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Summer:
This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image self worth, anti dieting and intersectional feminism. I am your host. Summer innanen, a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence, and the best selling author of body image remix, if you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the show.

This is episode 319 and I’m joined by Jenn Salib Huber, registered dietitian and naturopathic doctor who helps women manage menopause without diets and food rules. We’re talking about why we gain weight during the menopause transition, the impact of restricting and dieting during this phase of life, whether you need to eat loads of protein and lift heavy weights in order to be healthy, what is truly beneficial to your health during this period of life and more, you can find the links mentioned at summer innan.com, forward slash, 319.

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I’m really excited about this episode of the podcast. I was on Jenn’s podcast, the midlife feast podcast, about a month or two ago, talking about body image during perimenopause, and I wanted to have her on the show to talk about some of the nutrition myths that we hear about and well, whether they’re fact or myth, is what I wanted to get to the bottom of, because there’s so much conflicting information out there, and I really wanted to get some clear advice on who we should listen to, what really matters, and how we can move forward and improve our health, from an anti diet perspective during this phase of life. Dr Jenn saleeb Huber is a Canadian registered dietitian, naturopathic doctor and certified Intuitive Eating counselor, and she’s on a mission to help women manage menopause without diets and food rules. She helps women navigate the physical and emotional changes that happen in perimenopause and menopause, including their search for food freedom and body confidence. Working from a Health at Every Size approach, she teaches women to become intuitive eaters and build body confidence at any stage of midlife. In addition to her one on one and small group programs, She’s the host of the midlife feast podcast and community that helps women un diet their lives after 40, so they can nourish a relationship with food that helps them discover the magic of midlife. Let’s get started with the show.

Hi Jenn, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have you here today.

Jenn:
Thanks. Summer. I’m very excited to be here.

Summer:
Yes, I feel like that. We are going to talk about a lot of necessary information and maybe, like, debunk some myths, and hopefully have people feel a little bit more comfortable navigating the internet and their own health as they go through midlife and the transition into menopause, before we get into that. Though, I would love for you to just share, like, what got you into this work, like, what made you want to focus on this period of life and what made you want to do it from, like, an anti diet perspective?

Jenn:
Oh, gosh. Let’s see if I can, like, condense that story. So I guess it goes back. My dad was actually a gynecologist in a small town, and so he would say, because it was a small town in northern New Brunswick, he was part time OB. GYN, part time family doctor, and I worked at his office for years, and so I think I developed an interest in women’s health, but I knew from fairly early on that I didn’t want to go the kind of conventional medical route, I think I was. I just kind of saw it from the inside of what it was like, and didn’t want that in my personal life, because I saw just how much it like. Ate up his time as a, you know, in family and stuff. But I was always interested in health. I was interested in health. I was interested in nutrition. I loved food, so I went in to study nutrition and became a dietitian, and then became a naturopathic doctor. And from the get go, my practice was really focused on, let’s just say, like, women and families. And then as I was having kids, I was really interested in baby led weaning and, like, feeding stuff. But I was also very much still in diet culture, and I was very much in a rule based mindset and practice. And I joke that I was a professional Dieter and a professional giver of diets. So I not only was always in it myself, but I was like teaching others to do it. But then at 37 I found myself in early perimenopause, and my kids were still pretty young. I had three kids under the age of seven, and everything just kind of went sideways pretty quickly that, you know, I was missing periods and having hot flashes and crime scene periods. And at the same time, my body was changing, because that’s what bodies do. They change, and because I was heavily still into diet culture. 10 years ago was probably the most disordered year of eating of my life, but it was kind of also the, you know, this, like, double edged kind of blessing and curse and that it was awful, but at the end of that year, I was like, I’ve something’s got to give. And I was fortunate that I had stumbled on intuitive eating, and really spent, like, the next couple of years, figuring out what I needed, and through that, realized this is my personal path forward, and it’s got to be my professional path forward, too. So it was actually about eight years ago that I closed my practice to weight loss as a dietitian, which lots of people said, I can’t believe you’re actually saying that I actually had that on, like, my intake forms, that you know, if you want weight loss, I’m not your person, but if you want anything else, I’m your person. But I really felt like I needed to step into that space in every aspect of my life. It couldn’t just be my personal story. It needed to be my professional story, and I couldn’t separate them anymore. And so as I was transitioning through menopause, and I’m now three years post menopausal, you know, I’m kind of really just thrilled that I can, that I can do this, that I can support other people who are going through some stage of that, because I have a lot of lived experience, but I have a lot of professional experience too.

Summer:
Yeah, amazing. Oh, that’s cool. Our stories are kind of similar in that way, and that I was doing nutrition for weight loss as well, and then also extremely disordered. And had that sort of like, wake up call moment personally. And then was like, well, we have to change things professionally too, which is not easy to do. Obviously, like it is on one hand, because it’s very values aligned, but like it’s it’s a hard thing to do.

Jenn:
And like it is hard, especially when you work in nutrition? Yeah, you know, I sometimes joke that when I go to like parties, I tell people that, like, I’m an accountant or an actuary or something, because the minute that somebody hears that you like work with food or nutrition, it’s always, how do I lose weight? Because everyone thinks there’s some magic secret that like, that we’re withholding and that we can let them in on, when, in reality, there is no secret. It’s that pursuing intentional weight loss is never going to be easy or sustainable. That’s the secret.

Summer:
Yeah, yeah. So true. So true. So I think you know, you mentioned your own struggle when you started to go through early perimenopause, and that your body changed, and I think that that’s obviously a pretty universal experience, but I think a lot of people also think I have to stop this. And they, and they, you know, they, they sort of freak out about the body changes that that happen in that period of our life. And I’m wondering if you can just speak to like, why does that weight gain happen? And maybe even specifically, like, why does it seem to be more centered around the middle of the body and like, do people need to be freaking out about that? Because I think some people freak out about it from like, a vanity perspective, but other people freak out about it from a health perspective.

Jenn:
Yeah. So I want to, I’d love to just like, take a minute and lay out exactly what’s happening in perimenopause and menopause. For anybody who’s listening, who maybe hasn’t heard these terms described before, perimenopause is everything leading up to the last period and and menopause is just one day. Everything after that is post menopause. When you’re in perimenopause, which can last up to 10 years, you’re on this hormonal roller coaster. So this hormone soup that you’ve been making predictably and reliably every month for your reproductive years since puberty is now changing. And so you go through periods of high estrogen and periods of low estrogen, but there is this overall decline that is happening as you get closer to your last period, and then once you hit this last. Period. Over the next couple of years, you kind of enter this new normal where everything’s just in a low but a steady state. So that’s kind of perimenopause and menopause in a nutshell, from a hormone perspective. And so the closer that we get to menopause, we start to go through what I call a redistribution of assets. So we kind of have this change programmed into our DNA that where our body stores fat goes from our hips and our bum, or kind of that pear shape, to more of an apple shape. And so that, again, is just a change that happens to almost everyone. And as a result of that, even if the scale isn’t moving, not that we want anyone stepping on the scale, but even if you haven’t technically gained weight, how your clothes fit are going to change. What you see in the mirror is going to change the style of clothing that maybe has been your go to for 30 or 40 or 50 years now doesn’t fit the same way. So we go through this adjustment of I just don’t feel like myself anymore, and that’s really, really hard, and that term is actually being defined in research. They’re studying that as this grouping of symptoms that includes body changes, that includes mood changes, sleep changes, energy changes. So we really are kind of changing from the inside out, because this hormone soup that we’ve made reliably and predictably for so many years isn’t happening anymore. So there is that dis redistribution, but we also see and know that from the age of 30 onwards, we also lose muscle men and women. This isn’t specific to kind of perimenopause, but there is an acceleration of that around the menopause transition. So there may actually be some quote, unquote metabolic changes that are happening doesn’t mean it’s your fault or that you have to do anything about it, but I think that information can actually help empower us to be compassionate towards ourselves. When these changes are happening, then there’s also a change in life stage. So 10 years ago, I had three kids under the age of seven, and I was getting up probably at 530 in the morning with one of them. Now I have three teenagers, so, like, I’m not as busy as I was. So we have all this, like, you know, things that are happening around this menopause transition. So is it menopause? Is it life? Is it some combination of both? But even when it’s happening, it doesn’t mean that we’ve done something wrong. And so what I see happening, and I’m sure you see this too, is almost an urgency. It’s kind of like, oh my gosh, I’m here now, and I haven’t figured it out until now, and now things are getting worse. If I don’t figure this out, meaning, like, how to reach that magical maintenance land of easy, sustainable weight loss, I’m gonna be stuck here forever, and it’s just gonna get worse. So now we add, like, just the really uncomfortable feelings that come with not feeling comfortable in our bodies. So the urgency then just gets fed all the diet culture nonsense, because diet culture and wellness culture is just waiting to pounce on us. You don’t even have to. If you put in Google, if you put in menopause, into Google, the first 10 pages are just going to be about mental belly and all the fear based messaging. So, yeah, so there’s a lot going on.

Summer:
Yeah, I think it’s really helpful, because it makes sense then to understand all of these dynamics at play that can contribute. But I think the point there that you mentioned at the end about that sense of urgency, I think often, then causes people to, like, double down on what they’re doing. So, you know, like, restrict more, or look for ways to up their exercise and and I’m curious to know, like, obviously, maybe, like, what, what you’ve sort of noticed, but also, are there any sort of unique impacts of restricting or going like, sort of harder with restriction, whether that be through like, excessive exercise or restricting foods in that phase of life, like is is it different than when you do it, when you’re like, in your 20s, for example?

Jenn:
Well, I think that some of the things that happen to anybody who pursues intentional weight loss aggressively are going to still happen in midlife. So you’re, you know, you’re still likely to be a victim of weight cycling. You’re still likely to experience the weight regain that most people who even have you know some weight loss will achieve. We know that weight cycling comes with its own unique set of risk factors to our to our health. But the other thing that I try and impress on people, and just trying to kind of expand their view of how we can take care of ourselves, beyond making way to proxy for health, is this is an age and stage where Food Matters. Nutrition matters. How we nourish our bodies can have an impact on how well we age. You know, we’re all aging, that’s a fact. We can’t anti age, but we can influence how we age, and so eating enough to maintain the muscle that we have, eating foods that are going to, you know, help our brain, our heart and our bones. Bones be as healthy as they can be. Adding these things in, not cutting those things out, is one of the things that I try and impress on people. But probably the most relevant to how can we support our health is, how can we support maintaining muscle? So again, men and women from the age of about 30 onwards are losing muscle every decade. That’s a fact. It’s just part of a human changing body. But if we can help maintain the muscle, slow the rate of loss, and hopefully even be building muscle through these kind of critical decades, 40s, 50s, 60s, even 70s, we can have a big impact on our health and also a big impact on how we feel in our bodies. But when we pursue intentional weight loss, we’re creating a cleric deficit, and when we create that deficit, the weight that we lose is never just fat. That’s magic. If somebody tells you that it’s just fat, you’re going to be losing fat and muscle, and since it’s harder to build and maintain, I don’t see the risk benefit working out in that in that favor. So I try and kind of just insert this idea that maybe gaining some fat in menopause isn’t this big bad monster that’s like lurking in the corner. Maybe it’s losing muscle that we need to really be fighting against and we can’t preserve muscle and pursue aggressive weight loss at the same time.

Summer:
Wow. Okay, yeah, that’s super helpful. And I feel like where people struggle is because we’ve equated weight with health so much, and because people will go to their doctor, and their doctor will recommend, you know, weight loss and weight loss, drugs and everything else. So you’ve got sort of like this conventional messaging coming in, and your body’s getting bigger, changing, potentially through the menopause transition. So then you’re starting to, like, freak out about your health. So then you think the only solution is to restrict what what you’re saying is, like, actually, maybe what we need to be focusing on instead is, is like, maintaining and or building muscle, and because that’s ultimately going to be more beneficial for our health than, like, our actual weight.

Jenn:
Yeah. So if somebody loses weight at 50, they will be losing muscle, and it’s they can gain some of it back, maybe, for sure, but in 10 years, what is going to have a bigger impact on metabolic health, on brain, health on bone, health is it going to be having lost 10 pounds of fat or having maintained or built muscle? So if we’re talking about the long game, which is kind of what I think everyone actually wants to talk about, right? Everyone wants to talk about, how do I age? Well, how do I support my my overall health and my independence and yeah, of course, we want to feel good in our bodies, but I think one of the gifts of midlife is that maybe we become a little bit less invested in what our bodies look like, but we still want to feel comfortable in them, and we want to feel strong, and we want to feel like we can do the things that we want to do, so adequacy, like Eating adequately, imperfectly enough, in ways that you enjoy, moving your body in ways that you enjoy, and focusing on on that instead of a number or a metric. That’s where the empowerment comes in, and that’s where you can really harness that energy in midlife and find a way forward that doesn’t have to involve counting, measuring, tracking or feeling like you’re doing something wrong for the rest of your life.

Summer:
Yeah. And so something you mentioned there, like, obviously, the sort of key takeaways, like, you know, maintaining building muscle can really support health and longevity. And I think one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about, and that I have seen in the discourse online, in, you know, perimenopause, menopause spaces, is this sort of like, focus on, okay, so we we understand, like, you know, muscle is important, so we should be, like, everyone should be, like, lifting really heavy weights and, like, eating an enormous amount of protein. And so one of the questions that somebody asked me, which I was like, I’m definitely gonna ask you, is that how it has to look? Or like, what’s the best way forward for for somebody? Or like, what would you want to share with people listening who are feeling like, gosh, like, I should be like, you know, lifting super heavy weights and eating all this protein, but I don’t really want to do that.

Jenn:
Yeah, and it is such a great question, and it and it pretty much is the question that I’m asked the most every day. Doesn’t matter where I go, because we have these influences who are telling us, oh my gosh, you need to, like, eat triple your body weight and protein, and you need to be, like, lifting heavy at the gym in order to support muscle. We need adequate protein and some kind of resistance or stress on the muscles. That can be body weight training, that can be a stress on the muscle. It can be lepting weights. It’s a little bit more of a nuanced discussion when we’re talking about bone health, because the research is a little bit kind of more leaning towards that heavier lifting as being. Beneficial for bone health. But that doesn’t mean that other types of movement aren’t which is where we can stay out of the all or nothing, thinking, right? Nobody has to do everything one way. So what I say about the movement is focus on movement that you enjoy as often as you can, and work with somebody or learn how and what resistance training means because it is not just lifting heavy that can be part of it, but there are many ways that you can support muscle growth without kind of going to the gym and joining that whole kind of crowd, if that’s not your crowd. The protein discussion, again, there’s some nuance to it, because we do know that as we get older and again, men and women, this isn’t exclusive to women, our body doesn’t use protein as efficiently, so we don’t use it as efficiently, which does mean that the older we get, we can benefit from a little bit more. So what a 20 year old can do with 20 grams we might need 25 grams. Those are just kind of examples, not true numbers. So this is kind of where things get a little bit confusing, because there is, I would say, a good body of evidence to suggest that a little bit more can be helpful. But then you have these really small, or smaller studies that are looking at specific populations under specific conditions and giving you a number, saying you need this number or this range of numbers, and then it becomes this, all or nothing. Well, if I can’t get 160 grams, that I’m not doing any good, or it’s, you know, I’m failing because I can only get 100 like so what we need to remember is that normal eating means not counting and measuring and tracking all your food. Humans, you and I wouldn’t be having this discussion if humans needed to do that to survive, right? And so normal eating means building a balanced plate with foods that you enjoy with some intention around Do I have a main character protein on my plate? And I like teaching people like this is a main character protein and this is a supporting character. So if you have a piece of chicken on your plate, that’s a main character protein in your go. If you’ve got a few nuts on a salad, maybe you want to throw something else in just to round it out. But you still don’t have to, like, focus on, have I hit my target of, you know, 50 grams per meal. Because unless you are an athlete or you have very specific performance goals, in which case you should be working with a sports dietitian. Anyway, normal eating means protein on your plate at most meals and not requiring you to count, measure and track every bite. But we can still learn that intuitively, because Intuitive Eating has this gentle nutrition principle built into it, I can still lead with satisfaction and add the protein to my plate in ways that feel good and work for me, without having to worry about getting 150 grams of craziness protein per day.

Summer:
Yeah, yeah. And I think there’s also, like, this cost benefit analysis that has to be done on the person. So, like, if you have, like, a more Orthorexic background or history with an eating disorder, it’s like you have to really be mindful of, like, is your approach going to be more detrimental to your mental health and understand that, you know, and that’s where it has to come down to the individual. Because some people can, can do that, and it’s easier to absolutely focus on, like certain elements.

Jenn:
Also studies that have looked at protein and strength training versus just strength training, and the strength training comes out on top as being more relevant and important anyway. So we put all the emphasis on the food, but it’s not the be all and end all. You know, it’s one piece of the puzzle, and it doesn’t even have to be part of everyone’s puzzle. Like, we all need protein. But I just mean, like, I tell lots of people, you don’t need to worry about it. You eat a wide variety of foods. You eat regularly. You know you’re fine. We don’t have to micromanage every bite of food, even as we go through menopause, because we’re still human, and humans are pretty resilient. And food doesn’t have to be perfect to still be health promoting. And it only accounts for a small percentage of like health differences too, which I think we still need to like highlight for people listening, because there’s all these other factors that that influence health too.

Summer:
So some of the other recommendations that I see are, you know, like around, like intermittent fasting or cutting back on carbohydrates. Like, what are your thoughts on those types of suggestions, like in this time of life?

Jenn:
Yeah, I’m definitely not a fan of low carb and keto diets. I don’t think that we really appreciate just how much carbohydrates do for us as humans. You know, they not only taste good and are super satisfying and are very accessible and really are on every plate in pretty much every culture. Specifically, they help give us energy. They’re our brains preferred fuel source. We need them to make tryptophan, you know, getting tryptophan into our brain to help with sleep. So when I see people who have been trying to do low carb for a long time, and we start adding them back in, they come back and they say. Like, Oh my gosh, it’s so much easier to fall asleep, or I now have energy to, like, go do these things that I want to do. And most importantly, the brain fog clears up so quickly for a lot of people. So if you’ve been avoiding carbohydrates and you’re dealing with midlife brain fog, that’s like, the first thing that you need to do. You need to, like, add those back in. So low carb diets definitely not a fan. And intermittent fasting is one of those ones that I don’t think we’re talking enough about the side effects of it. So regardless of how you feel when you’re doing it, and most people don’t feel great because you have such a narrow window of eating, I have seen it, and I’m sure you have as well really create a lot of binge eating and disordered eating and very unhealthy relationships with food. So even when people stop fasting, they feel guilty if they eat before lunch, or they still doing something wrong if they’re eating in the evening. So you know, we have normalized a disordered pattern of eating in the name of weight loss. And so I really don’t, I don’t think there’s any research to support it, even though it’s widely promoted by health professionals, the research is pretty clear that it’s really just another way of counting calories. There is nothing magical about it. It doesn’t change your metabolism. It doesn’t have any anti aging properties or anything like that. And most importantly, I think it creates a lot of disordered eating that is going to interfere with your quality of life, regardless of what it does to the scale.

Summer:
Yeah, and I’m just thinking like if you’re trying to maybe add some more protein, like main character, energy, to your plate, then if not having a meal, so to speak, would make that much more difficult. I feel, I think, if I think you know about it’s easier to sort of redistribute it out throughout the day at different times than it is to, like, eat an enormous, yeah, chicken later, right?

Jenn:
I mean, how would you even possibly eat 100 grams of protein in a six hour period without sacrificing anything else that you wanted to eat, you know, like it would be so hard. Sounds awful.

Summer:
Yeah. Sounds awful, yeah. So you’ve talked about, you know, like adding some main character protein resistance training, which doesn’t necessarily have to be like a, you know, a barbell or anything like that. What are some other things that help to support health during this time of life?

Jenn:
So I mean nutrition by addition is definitely my philosophy, and I love encouraging people to add in beans and lentils, and not because they’re magical or anything like that, but soy foods in particular contain phytoestrogens. And phytoestrogens are very, very, very weak plant based estrogen like compounds that can bind to our estrogen receptors. They can be really helpful for people who are having symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats. But we also know that soy foods can help support heart health. Can help support, you know, bone health and brain health. So in terms of that plant forward approach, not plant based, not vegan or vegetarian, but just adding more plants to your plate, including those beans and lentils and soy, can be a really helpful addition. And a lot of people find that, hey, you know what? These are easier to prepare. You can buy them canned, so you just open the can. You don’t have to, like, season and cook a piece of meat, but they’re also great sources of fiber. So when we think about, you know, what am I? What can I add in that’s going to support my health as I go through this transition? Fiber is one of those. Like, when you’re an adult, you choose the cereal for the fiber, not the toy. And it’s the same thing with, like, the plants that you’re choosing to put on your plate. All plants have fiber, and adding more of them, regardless of where they come from, is going to be a good investment, and just helps us to feel better too, because it helps to make sure that everything is working smoothly. And calcium, even though we don’t talk about it, we talk about it a lot like through about bones and things like that, but there’s sometimes less emphasis on it because of some confusion around the effectiveness of calcium supplements, but including those calcium rich foods still important, because we want to keep topping up your calcium bank, right? So anytime that your heart needs some calcium, if you’re not eating calcium rich foods, it’s going to dip into your bones, essentially, and take a withdrawal. So even if adding those calcium rich foods or taking calcium supplements doesn’t, you know, significantly reduce your risk of breaking a bone later on. It’s still going to be topping up the bank, and it’s still going to be helping your body to maintain access to that when it needs it.

Summer:
What are some calcium rich foods like, other than dairy, obviously, kind of good, I mean, because that’s what was drilled into our heads in the 80s.

Jenn:
yeah, so, I mean, those are still, I think, accessible choices for most people. I think that they’re also delicious choices for lots of people like cheese, right? I think dairy foods had got a really bad wrap for a while. And what I tell people now is, you don’t have to choose dairy foods, but they’re probably the most affordable, accessible and a. Often delicious ways of getting those foods. So if you enjoy them, don’t feel bad, don’t feel like you’re doing something wrong. But the great thing is that we also have a lot of plant based alternatives. So most plant based milks in most countries are fortified, including soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, like all those kinds of things, leafy greens, if they’re cooked, you can also get a good amount of calcium, but, like, it’s three cups of cooked broccoli is equivalent to a cup of milk or plant based milk. So chances are you’re not going to be only getting your calcium from, you know, leafy greens or cooked greens, but they can definitely contribute. But one of my favorites is actually like sardines, because sardines has still have the bones or canned salmon. So these are great, kind of quick, snacky, even meal based sources that are going to give you some protein, some omega three fats, which we didn’t really talk about, but are also helpful and the calcium. So just kind of finding ways, and I’ve got some resources on my Instagram and my website, but just kind of finding ways to include a variety of foods, like not getting stuck on me. What is the best source? What is the only source? Yeah, that, like, all of these things we can get from a wide variety of foods, you can still choose the ones that you like. You don’t have to choose the best one. That’s diet culture, that’s wellness culture. Having this, like, well rounded relationship with food means like, yeah, I love cheese and I love yogurt. I’m gonna include those sources. But I also love broccoli, so I’m gonna include that too,

Summer:
yeah, and I think you mentioned earlier, like doing it imperfectly, because I think that that’s, you know, like, and that’s where a lot of people’s minds go, is to get it right and do it perfectly, and like, Oh, God, I have to make all these changes and do all these things. And it’s like, no, that’s not what you’re saying at all. Right?

Jenn:
No. I mean, I talk about lowering the bar all the time, right? And so, you know, when we think about, like, consistency, diet culture and wellness culture and gym bro culture, kind of, you know, drill in us that, like, consistency is like doing it perfectly every day, all the time, but doing something consistently just means not stopping. So you might have to lower the bar in low capacity times, or you may be able to, you know, raise the bar in high capacity times. But just kind of having this idea that food never has to be perfect, and adequacy is the name of the game. Is this adequate, given your capacity to meet your needs in the moment, and if you can build a plate that meets all that great, that’s the goal. It’s never to follow a set of rules and do it perfectly. I think I feel like that really needed to be highlighted for everybody, always, again and again.

Summer:
Yeah. So, like, one of the last thing I wanted to ask you about is just, it’s really hard to navigate information online, because you’re getting all of these different opinions, and it’s really hard to know who to trust outside of yourself. Like, how do you what’s your advice to people in terms of, like, how to navigate information related to, you know, health and menopause, menopause. Like, how do you know who to trust?

Jenn:
So on the menopause front, make sure that the person who is giving you menopause information, or that is giving anyone information, is actually qualified to do so. And so the menopause society in the US and Canada has a certification program for practitioners. So if somebody’s looking for a healthcare professional to meet with, they can find them on that website. But I also think that even for people who aren’t registered as a menopause practitioner, understand being able to back up their recommendations with evidence. And you know, I always tell people, if I say something, ask me where it comes from. I’m always happy to share research, and I’m happy to change my opinion if the research changes. And so what I often see online is, you know, people feel very passionate about their experiences, their opinions, the advice that they want to give, but it’s not always evidence based. And so evidence based doesn’t mean that we have a, you know, a randomized clinical trial and all that kind of stuff, but it means that there is evidence of some sort that it that meets a standard that we can say, not only is this advice that can apply to an individual, but it’s advice that can be adapted, because that really is how we need to start. I think that’s how we actually use information, is that we need to adapt it based on our own unique situations, and not just try and apply this recommendation across the board, so you know, and just finding people that I think are reasonable, like, if somebody is giving you advice that feels really polarizing, if they’re using words, like, always, never, you know, those are big red flags, because in the in the nutrition world, those don’t exist in an evidence based way.

Summer:
Yeah, okay, that’s really helpful, yeah, because I, I definitely stumble across stuff that just really highlights this need to do, like, more, more, more and, you know, like, have a walking pad while you wear a weighted vest while you like, all this protein and like, it’s just like, I’m like, Who has time for this? Like, I, you know. What I mean. And I just, I just feel like it can get so disordered for people. And obviously, if, like, that’s your jam, and you like it, like, fine, but yeah, I mean,

Jenn:
and that’s the problem with one of the big problems with social media, is that we see everything that people want to show us, and that’s not always helpful. It’s often not helpful. And you know, I never show like what I eat in a day or like anything like that, because what I eat in a day is completely irrelevant to what someone else eats in a day. Yeah.

Summer:
So true, right? So, yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been so informative, and I really appreciate you being here and sharing all this information, where can people find more of you?

Jenn:
Oh, thanks so much for having me. I love talking about it, and I love talking to you. So I’m on Instagram at menopause. Dot nutritionist, and that’s probably the best place to come hang out with me, because I hang out there too much, and the links in my bio can lead you to what I’ve got going on. But the podcast, the midlife feast, is another great resource for people who want to learn more about a non diet approach to menopause, which you were on not too long ago.

Summer:
Yeah, I will link to all those in the show notes. And yeah, and I’m so glad that you came into my circle and and were able to come on the show. So thank you so much for being here. It’s been great. Thank you. Rock on.

I love that episode. I felt like Jen really knew her stuff and was able to share all that super useful information with us in a way that was hopefully not overwhelming for you. You can find the links mentioned at summer inn, inn.com, forward, slash, 319, don’t forget to consider supporting the show financially by going to kofi.com. Forward slash summer in and in. That’s K, O, dash, F, i.com forward slash summer in and in. You can find that link in the information for this episode, or over at the show notes. Thank you so much for being here today. Rock on.

I’m Summer innanen, I want to thank you for listening today. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer innan, and if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts, search, eat the rules and subscribe, rate and review this show. I would be so grateful until next time rock on you.