The Menopause Body - Health & Wellbeing Magazine by Foyht

An exercise in reconnection literally!

How could I, A Wellness Professional fall into such an obvious (in hindsight!) trap?

How did the coaching knowledge and tools I share with clients to create holistic wellbeing suddenly disappear when I unwittingly became my own client?

My Undoing

Old adages tend to be true, and this one was no exception; I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. All of these symptoms bearing down on me like thousand year old redwoods. I just couldn’t get a vantage point from which to view my wellness holistically.

My Experience

I’ve never actually counted the symptoms I had, until now. There were a lot! But they didn’t all appear at once, and because they didn’t all appear at the same time, I, and the practitioners I went to for help, didn’t see them holistically. Each symptom was examined and treated as a stand alone issue.

Hot flashes, generally feeling overheated
Long pauses in menstrual cycle
Skin pigmentation
Skin breakouts
Extreme hunger cues
Weight Gain
Body shape changes
Extreme sleep disturbances

Cue a plethora of medications and supplements over a 4 year period trying to manage said symptoms and regain some measure of control over my wellbeing. Unfortunately, most solutions turned out to be anything but, and either made things worse, allayed one issue only to create another, or were completely ineffective. And of course, all of my desperate attempts to restore my prior wellness relieved me of not insignificant portions of my bank balance!

I must give credit to my dermatologist, the medication she prescribed to stop my skin breaking out was the one medication was effective and side effect free.

The other thing I stumbled upon that helped with the hunger hormone fluctuations, was iced green tea.

Strangely, during this time, the idea of HRT was never raised by any of the practitioners I saw. My GP flat out said after a blood test, that despite not having had a cycle for 8 months, it was definitely not perimenopause. And I didn’t have enough knowledge to challenge that diagnosis or advocate for myself. Whether HRT could have helped me during those 4 years, is a question I will never know the answer to.

The Most Distressing Thing

And I must be honest, as a person who likes to be physically fit, and holistically so, the most distressing was suddenly feeling like my body and I were two separate entities, no longer cooperating with one another, the lines of communication that had always connected so effortlessly abruptly disconnected like an old school phone box when you ran out of coins.

As the symptoms undeterred started to show a physical, visible impact, i.e. the dreaded weight gain (about 2 dress sizes for me) and weight redistribution, I was one half panic and denial and one half ‘Is this it? Do I just need to accept this as part of getting older?’

And then came the denial ‘What can I do? I’m not doing anything differently, I guess I have to join the chorus of ‘Welcome to menopause and the body that comes with it!’

I questioned my ego, is this just pure vanity driving my inability to accept & embrace this next life stage?

The answer after much consideration was no. I am ok with getting older. I am, however a person that loves a beautiful aesthetic in any form; property, clothing, interiors, landscapes, and yes, my own body. I have always loved a long lean aesthetic, and I know that this is achievable in a holistic healthy way because I had been sustaining that for myself for years, and coaching others to achieve the same. I wanted my holistic balance restored of course, and I wanted to see if it was possible to get my waist back too!

A small voice inside said ‘Don’t abandon the opportunity to reconnect just yet!’

Now I had to get really honest and step back and look at the symptoms and changes and check if I was telling myself the truth. Was there really nothing I could do to affect change here? Was I really not doing anything differently? Was this all really out of my control?

The answer was again, no! When I stopped to consider my daily choices, I had been making markedly different choices than I had in the past. My food choices had become quite ridiculous. Almond croissant at my favourite French bakery EVERY DAY lol!

Battered and fried pork with fried rice for lunch, and I can go on; suffice to say, I had changed my dietary habits pretty significantly and was not consciously aware of it. Until now.

I also looked at my workout habits. I had gone from doing a solid workout for 1 hour, 5 x a week, to constant app switching and in person gym trial hopping. I was not being consistent and it showed.

Sleep Is The Key

Once I had identified and acknowledged that a lot my wellness supporting habits had changed, I began to forensically investigate to see if I could track back to where it started. I found it. Sleep.

When my sleep quality deteriorated, the entirety of my wellness began to quietly melt away like snowflakes on a sunny winters’ day.

Lack of sleep can lead to increased appetite, cravings for high calorie foods, and decreased motivation to exercise. This occurs primarily because sleep deprivation disrupts the regulation of appetite hormones like leptin and ghrelin, making you feel hungrier and less satiated, while also reducing energy levels for physical activity.

Just as driving isn’t recommended when we are sleep deprived; I would strongly suggest that wellness decisions made in this state are also not ideal!

So I decided in order to course correct, I should go back to where the first detour occurred. I could trace all of the interconnected issues I was experiencing back to one starting point; lack of sleep and poor sleep quality.

I read The Science of Sleep by Heather Darwall-Smith and implemented many of the sleep hygiene techniques. My sleep began to improve.

Then I looked at my food choices. I started to make healthy whole food choices. I didn’t restrict to the extreme – I still had wine and chocolate! I started being aware again of making mostly nutritious choices.

Last piece of the puzzle! Exercise. I started doing 1 hour 5 times a week. My workout of choice Tracy Anderson Method. I could do it any home, online, anytime, and its had been effective for in creating the kind of body design that I like, in the past.

Fast forward 1 year to today. I brought everything back from the metaphorical wellness abyss!

The monumental shift I have experienced over the past year, can be accounted to prioritising the consistency of 3 simple things: