The Perimenopause Plate

So when we’re looking at the perimenopause plate and, you know, what should we eat, the first thing I want to, uh, you know, invite you to do is thinking about how you’re eating first before we even decide what is it that we’re supposed to be… First of all, I would say really, uh, invite you to make sure that you are eating enough. I think that is really the most im– one of the most important things to look at. And if you don’t know whether you’re eating enough, then I would, you know, recommend potentially tracking your food intake for a few days, um, you know, a few typical days maybe during the week and on the weekends to see: am I eating enough throughout the day? Am I… are there big swings? You know, am I eating like not enough during the week and then overeating on the weekends? Are my macronutrients all over the place? All this kind of stuff. I think in the same way that we would do blood tests or any other, uh, test, tracking your food can give you data to see, like, where are we starting from. A lot of times, I see resistance to women— from women— to track their food because they’re like, “Oh, well, I don’t want to track because it stresses me out,” and, you know, then I’ll, hmm, look at it from a more restrictive point of view. (laughs) But I think I encourage you to do it like as an exercise of data and awareness. You know, where are we starting from? Am I actually eating enough? And sometimes you might be surprised. Even though you think that you’re eating enough because maybe you’re not very hungry, um, you might notice that you’re not. When I first started tracking my food (laughs), especially on days when I was teaching, I was eating like 800 calories (laughs), and then I was like, “Why is my hair falling out?” You’re like, “Well, there you go.” So… you know, it can be— it can be very eye-opening. So making sure that you're eating enough is the first thing. And obviously we— in the Midlife Reset Program, I go through all of this and how it’s— how to, you know, how we can track. Um, and then my other top tip, really, and this is something that I just will never tire of talking about, and it’s the kind— the hill that I’m gonna die on alone, but it’s like: front-loading the day. Eating a large breakfast and lunch, uh, and eating within an hour of waking up because this is what I see most women not doing. Um, you know, either most women will skip breakfast or they’ll just have like a coffee, for example, which is not breakfast, even if it has milk and collagen or whatever it is that you put in it, it’s not enough. Or I’ll see them eating something like yogurt and berries, but when I ask them about the— the— the amount, it’s like two teaspoons or three teaspoons or two tablespoons of yogurt. That’s not enough. That’s like a snack, right? And then lunch is maybe a wrap or a salad or something super light, and then 3:00 comes along and you’re like (whistles) head first in the biscuit tin. And then, you know, then I’ve got clients go, “I’m addicted to sugar. I can’t stop eating sugar in the afternoon.” I was like, “It’s ’cause they haven’t eaten anything the first half.” I will guarantee you that front-loading your day will change your life. (laughs) It will set you up for the day, for the busy days that we all have, uh, it will give you the energy that you need. It blunts stress hormones. It helps about, you know, anchor your blood sugar for the day, and it fuels you for the busy day that you have ahead. You know, think about if you were about to— if we were to go on a big, long trip in a car, we would put, you know, fuel in the tank before we leave, not as we’re getting to the destination, right? So fueling up for the day, and by front-loading and eating a large, you know, a substantial breakfast and a substantial lunch as well, and within an hour of waking up to really blunt those stress hormones. If you enjoy coffee like I do, there’s nothing wrong with it, um, I would recommend having it after meals, not before. Having it before meals can increase cortisol. It can, you know, blunt your appetite a little bit because it is a bit of a stimulant. Drinking coffee without any food in the— in your belly is a bit like putting your foot on the accelerator without any fuel in the tank. It’s just gonna lead to burnout. So, you know, coffee— there’s nothing wrong with coffee, but it’s always important to do it afterwards so you're not revving up metabolism with nothing in the tank that then can cause sort of a stress as well. Uh, when we’re looking at our meals and putting them together, we wanna always combine protein and carbohydrates with each meal. And I’ll— I’ll show you in a minute which types of proteins, which types of carbs I normally recommend. Uh, always, you know, protein lowers blood sugar. Carbohydrates increase blood sugar. So eating them together helps blood sugar stay stable. I mean, it shouldn’t be like flat. It kind of should go like this, but it shouldn’t, as I said, there shouldn’t be these massive spikes. If you’re just eating protein without carbohydrates, you’ll see a drop in blood sugar. If you’re just eating carbohydrates without protein, you’ll see a rise and then a drop. So it’s important to eat them together to balance out, uh, you know, balance blood sugar. And same way as saying making sure that you’re eating enough, we wanna also make sure that we’re not going too long without, uh, eating. Ideally, every— you know, eating every four hours or so. Uh, if you have like— if you’re eating good logs-on-the-fire meals, you know, like really, you could potentially go just have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and, you know, kind of go between those. As long as you're eating enough in those three meals, that should be fine. But sometimes, especially if you’re coming from things like intermittent fasting or ketogenic diets or low-carb diets, you might need to eat more frequently, uh, to keep blood sugar stable until your body’s kind of used to then, you know, storing glycogen in the liver and you can go longer periods without eating. But in general, we would— you know, we wanna eat regularly throughout the day. You may have seen this on aura’s Instagram, but I love the daily carrot salad for hormonal health. Uh, it’s very simple, but it’s so effective. I’ve seen it— I see countless clients, uh, and people really benefiting from the daily carrot salad. Carrots have this sort of indigestible fiber, and they are quite antimicrobial if you just think about where they grow, right? They usually grow underground, um, and they— if you think about the carrots at the back of your fridge that you’ve forgotten for a few weeks, they generally— you know, they’ll go soft, but they don’t kind of liquify, whereas, say for example, the leaf— salad leaves, they kind of go all like bleh, brown mush, right? So carrots are just naturally antimicrobial, and if you consume them on an empty stomach in, you know, either ribboned or coarsely grated, uh, they have this sort of sloughing effect through the gut, and it helps to get rid of any sort of endotoxins, so bacterial overgrowth, um, and also, um, you know, they— helps with bowel movements, which are really important for hormone detoxification as well. So having a daily carrot salad either before a meal, about 15 minutes before a meal, or as a snack in the middle of the— you know, yeah, in between meals is a really great way. I’ve seen people really benefit— people that experience things like hormonal migraines or painful periods, cramping. Um, even recently, I have, you know, my daughter, as I said, is 11, and she’s starting to go through puberty, and she’s having some symptoms of puberty. And one of the ones that she’s experiencing is nosebleeds, which, uh, in my research, I’ve found that could be linked to sort of estrogen rising because estrogen makes cells more leaky, I guess, and it can make you more prone to things like nosebleeds, and she was experiencing them on a daily basis. Uh, and so I was like, “Hm, let’s try and get the carrots in and see what—” you know, we’ll go, uh, what happens there. So she has a— you know, she has a salad bar in her school. And I said, “Look, make sure you're eating carrots every day at school.” And she's making a point of it because obviously she’s starting to also get worried about having nosebleeds every day. Anyway, she's been having it for like, you know, two weeks and actually went from having nosebleeds every day to not having any nosebleeds anymore. So it's just, you know, I mean, it’s obviously totally anecdotal, this one. I don’t know if there's any scientific studies that show (laughs) how carrots can help with the nosebleeds, but it's just quite interesting how, you know, when you look at it from a holistic point of view and looking at the hormones, uh, that something as simple as a carrot salad can actually be really, really effective. If you’re struggling to sleep through the night, you know, if you’re waking up to go to the toilet or just waking up and, you know, eyes just pop open in between 1:00 and 3:00 and you can’t fall back asleep, then first of all, obviously we want to make sure that we’re eating enough. But in the meantime, having a bedtime snack can help you carry through the night. Um, and this, you know, this is something, again, you can just… It doesn’t have to be massive. It can just be something like a milk and honey or a nice hot chocolate with some honey. Uh, you know, protein and carbs together that are easy to digest before bed can carry you through the night. So these are just some of my top tips of how you can eat. But let’s have a look now at what you want to be putting on your plate, um, at each meal. So as I mentioned before, we wanna always have protein and carbohydrates together to balance blood sugar.