Perimenopause & Peaceful Eating

In this eye-opening second part of our conversation with perimenopause expert Shelby Tutty, we dive deep into the intricate connection between hormonal changes and our relationship with food and body image.

Ever wondered why perimenopause is a prime time for developing disordered eating patterns? We unpack this rarely discussed topic, shedding light on how our bodies naturally change during this transition and why fighting against it can lead to more harm than good.

Shelby shares fascinating insights into:

* The surprising ways perimenopause impacts nutrient absorption and metabolism

* Why your old diet tricks might backfire spectacularly during this transition

* How to work with your changing body instead of fighting against it

* Practical tips for nourishing yourself without falling into restrictive patterns

If you've ever felt confused or frustrated by changes in your body, this episode offers a fresh perspective that might just change how you approach your health and well-being during perimenopause and beyond.

Don't miss this chance to gain a deeper understanding of your body and learn how to work with it, not against it, during this important time of life. Tune in for a conversation that's equal parts informative, compassionate, and empowering!

Note: There is some discussion of weight and calories in this episode. If this is triggering to you, please consider skipping this conversation. I do not condone or suggest weighing or counting calories for anyone with a disordered eating history.

Links & Resources:

Perimenopause & Disordered Eating - Part 1

The Periprofessional

Perry - platform for perimenopause support

Perimenopause & Peaceful Eating Q&A Workshop

Want to know why you struggle with food and what to do next? Start watching The Food Freedom Mini Series today. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:46

Your journey to body trust starts now. Let's dive in. Hello, trusted listeners. I am excited to be back with part two of the discussion around perimenopause and disordered eating with Shelby Tutti. So if you did not listen to episode one, the first part of our discussion, we'll be sure, I'll be sure to put a link to that in the show notes. But in that our first discussion, we really talked about what is perimenopause. We kind of gave the definitions of perimenopause, uh, menopause, and being postmenopausal. We talked a little bit about some of the common signs and symptoms, things you might experience during perimenopause. We talked a little bit about how it impacts uh some just changes in your body. And we gave some key, three key things that you can do that have nothing to do with food that can be highly impactful if you are on the perimenopausal or postmenopausal journey. And so those three key things were sleep, um, hydration, and stress regulation, essentially monitoring your and limiting your stress. So you can go back and listen to that podcast and get some great foundational information. What we wanted to do today was really dive into the topic of food, the topic of our bodies. What is it that's happening in our bodies during perimenopause and in the postmenopausal years? What is it that's happening? We kind of notice, we see things like we see that our bodies changing, but what really is going on? So Shelby is back with us to continue the discussion today. So, Shelby, thank you so much for being here again today.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Thank you so much, Jane. I am thrilled to be back. And this is my favorite topic to talk about, perimenopause.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Perimenopause. Well, let's just dive in. So, can you tell us a little bit about what is it that's happening in our bodies during perimenopause? Like what's happening, what's changing? Give us a little bit of insight. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

So perimenopause are those years prior to reaching menopause, which is that one day in time where you have ceased having a period for 365 days. Menopause can also occur due to surgical reasons and medical reasons, such as in the treatment of cancer, where they would suppress your hormones to get you into a menopausal state. So those are three considerations for menopause. And then the perimenopausal years are a time of great hormonal changes within your body. It is a period of adjustment, it is a bridge between your ovaries working and your ovaries retiring. They've worked very hard for you for a long time, and it's time for them as they age to slow down and then stop producing the hormones and giving you the ability to reproduce. And that is a gradual change over time. Some years are more turbulent than others in the perimenopausal journey. And particularly there are special considerations if you've had surgical menopause or medical menopause.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Got it. So let's talk about specifically, like as it relates to what's I where I'd like to dive in today really is talking about food and body, like our body image, what's happening with maybe our weights, uh, what's happening with how our body is processing food, what's happening with our metabolism. I'd like to really dive into that today. So, can you tell us a little bit about during perimenopause, what's happening with our metabolism? What sort of changes are happening?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Sure. So the thing that happens in perimenopause are a number of different things. And I get a little disturbed when people want to blame one hormone versus the other on these changes because really that's not how our bodies work. Our bodies work in tandem as a unit. So, although there are a variety of changes with the hormones going on, we can't really pinpoint which hormone is causing which issue in regards to your hunger levels, your sleep, and so forth. So we really want to look at the body as a whole. When it comes to perimenopause, there are some changes that happen between early perimenopause and later perimenopausal stages. Initially, in early perimenopause, you're probably not skipping periods. You're probably not having hot flashes. Your uh estradyl estrogen is relatively stable. You may see your progesterone start to decline as you stop ovulating regularly. And then your hormone called FSH, which controls your ovulation, tends to increase. So, right there, there's a number of different things going on in your body. As you progress further into perimenopause, you'll start to see spikes in your estradiol estrogen. Your progesterone overall will start to decline. Your FSH will also start to increase as your brain tries to scream at your ovaries to get it to ovulate, it will release more and more FSH. So just in your reproductive hormones, you have that going on. At the same time, those hormones control other hormones like your ghrelin and your leptin, which controls your hunger and your satiety. You have your cortisol and your adrenaline levels that also get impacted. And there are so many other hormones in your body that we don't even know about yet because this is a new science, particularly with estrogen, that it was only discovered in the 1990s, that for women it is a full-body hormone. We use it for so many other things than just reproductive health. So, as those changes through perimenopause are happening, those will affect not just your weight, but also your metabolic functioning, your basal um metabolic rate, which is your baseline metabolism. It will um your new nutrient differences occur during this time. You have different things that you need as you go through this change. And then the last one is a reduction in the nutrient absorption. And there's a number of reasons for these things happening through the perimenopausal process.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Wow. So there's a there's a lot going on.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yes, and that's why I don't like people to say, oh, let's just blame it on estrogen, because yeah, that's only one piece of the puzzle.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

So many different pieces of the puzzle. And it sounds like depending on where you are in your own journey, whether you're somewhere in the perimenopausal process or your postmenopausal throughout this entire time, there's a there are a lot of different things going on. So we can't even just pinpoint anyone in perimenopause is doing this because it's going to be really varied. Sounds like person to person and where you are.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

We're all so individualized, down to things like our blood type, our gut microbiome, our preferences, our genes. There are so many different variations in our bodies. Generally, they all work the same, but there are variations within our bodies that affect how we react and respond to things. Some people are very sensitive to the hormonal shifts and changes during perimenopause. And those people tend to get more symptoms. And other women are not as sensitive to those hormonal changes and they'll have less symptoms. So when your girlfriends tell you, like, I have no idea what you're talking about, I I've never heard of this. What's burning mouth syndrome? Now you know, like, don't feel like you're going crazy or that you're the only one experiencing this. We truly do experience this as individuals.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

That's fascinating. Fascinating. I also wonder, I personally identify as a highly sensitive person. And I wonder if if somebody is more sensitive to other things, if they are, I mean, it would seem likely to me that they would potentially be more sensitive to these impacts and these hormonal shifts in general.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Well, I can tell you for myself, I'm I'm like you. I am very highly sensitive to the changes in my body. I always knew when I was ovulating. I did not need an ovulation predictor test to tell me when I was ovulating. I just was so in tune with my body that when one little thing went off, it was like I was alerted immediately. And my perimenopausal symptoms have not been a walk in the park. They have been difficult, they've been challenging, they've confused me, they've challenged me in ways that I didn't think even imaginable. But once I started to piece everything together and figure this out, I could make some adjustments and changes that I really benefited from.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, that's super powerful. You know, my my personal experience, I realized when we talked about uh in our first episode, I didn't really share, you know, kind of like where I am or my own personal experience. But I have really never had a normal cycle ever in my entire life. I had it, I had my period induced when I was 16, and I was on birth control for a very long time. I had periods of time where I was off it, but even when I was off it, I never got a normal cycle. And so I really, I just didn't pay. And I don't know how much of that was a factor of my eating disorder, how much of it was a factor of other things. You know, there's really, there's really no way to tell at this point, but I was never a person who had a regular cycle unless I was on the pill, which in which case, of course, it was very normal. But the um I never really related to the the different changes at certain points of the cycle. But and so it's been interesting me, interesting for me now, and I am I am postmenopausal at this point, um, but it's interesting for me now to see some of the things that I can't I am sensitive to and I can see are definitely hormonal shifts that are that are happening in my body.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

So yes, and I think as you age, you become more in tune with it as well. I always say that perimenopause will magnify any skills that you had while you were younger and anything that was a weakness for you. So uh traditionally I have been a very poor speller, and I've noticed as I'm getting deeper into perimenopause, my spelling has been atrocious. Um, but on the flip side, I've always been very in tune with my body, and through perimenopause, that has exponentially grown. So I am very in tune with my body. Oh, it's almost disturbing how in tune with my body I am. So you know if you had a period of time where your ovulation was shut down and you didn't have those cues from your body that, oh, something's happening, something's changing, because it was pretty much flat through the month, you wouldn't have had that experience of learning how to adapt and and connect into that inner wisdom that your body was trying to show you had you not been on the birth control.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

It yeah, for sure. And I also I very I was very disconnected from my body, from my physical body, from my emotions, all of that. And only only in the last probably 10 years have I really been cultivating that connection and that tuning in and that, you know, accessing that wisdom and all of that communication. So um, yeah, so it's really interesting. I want to go back to something that you said. You talked about we have different nutrient needs as we go into periamenopause. Tell, talk to me a little bit more about the the nutrient needs um that we have. You you said we have different nutrient needs, and then there's also the the way that our body even absorbs nutrients is different. So let's let's dive into that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, sure. So I also just want to point out I think this is so important because I feel like the medical and surgical menopause people get left out of the conversation a lot. I call them the middle children of menopause because they don't fall under the vanilla experience of the menopause uh transition. So for those people, it's um when you're going through perimenopause without those interventions, it's a gradual process. So your metabolism changes gradually, your nutrient um changes gradually for your requirements. But when you go through surgical and medical menopause, it is like a light switch. It's it's immediate. So you have a very condensed time that these changes are happening in your body, which can cause um a severity that you're not expecting because it's a condensed amount of time that these changes are occurring. So it's something that I want to point out because I I do feel like they're left out of the conversation a lot.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yes, I'm so glad that you point that out. And I what comes to mind as you share this, I have a a friend who um went through ovarian cancer and through her treatments, you know, ended up having a full hysterectomy. And I can remember the challenges that she had around really just what the shifts that happened so quickly in in her body and through through all of that. And um yeah, I can imagine that's a that's a yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

But as far as nutrient differences, you really like this is when nutrition becomes extremely important. So you could have gotten away with eating those potato chips and the hot dogs and the pizza and not feeling the effects physically from eating that kind of stuff. Um, the processed foods, the saturated fats. But as soon as you start going into perimenopause, the game changes and nutrition becomes extremely vital. You need the nutrients of the vitamins and all of the other good things that's in food to help support you through the perimenopausal tradition transition and also through menopause and aging. So let's not forget about the aging piece because we all are aging and we still need to take care of ourselves. But the the nutrient changes are definitely an increase in your protein intake. That becomes extremely important. And I won't get into the specificity of whether you're a vegan or vegetarian, pescatarian, or you eat meat. Um, you know, people who are on special dietary constraints kind of understand for themselves what they need to be doing as far as protein intake. But protein overall is the most, probably the most important thing as you go through this, particularly for your um lean muscle tissue, to make sure that your muscles don't waste away as you age. You need those muscles as you age to support your body and also to support your metabolism. Your metabolism is based on your muscle mass and it's functioning properly.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yeah, absolutely. So, what about the new nutrients, the nutrient absorption and the ability for the body to absorb nutrients as we go through this time?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yes, so that changes as well. So um your stomach acid levels can change during this time. Your gut microbiome, which helps digest your food, can also change during this time. So there's a number of uh different things that are going on that will affect how you are able to absorb your nutrients from your food.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

So I hear a lot of people talk about as they kind of get into this time of life, whether, you know, it could be anywhere in their late 30s, into their 40s, into their 50s, you hear people talking about, I just suddenly developed an allergy or you know, a reaction to eating certain foods, or all of a sudden I cannot, I just my body cannot process alcohol, for example. Um, is this all part of, is this just all kind of normal part of the journey?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yes. So, you know, caffeine, you might all of a sudden start having a sensitivity to caffeine. You might find that you cannot no longer drink alcohol. You find that you can no longer have carbs without bloating up immediately because your your ability to digest carbs changes. That's not to say that you don't need them anymore or you should cut them out completely. It's just to say that your carb digestion is a little bit different.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Interesting. And so is this going to be a matter of, again, everybody's journey as individual? So we have to really just kind of pay attention to what are you noticing in your body specifically?

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Yes, and that's really where the key is. So what you may notice is um something that I like to call waste gain, not weight gain, but waste gain, meaning that you're gonna start change if you're a traditional pear shape, meaning that you keep your weight from the lower part of your body, you may start to see that migrate up a little bit. And there are a number of reasons for that, but that um the weight around your stomach is what most women during perimenopause are concerned about. And that could be now what I find interesting is you know, I look around and I look at women and I see, oh, everybody, everybody looks good. I don't really see anybody that, you know, that there's a problem with. But what I'm not seeing is they may look good to me, but to them, they might be 10 or 15 pounds heavier than normal, but to me, they still look good. So I you we all we always look at everybody else and we're like, well, how come that person didn't gain weight? We don't know unless we ask them. So even though I think somebody looks good, they may be very disappointed that they're struggling with the weight around their waist, they're not at the weight that they want to be at. So it's uh a little bit of a change in perspective of not looking at other people because it doesn't make any sense to we really need to look at what our bodies are doing and how it's changing from what we're used to.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

You had talked about um that the that the you know the the shift in kind of the way that our bodies might accumulate weight, might shift up more towards our waist. You said there's kind of a number of reasons for that. What what are some of the reasons? I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Well, a big one is cortisol. So when we're going through perimenopause, we tend to be revved up. Our nervous systems are revved up because it's not on the traditional flow of hormonal patterns that it's used to. And I believe that that triggers a sense of survival mode in our brains. Like the brain is like, wait, I'm used to getting estrogen now, or I'm used to getting progesterone now. And now that's, I'm not getting that. What's going on? And I think that that can put you into a state of fight or flight more often. So you have higher circulating cortisol. The cortisol is going to lead to inflammation, and that's going to lead to that belly weight around uh your stomach.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Got it, got it. Makes sense, which then also would kind of track with the increase in. Anxiety that is often experienced during perimenopause.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

That's kind of all of that together.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

And it really ties into what you're doing with the nervous system with your clients because once you figure out the key of your nervous system, I feel like you've unlocked the universe.

unknown 22:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the things that we try to do when we have a heightened nervous system and we're kind of in that fight or flight response, many people have at some point in their lives kind of discovered, oh, food helps me calm this down. When I'm in this, you know, kind of anxious state, when I'm in this, you know, kind of period of, you know, I feel uh, you know, a lot of this excess energy in my body. When I go eat something, then I get a little bit of that relief. And if the things that I'm going to eat are the things that now all of a sudden my body's not processing as well, then you know, we kind of can end up with uh a little bit of a compounding effect. And then then I'm not processing things as well. Maybe my metabolism is slowing down. Maybe I get even more weight gain on top of what's just naturally going to happen to any woman's body as it ages. Then I get more stressed out about that. Then I think I've got to change. And then I, you know, might try to go on some old restrictive diet that I did back when I was 20. And like then now we're just in the cycle.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Yes. Yes. And and so many women tell me, like, this happened overnight. I don't understand. I feel like I woke up and I gained 20 pounds. But it it wasn't overnight. It was subtle changes over time that then caught up to you. And then what happens is, you know, we we look at that and then we use it against ourselves to berate ourselves and tell us that we're ourselves that we're lazy, or we like, why do I keep eating that when I shouldn't be eating that? And it's all about, you know, trying to calm down your nervous system because as these changes, these hormonal changes are happening, it's going to ramp up your nervous system. And temporarily, those things that taste good that are not necessarily healthy may make you feel like you're calming it down. And then it, like you said, it just goes into the cycle all over again.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Yeah. One of the things that is really fascinating to me is that the period of time during perimenopause is one of the most common times to for women, women specifically. Well, obviously, if we're talking about perimenopause, we're talking about uh women, but for women to develop disordered eating. And I remember when I first learned that, I was like, wow, I, you know, I kind of thought about developing disordered eating more in the, you know, kind of teenage years or when you go to college, which are also very common times, but it makes sense this time during perimenopause, we're also having these fluctuations, these extreme fluctuations in our hormones, which change what our bodies look like, which is very similar to what was happening in our teenage years, which is which is a lot of another prime time to develop disordered eating, is we have these changes in our hormones, these hormonal changes change, physically change the shape of our bodies. And then we, as the inhabitants of these bodies, kind of freak out and like, no, I don't want this change. I want what I had before. So it's kind of if we think about, and this I think is very interesting. If you think about a teenage girl who is trying to not have the curves and not have the filling out of her body that comes with hormones and comes with becoming turning into more of a you know, a mature female adult, she's trying not to have that. That's where a lot of that initial kind of disordered eating comes in. It's very similar as to what happens in perimenopause. We have women who are trying not to let our bodies do the natural changes that are going to happen with these changes in in menopause. So I think it's like if you can imagine for yourself, if you are a woman in perimenopause or menopause, and you can imagine the kind of ridiculousness of a teenage girl trying to stop the curves and trying to stop her body from filling out, it's the same ridiculousness that we are trying to keep our bodies the same as they were when we were 30 or 25, because that's a lot of what happens. We're we're comparing to that previous version, the pre, the pre-perimenopause version of our body. And for some people, they're even going all the way back to, you know, high school or when they were in teens, you know, when they were teens, that's the body that they want back. That's not how we work. Like as humans, biologically, it's not how we work. So, what we want to do is we want to work with ourselves. We want to understand what's happening in the body, what's happening with my hormones, how do I work with myself, how do I make the changes and the shifts that will really kind of support myself through this transition, but not expecting myself to not gain any weight. I think I read somewhere, I don't know where. So, I mean, this is just as good as, you know, I do not have a great basis for my this, what I'm about to say. But I read somewhere that naturally, like a like a natural expected amount of weight gain during in that like the perimenopause time frame is somewhere in the like five to 10 pound range. And but what often happens is that women, when they start seeing their weight creep up in a very natural way, they freak out and then they start trying to do all of this stuff, take all of these foods out of their diet, and they end up kind of on that restrict binge cycle where they try to take all of this stuff away and then they end up, you know, overcompensating and then eating so much, and then and then they're just on this whole roller coaster, which has them ultimately end up gaining even more weight than they would have if they had allowed, allowed for some transition and some change in their body, but not freaking out and trying to prevent it from happening altogether. What do you do, what do you know about this?

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Well, I can give you the exact numbers because I have them right in front of me. Fantastic. Um, I I want to mention also that when that happens, what we as women tend to do is to revert back to the things that used to work for us and possibly going back as far as our teenage years. And what are those two things? It's restricting your calories and over-exercising. And those two things will majorly backfire if you try to do them in perimenopause. Those two things will put your body into a survival mode state. Your body is already in a survival mode state from the changes going through perimenopause. So you're compounding the issue, creating more cortisol release and other hormonal disruptors. And then it's just compounded over and over. And then people are like, but I'm doing what I used to do. Well, honestly, we shouldn't have been doing it back then, but our hormones being on a regular cycle were as protective when we used to engage in those activities. And now it just completely backfires. And the recommendations are that you eat for your for your weight. Um, it's not to go underneath what you should be eating. We all have a number of calories that we need to eat every single day, and it varies by person, just to support our body. So if you were wanting to lie in bed all day and do nothing, your body still needs a certain amount of calories. And the recommended amount that you don't go under is 1200 calories a day. And there are some online calculators that are calculating out 800 calories a day, 900 calories a day. My body, and I I'm short, I'm five, two. My body, you know, it it just wouldn't work by not giving it the calories that it needs to do all of these processes that it has to do every day. Your body's working so hard on your behalf every day just to get you through the day. And we never stop to thank it or appreciate what it does for us. All we try and do is say, Well, I don't like the shape of it, I don't like how I look. I'm gonna try and starve you basically into doing what I need you to do. Um, and then just to answer your question, I do have the numbers right here. Um, on average, women gain 12 pounds within eight years of menopause onset. Okay, 12 pounds. 12 pounds.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

So I do want to say for anybody listening, if you're hearing, if you're hearing numbers of calories and you're hearing numbers of of weight and pounds and it's feeling a little bit triggering, I this whole journey is very possible, very possible. And I recommend doing it without weighing yourself and doing it without counting calories. I am not a proponent of counting calories. I am not a proponent of weighing yourself. For a lot of people, doing either one of those is going to, I don't know about, is has an increased likelihood of creating more disordered eating patterns around it. And this is where we can kind of get into that. Like, what is the relationship between perimenopause and disordered eating? When these changes start happening with our body, if we have naturally on average, people are gaining 12 pounds or so, and we have people who are like, I don't want this, I don't like, I see the changes, I see this waste gain, maybe I am weighing myself, whatever it is. Then I'm gonna try to like do all of these things to prevent that from happening at all. Then we get on this cycle that that does become kind of crazy making. And a lot of times it can show up in trying to count your calories, trying to count your macros, trying to count, you know, trying to get on the scale every single day to see what's changing, is it going up, is it going down, what's happening there. This is where, this is why the this time of life is uh a very common time to develop disordered eating. There are a lot of women who make it through many decades of their lives without developing disordered eating. And then all of a sudden, they start seeing changes in their body. They start seeing things happening to their body that they've never seen before. And then all of a sudden, they're like, really, again, that fight or flight, really, this feels very threatening. I've got to fix this. And they do it in ways that are going to promote more kind of disordered eating type of um type of scenario. So that's really what we want to be watching out for. Yes, we want to be informed. Yes, we want to give you here are some things that you can do as it relates to what you're eating, what choices that you're making. And we also want to be on the lookout for like what might be considered kind of like danger zone, like uh this might be, this might be maybe more at risk of developing more of a disordered eating pattern. I'm not here to diagnose anybody with disordered eating or anything like that, but I think for a lot of us, we can start to tell if it's if it's feeling a little like maybe, maybe my overall, like the my overall thoughts, the amount of time that I'm spending thinking about my body, thinking about food, thinking about what needs to change, if that starts to feel like it's really increasing or really um taking up a lot more of your time in your space, that's gonna be probably like a warning sign for you that we may be kind of just going more towards kind of towards that path. I know Shelby, you kind of shared you you had um your own experience with as you learned about what's what's happening in the body and trying to kind of make some changes. Um do you wanna to share with our listeners about what what happened for you? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

Um so way back when I just started going through perimenopause, um, we had a little bit of trauma in our family when I was about 45, which prompted me to really start to look at my um my health habits, which were pretty good, but uh there was some baby weight that I needed to lose from having twins many, many, many years before then. I really needed to get back for me back to the weight that I was used to having as an adult. Um, and knowing everything that I know about health and nutrition and diet, I started to take things into my own hands as far as um my weight, exercising, and fell into that trap of trying to do everything perfectly. And things became very restrictive down to what I ate, I had to weigh myself every day. I gave it a lot of time and consideration through the day, which honestly was exhausting. So when I got to, you know, those years were probably very early perimenopausal years for me, but as I got deeper into uh the early part of perimenopause, it really became problematic for me because I I was spending so much energy on trying to control my foods and my food intake and my weight that it um did not put me in the best position health-wise. And I ended up with some pretty uh debilitating health conditions that I needed to work through. Um, unfortunately, you know, I did have a period of time where, you know, my my my digestion just went offline. And when that happened, I had to start from scratch as far as, okay, this this is a real problem. Where do where can I go with this? And started learning, relearning, reteaching myself how to eat properly to support my body in a way that didn't uh stress me out and that didn't feel shameful to me.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

Yeah. One of the things that one of the things I talk about is when when it comes to our food selections, is eating in a way that is nurturing, supportive, and sustainable. And if we can come up with for yourself, I mean, and this is literally this will vary person to person. There is no like just eat this and you'll be fine. There's no like perimenopause diet that will tell you exactly what to eat or what not to eat, because, as Shelby said, your body is individual. The foods that you need, the way that your body is going to respond to certain foods is going to be different. But there are going to be some kind of key things that we can talk about. Like there are some, there are some principles that we could talk about that can be very impactful as you look at your nutrition. But we also want to make sure it always fits in the umbrella. Is it nurturing? Is it supportive? And is it sustainable? Sustainable is important. The important piece of this, can you do this for the rest of your life? The other part is Shelby was talking about with our hormones. If we're in this constant state of stress and our cortisol is increased, which is going to increase our inflammation, we're in this fight or flight state, our nervous system is highly activated. We don't digest very well when we're in a highly activated state. Probably makes sense as to why Shelby's nerve uh digestive system shut down because the combination of the restriction and the like all of the stress that she had around all of that totally makes sense. This doesn't fall in that sustainable category. We also want it to feel safe to our bodies. We don't want to be putting so much stress on ourselves about what's happening that we're creating even more stress because we're stressed about the size of our body or we're stressed about what we're eating. We really want to create more peace, more safety, and more connection with our bodies while also understanding, all right, there's a lot that's happening within my hormones. My hormones, my ovaries are trying to retire. There's a lot going on here. And overall, my brain is like, I'm not really sure what's going on or when I'm gonna get these hormones. So, you know, there are things we can do to kind of like let it know, I've got you, we're gonna take care of you, we're gonna, we're gonna respond and act in a way that as that is as supportive as possible. So, Shelby, if we wanted to give the listeners some just real key items as far as nutrition goes, while also just with the caution, like you notice for yourself if you start this starts feeling like it's taking up too much mental space or too much focus, or if it's feeling more stressful than helpful or supportive, that's going to be your red flag. So, what are some of the supportive things? You had mentioned protein, prioritizing protein.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

And just to clarify, I'm not a dietitian or nutritionist, so I can't give individualized advice. I can give kind of high-level overview of what you should be eating during perimenopause, which honestly is what we should be eat, what we should be eating at any time in our life.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

There's gonna be room for I want to just say one thing real quick. Rather than what you should be eating, what is in the most supportive way to support your body? I don't like should at all. Like there's no should, you shouldn't be, you should, because then it sounds like rules and all of that. So I just want to like, how about a way of eating that is the most supportive for a perimenopausal body?

SPEAKER_01 41:19

Yes. Uh, you want to make sure that you're you're eating regularly, skipping meals and letting your blood sugar crash and spike is not uh very helpful to your body during this time. You want to try and keep your blood sugar even through the day. Uh, I know that intermittent fasting is very popular right now. I I would not recommend it. I don't, as you know, aligned with Jane's values, the word dieting shouldn't be used. It's about eating to support your body through the day and not going too long before you have that snack or that meal, um, really to support your body as you're going. It needs a lot of calorie, a lot of energy to support these changes that are happening through your body. And the way that we get energy is by eating.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So probably I'm gonna say prioritize protein. We want a nice balance of good whole foods, fiber is so great for your for your uh your microbiome and your gut, your digestive, your digestion. And a lot of it is going to be really watching pay attention to the way that you feel after you eat certain foods. Like your body really does know the best, and it really is always, always communicating with you. Always. Um, one of the things I remember that we talked about, uh, I don't believe we talked about it in the last episode, but you and I talked about it in a previous discussion. And this really goes along the lines with the idea of not even the idea, but just the fact that we have um increased cortisol. We have, you know, all of these things going on in our body is kind of going to increase just the stress in our body as we're trying to figure out what's what's happening, trying to, you know, get that balance going on. We have, you know, kind of an likely an increased amount of you know anxiety and stress. One of the questions that I asked you, we were talking about in general, like where we have um, you know, we're we're trying to, you know, we all we all have like a certain size of tank, right? We have our tank and we're like overflowing and we're trying to fill everybody else's, you know, bucket or their tank. Um, and then, you know, we also have our own. And I ask you like, does the size of our tank or the size of our bucket, what we have capacity for just overall in a given day, does that change during perimenopause?

SPEAKER_01 44:01

I believe it does, and I've definitely felt it myself. So um, and so many other women uh say things like, you know what? I I'm not able to do X, Y, and Z that I was able to do before now. For example, multitasking. All of a sudden, that becomes a huge issue when you're going through perimenopause, spending too much time on our devices. That uh tends to rev up our nervous systems and you can feel it. I have women that all of a sudden no longer can drive on the highway because it's too stimulating and they can't keep track of what's happening and the speeds and the people around them. It becomes overwhelming. So all of those things, maybe you're procrastinating more. Um, there's all these things that can that that can happen that give me the indication that our stress buckets are full and we need to make room in them uh during this time.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Yeah, I think it's so good to know. I think again, I just got this image as you were talking about that. It's the same thing when we think about, you know, we're when we think about kind of the ridiculousness of uh a teenage girl trying to not allow her body to, you know, like grow and to evolve. It's like we're trying to, we're trying to stop the, we're trying to stop the natural progression of what's going to happen. We all know that as we age, we do, we do lose certain, we don't lose it, but our our overall bucket, it is going to shrink. I mean, look at anybody who is well into their older years. What they are able to do, what they have the energy for, what they have the capacity for, it is less. So we are on the road to that. It doesn't mean that we have to give up, but I think we create so much more stress when we're trying to expect ourselves to do the things that we used to do in our 20s or in our 30s when we simply don't have the hormonal, the physical capacity to do that. So if we can meet ourselves where we are, there's so much that we're capable of, probably way more than we actually do when we're so stressed out and trying to kind of work against ourselves. So I think it's just really good to know that that capacity does lessen. But if you can work within that, there's still so much that's available for you.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Um that's that's what I said. Like if you can unlock and understand your nervous system, that really is the key to the universe. Because then you can start to see how your body um is affected by the stress around you, whether it's that email from your boss or an argument with your child, those things have an impact on you, which you recognize more often in perimenopause than you did when you were younger, because you your hormones are at a different stage right now, and we we lose that uh capability, that protection from those hormones as we uh get hit by different types of stressors as we age.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

Yeah, so important. So important. Thank you so much for this. I think we could continue to talk for a long time, but for anybody who's sent who it wants to know more and they want to um just kind of dive more into this topic, specifically this topic on perimenopause, what's happening in the body. Um, I know you have uh two great places, two great resources uh for anybody. Do you want to share those with us? And then Shelby and I have another great opportunity as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Sure. So I write a free publication called The Peri Professional. It's on Substack. And this is my sweat, blood, and tears. This is my life's work of learning about health and spending the last three years researching and trying to understand perimenopause. This information is posted without any affiliate links, advertisements, or noise. I really feel like the menopause transition and menopause has been overcommercialized. So I'm trying to balance some of that by giving and providing trustworthy information. I am also a health guide for a company called Peri, that's P-E-R-R-Y. They are a global platform for community support of women, and it's completely free to join. You can uh create a free account and connect with other perimenopausal women for support and chatter about our days and our stresses and what we're feeling. And then we also have a program to support you individually through our Periguide program.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Awesome. Now, you may, you may not, you might be surprised to hear this just based on what you've heard from Shelby on the podcast. She sounds very, you know, very she is very informed, but she sounds very serious. Now, if you go and check out her periprofessional substack, you are not going to get the serious Shelby. You are going to get Shelby's amazing humor. She brings a humor to the topic of perimenopause that I have not seen or experienced anywhere else. Uh, we'll have links to all of this in the show notes so you can go, you know, grab it quickly. But um, if you want to bring a little humor and uh a smile to your face when learning about perimenopause, the periprofessional is absolutely the place to do that. And also if you happen to be listening to this, well, whether you're listening before or after October 3rd of 2024, Shelby and I are gonna be doing a workshop together. And it's uh called Perimenopause and Peaceful Eating. And it's gonna be a chance really for a QA for you to get your questions answered. We're gonna talk about some common pitfalls. My goal will be to talk about things that hopefully in a different way than we've talked about here, so that we can make sure that we're really just continuing to provide some additional information and insights for you. So that workshop will be on October 3rd. I'll have a link to that in the show notes as well. So, Shelby, thank you so much for joining us again. This is such an important conversation. And um, you know, if we end up with more questions and more desire to continue the conversation, we can uh certainly do that uh in the future.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Great. Thank you so much, everybody. I appreciate you listening. And as you can tell, I am extremely passionate about getting this information into the right hands for the women who need it. I do not want anyone else to suffer through the confusing time that I did when I started my perimenopause journey.

SPEAKER_00 50:49

That's so important. It really is a journey. Um, I can tell how unique and how individual it is. And it's like just like with the challenges with food, the more you understand what's happening, the more you are empowered to make the choices that you need to make for your body instead of thinking you're powerless. It's like, oh, I'm powerless, I'm out of control. I can't, there's nothing I can do. My body's just gonna do this thing. It's kind of it's a it's a very similar journey. And I think that's that's why, you know, they're they're really, and there is such a connection here. So I've really appreciated the the chance to um to talk together. All right, everybody, that's what I have for you today. I'll see you next week. I want you to know that you're not alone in your journey. If you're a coach or healing professional helping others while privately battling your own food and body concerns, it's time to prioritize your own healing. Join and support our folks for us.