As part of our Lunch & Learn series of webinars, we were joined by Nigel Denby of Harley Street at Home.
Do you know what’s going on with your weight during perimenopause and menopause? Do you want to understand what you can do to achieve permanent weight management?
In this session we discussed what everyone needs to know and what you can do, with Nigel giving his expert advice and top tips.
Henpicked: Permanent weight management sounds great. But is it reality or myth?
Nigel Denby: It’s absolutely reality if you’re prepared to take a step back and reassess what you’re doing. Perimenopause is a really good time to do this. You might have got into some faddy eating habits, with quick-fix short-term diets. But here, we’re talking about lifestyle, what kind of woman do you want to be in your 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. This isn’t something you can do in a few weeks. That kind of dieting is unsustainable, hard work and miserable.
What I’m talking about is forging new patterns, a new routine, that has some flexibility for planned indulgence at times of celebration. It’s about moving away from talking about being ‘good’ or ‘bad’, simply having a focused plan that you can navigate during different times of your life.
Henpicked: Why do we especially need to think about this during perimenopause?
Nigel Denby: On average, women gain 10kg during perimenopause. During this phase of your life you’ll start to have a reduction in oestrogen levels. This in itself won’t make you gain weight, but your metabolic rate will slow down as you lose muscle tissue. Sometimes the symptoms you experience can change the way your body deals with calories. Understanding this is the first step in realising that the diets you followed before are not necessarily going to work well for you now. This is a chance to recalibrate and introduce some planned exercise and look at your nutritional intake.
In the past, you may have been able to lose weight by cutting whole food groups out, but you can’t afford to do that at this phase of your life. This is especially the case if you choose not to use hormone replacement therapy to control your symptoms, as you need to think about heart and bone health too. Your diet needs to be nurturing and about looking after your overall health, so your aim isn’t weight loss at any cost. It’s about looking at what long-term changes you can introduce to sustain your focus.
If you’re struggling with symptoms I’d suggest to look at getting those under control first. You can’t really start embracing change until you’ve done that.
Once you’re starting to get in control of your lifestyle this can be the best time of your life. You’ve been stuck in that diet trap and now it’s time to get out of it. You find that lifestyle plan, you do it once, you do it properly and it’s amazing.
Henpicked: Where is a good place to start?
Nigel Denby: Keep a really honest food and activity diary for three or four days. No one is perfect. But there will be habits that you’ve picked up that your diary can highlight, showing you where the opportunity for change might lie. Most people do have a good idea of what they need to do, and it can be frustrating if you feel like you’re already being healthy. But you might be eating the same size portions as your husband or teenage son, or grazing through the day then eating a lot at night, or you haven’t quite got the balance of your food groups right. Maybe you’re relying on booze in the evening to help you sleep or to relax.
Even if you exercise a lot, your body will have grown used to this and what we need to see now is change. That’s going to mean changing the quantity of what you eat, the balance, the frequency, and introducing some increases in energy output to make your body think something different is going on. We need to create some more muscle tissue, which will speed up your metabolic rate and help you start using more calories throughout the day.
Henpicked: How long will it take for us to start noticing changes?
Nigel Denby: Each woman is individual so there’s no bespoke one-size-fits-all diet. But the pathway to working out what needs to change is quite straightforward. Sometimes it’s harder to accept long-term behaviour change, so I know it can be a difficult process to start – it’s why we like short-term quick fixes. But for long-term, permanent change to take effect, it will take about 12 weeks before things start to become the norm.
And across this time you will fall off the wagon, and part of the change is recognising a slip or lapse for what it is. It’s not a lack of willpower. Usually it’s because you forgot to plan, you didn’t realise you’d be out so long and didn’t take a snack with you, that kind of thing. We so often over commit our days and realise we can’t do everything we planned, and often the first thing to go for women is anything relating to their own needs.
Support is important, especially from other women on the same path and going through the same processes. This is about holding each other’s hands and celebrating successes and acknowledging that changing behaviour is not easy. You have to be in the right mindset and be organised. By the time you get to menopause if you’ve had kids, run a house and had a successful career, you have all the skills already there, you just need to transfer them to yourself.
Henpicked: We shouldn’t focus too much on the scales, should we?
Nigel Denby: No, weight and BMI aren’t the best indicators. If you’re dong strength training to build more muscle, it might not look like things are improving if you rely on the scales. Think about how you feel, your confidence, your motivation and self belief. This is just as important.
Henpicked: Can you run us through some tips for getting our meals and snacks well balanced?
Nigel Denby: Protein is incredibly important as it keeps us feeling fuller for longer. Look at your plate and imagine it’s divided into four quarters. Each meal should be a quarter protein – so meat, fish, nuts, tofu, lentils, pulses and so on. Vary this across your week so you’re getting all the vitamins and minerals you need for balance.
We often see breakfast a bit lacking in protein. But you could add nuts or Greek yogurt to muesli, if you’re having toast have it with egg, or go for smoked salmon and cream cheese on a bagel with fruit on the side. It’s just about being a bit creative.
Then you should aim for a quarter of your plate as carbs and half as fruit, veg or salad. This will always keep your balance right. When it comes to snacking, be savvy. Look at using two food groups, so protein and carbs or carbs and veg. Things like a Babybel with cherry tomatoes, peanut butter on an oatcake, or hummus with carrot sticks are really tasty.
Henpicked: What should we be looking at in terms of exercise?
Nigel Denby: Exercise really is the key. Go for a mix of three types: some cardio (a brisk walk is fine), strength training (you don’t need a gym, you can use your body weight or small hand weights for resistance) and some restorative exercise like yoga or Pilates to nurture your muscles. You’re going to be an active person for the rest of your life so you really need to look after them now.
This will have a really positive impact on your sleep, too. If you get out and do some steps in the morning you’re immediately building up melatonin, which helps you sleep. Then go for some strength work in the day and a cool down in the evening with yoga. This will calm everything down and tell your body it’s in relaxation mode and time for sleep. None of this needs to take hours. You can do a few thousand steps in 20 minutes. Regular strength exercise can be 15 minutes and a yoga cool down is fairly short.
People often say they’re too busy to find ten minutes. My challenge here is to look at all the plates you’re spinning. Are any of them going to change the world if you drop a couple and let other people spin them? There are some things you can let go.
