In this episode, Laura Clark, a menopause dietitian and food therapist with over 25 years of experience, discusses her holistic approach to helping midlife women navigate the menopausal transition through better nutrition, understanding food relationships, and addressing emotional well-being.
We chat about the importance of contextualising diet within a broader lifestyle perspective, acknowledging the complex factors affecting women’s health and habits during menopause, (such as hormone fluctuations and the influence of diet culture) and, of course, Laura’s messy middle too.
If you’ve felt flummoxed by menopause diet culture this is the episode for you!
Episode highlights:
03:09 Understanding Menopause: Symptoms and Dietary Impacts
10:26 Challenging Weight Loss Narratives and Embracing Sustainable Health
25:28 Midlife Transitions: Beyond Diet to Life’s Complexities
30:29 Ambition and Balance in Midlife: A Personal Reflection
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Transcript
A big welcome to Laura Clark who's joining us today. Laura is a menopause dietitian and a food therapist, and her approach combines nutritional science. Behavioral therapy, lots of compassion and a big dollop of humor, if I know Laura. She helps clients eat better so they can feel better and reconnect with their bodies and step into their power during the menopause. So there's loads of stuff that we can dig into around midlife today. And I'm really excited to have you here, Laura. Would you mind starting off by telling us a little bit about the work you do and work with? Yeah. So as you said, I'm a registered dietitian and I've developed, I think into more of a food therapist. I have a background in nutritional science, having qualified as a dietitian like 25 years ago or something crazy. but certainly the work that I do now, I think takes a much broader, more holistic, approach. I think I realized pretty early on in my career that lots of knowledge about nutrition and a smiley face and a diet sheet, was really only going to go so far and you actually realize that people are beautifully complex and a look at the drivers of our habits and behaviors and beliefs is actually really key because it enables you to, yes, give people nutritional insights, but also you're helping them to understand themselves better, to see how they want to navigate their food decisions. their relationship with food and body, as they go through life. And I think the happy middle, the midlife phase that we're both in presents an opportunity to take a deep breath and to consider all of the factors that contribute to our food relationships and body relationships, because we have a lived experience now, and we need to pay attention to that. And what kind of things do people come to you for help with? So as we go through the menopausal transition, there are a number of things that happen. Those fluctuations in hormones will cause various symptoms and those symptoms can be quite, they can create quite a lot of panic and fear within us. They can make us feel like we're not quite ourselves anymore. We might notice physical change within our body shape and size. We might notice, emotional and mental changes as we're struggling cognitively or struggling with mood fluctuations or feeling more anxious about things that previously wouldn't have fazed us. We might have other symptoms, which we've Googled and discovered that diet may play a part in helping us to alleviate. for example, things like hot flushes. So menopause brings with it a huge spectrum of, symptoms and challenge for midlife women. And. they present to me with a number of questions and a desire, to figure it all out and get some guidance and perhaps feel a little bit more steadied. I use the term anchors a lot. My signature program that works with women one to one is called the Anchor Program. It's all about really looking at what helps to help us feel more grounded and connected and calm to navigate this phase more successfully. And as I say, nutrition and our relationship with food is a part of that, but I help women to put it into context with other aspects of life, such as our communication and the needs of others that we're constantly trying to juggle and navigate, how we move within our body, how we feel about our body, and how we regulate ourselves in amongst the busy, and the endless to do list. it's a practical, authentic, compassionate conversation that, I bring to the table with the women I work with, I think. Like reaching this point, those of us who are in the middle bit now, we're in our teens or in our early twenties, figuring out who we are at that precise point when diet culture was horrendous. and bodies were, supposed to look a certain way, and behave a certain way, all of us, I remember swimming and all of that, see like the magazines that I used to read and being really, conscious of what I ate in order to try and attain this ridiculous ideal of the body. And it feels like even listening to you speaking about food now, I'm just aware that there's more that I could do for myself in terms of eating in a more healthy way to support myself. And I've got some kind of resistance to that just from all the baggage of my younger years, dieting was about, getting smaller, getting bigger. Do you find some of your clients come with similar baggage? absolutely. I like to talk about it in a three pronged approach. I think that the first part of it. is around, yeah, understanding our body, understanding what it's saying, how we interpret its need, how we make sense of our nutritional need in amongst our other needs as a whole. the second part of it is what you've just spoken to, which is our gremlins. our baggage, like what do we come into this phase of life believing and thinking about ourselves or food or whatever. And the third part is our environment. Are we able to advocate for ourselves and meet those needs and is our environment setting us up to win or is it just making it really complicated and really difficult actually to make headway? But that second part, the gremlins, are a massive part of it because we have all got a lived experience. it starts right from day one in terms of how food is presented. and talked about as we are really forming these, early beliefs. We are hopefully taught by the people who bring us up the importance of looking both ways before we cross the road Cleaning our teeth of washing these basic fundamentals and yet Food is not something that doesn't come with a conversation. It's very rare that it's just allowed to be food And there's definite common theme and the women that tend to come into my world is that there was some really screwed up narratives, that they absorbed at quite a young age within the family home. But as you say. There was nowhere for them to escape because they then went out into the world, we were, as you say, bombarded, weren't we with, with diet culture, although we didn't know it to be that at the time. Yeah. And I'm thinking about like at home as well, because as parents and, as my parents did, like we did all of the kind of brush your teeth, look both ways when you cross the road, eat well. But then we might have seen the people that were putting the food in our plates, not having so much on their own, or, etc. Yeah, so many different things. So what do you mean by that? is your environment set up? in a certain way. Do you mean like where you work or what's going on in your home or? I think it's the appreciation that we are hugely influenced by, the circumstances that we find ourselves in, that by default, so much of our food behavior has to be automated because we have a lot of other stuff that requires, our prefrontal cortex, our human part of the brain, to actively be thinking about. We haven't got literally the mental capacity to be giving such detailed thought to every single food decision we make. So to help us out, our brain will automate a lot of that behavior. And once we start to develop food habits that in some way benefit us, the brain remembers that and that behavior is then very easy to repeat. So I think it's having a really you know, honest, curious, bigger picture look at why do I do what I do? And a lot of the conversations I have might involve chats about partners and boyfriends and husbands and children and people that we naturally spend time with because We are tribal animals. We are hugely influenced by who we spend our time with and what they want to eat and what they, what they're doing. I had a client this morning who was saying, I don't even want the crisps, but they're open because my husband's opened them and so I'm having them and I don't know why I'm doing that because I don't want to do that. it's just that appreciation that Our environments and how we show up in those environments is a huge part of our behavior. yeah. I see. Yeah. And so the work that you do with women, it's not necessarily that they're coming to you because they want to reach a certain dress size. Because we live in a world that does celebrate thinness. We have an absolute black and white view that we have absorbed, as we've said, since we were little, that fundamentally if we can be a bit thinner, that is better. The narratives around weight and health are really complicated, very nuanced, and very oversimplified. So this is not me saying that in some cases weight loss improves health. But I am saying that weight itself is not a behaviour, and rather than getting distracted by a number on a scale that we cannot fundamentally control, we have to actually look at the architecture of our day and the behaviours that make that day up. And for a lot of women, they come because they want weight loss. And I can't give them that. I have long since given up on the principles of I'm going to write you a prescriptive diet plan, you're going to go home and stick it on the fridge, and then overnight you're miraculously going to turn into some robot that has no other influences, and literally just follows word for word everything I've written on that diet plan. Okay. and we assume that you can eat a certain number of calories and you can adjust that and that your body, which is like so complicated beyond our wildest imagination, we still can't really fathom the intricacies with which our body, our human body functions, we're going to assume that the body is not going to adapt, that it's not going to change, it's just going to go. Oh, okay, now we've got 500 calories less. we're going to beaver off over here we're going to, we're going to burn those fat stores and our weight's going to come down. it's just not that simple. And when we talk about midlife and menopausal transition, we have hormones in the mix. And. Numerous other things, the symptoms that we've described about menopause, sleep, for example, stress management. There are so many other factors that influence our weight regulation that it would be completely unethical of me to prescribe a diet plan and say, yep, there you go. That's absolutely going to work. Now, we can Google diet plans and people will listen to this and they will say, I, I can follow a diet and I, it does help me lose weight. And yes, of course it does, but it's the sustainability of weight loss that we're after, isn't it? We can all lose weight, but can we maintain that weight loss by taking that very dictatorial, I'm going to prescribe you this and you're going to follow it approach? I don't think it works, and the research backs that up, so I will say to women, I'm not anti weight loss, but I believe that there is a deeper conversation to be had here about fundamentally your health and well being. I think for me, like I'm interested in, and I follow you on Instagram and see the stuff that you put out there. I find it really interesting at this point now, I think because of my massive aversion to any form of diet culture, like I feel it scares me now because of, I guess my past, eating issues when I was much younger. So that bit doesn't interest me at all. Like the things that interest me about your work are like, how could I, how can food The way that my brain's working. Like how can I eat so that my memory's better, or I'm not feeling so tired all the time. those kind of. things are, I'm finding more interesting in midlife. How can I re educate myself around those kinds of things? Yeah. and that's nutritional science at its best. there is so much that we can get from our diets. There is a balance of foods that can absolutely support our cognitive function. It can help to protect us against disease. It can help us to function well, to feel less tired. Absolutely. I think the reality, sadly, is that for a lot of us, we can't just go straight to that bit as much as we want to. We have to wade through some of this baggage first. And, I have had conversations with women. through the tears, saying to me, I just thought we were going to talk about magnesium. and I'm there going, absolutely, magnesium is a really important nutrient for menopause, and this is how you can decide if a supplement is right, and this is where you get magnesium from in your diet, and absolutely, let's have a conversation about that. But for a lot of women, there's a bit of groundwork to do first. Because I'm feeling like in myself as well, wouldn't it be amazing if like I ate so beautifully and everything, started to feel a lot more grounded and my memory came back. And then I just thought, I'm finding it really hard to stick. new, those new kind of healthy, and there's all that baggage stuff there, isn't there? There is probably environmental stuff. I've got young kids who love crisps and chocolate. And also we have a wellness culture now that we've never had before. you and I remember the eighties and nineties, which was diet culture. but now we have a different culture. it's diet culture reinvented as wellness culture and it's the promotion of food. literally being able to do it all, food is, it's fundamentally not medicine. Food is an important anchor within our needs, but it can't do it all. And. I just think some people are really pushing those narratives of no, but Susie, come on, if you don't give in and you do eat this absolutely perfectly created concoction of nutrients every day, you're going to feel amazing. Are you, or actually are there other factors that are going to affect your physical and emotional well being? So we've got to let food be food. It's not going to save the world. There's a lot it can do, but we need to. give context to that really. Yeah, so it's an important part, but it's a part. Yes. And you see a lot of it playing out in people who have diagnosed conditions, for example, diabetes, there is this narrative that they have caused that disease and their bad habits have caused it and they now need to fix it. through changing their diet. that's a really complicated narrative to unpick because there's a lot of things that happen to us health wise that are connected to genetics, that are connected to aging. it's not, again, one dimensional as people, make it out to be. sugar does not cause diabetes. and yet there are many people that believe that they are solely responsible for the failure of their health, so to speak. it's the headlines, isn't it? It's that kind of click baity stuff that gets absorbed into our psyche. I think what you're saying is just a lot more of self compassion and awareness that our bodies are. Very complex and and ultimately we can't control them in that restrictive way taught to think that we can. Yeah. Yeah, and Sorry, I just it just reminded me there when you were talking about you know the fact that we have children and the fact that our children like biscuits and crisps and Do we not also need to remember about the other side of food, which is the cultural, social connection side, are you genuinely going to lie on your deathbed and say, I really should have eaten less crisps? Or are you going to sit there with those beautifully held memories of, eating a bag of crisps on the beach with your children, it's context, isn't it, to what else food is doing for us in terms of, that joy and connection, which is a huge part of, being and longevity in itself. this is going to be a big question. I don't expect you to give us like a full, answer, but, considering the women that listen to this podcast are, in midlife at the moment and might be feeling lethargy, brain fog, a little bit out of sorts, what are some of The simple adjustments that we could start to make, like one or two things that we could do around the food that we choose, it could feel a little bit more ourselves. Yeah. So the first thing I would say is this is an opportunity with curiosity and compassion to do a bit of a diet audit. And to ask ourselves the question of are we eating what we think we're eating? Because we lose sight of that because it's just in amongst the mix of the busy, right? So the first step is to do a little bit of food journaling, across a few days and not get your red pen out as if you're going to mark yourself, because as we've said, some of the baggage can be that people have, done MyFitnessPal endlessly or have to give food diaries in to, to keep track of. finger pointy, judgy health care professionals. So we've got to be a little bit cautious, we've got to do it with compassion. But really just ask yourself, Ooh, what's going on here? what am I eating? Because for me to be able to make suggestions on what will help, really depends on someone being able to look at what they currently do, to then see where the tweaks need to be made. So for some women who feel chronically low in energy, A lot of the time that's because they're under fueling, so they're not eating enough carbohydrate. There's a lot of scaremongering about carbohydrates in the menopause nutrition space. That's another entirely different podcast, but I would just say that the only fuels that the body can use is either carbohydrates or fat. And often we get dragged into the approaches that are more keto. So this notion that we eat. little carbohydrate and then we get all of our energy reserves from fat and we burn fat, we eat more fat, we therefore burn more fat and we're in this kind of keto phase. In reality, incredibly difficult to remain in keto, in ketosis, day in, day out, particularly if we've got other mouths that we're trying to feed. So it's a bit of a false economy because what we end up doing. is really cutting down on our carbohydrate, but we still eat just enough to not force our body to go into full on ketosis. And therefore we're not really using any fuel efficiently and we're lacking that, that carbohydrate that our brain is running on and that our bodies need to function. So understanding carbohydrates, understanding our carbohydrate need and really looking at whether you're eating carbs and the form in which those carbohydrates come. Because often we scrimp on them at mealtimes and then we go to the biscuits. that's not going to create regulation in our blood glucose levels. and generally people who are more regulated in their blood glucose levels. who's eating, um, habits, um, sit within a normal eating range. So in other words, they start eating when they feel emergence of hunger, and they stop eating when they feel comfortably full. Those are the sorts of people that tend to have better energy levels and feel like they're thriving. The ones that feel like they're dragging themselves through the day, often the first step is to look at, energy levels. mismanagement, if you like. I can recognize that in myself. I tend to, forget lunch. And then when I'm starving, I just eat something really quickly. And then, yeah. And when we're starving, we're primitive, aren't we? So we're not then going into the kitchen with this kind of sense of, Oh, what would my future self thank me for? What would be a healthy, nourishing, choice that's going to feed my brain? And all of this kind of stuff. We're like, I need food now. and that's purely physiological, that's purely primitive, and of course we have the gremlins that then say, oh, you're a nightmare, you've got no willpower, you can't be trusted. I did an Instagram live this morning, I think I spent half of it pitching a sandwich to this woman, it was like, you need to eat, you need to fuel your brilliance. Why are we denying ourselves that, that absolute basic necessity? Okay. So absolutely, I think that's step one. Other, the next step around, cognitive function and just really feeling like we're thriving. Sometimes there is a place where for supplementation. there is a huge market of botanical supplements and various vitamin and mineral supplements and sometimes there, there may be call for those. There's certainly some weird and wonderful claims around some of these. adaptogens, so these sort of botanical ingredients, and some people would absolutely swear that they do help them to feel greater clarity of thought, for example, but we need to be a little bit careful wading into that market, spending lots of money on supplements when we haven't got the foundations of our eating right, those are the bricks, they're not, they're just going to fall down if the foundations are not there. the other nutrient that you will hear talked a lot about in this space is protein because we need to protect our muscle mass and our bone mass because that really helps us to function well in old age. We don't want to fall over and break a hip, that's going to decrease our quality of life. So our functionality, our functional fitness as we age is really key. and protein and other bone minerals are really important for that. But the problem with that piece of advice is it's being taught to women who have come from the 80s and 90s and therefore people are displacing carbohydrates so they're eating lots of protein but then because protein actually fills us up quite a lot we then don't have enough room for carbohydrate and so we just cut that out. So that's where sometimes it is helpful to get individualised advice. Because our protein needs are important, but again, we shouldn't really just start ranking our protein up if we don't first have a handle on how much protein we're actually eating. the National Diet and Nutrition Surveys tell us that we, for the most part, quite easily meet our basic protein need through diet. In menopausal women, there's definitely advantages to eating more protein, but we've still got to give that context. We can't just eat bucket loads of the stuff and forget about, the other important components of the diet. It's the same principle, we're here to talk about midlife and we've done loads of stuff around food and nutrition and things. But, let's. move now to thinking a little bit more about the other parts of, the middle bit. And, can I ask you, what your experience of it has been so far? I'm chuckling because obviously You and I have come together in a coaching capacity. So I think you, have a sense of perhaps, how, badly I've navigated some of midlife. I think it just presents real challenge around prioritization, doesn't it? How do we decide where we put our focus and what should be prioritized? take our attention and how do we get that balance because I'm hugely ambitious in the work sense, but I also have children that I am incredibly proud of and want to do well by them. And I find personally that those two things are buttheads all the time. And despite, excellent coaching from the likes of Susie Dark, I don't think I still have quite made peace with that challenge, and, how we get that balance right. I think us as a generation is really figuring this stuff out. It's quite new to be balancing careers as, as well as motherhood. and that's probably where I feel like. I trip up the most, Yeah. And I would add that I don't think I've come across a single woman who is caring for, either children or, older people, older relatives. Just trying to do something career wise that has not been. is not struggling with the tension between those two things. Yeah. and I see that all the time in the women that I work with and absolutely that sort of sandwich parenting is very much on the horizon, for me as well, which, makes me very nervous, there's not a lot of room left. So where's that going to come, what's going to give, to allow that to happen. and I suppose I feel. very lucky that when it comes back to our coping strategies and our, our habits and behaviors that when I look at my own food relationship and baggage and all of that kind of thing, there isn't, there aren't too many gremlins there. I was very fortunate to have a very normal, quote unquote, upbringing around food. I was allowed to find my own way with food and what felt right for my body. All of my clients, most of my clients, were not given that privilege. We all have a coping strategy, don't we, in midlife, and mine might not be the biscuit tin, but it sure as hell is plenty of other things that, need work and need unpicking and understanding. it's that recognition, isn't it, that we are beautifully flawed and we're trying to find what works and what's helpful, I'd just like to go back a little bit to what you said about this tension between the caregiving role that we find ourselves in within the sandwich generation and The work that you want to do. And I think what I'm interested in, is that piece of the ambition and the hopes that you have for your work. We're not just talking about the logistical dramas between the working day and fitting that around caring responsibilities, you know, or, a kid being off sick or a parent being rushed up, into hospital to, you know, juggle the work. There's actually something around, a desire. to be doing something important and meaningful and how that butts heads against the other pieces of who you are as a human. Absolutely, because I think the day to day reality of feeling purposeful in that stuff is that you also have to feel heard. And I think that's the bit I find the most challenging, that I can't, I don't feel heard as much as I want to feel heard. Because to do that requires hours and hours of either content creation or clever marketing strategies or investment in things that will help me to leverage. and that's where the tension comes from, I think. And also just the fact that we, as female business owners, we are the faces of our business and so to put your face out there on some days feels really hard. You don't have the capacity, if you like, to do it. And yet if you don't do it, you don't get heard and you can't fulfill your purpose or what to be your purpose. so there's a constant tussle, with how you manage that. And as you say, the physical logistical stuff is tricky, but it's manageable. I think it's more the emotional load that I take on that sometimes seems to weigh too heavy. Do you feel like your ambition has changed as you've got into midlife? the hopes that you have for your business and the work you do, has it changed? And if it has, how? Yes, it's changed because my background is clinically NHS. And in that instance, you're working within a really well respected organisation, you're following procedures and protocols, you are serving the great British public and you feel like you are essentially giving your expertise for free. That's essentially the model of the NHS. So it's a very different switch to then go into freelance consultancy where you're charging for your time and expertise and you're wanting to broaden the way in which you work because what I love about working for myself is that my nutrition knowledge and my, my skill shows up in lots of different ways now. It's not just purely working one to one with people clinically. But my draw, my, yeah, how I see my business is has completely evolved because I've now got more lived experience and I see potential in what I'm doing and where I want to take it. I feel I've got direction now. I didn't have direction when I was in my early thirties because I had really small children, less time, and I was very reactive to what came in my inbox. And I don't feel like that now. I feel like I have got direction. I know where I'm going and I feel like I want to just get there as quickly as possible before something trips me up. Yeah. And I think if we're really honest, I think that I just fear, some of the big challenges that are still to come in my life and how I'm going to handle those. And I know that work inevitably for chunks of time will be taking a big toll. big backseat. And, therefore I want to get as far down the line with it as I can, before that happens. That's, that's probably the deep truth of it, if I'm honest. Trying to get to a place of safety, where you feel, That desire, I think that all of us have to bulletproof everything and make sure that we're ready for it. We're ready for whatever life's got to throw at us. Yeah. And also just the commitment that you make to the life that you want to give your children. And what, financially, what commitment that brings and those sorts of things. I know I have a little card on my desk. that says it's okay if it takes time and I know that it is okay if it takes time, but it doesn't mean I don't have a desire for it to have momentum. Absolutely. Okay. So we've looked at maybe you're the messy bit of your middle. Yes. Definitely. So what might a happy middle look like for you? what does it feel like when things feel balanced and good? And what would, what are you looking forward to? what kind of. happy midlife do you want to create for yourself? I think I've learned that my happy middle comes from flexing that self compassion muscle. I know for a fact that my inner critic has at times been very judgy and very irritated with me. and that does fundamentally make me feel more drained and, lacking in the energy to continue. And when I reflect on the good days, They are the ones where I am happy with what I have achieved. I'm able to almost redefine what success looks like today. and it might not have been all of the things on the to do list, but it, you know what, it's enough. and it has facilitated me to then do all of the other things that I do. I know that there are, plenty of women that will listen to this who don't have children. For those of us that do, we have another full time job that for me starts at about, five to five and I've got to do that one with as much gusto as I've done the other job. And I think the happy middle for me is feeling that I have managed to achieve that balance and that I've still got something left to give at the end of the day. Yeah. Nice. So a lot of compassion, a sense of enoughness. Yeah, the feeling of balance as well. Yeah, I think the sense of enoughness and it's not that I genuinely don't think I'm enough. I just battle with the, but I could be more. I think that's the thing. I don't have low self worth. I think I'm a good egg. I do my best. it's not that driving myself into the ground. It's just that I'm excited for what else I have the potential for. And it's tough when you feel like your wings are clipped, Yes, I hear you. And it feels like a really beautiful metaphor, for where lots of us find ourselves There's this real sense that there's more, and I want that more, which battles with the, but look what I've already got, and yeah, enough to like, I think we can be in both of those places at the same time. Yeah. And we are made to feel guilty, aren't we, I think, with this sense of, Gratitude is a huge topic, isn't it? At the moment, we are encouraged to counteract that negative bias by having a gratitude practice and, really homing in on what matters and what we have and not constantly suffering with the grass is greener. I'm very mindful of that. and I don't ever want to feel ungrateful for what I have. And I think it leads to like grateful girl syndrome where we just have to be like, just okay with everything. We can't. Yeah. It's almost like selfish to want more. It's a toughie, isn't it? It does jar a little bit with there's something that, that sits uneasy there. I don't want people to feel like I am being a spoiled brat. Yeah. And, we get to this point where we are in many ways at the peak, we've got all of this experience and knowledge. we've still got drive. When we can muster it, we're still at that point and we're, peak kind of family as well. we're the linchpin of the family as well. I feel, it feels like a natural point where, and say, I want more and be able to say, do you know what, there's a lot more in me to give and what might that look like and where can I, what can I go and explore that? I think it's definitely a good thing. and I also think it sits along that side that, Okay. Also, I don't need to be that person. I don't need to be more if I don't want to be, the two feel incongruous, but actually I think they go together quite beautifully. yeah, I think you're right. so before we finish our beautiful conversation, Laura, if people want to find you, find out a bit more about you, where would you go? So I am on Instagram at menopause. dietitian and that's dietitian spelt with a T and you can find lots of Resources and information on my website, which is themenopausedietician. co. uk There are tools on there that, as I said, are free to download and also an opportunity to come into my Pause to Nourish community which will give you access to even more free resources. masterclasses and my weekly newsletter and just that kind of dose of compassion and realism as we navigate this messy food landscape. so it would be wonderful to have anyone along for the ride. And we'll put links on the show notes for this as well, so people can find you. Thanks for having me. Thank you.