00:03
Hey there. I'm Sarah McLachlan. Thanks for joining me on the Chaos To Calm podcast, a podcast designed for women over 40 who think that changing hormones might be messing with their mood, metabolism and energy and want to change that in a healthy, sustainable and permanent way. Each episode we'll explore topics related to health and wellness for women in their 40s like what the heck is happening to your hormones, what to do about it with nutrition, lifestyle and stress management, and inspiring conversations with guests sharing their insights and tips on how to live your best life in your 40s and beyond. So if you're feeling like you're in the midst of a hormonal storm, and don't want perimenopause to be horrific, then join me on chaos to calm as I share with you how to make it to menopause without it wrecking your relationships and life.
00:59
Hello, and welcome to the chaos to calm podcast where we discuss how to master the chaos of changing hormones, mood, metabolism and energy in your 40s and beyond. I am your host Sarah, the perimenopause naturopath and I a big hearty welcome to episode number seven, where we're going to discuss the 10 Things That I Had Rrong About My Health in my 40s. I wonder how many of these you'll be able to relate to as we go through today. So I'm going to start hit it hard. Number one, over exercising. You know, I was kind of really flogging myself at one point in time, they're looking for that high intensity and smashing it out on the exercise bike we had at home, racing up the hills. And yeah, really smashing myself there. But actually over exercising can harm your health, especially in your 40s because it can contribute to weight gain. It's actually a stress or it increases the stress or increases cortisol and adrenaline, which increases your blood sugar level. And insulin puts you into fat storage mode. Oh, given that most of us are trying to exercise hard to lose weight. That's kind of really depressing, isn't it. So moving your body getting stronger building muscle mass, super important. But over exercising also puts unnecessary stress on your body, on your joints and leads to injury and inflammation which also influences your blood sugar levels and insulin there as well. And it can make your perimenopause symptoms worse. So we're going to change out that and get rid of the over exercising. I actually asked my clients to not exercise for the first few weeks of their program time with me. So you don't have to exercise heavily to lose weight at all.
02:50
So another thing I had wrong was fasting or skipping meals. And actually, I was skipping meals at one point because it was so difficult to everything was making me angry, I was reacting to like all sorts of stuff. And it will vary from day to day. I know a lot of women feel that too, in perimenopause, and that's because of the way estrogen impacts your immune cells. But yeah, I was skipping meals as well which is like a danger zone or put your blood sugar levels on a roller coaster and insulin as well. So it messes with your hormones, your female hormones, and really makes it hard for you just to show up and be the person you want to be. Because you’re hungry all the time. So I class fasting or the way a lot of people do fasting in the skipping meals category. And I feel like it's in me to do another session on why intermittent fasting isn't great for women in their 40s. But needless to say it's also a stressor for your body. It messes with your blood sugar levels, insulin, putting you in fat storage mode again, but also impacts your female hormones and just makes you more likely to be irritable and and agitated and overwhelmed.
04:16
Number three, coffee before breakfast. Hands up who's smashing down a coffee in the morning because they don't have time for breakfast before they race off into their day and dropping kids off or going to work. Yeah, I see you practice lots of you there. Maybe you wake up and you don't feel super hungry. So you just have a coffee, or maybe you're fasting so you're going to use coffee to suppress that appetite and get you through to your eating window. You've probably got a sense a theme for me I my attitude towards intermittent fasting and how it's done by how it's recommended people do it anyway. So drinking coffee on an empty stomach can increase your cortisol levels, increase anxiety, increased stress in your body and disrupt your digestion suppresses you appetite girl, you're not going to have enough nutrients in your day. If you are not eating breakfast, it's really important to nourish your body with a healthy breakfast doesn't have to be a huge or grand affair. Gosh, just put some yogurt in your bowl and put some fruit in there and eat that. And then have your coffee. Please don't be like I was an even as a naturopath, I was doing these things. And I know I'm not the only naturopath in town that's doing those as well. But if you just make that simple switch and take your brekkie and put it before your coffee, well, you'll find you'll find yourself mid afternoon feeling like a new woman.
05:39
So number five, ignoring self care. Self care is our long term stress resilience builder. It's our stress release thing as well. And it can be tempting to go to self comfort, like junk food or alcohol, but they can worsen your symptoms, and self care, again, not grand gestures. But it's those small simple things, eating three meals a day balancing for protein, fats and carbs. And taking some time out going to bed early, taking vitamins, whatever. That's true self care. It's not all many peds and massages, friends. So, that was something I wasn't doing because I felt like I didn't have time for it. What I now think of is if when I hear myself saying I don't have time for it, I switch in my head and say, That's not a priority for me. And then reality really strikes because when you're saying that it's not a priority for you to look after yourself? Well, it's pretty sad, isn't it? That we don't think of ourselves as a priority. And yet so many people rely on us and need us to show up in our best possible form.
06:48
All right, I've lost track of numbers here. 1,2,3, self care was actually number four. Number five is too many treats. Now this falls into the category of self comfort, which is a short term stress relief strategy. But it doesn't move us towards our health goals. Not generally speaking, because self comfort is things like why chocolate sweet treats all those deliciously tempting ways I should put chips in there too. Hot or cold, those salty, crunchy deliciousness. And they're really tempting to use to relieve stress, but ultimately that they don't work towards your long term health goals. They don't help support your body during this fluctuations of hormones. I really want to talk here about the cultural phenomenon of the mummy wine culture, which really promotes the idea that drinking wine or drinking alcohol is an acceptable way to cope with the stressors of motherhood, you know, you've earned it, you deserve it. It's been a hard day. It's really harmful because it normalizes excessive drinking, you might only have one or two. But if you're having that every day of the week, then that is harmful to your body and your hormones. Also, it normalizes the idea that we need to suppress our emotions and how we're feeling.
08:14
Conceal don't feel. We were just singing the song to frozen before my daughter Maeve and I. Yeah, that's exactly the message that she was given. And that's the message we're constantly given out. And let's change that for ourselves and for our kids as well. It's okay to have feelings, it's okay to feel them. If we don't feel the bad, are the less than awesome. How will we even be able to recognize and enjoy the good times and emotions we've got. And the reality is probably 50% of life is not all sunshine and lollipops. It might be really crappy. But that's okay. And sometimes it might be awesome. But there might be icky bits or nice bits around in that too. It's, it's possible to have both things happening at the same time, good and bad. They're together. So let's work to get rid of you know, let's work against that mummy drinking culture there. And I just want to say that excessive or that more that constant small doses of alcohol is can be especially harmful during perimenopause because your body's already struggling to adapt to changing hormone levels. Your livers already busy working on that. And then you're adding in alcohol there as well. So it's going to be busy dealing with the alcohol which your liver and your body prioritize because it is a toxin and less, less focusing on your hormones. So when you drink alcohol, and you drink small amounts of it consistently, you might notice things like your hot flushes, night sweats, mood swings, and insomnia are going to be more frequent you're going to you might go to sleep easier or quicker but you're going to have a crappy sleep. I am sorry, I know, I am a Grinch sometimes, but I might, you know, I have your best interest at heart, it was something I used to do, you know, as well. And some things you just need to break up with in that when it's hard.
10:18
So let's talk about number six, being over scheduled to busy, modern motherhood. Just, it's so busy. It's a 24/7 culture. I know I've talked about this before. But being over scheduled and too busy is a stress or it's maybe you know, not a financial or business deadline. But it is a stressor. It does trigger that stress response in your body. And so it can increase things like hot flashes, sweats and mood swings as well. And weight gain because cortisol is increasing when the body is responding to a stressor. So, yeah, thinking about what you're saying yes and no to is really important. Rest and recharging, will likely improve your productivity. So in this culture, where we're focused on productivity, and making money being the Mecca, what we're all striving to do, you know, rest and relaxation is not valued, because it doesn't make dollars in a capitalist society. But you can't you're not a machine, we're not Fembot we can't just keep going on and on an on 24/7 without breaking down, we will break down. And so rest and relaxation, go to bed a bit earlier. Say no to some things if you really, you know, if it's not a heart sparking joy, yes. Then say no, they will feel hard. But you and you need to practice but I know you can do it, I believe in you.
11:50
So let's talk on to number seven, the thing that I was doing wrong in my 40s for my health calorie restriction. Now, I just calorie restriction is just old science from 1896. It hasn't changed since then. The only winners from calorie counting is junk food. So just leave that crap at the door. Just drop it, don't do it anymore. It doesn't reflect how our body uses the nutrients from the foods that we eat. And yeah, as I said, the only the only winners is junk food. Restricting calories can and will actually trigger cravings make it hard to stick to a healthy eating plan, you will likely lose muscle mass freaking your body out and driving and they will drive you to eat and binge eat. That's why you Yo-yo on when you're on a calorie, restrictive diet might be fine for a while. And then your body just makes you go mad and eat more food and more food until you get your muscle mass back up to where it likes it. So please don't do that. Just get rid of calories. And just not not worthwhile, not with your attention.
13:00
So number eight is over eating. Yeah, even including vegetables. And this is the thing we might think oh yeah, we got to eat all these mountains and buckets of veggies each day. But even eating healthy foods, even like vegetables can lead to weight gain and disrupt your hormone balance there as well. Especially if they're not the optimal foods for you as well. So that this some things like tomatoes don't work well for a lot of people or maybe there's some other foods that you eat that you know really are your kryptonite and give you joint pain or some really strong reaction in your body. We do need to address the underlying cause of why you know if it's bloating or something like that. Introduce look after your gut health but yeah, over eating veggies and stuff like that can was something that I was doing a lot there as well. Especially the starchy ones eating on the run I know you're always smoothie lovers, smashing him down on your run to drop kids off and go to work. We do have a lot on I hear you I acknowledge that his career family social lives all of that was really important to sit down and eat your meals instead of eating on the go and I know you're sitting down in the car that does not count as sitting down and eating is it is an on the go meal. So an eating while you're distracted or rushing, you're in fight or flight mode you're not in rest or digest mode. So guess what, you're less likely to break down and absorb the nutrients and use them you can also eat more than you want because you're not queued in and listening to your your body's signs and signals that it's getting full. And yeah, it'd be more likely to get bloated and reflux and those kinds of symptoms because your digestive system isn't focused, or your body's not focused on digesting foods. So your enzymes, your acids that help you break down food in lower levels, their last point, the thing that I did wrong in my 40s, for my health, very low carb, keto or even low carb.
15:20
So while low carb diets can be effective for weight loss, yes, it's true, they may not be the best approach for most women in their 40s. And it's because we do need some carbs, we do need some carbohydrates for our hormone production, to help us sleep. So cutting them all out or doing really low carb, it doesn't necessarily work for everyone. And a lot of women like me, I put on weight when I did low carb and keto, which is feels really unfair, and frustrating. But that's what happened. And I'm not I know, I'm not the only person there as well. So it's more important to focus on that balanced diet. And if you go to my show notes, you'll see I've got the freebie, The Balanced Meal Formula, there that you can go and download that and that will help you create your meals in a way that they have healthy sources of carbohydrates, protein and fats there for you.
16:19
So that was the 10 things that I had wrong about my health in my 40s. And I'm wondering, how many of those can you relate to? How many of those have you done yourself? I'd love to know. So do feel free to, you know, reply. Send me a message here or a comment or reply to one of my emails and let me know how many of those can you relate to there. They were over exercising, fasting or skipping meals, coffee before breakfast, ignoring self care. Too many treats are self comfort, and that's especially alcohol they're being over scheduled or too busy was number six calorie restriction number seven over eating, including veggies number eight, number nine eating on the run, and number 10 Being low carb or keto.
17:14
So yeah, don't forget to let me know how many of those have you done as well. And I really appreciate you tuning in and listening to today's episode of chaos to calm where we've we've explored the 10 things that I had wrong about my health in my 40s and what you might have to we've talked about over exercising fasting, skipping meals, ignoring self care and how they can do more harm than good at this crucial phase of life. And it really is crucial. It's like a fork in the road perimenopause, where you get to decide or have an influence on what your next phase of life, how you age, what that looks like, and what the risk of chronic diseases what your risks are, and you get the opportunity to reduce them. So I've also talked about the pitfalls of things like coffee before breakfast, just change it over, you'll be amazed at what a difference it makes to your energy through the day, how too many treats over scheduling, those sorts of things are really toxic for you as well.
18:14
Now, you might be feeling overwhelmed and thinking well what do I do then? If everything I've done is wrong? Don't worry, I've got you covered here. You can check out my free masterclass where you're where I will talk you through the three key secrets that you need to balance your hormones and optimize your health health in your 40s and beyond. So just head to the show notes and you'll find the link there to register and you can watch it straight away today so you'll find everything you need here the link to their freebie meal formula, the my free masterclass and the show notes for today at www.chaostocalmpodcast.com and that's it. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today. I just appreciate it so much. And I applaud you for taking the time to focus on you and your health. Until next time and next episode. I'm Sarah, the perimenopause naturopath and I'm here to remind you that perimenopause does not have to be horrific.
19:21
It's really common for women over 40 to experience the chaos of changing hormones, mood, metabolism and energy. But I hope you know now that common doesn't have to equal normal for you or them. You can help others understand that aren't alone in feeling this way. And that perimenopause doesn't have to be horrific by subscribing, leaving a review and sharing this podcast with other women in their 40s and beyond. Thanks so much for listening and sharing your time with me today in this chaos to calm conversation.
