Reading Time: 6 minutesBy Faye Hall
Do you ever look back over time and reflect on how quickly it has passed?
I remember waking up on my fortieth birthday and thinking crikey where did that time go!
When you get to the point where you have several decades of life under your belt, your perspective seems to shift. You realise that if the first half of life has gone so quickly the second half probably will too?!
My second thought was, if time flies, we probably want to make the most of it! How can we make the most of life? How can we enjoy it, be productive, experience the things we wish for? We can enjoy and create experiences in life if we are healthy and feel good.
When we are young we seem to be able to get away with things like burning the candle at both ends, eating badly and staying slim without too much effort. As we transition into midlife this can become more challenging. We need a new approach.
Take a moment now and ask yourself these questions:
How do you feel in your body? Is it the same as 20 years ago or do you have a few aches and pains, a few grey hairs and a bit of “stubborn weight” around the middle? Is there a niggly health condition that has appeared over time?
What do you believe about the ageing process? Do you think changes like tiredness, weight gain, chronic pain or symptoms are an inevitable part of the process? Or do you believe wellness is possible throughout your lifespan?
Quick Reflective Practice
Close your eyes, take a deep breath and think about your answers to these questions:
What do you feel in your body right now?
What do you believe about the process of getting older?
Take a minute…
It is true, things seem to start to shift in midlife especially for women, who have the additional challenge of the transition of menopause to work through as well as the natural progression of the life cycle. The process of hormonal, emotional, psychological and cognitive change known as peri-menopause and menopause is a significant period of time.
The point of this blog and in fact, our whole series on midlife is to get a few simple messages across and hopefully expand your perspective on health and ageing.
- Ageing and associated symptoms are not solely about chronological time passing. They are also about what you do within that time to support your health. It is not just chronological, it is biological and there are many, many things you can do to influence and slow the biological processes associated with ageing.
- By connecting with your body, taking care of yourself and adapting to the changes that come with menopause and the mechanisms involved you can realise you are not necessarily a victim of your body transition or a victim of time, you are primarily a victim of yourself and your willingness to change and respond in healthy ways to this wonderful period of life.
- Menopause, just like puberty is a time when your body is more receptive, it’s a strong transitional phase where there are significant changes in hormones such as oestrogen and significant opportunities for imprinting some healthy patterns to feel good now and in the years to come. Your health in midlife is the best indicator of your health later in life. Optimise a solid baseline of food, sleep, movement and mind management and it will pay you dividends now and later. Menopause is actually a window of opportunity.
This is what thriving in midlife and on into later decades is all about. This thriving comes from understanding what these changes are and how you can influence them positively.
Let’s take an issue that comes up for a lot of women:
Managing Weight Through Midlife Changes
Weight gain can happen anytime in life for any number of complex reasons.
Menopause does not need to mean weight gain, weight gain is by no means inevitable or necessary as part of the menopause transition. However, it is a time where underlying pathologies or imbalances may be exacerbated. It is also a time where there are many changes taking places that may lead to a shift in food or health behaviours. Maybe you exercise or move less, sit down more, experience different emotions, even feel a sense of loss because your circumstances in midlife often represent change and time passing.
If you haven’t already done so, it’s the ideal time to address any midlife weight issues and develop new health behaviours.
If you wish to prevent or reverse midlife weight gain and improve overall health at any age then three of the most impactful things you could consider are:
- 1. STOP THE SUGAR ADDICTION
When we eat, and especially when we eat high sugar foods, insulin is triggered, causing insulin spikes. Insulin is a hormone that plays a number of roles in the body’s metabolism, it regulates how the body uses and stores glucose and fat.
If we’re constantly eating and eating sugary foods, the perpetual release of insulin can contribute to weight gain.
As well as weight gain, a sweet diet or eating too frequently may also contribute to low-grade inflammation, disrupted gut bacteria, fatigue and many chronic health conditions.
If we enter into our midlife and menopause with some of these symptoms and underlying conditions already under our belt, it’s possible a continued high sugar diet (including refined carbohydrates or alcohol) may also exacerbate symptoms of menopause.
A paradox is that sugary food, alcohol and carbs can also be a great mood booster so if menopause and midlife are affecting our mood and energy levels (as it does for so many women) you might be tempted to reach for even more sugar as you hit this transitionary period. If this is you, cutting this cycle of sugar craving and consumption might be the key to better health and tackling midlife weight gain.
Becoming sugar savvy (mindset), learning how to replace sweet foods with delicious alternatives (cookery and nutrition), may not only help you stay slim but also stay young by reducing the likelihood of “inflammaging”! (to be discussed at a later date)
Sound good?
With every person we work with, we provide them with our food plate, it’s a healthy eating guide & shopping list providing you with a clear understanding of what to eat to be a healthy human. Download the guide now and you’ll receive a free 15-minute health coaching conversation to guide you through the plate and how to use it.
- 2. BE A SLAVE TO SLEEP
It’s 8.50 pm as I write this. I am going to bed soon and I’ll be aiming for 8 hours and waking naturally without an alarm. An early night and an extra hour of sleep for me is more exciting than an extra glass of wine or a biscuit. Lack of sleep increases our chance of weight gain including fat around the middle.
Perhaps after years of bringing up children, or decades of high-stress work, sleep has been sacrificed. Later in life, we have time to make up this sleep and perhaps an opportunity for redressing sleep and stress issues that may be contributing to poor energy balance and being overweight.
If your sleep is a little off-kilter, you may like to try a couple of our nutrient-dense sleepy tonics, designed to support a good nights sleep.
- 3. LEARN TO FEEL GOOD
In the end, we all just want to feel good. At Weight In Mind, we have a phrase that underpins all that we do “feelings come first” if you feel good, life just goes better and easier. If you feel good then life is an enjoyable and uplifting experience. Feeling good (more often than not) is actually a skill that you can learn!
During menopause changing hormones and their corresponding influences on neurotransmitters can change the way we think and feel.
The process of transitioning through midlife, adjusting to a different physical experience, emotional environment and even life roles and responsibilities may require a need to accept this new self and learn to love and nurture this next stage of you and your life!
Don’t Miss Our Midlife Health Tips & Tools
We have tools that we use with our clients helping them to build a loving relationship with themselves and learn how to feel good as a fallback position. We are giving one of them away in our Midlife Health Newsletter. It’s a beautiful and simple tool that you can practice every day at home with ease. We’ve had clients say “wow, this is so simple, yet so powerful, I’m enjoying seeing myself from a new perspective, I wish I did this earlier in my life”.
If you sign up to our newsletter, each week for the next 6 weeks you’ll receive an email dedicated to feeling amazing by 40 and beyond, sharing incredible tips, tools and recipes to support you through this period of change so that ‘health’ is just what you do, live and experience each day, no matter your age or stage of life.
