I am frequently asked to pick 3 natural things that work time and time again to relieve menopausal symptoms.
Here’s what I answer.
The first important thing to work with in order to feel better is your diet.
Exercise is important too, but your diet is queen.
There’s so much confusion these days about what constitutes a healthy diet.
We are suffering from information overload and conflicting messages in the media about what is healthy and what is not.
There are so many diet books about low carb, low fat, high protein, vegetarian, fasting, liquid diets, and hundreds more. The average middle aged woman doesn’t know where to start when it comes to eating what’ll help her feel her best during menopause.
OK, if you’ve been a regular reader of this blog then you do know where to start, but you get my point!?
The starting point is to make sure your diet is as natural and unprocessed as possible. The overprocessing of food is in most cases what makes it unhealthy.
This will wreck your metabolism and disrupt the hormonal balance in your body.
To give you some examples, eat whole grains rather than refined grains. Stay away from refined sugar and choose natural sources of sugar from nutritious, whole foods like fruit. Eat natural sources of healthy fats like nuts, avocados, fish, eggs, coconut milk, and organically raised meat, instead of processed and refined oils.
It’s about the basics.
You can get too caught up in the gimmicks and miss the big picture.
Low carbs, low fat, high protein, or any other combination that has you focusing on one macronutrient or another can blind you to the big truth. Your body needs all macronutrients to thrive and help you feel your best during menopause. Cutting out an entire food group will send your hormonal balance out of whack, which is precisely the opposite of what we need during menopause.
The second thing that works time and time again, is getting sufficient exercise and enjoying an active menopause lifestyle.
All women enter menopause at different levels of hormonal health and at different levels of fitness. We all must start from where we are and go forward from there.
This may sound obvious but this point is not to be overlooked.
If you enter menopause in a fatigued state and see that you’ve gained a few pounds, your tendency might be to start exercising like crazy to thwart the weight gain.
However, that level of intense exercise will only fatigue and stress your already hormonally challenged body, doing you more harm than good.
It’s essential then, to first assess your health upon entering menopause so that you begin, or continue, the exercise lifestyle that is perfect for you!
Another point is to focus your exercise both on cardio and strength training, working your body as a whole. At this age we want to be functional, lean and strong and this is most effectively and efficiently accomplished by exercising your body as a whole.
For the third thing, let’s talk about managing stress.
Let’s face it, menopause is a stressful time.
These days women in midlife are pulled in many directions. We are caretakers for older and younger generations. We manage jobs, households, relationships and must find time for ourselves as well.
Whether you practice yoga, enjoy tai chi, meditate or sit quietly every day watching the sunset, every woman must make the time to manage her stress.
It’s not an option during menopause: it’s a requirement.
Actually, in thinking about it, if you’re looking for menopausal symptom relief (and who isn’t) ALL three of these are requirements, not options.
These three: optimizing nutrition, leading an appropriately active lifestyle, and managing stress, are the three best pillars to use when building a foundation on which to go through menopause.
Let me know what you think!
shelli
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