to have, you know, long term friends. And we wanted to sort of have a steady home. And then after a year, my husband came home, and he was raised traveling. His parents were diplomats, so he had been, you know, he has it in his blood. So he came home after a year, and he said, well, there's this posting in Madrid, and I think it would be really nice.
Kim Rahir:I said, yeah. But we promised the kids. And then, okay. What we could do is you go to Madrid and we stay here and then we meet. You know, we we sort of shuttle and meet and stuff.
Kim Rahir:Yeah. Okay. We can try that. It's a good idea. Madrid is a great great opportunity.
Kim Rahir:We told the kids there was this possibility, and dad was gonna go to Spain, and we're gonna stay. And the kids all said, are you out of your mind? We're all going. We all wanna go.
Merry:Oh.
Kim Rahir:So we all moved to Madrid.
Cathy:And were they all still in their teens at that point?
Kim Rahir:Yes. Absolutely. I mean, the youngest was, the youngest was 12. Yeah. They were between 12 and 16.
Kim Rahir:Mhmm. And then when we were in Madrid after 4 years, my husband actually managed to get 2 more years. Mhmm. And I don't know why that happened. I think that there was a problem that they had to solve, and they wanted him to stay in place so his successor wouldn't have to start from scratch, but solving the problem, something.
Kim Rahir:You know? It was just good luck for us. And then after the 6 years, he was about to retire. He had he had accumulated, like, close to a year of time off, and then he was to retire. And then there we were thinking, where do we wanna go?
Kim Rahir:Did we wanna go to Germany? No. Did we wanna go to France? No. I mean, we'd lived in France.
Kim Rahir:Paris is kind of our second home. But, you know, the quality of life is just so fantastic here that we didn't hesitate long. We said, no. We're gonna stay in Madrid. Mhmm.
Kim Rahir:And that's what we did.
Cathy:Oh, he's retired now.
Kim Rahir:This is the most
Cathy:He's retired now.
Kim Rahir:And this is the longest we've been anywhere. We're gonna close 10 years. This Oh.
Cathy:So Your kids are grown.
Kim Rahir:They are. And they live in one lives in France, one lives in the UK, and one lives next door. So you
Merry:have many places to go.
Kim Rahir:Yes. That is true.
Cathy:Yeah. What would you like our audience to have as a takeaway today? What's your main message?
Kim Rahir:I want everybody to really embrace the thought that it's never, never, ever too late. There was a very touching video that I saw today on social media by Shannon Doherty Mhmm. Who passed away.
Merry:Right.
Kim Rahir:And she had already been diagnosed. And she said, I am not done. And that's something that I want to show. You are not done. It's never too late.
Kim Rahir:And focus on just one small thing that you can do now. Forget about the big picture. I know we're supposed to have big ass goals and big picture and think big. No. Think small.
Kim Rahir:Think what can I do right now that will somehow make me better? And that could be go for a glass of water or take a walk around the block, whatever it is. Something small that you can do now because now is all you have, and it will make you feel better right away. And you can start something from there.
Cathy:Oh, I love it.
Merry:I love that. Thank you so much, Kim. I'm inspired. I'm gonna get out and start lifting weights. Our guest today on Late Boomers has been Kim Rahir, who overcame MS and being in a wheelchair to become European masters weightlifting champion.
Merry:You can reach Kim on her website, kimraher.com, and I'll spell it, kimrahi r.com, where you can have access to free health and strength assessment that'll help you figure out where you are right now and what your steps should be, in order to improve your health, strength, and happiness. Thank you so much.
Kim Rahir:Thank you for having me. Love this conversation.
Cathy:Oh, we do too. We wanna thank our listeners also for subscribing to our podcast and checking us out on YouTube and for recommending us to your friends. We appreciate you. We'd love to have you give us a 5 star review, and we wanna hear about your experiences with late boomers and what gets you inspired. We are on Instagram at I am Cathy Worthington and at I am Mary Elkins and at late boomers.
Cathy:Thank you so much for listening, and thanks again, Kim.
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