You know what I realized the other day… I don’t think I have ever written about who I am and why I do what I do. My passion in life is to help middle-aged women feel as vibrant and look as fabulous as they did in their thirties. I am “62 years young” and I feel as energetic and as able to tackle life as I did before I went through menopause. It wasn’t always this way for me, however…Ten years ago, I was learning to live on my own again, going back to school, and fighting fatigue, weight gain, and brain fog the whole time. So, believe me, I feel your pain. But I am also here to tell you it can be different. At the end of this article, I will give you five quick secrets to help you regain some of your youthful energy and radiance (and a few other goodies as well).
So let me start by telling you a little bit about myself. I am a Nationally Board Certified Holistic Nutritionist® with a private clinical practice in Fort Collins, Colorado (I work with people all over the country and the world using Skype and phone). This is my third career; for 18 years I was an elementary school teacher and then owned a busy and profitable bookstore in the mountains of Colorado. A few years into my life as a bookseller, my stud-muffin husband, Dan, suddenly became a vent-dependent quadriplegic when a growth burst in his spinal cord. I was only 44 at the time and my good health and youth supported me through the initial few years of taking care of him and running my busy bookstore. But eventually the stress began to take its toll and I went through a very miserable and symptom-filled menopause. I gained weight, became depressed, lost my cognitive edge, and suffered from debilitating fatigue.
I started researching how to improve both my health and Dan’s through reading just about anything on healthy lifestyle and nutrition that I could get my hands on. (I actually read Michael Murray’s 946-page tome, The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, from cover to cover.) I began changing our diets, our sleep patterns, and our toxic exposure. I made sure we both had some stress relief every day and I instituted a supplement regimen that complemented our new nutritional habits. Both Dan I began to feel the difference and I started the long journey to the vibrant health I have today. I also decided to sell my wonderful bookstore and go back to school for my nutrition degree.
After years of fighting pneumonia and kidney and bladder infections, Dan passed away peacefully one day while taking a nap. It was a sadness and a blessing all in one. I miss him terribly and think about him daily, but if it was not for that long painful journey, I would not be as happy and as healthy as I am today. And I would not have the absolutely amazing job of helping women like myself become happy and healthy also!
I specialize in helping women (and men, too) navigate the waters of middle age. It is neither natural nor normal for us to feel tired, depressed, overweight, and sleep-deprived as we move into our later years. In fact, with the kids out of the house, financial stability, and the gift of experience we should be having the best years of our life. But for many, this is not the case. Well, I am living proof that you can go through hell and come out smelling like a rose.
Here are five quick tips for menopause treatment and to turn your “MenoPause into MenoGo” as I have done:
1. Make sleep a priority – Don’t let menopause turn you into a night owl! This will create an imbalance in your hormones and neurotransmitters making you grouchy, fat, and sleepy. Sleep is your fountain of youth! Click here for my Sleep Worksheet, Rejuvenate Your Sleep Naturally.
2. Don’t diet… just eat real, whole foods as nature intended – As menopause looms, the hormones that regulate weight, appetite, and energy begin to go offline. The best way to rebalance them is to eat three meals a day of natural, whole food… very nutrient dense and full of the building blocks the body needs. No need to count calories if this is your “diet”.
3. Do three things every day to give you stress resilience – Stress affects all aspects of our life and, unfortunately, there is no way to remove all the stressors from our world. The best way to deal with stress is build resiliency. The way to be resilient is to spend as much time in “rest and digest” (R&D) and as little time in “flight or flight” as possible. One way I do this is to go into R&D as many times in a day as I can. I have just taken up coloring (yes, just like when I was a kid, but with adult coloring books and fancy colored pencils… this is my favorite coloring book, The Secret Garden). This is a great activity to help slow breath, put your mind in the moment, and improve hand-eye coordination. Two of my other favorite R&D activities are listening to music and picking weeds in my garden.
4. Reduce sitting and move everyday – Sitting is the new smoking. Our bodies were just not made to sit in a chair all day long. Try using a standing desk, a timer for the computer, and taking short walks throughout the day. Take a look at this amazing infographic illustrating some of the health issues related to sitting.
5. Reduce multi-tasking and focus on one task at a time – The more things we try to do at once, the less we actually get done. This is a proven fact shown by numerous studies on productivity. Many of my clients complain they are overwhelmed by the amount of things that they have to do and they just can’t seem to get to the bottom of the pile. This takes its toll on our energy and our well being. I suggest working on one task at a time… try not to look at email, answer the phone, or let out the dog out while working on something. Having said that, you will improve your productivity if you take a break every 45 minutes or so then go back to the same activity.
Try one or two of these tips and notice the difference in how you feel. Don’t get frustrated if you fall back into some old habits, just get back on the horse… It can take up to 15 times before a new activity becomes a habit. One small change can make a huge effect on how you feel.