SPEAKER_02 0:13

Does it feel like you're doing all the right things? You're eating well, you're exercising, you're trying to take care of yourself, but you're not seeing the results that you want. Or if we're being honest, maybe even feeling worse, well, then today's episode of Empower Your Menopause is absolutely for you. So welcome back to the show. It's James Ellis here, functional nutritionist.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

And I'm Julie Medesi, Master Health Coach.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

And today we're diving into cravings, appetite, and gut health, and a little bit of what's really driving your hunger after four. Because this is something that Julie and I see all the time in our practice with our clients, people who come to see us. Women ticking all the boxes, they're eating well, they're moving more, but still feel like their appetite is all over the place, still feel like crap. They're hungry when they don't expect to be, craving things they didn't used to, feeling control all day, and then suddenly not, and it's all over the place. So it's really easy to assume that all this is just a willpower issue or just a natural part of getting older. But your body doesn't work like that, appetite doesn't work like that. It's been driven by signals from somewhere, right? It doesn't just have a mind of its own, something's telling it to do this kind of stuff. So you got your blood sugar, your stress levels, all involved in this, and when those are off, hunger gets louder, and that can then start a whole cascade of challenges. So today we're gonna try and break down a little bit about what's actually going on, what you can do to start studying things. So some of this might be new, some of it might not be new, but anyway, we're gonna dive into it. So, Julie, let's get into the why first of all, and what does this look like for the women that we work with on a day-to-day basis? What's actually going on?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah, it's it's interesting because people come in with uh a number of different symptoms, but they all tend to cluster around similar things. Like appetite starts to feel really unpredictable because our hormones are all over the place, our stress levels are all over the place, it our sleep is all over the place, there are a lot of things affecting us, and so it can change how our appetite feels and how it when it shows up and and kind of how it happens, and even the things that we're hungry for. Um, sometimes it feels like, well, nothing in my life has changed, but everything in my life has changed. All the things I used to do, they're the same. I'm doing all of the same things, I'm making all of the same meals, and yet my body is just completely different, and it won't respond to the things that I used to be able to do. Um, the big one of the really big ones is coming in and having this, you know, we try not to promote good, I'm using air quotes, good or bad foods or activities, because there really aren't any of those. But we come in and a lot of women feel like, oh, I've been good all day, and then I get home and I just completely lose my mind. And the next thing I know, I'm sitting on the couch with Cheeto dust all over my chest, and I don't know what happened. I've been there. Um, and then there's this constant thinking about food, right? We're bombarded by ads everywhere, by diet, um, diets everywhere, everything is about food. You gotta have snacks with you, you have them have them in your handbag, you gotta have them in your desk, you gotta have them in your car. So we're thinking about food all of the time, which makes it even harder when some of these cravings come about. And then we start second-guessing ourselves, right? Like, how how can I not be in control? I feel like the cookies are in charge or what whatever it might be. So it's it's it's really taking up a huge amount of our headspace, and it can become really emotional as well. So it isn't just about hunger, it's about a lot of other things together. Um, James, do you want to talk a little bit about what drives all of that?

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Yeah, so it's several things, really, I suppose, isn't it? But let's start off at the obvious one, which is blood sugar. Now, blood sugar balance is impacted by uh the fall in estrogen that women going through the menopause transition go through. So that's that's an actual thing. We'll talk a little bit more about the physiology and dive into it later, but let's just talk about blood sugar and how it kind of works, right? So if blood sugar is imbalanced, then cravings tend to follow, right? As soon as your blood sugar starts to drop, who's not been hungry? You know, I I know I certainly have, yeah. Well, you get to that point where you think, God, I'm just so hungry, the food right now, because otherwise I'm gonna go absolutely bonkers. So those energy dips that come from irregular blood sugar, then cravings follow from those. And one of the things that I think we'll see today a lot is that a lot of this stuff is intertwined and a lot of it interconnects. So, you know, women tend to get up because they've been told they've got to have sort of like quite light breakfast, or they've decided they're gonna fast or they're gonna have low protein for breakfast or whatever it may be, that doesn't help stabilize blood sugar balance. Healthy meals that don't really provide any kind of satisfaction. Again, the healthy is in air quotes, right? When we say healthy, we talk about people's perception of things, so they they put together this plate, but you know, if that's just a load of salad leaves and not very much else, maybe a tiny little bit of protein, that's not really satisfying, and it leaves people sort of like with imbalanced blood sugar uh balance, and then obviously, you know, when this is up and down, we tend to get these two periods that are really critical, sort of like crash points, I guess. One is sort of like 11 o'clockish in the morning, the other one is about 3 pm in the afternoon. Yeah, we've all gone there, haven't we? 3 pm, you're at work and you're thinking, God, you know, I just need something to get me through the last couple of hours before I go home. And what's in front of you is a snack drawer. Because you're working in an office, it's absolutely full of chocolate and crisps and other kind of stuff that is probably not serving either your own personal goals or anything that would help manage blood sugar balance. And so the truth is, if your energy is up and down, your appetite's going to be too, and that is where blood sugar balance comes into this a little bit. So we're just skirting around that a little bit, we'll dive into it a little bit more further on. It's obviously not the whole story, but let's talk about something that is a huge, huge, huge part of the picture, and we're seeing it more and more often that this is often the underlying challenge when it comes to women over 40's health. Let's talk about gut health because I think that's really important. So, Julie, what have you got to say about that?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Oh, yes, gut health. This center of our universe, of our internal universe, right? It drives absolutely everything. And I think we don't give it our our gut, our digestive system, enough credit for all of the work that it does for us. And given our busy lives and the kinds of meals we grab on the go, it's no wonder that we feel the way we do sometimes. A lot of times we'll eat in a hurry or we'll eat something because we think it's healthy, as you were saying, James, and we just don't feel satisfied after our meals uh after we've eaten our meals. Um, that can be from a lot of different things, but oftentimes if our gut isn't healthy, meaning our intestinal tract, the part that does all of the digesting and breaking down and shipping the nutrients off to where they're supposed to go. So if we're not feeling satisfied after our meals, it could be that our gut isn't working optimally. Most of the women we work with today have diets that are pretty low in fiber or at least very low in fiber diversity. And just taking a fiber supplement isn't really the answer. While it's supportive, we have to look at the diversity of the different kinds of fibers that we take in because that feeds all of the important bacteria, the microbiota, in our in our gut. Um, our gut really influences, I mean, hugely influences our appetite and our cravings. Our gut is sending signals out to our body, it's it's helping us produce all of the things that our body needs. And if we're not, if we're not digesting properly, if we've got some leaks in our in our um gut lining, if if we're not processing food the way we need to, it can really have an effect on our health. And you know, we our immune system is about 70% in our gut. So even those times when you're feeling run down and your energy is low, it might not be because you're you need food. It might just be because your immune system is tanked, because your gut health is is off. So you really need to think about it's like watering the garden, it's like fertilizing the garden, right? We want to we want to feed it as much as we feed our body, because really when we're feeding our gut, we are feeding our body. Um, and it so if your gut isn't in a good place, if it's not doing all the right things and it's not functioning optimally, then your appetite signals aren't gonna function optimally either. And it'll be harder to tune into your body to to understand what it what it really needs. And then, you know, on top of that, you think about all the things we're doing in our lives and how much stress affects us. So, James, I'm gonna hand that one over to you because I know it's a favorite topic, our broken record topic.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Shall we dive into these once again? Um, but I mean the truth is, you know, that like I said before, all these things are interrelated in a way, right? So, gut health being at the core of it, you know, your gut health affects your blood sugar balance. As you said, it affects your immune system, it affects your stress levels. We've all heard the term getting butterflies in the tummy, you know, when we're stressed out, we can feel that in our guts, right? Um, and so you know, again, interlinked. What is it? 80-90% of your serotonin, your feel-good hormone, is produced in your digestive tract. And so once the gut's off, everything else is off as well. So let's talk about stress and sleep then. So, yeah, we've said this loads of times before, and I hate to keep banging on the same, singing the same tune again and again and again. But stress is a real challenge for women at this time of life because we know they've got busy lives, and we know that society tells them that they've got to be busier, and we know that adverts that they read tell them that they've got to be better and fitter and healthier and have better skin and have amazing hair and all this other kind of pressure that's in there as well. So that all drives stress, right? And in many of us, high stress, not in everybody, some people's stress totally switches off the hunger signals, but in many of us, stress drives a need, a one, a search for quick energy, and so you're trying to get more and more food in. So lots of people when the stress, you know, stress eating, it's a big thing, isn't it? Lots of people talk about it all the time, and then of course, you've got poor sleep as well, because stress is high generally. If the hormonal changes that happen will affect sleep for a woman at this age as well, and when you've got poor sleep, then you're also not regulating your hunger signals very well, so that increases your hunger. So now we've got stress and we've got sleep playing into things. What do those two what happens when we're tired and we're grumpy? We tend to make bad decisions, not because we want to make bad decisions, but because you know we're tired and grumpy. It's pretty simple, right? Who, when they're feeling off, you're either exhausted or you're stressed a heck, who doesn't make poor choices in their life? Whether that is reaching for something that doesn't serve you from a food point of view, or you're having an extra glass of wine at night, or whatever it may be. And so decision fatigue comes into play when stress and sleep. So that busy life thing is a real challenge for many people, and people talk about it being emotional eating, and really it's not a weakness, emotional eating, often it's about the context of where it's all taking place. So, against that big backdrop of all those stresses that I talked about, is it any wonder that some of us emotionally when we emotionally eat, we tend to grab the fuel that's the sort of like quickest, easiest to get a hold of. So when stress is high, sleep is off, your body's gonna push you towards that fast fuel because that's what it's looking for, it's looking for a way out, yeah, and that's what really the driving of a lot of the cravings that come. So when it comes to hunger, then let's talk about one thing that I find surprises many, many people, but it's absolutely so when you look at it in black and white, it's a real it's a real given, and that's underfueling. How many women women are under-eating from a calorie point of view? Often without realizing it, but often because you know they've been on one of those 140 gazillion diets that women tend to go through in in their lives. So, Julie, talk us a little bit through why underfueling is actually a challenge there when it comes to hunger, when it comes to all the things we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Yeah, 100%. And this is, as you said, it's it's a really surprising thing when when women come to terms with it. As a matter of fact, when one of our recent group calls in our club Fabulous Beyond 40, somebody was saying, I've been um really intentional about portions and the the way I'm eating and filling my plate. And she was surprised at how much more she's eating, but how much less she's craving. Yeah, because she's actually getting the fuel she needs in her meals. And we it it's so counterintuitive because we've been had diets shoved at us. The the stat that we've read most recently is the average woman in her adult lifetime will will go on 126 different diets, which doesn't really leave very much room for not being on a diet. So we have this mentality of I need to skip a meal to make up for something I ate, or I need to to uh restrict myself because I'm gonna go out to dinner later, or because I was quote bad, right? For whatever reason that might be. So we especially with intermittent fasting being such a hot topic, a lot of women's are women are skipping meals and saying, Well, I'm just intermittent fasting. But it needs a lot more structure than that. And that results often in not getting enough protein. And we have to have enough protein. Now, whether you're a vegetarian or an omnivore, whatever it is that you eat, you still need to take in a sufficient amount of protein because your muscles need it, your hormones need it, your brain needs it, your bones need it. You need it to be able to move, and it is the most satiating nutrient. So when your protein levels are good, you aren't going to have those cravings, and your what you've eaten in that meal is going to make you leave you feeling satisfied until the next meal, or is much more likely to than if you're not getting enough protein. So we always say they prioritize protein. And again, that diet mindset is just everywhere, right? And and in the evening, if we are skimping on our meals all day, eating lightly because we're trying to you know lose weight, we're trying to restrict, we're trying to be good, we end up with that rebound hunger at night. And that's where a lot of women's we talk to fall down because they get home and it's like, I just need to eat all the things. And so they go through the pantry, they come in the kitchen and just grab whatever happens to be there. And again, in the evening, that that ends up with grazing and snacking through the the TV shows that that we're watching or whatever it is. And it's it's just it's a natural response, but feed me, right? So we we need to we need to realize that a lot of times it's not that we're eating too much, we're not eating enough earlier in the day to keep our energy stable so that we don't end up with these this roller coaster of cravings and hunger and and eating. And then, as you said, James, being so tempted to just reach for whatever's available. And it one thing I will say, I see a lot of influencers on social media right now talking about it's calories, you have to, you know, calories in, calories out, and we've had sessions, whole sessions about this, but it isn't that because our bodies aren't machines. We keep we don't function in a linear fashion. So it isn't just calories in, calories out, but the truth is because we're so diet-minded as a society, as a as a as a sex, we tend to eat less, um, more times, I think, than we than we eat too much. So that that's that's what we see frequently with the women we work with. So then when you put that all together with our changing physiology, you know, I'm handing, I'm handing this one over to you.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Yeah, well, but I mean before we go into that, the calories in calories out thing, it's interesting that that's come so coming back full circle, isn't it? Everybody's going, oh yeah, yeah. And you know, we can't ignore the fact that laws of thermodynamics exist. There is an element of calories in, calories out that's involved in weight loss and blood sugar management and all the other things that we've talked about. But the actual circumstances and context around it is so much more nuanced, obviously. And even if we were machines, you know, you look at the average car, you put poor quality fuel into it, that car's internal mechanisms over time are going to bung up, and then when you try and put some good fuel into it, it's not gonna work until you've cleaned the internal mechanisms out. So sort of like the analogy actually runs all the way through this to a point. Now, when it comes to midlife physiology that you mentioned, and I realise that I diverted off track there, so let me try and pull it back on. Um, midlife physiology, you know, the key thing there is what happens in midlife is hormonal changes. They happen. That is the way that women are built, yeah. And the key hormone that we all know changes is estrogen, along with progesterone and a few of the other sex hormones, but estrogen is the one that tends to drive most of the symptoms because estrogen is so protective against so many different things, and so it affects your muscle mass, it affects your bone mineral density, affects your insulin sensitivity, which in turn affects your blood sugar balance, it affects your gut health, it affects your appetite signals, and so you've got lots of other challenges as well, and then midlife adds another challenge, which is why we really need to start looking at this in a with a different approach and with different context and more nuance. And it's one of the reasons that gut health comes into this, and it's also one of the reasons why you know quite often you can have two women who've got exact eating exactly the same thing, exactly the same inputs when it comes to sleep or activity or whatever it may be, and the results of that will be very, very different based on what's going on internally, what's going on inside from a gut health perspective, and then if you throw in obviously the lack of uh the drop in estrogen as well, then that affects it even more. So I think we're coming back to this idea then once again that gut health is so so so important, why it's so central to this. So let's dive into what can we do about it, Julie? What are some levers that listeners who are listening and thinking, I recognize some of this stuff. Okay, guys, you know, you don't want me to go on yet another diet. What do you want me to do? So let's talk about what people can do. What are some levers that they can pull, Julie?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Okay, well, we want to focus on the gut first because this is where we're gonna fix a lot of the issues that that women are experiencing. Number one, protein. Get a palm-sized serving of protein, 25 to 30 grams of protein with each meal. And that is each meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, ideally, um, because it's going to stabilize your appetite. It's going to help you stay feeling satisfied for longer, and it's going to feed the things that your body needs. Um, we're gonna make meals more satisfying because the protein helps there, but so do um healthy fats and uh diverse sources of fiber. And we we can do a whole session just on fiber alone because it's so important and there's so many different kinds. But don't just think about, you know, you see all these pre-made meals in the freezer section, light and healthy, right? Again in air quotes. And that isn't necessarily the way you want to think about eating. You don't want to feel like you have a brick in your belly either. But eating the right mixture of things can leave you feeling satisfied without feeling heavy, and it also is going to give you that energy to get through until your next meal. Because if we're eating enough at our meals, we aren't going to need snacking throughout the day, and that's much better for our blood sugar for a whole variety of other reasons. Um, so feeding the gut, you know, that that fiber diversity we talked about, 30 plants a week. And that isn't just fruits and vegetables, by the way. That's also grains and beans and legumes and nuts and seeds. It can be 30 and herbs, yeah. And and mostly plant food. Yeah. Yes, yes. So it's it's a we have a lot of options when it comes to, as we say, 30 plants. And I think that's a an easy thing to get mixed up because people think, oh, vegetables, actually, 30 vegetables in a week. No.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

I was talking to a lady the other day and she said to me, Oh, 30 vegetables, where do they come from? I was like, Well, you know, when you cook a Sunday lunch, what do you have on your Sunday lunch? We'll have potatoes and have some carrots and have some broccoli and have some cauliflower. I was like, Okay, so you've got about five there. You know, what happens if you stick some sweet corn in? As well, she goes, Oh, I like sweet corn, I'll stick that in as well. I said, What about if you sprinkle some herbs on whatever you know meat that you're having when you sit in lunch? Oh, yeah. So suddenly she's got up to like seven, eight in one meal, and she's like, Oh, I thought I didn't like vegetables and I didn't like plant foods. But you know, it's just shows how quick you can actually up the levels if you just want to be a little bit creative and a little bit thinking about it, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Yeah, 100%. 100%. And I I think the other thing is to just be realistic about it. We're talking about small changes, right? Focus on one thing. You don't please don't try to do all of the things we're suggesting all at once because it's a a certain recipe for failure. Just do one small thing at a time, see how that feels, build on it, and don't try to overhaul your whole life at once. It's one of the reasons why diets fail so much, because we're trying to overhaul everything all at the same time. And uh it doesn't it doesn't help us at all. So um have you got some ideas as well?

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Well, I think eating regularly is really important, isn't it? You know, that idea we used to all be fed for years, didn't we? You're like, Grizz, keep your blood sugar balance stable all the way through the day. And really, you're not your blood sugar balance needs to have some swings and roundabouts in it. What it doesn't want, it doesn't want to be too high all the time, it doesn't want to be too low all the time, and it doesn't want the swings and roundabouts to be too violently swinging from one to the other. And so, you know, three balanced meals, allowing yourself to feel a little bit of hunger in between is really really important. Keeping it stable before trying to start to restrict things because stabilization, regularity. I know it's boring to keep saying the same thing, but when you keep doing the same thing, when you're eating at a similar time, your body likes that stability, it likes knowing what's what's coming, doesn't particularly care for massive shocks, and we tend to massively shock it on a regular basis by by various inputs, right? Via what we eat, what we see, what we do, how we spend time, how we manage our stress. Um, and then I think planning's really important, right? Because we all know that things change, and you can set out with the best intentions. Now, some people, I was talking to somebody yesterday about this. She said, I'm a troubleshooter, I like to dive in and work on solutions when things actually go wrong, and that works for some people. I'm an advocate of the opposite. I like a plan, and I like my plan to actually include an element of you know, maybe it's the health and safety person that's latently hiding under me, but I like to have an element of knowing what the risk is, and so what are my actions when that plan goes wrong? Now, in the army and military circumstances and things like that, they call this actions on. So, what action am I gonna take on this event happening? And we need to plan for that kind of stuff. So, yeah, on those, you start off, you've planned your week out, and suddenly Wednesday, you get a late meeting put in. Now, a friend of you invites invites you to go to the theatre, or something happens last minute. That is gonna throw a Wednesday night's meal plan out. So, have you got in the back of your mind already something that can be a quick, easy, simple meal substitute, or a go-to, simple restaurant meal that you can choose, or whatever it may be, but having an element is not it's not just planning and then adhering to that plan, it's planning sort of like how your week's gonna look from a food perspective, but also having an element of what happens when that surprise thing comes in, having your backup plan there as well, I think is is really important. And then sleep and stress, it's amazing how small changes can have really, really big improvements. So, you know, just things like sit down before you have a meal and take 10 deep breaths, so you're not eating in a stressed-out state, you're eating in a more relaxed state, it can have a massive, massive effect. Slowing down when you're eating can have a massive, massive effect. You know, people talk about I want to improve sleep, how much do you get? I get five hours. Well, what does good sleep look like? Well, everybody's told me it should be eight hours. Okay, so you're gonna go from five to eight in one step, it's it's you're never gonna do it, right? So if you're only having five hours sleep, two questions. How do you feel on five hours sleep? And if you feel okay on five hours sleep, I would say don't change anything. But also, if you think you want to improve your sleep, why don't you start by trying to get five hours and 15 minutes or five and a half hours? Yeah, six hours that's a what 15% improvement or something like that in things. That's even one hour is a massive, massive change. So don't think that small improvements don't make a difference because the goal isn't to just sort of like start eating less and changing everything all in one go, it's about making your food and your routine actually work for you. So when those things sort of like line up, then what kind of things do we see shifting? Do you want to take this, Julie? Well, when clients put that stuff together, what what's what what's happening to them? What are the results?

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Well, the their appetite becomes more predictable, which is a huge win for for most of the people we're working with, certainly. And you know, just to that point, we put babies on a feeding schedule. Well, we put small children on a uh regular schedule for their meals and their activities. We put our pets on a regular feeding schedule because we know it's healthier for them and it makes energy and all of the things that that we do in our lives more predictable. So for what uh why we think we don't need to do that as adults is is always a mystery to me. Um yeah, because that some of the boring things are are good actually, because it takes again, it takes that decision fatigue away, so you have more uh brain space for other things. Um when you have fewer cravings, when you have less of that mental noise going on, um, it just everything just feels so much easier. And you're not constantly fighting yourself, you're not constantly fighting your body, you're not constantly feeling that sense of overwhelm. And I think that's one of the biggest results that a lot of our clients certainly experience that wow, this is so much simpler, this is so much easier than what I've been trying to do, right? And that's that's what we want because that makes it doable. So we it isn't about trying to control food, it's about regulating all of those factors that we talked about that are driving the appetite, and that way our body will naturally gravitate toward the things that it wants and needs. We just have to learn how to listen.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Yeah, 100%. So that's the end of this week's pod, then. So if you've been listening to it and recognizing some of yourself in it all, the next step is not another round of guessing or jumping on another diet, it's actually about doing something to reset all those underlying signals that we've been talking about. And that's something that we focus on in our all-new gut health reset program. It's gonna help you improve how your gut is functioning, stabilize your appetite, start getting your energy and hunger working for you instead of against you. Because once those signals start to settle, everything else is gonna get much, much easier. So if you want to check that out, head to guthealthreset.com and, of course, we'll put the link in the show notes before. Uh, you can sign up to a four-week level one course for just £49, which I think is about $70. Last time I calculated it. We also have a level two course for those people who uh have some deeper challenges when it comes to their gut health. You do need to do level one as a prerequisite to level two, so just to so you need to do one and two if you're going to do two. But start off with one, it's a great place to start. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget those usual things that every single person says on the internet. Give us a like, give us a share, or point a friend who needs some support in our direction. We'll see if we can't help you out and we can't help them out. So that's all we have time for this week. We'll see you next time. In the meantime, it's been Julian James from Fabulous Beyond 40. Stay strong, stay fabulous. We'll see you next time. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Bye everyone.