The Power of Phytoestrogens In Peri-menopause

The more I talk to women who are struggling daily with weight gain and debilitating symptoms of peri-menopause, the more deeply I feel that it is imperative midlife women to find a trusted resource to empower themselves with nutritional knowledge and place their personal health and wellbeing as a priority in their life.

Did you know that there are foods, seeds and fruits, packed full of gentle-on-the-body phytoestrogens which help you to reduce your symptoms of peri-menopause?

That’s right.

The food you put in your mouth can drastically reduce your experience of the 34 symptoms of peri-menopause putting you back in control of how you feel daily.

Phytoestrogens are found in plants and are fibres called polyphenols that mimic estrogen in the body in a very gentle way. If you load your diet with these beneficial fibres, you get a gentle top up of the estrogen you are missing in your body in hormonal change.

Conversely, if you are in that part of what I call ‘the peri-menopausal dance’ where estrogen spikes and hot flashes take over, you can calm your body down as phytoestrogens trigger the feed-back loop that switches off estrogen production in your ovaries.

These plant based fibres that gently act like estrogen in the body are perfectly safe for women at midlife and help to balance and soften our hormonal change.

You can find a list of these foods below:

Ground Flax (keep in the refrigerator to protect omega 3's)

Sesame seeds

Chickpeas/ Garbanzo beans and chickpea miso paste

Chia seeds (again in the refrigerator because they are packed with omega 3 fatty acids)

Berries especially raspberries

Organic edamame and other fermented soy products such as tempeh as and miso.

Sunflower and pumpkin seeds

Alfalfa, soybean or mung bean sprouts

Organic tofu or soy milk (these can be hard to digest if you already experience some bloating, gassiness or adult acne and your digestion is not at 100%. Avoid until you have your digestive health supported)

Dried prunes, apricots and dates

Lentils, adzuki beans, mung beans

Maybe after reading this you would like to make yourself a bowl of Red Lentil and Lemon Soup or a serving of Beet Hummus, a Ground Flax and Blueberry Muffin or make your own Granola, to which you can add berries and raw nuts and seeds so that you can reclaim control over your peri-menopausal experience in a safe and gentle way.

The path to being a woman who finds menopause is a breeze is accessed through the food you eat each day. Plate by plate you can support your body to shift from a stressed out and sweaty peri-menopausal nightmare to daily cool, calm relaxation.

Now that we are the generation that has started the conversation about menopause, let's be the women who empower ourselves around this natural hormonal change with natural nutrition based solutions, that offer no risk to our health and wellbeing as our first line of defence.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie

It’s Fall/Autumn, leaves are turning colours and morning temperatures are beginning to cool.

Tis the season to drink pumpkin flavoured everything and lust after fabulous, knee-length leather boots.

When I had three children at home, I remember resenting September/October with a passion. It felt like going back into shackles when the school/extra-curricular/evening-Mom-taxi routine set in. I just so loved the relaxed and unstructured days of summer and never wanted to let them go.

I am now an empty nester and this year I am enjoying a more relaxed observing of the turn of the seasons. I do not have to get out of bed at 6am to drive kids to band practice and I am not on call for rides to the mall or extra curricular activities in the evening. I just get to watch the leaves change colour, wiggle into a soft roll neck sweater in the morning and lean into how much I love chai tea.

Interestingly, there are old routines and recipes that I still want to pull into my life in the Fall. Comforting foods that just ‘fit’ into Fall for me and enrich the season (spoiler: It does not come from Starbucks!) I have started making chicken bone broth on a weekly basis again so that I am ready for soup season and I a making my staple Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe that I used to lean on heavily for lunch boxes.

Chewy, dense and absolutely packed with nutrition, these cookies are not too sweet and more of a meal in a biscuit, designed to keep teens energized and satiated.

The beauty of making your own cookies is that you get to choose the nutrition you want for yourself.

I love pumpkin seeds because they are packed with protein. This slows the passage of sugar to the bloodstream. They also give me a healthy dose of zinc to support my skin and tissue health and boost immunity. This batch contains sliced almonds and goji berries but I encourage you to make this recipe your own and add nutritious nuts, seeds and berries that you love the most.

I also add blackstrap molasses for easily absorbed iron and this accounts for the dark colour of the cookie. We need adequate iron stores at midlife to support us when our periods get heavy or erratic, to boost our energy and to ensure the function of our thyroid gland. Our thyroid gland is more efficient at converting thyroid hormone T4 to active thyroid hormone T3 when our iron stores are fully stocked. Your thyroid gland is a master gland that has kept the rhythm of your menstrual cycle for decades, so it can get stressed when you move into the peri-menopausal dance. Give it some love and load iron, selenium and iodine rich foods into your diet.

The non-negotiable are the chocolate chips. Every bite of this cookie should be rich in chocolate.

After years of making these cookies weekly for my family, it is an absolute joy to make, bake and store in the freezer so that I can pull one out whenever I want the taste of Fall.

Ingredients

      11/2 cups whole wheat or spelt flour

                     1tsp baking powder

                     1 cup butter or 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup coconut oil

                     1 egg

                     1/2 cup unrefined sugar or Sucanat

                     1/4 cup blackstrap molasses

                     2 cups rolled oats

                     1 cup coconut chips or desiccated coconut

                     1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

                     1/2 cup pecans/ walnuts/ sliced almonds/ goji berries or cranberries

                     3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

Instructions

      Heat the oven to 350F/200C

      Put all the ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix thoroughly to a rubbly batter

      Drop batter onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet using a tablespoon and form into an oval

      Cook for 12 minutes until just done.

Savoury Breakfast Muffins

What if peri-menopausal/midlife weight gain and the ubiquitous midlife muffin top has nothing to do with calories and instead is a symptom of dis-regulated metabolic hormones?

What if we did not need to lose weight to make ourselves healthy but that our bodies will naturally release excess pounds from around our middle and maintain our ideal body weight WHEN we are fully healthy?

In my one-on-one coaching practice and in my 12 week program, I spend a disproportionate amount of time encouraging women aged 40+ to eat MORE; more nutrition and more nutrient dense whole foods so that their bodies can release the weight they are sick and tired of carrying.

This recipe for Savoury Breakfast Muffins is a perfect example of building dense nutrition into your day and eating MORE health promoting food so that your body can achieve the all round, mental and physical health you working towards.

Let me explain:

As we pass through midlife and the hormonal stage called peri-menopause, we are enter into a crazy hormonal dance as a result of the depletion of estrogen and progesterone from our bodies as our ovaries finally work towards getting the rest they deserve.

In a nutshell we drop out of our regular hormonal cycle we have come to know so well for decades and enter an unpredictable hormonal pattern that creates hormone based symptoms throughout our bodies.It is discombobulating.

In this hormonally turbulent stage as we lose estrogen, it is very easy for our bodies to become dominated by our stress hormone cortisol.

Cortisol increases our appetite, causes cravings for sugar and carbs and robs us of our sleep at night. Cortisol triggers our fight or flight response, sending glucose into the bloodstream, releasing insulin and causing the liver to lay fat down around our middle. The classic middle aged muffin top.

The truth is that as much as we may have cursed our menstrual cycle over the years, the presence of estrogen in our bodies is important for many areas of our health.

One of roles of estrogen is to increase our insulin sensitivity throughout the years after our puberty making every cell in our bodies more effective at handling excess sugar in the blood stream.

As estrogen depletes, so does this protection and just as a result of being peri-menopausal we slide gently towards insulin resistance, a state of pre-diabetes purely as a result of being a midlife women.

Don’t panic! We can manage this metabolic change in our bodies with the food we eat and when we eat it.

If you were ever going to take your health seriously and make changes to your habits to build a nourishing routine and lifestyle, peri-menopause would be that time.

Both of these recipes are gluten free and contain eggs to boost the protein content.

These are recipes to riff off.

Add in seeds that you love, add the vegetables that you have in your refrigerator or frozen and on hand. Use the recipe as a guide and make them your own.

…and here is my favourite way to serve these muffins in a completely satiating, blood sugar balancing breakfast. Additional protein; and a gorgeous piece of grilled salmon or left over chicken would work perfectly here, and additional healthy, satiating fats in the form of avocado. Don’t forget the hot sauce!

Sweet Potato Breakfast Muffins

Ingredients

Olive oil to prepare the muffin pan
Parchment paper
600g or sweet potatoes or 1/2 a butternut squash grated
4 spring/onions finely chopped
1-2 red chillies finely chopped
6 large free-range eggs beaten
3 tbsp cottage cheese
250g/ 11/4 cups corn meal
11/2tsp baking powder
50g/ 1/4 cup parmesan cheese finely grated
!/4 cup sunflower or pumpkin seeds
1 tbsp poppy seeds

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 375F/190C
Prepare a muffin pan by coating the wells with olive oil or lining each well with parchment paper
Put the corn meal, baking powder, parmesan cheese, sunflower seeds and poppy seeds into a large bowl and mix to combine
Add the spring onions, chillies and sweet potatoes or butternut squash and mix thoroughly
in a separate bowl add the cottage cheese and eggs and mix to combine thoroughly
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined
Place the mixture into the oiled muffin tray and bake for 30-40 minutes until cooked through and fragrant
Place on a cooling rack until the muffins reach room temperature and can be frozen

Savoury Breakfast Muffins

Ingredients

8oz Organic Chicken Breakfast Sausage
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cups of baby spinach or 1 bunch of parsley finely chopped
1 cup vegetable (Frozen sweetcorn, diced red pepper, diced Zucchini
I small apple diced
3 green/spring onions finely chopped
2 cups corn meal
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
6 tbsp organic butter melted/hemp oil/olive oil or pumpkin seed oil
1 cup buttermilk or coconut milk and 2 tbsp lemon juice
4 large eggs
1 cup sharp cheese grated

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 375F/190C
Remove the casing from the sausages and cook on a medium heat in a small frying pan with olive oil until cooked through.
Add the spinach/parsley and vegetables for the last minute to cook through
Prepare a muffin pan by coating the wells with olive oil or lining each well with parchment paper
Put the corn meal, baking powder salt and pepper and cheese into a large bowl and mix to combine
in a separate bowl whisk together the butter milk and eggs add the melted butter or oil of choice
Grate the cheese and dice the apple and finely slice the green onion and combine with the flour mix
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined
Add the sausage and vegetables and stir for a minute longer to combine to a veg rich savoury batter
Place the mixture into the oiled muffin tray filling the wells generously and bake for 30-40 minutes until cooked through and fragrant
Place on a cooling rack until the muffins reach room temperature and can be frozen