The best menopause nutritionist knows that there’s a lot of really good ways to approach nutrition. When you’re educated as a hormone health coach you understand women’s hormones as they pertain to this time in life post-menopause. The shifts that happen in the body at menopause change the body’s nutrition needs. And the best menopause nutritionist knows and understands these shifts.
The important thing is to find a hormone health coach, a nutrition counselor that works for you. And the best person for you depends on if you are looking for a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist or an integrative approach meaning a more holistic approach to nutrition?
An RDA can be great, but when they give you a list of foods to consume you know it is based on the generic public.
What I believe is most important in finding the best menopause nutritionist is that we have different needs. Women at this stage in life are much more sensitive to certain food groups. Specifically we can have more gluten sensitivity, intolerance to gluten. We can have more sensitivity to corn, to dairy. Especially for women who at this stage in life are really frustrated
with the belly bloat and weight gain that won’t budge.
That weight gain and belly bloat can be due to inflammation that has built over time to a state of chronic inflammation in the body. And this shows up as weight gain at this stage in life.
So thinking about the best menopause nutritionist it is someone who is schooled and educated and knowledgeable about this phase in life. Someone who deeply understands what a woman post-menopause is going through hormonally, and how that impacts our weight and our fat storage.
For me as a menopause nutritionist I look at a more holistic approach. My background is in integrative medicine, integrative nutrition, and holistic health. It’s not just about what we’re eating.
It’s more what we’re eating, when we’re eating, why we’re eating, how we’re eating and where are you eating
Where, why, and how, those are all important, really important things to take into consideration. And that I work with clients in this space around menopause nutrition to see what’s happening.
Where are you starting?
What is a typical day like?
And for a lot of women there is no typical.
So from there we try to create as much consistency in those five things as we possibly can step by step by step.
Not an overhaul, not all at once.
What You’re Eating: The Best Nutrition Post-Menopause
We start with what you’re eating. I say this all the time, protein, fat, then fibre. Those are the main food groups we want to be getting into our daily nutrition framework.
The Importance Of Protein Post-Menopause
When I think of protein, we’ve got so many options, and yet this can be such a struggle for so many women. Here are a few ideas to put on your next grocery shopping list.
- Grass-fed bison – This has 23g of protein per serving. That’s amazing at 160 calories.
- The easy to go to for lunch, we’ve got some tuna. This has 21 grams of protein in just a little packet alone.
- Chicken breast is another super easy option. There are so many ways to prepare it. Stir fry it, bake it, broil it, grill it. And always great with some veggies.
- Eggs are a great add-in, too. 6 grams of protein, but you know, you have a couple eggs, maybe add in some egg whites for an omelette and maybe some chicken sausage and there goes your protein intake.
- And then I also have chickpeas. So if you’re, you know, for vegetarian or if you just want to add again a little bit of extra, you can do a small serving of chickpeas in there.
A good serving size of protein matches the size of the palm of your hand.
Protein forward is the way to build your plate. We’re always about let’s get enough protein in.
Fibre Rainbows For Joyful Eating
Once the protein is in we want to look at bulking out the plate with fibre. We want the vegetables to take up maybe 3/4 of our plate. Pile high. Think about making a rainbow on your plate of lots of variety in the veg you use.
- Kale
- Sweet potato
- Scallions
- Zucchini.
- Broccoli
- Arugula
- Carrots
- Parsley
- Cilantro
- Red cabbage
Those cruciferous vegetables. We need to get those in. The rainbow and the bulk of your plate is going to be these low carbohydrates.
Starchy carbs like a sweet potato or squashes, those are more of a higher carb content. We want to maybe do half a sweet potato once in a while. We can do the squash, you know, but those are important to get into real whole foods.
Fat is Essential For Hormonal Health
A thumb sized portion of fat is essential for helping regulate hormonal health.
I like to add in a couple tablespoons of seeds, pumpkin or sunflower seeds. You can always do
olives, green or black. And of course, avocado.
That’s a great combination to create satiety, right?
So, we need to make sure we’re getting enough of the right foods in the right spacing, which
brings us to our next important step.
When You’re Eating: For Your Best Nutrition Post-Menopause
When are we eating? You know so many of us, and me included, were brought into this space on several small meals a day, right? To keep our metabolism stable.
We’ve learned since the science and the research has taught us that that isn’t the case. We need to space out our meals and give our digestive system time to digest the food so that we can then get into using the fat stores.
And this is where you’ve heard maybe about intermittent fasting. Not extreme fasting, right? But something where, let’s say, you finish your meal at the end of the day by 700 p.m. and then you don’t eat again maybe until 9, 10, 11:00 a.m., right? Giving yourself time to go into the fat stores. I think of it like a cleanout.
Your body needs time to clean out the old to allow the new in.
And when we give our body time to digest, use the food, what happens is once we hit the point at where we’re no longer burning the calories that we just ate, the body is then allowed to go into the fat stores and start using fat for fuel, which is what we’re looking for, right?
So, we want to flip the fat burning switch.
When we eat all the time, constantly, we’re always off the top, meaning we’re always burning sugar. The body never gets into the fat stores, and we become addicted to that. So, it takes some help. That’s where I work with a lot of clients to help them flip the switch from sugar burning to fat burning so that they can lose weight for good.
And once you get there, it’s really not hard to sustain it. So, you want to make sure you’re bringing in consistency. Day in, day out, I eat at this time. This time I close my eating window and I fast till the next day.
Again, rinse, repeat. The body likes consistency in that way. We don’t want to be up and down.
That yo-yo dieting is where the body goes into stress mode and it’s like, “Wait a minute. I don’t know when food’s coming, so I better just go into starvation mode. Which is that fight, flight, freeze.” And that’s where our body goes into storage again and regains weight versus using fuel.
So, we really want to watch that balance. What, when and where are you eating?
Where Are You Eating?
Are you eating in your car? Standing up, maybe rushing through to get to your meeting. It’s really important that we find a space that is somewhat relaxing where we’re not super distracted.
You don’t want to be in the middle of a high-spirited discussion or argument when you’re eating. It disrupts our digestive process again, which leads to fat storage.
Why Am I Choosing To Eat Right Now?
The best menopause nutritionist will say these are the things it’s important to get into a rhythm with. A lot of us eat emotionally and we look for food for comfort, when we’re bored, when we’re angry, when we’re happy, you know it has all these kinds of plays in our life. And when I work with clients, this is an important thing to start to work on because it’s just an automatic response.
We probably haven’t thought about it and we’ve been doing it forever the way we eat, right? And why we’re eating. So, it’s important to reflect. Am I hungry? or am I lonely, tired, you know, stressed out, and I just am looking for something?
Because what we can do is come up with alternative ways to calm your body and your mind down that will help you feel better and not turn to food that later you’re going to feel badly about, right? I shouldn’t have eaten those cookies or that ice cream or why did I know that again is that talk that just keeps us in that cycle of reaching for the food.
So we want to clear the path there as to why you are eating.
I’m post menopausal. I know HOW to eat!
Okay, the how. And this kind of comes in, I mentioned this a little bit with where are we eating, but you know, we want to take our time. And this can be the most challenging thing, right? Again, we’re rushing, right? We’re on the go, so we got to get the food in to move on. Well, this is where a lot of us, we don’t even realize we’ve eaten or sometimes it’s just mindless eating. We’re not even aware of what we ate.
So, it’s really important to slow down enough and come into the space where you’re enjoying your food as much as you can. And, you know, doing things like putting a candle out, putting on some light music, really making it you and your plate, right?
You and your food that you’ve created and really enjoying that experience. This is where real satiety is, right? That satisfaction of nourishment comes in.
And so also with chewing, right? So many people are like, “Coo, chew, chew, swallow, chew, chew, chew, swallow, chew, chew, chew, drink water.” We don’t want to do that.
We want digestion to start in the mouth. So, we really want to take our time, chew our food several times, right? We really want to make sure we’re breaking it down before we swallow. So, really give yourself time blocking on your calendar, you know, 30 minutes to enjoy your meal, 20 minutes at the least, but because then you won’t be so hungry so soon after.
You will be satisfied which gives your body the chance to use the energy, digest it, use it and then get into the fat stores. So we can start to use the fat stores to burn fat for fuel.
And so these are really important aspects of menopause coaching I use, you know, as a menopause nutritionist. And I hope you find this helpful. And I really hope that if you have any questions or this resonates with you, you know that you’ll think about reaching out if you want some help with this because you’re not alone.
And there’s nothing wrong with you.
It’s just we need to think about, you know, nutrition and eating and how we treat our bodies differently at this stage in life. And that’s what I’m here to help you with. So, with that, have a great day and I hope you found this helpful.
