You’ll hear me say it a lot.
The best way to improve your midlife health is to take BABY STEPS to better midlife health.
But what do I really mean?
I clearly remember hitting rock bottom with my health. I was 46 years old and felt about 92 with my aching shoulders and hips.
I remember laying on the sofa late one afternoon knowing that I needed to make dinner for my family but simply not having the energy to get up and walk to the kitchen. Standing left me feeling lightheaded (a classic symptom of adrenal burnout) and I suffered so greatly with sharp spikes of pain in my legs from varicose veins that I would cook with one leg up on the counter, taking turns to rest each leg to relieve the pain and stay standing.
I could not get out of bed in the morning, pulled all of my energy for life from a coffee cup and found it hard to get a full night sleep as my anxiety kept me tired but wired in the late evening and watching the clock at 4am. I had lost my joy.
I craved sugar 100% of the time and beat myself up with unkind thoughts when I ate carbs or chocolate. My energy crashed every day and I did not link my breakfast of a skinny venti latte and baby carrots to my cravings, exhaustion and subsequent carb binge every afternoon. I ate to avoid all fat, bought skimmed organic milk and vegetables and thought I was doing an OK job with my diet.
I had never heard of peri-menopause and had no clue what that meant for my body.
I made an appointment with my doctor only to hear the worst advice for midlife women… “You need to eat less and exercise more!”
Two weeks later, I was sat behind my desk on the back row of the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, on a quest to find out how I could eat to feel like myself again.
The information I learned in school was so enlightening and valuable BUT I instantly felt my anxiety surge as I swung from rock bottom to overwhelm.
How was I going to change everything about my diet and everything I ate so that I could feel healthy again?
This is when I made an amazing discovery about real whole foods! When you get to the root cause of your health issue and use food to fuel your body for health, you can relax and only need to take one baby step at a time.
Let me explain with a bowl of raspberries.
These berries provide nutrition in the form of real food and all of their nutrients are recognized and easily absorbed by the body.
These raspberries provide fibre that help us to poop, our daily detox, and this in turn helps us to remove excess estrogen from the body supporting a reduction in peri-menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats and midlife acne. Our daily poop also supports our liver health, keeps our skin clear and helps to prevent cancer of the colon.
Raspberries contain vitamin C to support your skin and other tissues of the body. Vitamin C is important for immune system health and acts as an anti-oxidant which helps to prevent cancer.
The dark red colour of these berries shows us that they also contain other anti-oxidants called anthocyanins which have powerful anti-cancerous, anti-microbial, anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory and anti-obesity effects on the body.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5613902/The fibre in these berries also helps to support our microbiome, providing food for our healthy bacteria which in turn supports our mood, immune health and hormonal balance.
Raspberries contain phyto-estrogens, plant hormones that mimic the effects of estrogen in a healthy way when they are in our midlife bodies. This supports our mood, vaginal health and libido as we move through peri-menopause and into the estrogen deficiency of menopause. Phyto-estrogens help to prevent breast cancer as these gentle plant based hormones bind with beta estrogen receptors in the body to slow cell growth.
Real whole foods are truly powerful in the body!
Just the one simple step of including a portion of raspberries into your day either from frozen in a smoothie, or fresh on a serving of Energy All Day Granola impacts multiple areas of your health.
Just one baby step, carried out consistently will be transformative for your health.
What my clients hire me for is the support and accountability to stay on that path to health and keep taking those baby steps, one after another, after another.