The Midlife Feast
The Midlife Feast
#122 - 3 Reasons It’s Time to Lean Into Menopause
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Is it just me, or is the “fight menopause” messaging starting to feel a bit stale? Yes, midlife 100% comes with its challenges (many of which we’ll tackle together in Season 5 with the help of some fantastic experts and guests).
But to kick off this season, I wanted to share three reasons why I think life post-menopause is pretty awesome. My favorite being that midlife is this incredible opportunity to transform your relationship with food and your body.
I’ll share how we can learn to work with our bodies rather than fighting them. Join us as we discuss how movement and food—focused on how it makes us feel, not how we look—can make the menopause journey more empowering and even fun.
Plus, you’ll find out where you can connect with me on YouTube and celebrate Menopause Awareness Month in October by joining my free Ditch The Diet Challenge, which includes bonus access to my Midlife and Menopause Undieter's Guide to Intuitive Eating mini-course.
Welcome to Season 5 of the Midlife Feast! I’m so glad you’re here!
Click here to hang out with me on YouTube!
Looking for more about midlife, menopause nutrition, and intuitive eating? Click here to grab one of my free resources and learn what I've got "on the menu" including my 1:1 and group programs. https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/links
Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you. Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the Midlife Feast Community, my monthly membership that combines my no-nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife. Hi everyone, welcome back to the new season of the Midlife Feast. I hope that you all had a great summer or winter if you are down under or in New Zealand, as I've heard from lots of listeners who are in Australia and New Zealand but I hope that you've had a great, whatever break it feels like. I have so much to tell you and so much to update you on, but I'm going to try and keep myself on track, which, if you know me, sometimes I like to go on tangents and ramble, but I'm going to do my best not to do that on this first episode of the season. So first I want to tell you a little bit about the theme for this year. So every year I try and pick a theme, not as a rule to follow for every episode and every guest, but just to give me a bit of structure. I also find that it helps me to get creative about what I want to talk about and who I want to talk to. But let's talk about the theme. So last year's theme was menopause nutrition made easy and how to press the easy button. And I did that because it felt like in the year leading up to last year, so many of the conversations that were happening were how to do the right thing and the things you have to do and lists of you know eat this, not that and it just felt like I wanted to help cut through some of that noise, and so that was our theme for last year.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:This year's theme is a little bit different because it's kind of one that's been building in my mind over time. So five years ago, when I first started really focusing on midlife and menopause in my intuitive eating and nutrition practice. So many of the conversations were around information. So a large percentage of people had never heard of perimenopause, did not know what the symptoms were, didn't even know much about menopause beyond hot flashes and mood swings, and so there was a real push to add information and understanding to those conversations, which is amazing and absolutely needed to happen, because we need everyone, and especially everyone with a uterus, to be educated on what to expect when this inevitably happens to all of us, when this inevitably happens to all of us.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:But in the last year I've kind of noticed a shift, and that shift has been a little bit away from I'm going to say a shift away from empowerment, and I'm going to explain that a little bit. But it feels like it has become a fight menopause conversation. It has been lumping menopause as always something bad, always something to dread, always something awful and you should do everything that you can to fight it, and it just has not been sitting well with me. It feels a lot like the anti-aging conversations from 20 years ago that have softened. They're still out there, obviously, but it really feels like now the fight is against menopause. And this isn't even really about the hormone conversation, because I never bring hormone therapy into these conversations because that's a choice. That's a personal choice, a medical choice. There are lots of reasons why someone would want to and lots of reasons why others may not want to or can't, and so this isn't about whether or not you treat with hormones, but it is really about how can we start to have more of an acceptance, and I'm going to explain that acceptance-based conversation, and so my theme for this year is how can I help you to lean in to menopause? So let's talk about what I mean, because it is not giving up, which is sometimes what comes across when we're talking about acceptance is that like, oh, it just means I'm giving up. But if you listen to last year's episode on body image, there'll be a link in the show notes.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:I talked about the difference between resignation and acceptance and we can apply that to this menopause conversation as well and acceptance and we can apply that to this menopause conversation as well. Resignation is when we feel like the situation is what it is and there's nothing I can do about it, versus acceptance, which is the situation is what it is, what can I do about it? What's next? No-transcript it really makes a big difference in how we feel about the situation. One is disempowering, and one really helps us to stop fighting reality, because the reality is that, even if you treat your symptoms, you're still going to go through menopause, and it's not all doom and gloom. There are some positives, and we're going to talk about those, don't worry. But I really want to help you step back from the fear mongering and the comparison especially what we see online and in social media and help you step confidently into a menopause where you enjoy life and how you feel. So I feel very, very strongly that this is an opportunity for all of us to turn what's portrayed as a weakness into a strength, and I'm going to talk about why and how in a minute. But just remember, lean in, because menopause is going somewhere good, I am sure of that.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:But before we dive into a little bit more, I want to tell you about one of the other things that I'm leaning into this year, which is YouTube. So my YouTube channel is at menopausenutritionist, same as Instagram, and every Monday, starting today, you will find new episodes with the full video, and so this is something that people have been asking for for a while, because some people prefer to watch it like a TV show, which I think is awesome. So, starting today, you'll find new episodes every Monday, as well as all the usual places that you listen to podcasts, and on Thursdays we'll be adding in episodes from last season. So, starting in season four, we were recording video and audio, so we're going to be starting to add those as well. So that means that twice a week you can watch or listen to these episodes. So like and subscribe so that you can get notified when new episodes come up and also drop your questions in the comment section. So questions, comments, feedback or use the fan mail button which is on all the usual podcast sites wherever you listen to podcasts, because, as you'll see next week in the intro to my guest next week, I answer one of the questions that came in through fan mail last year, so I'm going to be answering questions in the comment section, but anytime I feel like the answer could serve the bigger community, I'm also going to be putting it into the intro to a podcast episode. So that is one of the fun things that I'm doing.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:So let's get back to this leaning into menopause and how do we do that and why would we want to do that. So the first reason is that it doesn't suck, and that is not just my opinion, although I'm very vocal about saying that I love life postmenopause and I would not go back to my premenopausal self for anything. It's not just me. We have some research, some great research out of Australia and Denmark that tells us that postmenopausal women rate being happier compared to premenopausal women, but also compared to their premenopausal selves. So that really speaks volumes that as these women in this study and it was for 20 years went through menopause, they came out the other side happier. And whenever I post this question in my stories, that is overwhelming. That is the overwhelming response.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:People say I love life post-menopause Doesn't mean that I wouldn't trade some of the things that come with postmenopause or that I wouldn't change them if I could. You know I don't love that. I'm a little creakier sometimes a lot creakier when I get out of bed in the morning. You know those kinds of things, but they don't impact my quality of life and happiness postmenopause, partially, because I have not been fighting the process of going through menopause. I have been supporting it. Don't get me wrong. I am doing things to try and age as well as I can, but I'm not fighting it. And I do think that that's a key difference, because when we're trying to stop it or when we're trying to fight it, it's a very different approach compared to when I say this is happening. I can't change the fact that it's happening or, in my case, that it's happened. What can I do to improve how I feel in my body and what do I want to continue to do? Not just what's a quick fix that's going to help me to feel better today or tomorrow, so it doesn't suck. That is the first reason.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:Second reason is that there are advantages, not just the obvious ones of not having a period, so not having to deal with, you know, regular bleeding and all the fun things that come with that, but also just, you know, being able to be in a life stage for most of us. If you, if you have kids, for example, you might be in a life stage where your kids are older, you're, you know, finding that you have more independence or more time to yourself. And if you, you know, don't have kids or have kids that are long, you know, left the house, there's a good chance that you're just getting at a stage in life where you might just have more opportunities to do what you want instead of what you feel like you need to do. Which is one of the great gifts of midlife is this you know inability to do the things. Inability to do the things that we don't want to do anymore things. Inability to do the things that we don't want to do anymore. So you know being able to say no more often and confidently, and being able to say yes to what you want and not just what you think you should do. So I really think that the advantages of being in this stage of life, paired with the advantages of not having a cycle which can include better mood as well that's another evidence-based finding is that, you know, mood improves for many people post-menopause. Without the ups and downs of the roller coaster of hormones, you may feel like your mood and your mental health is in a better place than it was before. That's true for me, and it's definitely true for other women as well.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:But the third reason why I want you to lean in, which really speaks to the heart of my work, is that this is an opportunity to rethink your relationship with food and your body. For many, many people, the war with their body and food being a weapon has been their truth from puberty on onward, and this is an opportunity to take advantage of some of that brain remodeling that we know is happening Dr Lisa Moscone has some great research published around this but to have a say in how we remodel, how we rethink, how we change, and so this is where I feel like the leaning in might be the best thing that you can do, because, instead of having this relationship with food that is all about controlling your body, you can have a relationship with food that is about working with your body, that is helping you to lean into what is happening, this process of going through menopause, and that doesn't mean not treating things. I hope everyone here would know that by now. Leaning into menopause doesn't mean sucking it up and just dealing with the symptoms, but it does mean coming from a place of acceptance versus resignation, and so leaning into menopause with food just feels, I think, more luxurious, it feels more comforting, it feels easier because we're saying yes and we're adding in. We're adding in movement because of how it helps us to feel, not because of how it's going to change what our body looks like. And so if you need a reason to start leaning into menopause.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:Lean in so that you can support a more peaceful relationship with food and your body, and that's one of the things we're going to be doing this October. So October is Menopause awareness month, and I always try and do something fun, and this year we're doing a five-day ditch the diet mentality challenge. So if the diet mentality has been a mainstay of your relationship with food and your body, this is a chance to change it. So, in addition to helping you ditch the diet mentality, you will also get to do my Midlife and Menopause Undieter's Guide to Intuitive Eating, which is a quick 13 little module course, takes just over an hour. But in the process of undieting and ditching that diet mentality, you can start adding in some of the principles and teachings of intuitive eating so that you can move into that more peaceful relationship with food and your body. So that's going to start on October 1st. You can sign up for it now, though You'll find the links and the show notes and all the usual places, because there is going to be a live component towards the end of that challenge, and so spots are going to be limited. So that is it for now.
Dr. Jenn Salib Huber:More fun things to come as we get on with the season, but I'm really looking forward to the guests that I'm going to be bringing you. I'm looking forward to the conversations with all of you and, as always, thanks for being part of this Midlife Feast community. I really appreciate having you listen to my little podcast and support it in the way that you have been supporting it, which last year we had over 300,000 views, which listens, which was absolutely mind boggling. So have a great day and I will see you again soon. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast For more non-diet, health, hormone and general midlife support. Click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me. And if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in midlife.
