Stop Dieting and Ease Your Menopause Symptoms
Will you join me on a journey to ditch the diet mentality?
When I become a nutrition therapist I knew I didn’t want to coach people on how to lose weight.
I don’t believe that being thin is a sign of health.
Health comes in all shapes and sizes as does disease.
What I did know is that I wanted to share my love of food and how it can enrich our lives from everyday meals to celebrations, planning and looking forward to mealtimes.
Eating is something we have to do to survive, let’s make it a source of joy.
Since I originally wrote this blog post over two years ago my practice has evolved to supporting women on their journey into, through and post-menopause.
Understanding the principles of intuitive eating is one of the tools I use to support hormone balance and heal the metabolism at this time in our lives.
For the next few weeks, up until Christmas, I am going to share the principles of intuitive eating as I have interpreted them through reading books such as ‘Intuitive Eating, A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch’ and further studying I have completed in applying non-diet approaches in practice.
I hope they inspire you to nourish your body rather than punish it and help you to see there is another way to find optimal health and well-being.
My Dieting story
About 5 years ago I started my non-diet journey by ditching diet foods.
I gave up artificial sweeteners and low-fat everything including my beloved diet coke.
This along with making sure I nourished my body with well-balanced meals and snacks along with supplements such as a good probiotic and inflammation-reducing aloe vera gel, I can honestly say, has made my immune health the best it’s ever been.
Gone are the winter chest infections that used to get me every Christmas, I wake up early every morning full of energy to cope with my full days.
Mentally though I struggled for the first couple of years, plagued by the need to go on a diet, and the need to weigh myself trying to reach a number that made me fit certain criteria not worrying about whether that number was made up of lean muscle mass, bone density, healthy cells and other goodness.
My emotions were often dictated by the number that appeared on the scales, and I would move the scales around the room until I found a number I liked best!
Through lots of re-education I have been able to ditch these harmful practices, that is not to say I wouldn’t like to be a dress size smaller, I am not immune to the marketing I am bombarded with every day BUT I know my long-term health, especially through menopause, is much more important AND that additional weight is often a symptom and the root cause is what needs to be dealt with.
One Last Diet
Most women have tried at least one diet. Others have never dieted or now claim to be diet free.
Diet culture is very sneaky.
Even if you think you are currently not dieting can you resonate with doing any of the following:
- Counting carbs or macros
- Sticking to safe foods – fat-free/carb free/low calories
- Pacifying hunger with diet drinks or coffee
- Skipping meals
- Only eating at certain times of the day
- Earning food – through exercise or ‘being good’
- Reducing food intake
- Changing your eating style in order to lose weight – Vegetarian/Vegan/Gluten free
- Calling any of the above ‘A Lifestyle’
It can be scary to seriously consider giving up dieting.
What will you eat if you can eat anything? How will you be able to stop yourself from eating if you can literally eat anything? How will you control your weight?
Maybe you think “one more diet, just to get to the size I want to be and THEN I will stop dieting”…
The Dieter’s Dilemma
The trouble is for all the times I have been ON a diet and lost weight, that weight has found me again and then some and more so on my tummy.
Dieting is a form of starvation.
Our bodies have been designed to protect us from starvation and this is part of the reason why no study has ever found that the results of a diet have lasted longer than 2 years.
As you can see from the graphic below the cycle of dieting is pointless.
Let’s get off this merry-go-round and learn how to listen to and nourish our bodies for optimal health.
Dieting and Menopause
There is nothing wrong with assessing your health and well-being in order to improve your menopause symptoms.
Eating well and moving more is a no-brainer to increase your menopause health but what does this actually mean?
If you are currently on your menopause journey I am going to make the assumption you are a 1960’s/1970’s child.
In this post-war post-ration time studies were conducted into the increasing body sizes and heart disease in Americans. It was found that high LDL cholesterol was responsible (such was the scientific knowledge back then) and governments were encouraged to spread the word to consume more carbohydrates in the form of fresh vegetables and fruits along with whole grains.
The trouble was this was lost in translation.
All the American people heard was ‘fat is bad, carbs are good’.
The food industry saw what was going on and marketed their foods accordingly, low-fat everything!
Unfortunately low fat = high sugar
Whether sugar was added to processed products to make up for the lack of fat and taste or a lack of fat and protein was consumed leaving only starchy and non-starchy carbohydrates on the plate in the form of vegetables, fruit and grains, they all end up as sugar/glucose in the body.
The body releases insulin to move the energy (sugar/glucose) into the cells to be used.
If we are not balancing our meals with protein and healthy fats more and more insulin needs to be released to deal with the energy and eventually all the cells are full and insulin has to release the excess energy into the fat cells leading to insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance isn’t the only issue.
We need protein and healthy fats to produce hormones and neurotransmitters.
Stress is also a major factor. Restrictive dieting is stressful for the body. When stressed the body releases cortisol and adrenaline over our sex hormones estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.
Over exercising is also stressful for the body.
Once we are post menopause our adrenal glands take on some of the responsibility for producing estrogen, if they are burnt out they won’t be able to do this.
All of these circumstances contribute to menopause symptoms.
Stop Dieting and Find Balance
Our bodies are constantly trying to achieve Homeostasis.
Homeostasis is the ability to maintain a relatively stable internal state that persists despite changes in the world outside. All living organisms, from plants to puppies to people, must regulate their internal environment to process energy and ultimately survive.
Live Science
As we restrict food when trying to lose weight our brain releases chemicals to stimulate more appetite and protect our fat stores, we need fat to live.
Our brain will sense we are in danger, and we will think about food constantly.
This literally causes you to feel cravings as you are not getting enough nutrients.
It is not your fault if you can’t stick to a diet!
You are not a failure.
The diet industry is worth over $60 billion. You are set up to fail.
Eating nutritionally balanced meals and snacks and honouring your hunger will remove food cravings altogether.
How to stop dieting
Changing our mindset about the whole diet scene is a slow process, yes I’m sorry there is no ‘quick fix’.
However, if you are willing to open your mind and put in the work a whole world of food freedom and optimal health is waiting for you.
There are many steps to take and unfortunately, they won’t all be forward.
If you decide to stop dieting you might feel left out when friends talk about the latest diet fad. Others may not understand the journey you are on and sometimes you are just going to want to fall back into familiar ways.
Should that happen, come back to these steps set by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in their book ‘Intuitive Eating, A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach;
- Recognise and acknowledge the damage that dieting causes
- Be aware of diet mentality traits and thinking
- Get rid of dieters’ tools – especially the scales!
- Show yourself compassion
Join me on a journey to Stop Dieting
Over the coming weeks, I am going to share with you the main principles of Intuitive Eating and how you can incorporate them into your life so you can start to take control of your menopause journey and find food freedom.
Would you like to understand more about menopause and get clarity about what you can do to support your individual symptoms?
Book a complimentary 30-minute menopause assessment with me and we can chat about your individual symptoms and requirements.
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