Why you must love your menopausal body with food
Why you must love your body with food
A healthy body relies on the right fuel to function. As we all know one of the absolute basics about owning a car is that you put the right fuel in it. Sounds pretty straightforward but, let me ask this question. Have you ever put the wrong fuel in your car? I have and the result is that it cost me a lot of money, with towing and leaving at a garage, then paying the garage to sort out the issues. Not something I’d wish on anyone, especially the anguish of being a woman on her own stuck in the middle of nowhere.
What if I told you right now that the car you drive is the last one you will ever have? You can’t ever have a new one – not even if it starts to go wrong – and it must last you for the rest of your life. If you absolutely knew that this would be the last vehicle that you will ever own, do you think you would take better care of it?
Why do people change their oil filters? Cars with clean oil filters run better and last longer. Why do we do frequent preventative maintenance? Isn't it because we know that it's a lot less costly to take care of the oil, the filter, and so on than it is to replace an engine or transmission, or worse, replace the entire vehicle?
Well, guess what? You are in the last vehicle you will ever have in your lifetime; it's your body. So, if you don’t put the right fuel in your body, you cannot expect things to run smoothly.
It doesn’t have to be complicated
‘Eat real food’ doesn’t have to be a juice cleanse, just good quality, honest food. Good quality proteins, healthy fats, complex carbohydrates and if you eat snacks aim for what I like to call "snacks with benefits". Limit or remove sugars, white bread/pasta/rice and alcohol Make meals and snacks from scratch where you can or buy in from good quality takeaways.
Be mindful to hydrate sufficiently for your needs. Your body will thank you for it.
Keep a handle on how many cups of tea and coffee you have, watch the fizzy drinks (diet or otherwise), and alcohol which all can steal your health.
Food journal
Your starting point is to complete a food journal of what your normal daily food intake (including fluids) are. Definitely not the weekend of your birthday party when your normal eating pattern got shoved out the window. You might wince at this but getting to the brass tacks and facing up to what you do eat in a day is the first step towards fuelling your body with the right nourishment and hydration if needed. Then use some quiet time to review the 3 days and note your top priorities for making changes. Remember, to view the 3 day food journal as a snapshot of where you’re at right now. From there you can use it to set goals to work on sorting your top priorities for change first and take it from there.
Symptom triggers journal
This is a very useful tool to note down menopause symptoms triggering at or around certain meals or snacks. Obvious trigger foods are some spicy foods, eating too much sugar i.e. beyond your tolerance level, empty carbohydrates, alcohol. Then you can get a clearer picture of what foods may be contributing to your symptoms.
With both the food journal and symptom trigger journal use a notebook, it doesn’t have to be an expensive notebook.
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