Over the weekend I was part of a Biohacking Panel at a Wellness Retreat. The professionals on the panel all had different specialties and we spent an hour answering questions and geeking out about health research as well as what we had experienced with people we had personally helped.
It was phenomenal to find that despite our different backgrounds and focuses, much of our advice aligned at its core.
When asked the three things that had the biggest positive impact on health, we were in full agreement:
- Move regularly
- Nourish your body with a wide variety of quality foods
- Ensure you body has time to rest
From here, we agreed that there were many possible pathways to each of these goals. The trick is to check each of these boxes in a way that works and you can do consistently.
I shared the three most important guidelines in each of these categories from my course How to Powerup Peri/menopause: the Complete Guide.
Let me share them with you!
- Move regularly
We know the value of exercise, but the impact of getting up and out of your chair every hour cannot be understated. Just by standing up and moving around at regular intervals during the day, we can significantly decrease our risk of cardiovascular disease, which is still the #1 killer of women in the United States.
Yes, hit the weights and get some cardio in too, but ALSO stay moving all day long as much as possible. If you crush a workout in the morning, but then spend the bulk of your day sitting at a desk, much of the cardiovascular benefit is lost. Even the Blue Zones special on Netflix emphasizes the value of just getting up and walking around to maintain your wellness and longevity.
Long live the people who putter!
Set a timer and force yourself to spend 5-10 minutes moving. Do a quick chore, walk to the furthest bathroom, pace while you are on a phone call, stand and stretch during meetings, do whatever it takes to move! Your heart will thank you.
2. Nourish your body with a wide variety of quality foods
Your body is one big collection of cells that runs on chemical reactions fueled by food. What you put in your mouth enters your blood stream and is delivered to cells all over your body to make sure they work properly. Make that food count!
There is so much that goes into nutrition, but it can also be quite simple. Make what you eat as close to its natural source as possible. Choose the best quality of food you can afford. Eat the widest variety of foods you can manage.
A good start is avoiding processed foods, added sugars, and foods that cause inflammation for you. If you have no idea who to do this or what foods might cause you to be inflamed, you might want to give Powerup and Reset a try. It works like a charm to get you on track with food quality and variety!
3. Ensure your body has time to rest
We have two pathways in our central nervous system:
Sympathetic – this is our stress and performance pathway
Parasympathetic – this is our rest and recover pathway
With our non-stop busy lives, we spend more time in the stress pathway and need to work to switch-on and spend time in rest and recover mode.
Managing our stress as well as ensuring good sleep hygiene to get our Z’s are both key to getting enough time in recovery. Each of these has it’s own section and list of recommendations in How to Powerup Perimenopause: the Complete Guide, but one simple trick that can be done anywhere is deep breathing.
By sitting up straight (or lying down with a straight spine), fully emptying our lungs on an exhale and then filling them up on an inhale, our Vagus Nerve is stimulated. This nerve is like a switch that flips on your parasympathetic nervous system.
Taking some deep breaths can be done anytime, anywhere. No matter what you are doing, if you take the time to slow and deepen your breathing, you will have a payoff.
Each of these major categories has a neat and efficient list of recommendations as well as piles of suggestions on how to implement them in your life in How to Powerup Perimenopause: the Complete Guide.
Find your balance
Each of these three – movement, food, and rest – are a pillar of health. Picture your body standing on a stool where each leg is one of those pillars. If one of them is short, you will fall off of the stool.
It can be frustrating if we are making an effort to improve one aspect of our health without making progress. Often, if our stool if off balance, our bodies are resistant to progress.
- Are you great at hitting the gym, but find yourself eating foods that aren’t serving you?
- Are you very clean in your eating, but drinking alcohol too often?
- Do you nail every workout and run a clean kitchen, but come up short on sleep?
- Do you cringe at the idea of skipping a workout and never allow time for your muscles to recover?
In perimenopause and menopause, our bodies can be off-balance and prone to stress at baseline. Our approach to our health becomes more important than ever.
What is the ULTIMATE IMPACTFUL health habit?
It is one you can maintain!
It is aways hard to start something new, but if you give it a good go, tweak things until they are working, and then feel like you can keep it up, you have a winner!
Imagine yourself looking back in ten year thinking, “I remember when this felt hard! Now it is easy! I am so glad I took that first step!”
Have you tried and failed to change your health in the past? Consider this:
- Now is the time to take your health seriously. What we do RIGHT NOW decides if we will spend our golden years sick and broken or thriving and enjoying life.
- Just about EVERYTHING you read or see in Health Media is NOT designed for women in Perimenopause or menopause. Our hormones are DIFFERENT than men and younger women. Things that work for other people are likely to make things WORSE for you right now.
- We cannot afford to waste time with-fast fix weight loss schemes that will likely cost us precious bone and muscle, cause us to gain belly fat, and can even cause us to become more at risk for heart attack and stroke.
Everything in How to Powerup Peri/menopause: the Complete Guide and the Powerup and Reset Program are designed for women in Perimenopause and Menopause to:
- Help you feel better RIGHT NOW
- Find your best health and make it last a lifetime
- Lose stubborn fat, especially in the belly
- Increase or preserve bone and muscle, the key to aging well
- Keep our cortisol levels down
- Decrease inflammation
If you have previously struggled to make real health changes stick, these are the programs for you.
Instead of presenting a bunch of information and leaving you overwhelmed, with no idea how to apply it to your life, BOTH COURSES are filled with BEHAVIOR CHANGE strategy, tips and tricks, and realistic advice that walk you through how to apply everything successfully into your life and maintain it for the long term.
These programs have been changing the lives of so many women. Why not let it be you?
Click here to take a look at these two programs
Select the course you want to know more about and click on FREE PREVIEW
