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Episode 52: Snacks That Work – Smart Snacking Strategies for Midlife Women · Empower Your Menopause

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Empower Your Menopause, the podcast where we talk about all things health, hormones, and happiness for women 40 and above.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're coaches James and Julie here from Fabulous Beyond 40, and we're excited to be here today for a tasty topic that we've not really approached before.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of have in a roundabout way, but we're going to talk menopause-friendly snacking here.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, is even snacking friendly in menopause, might be something that comes up.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Snacking tends to get a bit of a bad rap, or it has done recently.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about the history of snacking as we move forward.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're navigating perimenopause or postmenopause, skipping meals and ignoring hunger cues, that's a fast track to fatigue, cravings, and mood swings.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: So in this episode, we're going to break down how smart mini meals can help with everything from blood sugar balance to symptom load reduction to brain function and see what actually works at this time of life.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I suppose it's worth diving straight in.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Julie, you're the woman in midlife in the podcast.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: What is the issue here then?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Why are women struggling with smacking, do you think, at this time of life?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's really interesting because there are so many different factors involved, but at this time of life, specifically, because our hormones are all over the place, especially, especially in paramenopause, when they're up and down, like this roller coaster.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Those shifts can cause changes to our hunger signals.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: They can cause changes to our emotional connections to things.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we all know that stress eating and emotional eating are a big thing, right?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but those hormonal shifts, especially when we're looking at stress hormones like cortisol, um, they can create a greater hunger drive than what we're used to having because our body wants to hang on to some of that fat as we shift from producing estrogen in our ovaries to producing estrogen in our body fat.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's telling our body to do things that we might not normally do.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, as I said, the emotional eating is a real thing for most of the women we talk to.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a big factor because we have so many emotional ties to food.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're exhausted and we think eating things is are going, it will give us better energy.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because when we tend to be tired, we seek out energy in any form we can get.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So think of you know, uh sugar-laden coffee, fru-fru drinks, and uh whatever happens to be available in the vending machine.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, those tend to be the go-to things because they're convenient.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we also have times where maybe our blood sugar dips, we're skipping meals or we're too busy to think about preparing food ahead of time.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have these long gaps between when we're eating and our blood sugar goes down.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: We might feel really irritable or brain foggy.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We like to say hangry, right?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because we get that mood when we're feeling extra hungry.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we have so many conflicting inputs from this diet culture that we live in.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: One camp says, don't snack ever, it's really bad for you.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's another camp that says you should always have a snack in between meals, and there's yet another one that says you should be grazing constantly all throughout the entire day.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to know what to believe.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I know people personally who have snacks in their handbag, in their desk drawers, in their car, you know, any place else where they spend time in their away from home.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So so understanding how your body is working and the best kinds of snacks to have, if you need snacking, it's a very individual thing.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know there's science behind this, and this is your uh your uh expertise, so so maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh just a couple of things before I move on to some science stuff.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So interestingly, one of the things that I tend to find that with a lot of the women that we speak to, and generally a lot of people in general, is that the snack drawer or handbag or cupboard or glove compound, whatever it is, is also the treat drawer.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're talking about snacking, we're not always talking about, and I'm gonna put this in inverted commas for those of you who are watching in YouTube, but if you're on YouTube, but if you're listening, I'm I'm doing the air quotes thing, you know, the snack drawer is often not the healthy foods or the foods that serve us, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually a treat, it's usually a piece of chocolate or a biscuit or a cake.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly, I find that's often true if people work in an office environment.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that three o'clock dip or eleven o'clock dip in the morning is usually associated by let's all have a snack.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the snack is usually like tea and cookies, tea and biscuits, you know, a packet of chips or crisps, or a bar of chocolate, or somebody's just come back from vacation.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And what do we always bring back from vacation for our co-workers?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: A big bag of the local chocolates to to eat.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been guilty of that myself myself, so you know, there's no judgment here, but I think that's just an observation that's worth talking about when it comes to snacking.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to the actual science behind this, you're absolutely right.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that the the information that we get fed is in ha ha ha ha is in um is is confusing to us, right?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Should you snack, shouldn't you snack?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: I know that particularly when I first started working in nutrition, first started doing my PT qualifications, that all the rage then was grazing over gorging, but you had to keep your energy levels stable so you wouldn't get hungry, you wouldn't and and the the truth is that when that when you do that kind of eating, you may not get hangry, but also your your your hormones, your digestive hormones, aren't actually working properly because your body forgets what the hunger response actually looks like and what should happen when we're eating them from a let's let's take it back to a hormonal perspective.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we heat eat something, it's carbohydrates.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's a hormone that comes into play called insulin.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Insulin tells your body how much of the sugar that those carbohydrates are converted to goes into your bloodstream and how much of it is stored away as fat.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so insulin levels raise when we have something to eat, and then what you ideally want is your insulin levels to start to fall naturally in the periods between meals, and then another hormone um will come into play called glucagone, and that means that your blood sugar um has has got has dropped down, glucagon comes into play, and glucagon says, right, some of that stored blood sugar that's in our muscles and our liver comes back in to help keep blood sugar levels stable.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a natural response that you want.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: You want insulin to be up and then dropping, and in between you want glucagon to be up and dropping again.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: What tends to happen when we're grazing all the time is that our blood sugar levels are constantly high.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if that um if our blood sugar levels are constantly high, what then tends to happen is that our bodies forget how insulin works, and so the insulin response is actually blunted, and that can lead to things like inflammation, it can lead to metabolic syndrome, it can lead to obesity because our body is never really in tune with when it's hungry.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that idea of grazing probably works okay when you're younger and you've got a metabolism that is firing all sit on all cylinders and just wants to go and burn things off.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's less helpful as we get older and our metabolisms slow down for a number of reasons.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: One is that idea that you know we do become insulin resistant, two is insulin resistance is also a challenge when oestrogen drop drops as well.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so, ideally, for me at this time of life, if I was starting out with a client, I would be looking at trying to get them to eat three solid meals a day.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if they do want to snack in between, making sure that those snacks are relatively small, because that is the other challenge that we have, right?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Our snacks end up becoming mini meals in themselves.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of being something that's like a 50 or 100 calories, there's something that's two, three, four hundred calories, and they're almost becoming the same size as meals, and then you get to that stage again where insulin is not kicking into play properly, and neither is glucagon, and so your hormones are all over the place.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would start off with three three meals then breakfast, lunch, dinner, let's say for argument's sake, and try and reduce snacking in between those because you do want your body to be as adaptive and sorry, insulin to be as useful as it can be.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: What I tend to find to happen is that a lot of people say, Well, you know, I can't go for three hours without food, and physiologically, that is actually nonsensical.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we can go three hours without food, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Our bodies are designed to go for periods without eating, you know, they aren't designed to be to be fed all the time, but we get into this idea because of this calling upon our blood sugar by the blunted insulin response that we need to be eating all the time.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: What I often tend to see then happening at this uh at the at these kind of times is that also women at this uh life stage tend to, many of them tend to have been stuck on this diet cycle for a long time.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea in their head is that they've got to eat really tiny portions.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: So if you do go to three meals a day and you're eating quite small portions, you're actually not filling yourself up at each of those meals.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some people are on like 1200-1300 calories a day.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the kind of calorie input that doesn't even sort of like work for a small toddler, never mind a grown-up, grown-up woman.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, those meals are quite small.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: In between meals, you get super, super hungry.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you're three biggish meals.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you assume that average woman, about 2,000 calories a day.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that we don't actually advise our clients to look at calorie counting as a thing, but you want each meal, everything carries a calorie count now to be about seven hundred calories to get your two thousand a day, which is what you'd be having, and then that might help stop some of the snacking.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the challenge within all of that is that some women will get generally hungry, and so where do you start then?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, recognising what the true hunger signals might be.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Are you actually hungry, or is something else going on?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is it a level of stress?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is it that you're thirsty?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is it um that you're tired, your blood sugar's all over the place, whatever it may be.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: So getting in tune with hunger signals is really, really key.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Good way to do that, of course, is just slowing down when you're eating and not eating on the on the hoof, making sure that you're allowing your gut and your brain time to catch up with each other.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: When you are talking about snacks, keeping them small, making sure that you aren't diving into that treat drawer rather than a snack drawer, so it's not crisps, biscuits, chocolates, those kind of things.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So really good balance in your snacks of protein, fat, fibre, and keeping things relatively small, and a couple of things that you can keep in your handbag or your purse or whatever it may be, so it's simple and portable.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of like a bit of science, a bit of my thinking around it.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know whether you've got anything to add to that, or if you want to talk a little bit about some snacks that you've tried and worked, Julie.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The what the one thing I will say, and I think this was my biggest lesson when I was the client, is that hunger is not an emergency.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, James, we can go long periods of time without eating.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you think about people who are doing intermittent fasting, you think about tribes and and different cultures that fast sometimes for days.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's our bodies are designed to go, as you said, for those long periods of time without food.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of what we get that panic around hunger is because we're not used to feeling it.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of money in marketing for all of these snacks that were being sold, say, you know, don't let yourself turn it.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the Snickers commercials with Betty White and um the really rugged football players, and I there were some really fun commercials there.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, but yeah, they're telling you, no, no, you can't let yourself get hungry.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to have this thing.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if you really don't have time for a full meal, and by the way, that's a whole other discussion, we can talk about uh planning, meal planning and and actually eating what a good solid meal looks like, having some portable mini meals can help keep you from grabbing at whatever's in the snack drawer, the treat drawer, the junk drawer, um no matter what happens throughout the day.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you find yourself getting super rushed in the morning and you don't have time to eat anything before you go to work or before you start your day, and then it's like 10 or 11 o'clock and you feel like you could chew your own arm, then yeah, it's a good idea to have something available.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So things that don't take a lot of planning that I find helpful, uh, things like Greek yogurt.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and by the way, I know probably everybody listening has one of those insulated lunch bags or mini coolers that's been gathering dust.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So um, even if you don't have a refrigerator available, you can do this.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but so like uh some Greek yogurt with chia seeds or berries, um, or even if you want something savory instead of sweet, Greek yogurt with some chives and some spices mixed into it, um, or even little bits of meat could be can be a nice snack that will give you some protein and healthy fats.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: I love boiled eggs, they have so much nutrition in them.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not allergic to them, of course.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but a boiled egg with a couple of veggie sticks, that's a really great.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: It not only is it a good snack, but it's also a good mini meal because it's it's got enough um substance to it that keeps you full, or veggie sticks and hummus.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's I know a popular one because it's always fun to dip and eat with your hands and play with your food.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Blows down your eating as well, doesn't it?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you're using a carrot stick as your utensil.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's one of the reasons why soup can be such a filling meal because you have to take time spoon to mouth, right?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can't only load your spoon so far, unlike a fork, which you can, you know, load right up and and turn it in.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um apples are really high in fiber, and that's a great snack with maybe some peanut butter or a handful of almonds.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Protein shakes, always a good go-to, not as your sole source of protein, but if you find a protein powder that you like, um carrying a shaker bottle that you can put the protein powder in in the morning and and either take some nut milk with you or dairy milk if you can tolerate it, or even water, I mean that's a really easy thing to use on the go.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the things like I mean, I'm not a huge fan of rice cakes, but I know some people swear by them.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: But rice cakes with something like cottage cheese or peanut butter, and again, you're getting some fiber, you're getting some protein, you're getting some healthy fats.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I having, I mean, you know, let these inspire your ideas.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the only alternatives, but they're simple things that you can do without very much preparation that you can that you can grab and and go.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So but a lot of this, I think a lot of this hinges on how we look at it, you know, what's our perspective, what's our mindset about this whole thing?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So like I said, hunger isn't an emergency.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to feel hungry.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, it's good to feel hungry so that you know what that feels like.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're if you're eating in a way that's supporting your body, it's you should get hungry between meals because it means you're digesting what you've eaten and your body's ready for more.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and absolutely, and that is going back to what I was talking about before that hunger between meals is actually an indication that your insulin stroke glucagonaxis, the two hormones that are dealing with blood sugar, is actually working properly, right?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Which is what we which is what we want and what and what we need because we don't want that insulin response to be blunted because of all the challenges that it can bring down the line.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are what are your thoughts?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, as far as tips and thoughts.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, I think look, we don't want anybody to be going around starving, right?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea that snacking is has a big X through it and shouldn't happen isn't where I sit on on this subject.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think having your three bigger meals, and if you do want to have a snack, having something small in between, if you do feel as though you're truly, truly hungry.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, if you're not hungry, there's no need to snack at all, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Snacking for the sake of snacking kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're just taking an extra energy that you don't really need unless your body is actually hungry.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, when it comes to snacking, the key thing is if you're gonna do it, you know, some of those mini meals you talked about there are actually just that, they're mini meals, so you know you scale them up a little bit, and it could be one of your three meals.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're scaling them down as a snack, they need to be relatively small, I'd say.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, apple with a cup, a couple of almonds or something like that, or a few seeds, absolutely perfect, you know.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Two apples with a massive handful of seeds, you're probably overloading things there, or you know, if you if you've if your Greek yogurt is not 50-60 grams, and suddenly you've got three massive cupfuls of Greek yogurt with sort of like four tablespoons of berries on it, and a couple of spoonsful of cheer, suddenly that that is an actual meal.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I think yeah, people just being aware of where snacking ends and a meal starts is is is really really important.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to keep it small, um recognising that you can snack, it's not failure if you don't snack, you know.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: There aren't no hard and fast rules here, we all have to do what we feel is right for us at the end of the day within what we know is the science.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and generally going back to sort of like meal uh thoughts and ideas, if you've planned out your meals for the week, if you've set spent some time meal planning, and we probably need to do an episode on meal planning at some point so we can talk a little bit more about that.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if you've sat down on Sunday, you've planned your meals out for the week, you know what you're gonna eat, you kind of know what your three main meals have per day, you are less likely to want to reach for a snack anyway, and then you know, if you do get really hungry, you can have you know some boiled eggs in the fridge where you can pull one out, or you kind of grab that apple with a little bit of peanut butter or that couple of spoonsful of Greek yogurt as you're in between things.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the more prepared we are in general, the less likely we are to snack, bearing in mind that if you do decide you're truly hungry and you do need to have a snack, then that is your body telling you it needs fuel, it's not telling you that you've failed.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: So let's not see this as a sort of like cast iron, yes, you are allowed to, no, you're not allowed to, you know, no hard and fast.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of grey areas in there.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um don't wait until you're actually chewing your arm off to eat because what is more likely to happen then is that is when you're more likely to want to overeat and lose.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know that was one of the biggest challenges during my weight loss journey that I used to used to have to deal with was letting myself go so long without eating something that by the time it came to actually eating something, I was so hungry it was gorging rather than rather than eating.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where I I I kind of say I suppose the other thing as well is from a practical tip point of view, you kind of know what your go-to snacks are, because if you don't know what they are, and you do fancy a snack, that is when you're more likely to reach for whatever it may be.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's worth just talking here a little bit about how our environment can fuel snacks, particularly for those people who do work in offices.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've lost counting the number of times that I've had clients who happen to sit right next to the office snack drawer.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the easiest thing in the world to reach into it and grab something from that plethora of crisps, the chocolate that's been brought about from holiday that we mentioned earlier, all that kind of stuff.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes just shifting that environment can be can help when it comes to you know, if we're talking about snacking, let's talk about choice of snacks as well.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Shifting the environment can help towards choosing something that is going to serve your journey better.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes just having the fruit bowl between you and the snack drawer can lead to a better choice of snack when you when you do actually want something because people talk about fruit being laden with sugar and stuff like that, but it's also laden with fibre, it's also laden with vitamins and minerals.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are going to have a snack, I would rather you grab a mandarin orange from the fruit bowl or an apple from the fruit bowl or a banana from the fruit bowl than I would you be reaching in for a bar of really low quality chocolate that is just in that lowest common denominator snack draw there.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's not to say that chocolate is a bad snack, you know.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you're having 70% um cacao, really nice, sort of like chocolate, can be a great, great snack.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but shifting your environment for those people who work in offices can have a massive effect on the whole snacking conundrum.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure if you've got anything to add to that, Julie, at all.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when when I worked in an office, we had a conversation among people on the floor because we were getting frustrated that none of us could seem to stay away from the snack.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: We had a closet and on our floor, a snack closet, and it was chock full of everything.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we talked to our office services director and said, Look, we're all wanting to lose some weight, we're all wanting to get a bit healthier.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can we include some healthier snacks, maybe replace a few things with some healthier options?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, sure.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't cost the company anymore to get uh small snack bags of almonds instead of this laden trail mix with chocolate, you know, um chocolate and all sorts of sugars added.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it it really made a difference.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, it for those people who weren't that interested in the healthy stuff or healthier stuff, it let them take all the less healthy options and we didn't have to worry about it so much.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I would say, especially because I was just reading an article, a research article yesterday that was saying that um and I know this from living it, portion sizes in the US and North America generally are double or triple what they are on our side of the pond in the UK and in Europe.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we talk about these small snacks and mini meals, really pay attention to that because in it like a small small soda that you get in in Europe, um, or a um what do I want to say?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not the small soda, not the small soda from Europe, a small soda from the US is the size of a large in Europe.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a typical entree that you order at a restaurant in the US would feed would be two to three meals in in Europe or would feed an entire family.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're thinking about going out to lunch, when you're thinking about you know the meals that you're eating, um maybe you can even use some of those leftovers in between to nibble on.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: But even even things like you were saying, a small little bit of Greek yogurt or cottage cheese, we're talking about you know, a quarter, a half cup rather than some massive bowl, bowl of it.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because a lot of it's easy for those things to get blown out of proportion.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we talk about environment.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you keep small dishes and small utensils handy, it makes it so much easier because your brain doesn't make, even though logically you know that this is smaller, your brain doesn't make that connection.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: So when you've had a a dish of something, even if it's smaller, your brain is getting the message that you've had a full dish of something.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you can trick yourself into um feeling like you've had more just by decreasing the size of the the plates or the utensils that you're using.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be my other input there.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we're coming up to the end of the half hour, just there or thereabouts.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just quick run through on how Julie and I can help if you're interested in some help in this area.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, meal planning support within our Club Fabulous Beyond 40 membership, low-cost membership monthly fee of just£23, that's about$31.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we offer meal planning support in there.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about sustainable eating a lot and give science-based evidence on how uh the things that we find are most appropriate for women during midlife.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're not ready to take that jump and take that leap and jump into our membership just yet, that's absolutely fine.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: We do offer something called a menopause impact assessment call where you can jump on a call for 45 minutes with either Julie or myself, and we'll take you through a validated questionnaire that will speak to the impact that menopause is having on your life at this particular point and which areas you might need some help in.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Second part of the call will take you through goal settings so we you know exactly where you want to go, so you know what the impact assessment tells you where you are, we'll take you through goal settings so you know what you want to achieve, we'll talk about what's already working for you so you don't throw things out, and then we'll give you some tips as to where you can improve things so that you can move forward.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: So within 45 minutes, you will walk out with a plan to move forward.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you then decide you want to work with us further than that, amazing, we'd love to have you.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, if you get enough from that call, that is also amazing, and we will be happy to have helped.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, to sign up for that, it's impact.fabulousbeyond40.com, and we will stick that URL in the show notes as well.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, just a reminder then before we sign off, hunger's not an emergency, it's just a signal, it doesn't mean that you have to eat.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: But if you choose to, then choose the right fuels for your body and your brain will thank you for it.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, a couple of final calls to action, then share this episode if you know anybody who you think might be interested in it.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Try one of the snack swaps that Julie was talking about earlier or book in that MIA session.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean missing in action, it means menopause and assessment.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we've been coaches James and Julie of Fabulous Beyond 40.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Reminding you to stay strong and stay fabulous until we see you next time.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.