This podcast episode features an enlightening discussion between Tricia Blake and Ina Benkova, centering on the intricate relationship between menopause and nutrition. Ina clarifies the significant misconceptions surrounding weight gain during menopause, asserting that hormonal changes, rather than mere caloric intake, play a pivotal role in this transition.

With a robust background as a registered dietitian, she emphasizes the necessity for personalized nutrition strategies tailored to the unique experiences of women navigating this phase of life.

The conversation delves into essential lifestyle pillars, including nutrition, movement, stress management, sleep, and mindset, all of which profoundly influence well-being during menopause.

This episodes aims to empower listeners with the knowledge and tools necessary to embrace this transformative stage with confidence and grace.

Takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the importance of understanding hormonal changes during menopause and their impact on weight management, particularly the misconception that weight gain is purely about calories.
• Ina Benkova highlights the necessity of personalized nutrition approaches that take into account individual lifestyles, preferences, and cultural backgrounds to achieve effective weight management.
• Listeners are encouraged to prioritize protein intake, especially at breakfast, to aid in muscle preservation and appetite regulation during menopause.
• The discussion reveals that stress and sleep significantly affect hormonal balance, influencing cravings, weight gain, and overall well-being during the menopausal transition.
• Benkova stresses the importance of integrating lifestyle factors, such as movement, stress management, and sleep hygiene, into a comprehensive approach to managing menopause symptoms.
• The episode advocates for seeking specialized dietary support to navigate the complexities of menopause, emphasizing that women should not feel dismissed or unsupported in their experiences.

Welcome to the My Third Bloom Podcast where we get into unfiltered conversations about the powerful journey of aging gracefully during perimenopause and menopause, breaking taboos and embracing transformation.

I'm your host Tricia Blake, founder, CEO and Chief awesome Officer of My Third Bloom, where we are on a mission to empower those experiences experiencing perimenopause and menopause.

We're guided by empathy and fueled by innovation.

We provide support, education and resources.

Whether you're navigating the roller coaster of hormonal changes or seeking a supportive community, you're in the right place.

Buckle up and get ready to bloom with strength, wisdom and grace.

Hey listeners, welcome to the next episode of the My Third Bloom Podcast where we bring you real talk, real science, and real solutions for navigating midlife with confidence.

Today, we're tackling a big one.

Menopause and nutrition and why so much of what we've been told about weight gain and hormone changes is either outdated or flat out wrong.

You hear me?

Wrong.

So here's the truth.

Women in perimenopause that's the years leading up to menopause, when hormone levels start to fluctuate.

Just like that roller coaster.

And did you know that 72% of women in Canada say their healthcare providers don't have up to date menopause knowledge, which means too many of us are left navigating these changes without clear guidance.

But our guest today has made it her mission to change that.

She's a registered dietitian, founder of the Menopause Dietitians, and creator of the Menopause Relief Program.

She holds a Master's in nutrition and a specialization in women's health from Women's College Hospital.

And she's trained in cognitive behavioral therapy, often called CBT and Dialectical Behavior Therapy or dbt, a framework for managing emotions, building resilience and handling stress.

She blends evidence based nutrition with mindset coaching to help women take back control of their bodies without extreme diets or gimmicks.

Please join me in giving a warm My Third Bloom Podcast welcome to Ina Bankova.

Ina, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Tricia.

So excited to be here and can't wait to dive right in.

Oh, my goodness.

So we're going to jump right in.

So starting things off, let's go a little easy.

Can you share a little bit about your journey with us and what sparked your passion and desire for menopause nutrition?

Absolutely, Tricia.

So I actually started my private practice in the realm of weight management and even obesity medicine.

And what I was finding was over time, I noticed a pattern, specifically with women in their 40s, in their 50s, where they found they were doing everything they always had done.

They hadn't changed anything about eating, exercise, but they were now struggling with energy, sleep, mood, and a plethora of other symptoms that were dismissed by their health care providers despite communicating this.

And that's when I realized what was really, really missing.

And that was a deeper understanding of how hormonal shifts in perimenop into menopause impact everything from metabolism to appetite regulation.

And once I started digging into the research on estrogen role in insulin sensitivity, in muscle mass formation, in inflammation, and even in neurotransmitter communication, it completely changed how I practiced.

And that's when I decided to focus my work exclusively on this group of women to bring science back to personalized care, to a group that's often underserved and completely misunderstood and just feels sweep swooped under the rug.

So that's where my, my passion came for, from, for to really serve women in menopause and support them on leading their highest quality of life through this stage.

Oh, I love that.

I love the work that you're doing here.

You know, just thinking that over half the population is going to go through it and, you know, the, there's still gaps and how we just don't get, we go years, so many years without getting the answers that we need.

I love what you're doing and the specialization and the focus on, on nutrition.

So I think my first question is, I think maybe even going back to the North American, like menopause society or the menopause society.

You know, a lot of women believe that the menopause weight gain is inevitable and there's nothing they can do.

And you know, the North American menopause society says, well, you know, you could do some strength training.

There's like a holistic approach.

Balanced nutrition can help to reduce the fat, preserve muscle during perimenopause and even after menopause.

Can we do a little bit of myth busting to start off?

Like, what are some of the, like, misconceptions you hear from clients about weight gain and Hormone changes during menopause 100%.

There's tons of misconceptions around weight, our ability to manage weight through menopause.

There are 100% things we can do to regulate weight and get women feeling confident again and feeling like they recognize themselves so really pivotal.

But the biggest misconception, I would say overall is that weight gain and menopause is purely about calories and calories out.

And they're just the same old advice, you know, from the medical, from the physician's office that they had been given 15 years ago, 20 years ago, when in reality we know hormone shifts affect how our body responds to food and exercise even outside of menopause.

Right?

This whole interplay between ghrelin and leptin, which is our appetite regulation system, cortisol, which is our stress hormone, um, insulin.

And the way we store body, store energy in the body also changes and shifts.

So with the additional layer of then estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, luteinizing, hormone shifting like there, there's an additional layer of things we want to address there.

And we know, as you mentioned in your intro, Tricia, estrogen declining leads to increased visceral fat storage.

So it changes the way our body actually stores that fat tissue in particular.

And we know that estrogen decline leads to the decrease in muscle mass and greater insulin resistance even without major changes in the diet.

We also know progesterone affects fluid retention.

And so we can see some increased, you know, water retention in the muscle in the body, which leads us to feeling a bit inflamed and looking a bit bloated even if we hadn't eaten changed nothing about our day to day also impacts mood, which can influence emotional eating.

And the way that we seek comfort and soothing from food when we're not feeling up to par.

So overarchingly, it's not about eating perfectly.

It's about learning to work with your physiology in a new hormonal environment, taking specific approaches that are not complicated.

Let me preface, nutrition is so over complicated online and there's so much information that is contradicting itself.

And so what we do, what I do with my clients is we just cut through all of the BS and just get to the root of okay, what is evidence based that shows us actually works for long term sustainable weight management through Peri into menopause and we cut to the chase and it's really realistic, it's super simple.

So nothing really, you know, will take you by storm, but it's, it's really just dissecting what Actually works through that stage when it comes to nutrition.

Uncomplicate nutrition how everything that you see on social media and come on, it is, there is a lot out there.

And if you're telling me calories in, calories out, or if I go to the gym and you know, the trainer's trying to give me this meal plan, talking to me about lifestyle habits and things like that, what am I supposed to do?

You know, Totally.

It's not about eat less, exercise more.

Right.

Like that is just like the single most commonly used phrase when it comes to weight management.

But what I like to do is actually think about the five pillars of lifestyle that really.

Let's talk.

Yeah, let's talk about it.

That really do support that overarching goal of just finding a healthy weight through menopause.

Those five pillars include nutrition, movement, stress management, sleep and mindset.

And the mindset element can actually assist with the stress management, can help with improved sleep, can help with consistency and movement and with regularity when it comes to nutrition habits as well.

So the mindset is almost like the umbrella and then underneath that, that piece we have the nutrition, movement, stress and sleep, which are all really impactful and influence hormone regulation and body composition.

So nutritionally we focus on blood sugar management and balance.

We talk about protein timing, especially for muscle preservation.

We talk about anti inflammatory foods to support estrogen metabolism.

All super important.

Like you mentioned, Tricia, strength training becomes essential not just for weight management, but for preserving bone density and muscle mass, which we just know is at an increased risk of loss during menopause, specifically with some sarcopenia for muscle and a little bit of osteoporosis risk when it comes to bone density.

So those are things that we want to protect against for sleep and stress.

We know those things directly impact cortisol, which is our stress hormone and affects our appetite regulation as well as our fat storage.

Because when our body is perceiving increased stress, it goes into a bit of a survival state.

And what happens when we're in survival is your body is going to want to protect you and have backup stores of energy on your person so that that's available to you at any point.

So these are super core elements that each client needs a personal, you know, approach to because everyone, every woman's life looks entirely different, managing different responsibilities at different phases of life.

Women have kids, adult children who are still living with them, trying to balance a career, trying to manage a household.

Caregiving even like as women that are either going into perimenopause or menopause like that's a new role that, you know, you may find yourself, you know, having to, to take on to take care of your parents and there's a lot of stress or you're, you know, climbing the corporate ladder.

There's so many different things.

I, I like the, the, the pillars and just talking about lifestyle habits and that it is, it's, there's an individual approach because lifestyle habits can have as much impact on symptoms as medication for a woman.

Right.

And just knowing that from a symptoms perspective.

I know we're speaking on nutrition, but these things can impact, you know, how severe your hot flashes might be or your mood swings.

A hundred percent, 100%.

It has a whole body.

Because we're taking a whole body approach to health beyond just the food element, which is incredibly important, of course.

But we're looking at stress, we're looking at sleep, we're looking at movement, mindset and psychology that will directly impact how you know your sleeplessness and your hot flashes at night.

Because we're regulating hormones from a cortisol perspective, which impacts progesterone, which is most commonly tied to sleep issues.

So there's this whole cohesive effect of, you know, even mood stabilization when we balance out blood sugar specifically.

And for, for a lot of women, even the sensation of tingling in your extremities and in, you know, frozen shoulder.

We've seen improvements in symptoms and managing nutrition that way by making sure that we're maximizing muscle protein synthesis and maintaining muscle mass.

So there are direct effects of optimizing for these lifestyle factors on your day to day experience with perimenopause symptoms too.

And we can.

We see significant improvements and increase in quality of life?

For sure, let's.

Awesome.

You mentioned something about protein timing.

I don't think I've ever heard about that.

What is protein timing for our listeners?

Would you be able to explain?

Yeah, definitely.

So protein timing is basically this idea of we want to have a bit of a structured approach in terms of when we're consuming food throughout the day that follows your body's natural hunger cues.

And that's called the appetite regulation system.

A lot of women experience like lack of hunger and this constant background hunger or never feeling quite satisfied and full or feeling this, you know, the sensation of post meal, there's something missing and I, I need, I need a little something more.

Like I need a little something more.

They get cravings at a particular time of day.

So meal timing and protein timing in particular really affects that whole relationship.

We're looking to Regulate your hunger fullness rhythms.

We're looking for you to actually experience physical hunger around meal times and feel satiated post meals that we're reduc cravings and reducing the likelihood to binge later that night too, which is a huge issue when ghrelin builds up and that hunger tends to accumulate throughout the day, specifically with protein.

What we mean by protein timing is we want to have that protein at increments in the day where we're shutting ghrelin down, we're shutting that hunger hormone down, we're producing leptin, which is our fullness hormone.

Leptin is the main hormone that stimulates that satiety.

Decreased cravings, decreased likelihood or vulnerability eventually during the day.

So it's about the timing there.

But then proportionally, quantitatively, we're also not looking to just eat like 5 grams of protein here, 10 grams of protein there, because that actually doesn't do anything to activate muscle protein synthesis.

So when it comes to timing that protein, we want to have a bulk of protein in one go.

The research has really shown us that aiming for about 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal is going to allow your body to actually enter the threshold amount of protein necessary to enter MTOR and muscle protein synthesis.

AKA to be able to actually generate new muscle tissue, you need to get at least that 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal at once.

So we want to time it in a way where you can have a bulk protein.

Why do I need new muscle tissue?

Muscle muscle is so key because it is really the most metabolically active tissue in the body.

Right?

So it basically requires the most energy at rest to just purely operate and function.

So the more that means the more muscle tissue you have, the more energy you're literally burning just sitting here, like just sitting here, just chatting, which is really helpful when it comes to weight management because we're naturally boosting your metabolism that way.

We're increasing your metabolic rate, which means your body is expending more energy at rest and more inclined towards shifting body composition, towards increased muscle and reducing fat composition.

Okay, so if it's 20 to 30 now, like if you're, I don't know what, like 40 plus, what was it when I'm in my 20s and 30s, like, the number just keeps going up.

This number.

Absolutely.

Through so into postmenopause, you'll find that number actually gets higher and higher and that just because that's because our ability to actually digest and absorb those amino acids, which are basically the constituents of the protein, decrease with with age.

Unfortunately, and that's.

It sucks.

And the original numbers around, you know, protein goals were actually based on research done on men.

Women actually need heightened, heightened protein intake through peri and to meno.

But why we start a bit lower at 20 to 30 is because 40 feels like an insane goal and we need to work up towards that in order to form sustainable habits.

So we start at 20.

In especially breakfast foods are a bit harder to hit 30.

So we start at 20, we build up to 30, we increase, you know, 30 plus proteins a meal, grams of protein a meal.

We just need to stack on that habit and make it become, you know, a regular thing before we throw a crazy goal at you.

Like why this number keeps going up, I don't understand.

It's that exact.

The digestibility element of our ability to absorb the amino acids, unfortunately.

And why didn't anybody tell me, you know, that's stressful enough.

And speaking of stress, stress during midlife, it's not just emotional, it's chemical.

Right.

And high cortisol levels, increased belly fat fuels, cravings, worsens hot flashes.

Thinking about emotional eating, cravings and stress related behaviors that often show up during perimenopause.

How do you approach that?

Absolutely.

We have these ingrained coping mechanisms, right.

Where through our 20s, through our 30s may not have impacted us very much.

And we could rely on food to give us a sense of pleasure, give us some comfort that we're looking for in certain moments in time.

Unfortunately, through perimenopause and post menopause.

Post menopause that has a little bit more of a effect on the way that our body's now storing fat.

So we are going to see more of the direct implications of that.

And in the past we may have used food to cope, but you know, there are other ways to cope with really intense stressors that we aforementioned.

Right.

Like the work stressors, caretaking stressors, managing family life and like different challenges that come up with that day to day struggles that we have as human beings trying to survive and meal prep and also move and also sleep well and also have a solid relationship and you know, caretake and layering all these factors.

We basically, you know, have our go to kind of reliant coping mechanisms.

Food tends to be one of the most common ones because it does it such a fast dopamine inducer, which is dopamines are good, feel good hormone and it does give us an immediate hit of pleasure.

And often that's what we're looking for when we are in that stressful environment.

It's like, give me something to just temporarily blank out those emotions and not feel anything right?

For five minutes, just give me a little blackout and just like let me feel nothing.

Right?

So generally what happens is with hormonal shifts, especially estrogen, progesterone, those things directly on top of all of that.

So on top of all the stress management that we might have experienced that had trickled into midlife, we also have the direct impact of estrogen and progesterone affecting serotonin and GABA production.

So they reduce serotonin and GABA production, which are two hormones that produce that sense of pleasure, relaxation and like joy day to day.

And that actually also impacts mood, sleep and appetite.

So it's no surprise that cravings and emotional eating often spike during this time.

In addition to, you know, maybe having been experienced earlier.

What we would do, what we do to, to kind of combat this is we combine nutrition strategies like protein and fiber and optimizing fat and making sure you're getting a carb and despite what you read online, like it's really important to fill your brain with glucose.

That's a whole other thing.

That's a whole other point.

But is this the carb discussion?

Is this the, the, the.

We'll get into that later.

We'll get into that later.

But it's crazy because, you know, the number, the one contributor to emotional hunger is actually physical hunger.

So what we do first is we rule that out, making sure hormonally you're not prone to emotional eating because your body's actually seeking, desiring, nutri nutrients and food and energy.

So we rule that out.

But then we pair that with CBT and DBT informed tools to help you build awareness around certain patterns or triggers.

So our brain works in a very interesting way.

It's been well studied.

The DBT thought model kind of draws out the fact that we experience an event or a trigger.

We generate particular thoughts or beliefs about that trigger that then produces specific emotions.

And if those emotions are really uncomfortable, they're anxiety, you know, fear, disappointment, guilt, shame, annoyance, frustration, anger.

Like tons of different, you know, emotions that are very unpleasant.

As humans, we're literally wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

We do not want to feel those things.

And so what we're going to do is we're going to engage in a behavior that we're looking to avoid just to temporarily block that out.

Often it tends to be food short term, provides us with that distraction, provides us with that pleasure.

Shortly after we finish the bag of, you know, fill in the blank, the bag, the bag of chips, the box of cookies, whatever it may be.

We feel those same thoughts come up of ugh, like why did I do that?

I lack willpower.

I told myself I wasn't going to do it.

Where's my self control?

Like we beat ourselves up right where there's a hundred other factors that are actually leading up to the moment of the craving.

But we make it mean something about our own character and our own flaw.

Like oh it was me, that wasn't enough when that's completely false.

But that produces only that feeds into that, you know, that behavior chain of okay, I'm going to feel those same uncomfortable emotions, seek pleasure, then feel the pain again, want to, you know, soothe comfort and soothe.

So we're going to, we learn how to break that chain and reroute that outcome that post binge, you know, post binge.

We're going to generate new thoughts that produce different, more tolerable emotions and produce different action outcomes.

We're going to learn how to think about even just addressing the thoughts and the beliefs because we have these really deep ingrained thinking patterns that have just established themselves over time through doing, you know, four different, five different diets throughout life and kind of downloading some of the food rules we learned there, reading different things online, something your aunt told you, like, you know, all of those things kind of sit in the background when it comes to nutrition.

And we make it's subconscious.

We're not even recognizing we're thinking those things, but they're driving our food behavior and we experience all these secondary impacts of it.

So we basically learn how to address the thought, the emotion when we are dysregulated emotionally, what do we do to re regulate and make that more tolerable?

So we don't engage in that action of emotional eating, but when we do emotional eat also how do we cope with that in a different way to where we reroute the behavior and we break that loop that happens with emotional eating sometimes.

Okay.

There's so much conflicting advice out there.

I'm glad that they're an extreme diets or do this or this is the new menopause diet.

Come on, stop it.

Agreed.

Completely agreed.

Yeah.

About intermittent fasting and apparently that's now the best approach.

And you read about keto and low carb and all these things.

It's like none of those work.

Let's scrap those.

We have new research on women in particular that shows us there's a better approach and it's much more standardized.

It's a little more boring.

Unfortunately, it's not a magic pill solution, and that's actually refreshing to hear.

So there is a way that we want to be eating right and just in terms of even offering a few practical, like nutrition lifestyle tips for women who just want to start now, want to start now, and want to start making shifts to nutrition.

Starting your day with 30 grams of protein is number one.

Number one.

Number one.

Oh, to support muscle maintenance, reduce cravings, improve satiety like that is the best place to start, simply from nutrition standpoint.

Okay, working on balancing number two.

This is number two.

Balancing your meals with a protein, a healthy fat, a complex carb, and a veg and or fiber supports blood sugar regulation, which in turn supports cortisol and insulin regulation.

Incredible.

Number three.

Yep.

Number three, we can't underestimate sleep.

And less than seven hours can really impact ghrelin, which is that hunger hormone, lower leptin, which is our fullness hormone, which is why we just feel hungrier when we have had less sleep.

Our body's literally seeking energy from an external source because you're exhausted.

So if you're having hot flashes, if you're having sleeplessness, and that's impacting sleep, we just know that puts us at a predisposition for increased ghrelin, lower leptin.

And sometimes we experience this thing called nighttime revenge procrastination.

We don't want to go to bed, which only further exacerbates those things.

What?

Wait, wait, say that again.

What.

What is it?

It is nighttime revenge procrastination.

Our good nighttime revenge.

Is that what you said?

Revenge procrastination?

I think I have a PhD in that.

Unfortunately, it's more common than we think, really.

This, like, avoidance of trying to start the next day.

Right.

So we stay up later and we.

We're maybe scrolling and we're watching another episode and TR of personal experience.

Like, it's not like I'm exempt from this either.

And I completely get it.

I completely get it.

But can we implement some strategies to try our best to get, you know, to improve sleep quality in any way we can, just to help balance out that ghrelin and the leptin, which we know also actually improves hot flashes.

So can we go to bed a little bit earlier, potentially, or wake up a bit earlier, even though most women are already waking up at 4am like, and it's just, it's a chaotic, you know, it's chaotic.

But can we improve our kind of sleep hygiene and our routine in the evening to actually wind down and bump that cortisol down so we can improve our, our rhythms, our circadian rhythms at night.

Okay, those are four.

We got four, right?

Was it five?

We've got one last one.

And this is more to do with your strength training.

So our fourth one, if you're strength training, timing, protein post workout can actually really help with muscle retention as well.

So we have now a lot of resurfacing or we have a lot of surfacing research showing us that specifically for women, you're going to want to have at least 30 grams of protein, about 30 to 40 minutes maximum after your workout.

For men, that window is up to two hours after workout.

They still get the benefits of the muscle formation.

For women, we really want to have protein within that 30 to 40 minute window.

Okay, that's interesting.

I know that I've been trying my best.

I, I think I struggle with breakfast.

I can do well with lunch when it comes to protein and obviously dinner.

But the breakfast one is, is I got some work to do, you know.

Of course, of course it's.

Once you get the grasp of it, it's very easy.

Honestly, it's just about basically taking whatever protein source you're already doing at and then doubling it potentially.

If you're, you know, a Greek yogurt, one cup will get you over 20 grams of protein.

Three eggs will get you about 20 grams of protein.

Can we do things to further bump that by adding in additional protein sources?

Totally.

But that's a good place to start.

So like full cup of Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, or at least three eggs.

Or if you're, if you're, you know, afraid or sick of eggs.

And then two eggs and half a cup of egg whites will do the same trick.

Okay, now I know like the, there's, there's tips, a lot of different tricks.

It's like, okay, we're gonna increase this.

How do you personalize your approach when, like, my perimenopause journey is different from someone else's and even from, like, when we're thinking about the symptoms.

You know, some people have hot.

I know some of my friends, they've never had a hot flash in their life.

And others are just like, I can't live with this, or night sweats.

But what about genetics or even ethnicity, culture when it comes to foods?

Like, how does that play into your approach, if at all?

It definitely plays a very, very, very strong role.

The personalization aspect is actually what makes it or breaks it.

Because if I'm giving you generic advice, that's Going to work for three days and then once we stop, you know, if we don't touch base, that just completely falls off kilter.

So it's absolutely everything.

And that's why we dive in from the initial assessment and we do a very thorough analysis of what you've shared with me in your intake form.

And that will really surround past medical history, social history, preferences, dietary restrictions, allergies, cultural practices that you implement day to day, types of foods that you absolutely adore and are staples for you from a week.

And then we're not reinventing the wheel at all.

We're literally taking those things.

Your lifestyle, your, your schedule, your routine.

Do you work from home, do you, are you stay at home, are you working in the office?

Like how does your week structure look like?

And then we just make micro tweaks within that structure already.

So we make micro twigs, micro adjustments to make sure your macronutrients are balanced out, to make sure your timing is making sense for your life, to make sure that if you're, if you are feeding others outside of yourself and you're cooking, how can we accommodate to the whole family and make sure that everyone's eating this one dish?

You know, to create, cook four different dishes so everyone's satisfied.

Like, how do we make it work?

Within the context of your life, your background, your history, like that is all definitely taken into account.

And I actually do some menopause symptom tracking as well.

And through the course of, over the course of six months, on a monthly basis, we're basically tracking changes and improvements in those symptoms.

And when we're seeing, we'll also be layering supplementation in there for you know, that are all again, based on evidence, actually have research to support improvement in hot flashes, mood stabilization, regulation, stress support, in order to see those symptoms change outside of the nutrition too.

So from a physiological perspective, we're layering those two elements and we're gauging what's working really well, what we're struggling with, and we're adapting our approach.

Every single check in that we have.

So every session we basically have a pre session check in where we analyze.

Okay, what's been going super well, what's been, what are our wins, what are things we want to celebrate and, and then what have you been struggling with?

And that's where we layer in the appropriate strategies on a session to session basis that are specific to you.

Oh, I love that.

And just even thinking about support because that's where, you know, we're often told that, oh, it's Just a part of aging.

Oh, you know, you know, it's inevitable.

There's not really a lot you can do, and it leaves us just feeling dismissed and unsupported.

What do you wish more healthcare providers understood about supporting women through perimenopause into menopause and even post menopause?

I wish more healthcare providers in the weight management space where I sit, right, understood that women are not lying when they're telling you that they're putting on weight out of thin air, where it's literally coming out of nowhere and they are seeing weight gain and they're not more sedentary than they were before.

They're not drastically shifting.

Anything they're doing in terms of their body is genuinely changing.

And we need to listen to women and actually support them through those changes and do a deeper dive.

I honestly wish all doctors referred women in menopause who are going through weight challenges to a specialized dietitian, because that would be a game changer even prior to menopause.

Like, I want all the healthcare providers to just hear me.

All doctors, I want to just hear me when I say, please never utter the words eat less and exercise more.

Just refer to a dietitian who literally specializes in food and healthy and stable weight.

Like, this is.

We spent seven years of education on this master's is required for this regulated profession.

There are very intense requirements to enter the profession.

Like, we know what we're talking about.

So please, please, please leverage a support of a dietitian and get the eating portion and lifestyle factors balanced and taken care of.

Because you can't do it alone.

You can.

It will take 12 years to figure it out on your own.

Like, just get someone who can, who can help you throughout the way, help with accountability and just like, help you feel heard also and know you're not crazy and just explain to you the root cause of where your cravings are coming from, why the weight is changing, like how what food practices will really work for you.

It just is so freeing and it really does alter your relationship with food that we can tend to experience a lot of anxiety around.

Right.

So it's like we dispel all of that, tell you what actually works, and then you can just move on and do the things in your life that actually matter and just use your mental real estate for loving others, spending time committing to your other responsibilities and just removing food from the equation and just being able to ride that out and make a system.

I love that.

Yeah, create the real estate for the things you love.

You know, with the energy and the things that bring you joy.

Before we wrap up, there's one question I ask every guest that comes on and it is if you would give, if you could give, sorry, one piece of advice to your younger self about weight management, what would it be?

Nutrition?

Anything, what would it be?

Don't cut out or restrict any foods, food groups or cut things out unnecessarily.

You don't have an allergy, you don't have an aversion.

You don't have an inflammatory response.

It's not spiking or cortisol.

It's, it's none of these crazy like buzzwords we hear often.

Of course there's real allergies.

Please don't misinterpret that.

But just talk to someone who is an expert in the field and figure out what eating looks like for you before jumping to conclusions and treating your body as an experiment.

Because we do that a lot.

So don't fall for the latest trend.

Just talk to someone who knows what they're, what they're doing and spare your body the pain of exploring different dietary patterns when you don't need to.

Love that.

So where can our listeners find you?

They can totally find me on my website, menopause dietitians.com or give me a follow on Instagram at Menopause Dietitians.

I'm on TikTok.

I'm on LinkedIn so you can really find me under that handle on all different platforms.

But if you want to reach me, shoot me a DM on Instagram or send me an email at inamenopause dietitians.com and I will be there and we'll, we'll chat and we can set up a menopause strategy call and talk through your needs as well.

Awesome.

Well, we'll be looking out for you for sure.

And thank you so much for sharing your expertise, helping us break down some myths.

I love the pillars, the really simple like even nutrition tips.

You know, I think for our listeners, menopause doesn't have to mean, you know what I mean, like giving up.

With the right strategies, the right information.

Like this transition, this phase of life can, can be, has an opportunity to be some of your most vibrant with the right information.

So connect with ina on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn.

Until next time, keep asking questions, keep advocating for yourself and keep blooming in every season of your life.

And with that, we're out.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much, everyone.

Looking forward to being touched.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of My Third Bloom.

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Until next time, keep blooming and embracing the beauty of your Third Bloom.

This is Tricia Blake signing off with peace, love, light and grace.