SPEAKER_00 0:14

So apparently, once you turn 40, your body requires an entirely new instruction manual. You must eat more protein, eat fewer carbs, fast for 16 hours, avoid sugar, eat six small meals, never snack, and somehow get 30 different plants into your diet every single week. And depending on which expert you follow, you're probably doing at least half of that wrong. So today we're tackling the question: what's actually the best diet after 40? And uh, spoiler alert, we're probably going to annoy a few diet evangelists. So, welcome back to Empower Your Menopause, the podcast all about health, happiness, and hormones for women 40 and beyond. I'm Coach Julie Medacy.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

And I'm Coach James Ellis.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

So, in today's episode, let's address something that comes up regularly in discussions we have with women. And the big question from many of them is why does it feel like women need a completely different diet once they hit 40? And why do all these diets we hear about sound like they're the one, I say in air quotes, definitive answer to everyone's problems? Because you'll hear a lot of different professionals in this space tell you that all diets work equally well as long as you follow them. But the reality is they don't, because different eating patterns have different evidence, advantages, and limitations. And the strongest evidence for long-term health doesn't require everyone to follow the same rigid plan, which is exactly in line with the way we coach our clients. So before we pick apart the all of these popular diets, James, what actually changes in midlife that might influence how we eat?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? There's a lot of stuff out there, uh, you know, even a menopause diet these days. And the truth is, you know, there's been tons of studies into loads of various diets. And what you have as an eating plan at a certain time in your life, you know, whatever it may be, I think there was one study that looked at something like 121 different studies and 22,000 participants, and it concluded that yeah, all diets kind of work for a while, and there's not really that much difference between them when it comes to various eating plans. But I think beyond that, it's important to say that you know, 40 is not this massive biological switch that we've kind of been led to believe it to be. It's not like you just go from being this sort of like lean, mean, fat burning machine when you when you're a youngster, and suddenly you know you turn around and you've gained sort of like 20 pounds or 40 kilos or whatever it may be. Um, so change happens gradually, and menopause does affect women differently. So, a couple of things that actually do change that we do know that that happen is that decline in estrogen means that the way body fat is distributed, distributed on a woman's body is slightly different, and more fat tends to accumulate around the abdomen. Now, that is not just a function of declining in estrogen, but it's also a function of stress and cortisol and everything else that goes on with it as well. And then, of course, you've got muscle mass, which declines with age, particularly if you're not doing a lot of resistance training or you're not eating enough protein. That's actually again excessive, but that happens to everybody, right? Salcopenia is just a thing, it's a thing that is associated with aging. You can resist it by doing some strength training and by eating more protein and having a good varied diet. Um, but that's further challenged by the drop in oestrogen as well. And then obviously, as you get older, things like cardiovascular system changes slightly, your bone health changes slightly, your metabolic health changes slightly. That's all a function of declining estrogen as well. So throw into that that your energy needs might change depending on what's going on with your activity levels and body composition, but your metabolism simply doesn't stop working full stop. You know, there are lots of other things that come into play here, but that same old adage still uh holds true that there is an element of calories in, calories out. It's not the whole story when you get to this age, but unless you're you've got at least a slight calorie deficit, it's very, very hard to lose weight. Of course, quality of diet will determine that as well. So, what you're actually eating, you know, nobody's saying that if you eat 2,000 calories of potato chips versus 2,000 calories of a balanced diet, that they're gonna have the same effect on your body. Clearly, they're gonna have very, very different effects. But you know, all things being equal when it comes to diet to food quality, preferences, and whether you can sustain something or not, then that difference in um in your thermogenic equation that sort of like you need to be burning a little bit more than what you're eating to actually shift some weight. The key things to think about there are you know, weight is not equal. So if you are aiming for weight loss, you want it to be fat loss rather than muscle loss, because that's really, really important as well. Losing all your muscle by your body cannibalizing its muscle rather than cannibalizing the fat that you want it to cannibalise is probably counterproductive when it comes to weight loss. So something else there to watch out for. Um but Julie, you know, we get told this a lot, right? Women tell you that they what they did at 30 just doesn't work at 50 anymore. So what else is going on here?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah, it's it's interesting because we are dealing with physiological changes, obviously, through menopause and the drops in estrogen and all the things that you just mentioned, but there are also a lot of changes in our daily life. And when once we're in our 40s and 50s, you know, you may have a lot of different things happening. Maybe you've got a very demanding career, maybe you've you're taking care of aging parents, um, you've got teenagers, you know, you're parenting up and down, maybe you've got grandchildren by now, or even all of the above. And those add demands to your daily life. You if you have disrupted sleep, which could be from stress, it could be from hormonal fluctuations or any of that. Um, if if you're having difficulty managing your stress, your stress levels are elevated, maybe you're taking some medications that have side effects of um weight increases, and just generally reduced activity levels, especially if you work in an office, you know, you're driving a desk all day, you miss a lot of that day-to-day activity that you might have had when you were younger. Those things can not only affect um your body composition, they affect your appetite. They can affect your energy levels, which also, of course, affect your eating habits. Um, and and this is something I find really interesting because most of us eat the same things all the time, and we eat pretty similarly year over year. But as your body's changing physiologically, um, maybe the things that you were eating 10 years ago worked well for your body then, but now the circumstances have changed, maybe your body's needs have changed, and so we have to revisit what it is that's working with the way you're eating and what isn't to find out what your body really needs. And a lot of times it isn't even that your diet is wrong, your eating habits. When I say diet, I mean eating habits, not diet programs. Um, but it could just be that whatever, whatever it is that you're trying to follow is is just not suiting your life. You know, if you're used to in the past you had lots of time to prepare food, you don't have that now, you know, there can be a lot of different factors in there. So um so James, I you know, we talk about eating less, the calorie deficit. Obviously, we have to have that to some extent to lose weight, but is that more important or should we just be thinking about eating differently? What's your take?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, I think it's a mixture of of the two, really. You know, um I was talking to somebody the other day and they were talking about the mum tax, you know, when they're putting food out for their kids or they're buying the kids an ice cream or something like that. It's like having a quick lick of the ice cream before they hand it over to the kids. And so, you know, if you're doing that consistently 10, 15, 20 times a day when you're handing your kids some food, you know, that kind of adds on a significant amount of calories or energy intake that you're probably not even thinking about right off the bat there. So that can be a challenge when it comes to if we're just talking basically, start start off about sort of like eating less and trying to create a calorie deficit. So that is one thing, and then the other thing is I don't know when we got into this idea, and it was probably somewhere about 20 years ago when somebody suddenly decided that to keep our fat burning furnace moving all the time, we had to have six small meals. And the challenge with that is that yeah, that can work for some people, it doesn't work for everybody. What does tend to work for most people is that good old way of eating, which is just three square meals a day and getting used to the hunger between it, but also getting used to what your hunger cues are when you're actually eating, so things like mindful eating, slowing down, making your plate size smaller, swapping hands with your cutlery so you're eating differently, all those kind of things can come into play as well when it comes to sort of like both the signalling that tells you that you're full or not, because if you're eating quickly, which most of us tend to do in this Western society, you know, throw your hands up if you're listening, and you've never once sat your desk cramming down a sandwich that you just bought from the local supermarket while you're trying to answer an email from an angry client, right? We've all been there, we've all done that. But when that happens, because your your head and your your gut aren't talking to each other, then you can end up overeating it. Once again, do that three times a day, you know, over the course of however a week or two weeks, suddenly you've massively overeaten. And I think it's important as well when we talk about these things that we don't want people to get into that sort of like idea of really drilling down into sort of like what they're doing on a daily basis. You really want to take sort of like a 40,000 feet view of your intake and your outtake and what you're doing over the course of you know a week or a month, because that is going to give you much better information than if you know one day you bust whatever it is that you've set yourself as a goal for eating that day by having a dessert or a sweet, which you should still be able to do on a sensible eating path. So lots of different things come into play. So, yes, calories in, calories out are important. I think mindful eating is in is is important, and really, you know, this is not just an age thing, it should be driven by your goals and your needs, and you want to make sure that you know you're not under-eating things like protein, you want to make sure that you've still got a wide range of fruit, vegetables in your diet, so you're getting the full um spectrum of vitamins and minerals that are going to help. And also the other thing that I'd say to add on to all that is that if you just put weight loss aside for one minute, you know, it shouldn't be the only goal that we aim for. Now, I absolutely understand the diet culture that we've been in for the last sort of like 30, 40, 50 years, you know, particularly 70s, 80s, 90s, which is where sort of like women 40 and above would have been born and grown up. It was very much about sort of like looking stick thin, as thin as you could. Curves were out, thin was in, and so you know, that mentality of having to be in calorie restriction, having to under eat, you know, famously I think Kate Moss said, you know, nothing tastes as good as being thin feels. You know, what a miserable and and she was bothered for it at the time, but what a miserable way to live your life where you actually think I can't even eat something because I need to need to need to look thin. So I suppose the thing is, you know, the challenge is let's try and think about other things as well. Let's think about strength, let's think about health, let's think about our energy and and uh and let's think about quality of life, but more importantly, let's think about enjoyment as well, right? Because nobody wants a miserable life where all you're gonna do is eat a lettuce leaf and some broccoli for the rest of your life. It's absolutely mind-numbingly dull, boring, not a way to leave and it's to live, and it's probably gonna lead to greater health, ill health anyway. So I suppose you know, this is the thing that maybe confuses many people. You know, if the fundamentals haven't completely changed, because yes, there are other things that play in, but the basic tenants of weight loss are still there for many of us. You know, why do so many diets claim to be the answer for women over 40? So let's go in and have a look at a few of the big ones. And to do this, Julie, I'm just gonna hand back to you so you can go through them.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Sure. And I I think the the place to start here is looking at these popular diets and decide what does the evidence actually tell us? Because, you know, you can go on a Twinkies diet, and there isn't very much science to back that up as a healthy way to lose weight. Um, the first one is Mediterranean style eating. This is a big one, uh, gets lots of attention, but unlike a lot of the fashionable, trendy diets, there's actually a substantial body of research behind it. So, what does Mediterranean eating actually mean? James, you grew up in Greece, so this one is definitely in your wheelhouse.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

It is, and I mean I like the Mediterranean diet for several reasons. Um, you know, not only the fact that I was bought up in Greece, not only for the fact that the food tends to be really nice, you know, whether you do a Spanish version of it, a southern French version of it, an Italian version of it, a Greek version of it, a Turkish version of it, they all prioritize things like flavour, things like quality of food, um, and also the eating experience as well. That thing I was talking about before, whereby you're grabbing the sandwich and it at your desk, that is not part of the Mediterranean culture. It's more about sort of like long, lazy lunches where you can possibly get them in. So there's there's a whole lifestyle element around the Mediterranean diet as well that I think has a lot of merit. But when it comes to what you're actually eating, and it's interesting we took chose the Mediterranean diet first because I hate this idea as having to distinguish between the word diet, which in Greece is basic in Greek, where it comes from, the it just means the food that that you eat. We've come to sort of like uh associate the word diet with sort of like it's got to be this really restrictive sort of like food style, whatever it may be. And it's a real shame that the term's been been hijacked because you can't actually use it without people's minds going to that sort of like calorie restriction. But just going back to the Mediterranean diet, then so a lot of vegetables, lots of fruits, lots of legumes, whole grains, nuts, olive oil, fish, lean protein, um, super strong evidence for all kinds of different things, you know, cardiovascular health, bone health, um uh longevity, you know, two of the famed blue zones, the areas where people live longest in the world are in the Mediterranean. Um, and also it's a dietary sort of like pattern rather than this rigid set of rules. So, you know, grow local, eat local, eat seasonal. Um you can adapt it a little bit from that, but they're sort of like the main things, right? So vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts, olive oil, fish. When you do get things like bread and pasta on the menu, they tend to be sort of like made from uh single grain uh wheat from one farm, old origin, old stock, not this mass, sort of like produced wheat that you get elsewhere that is almost sort of like genetically modified to within an inch of its life. The slow culture that exists in the cooking as well also is replicated in that kind of thing. So breads will be created from a sourdough starter. And in Greece, they don't even distinguish sourdough bread because they think, why would I be using commercial yeast unless I'm producing that horrible spongy sandwich toast you get in a plastic bag? You know, if you're buying from a bakery, it's automatically you know done from a live culture, and so yeah, much more in line with kind of where we kind of direct clients to go, I suppose. Um, so it doesn't automatically mean eating perfectly, it means eating well, it means enjoying food. Um, doesn't really involve expensive ingredients or elaborate cooking. I was talking to a client the other day, they'd just come back from uh a trip to Spain, to Madrid, and they went to a restaurant and they were literally served a dish of tomatoes wristled in olive oil and said they were the best tomatoes they ever tasted in their life because there were alum tomatoes, there were different colours, different flavours, a real pungent taste. You know, just literally plucked from you know, I assume the tomato vines that morning. So it doesn't need necessarily a load of elaborate um cooking. Um, I suppose protein is the one area where it can be challenged a little bit. You might need to have a bit more attention to it. But you know, you are getting a lot, a lot of plant foods in there that have have protein based as well, like all those sort of like legumes and whole grains and nuts and things like that. Really good fats, obviously, for them the olive oil and the fish. So, yeah, it's um it's pretty good, right? And and mostly uh adaptable, yeah. So yeah, let's talk about um low carbon keto, then, because I think this is the next one on our list, right? Um yeah, apparently following fats in the 70s and 80s, carbs are now responsible for just about every single nutritional disaster uh since bread was first it first invented. So um why don't you talk us through these then, Julie, a little bit? Low carbon keto, what's your take on them?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Sure. And you know, people find these approaches appealing because a lot of folks find that reducing refined carbohydrates helps them better manage their appetite or maybe even simplify their food choices. Um, a lot of the carbs we eat, and when I'm talking about starchy carbohydrates, we we end up with what I call the whites, white sugar, white flour. You know, we look at pasta and bread, it's all that stuff that's heavily processed and in a package, and all the nutritional wonderful things that are contained in those vitamins, minerals, um, fiber, are all just completely processed out. So they tend to be very bloating, they can um raise your blood sugar levels, they're there, they can be difficult on your digestion depending on how much of them you eat. So a lot of women find that reducing those things can help them feel better and it helps them manage their appetite and it supports weight loss for quite a lot of people, because the things that those ingredients tend to be in are also high in other things that we don't necessarily want to be eating. Um you have to bear in mind is that a lot of that style of eating can be helping with your weight mainly because we're reducing a bit of inflammation. You've when you're not having those processed carbohydrates, you tend to be eating more whole foods and lower calories, uh lower caloric intake. So you can lose a lot of water weight, which we say, or or inflammation when you're going very low carbohydrate. But, you know, it isn't necessary for weight loss or metabolic health. Some people find that they get, I think they call it the keto flu, because you start to um your body has to adjust to not having that carbohydrate intake. So you can get headaches and nausea if you go too far too fast. Um, so cutting cutting and cutting carbohydrate-rich foods just across the board can end up decreasing the dietary variety that you get to have. It's it's less interesting after a while, it's easier to get tired of it faster, and it reduces your fiber intake. So you may find that without enough carbohydrates with whole fiber, you end up getting um really constipated from that. So that can be a little bit challenging for some people. Long-term adherence can be difficult because you know, everywhere you go, you know, you go out to dinner, you're gonna get a breadbasket or a side dish of rice or um, you know, chips on the table, um tortilla chips on the table at Mexican restaurants, and they're really hard to resist. So a lot of times it's hard to harder for some people to maintain. It requires a little more planning, I should say. Um, and people who are using glucose lowering medications specifically may need to get some proper medical supervision here when you're substantially reducing your carbohydrates because blood sugar balance is really important. So, you know, I don't know that it's that carbohydrates are necessarily the problem, um, or that we're confusing highly processed foods with an entire micronutrient group, um, you know, because this is or macronutrient group, because this is that's really important. You know, read eliminating food groups isn't necessarily the best nutritional approach. Now it can be useful for some people. I find I do better with a lower starch in my diet, but I don't ever eliminate carbohydrates completely. Who'd want that kind of sadness in their life? Right? Yeah, and then And then we've got uh intermittent fasting next, which I think is really interesting because it's promoted like it's has some magical power over over menopause hormones and and belly fat. But but uh is that what the evidence actually shows? What do you think what do you think? You're our research guru here.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Well, intermittent fasting is an interesting term because it's like a contradiction in terms, really, right? Fasting means not eating at all, so doing it intermittently kind of seems like an eating plan to me, but you know, I suppose the the the better term for it really is time-restricted eating. I think that is much more um much more manageable, and there are various different sort like regimes, and they're based on splitting the 24-hour clock into how many hours you eat and how many hours you don't. So at the very very extreme end, it might be a 420 or a 24, depending on which way what you might see in the literature, depending on which way the researchers have done it, uh, which would normally be four hours of eating, 20 hours of not eating. You can have a 618, you can have a 1410, you can have a 1212, and 1212 tends to be the one that I think seems relatively in tune with the way that our bodies have evolved over the years. So you think our ancestors before the advent of electricity, before the advent of food being everywhere possible, uh, most people would have sort of had their first meal when they got up in the morning and their last meal when they went to bed at night. And if you think that you know, unless you're at the extreme north or the extreme south of the world, in that band that's around the middle, that tends to be something around like six till six or seven till seven, depending on the time of the year. And so that's quite a nice way of doing it, I think, because what it tends to do is it still gives you your three square meals during the day and give you 12 hours for your gut to just reset and come back to it. Now, when it comes to calories and when it comes to weight loss, like many of these diets, the key tends not to be in what's actually involved in the diet, but the fact that they reduce the amount of energy that you take, right? Because if you do a high-protein diet, so you're eating tons of protein, you're not eating very many carbs, you've cut a whole food group there that is gonna give you quite a lot of energy during the course of the day. So you cut a whole food group out. Surprise, surprise, your calorific intake drops, so your energy intake drops, and so you end up losing weight. It's exactly the same with time restricted eating. You know, if you spend 20 hours a day not eating, how much food can you eat in the four hours that you're allowed to eat that are going to get you back up to you know the nutritional adequacy that a full-blown adult needs? The interesting thing about the time restricted eating is like you mentioned before, you know, it's it's been promoted as sort of like uniquely fixing all sorts of like menopausal hormones and belly fat and all that kind of stuff. That goes well beyond any of the evidence, right? So it's worth noticing that once again, individual response is important. The fasting schedules are going to determine the intermittent the uh the individual response, and so it can be a real mindfield to try and work it out because your friend says to you, Oh, I'm doing instant fasting, they don't tell you what the regime is, they're doing a 1014, and suddenly you go in and try and smash a 2040, you've got a different metabolism, you've got a different eating pattern, the results are going to be massively different. So people I think tend to find this easy to adhere to because there are less actual rules around it, because the main rules are can I eat in what can I eat in this time period. You know, there aren't many intermittent fasting diets that sort of like start giving you whole food groups to remove as well. In fact, um there's some very variations of it like the um the 5-2 diet, which was popular a few years ago, where you know on the days that you can eat you can pretty much eat what you want as long as you just on the days that you can't eat restrict it to I think it was less than 600 calories on the two days when you when you couldn't eat. Um so people who struggle with it um are people who already have an irregular schedule, you know, if you shift worker or something like that, that can be can be difficult. If your sleep's not great, if you're the kind of person who has difficulty eating enough, and I know that that sound sounds like a contradiction in terms while we're talking about a weight loss, um, what the best diet for weight loss is, but there are people who actually find it hard to eat enough calories, and there are also a number of people who uh inadvertently eat a lot less than what they should be doing for their energy needs as well. Um it can be difficult as well if you're trying to get adequate protein and a good balance in because reducing the window can be quite quite difficult. I think it's it's it's probably a bit of a challenge for people who have some kind of disordered eating, and you know, let's qualify that the disordered eating and eating disorders aren't exactly the same thing, they're kind of adjacent, but they're not the same. So if you've already got disordered eating, you know, adding yet another food rule in can be um can be a challenge. So I I guess the the key thing to think about here is if you really find fasting convenient and you are getting you know adequate food intake for your energy and you've still got a relatively good balance, there's no reason um you shouldn't do it. But I suppose the question is at what point does just having it what could potentially be a useful structure just become yet another restrictive rule? And one of the challenges I think that we do find amongst people is that it's the restrictive rules that have kind of messed up our modern thinking about food, right? Not just around diet, but around all kinds of things, you know. Yeah, yeah. I heard uh a good little line today just talking about restrictive things. You know, I'm sure that most people listening to this podcast would have been told when they were kids, you know, you've got to eat everything on your plate, you know, you're not allowed to waste food. Yeah. What would the starving people in Africa say if you're throwing food away? Um I mean the truth is, you know, if you've got food left on your plate and you're not hungry and you're still eating it, and you don't put it in the bin or the garbage, then you're becoming the garbage or you're becoming the bin yourself, yeah, because all you're doing is disposing of that food so it's not on your not on your plate. And if that is leading to you overeating, then that's then that's a a challenge. So shall we move off of meal timing then and and restrictions? Because I went on a bit of a rant there, I realize. And let's get plant-based and vegetarian eating, Julie.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Yeah, so plant-based and vegetarian eating can mean a lot of different things. It can mean eating more vegetables to completely eliminating animal products. I mean, I've seen people who say they're vegetarians and they still eat fish, or people who are vegetarians and they still have dairy and eggs. Um, so you know, depending on what uh what extent vegetarianism or plant-based eating is to you, it's going to look a little bit different. But plant-rich diets are great because they're going to give you plenty of fiber, they're really good for your cardiovascular health. Um, and when you're talking about plant-based eating, especially when we get into the vegan end of which is the extreme end of plant-based eating, they can still be nutritionally adequate when they're appropriately planned. And I just want to emphasize that because they do need to be more carefully planned so that you get adequate protein, because that's something that can be missing from vegetarian-based diets, especially if no animal products are being consumed. Um, strict vegan diets also are missing important sources of vitamin B12, iron, calcium, and some possibly some other nutrients as well. So it can be really a really healthy way to eat. We emphasize getting more plants into our diet, um, you know, but eating eating animal products doesn't mean that you have to have a massive platter's worth of animal products at every meal. So, so it depends on your approach. Um, because a lot of vegetarian and vegan diets can use substitute foods, right? So these are still heavily processed. So you've got you get tofu burgers and tofu hot dogs and vegetarian um turkey. I've seen tofu in in the States that they sell at Thanksgiving time.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Fake bacon, bacon.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, yeah. So so depending on what you're eating, it isn't necessarily uh virtuous, let's just say. So it the same rule applies of well, rule, I hate to use that word, but the same philosophy applies that that be careful of the number of processed foods that that you let in. And it a lot of it's about personal choice, right? Because people may be doing it for health reasons, some people may be doing it because they have environmental concerns or ethical concerns, it might be a cultural issue or just food preferences. I know I I have some friends who just don't like the taste of meat and it doesn't sit well with their body. So all of those things are going to influence your choices. So you don't have to become a vegan or a strict vegetarian for just to benefit from eating more plants, whatever your dietary approach is, you can always eat more plants, and that's that's a good thing. And again, you don't always have to eat meat to meet your nutritional needs, just want to take a closer look at where you are actually getting your protein from. So um, yeah, that's what I think about vegetarian diets.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Excellent. So um quick closing question then. If two women are eating completely different diets and both are meeting their nutritional needs and supporting their health, who's doing it wrong?

SPEAKER_00 32:28

I would say probably neither. Because if you're meeting your nutritional needs and you're supporting your health, who's to say which way is right or wrong? Your body's different from another person, your lifestyle is different from another person, your health and genetics are different from another person. So, you know, I would say neither one is doing it wrong, and I know that's a little inconvenient for those who are trying to sell us their one perfect diet program. But that's, you know, that's really the the point of us going through all of these. Instead of asking which diet has the best name or the most enthusiastic followers or the best format or whatever, maybe we should be asking what all the what all of these approaches need to get right. And those are the basics adequate protein intake, plenty of plants, lots of hydration, you know, colors, lots of fiber, good minerals and vitamins and other nutrients in your body. So um that's what it's that's what matters for for getting it right. And I say right in air quotes because that's a bit of a strange term.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah. So let's go on to talk a little bit more about what matters then, uh, rather than the name of your diet. But before we go into that, let's just take a quick little break. Hey, it's James here. I'm just interrupting the pod for a moment. At Fabulous Beyond 40 coaching, Julie and I are on a mission to help as many women over 40 as we possibly can as they navigate midlife, the menopause transition, so they can feel more like themselves again. And while we offer paid coaching programs, we also put out loads of free advice, including this very podcast. So we don't take advertising on here, but we know that everyone might not want or be in a position right now to invest in coaching, and that's absolutely fine. But there's one thing that you can do that won't cost you a penny, but it would mean the world to us, and that is help us spread the word. So if you enjoy the podcast, please give us a follow, leave a review, share an episode, drop a comment, better still, tell a friend who you think really might benefit from listening. Because the more women we reach, the more women we can help. And that's really what it's all about. So that's enough from me. Let's get back to today's episode. So, welcome back to Empower Your Menopause, the podcast where we talk about all things health, hormones, and happiness for women over 40. It's James and Julie here again. Um, so here's a question then that we asked before the break. What are the foundations that matter regardless of whether someone eats Mediterranean, vegetarian, lower carb, Atkins, whatever it may be, or something else? So you touched on this before, Julie. You know, it's enough protein, it's uh important for maintaining muscle, recovery, preserving your physical function, fibre and plant foods, really, really important. You need to support your digestion, your cardiometabolic health, lots of fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and all that kind of stuff, and then adequate energy and nutrients. And you know, eating a little bit less is important, but you also need to have enough for your energy needs and nutrients, right? So, Julie, if a woman comes to you and she's feeling completely overwhelmed by conflicting nutrition advice, where do you start?

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Actually, we don't usually start with food, which seems like a strange thing for nutritionists and health coaches. But the first thing we need to look at is, you know, what do you enjoy and what's practical for your life? I mean, if you go on some program and you absolutely hate the food, or you can't afford it, or it requires hours of meal planning or meal preparation and planning that you don't have time for, then the plan isn't going to work. It doesn't matter how amazing it is. Um, your family circumstances, cultural preferences, do you travel? What's your work schedule like? You know, those things all make a big difference. And then we have to think about how can healthy eating be flexible and fit into your life? Healthy eating isn't uh it's a way of life, but it isn't necessarily a restrictive way of life. You don't have to give up everything you enjoy or be what people say, I was good today, right? In air quotes. I was I ate perfectly today in air quotes, because what does what does that mean? Did you enjoy what you ate? Um, you know, did you did you sit down and and just savor it and enjoy the company? And and another thing that we'll look at is consistency. We don't need a hundred percent of anything we do, and that's just not realistic given most people's lifestyles. And rather than always starting and abandoning restrictive plans, which are that that pattern of dieting is so much more disruptive than just making smaller, sustainable improvements. We all want the quick fix, right? We all want to see instant results, but it's just it's not going to be something that lasts for you. And if you want to live that healthy life, when you're 60, 70, 80, 90, you know, however long you want to live, being able to do some small things consistently is going to go a lot further than trying to do some massive thing and stopping after after a week or two. So that's um, you know, abandoning these plans is is probably more damaging than just taking a tiny, tiny step forward. Um, yeah. So, and sometimes we forget to look at what we're already doing well, you know, celebrating the wins and finding look at what we're doing well. How can we expand on that? How can we do more of that? How can we translate those skills that help us do those things well into other areas of our lives where we might be struggling? So, you know, we see we and we see things to this to this end, we see things a lot of the times, like women come to us and they're just absolutely obsessing over, you know, should I eat breakfast at seven in the morning or should I eat it at 11 in the morning, you know, if I'm intermittent fasting, or what does that mean? You know, when you're barely getting enough protein or vegetables into your diet to begin with. Um so so how much do you think the diet industry distracts people from the basics?

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Oh, I mean, massively. It's um it's crazy, right? And people do need to go back to the basics. So, you know, if we've convinced you of anything today, let's have a look about what those basics might look like. So you can stop searching for the next miracle diet um and maybe find somewhere to begin. So let's talk about sort of like where should you start then when you when you're looking at your food intake? What can you do this week without embarking on yet another massive complete dietary overhaul? So I'd say there are definitely three starting questions that I'd be asking myself if I was looking to lose weight. The first one is what am I actually trying to achieve by going on a certain diet? Is it weight management? Do I want better blood glucose control? Am I looking to improve my cardiovascular health? You know, do I also want to be strong, or do I just want to be confident about what my food might be? And you know, all those kind of things might call for different priorities. I think number two is ask yourself what's already working, what habits do you have that are worth keeping rather than assuming you just need to chuck everything out and start again? And that is one of the challenges, is that very often when people go on one of these highly structured diets, they're changing just about everything in one go. And that changing everything in one go is one thing that we know it it sets people up for failure because it's so hard when you're changing everything to maintain it, your initial enthusiasm to make those changes only lasts so long. We see this multiple time and time again. People trying to change too much. So, what's already working is is the next question, then. And then the third question is what's a change that you could make that you could realistically maintain? So, could it be adding a portion of protein to breakfast, particularly if you're one of those people who at the moment is just rushing out of the house with a slice of toast in your hand as you jump in the car to drive to the office, or your breakfast is just like a bowl of cereal or something like that? So that might be one thing you might want to do. You might want to think about adding more fibre-rich foods to meals. We know that fibre helps with hunger, we know that it helps with digestion, we know that it helps with feelings of fullness. But I think having a practical lunch instead of just either regularly skipping it or just diving in. I I really think it's key that those three meals a day with an adequate break in between them so you can get in touch with your hunger, hormones, and the way that your body's regulating itself is really, really important. So many of us skip lunch. You know, if you skip lunch, what tends to happen? You spend almost most people spend almost all day with no food intake at all. By the time they get home, they're absolutely starving. What is the quickest and easiest source of food? I can guarantee you it's lying in the snack drawer, and it'll be potato chips or chocolate or something along those lines. Um and then trying to look at the balance of your meals as well. So we talk about this a lot with our clients. You know, we use hand sizes to sort of like gauge what's on your plate, so palmic protein, uh cupped hand of starchy carbs, a fist of veggies, a thumb of um fats, and then work on those in multiples depending on you know how actually active you are. And that's kind of like the kind of things that we're talking about. So really just to recap, then think about what you're trying to achieve. Think about what's already working, don't throw the good habits out just because a new diet has told you to do that, and then think about things you can change gradually over time that you can actually maintain. And the truth is weight loss doesn't require a good diet more than anything. Right, a good diet. I say that using the other version of the word rather than you know, good eating plan. It doesn't require yet another diet. What it requires more than anything else is good habits applied consistently without them having to be massive, and you will find that the weight tends tends to come off. So, Julie, let's wrap it up there then, because we've run a bit long this week because I know it's something that we're both passionate about.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Yeah. Uh I I would just say, you know, summing up, if you struggle with a diet plan or it didn't work for you, it's the diet plan that failed you. It didn't suit you. So don't beat yourself up over that. Get rid of that self-judgment. I know that's sometimes easier said than done, but diets are designed to fail. Um, you don't need to prove your commitment to your health or to losing weight by following the most restrictive plan you can find, right? Just relax a little bit but try to make it as practical as possible, but take those small steps and do them consistently rather than trying to do these sweeping changes. And I think an important piece is just because somebody something worked well for somebody you know doesn't mean it's necessarily the best choice for your own health, your personal preferences, or your life circumstances. So when you start by understanding your own needs rather than copying somebody else's, you're much more likely to be successful. And of course, of course, figuring out what's right for you can be challenging when you've got years of conflicting advice rattling around in your head. And uh that's one of the reasons that we offer individual coaching.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

Absolutely. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking that's all very well and good, but I still don't know what's right for me, we're happy to have a conversation with you. We offer a free 20-minute introductory call where we can talk about what you're struggling with, what you'd like to change, and whether working together one-to-one might be a good fit for you. There's absolutely no obligation to sign up to anything, you can just join us for a little chat. We love chatting to people. We don't believe in cookie cutter and meal plans. We're certainly not going to tell every woman over 40 to follow exactly the same diet. So the link to booking for that is in the show notes. Uh so please take it up and join us. Aside from that, the other thing that I would say is a little reminder you know, we don't put ads on this podcast. We love giving things away for free as much as possible, as much for information as we can. If you're not ready at this point in time to become a client with us, one of the things that can really help us is by spreading the word. So if you like this podcast, if you like listening to us, like it, share it, pass it on to your friends, help us spread the word so we can continue to help as many people as possible. Julie.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

Yeah, so just remember the best approach is the one that's going to support your health, it suits your life, and it gives you something that you can sustain. And sometimes having somebody help you work that out is what makes all the difference. It did for me personally. I know James has a similar story. So we hope to hear from you. Uh, jump on and book that free call. There's no pressure. Um, and I'd just like to say thanks for joining us for another episode of Empower Your Menopause, episode 101. Um, we've been coaches James and Julie of Fabulous Beyond 40, and we're here to remind you to stay strong, stay fabulous, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Bye, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Bye.