Fresh Feeling Lifestyle Health - Understand your health

Perimenopausal? Get back in control.

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 12:28:50 GMT

Are your hormones wreaking havoc? Take control of your menopause.

Are you perimenopausal (or think you may be starting to be) or now menopausal? Does it all feel a little out of your control?

The effect on longevity

This process happens to all women and represents a huge transition in your life, often at a point when life is most hectic. Hormones, notably oestrogen, play a crucial role in your long term health.

Did you know that once you lose your oestrogen supplies (menopause) you are at higher risk of:

heart disease and stroke,
thinning of the bones (osteoporosis),
dementia (particularly Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia), as well as
obesity, type 2 diabetes and colon cancer.

This can be concerning to many.

So get back in control of hormones to lower the risk

However, there is no need to feel overwhelmed as this is the perfect time to seek support to take control and live a healthier, happier, fulfilled life, long beyond your menopause. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) is crucial to replace the missing oestrogen and usually given as something called Body Identical HRT. This type of HRT is the most natural and safest option, providing symptom control as well as protecting your future health.

But you need to make other lifestyle changes too

Lifestyle measures are also essential to improve your longevity and reduce future health risks from long term disease. The inevitable weight gain, usually around the midline, indicates metabolic issues arising, which without change, increases your future risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer.

Understandably, due to the impact of the peri/menopausal symptoms you experience, your diet may be less than ideal. You may be drinking a bit too much alcohol, not doing any exercise and have poor sleep. Whilst replacing your oestrogen supplies is so important (to help you take control of the symptoms and improve your health), changes in your lifestyle will be needed to give you the ultimate longevity, get your body back to the shape you want, and complete the full health picture.

It doesn’t need to be overwhelming

This can all feel very overwhelming, and this stage in life can be particularly challenging, especially with work and if you have children/other commitments.

At Fresh Feeling we can support you with the lifestyle changes that you’ll need to make alongside your HRT. You get evidence based modern science on what you should be eating (and when), maximising your sleep, improving your energy and looking at managing your stress: crafting a life which puts you back in control and helps shift that midline back to where it was before.

You can start with a free lifestyle health assessment even if you’re not sure yet whether you want to take any other testing to determine gut health or your personalised responses to food, etc.

Free Guide: Simple shifts to help blood sugar levels

tom@renurtured.com (Tom Skew) — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 11:38:16 GMT

Some small shifts are easy and can make a difference

To help those who want to improve their health but aren't in the position to commit to a support plan yet, we've produced a free guide.

Our free guide explains:

Why blood sugar levels matter, in particular the danger of regular blood sugar spikes

Simple shifts you can make which can help to reduce blood sugar levels, lowering your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes

Will your new diet have you GAINING weight?

tom@renurtured.com (Tom Skew) — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 11:53:52 GMT

New year, new healthy you? We’re days into 2023 and two January topics are trending: #DryJanuary and #NewYear (health) resolutions.

Our key message is a recommendation not to start an unsustainable diet in January, or any month of the year.

Instead, learn to eat, sleep & live your way to better health whilst losing weight at the same time. Discover what works for your body: this will be different to Emily’s, mine, your best friend, and your cat. Rather than assuming a generic strategy will work.

Dieting may make you gain weight!

You might have finished Christmas celebrations and started the New Year having put on some extra weight. Or maybe you’re just looking to get in better shape, and feel the new year is a good time for change.

In some ways it could be the worst time to start a diet. Many diets are unsustainable beyond a few months. Post the initial period of weight loss, you plateau, you give up. Whether you give up or not, you are likely to put the weight back on and often some more.

Additionally, significant studies such as DIETFITS clearly demonstrate that we all have a different response to generic diets such as low-fat or low-carbohydrate - don’t simply think that one will work for you because it did for your neighbour or best friend. Though, we would offer that one thing is universally good: a high fibre low sugar diet; we’ll cover what this practically means in a separate post.

Why would I put the weight back on?

Emily: Unfortunately, even as a GP, I used to subscribe to the idea of calories in, calories out. And that people may be overweight because they ate too much and they weren’t active enough. Many robust studies have shown that this simply isn’t true. We are not engines with fuel where you can just apply regular thermodynamics: our bodies have the ability to regulate energy expenditure (without us consciously controlling it) dependent on our body’s state.

Limiting this post to just one aspect of this, and simplifying for brevity:

If your new diet plan relies on restricting calories each day, over a number of months, then unfortunately your body is no fool. If you do something consistently such as underfeed yourself, your body will also adjust so it can achieve homeostasis.

What is homeostasis and why do I care?

This is steady state in any system - to enable the process to keep continuing, without end.

In your body, this will need to be reached, for survival purposes.

So, with consistently reduced energy going in and fat already lost, your body will throttle down your energy expenditure , to help you stop losing more fat stores and keep to your body’s set weight (given the energy input is now lower). You’ll be less active and more likely to feel tired, cold, hungry and less happy.

At the same time, hormones which drive hunger will start to ratchet up - soon you will be driven to eat more to get back the fat stores lost, and really you can’t be blamed. When driven by hormones, that is something you can’t put up a fight against: it’s like me asking you not to wake up tomorrow, just wake up the following day. Ok? You can do that right?

So, the result is that after the plateau, your weight starts to increase again to recover lost fat stores. Again, we’ve oversimplified this for the purposes of brevity.

Other hidden evils

Additionally, with any exclusion type diets - getting you to cut out food groups or certain foods - you may actually be reducing your intake of the range of nutrients you need, which will not be good for your health.

Eating a less wide range of real foods tends to correlate with decreased diversity of bacteria in your gut, which as a consequence, is detrimental to your overall health and longevity (they’re that important!), and may see you more affected by illnesses that go round.

We’re in agreement with the Association for Nutrition in that we don’t recommend following any diets or advice which say to avoid certain foods or food groups (allergies excluded).

Shift to a better lifestyle

Instead, change your lifestyle and your diet long term: adopt a new lifestyle which you can gradually get to and then sustain. Done at a gradual speed you won’t feel restricted, and you will be able to sustain it. And, you don’t need to cut out food groups or do anything extreme.

Find out your real motivation and goal

When we coach people they get to understand their real motivation for change. Understanding this is key. Normally, in exploring their goal properly, they uncover the real change they’re looking to make, not always what they first thought. This enables success.

Is it really just losing weight, or is there actually a future state you want to achieve which will have you feeling different about yourself and life? I’d estimate that for many, weight loss is a surface part of the real goal.

Better performance and success for you

Improving your health means you perform better at work, as a parent, are happier, better rested and more likely to succeed and achieve your set goals and values, whatever they are. You’ll feel more energetic and able to take on the challenges of life.

Because it isn't related to a temporary diet or change, you can then stay a great shape and feel better indefinitely.

But what about the weight loss too?

The good news is that this is compatible with shifting to a better lifestyle - you can achieve both at the same time.

There’s a number of things which work in harmony versus opposition with each other which will help you succeed or fail. As an example, food timing, sleep and diet composition can work either well together, or undermine success by being in conflict.

The key is taking a whole picture approach rather than just doing one thing and expecting it to deliver both short term and long term weight loss and life improvement.

Generally, the current science is supporting techniques such as intermittent fasting and time restricted eating, however, like we say, if you don’t consider other aspects such as sleep, stress and what you eat, then success can be elusive.

Make the resolution: no short term weight loss diet!

So, make it your resolution not to start a short term fad diet.

Rather than reaching for some kind of caloric restriction diet or something which eliminates food groups, change your life instead and win permanently. If you need support doing this, Fresh Feeling are here to help.

You don't need to punish yourself and feel restricted in order to win!

A HEALTHY Liver's for life, not just for dry January

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 18:25:16 GMT

New year, new healthy you? We’re just days into 2023 and already two topics are trending: #DryJanuary and #NewYear (health) resolutions.

At Fresh Feeling, we’ll always give you the opportunity to take stock, but rather than short-term, temporary recovery, we’d rather enable you to enjoy the benefit of a long-term lifestyle change instead. Done gradually, this won’t feel restrictive, yet will have you reaping the benefits. Plus, a glass of red wine here and there can actually be of benefit!

So, why is my liver important?

We feel the clue to the extent of the liver’s awesomeness is in the name: ‘liver’...’live’...’LIFE’.

Life itself depends on crucial energy conversion processes which the liver supports. You trouble the liver and you start to hamper those energy conversion processes and degrade the ability for your entire body to remain healthy long-term, leading to problems with metabolic health including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity.

Never too late to de-liver

The liver is an amazing organ, so much so that it can regenerate itself significantly, so it’s not too late to make changes. Imagine if your arm got half cut off and could regrow itself: impressive.

Why sugar is the enemy of your liver

Think alcohol is the biggest day to day threat to your liver? Think again. While binge drinking is a big protagonist for liver damage, in fact sucrose, i.e. normal sugar, is a stealth threat in our diets. It’s woven into so many everyday food products, disguised by more than 260 different names so as to make its presence less clear.

Sugar: the simple science

• Normal sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose.

• Glucose is useful energy for your organs and muscles.

• Fructose is not – it just goes straight to your liver which then has to deal with it.

Liver fat – the unseen threat

If your liver receives fructose in small amounts, and is in good condition, it can deal with this adequately. However, a rapid frequent surge of fructose heading to the liver, or fructose coming to a liver in less than great shape, and you see new liver fat being produced. You can’t see it on the scales yet it drives a lot of long term disease. The great thing is that this is preventable!

All you need is love…for your liver

Learning how to eat and live healthily is all you need to do. With some tweaks to your lifestyle it’s likely you’ll have drastically reduced your likelihood of damage and you’ll also feel a new sense of energy and potentially be a healthier shape.

The way Fresh Feeling approaches this is by helping you understand what are positive changes for you, your diet and lifestyle. Then, we support you in making changes which are specific to you.

We can help you to understand your individual response to food, or your current liver and gut health. What you do is up to you; we’re here to help support you in your situation.