Lose Body Fat & Gain Muscle In Perimenopause

Transcript:

LEAH: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition, brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. We are a small Minnesota company with the big goal of spreading the real food message and helping people draw the connection between what they eat and how they feel. My name is Leah Kleinschrodt. I'm a Registered and Licensed Dietitian.

Today, I'm here with Teresa Wagner, who is also a Registered and Licensed Dietitian. I am really excited for today's show because it's a topic that we haven't really tackled before, or at least not from this angle before, which is hard to believe when we think about Dishing Up Nutrition being 20 years old.

This episode today is for the ladies out there who are going through perimenopause, those who are staring down the barrel of perimenopause, those who have gone through perimenopause. And also for the men out there who are partnering with and supporting the women in their life who are in this particular phase. Our topic today is “Lose Body Fat and Gain Muscle in Perimenopause”.

TERESA: I am really excited for this discussion as well, Leah, because a large portion of our clients and students fall right into this age bracket and stage of life. They're in their 40s and 50s. They're likely raising kids and teens or sending them off to college.

What is perimenopause?

They're invested in their careers, and they may also be taking on more responsibilities of caring for aging parents, suffice it to say, they are busy. So, I'd like to set the stage by discussing what perimenopause actually is and what can go on for a woman's body and mind at this time. Then we'll dive into the nitty gritty of eating well to support our bodies in that transition.

In the United States, the average age of menopause is 51, with the average age range being between 45 and 58. This took me by surprise for the first time I heard it, but menopause is actually only one day on the calendar. The day a woman hits 12 consecutive months without a period. After that day, a woman is considered post menopausal.

The months and years leading up to that day is perimenopause. Often in conversation, the term menopause is broadly used to describe menopause and perimenopause years also. And many post-menopausal women also say they're in menopause. This just goes to show how for most women, there is a lack of good education or good resources for that education surrounding this time in life.

LEAH: Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's easy to say one term and for it to just cover all the bases there, but really truly there are some very distinct stages when it comes to the, again, perimenopause, menopause, post menopause years. I remember also, Teresa, when you said menopause is actually just one day on the calendar.

I heard that also on a podcast or reading somewhere and it took me a second. I had to kind of hit pause and rewind on that thought for just a minute, but it was like, oh yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense once you think about it. So yeah, menopause may only be one calendar day, but oftentimes, a woman's symptoms, which can vary greatly from woman to woman, can span from 10 years prior to that date to several years after that date. So the body doesn't just usually flip a switch and turn off uncomfortable or irritating symptoms just because like magically we hit that one year mark on the calendar.

TERESA: Wouldn't that be nice though?

LEAH: It would be nice to have that predictability, right? Yeah. So, our focus today is going to be on those years leading up to menopause, which are the perimenopausal years. And for the average woman, this will be the four years or so leading up to that 12-month mark on the calendar. But for other women, this could be only two years. It could be seven years. It could be 10 years leading up to menopause.

And experts say that it is possible to start experiencing perimenopausal symptoms even around age 35. Maybe there are some of you out there listening that started feeling that transition in your late 30s, and there might even be more of you out there just kind of wondering, you know, if you're sitting in this transition time right now.

TERESA: Well, and so how do you know if you're in perimenopause?

LEAH: Good question.

TERESA: Perimenopause is the time where the ovaries stop producing hormones in the same manner they used to. They've been working hard since puberty and now they're starting to sputter out a bit in their hormone output. Estrogen especially can be in for a wild ride with big spikes and dips, even over the course of one menstrual cycle. As a woman starts inconsistently ovulating or is under a lot of stress, progesterone levels go down, ultimately, as time goes on, progesterone, and testosterone. estrogen, and testosterone.

What kind of symptoms can happen during perimenopause?

In the wake of these hormone swings and shifts week to week and month to month, a woman can experience a huge range of symptoms and intensity of those symptoms. Many people know about the hot flashes and the night sweats, the potential sleep disturbances, mood swings, irritability, and lower libido, but there can be some off the wall kind of symptoms that many times are treated with medications that aren't addressing the root cause of the problem.

These symptoms can be things like heart palpitations, thinning hair, or hair growth on the face, brain fog, difficulty concentrating, anxiety. Leah, how many women in their perimenopausal years that you see are on antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds?

LEAH: Yeah. I mean, it's hard to kind of put a number to it, but definitely a fair amount. And like those early forties, mid forties, late forties 40s, somewhere in there, that is a common time for a woman just to feel like they need some kind of extra support for their moods and how they're feeling. But again, oftentimes if they bring that concern to the doctor, that's where the medications come into play.

TERESA: Right, right. Other things that we can see in perimenopause, strange muscle and joint aches. So then maybe we're taking ibuprofen or aspirin or Tylenol. We might get itchy skin or I've heard itchy ears like we were saying before off the wall sort of complaint.

And of course, periods change also. Women may have longer times between periods or shorter times between periods. Women may have heavier bleeding and bleeding for longer, or they may have lighter cycles or start their period with more spotting. And then of course, since we're on the topic of medications and these symptoms, birth control can be prescribed to “regulate their period”.

LEAH: Yep. Yep; seen that before as well. It is just mind boggling, isn't it? To think about just this process that all women go through can look so different for everyone. One commonality that I hear though, a lot of times is that this is a prime time in a woman's life for weight gain and body composition changes.

Most of the time, these changes are an increase in body fat, especially in that belly fat area in that midsection and a decrease in muscle mass and definition. What I'll often hear from women is that they're not doing anything differently than they were before. They're not eating any differently or exercising any differently, or the things that they used to do to manage their weight don't work anymore.

“So I'll just tighten up my diet for a few weeks and all will be good, or I'll eat a little bit less for a week or two, just to kind of reset my baseline. Or maybe I'll add in an extra workout or two every week for a couple of weeks. And that'll just kind of bring things back to my normal.” This is this phase of life where those things don't work the same way and these women don't see the same results as they did before.

And this then starts to kind of create these feelings of like, oh my gosh, I'm losing control over my body. I'm desperate to find something to stop that train from barreling down the tracks or even just like, like a mourning for like how my metabolism used to work or how things used to be. It can be an uncomfortable time in a lot of different ways for women.

What is contributing to body composition changes during perimenopause?

TERESA: I've heard these same sentiments from women too, in my personal life and professionally in counseling women. So let's look under the hood and get a sense of what's going on and contributing to these body composition changes. I want to credit Dr. Stacy Sims for a lot of the information I'm about to share. Dr. Sims has a PhD in exercise science and nutritional science, and is a leading expert in female physiology and sports performance.

So, first off, as we age and estrogen levels start to decline, the ratio of protein synthesis to protein breakdown shifts. It shifts in a way where we break down muscle faster than we can make it. Our bodies start to have a harder time making muscle from the protein we eat and the exercise we do. We also burn less fat than in our younger years. These changes can start occurring in our 30s, but really seem to accelerate through those perimenopausal years when the hormone fluctuations hit.

The takeaway here: when we have less muscle to work with and we see a decrease in our metabolic rate, it is easier to gain weight without any major changes to your diet or exercise.

LEAH: Yep. So in perimenopause, the body shifts in a way that it's easy to lose muscle and to gain fat, as you were just saying. Another thing that happens as we lose estrogen is our level of insulin resistance goes up. So in other words, it takes more insulin to do the same job of clearing out carbohydrates from the bloodstream than it did before. And how I'll explain it to clients is the more insulin you have floating around in your system means that you tend to stay more in a fat storing mode versus a fat burning mode.

And long-time listeners of the show, hopefully you recognize that term insulin resistance. Hopefully you're starting to kind of make some of those connections between insulin resistance or carbohydrates, healthy fats, blood sugar balance. And if not, no worries, we got you. We'll be covering that shortly in just a little bit.

TERESA: One big shift that I want to mention is that with age and shifting hormones, women become more susceptible to the effects of high stress from a body composition standpoint. Chronic stress will keep our big stress hormone, cortisol, high, and high cortisol equals more belly fat, plain and simple. Let's think, what things might stress a woman out? Her job, organizing and coordinating the family's activity schedule, caring for aging parents or a spouse or a child with special needs, moving homes, a divorce, money troubles, a breast cancer or colon cancer scare.

Yes, to all of those. But let's not forget about the biochemical internal stressors. Things like skipping breakfast or working through lunch, trying to make it through the day on 1,300 calories, relying on four to six cups of coffee to get through the day, drinking only four cups of water during the entire day. And maybe that's to avoid issues with incontinence, which is also another symptom that arises in perimenopause.

LEAH: Yep.

TERESA: Maybe she's having two to three glasses of wine multiple nights per week to unwind. Maybe she has interrupted sleep or early wakings, or maybe she's doing a lot of high intensity extended cardio style workouts, just to name a few things that might be stressing her out.

LEAH: Yeah. So there's some of those typical things we think of being stressors like those external stressors of work and family and taking care of littles and parents. But then, like you said, there's the internal things as well, which we tend to just gloss over a little bit more. It just tends not to register the same way.

TERESA: Right.

LEAH: Yep. And I think I've definitely heard every one of those stressors from my clients at some point, some more frequently than others, of course. But I think the point you're also making, Teresa, is that there can be a lot of things stacked against a woman's favor if we're not careful and intentional about just how we manage some of our lifestyle patterns and habits.

So this likely means making some changes to your approach with food and with fitness and just some of those other lifestyle factors to support that shifting physiology as we go through this transitional time. And if we go back to that first point that you made, Teresa, about how age and less estrogen means that your body easily breaks down muscle.

Adequate protein intake is critical

So the first thing that goes to my mind then is, is there anything we can do from a nutrition stance to mitigate that process? And so we want to share here that yes, there are some answers here. And one of the big answers lies in high quality protein intake and also resistance training. So we're going to tackle the protein intake first. We'll circle back and say a few blips about the resistance training also.

TERESA: Right. There's an equation there, in order to build muscle and maintain muscle. It's amino acids that we get from protein plus stress from weight training equals muscles.

LEAH: Yeah. I love that equation.

TERESA: So from the nutritional side, it's protein to the rescue. That is a huge thing I'm looking at for my perimenopausal clients. I'm looking to see if they are getting around 4 to 6 ounces of animal based proteins at most meals, which is about 28 to 42 grams of protein. This is not a small amount of protein.

If you've never weighed or measured out 4 to 6 ounces of cooked chicken, steak, ground beef, ground turkey, fish, that's the challenge I have for you today. Do that for a few meals and see where you land.

LEAH: I did this challenge a number of years ago, early on in my career at Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I weighed out my normal portion of what I would typically serve myself. I think this was ground beef that I was using and what I found when I actually weighed it out was that I was only serving myself around two and a half to three ounces of protein at those meals. That's just what, like, my eyeballs and my brain registered as enough.

And I, I do remember, like, then looking at what that four to five to six ounces looks like, and I felt shocked by how full that bowl actually looked. It, that was a big eye opener for me.

TERESA: Right there, and it is, it's a, it's a lot. I mean, I feel like that's a hard thing for many women to adjust to is, is, is that much protein. But there are a lot of wonderful reasons to make sure that you are eating adequate protein throughout the day. But when it comes to making or preserving muscle, the key here is that four ounces or so of that high quality protein will get you to enough leucine, which is a very special amino acid in the world of muscle building. You need to get a certain amount of leucine at a meal in order to hit the gas pedal on muscle building. And that's where four to six ounces of protein comes in.

LEAH: Right. So I think about my clients who maybe they're putting one hard boiled egg and a few little cubes of chicken on their lunch salad. Like, that's going to be that example of maybe we're getting two to three ounces of protein at best from a lunch like that, and that's not going to cut it if, one, you want to stay full from that meal, and then, two, if you want to shift into more of that muscle building or muscle preserving state.

So, a shift that we could make there then is, maybe we do two hard boiled eggs and perhaps two to three ounces of chicken breast to reach that minimum of that four ounces of protein threshold. Because one egg is one ounce and then, like I said, you can weigh out, cooked meat to that three or four ounces on top of that. In my experience, the trickiest meal to get this amount of protein in is at breakfast.

And oftentimes people, and this is women and men, they just aren't hungry enough to eat that much protein right out of the gate. So this is something that it just might take some practice to work up to that amount of protein at any meal over time. But especially at breakfast, this is where I find, I think a good homemade protein shake can be really handy. If my clients tolerate whey protein, this is my preference as it will have that good amount of leucine in it.

And then when we do it homemade, we can keep out some of the other questionable ingredients about added sugars, or artificial sweeteners, or refined seed oils. So let's revisit that concept again when we get back on the other side of break. So you are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition, brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I am Leah Kleinschrodt, along with Teresa Wagner, and we are your hosts for this episode covering changes in body composition during perimenopause and what you can do about it. We'll be right back.

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TERESA: And we're back with your weekly Dishing Up Nutrition episode. Before we went to break, we were talking about the importance of getting protein in the diet for muscle building. And we were leading off with breakfast and how important it is to start off the day with getting adequate protein in order to start that muscle building or that muscle synthesis that we were talking about earlier.

LEAH: Right. Exactly. And just again, breakfast sometimes is the more challenging part of the day to do that just because people's appetites are a little lower or just, or we're used to just kind of rushing through the morning and not really putting a whole lot of thought into the breakfast piece.

And so we were saying a good protein shake is one easy way, especially if you're starting stomach is just unsettled in the morning or you just don't have a huge appetite, that's a great way to get in a good amount of protein with some whey protein powder if you can tolerate that, but there's lots of options out there.

And so what I find for most protein powders is like you're doing for sure at least a full scoop of protein powder. You may even need to do like a scoop and a half just depending on what that label says to get up to that 25 to 30 to 35 grams of protein in a protein shake. You'd pair that with a little bit of fruit.

If you're feeling adventurous, put some leafy greens in there, or maybe some frozen riced cauliflower and top it off with some healthy fats, put in a little natural peanut butter or almond butter or some canned coconut milk, some avocado slices. Blend that all up, enjoy. And like, again, that just sets the stage for preserving muscle mass throughout the day.

TERESA: Yeah. And when you're drinking your breakfast, if you don't have much of an appetite, it's easier to do. And then with protein powders, you can add as much as you want. Right. It makes it pretty easy to hit that protein goal.

LEAH: Yep.

Which carbohydrates should we chose for blood sugar balance?

TERESA: So the balance that you were talking about, Leah, is that balance of protein paired with some real food carbohydrate and then some healthy fat. That seems like the perfect segue to talk about blood sugar balance and keeping insulin levels in check.

Remember, we mentioned that as estrogen drops, we tend to produce more insulin and not handle carbohydrates as effectively as we did in our 20s and 30s. I've met with some clients who have seen elevated fasting glucose numbers or elevated hemoglobin A1C numbers for the first time in their perimenopause years.

This doesn't mean that we do away with all carbohydrates altogether. But we certainly want to be conscious of what kinds of carbohydrates we're eating and what we're eating them with. Carbohydrates that are high in fiber and slower to digest will be gentler on the blood sugar and require less insulin to process them.

The star players here are vegetables and fruits. We can splash some higher starch items at each meal like a half a cup of sweet potato, some winter squash, brown or wild rice, beans and lentils. So you can do a cup of vegetables at every meal, even at breakfast. And if one cup is easy for you, then I would say go for two.

LEAH: Yeah, absolutely. The sky's the limit with those. I made a recipe for dinner a few weeks back and that involved, so I did turkey meatballs, some ginger, some garlic in there. I had some brown rice on the side for more of that starchier side. And then I did a carrot and cucumber salad. So I just marinated the carrots and cucumbers in some lime juice and some dill and some salt and pepper, just marinated those for a little while.

The actual recipe called for cilantro, but I didn't have any. So I substituted dill. And I should back up and say that the carrots were like the little matchstick carrots or like the shredded up carrots. The cucumbers were sliced up. So again, like there's a lot of surface area to cover there, but I am totally hooked on this salad now.

It is so good and fresh and it just like, that was like that reminder, like there's spring and summer here right around the corner. And so it's an easy one too. These are, especially the carrots are a little heartier vegetable. So you can make a bigger batch and make some that'll last you a couple of days. And so I'll just throw that in with my lunches as that easy vegetable side dish. And then I might just vary the proteins up; might use the turkey meatballs again, or maybe it's some shrimp or some rotisserie chicken or maybe a burger that we had grilled up earlier in the week.

That's one way that I'll do the vegetables. And I know I've mentioned a few times on the show before, I like to do a cabbage salad for breakfast. I don't get tired of that. I am still not tired of it. And it's one of my favorite breakfasts of all times to do some eggs and some turkey sausage and do that cabbage salad on the side for my vegetables.

TERESA: What’s funny is I just had that for lunch today, that cabbage salad, and it's so good. And I just want to highlight those cruciferous vegetables, including cabbage, just let's just talk about those for a moment. So cabbage and broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, arugula, and more. These vegetables have some very special detoxifying powers and they are so supportive of our liver. We won't go there today, but it is important to know that we need a healthy liver to process and to balance our hormones.

Pair quality carbohydrates with healthy protein & fats for blood sugar balance

LEAH: Yep. That's one of my favorite tips for clients also is just to see where they're able and willing to insert those cruciferous vegetables into their day. And before we leave the topic of carbohydrates, let's also remember, so of course, the quality of the carbohydrates matters, but we also don't want to eat carbohydrates by themselves. We need to pair those carbohydrates with the protein that we mentioned earlier, and also some of those healthy fats to create stable blood sugar and stable insulin levels.

I feel like for many people, it's not so much the meals that this is a challenge at, but it is a different way of thinking about things for snacks. Oftentimes it's easy to reach for just a piece of fruit or to grab some raw veggies and count that as your snack. So those things are great, but they are not a complete snack in and of itself.

You'll get more mileage out of that snack if you pair that apple, say with some, like a yogurt, peanut butter dip. So you can mix some plain Greek yogurt with a little bit, say like two tablespoons of some natural peanut butter in there and dip the apple slices in there.

TERESA: That sounds good. And I just want to say, I don't think that's anything we've ever mentioned on this show before.

LEAH: Oh my gosh. In 20 years. Yeah. It is. It's kind of like, again, like just a nice alternative to like the fruit dips that you'll often find in a fruit tray or something like that that you get from the store. And then say you do have some of those raw veggies again, maybe some cucumber slices, some baby carrots or some mini bell peppers or some snap peas, you pair that with some guacamole for that healthy fat and you have a meatball to go along with it. That would be a more like well-rounded snack. So it's that fiber, the fat and the protein combo, those work together to keep blood sugar steady, prevent insulin from having to work overtime. And that really again helps with the body composition. It prevents from a lot of that belly fat from accumulating.

TERESA: That's such a great point. And steady blood sugars are actually also a key part in managing stress and keeping our cortisol levels in check. This goes back to the point we made earlier that women become more prone to belly fat and feeling thicker in the midsection when stress and cortisol are high and stay high for long periods of time. Both high and low blood sugar levels are stressful on the body.

It's extra important to choose real whole foods as much as possible. Eat that protein, carbohydrate, fat combination and eat often enough to feel fueled and energized. For most of our clients, this usually means eating something every say three to five hours.

LEAH: And I’ve got a great example of this and kind of weaving in that cortisol story to this. I recently met with a client. She's in her late thirties, came in big goal of wanting to lose weight. She has three kiddos, two of which are very active in sports. And because of these evening activities, most nights of the week, she says, “My options for dinner is either to eat at 4 PM or 8:30 PM. And there's a huge window in between where we're out and about or we're in the car. We're going to and from.”

TERESA: She's got my life.

LEAH: Yeah, right. And yeah, exactly. This is a common experience. So she's been opting to eat at 4 p.m. with the kids and that's not a bad choice. But then she is not eating for the rest of the night. So she's eating dinner at four, not eating for the rest of the night.

Then she gets up in the morning, gets her kids off to school and daycare. She throws down some coffee and some pre-workout, does an intense workout class four days a week. And then she doesn't get, start to get in any kind of nutrition or get that full breakfast in until about 9 AM. And again, remember she's not eating. She hasn't eaten anything since 4 PM the day before.

So we talked about how her body is likely in this more stressed and high cortisol state by the time she gets to breakfast, because now we've just gone a long period of time without any fuel. And we're just running on caffeine at that point; all of which those things are going to work against her goals of weight loss. So for her, we're going to start with adding just a small snack to her morning routine that includes some of that protein, carbohydrates, a little bit of fat.

So the example that we came up with that she thought would work well would be like a homemade energy ball type of recipe. Like make that recipe. The bonuses, she's done this before and her kids have liked some of the things that she's made in that sense. So this was something that she felt like, again, I can get a little nutrition into my system, but not weigh me down to, and so that I can't go like work out hard at the gym. And so it just, like, that seemed like a good solution for her.

TERESA: That's a great option, too, because in that window in the evening when she's running around, those are very portable snacks, too. So for her kids between games or however their, her schedule works.

LEAH: Yeah, exactly.

TERESA: That might be something that could be helpful there, too. I think that's a great example too, of how our brains think logically about that, right? Like our bodies are a math equation. Oh, I should be losing weight because I'm not eating anything for 16, 17 hours and doing workouts fasted. So that restrictive calorie idea and then also burning calories. So obviously we should be losing weight, right?

But in reality, the stress from lack of food and low blood sugar is working against that weight loss goal in the long term, and might actually be using some of our body's stores of energy for that fuel. And maybe not the stores that she wants it to be, right? We want it to be coming from that fat mass, but it might be coming actually from her muscle mass. So she might be working out and eating her muscles for fuel.

LEAH: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's, you've said this before. Our bodies are biological, not always logical. And I love that saying, because it does speak to the complex complexity of our metabolisms and just how smart our bodies are to work for us as much as they can. And I did want to just pause here really quick before we move on with the nutrition aspect because we were just talking about workouts. Like this particular client was working out at four days a week.  And we were talking about fasted workouts and things like that.

Resistance training helps with building/maintaining muscle

And a while back on our show, we had just put in that little blip that resistance training, like we do want to work out. We want to move our bodies. We want to use those muscles, because we can put the fuel in, but we got to put that fuel to good use.

So this is where, especially as women get into that perimenopausal phase, and we need to try to keep that muscle and build muscle as much as we can. We want the protein aspect in there, but we also need to stress those muscles and use that fuel where we want it to.

And that's where the resistance training comes in, AKA weight training, right? Yeah. Yeah. And this could look different for everybody. This could be body weight training. This could be using resistance bands. This could be lifting dumbbells and barbells and doing the traditional weight lifting type of workouts.

So just wanting our listeners to know that the resistance training and exercise is an important component to this as well. And if this is something that you've never really explored before, most gyms offer like an introductory personal training session, or like there's something in there, like there are people around that can help you and guide you and just get you started on the right path with that.

TERESA: Right. Cause that is, it is very intimidating. And I think that culturally it's shifting right now that it is something more that women do, but in the past lifting weights was not really what women did. It was more of the cardio. It was the aerobics and it was running and those types of exercise, which are great, but don't build muscle in that way.

And as we had mentioned earlier in the podcast was we were saying how our body is now physiologically set up to lose muscle faster. And so we want to hold on to what we've got. And if we can build some more, that's great because muscular bodies are look and feel like younger bodies. And women sometimes are worried that they're going to bulk up and really that is not something, you have to work very hard for that. And most of us don't have the time to do that.

LEAH: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's a very specific way of living to be able to do that.

Tips for steady cortisol

TERESA: So going back to what we were talking about before about blood sugar. So transitioning away from exercise, going back to food, steady blood sugar is key to steady cortisol. Consistent quality sleep is also a key component for steady cortisol. We won't dive too far into this topic because we've covered sleep issues and solutions in a lot of our shows over the years, but I do want to point out though that both estrogen and progesterone play roles in different aspects of sleep.

So when these hormones start to fluctuate and decline, all sorts of sleep disturbances can arise; interrupted sleep or lack of sleep is another big driver of high cortisol levels, as well as an increase in your hunger hormones and any weight loss that you do lose while sleep deprived will come at a higher expense of muscle tissue, and less of that weight loss will be in body fat.

So let me just say that again: when you are sleep deprived, you will lose weight. If you are losing weight, it will be more so from your muscle mass than from your fat mass. And this is the opposite of what we want to do. In the long run, this just feeds into that same cycle many perimenopausal women find themselves in: more fat, less muscle. So a little food for thought there.

LEAH: Yep. Yep. Good pun. I like that. So with two young kids at home, I hear this message loud and clear, and it is my arch nemesis because more often than not, my own, my sleep gets interrupted, not of my own accord. So I feel a lot of women out there that sometimes it's not necessarily a matter of just trying to go to bed at a normal time and getting up at a regular time. There are a lot of biochemical things going on under the surface that can interrupt or disrupt sleep.

So just know wherever we all are on that sleep spectrum, anything we can do to even get just 15 minutes more of sleep has those rippling downstream effects that'll be beneficial. I wanted to share something I heard on a webinar that's stuck with me. I heard this a couple of years ago, and it relates to stress and the perimenopausal woman.

This webinar was being given by Dr. Joel Evans. He's a board certified OBGYN and chief of medical affairs at the Institute for Functional Medicine. He was explaining how important it is for women going into perimenopause to be taking care of their adrenal health. So AKA managing their stress. And he explained this as again, the ovaries are just winding down their production of those major sex hormones.

But what they do is they pass the baton onto the adrenal glands. So our adrenal glands do make up some of that hormone production with estrogen and testosterone. The adrenal glands become responsible for picking up at least some of that load just at lower amounts than what the ovaries were making.

So if we've beaten our adrenal glands to death with under eating, over exercising, over committing, under sleeping, and just continuing to push the gas pedal without ever hitting the brakes, we're much more likely to have a rocky transitional or rocky perimenopausal period from that symptom standpoint.

So everyone's breaking system is going to look a little bit different, but I'm, here's a, just another homework assignment for us, our listeners; encouraging the listeners out there just to think about how you're going to include some rest, some recovery, and some repair into your routine. For me personally, one of my favorite things is to get out and walk the dog every night after the kids go to bed. I get to move, I get to be outside and just be with my thoughts for 15 or 20 minutes.

But this could be deep breathing that's accessible at any time of the day or night to anybody. Soaking in an Epsom salt bath can be lovely. You get in a little extra magnesium then. And even, you know, turning off NPR and the podcast in your car every now and again, and you just listen to some music. Taking your lunch outdoors when you can when the weather gets warm. These are just, again, some simple things that we can do, not even necessarily to take extra time out of our day, but like how can we incorporate some of those restorative practices and take care of our adrenals? That would be great.

TERESA: Yeah. And I, like for me being in this phase of life where I'm almost checking every box of those stress stressors, I think some of it there is a very finite amount of time in the day. And so what we need to do is enjoy the moment you're in, right? You may be working like crazy at your job, but maybe taking a moment to just enjoy the conversation with your coworkers. That can be a way of just taking a moment to de stress.

When you're driving your kids around, take a moment to just be in that moment because in a few years it's going to look a whole lot different. At extracurriculars, you know, just be present. Put down your phone. Just watch the game or the musical or the concert. Just be in the moment. And you can do some of that deep breathing while you're in those moments and just taking some time to just relax, even though you cannot change how much time you have in the day.

I think there's just some really great insights as far as there are some biochemical reasons why ideally we want to be putting some of these stress mitigating practices into place before this whirlwind of perimenopause hits. Like most other lifestyle practices, though, even though it's not a habit right now, that doesn't mean it can't be practiced and crafted starting today, just like adding protein to your plate or making sure you're eating a fully balanced snack and meals that include proteins, healthy fats, and slow digesting carbohydrates.

And if you find yourself treading water and unsure which way to turn next, try giving our office a call and talking through your options with someone who is caring and has a listening ear. Our front desk staff are well trained and excellent listeners, and they truly want to help everyone who calls or walks in the door; feeling better than when they came in. Our phone number is 651-699-3438, or you can visit our website at weightandwellness.com.

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LEAH: That's a great wrap up. So our goal at Nutritional Weight & Wellness is to provide each and every person with practical real life solutions for everyday health through eating real food. It's a simple yet powerful message. Eating real food is life changing. So thank you all for listening. And if you enjoyed the show, please head over to iTunes or your favorite podcast app to leave a review and help others find our show.