Midlife Wellness: Transform Your Health Through Nutrition with Gretchen Spetz

In this episode of the 'Midlife with Courage'™ podcast, Kim welcomes functional nutrition-based dietician Gretchen Spetz. 

They discuss practical strategies for women in midlife to balance nutrition, manage blood sugar levels, and embrace a better relationship with food. 

Gretchen shares her journey, including overcoming hypothyroidism, and provides actionable advice on maintaining fiber and protein-forward diets, combatting emotional eating, and fostering self-compassion. 

Tune in for insights that will inspire and empower your wellness journey post-40.


00:39 Welcome to Midlife with Courage Podcast
01:01 Meet Gretchen Spetz: Functional Nutrition-Based Dietician
01:27 Gretchen's Journey to Becoming a Dietician
03:31 Starting The Functional Kitchen
04:51 The Importance of Nutrition and Community
06:37 Challenges of Midlife Nutrition
07:37 Understanding Functional Nutrition
09:31 Addressing Disordered Eating in Midlife
13:20 Self-Compassion and Mindful Eating
19:50 Gretchen's Personal Experience with Hashimoto's
23:07 Struggles with Hypothyroidism
23:31 Finding the Right Treatment
23:51 Dietary Changes for Better Health
24:49 Importance of Fiber and Protein
26:00 Managing Sugar Cravings
26:51 Protein and Fiber Recommendations
28:32 Role of Fiber in Gut Health
31:12 Balancing Blood Sugar
36:19 Practical Dietary Tips
38:53 Gretchen's Services and Final Thoughts

To get the freebies that Gretchen mentioned and learn more about her services, and connect with her on social media, go to her WEBSITE. 

Get your free ebook called Daily Habits for Hormonal Harmony by going to my website. This free guide will help you balance your hormones through some easy daily activities. 

Just add your email to the popup and your guide will be on its way to your inbox.

From morning until bedtime, you can help yourself feel better! 

Reserve your spot today to get in on the very first Courage & Confidence Hour!

Transcript

0:33

when the world feels unsteady, there is nothing like something crunchy to truly ground us. So what can we do instead? You know, grounding, we can go lay on the floor with a soft blankie. We can pet our dog. That is huge. Mm-hmm. We want a dopamine really? So we wanna light some fire on our butt. How about some breath work or how about go for a walk around the block? So if we have kind of a little cheat sheets. Of things that we typically need, then we can be like, oh, I'm gonna go do that. And I always tell people, don't tell yourself you can't have food. Say, I'm gonna do this first, and then if I still want the food, I'm gonna come back for it. You are listening to the Midlife with Courage podcast. This is where women in midlife come for inspiration, motivation, and sometimes a little education to help them flourish. After 40, don't forget to hit that follow or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. Now, let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome back to Midlife With Courage. I am Kim Benoy, your host. I'm so happy to have you joining us here today. I also am very happy to have my guest here today. Her name is Gretchen Spetz. She is a functional nutrition-based dietician, and we're gonna talk about that. But first, welcome to the podcast, Gretchen. Kim, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, I love your energy. This is gonna be a great conversation. So tell us a little bit about you. Where in the world are you and what you're doing? Sure thing. So as you, as you said earlier, I am a registered dietician and I call my approach a functional nutrition informed approach. I'm sure we'll get there in a minute. I'm based in Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up here swore I would never come back to the great state of Ohio, but I has a way of, of getting you to come back. So I live here with my husband and our two girls. And so before we get into your story, I'm gonna ask you my question I ask everyone, tell us about a time in your life when you felt courageous or you showed courage. I will say a time in my life when I felt courageous and I'll actually. I'll give two examples. Sure. If that is okay. When I was young, actually younger, I had what I affectionately call my quarter life crisis, and that's what led me to become a dietician. I was working for the then governor of Ohio. I had an undergrad in English and history. And I came home from work one day and I realized I hated what I was doing and I wanted to stop working with so much paper and start working with real people. So I just took it upon myself. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna research, what else can I do? I didn't even know that the career of being a dietician even existed. And I narrowed it down to two things. One day after work. It was probably too late at night to be up, but it was between. A chef and I'm not really a night person, so that didn't seem like a great fit. I don't really like working under pressure and being in the weeds as they say. Sure. Or a dietician. And I started my undergrad as as many do in pre-med and I was like, oh, this is what I actually wanted to do when I decided to be pre-med. And so I started calling up schools and the, the next year with great support from the program director, I ended up at Case Western Reserve university here in Cleveland, getting my master's in actually public health nutrition and completing the internship program. So, really took the bull by the horns and was like, if I don't like it, I'm gonna change it. And I did that. Mm-hmm. And another time in my life was actually starting my private practice the functional kitchen. I worked for both the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, which is the other hospital system here in the Cleveland area. And when I came back from maternity leave, after having my second baby, I found out that my appointment times had been shortened to 20 minute. And if you've ever spent time with a dietician, you know, it's, I call it, it's kinda like food therapy. Mm-hmm. So we need way more time than 20 minutes, not only to talk about things, but also to get you in the door just in the first place. So I said, you know what? I can do this better. So I started my practice in January of 2018. I had a. 2-year-old and a not yet 1-year-old. So super little kids. And by May I had actually recouped my income from the position, part-time position. I was working at the hospital and was able to leave my hospital job and continue forth with the functional kitchen and have been in practice ever since. Nice. I love that. Yeah, it 20 minute appointments. I, I was a nurse for 27 years and one of my last jobs was supervising in a clinic, and the appointment times just kept getting shorter and shorter and shorter and like, this is ridiculous. We aren't helping anyone, you know, but Right, right. We're just billing for time. It's all about getting them in. The money. Yeah, unfortunately. But so what was it about nutrition that you were attracted to or being a dietician? I love food and I'm not afraid to say it. I love eating. Eating is fun and I think there's also, I'm sure we'll talk about self-compassion and shame and blame, and there's a lot of shame around. Yeah. Just admitting I love eating. It's fun. Yeah. So I really like, like the experimenting. This is what led me to, to going down the nutrition pathway in the first place. I loved cooking. I loved making new recipes. Experimenting with different things. Trying to make things a little healthier was a little hobby of mine. And I just think food is really fun and it's so nourishing. I always say to people, you know, food is three things. It's fuel. It's information, so obviously we get our fuel. Lemme back up. We get our fuel from our macronutrients. We get information from our micronutrients, our micronutrients, so our vitamins, minerals, our phytonutrients are really in charge of how our cells and bodies work. And then it's community. It's one of the major ways that we as humans relate to each other and the fact that we're a species that. Can have a relationship with food is really something special. And I think something to be celebrated. Oh, for sure. I mean, most species eat to survive. That's it. And with the community around food, like some of my best memories are around food, like going to my grandparents and having Sunday dinner and, you know, making cookies with, you know, family members or whatever. So yeah, I totally get that. That's kind of cool. Yeah, we should celebrate it and figure out a way for food to align with our lives and not just try and eat in a way that we are quote unquote supposed to. So I know tends to be not sustainable. Right. Right. And probably all the women that are listening are in their midlife stage, you know, 35 and over and yeah, all the changes that happen, which we can talk about here in a little bit, but. Food becomes more of an issue, I think, because we think, oh, I'm getting this fat around my belly. I need to do something different with my diet. Or, you know, it, it's, it's a big deal. It is. It is. And you know, we see actually in midlife, in perimenopause and post menopause, we see rates of disordered eating increase because women go to the doctor and they're just told, oh, you're probably not telling me the truth about your food. You really just need to eat less than exercise more. And there's nothing more frustrating than being a perimenopausal, woman who can't. Sleep, who is, you know, white knuckling every meal and busting her butt, you know, pounding the pavement to be told that when it's way more complicated and way more nuanced than that. Yeah, for sure. We mentioned that you're a functional nutrition based. Is that how you started out or did you kind of go to that after a while? Yeah. So no, I did not start out there. I actually had zero training in functional nutrition in my master's degree. Now I'm excited to say that more and more including case Western Reserve University, where I went, have functional nutrition courses. Functional nutrition is, if you're familiar with functional medicine, it's really about getting at the root causes of, of chronic issues continuing chronic diseases or chronic. Symptoms that somebody has. And I drill down functional nutrition, thinking about the diet and lifestyle related root causes of chronic symptoms or chronic diseases. So I say functional nutrition informed because, functional medicine has really evolved over the last 10 years and. I think it's really easy to go down the functional medicine rabbit hole and wind up with no answers. And when this happens with nutrition, a lot of the times it's in the form of restrictive diet, after restrictive diet, after restrictive diet. And the only thing you come up with is 10 foods that you think your body can tolerate and a lot of frustration. So I think when we're thinking about food. Thinking about the root causes and how food plays in with your physiology, because it's a huge player. Obviously your nutrients that you take in are hugely important to your physiology. But also thinking about your personality, your mindset, your traumas, your lifestyle, who you're eating with, logistical stuff, where grocery shop, all of that stuff needs to be taken into consideration as well. So taking a really broad based approach. And considering different factors is really important to my practice. Oh my gosh. I wouldn't have thought of all of those things surrounding food and what I'm eating. Yes, there's a lot. There's a lot. And a lot of times with midlife women especially, I'll get women. And the thing that we end up working on more often than not is actually eating more and eating more variety because they have been on that restrictive diet merry-go-round for so long, and as I tell my ladies. F food is generally not the problem. It's not the food's fault. We gotta think about your physiology and what is, what is not working so well there with digestion being a common one. Mm-hmm. Or blood sugar. Why is that not not working? And really make sure we have the food supports to better support those pieces and parts of your physiology. Right? What do you think is. Like one of the top things that women come to you with, like the restrictions that they've been following and, and you're like, whoa, nope. Stop. Wait, let's change that a little bit. Yeah. I think two things come to mind. First one is restricting intake of animal products in general. Mm-hmm. And I think that this absolutely can make sense. For some people, people that are vegan or vegetarian for religious reasons that absolutely should always be respected. Some people, there are certain conditions where this is the best route to go. But for many women, just thinking like, oh, cutting out animal products automatically makes me healthier. Isn't necessarily true. As we get older, we actually need more protein and the most bioavailable forms of protein are our animal-based protein sources. Mm-hmm. Now we also need to drill into, let's make sure you're getting the least processed versions of animal proteins that you can, like, we don't wanna do the chicken nuggets. We'd rather cook chicken. Right. Cook chicken thighs, chicken breast, something like that. But it's really important for women as we age to think about how much protein we're getting. And we know with our animal based proteins, they always have enough of a, of a very important amino acid called leucine. Leucine is responsible for stimulating muscle protein, Synthes. You know this, I'm sure your listeners probably know this. As we age, we start to lose muscle more rapidly. Mm-hmm. So one of the ways we can prevent that is making sure we're getting enough protein, specifically protein sources, rich and leucine, to stimulate, as I say, stimulate that muscle protein synthesis three times a day. That's what we want. So really kind of reformulating how we think about healthy eating. Mm-hmm. Is, is really important. And the other thing is also just this mindset that less is better. Oh my gosh. Less is better. And this is what I see so often happening. A lady comes to me, we're chatting, she's not hungry ever in the morning, so she grabs a little granola bar and then lunch. Mm. You know, she's busy, cheats a little salad. And then what happens when we get home from work and the kids are running around, all of a sudden the pantry is screaming at you. Chips, cookies, yay. All the fun stuff. And you can't stop yourself. And then you feel wildly guilty or you eat a really big dinner or you have dessert afterwards or at some point in time you just feel really out of control around your portion sizes. And really what you need is to think about yourself as a little computer and upload your calories in earlier because you need that energy to stabilize blood sugar. You need that energy to have energy to get through the day. And if you wait too long, ghrelin our main hunger hormone. It's easy to remember. It's like ghrelin. Ghrelin is gonna start yelling at your body and saying, Hey, we are starving. So don't let yourself get to that point. It's not just about restriction, it's really about being strategically nourished. Right. Oh, I love that. Strategically nourished. That is an amazing phrase. So we kind of alluded to a little bit, and you just mentioned too about shame and guilt surrounding what we eat or how we eat. Can we talk about that a little bit?'cause that, I think that's really big. That's huge. It is. We, I don't have a conversation really with anyone without talking about what is the mindset that you have around food. Mm-hmm. So many people and including myself, you know, at times and, and I always have always joked that I, number one, have the metabolism of an 80-year-old. It's always been very easy for me to put on fat, very hard to put on muscle. I have Hashimoto's. Hypothyroidism. It runs in my family. Got that after I had my babies, which is probably a relatable story for Yeah, for some of your, your listeners. And although I don't have really the metabolism of an 80-year-old, it's always been, you know, very easy for me to gain weight. It's always felt like that. So for a long time I was definitely in the, oh my gosh, you just have to restrict. And I was that person having the healthy granola bar and the tiny little salad, and then coming home and reading the pantry in the evening. And I had personally a lot of shame around that. It was super embarrassing, especially as a new dietician. Oh my goodness. Cool. You kidding me? What's wrong with me? Yes, I'm, I'm failing. I see this in so many people, regardless of, of whether they're, in the health field or not. And it is actually the biggest roadblock to making changes because if you're just sitting there whipping yourself mentally, you are gonna tune out your behavior because it's just too painful. And then before you know it, days are gonna go by and you're gonna be in what I like to call, excuse my language, F it mode. I'll eat the pizza, I'll eat the brunch, I'll have the, you know, multiple glasses of champagne, whatever you're in, like celebration mode and you're just not paying attention until one day you wake up and you realize, you just, you feel physically not well. Mm-hmm. And then you're on this rollercoaster of all or nothing. We can break this by adopting a self-compassion mindset. We're not here to eat perfectly. I always tell people that we're not here to eat perfectly. You don't get a grade in my class. This is even a class. There are no grades. Not at all. So we start with by, by recognizing number one, I'm not alone. I know I'm not alone now, like the story I just shared hopefully is relatable to you. Sure. We're not alone. Number two, we do wanna talk to ourselves like we would talk to our best friend and, and show some self kindness. So instead of saying, oh, you suck, I can't believe you, and a lot of us walk around with that sort of a mindset or that sort of an internal dialogue. Breaking up with that and really asking yourself, nonjudgmentally, let's say you rated the pantry, you know, late at night or something. Mm-hmm. Hey, why did you do that? Like, super curious, like no judgment. And sometimes that won't bring tears to your eyes'cause you'll be like, my gosh, I'm just feeling so stressed by the state of the world, something going on in my life. And then this gives you space to ask yourself like, with so much love, what do you need right now? Sometimes it is food, but a lot of times it's not. You can regulate dysregulated eating patterns or emotional eating patterns by asking yourself that really powerful question, what do I need right now? Yeah, that is huge. And that, you know, we use that in other ways with other situations. Personally, this has been not a great week for the whole world, for our country and everything. And I know why I'm feeling down. But there's times when I'm feeling down, like. Why are you feeling like this? You have to get curious, and I love that you're using this in this situation too, like why are you eating two bowls of ice cream? Or, why are you grabbing that big bag of chips that it just, takes the blame away. Yeah. Blame does nothing but shut us down and then we can't be mindful asking the question, what do I need? Opens the door wide open to mindfulness. Yes. And you didn't even have to do anything. You didn't have to practice anything. You didn't have to meditate with special music. You just had to give yourself that compassion so that you could move forward and think about things without that that shame and blame attachment. Yeah. So you have them ask that question and it probably takes a while to figure that out, well, I'm not really sure. So what are some next steps that they can do if they're not sure? Absolutely. So when I work with, with people we often create a little toolkit list. So if they have a commonplace, like maybe they go in the pantry or you know, the ice cream in the refrigerator, we'll put a post-it right there. And say like, what do I need? And actually before separate from the food we're thinking out like, what would I need? Sometimes it's comfort food usually does two things. It's providing us with, with, with comfort on some level. Mm-hmm. A dopamine hits. So we can go and do things like light a fire under our butts so we can take care of the kids after a long workday or it's grounding us. Especially like you were saying, when the world feels unsteady, there is nothing like something crunchy to truly ground us. So what can we do instead? You know, grounding, we can go lay on the floor with a soft blankie. We can pet our dog. That is huge. Mm-hmm. We want a dopamine really? So we wanna light some fire on our butt. How about some breath work or how about go for a walk around the block? So if we have kind of a little cheat sheets. Of things that we typically need, then we can be like, oh, I'm gonna go do that. And I always tell people, don't tell yourself you can't have food. Say, I'm gonna do this first, and then if I still want the food, I'm gonna come back for it. Sure. And usually this, this cuts back on the emotional eating. It also helps you from having that all or nothing like, or, or having an attitude like the food is bad, the food's No, no, no. We're not trying to avoid food. We're just trying to actually give you what you actually need. And first and foremost on the list, I, this is really important. Before you get to what, what do I really need? You do have to ask yourself, am I actually physically hungry? Did I just have that granola bar and that little salad? Okay. You know, it's probably time for me to have like a really good snack. Maybe I need some apple and peanut butter. Maybe I need a handful of nuts and I'm gonna pair that with some veggies and dip. Maybe I need some real food. Right. Yeah, that's cool. Do it. Yeah. Let's go back to, you mentioned you have Hashimoto's and I know there's a lot of women that have that and talk. Do you wanna share that with the listeners? Absolutely, absolutely. So I had my, my first baby and actually had a pretty traumatic birth. She was great. I lost a lot of blood. Ended up actually being not conscious for her birth and ending up having to have a, blood transfusion. So, yay. That's fine. We all recovered. It was great and for the first it was great. It was great after that. It was a little, a little rocky start, but we all made it through. I see that though,'cause I think a lot of women have some sort of traumatic birth story that sort of kicks off some of this and sometimes things like that can actually kickstart an autoimmune response, which I think is always something important to keep in the back of the brain. Mm-hmm. I'll also say too that on my mother's side of the family, almost everybody has. Hypothyroidism. Most don't know, have never had antibodies tested to know if it's autoimmune driven or not. Mm-hmm. But almost all the women do have that, which is which is, you know, a genetic, a genetic inheritance. Yes. Thanks mom. Yeah. Thanks mom. So the first year went by no problem. And I decide as my, my little girl was, was turning one, I'm like, oh, this is the time in life to run a half marathon. I had run several before, but this time I was gonna pr. I joined a run club. I also decided this was a great opportunity to get up at three in the morning. Baby still was not sleeping through the night. Really compromised my sleep for the Almighty pr. Don't worry everybody, I pr that race. Yeah, by one minute. And and no joke, less than a month later, I was wildly constipated, which is actually something that a lot of women suffer from and do not talk about. We don't talk about poop. But we should, you know, everybody poop, so we should talk about it. I was incredibly constipated for the first time in my life. I put on seven pounds in six weeks and I am four 11. So that was a lot. Yeah. And it felt very out of control. I hadn't changed my exercise and I felt terrible. I would actually fantasize about getting in a tiny car crash that required me to spend the night in the hospital so that I could rest. Oh no. And I share this because I've told other people this and people like, oh yeah, I've had similar kinds of things. So again, self-compassion mindset. Gretchen, you are not alone. Yeah. And I went to, for, for three years, I went to different providers, functional providers, conventional providers, and I'm like, I am unwell. I do not feel well. Mm-hmm. And actually to, and in the middle of that, actually I jumped ahead a little bit in the middle of that, I, I started not feel well, but then I got pregnant with my second baby. Ah, so. We tabled everything. Had second baby, much better labor and delivery situation. And then also again started feeling very bad and had, you know, was unable to lose weight postpartum. Was having those, those fantasies and that's when I was started to see people, okay, let's figure out what's really wrong. Mm-hmm. I was diagnosed with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth which is where you can have, which is actually very common in people with undiagnosed hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism affects gut, gut function. Mm-hmm. Actually vice versa can and gut function affects hypothyroidism, so on your thyroid function. But so I ended up getting treated for that, and then I went to actually six providers before somebody would prescribe me thyroid medicine. I kept getting the run around. Oh, you just, oh, we're gonna, you, you're trending bad, but you're not bad enough. And I'm like, I feel terrible. Please. No. So I, I found a wonderful provider. I started me on thyroid medicine. I'll never forget it.'cause in 48 hours, I felt wildly better mood. You know, everything. Now that was, the middle of the story. It took another four years to get my antibodies to be non-existence. So it took a gluten-free diet which is something I needed to do anyways with the IBS symptoms. It took a lot of attention to. Supporting my gut. So a lot of things that I still do now. And most importantly, it took a fiber in protein forward diet. Not that I wasn't doing this before, but I wasn't putting the attention on the amount of protein that I needed as a mom who was doing a lot of things as I was getting older. I was in my mid thirties at mid to late thirties at this point. Mm-hmm. I'm 41 now, and I also. Was not putting the emphasis on fiber that I needed to. Sure. I was eating my veggies. Veggies aren't the whole story. When it comes to fiber. We wanna make sure we're prioritizing our nuts and seeds. Mm-hmm. I can't say enough good things about beans. I know not everyone can tolerate them, but beans, beans, they are the magical fruit. They do a lot of really powerful things for your gut. So when I'm speaking with people, my ultimate goal is to get my clients eating enough fiber and protein. Mm-hmm. Because that really stimulates satiety hormones properly so that you feel full after a meal. Mm-hmm. Regulates your blood sugar, supports your gut function, so it's lowering inflammation in the body. And if you get the right fiber and protein, generally the fat and the carb are right, and then the calories are right, so everything connects. That sounds so easy. It's totally not sounds, it's not very, totally not. No. It takes practice. Yeah. But it can be done and it can be done incrementally. Mm-hmm. Again, you don't have to jump from, oh my gosh, I just realized I'm only getting 50 grams of protein a day to Gretchen tells me I have to get 120. No, you take that in stages. Yeah. We increase at each meal. And we move up in a way that's gonna make this sustainable. Sure. Okay. I'm gonna go back to those numbers, but first of all, I will say if you start eating the correct foods that your body wants and needs, your body starts craving more of them. So it does, if you just keep going, it helps. It helps. Yeah. I always tell people that are eating a little bit of too much sugar is number one self-compassion mindset. You don't have to blame yourself for not being able to keep your fingers out of the candy dish. Mm-hmm. It's also your gut microbiome talking to your brain 10 times. The number of signals travel from gut to brain as travel from bringing to gut. So, oh, your job as the eater. Is to say, huh, okay, how can I feed more of the good gut bacteria? They're gonna help regulate me. And there's a little bit of a learning curve there. It takes a minute, but once you start eating more fiber specifically to support the good gut microbes, more of those will grow. Your sugar cravings will become quieter. It will happen. Just take some time. Mm-hmm. Oh, my sugar is the hardest thing. It's so hard. It's so available. It's so available. Yeah, for sure. So protein you mentioned, is it 120 grams that we're supposed to have a day? Great question. It actually varies from person to person, I think. Okay. The most common thing we hear now is everyone should get a hundred grams of protein. For, for you and your listeners, let's give you the real calculation.'cause I know you can all do math. Sweet spot for midlife women. I say midlife, anybody, any woman, sweet spot for any woman and even any man who might be listening in 0.8 to one grams per pound. And I use the term desired body weight. So if you are 20, 40, 60 pounds. Above your desired body weight. You don't have to eat 200 grams of protein. That's too much. So the most accessible way to think about it is about a 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound of desired body weight. So body weight. Okay. If you wanna be just. To keep the math relatively simple here. If you wanted to be 140 pounds, you could think about some, about 140 grams of protein per day. That's pretty aggressive, I have to say. So you wanna think about 0.8 as a really good starting point? That's 112 grams of protein, which is pretty accessible for most people. Yeah. Yeah. You have to pay attention to it for sure. But that's doable. Now what about the fiber too, because that's something I had, this is bad. I had my first colonoscopy a year ago, I need to eat more fiber. So yeah. Is there a recommendation for that? Yes. So women should be getting about 25 grams of fiber per day. Okay? That is the recommendation. Studies suggest that somewhere between. 90 to 95% of women do not get enough fiber. Mm-hmm. Men do. Even worse, by the way. Mm-hmm. But we'll just talk about the ladies here. So if you feel like you're not getting enough fiber, you're not alone. And I don't know about you, but my Instagram feed is absolutely inundated with get more protein, get more protein, get more protein, and what's being missed there is the fiber piece. We need the fiber too. Some people come back and say, oh my gosh, I can't tolerate fiber. I feel terrible when I eat fibrous foods. Then we gotta look at your gut function. You might have like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. You might have, you know, a motility problem, but we need to look at that because that it's not the food's fault. Something's going on to cause these symptoms. Right. And fiber's so powerful. You know, I hear from a lot of women in midlife where they're like, oh my gosh, my cholesterol is going up. Definitely need to talk about what's happening with estrogen that contributes to that as well. Mm-hmm. But, we wanna think about fiber and how important fiber is at sweeping away access cholesterol in the digestive tract. So that's really important as well. It's an important modulator that, you know, doesn't require a medicine. Yeah. That's the thing. We are so quick as a society to jump to. Medications and pills and quick fixes we think, but we don't always think about long term. And I'm not saying we shouldn't take medication because you know, there are obviously medications that people need. Agreed, agreed. Yeah. But there are also ways that you can quote unquote, fix what's going on with food and changes, just activity changes or whatever it happens to be, but they just take a little longer to work. Yeah. Or we need to be really diligent, like, are we actually getting a fiber? Let's look at this. Whenever I get somebody and they are experiencing diarrhea or constipation or, something on that spectrum, IBS symptoms, before I slap them with a$500 functional stool test. Mm-hmm. We work on fiber and and fluid because a lot of those times it's lacking. And I'll tell you, nine times outta 10 that fixes the issue. That's it. Yeah, that's great. You just saved yourself 500 bucks. That's wonderful. Right? Yeah. I love that. I love that outlook. Let's try and save some money. And, but get you healthy. Of course. That's the important part. Oh my gosh, so many things here. One thing, and you've mentioned balancing blood sugar. I know that's a big deal for everybody. My mom has type one diabetes, so I've been watching, my hemoglobin A1C. Measures the amount of blood sugar kind of over time. It's kind of steadily going up and up and up and, oh, you're, you're getting to that pre-diabetic point, and I'm like, okay, stop. I, I wanna stop this. Yeah. Yeah. For, for the listeners out there who might be in that same situation, or maybe they just wanna make sure that they don't get into that situation, what kind of things can we do? Absolutely. So this is such a huge topic, especially in midlife. This is where we see that hemoglobin A1C start creeping up and creeping up, and you're like, oh my gosh, what's happening? I haven't changed my eating. Yeah. Something I just think is so important to say is that we have estrogen receptors and every part of the body except the red blood cells, so estrogen decline in perimenopause and, and post menopause is, is playing a role here. Mm-hmm. You know, I'm very pro encouraging women to be evaluated for hormone replacement therapy because it can be so supportive to our long-term health. Something I just wanna mention on that point is women have higher incidences of Alzheimer's disease, which is also known as type three diabetes. And so blood sugar dysregulation in the brain is what causes the most common type of Alzheimer's disease. Oh, interesting. So we really wanna think about blood sugar as, as a longevity issue and getting our blood sugar in the best place possible to prevent chronic disease. So, having a hormone replacement therapy plan can be very helpful and I'll defer to your other guests who prescribe that on that point. Yeah. But getting back, it's very common in midlife to see this, and it's not just about hormone replacement therapy, it's also about getting strategic about your diet and movement choices. Mm-hmm. It's just all these things, it's a decline in estrogen. It's a decline in muscle mass.'cause our muscle sucks up our sugar from our blood to use it for energy. Mm-hmm. And we have less muscle, so there's less cells doing their job. Also, lifestyle wise, just culturally we live in a culture where we have a lot of carbs that are available at the ready. Mm-hmm. And. We often eat what I like to call naked carbs. Right. Pasta with red sauce or a bag of Doritos while we're watching a, a game or popcorn at the movies, whatever. And we wind up in this situation where our body is so used to being inundated with carbohydrates that digest pretty quickly. Mm-hmm. And our cells develop insulin resistance, so they sort of get numb to all the sugar and the bloodstream. They close their doors so the sugar cannot get into the cells. We see this, A sign of this is that you're real tired after you have a high carb meal. Sometimes it doesn't even have to be a super high carb meal, but you just get really tired. Yeah. And that's because your sugar's not actually making it into the cell to be used to make energy. And so what can we do? Fiber and protein. Oh my gosh, there's so many things, but fiber, having a fiber and protein forward diet is going to first and foremost. Reduce the amount of carbohydrates that you take in, but it also slows down the digestion of the carbohydrates that you are eating. Remember, our fiber foods are carbohydrates too. Yeah. They just digest a lot slower. Mm-hmm. So you don't have this big bolus of sugar flying out and I the bloodstream that then your pancreas has to send insulin out and, and take care of all this. It's much slower trickle. And the cells aren't like, whoa, too much. Ah. The cells are like, oh, okay, I'll take you, I'll take you in, come on in and, and we'll use you for energy. That's awesome. So we wanna think about, Hey, what can I eat that's can actually gonna slow my digestion down? Which of course also stimulates our satiety hormones in our gut, so we feel like we're actually full after a meal. And then we wanna eat the foods that are also supporting the growth of our muscles. So our protein. Protein. And then fiber, again, a positive for fiber, really great at reducing inflammation. Inflammation's a two-way street. Too much blood sugar causes inflammation. Also, poor digestive health causes inflammation that can affect your metabolism. So if we can get enough fiber in the digestive tract to lower inflammation, it does this by feeding the good gut microbes supporting regular motility in the gut, then we can be supporting better blood sugars longer term. So it's about thinking about digestion. Mm-hmm. It's about thinking about the right foods to fuel your, your muscles, and it's also about reducing inflammation. Oh my gosh. I love this. I love that We could be talking for hours, I know it's really easy to get overwhelmed with information. If you could tell Gretchen, our listeners, a couple simple things they could do just to start thinking about food differently or helping them feel better? You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. So I'll talk about three things. I actually really like to start with breakfast because so many women fall into the camp of either they're the granola bar, breakfast, or they just don't eat it.'cause we've heard so much about intermittent fasting. Oh. And that can be supportive. But I find more often than not in practice, it's actually not supportive to metabolic and body composition goals. Mm-hmm. Long term in women because we honestly just get too hungry. Oh my gosh. And yeah, it's really hard to get the protein we need if we're not eating three meals a day. Mm-hmm. So having a really good. Breakfast that has about 20 to 30 grams of protein. It could be something like a protein shake, for instance, that you can do you can do a cup of berries in here. Chia seeds. Again, you're getting a little protein. You're getting a lot of fiber and some healthy fats. Mm-hmm. And that can be a really nice way to start your day. That's a really easy protein shake. You can also do something like I did today. So I had an apple with peanut butter and this is something that's super convenient for people. I did what's called an egg witch, so it's two egg patties. You can usually find'em at Costco. Two egg patties with a chicken sausage patty and a slice of cheese. And that's usually some variation of that is my breakfast on. Fridays like today. I'll do something like that. So remembering to pair protein and fiber at your breakfast is super, super key. Another thing is, again, the self-compassion mindset. You kind of wanna get curious about why you're eating patterns are what they are. Mm-hmm. But not in a judgmental way. Again, why am I eating all the peanut butter cups in the cabinet? Is it that I'm not properly fueled? Or is it that I, I need some emotional support, what's going on here? Or I'm just overstimulated. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, last but not least, really thinking about dinners and make lunches and dinners, making sure you have protein there, because a lot of times we forget, especially at lunch, we forget about the protein and we forget about the vegetables. Half a plate of veggies at lunch and dinner. That is a key. That's good for fiber, that's good for antioxidants. It's gonna help you stay more full. And if you're thinking, if you have body composition goals really triggering those satiety signals in the digestive tract is really, really helpful to you.'cause you don't wanna be white knuckling your way through a diet that's almost assuredly going to fail. Yeah. Yeah. Why make yourself miserable? Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Do it. Let's be joyful about this. So Yes, for sure, so tell the listeners what you do. How do you help people? Do you have something where they could talk to you and do you do online or how do you help women? So I have a virtual private practice called the Functional Kitchen. I have three ways that you can work one-on-one with me. We can meet twice a month. We can meet once a month or we can meet quarterly. Everybody in our program gets weekly message check-ins because accountability is so helpful. Mm-hmm. And what I like to do is just invite you to book a complimentary nutrition evaluation call with me. You sit down with me. I don't know if sales team or anything like that. Sit down directly with me. We have a chat if, if this is a good fit for you, so I'm happy to provide that. Kim, for your show notes? Yes, I'll provide you that link. And then the, honestly, the best place to start is with my freebies. I have a video series and cookbook called. Protein and fiber first, and it really covers a lot of the things that we talked about today, but gives you practical tips in the video series. Real short sound bites, just thinking about how to support those satiety hormones, how to support your blood sugar, your gut health, those sorts of things. So like the, the, what we wanna be thinking about, like what's happening. And then the cookbook is all about practical ideas for how do I get enough fiber and protein at my meals without spending all day in the kitchen. So you can access that@gretchenspzrd.com slash freebies, and that's entirely free, and I would love for you to check it out. Yeah, I will definitely, we'll put those links in the show notes for people. I feel too, like, I'm glad you mentioned accountability. I think you would be someone who would really be good at holding people accountable in a nice way. That is, my number one goal is I, you know, I, we had talked about what we were gonna talk about. I just, I'll share this. An early blunder in my career, I was newly married, so, you know, like 28 years old. Mm-hmm. Only responsibility was a dog. Right. So, and I remember I had a, a mom come into my office who had several kids. She was a single mother. She was in her forties. She had a toddler and this toddler you know, made, made dinnertime and mealtimes really super fun. Can I say that? Fun sarcastically fun. So mealtimes were extremely challenging and she was falling into that habit of just sort of eating off of her toddler's plate and eating kind of fanatically. And she had a full-time job on top of all of this. And I remember looking at her and being like, oh, you know, you just need to make eating your full-time job. And I'll never forget the look on that woman's face. And I learned so much in that moment. And I've heard other practitioners say this as well. And I always say, no, eating should never be your full-time job. It should be aligned into your life. That's really what we're striving for here. It's the magic is in the tweaks and the consistency, not in the overhaul. I love that, it makes it so much easier. Just, just that thought of that. Yeah. Like this is accessible. So many people don't see the dietician because they're afraid they're gonna wind up with being shamed or you can't eat anything. This is the food police. No. Yeah. You know, we're here to help and we're here to, to help you do what you want to do. You are ultimately in charge of your choices. Yeah. Let's just help you be really empowered to make choices that align with your life. And help your health. Yeah, for sure. I love that, that that just so aligns with what I've been trying to do with empowering women. Find your confidence, build that courage, and it starts with you. So, yay. So I hate to say goodbye, but we do have to say goodbye. But before we do, is there any one last little nugget of information you wanna share with the listeners? I just want to encourage everyone to take a moment today and just notice if you are talking to yourself in a way that you would not talk to your best friend and see if you can employ some of that self-compassion mindset. Say, Hey, I'm not alone, and then B, Hey, I'm Nonjudgmentally asking what's going on here and what do I need? Tell yourself those two things. I am not alone. You're never alone. A ton of people are feeling this way and what do I need and can I not judge myself for it? You are gonna open up the door to so much mindfulness and it's gonna be way less drama filled as well. Yeah. We all need less drama for sure. Kim, thank you so much for having me on your show. This has been so enjoyable. I have loved every minute of chatting with you. Me too. I just love this. I feel like we need to just keep going, like I said, but yeah, I, I, I see some collaboration somehow in the future with us somewhere. Let's do it. I'd love that. Yay. Alright, well, Gretchen, thank you so much and like I said, I hope I talk to you soon. Yes. Thanks Kim. Mm-hmm. Thank you for listening to the Midlife with Courage Podcast. If you liked what you heard, I would love it if you would leave a review or even better send a link of this episode to a friend. Until next time, take care of your beautiful self.