What’s to Love about Canada Food Guide 2019

Posted on January 25, 2019 by Cathy Cochrane

You know when you’re expecting something and it’s late and you begin to doubt it’s ever going to happen, and then it does and it’s better than you had hoped?

That’s pretty much how I feel about the Canada Food Guide 2019 which was finally released this week. Here are my thoughts as to why you might want be just as excited.

Health Canada has been sharing food rules since 1942, to help Canadians get adequate nutrients during rationing, as well as stimulating the agricultural economy. They developed it over the years, based on what researchers (and politicians) considered the best nutrition for us as a general population.

As a recent report on Global News so aptly stated, it has always included “dairy, beef and grains with a side of vegetables”. The new guide, however, takes the focus off those particular foods, does away with the 4 food groups we all grew up with, and places the emphasis on the composition of your meals.

canada-food-guide-2019-health-canada — Health Canada – Canada Food Guide 2019

Before even reading the details, this image speaks volumes in a clear and simple way. The big picture of this Canada Food Guide 2019 plate: whole food and the importance of eating habits!

Here’s my take on the key points of Canada Food Guide 2019:

1. Eat vegetables and fruits

Half your plate’s worth!

Again, the picture says it all: eat as many colours and textures and types of produce, cooked and raw, as you can in a given day. If you take this to be your plate at every meal, it tells you to eat fruit or veg every time you eat. Yes!

The benefits:

a variety of flavour
a mix of fibres – soluble and insolube
key vitamins & minerals, such calcium, magnesium, iron and vitamins A&C
each colour comes with its own array of phytochemicals – the plant-based antioxidants that provide your cells and immune systems with the wherewithal to prevent and minimize disease

2. Eat protein foods

While we’ve all become aware, to the point of obsession, that we need to eat an adequate amount of protein, this section makes for a more inclusive approach.

In former versions, the Canada Food Guide emphasized meat and dairy as 2 core parts of healthy eating. It all but ignored people with different health concerns, cultures and values whose diets don’t necessarily, or can’t, include those foods.

While critics have worried about the elimination of beef and dairy, they are not gone entirely. You will find these foods among the vast array of proteins you can enjoy, depending on your tastes, etc.

That this category puts a focus on plant-based protein allows for a more balanced intake of that nutrient. The plate as a whole is mostly plants; animal food is there in a healthier proportion.

Other than fibre, vitamins and minerals in plant-based protein, having a variety of sources allows you to stay within the 15% your body is best suited to consume. An animal-based diet tips you over than amount. Too much protein displaces the other macronutrients from your daily intake and makes your liver and kidneys work harder than they need.

3. Eat Whole Grain Food

This one made me jump up and down with joy!

Canada Food Guide 2019 encourages the consumption of whole grains or products made from the “whole grain”, that is, it tells you to cut down on most flour-based products.

These are part of your good carbs, ladies!

While the debate continues as to whether we should be eating grains at all, this is a step in the right direction.

Fibre, vitamins, minerals, a bit of protein and good fat are what they provide nutritionally. Not to mention deliciousness and texture and feeling satisfied longer… the best kind of comfort food!

4. Make water your drink of choice

…rather than sugary alternatives, which, yes, includes fruit juice.

More than simply replenishing losses, staying properly hydrated

improves digestion and elimination
regulates blood pressure
helps clear out the garbage
supports all metabolic functions, that is, keeps you energised!

Each of the above sections of Canada Food Guide 2019 offers practical information about how to prepare or incorporate items into your lifestyle. What a pro-active way to get people taking those first baby steps!

The most exciting part about Canada Food Guide 2019: a focus on eating habits as part of your nourishment.

These sections are

Be mindful of your eating habits: the importance of your physical and emotional environment as you eat; AND listening to your body for hunger and satiety signals, as well as using all 5 senses to eat!

Cook more often: even one meal a week to start (for those who don’t yet cook) makes a difference!

Enjoy your food: includes being open to try new things and maybe even grow some of it yourself; cultural and food traditions are an integrative part of that enjoyment. Read: bring your meals back to an experience much greater than your body and the food on your plate

Eat meals with others: shared meals is a part of how you connect to each other and has an impact on appetite, healthy food choices and how well you digest.

The new guide raises a red flag around food marketing. Furthermore, the committee refused to meet with special interest groups in developing Canada Food Guide 2019. The emphasis for these new Canadian Food Rules is about what’s best for our health as individuals.

Canadians are encouraged to steer clear of processed food, read labels and make room for the way Nature offers nutrients. Little or nothing added, little or nothing taken away.

What Health Canada has proposed here feels like we’re moving back towards what we now refer to as “traditional diets”. It takes some of the focus off specific food and elevates the necessity of eating to an essential element within cultural and community health… all part of your physical health.

Not every long anticipated event can be without its small disappointments

The guide is lacking more comprehensive, up-to-date information about fats & oils, and the best choices. The good news here: action has been taken to eradicate trans fats and their production from our food.

My colleagues and I will continue this part of the discussion, teaching Canadians about the benefits of adequate fats and how to best assimilate them as part of your ideal eating pattern.

How to eat better is an on-going conversation about what is optimal foodwise for Canadians, well, for all modern people. I look forward to being a part of the, for the benefit of my family, my clients and my community.

How do you feel about the changes to the Canada Food Guide? Does it bring up questions, confusion, frustration? Are you as excited as I am about the possibilities of where this can lead us? When you share your thoughts in the comments, you open those possibilities for others.

The Magic Wand for Eating Right

Posted on May 24, 2018 by Cathy Cochrane

“I want to eat right, but I want it to happen like magic.”

OK, maybe the request isn’t spelled in such blatant terms, but the message is there. Clients arrive in my office with the apparent hope that I will have the magic wand to turn their belly fat, their fatigue, their achy joints and all their troubles into happy endings.

In a sense I do, though, like Cinderella’s fairy godmother, I’ll make her work for it. Have her gather all the necessary pieces so that I can help her turn them into what she wants.

Being the diverse mosaic of humans that we are, there’s obviously no one-size-fits-all solution to the quandary of eating right. The map for your healing journey will be different from anyone else’s.

And yet, there is a common ground to that human-ness, to the nourishment it takes to feed a vibrant woman. So, that the answer to that question of “How do I eat better?” really is as simple as the wave of a magic wand. It’s a guideline that goes like this:

Reduce any food that causes you trouble and increase those that nourish you.

Bibbity-bobbity-boo!

Very general, yes. Think of it as a forest path with several possible routes to get you to that garden of health you long for.

Explore the possible paths by listening to your body.

Eat less of anything you know you are, or to which you even suspect you are, sensitive. This could mean a full-on allergy (walnuts give you hives), an intolerance (lactose gives you cramps), or just some random item that makes you feel “wrong” (raw cabbage makes your eyes itch, grapes make you sleepy, oats turn you into a screaming banshee).

Logical or not, common or not, if you react to it in an adverse way, your body is saying “No” …at least for now.

Periodically avoid the items that are generally hard to digest or make your body work harder in other ways. These include such items as dairy, gluten, red meat, sugar, alcohol, poor quality fats, chemical additives. You don’t necessarily need to give these up permanently (ok maybe the additives and the poor fats), but give yourself a periodic break.

Whether you notice that they cause distress or not, they do add to your stress load.

Holistic nutritionist Jessica Sherman sees our capacity to deal with stress like a glass: the more you add to it, the more likely things will spill over into an inability to function or disease or irritability or weight gain or any of the myriad reactions we experience when our energy is drained under stress.

Staying away from foods that cause you stress, physical or otherwise, will allow you to keep enough room in that glass for the stuff you can’t avoid (the jerk at the office) or for when the rug gets pulled out from under you (your husband says it’s over) and you need the reserve.

Eat more nutrient dense food. Food that gives you more nutritious bang for your caloric buck.

Whole food. (Not sure what that means, or think you do? Read more here.)

Here’s a fairy godmother trick for you to ensure nutrient density. Think of it as the Magic Looking Glass through which you can consider everything you eat.

magic of eating right

Make sure every meal and every snack contains some amount of protein, fat and fibre. Bonus points if you include something green.

Here’s why:

Protein: Needed to make all the functional molecules in your body and to maintain all of your structure. It’s easier to access when consumed in small amounts with other foods through the day. Get details on how much protein you need daily and food sources here. Get the deep story on why we need protein here.

Fat: Slows your digestion to help level out blood sugar; needed for your hormone balance, efficient metabolism and to help you absorb minerals and fat-soluble vitamins. Get the skinny on fat here.

Fibre: Will help you feel satisfied (and stay that way longer); feeds the friendly flora in your gut; gives your digestive tract a good workout and grabs all the garbage for removal. Here’s the real reason you need fibre AND this one outlines the benefits of whole carbohydrates (where you find fibre).

Green (plant) food contains magnesium. Of the 500+ jobs that magnesium does in your body, it is key to your hormone balance (in men that magic mineral is zinc); it helps your body release energy from food; it gets depleted under stress and yet it helps your body recover from the effects of stress.

Ex. Apple with nut butter (pumpkin seed butter)
Eggs with sweet potato and leafy greens
Chicken & vegetables (at least one green)
Rice cakes (or other whole grain/seed cracker) & black bean dip, drizzle with olive oil (add a pinch of arugula or cilantro)
Red beans & brown rice with avocado (really yummy with steamed broccoli)

What about all the other vitamins and minerals?

I’m glad you asked.

When you choose nutrient dense food, whole food that is naturally nutrient dense, you are choosing food that already contains the vitamins and minerals needed to digest, assimilate and metabolise that food.

And here’s my little secret: when you feed your body such nourishing food on a regular basis, then, having felt the difference, your body will start to crave those very things!

Like in the fairy tales, this magic mirror reflects something more than the beauty of your meals. It is showing you a way that you can up your self-care. It shows you one of the ways that you express self-love.

How’s that for a magic wand?

Think about the last 3 meals you ate through that filter, and let us know how they fared. Any improvements may be one small step away and sharing these tweaks opens the possibilities for others.

Let all your friends know about this simple trick by clicking any (or all!) of the pretty green buttons.

The Soul of Bone Broth

Posted on May 21, 2016 by Cathy Cochrane

You can’t turn around these days without tripping over a nutrition expert extolling the virtues of bone broth.

Guilty as charged. I have been suggesting bone broth to clients with everything from IBD to arthritis to breast cancer, and to entire groups of busy, nursing mothers. Heck, it even makes a great body booster for my athletic sons.

Is bone broth truly a revolutionary superfood or just the nutrition-obsessed flavour of the month?

I’ve always known bone broth to be the ideal supplement for nourishing, well, your bones.

It’s one of Nature’s calcium supplements, balanced along with ALL the minerals and protein your bones need. By steeping all the nutrients from one set of bones into liquid, they’re easily assimilated to support yours.

Recent studies are proving that this very basic, traditional food is also loaded with

glucosamine (repairs cartilage),
chondroitin (reduces inflammation & improves joint function).
electrolytes, including a highly absorbable form of potassium (regulates heart rate, blood pressure & nerve impulses).

Bone broth has being touted as the cure for leaky gut and dysbiosis. It calms inflammation and detoxifies your digestive tract. It nourishes you when you’re pregnant; it rejuvenates you when you’re ill.

My goodness, bone broth really is a super food!

Now, you might know me enough to realize that my trust in bone broth goes much deeper than those wonderful physical benefits.

Broth is at the basis of some pretty ancient traditions: show me a Jewish grandmother who doesn’t make chicken soup. What about congee, the Chinese equivalent? Soups cross every culture – phó, dal, wonton, Korean hot pot, Mexican avocado soup, minestrone,…

This isn’t coincidence. These foods developed from very basic human practices: ancient traditions that use every last piece of the animal they killed. Not the “yucky” parts we modern Westerners tend to throw away, bones and cartilage and fat and organs are the gold!

Think about it: your structure and your organs are a core part of you, the most essential, so it stands to reason that they should be storehouses for your most essential nutrients.

Maybe it was the fat scare in the late 20th century that turned us off these good bits. Maybe it was growing awareness of environmental toxicity that compelled us to chuck the skin and the liver. Then, we became overly concerned with building muscle, which somehow translated to a need to eat more muscle, aka lean meat.

Over the last few decades, our focus shifted from enjoying the whole animal, to only wanting boneless breasts and tenderloin.

The return to whole food seems radical, but it’s just a natural return of the pendulum after so many years feeding ourselves refined, partial foods and non-foods. Some items obviously need peeling or gentle cooking, but the goal is to eat food as closely to how it grows in Nature. All of it – the seeds, the pith, the leaves, the roots – not just the starch and the sugars.

Whole food is not just about plants, either. Eating whole food also means eating an entire animal. Ok, you might not eat an entire cow at one meal, but a family of 4 or 6 through a year…sure!

Eating the whole animal means getting what you can out of the gristle, the gizzards and the bone, not just the “meat”.

It’s not just the what of bone broth, but the how.

We city-dwellers also like the convenience of cooking lean, boneless meat. Nothing to trim or clean; just pop it on the grill or in the pan and voila! healthy fast food at home. We live fast, we eat fast, we want our meals to be ready fast. I can’t tell you how many women in my office tell me they don’t have time to make healthy meals.

At the risk of sounding like my mother, Rome wasn’t built in a day. To have anything of quality – a solid house, a well-made dress or a healthy body – is not something that appears fully-formed overnight. Quality takes time and effort and persistence.

Your body regenerates completely every 7 years. Which means that it could take that amount of time to shift your health fully. There is no magic bullet – no herb, no superfood, no drug – that will cure you tomorrow.

You’re in the driver’s seat of your own healing with the choices you make, the food you eat, the thoughts you think, the feelings you express and words you speak. All that you receive into your body and that you emit from your being form the dynamic creation of your health. It’s a wave, a pulse, an ever-shifting breath. It is eternal.

Health takes time. Wait…scratch that…it’s timeless.

When you feed your body with such “slow” food as bone broth, you are infusing the water, not only with nutrients, you are accessing the health and energy of the animal, of the plants he ate, and of the plants you’ve added to the pot.

Having a crock-pot on the go for a day or two harks back to the kettle on the fire, the hearth of the family home, the core of the community. It’s the women around the fire-pit, tending, caring, nurturing. You’re heating the house and nourishing your family with nothing less than basic nutrition. Boiled down to its essence, you’re feeding your family with love.

Nothing fancy or difficult about it, either. Same method your grandmother used: bones and veggies covered in water, with the addition of some vinegar to draw out the minerals and break down the protein. Let it simmer ever so gently for a good long time (3-4 hours for fish, 24 for poultry or up to 48 for beef). Want a more specific recipe? Try this one from the inimitable Sara Bradford.

If truly time is of concern to you, why not engage some of that community spirit to your benefit? Get a couple of friends to start bone broth sharing: everyone collects their organic bones and veggie scraps in the freezer, then each month, one of you tends the fire. You can even make a party of everyone coming by with their jars for their share of the wealth.

Perhaps my ideas are bit too far out in left field for you. Then, look at it this way: taking the time to make your own bone broth is a way of slowing down, of taking a breath in the middle of your go-getter life.

See the effort of bone broth as an act of self-care, an act of self-love, to supply yourself and your family with the most exquisite nourishment you can offer.

There are countless recipes out there for how to make and use bone broth – what’s your favourite? When you share in the comments, you open possibilities for others.

Have a friend looking to improve her health and digestion? Send her this post by using any (or all!) of the pretty green buttons.

What’s for Breakfast?

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Cathy Cochrane

Readers have been asking: “What’s the best way to start the day nutritionally?”
I’ve been having many conversations about breakfast with clients.
It’s time I wrote about the most important meal of the day.

It really is. Here’s why.

The way you start your day sets the stage for the rest of it.

Think about it:

How does your energy improve when you go for a run first thing?
How does your focus shift when you wake up with a few sun salutations?
How are your moods when you’ve meditated in the morning?

What happens on the days when you don’t feel like it, when you don’t have time?

What you eat at that time of day makes a difference as well.

Consider the client who came to see me about energy levels and about getting enough food to help her sustain a rigorous physical routine – she runs, does Pilates and martial arts. One of the first things she said to me was that breakfast is her favourite meal. She LOVES a full breakfast (eggs, sausage, toast or potatoes). She proceeded to tell me that she works out, then has a green drink “because it’s healthier”. I don’t know how it’s healthier if she can’t focus on work by 11, and she’s ready to eat her agenda by 3.

We have a tendency – because of time, health, lack of a.m. hunger – to skimp when it comes to breakfast. Sure a coffee and a bowl of cereal will get you out the door and through traffic to work. Once you get there, the small burst of energy will be done (and your blood sugar will drop) so you’ll need the next cup of coffee and/or muffin to keep you going.

Then, for the sake of your health – or let’s be honest, your waistline – you have “just a soup or a salad” for lunch, maybe with a bit of tuna or turkey. Come 3:00, you got it, the blood sugar takes another dive (naptime anyone?).

Let alone the meltdown you have when that thing you’ve been working on for weeks hits a major roadblock or your computer dies in the middle of a launch.

Then you start grazing the minute you walk in the door (I used to start with the lunchbox leftovers) and keep going all the way through supper prep, sometimes not stopping until you hit the sack. Feeling like shit and resolved to “eat less” tomorrow.

Yes, it has to do with healthwise choices (which I’ll get to shortly), but it also has to do with the mindset that goes into the planning and preparation of a decent breakfast. I make it pretty clear around here that nourishment involves much more than nutrition.

There’s more to your breakfast than a collection of nutrients.

For one thing, have you ever noticed that breakfast food tends to be pretty beige – cereal, toast, etc. The green drink craze has at least introduced a level of vibrancy to the morning.

Nourishing your body with a variety of colours awakens you at a different level. As I tell 5-year-olds, when you eat more colours your cells will be as happy as when you see a rainbow. To put it in more adult language, the colour of the food you eat will resonate with your chakras (the body’s energetic “rainbow” and emotional centres).

And that’s just one sort of sensual enjoyment you can get out of a meal. We tend to be one-hit wonders in terms of morning flavour as well: sweet. It’s quite stimulating to experience a bit of salty, a burst of sour, a hint of bitter, maybe even a touch of spice. When was the last time you took a bite of your breakfast and thought, “Delicious!”?

Taking the time to prepare and eat an adequate meal in the morning sends the message to your entire being that you’re worth the effort. Breakfast is an act of self-love.

And I’ll bet if you’ve taken the 15-20 minutes to cook a beautiful breakfast, you’ll want to sit down and enjoy it fully.

When you provide your body with the food it needs to efficiently get through the morning, you’ve set yourself up for success.

I had recently recognized that my own morning choice – usually the unconscious bowl of cereal (granted organic, gluten-free and bulked up with seeds and dried fruit) – wasn’t cutting it when it came to getting me through the day. I often ate lunch at 10, then needed a 2^nd one at 2. I knew I had to make a change.

Synchronicity brought my attention to an online breakfast challenge (Laura Hames Franklin’s Superhuman Breakfast). I’ll admit, it took a few days of resistance to get me through the initial commitment, but the difference it made to my day was instantly remarkable.

Since making the commitment to eat well in the morning, I can sit down and work at my desk without visions of sugary snacks distracting my writing. I can be present for several clients or teach a whole class (often talking about food) without my stomach rumbling from any lack.

Without the requisite blood sugar drop that comes with the standard muffin or green smoothie, your moods stay on an even keel. You can now cope with whatever the day brings with grace.

Imagine: no embarrassing rumbling, no slump, no need for a cookie (or 3) mid-afternoon, a good night’s sleep and enough energy to get up in the morning.

Sure, I’ve adapted what I learned to suit me more fully, but the basics have been established in my mind as the way to go.

The recipe:

A full, colourful, warm, delicious meal.

In nitty-gritty terms, you want to make sure that your morning meal makes up 25% of your daily calorie intake. Include protein, complex carbohydrates and a fermented food for ease of digestion.

If you’re trying to cut down on animal protein, this is the meal to eat it!

(Enter your email in the blue & orange box below to receive more details, the reason each part is so important and a handy PDF to pin to your fridge.)

Play with your food.

OK, you know I don’t mean finger-painting in your porridge.

I mean play around with different foods, new ways of preparing old favourites. What happens in your day if you have an egg along with your green drink? What happens if you have a sweet potato instead of toast? How would you feel after eating another helping of last night’s casserole or a bowl of the lentil soup you just warmed up for your kid’s thermos?

My friend Sue Ann runs an online community called Chocolate for Breakfast. Whether you literally eat chocolate for breakfast or not (she does!), it engenders the idea that all of our meals need to be infused with pleasure.

What works for YOU?

You should have seen the look of relief on my client’s face when I gave her “permission” to eat a full breakfast again.

Bon Appétit!

Now I’ve got a challenge for you:

In the comments, share your fave breakfast & whether it works for you. THEN, spend a few days playing around with different options and let us know what you’ve discovered. When you share your thoughts, you open the possibilities for others.

Give your friends the chance to improve their day too: share this post by clicking any (or all!) of these buttons.

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To help you get going, I’ve made a PDF to post on your fridge: the basic recipe (and why each element is important) + suggestions and room for you to add a few ideas of your own.

Navigating the Perils of Perimenopause

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Cathy Cochrane

Perimenopause is a process, not a disease.

Let me say that again: Perimenopause is a natural process, a stage in the journey of a woman’s life. It is NOT a disease state that requires medical intervention.

Like puberty.
Like pregnancy.
Like labour & delivery.

In my practice, it shows up as

the 40-year-old who can’t get pregnant;
the woman who’s tried everything to lose the 20 lbs that showed up overnight and refuse to leave;
the woman who can’t sleep at night, yet can hardly keep her eyes open all day;
the confidant woman paralysed with anxiety;
the woman who wants a new job and can’t stand the site of her husband…let alone have sex with him;
the woman who walks into a room and…wait a sec, what was I saying?

She’s anywhere between 35 and 50, yet she feels like you may as well just buy her a flowered hat and sign her up for shuffleboard.

“Nobody talks about this,” my girlfriend complained the other day. And yet, we’re all (not so) silently suffering through its effects.

Is this all you have to look forward to?

Not at all.

Perimenopause is a transition. Depending on your attitude and willingness to work with the waves, it can be navigated smoothly, albeit not always gracefully.

As a holistic nutrition student, I learned that menopause is “simply” puberty in reverse.

Puberty:

Ovaries produce estrogen (boobs, pubic hair, curves + uterus develops + bleeding starts)
Progesterone kicks in (ovulation + body ready to maintain a pregnancy)

Perimenopause (= around menopause):

Progesterone production declines (ovulation stops)
Estrogen dwindles (stop bleeding = menopause after 1 year without a period)

But we aren’t simple creatures, as the men in our lives like to remind us: we’re complicated. (I prefer the word complex.)

First of all, puberty got rolling a good 3 years before you actually got your period and continued to fine-tune for a few years after. (Remember all those years of feeling more like a moody alien than a normal teenager?) The transition out of child-bearing mode takes its time as well, with just as many mood swings. About 10 years, and you might even start feeling the symptoms of hormonal shifts in your 30s.

The complexity comes from the fact that these processes involve much more than just your 2 female hormones.

All the glands of the endocrine system work in concert. (Skip the green box if you’re already familiar with this system.)

The Endocrine System – Click on the image for easier reading

If other aspects of your endocrine system’s out of whack, your sex hormones won’t be able to do their job properly. (Which impacts periods & pregnancy as well as perimenopause.)

When your sex hormone production begins to wane in your 40s, the other hormones change their tune to create a new harmony. Generally, that interplay happens most dramatically with the thyroid and adrenals. If those two musicians aren’t feeling their best: the perils of perimenopause.

The key players in this crazy dance:

Cortisol (from the adrenals) gets into action to keep you safe and able to cope during occasional times of strife. It keeps you alert to potential danger and ready to make a hasty retreat if necessary.

Unfortunately, we’ve set up our lifestyles in such a way as to keep that state of emergency going constantly. (To read more about this concept, click here.)

When stress gets the best of you, or you can’t get out of bed in the morning, that’s cortisol out of whack.

On the other hand, you know that elated mood you’re in about a week after your period, like someone lifted a veil? You know the peaceful, blissful state, like you’ve never looked or felt better than in your 2^nd trimester of pregnancy? That’s progesterone at work.

Progesterone calms the brain as part of its job to keep you zen & happy while pregnant.

Given the way that cortisol can dominate progesterone (see #3 in the green box), it’s not hard to see why so many women of this age suffer from anxiety.

Estrogen is like the Enjoli of the body. You remember the ad?

“I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, ever let you forget you’re a man, ‘cause I’m a wo-o-oman.”

Ah yes, the epitome of the 70s women’s movement – elbowing in to take our place in the boardroom without giving up power in the bedroom, all while keeping up the housework.

The main peril of this life stage is estrogen dominance, the state in which estrogen is too high relative to progesterone.

It happens because of progesterone decline, progesterone resistance (see the green box), or because diet & lifestyle increase your exposure to xeno-estrogens & estrogen mimics from chemicals.

In terms of attitudes and ideals, it’s easy to see how this state has energetically become so prominent these days. Modern women focus most of the our energies into being sexy, successful, multi-tasking CEOs and push aside the instinct to make babies until much later, if at all.

Part of estrogen’s job is to enhance our female wiles to snag a mate, then give us the wherewithal to raise/maintain/hold together a family. One part of this particular super-power means that estrogen (along with her sister progesterone) makes us more, umm, let’s call it open to compromise.

I heard it best described in a conversation between Marc David and Dr. Sara Gottfried (during the Psychology of Eating Conference in July). One of them said something like, we spend childhood just being ourselves, go through the 1^st change to become accommodating for about 35 years and then go through the 2^nd change to be our (true) selves again.

Estrogen dominance also disrupts thyroid function (through iodine displacement as described in the green box).

Thyroxin modulates metabolism, that is, your energy levels and your ability to lose weight. The thyroid gland sits in your throat, the middle of the 5^th chakra, the emotional centre of expression and judgment. Your Voice.

It’s interesting to note that the hormone, which defines the first half of womanhood, also keeps the ability to speak your truth in check.

One thing for sure, once you get to the end of the fertile leg of the journey, once the estrogen levels off to a minimum, you no longer give a shit what others think. I see women in perimenopause all around me compelled to say what they have to say, do what they have to do, wear what they want to wear. It’s no wonder job and husband dissatisfaction are high on the perimenopausal complaint list.

(This by no means insinuates you have to change them – unless you do – but it means you need to reassess priorities and relationships. You may need to learn a few new dance steps with your sweetie, your colleagues, even your girlfriends.)

I could go on about all of this. In fact, as I wrote this, I realized that I could develop each sentence into a paragraph, each paragraph into a chapter…hmm, now there’s an idea… For now, I’ll keep it “simple”.

Is there a “simple” way to address the complexity?

You bet: reduce estrogen dominance.

HERE ARE 3 WAYS TO START:

1. Reduce exposure to xeno-estrogens.

Opt for household cleaners with natural ingredients (never anything chlorine based).
Pull out your grandmother’s old cleaning tricks.

2. Clear out/displace the excess.

Eat 7-10 servings of vegetables each day. Vary the types and colours; always include leafy greens, sea vegetables and (cooked) cruciferous.
Eat legumes (pulses) at least 3 times a week.
Eat good quality protein and fats (building blocks for all your hormones) at each meal.

Make it simple: vegetarian chili with sliced avocado

3. Reduce mental-emotional stress

Hang out with your girlfriends
Hang out in Nature (sunshine!).
Move in a way that you love, be it Zumba or running, surfing or dancing,…

Even simpler: Take a walk in the park with your BFF.

(For more detailed information about reducing estrogen dominance, click here.)

As I said, this is really just the tip of the iceberg, but let’s get this conversation happening. I’d love to hear about your experiences. Let’s support each other through this transition, to land softly grounded on the other side.

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