The Dr Louise Newson Podcast - 093 - The midlife method to losing weight and feeling great - Sam Rice and Dr Louise Newson

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

Food and health writer, Sam Rice joins Dr Louise Newson in this episode to discuss eating well in midlife. Sam tells of her unconventional route into nutrition and wellness, and how living in Bali inspired her to write the Midlife Kitchen with her good friend and best-selling author Mimi Spencer.   After the success of the Midlife Kitchen, Sam has recently published her follow up book, The Midlife Method, which supports women who have made the transition to healthier eating but struggle to shift the weight they would like to lose. She urges us to turn away from toxic diet cultures and worrying about our dress size, and focus more on our microbiomes, and having a healthy, happy gut.   Sam’s three top tips are: Think about the balance of food you’re eating, you don’t need to cut out whole groups of food, just focus on your complex carbs, lean proteins and healthy fats. In your regular exercise routines, don’t forget to include strength training with weights and resistance, as well as your cardio activities like walking or Zumba. Embrace eating with awareness. Give yourself permission to eat well and allow yourself to enjoy food. The Midlife Kitchen: Health Boosting Recipes for Midlife & Beyond http://www.amazon.co.uk/Midlife-Kitchen-health-boosting-recipes-midlife/dp/1784723185 The Midlife Method: How to Lose Weight & Look Great After 40 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Midlife-Method-weight-great-after/dp/147227893 Instagram: @midlifekitchen Blog: http://www.midlifemethod.co.uk 

Welcome to the Newsome Health Menopause podcast. I'm Dr Louise Newsome, a GP and menopause specialist, and I'm also the founder of the Menopause charity. In addition, I run the Newsome Health Menopause and Well-Being Clinic here in Stratford-upon-Avon. Today I'm very excited to introduce to you Sam Rice, who actually is in Singapore at the moment, so we're doing this remotely. And I've been liaise. with her for over a year now since I had her first book, The Midlife Kitchen. And so it'd be really exciting to talk to her about her journey and about her new book that's just, well, barely recently been published called The Midlife Method.

So welcome, Sam. Thanks for joining me. Hi, Louise. It's actually great to talk to you in real life because like you mentioned, we've been messaging and emailing for well over a year. And this is the first time we've actually had a conversation. So it's really exciting. Yeah, no, it's great. So tell me a bit about you and your background. That would be really interesting

just to set the scene if that's okay. Yeah, sure. So my background is not in health and nutrition, which always surprises people. And I think actually this kind of midlife reinvention is something that a lot of people get quite excited about because midlife is a time where you're rethinking quite a lot of things. And, you know, if you're not in a career that's progressing, it's a time to have a rethink. And that's certainly what happened to me. I'll sort of rewind a little bit. So back in 2012, I was living in Brighton. My husband and I were running actually a ski company, completely unrelated. And we decided that we really wanted to have a bit of a life change. And the kids were quite small at that point. And we thought, okay, we're running our own

business. Maybe we can reorganise things so that we can have sort of a year off, a year out, take the kids, do something exciting. And so we decided to go to. And so we decided to go to to Bali of all places. So we headed off thinking this is going to be a fun adventure for a year and we actually ended up staying for five years. Wow. Now, when I was not planned at all and thanks to the power of Skype, my husband found that he could run our business pretty much remotely. So that sort of enabled that to happen. But when we got to Bali, I was actually, what I had been doing is I had been retraining to be a wine writer and a wine buyer. And that's really how I'd sort of seen my next chapter of life. And I'd gone to Plumpton College just outside Brighton, studied wine, and it was all set

to go. And then we went to Bali, and there is no wine scene in Bali. No. So I had to sort of shelve that plan. But what they do have in Bali is a really fantastic health food scene. And so I got really inspired to change, just lead a healthier life, basically. I could see all these people around me. they were really into yoga, they were really into like looking after themselves and wellness is a big industry in Bali. And it was just really a whole new world. So I got into the healthy eating really as a consumer first of all. You know, I was going to these beautiful restaurants. There was a lot of, it was kind of at the start of that raw vegan phase where people were doing quite interesting things with plant foods. I mean, I'm not a vegan or even a vegetarian, but I was just

very excited to see all this different kind of food to what. I was used to. So that was the start of me trying to get my health under control. And then what happened was a really good friend of mine who I ended up writing the Midlife Kitchen with Mimi, Mimi, Mee Spencer, who has written several other books, including the fast diet, is her best known one with Michael Maseley. She came out, she's just a friend, our kids were at school together. And she came out to visit in 2016 and was equally blown away by this health food scene. And during the course of her, holiday there, we came up with the idea for the midlife kitchen, which was basically, in a nutshell, it was to try and produce a cookbook that was focused on optimum nutrition in midlife,

because we'd felt that as we sort of headed into our 40s and we felt like we wanted to make these changes, but we didn't really know where to look. And there weren't really any cookbooks on the shelves that were talking about midlife specifically. So the fact that your palate does change quite a bit as you get old. You need to crave different tastes and textures and the kind of foods that we were drawn to were changing. And our bodies needed help in different ways. You know, we needed to think more about the kinds of foods we're eating, eat more plant-based

food. So all of that came together in the midlife kitchen. And we did a lot of research around what kind of foods are good for you when we found a very inclusive, broadly plant-based diet was kind of the way to go. And the Midlife Kitchen came about. that did really, really well. And I just sort of thought to myself, you know, there's something in this midlife nutrition thing. It was right at the beginning of that transition where people stopped talking about middle age and they started talking about midlife. And there was suddenly that more

positive angle on being in midlife. And we really wanted to sort of embrace that idea and run with it. And fortunately, our publishers were on board, this kind of thing about being pro-aging rather than anti-aging. And that was really what we wanted to get across. And I think actually that ties in with your philosophy, doesn't it, of just being really positive about these changes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think midlife is an interesting term, isn't it? Because it's not being around forever. It's quite new and it's branded about. And I sometimes tie my mind, what does it mean? How do we know we're in the middle of our life? Of course we don't know at all, do we? And is it just a polite way of saying perimenopause and menopause? And it probably is actually. But then I always think about the

young women who are perimenopausal or menopausal who were in their 20s or 30s or 40s. But, you know, 20s and 30s still can be perimenopals and menopausal still have the same challenges as older women that they wouldn't think of themselves as midlife. So it's really hard. And also, actually, I want to stay as fit and well as I can when I'm in my 60s, as well as in my 50s, which I am at the moment, but in my 60s and 70s, and then I wouldn't say I'm midlife when I'm in my 70s, of course I wouldn't. Certainly, it's this whole sort of narrative really, isn't it, about it's not the end of your life because you're menopausal, which I think a lot of women have seen as in the past. And even now, people come to my clinic and say, well, I've been trying to battle through my symptoms. I've been existing rather than living. Every day, I think I'm going to get better. Or I'm going to get through it. And it's like, well, you'll never get through having low hormone levels. They will last forever. So I think, but this whole perception of anti-AIDS,

or sort of slowing down ageing, I think is really key, isn't it? Because I think when people talk about anti-aging, they think about having some Botox and, you know, fast-exirgery. They think about the physical, how they look on the outside and not on the inside. Yeah, absolutely. But it's not about inside. It's that whole inflammatory response that goes on as we get older. And it often can be accelerated by eating the wrong things as well. And it's so easy, certainly, as you know, in the UK.

I mean, it's staggering. We're the fifth or fourth, even, most of obese country in the world. I'm so embarrassed. I know. And the stats just keep getting worse and worse, don't you? And that's one of the things I do talk about. So the midlife method came about because the midlife kitchen was all about nutrition in midlife.

But I was just speaking to so many midlifers who bought the book and they were saying, you know, I really feel like I'm eating quite healthily. And I feel like I'm doing quite a lot of exercise. But this weight just keeps on accumulating. around them and I don't know really what to do. And of course we know hormones are involved and we know certain changes going on, but I really wanted to research that a bit more fully so that people could understand what was going on in their bodies. And then you can sort of plan the best holistic approach for dealing with that because it's not a question of just going on a diet

for three weeks to sort of drop a dress size. No, I think it's very different, isn't it? You know, this time of the year we're now in March, the papers will still be talking about your bikini body and there's lots of quick fixes that people can make but they're not going to last for long are they? And I always say I say in the book it's you know now we're not so much concerned about better booties as better microbiomes because it's lovely if you can look a bit better in your place. Fantastic. Who wouldn't want that? But actually we're talking about our health span and getting our weight to a healthy point such that we have those fit active healthy years ahead of us and we can enjoy doing what we want to do for longer.

So it's got to be holistic approach. It's got to be a long-term view because if you start in midlife punishing your body with really restrictive regimes and cutting out food groups, you might lose the weight, but you might also be damaging your health. And what's the point? Absolutely. And I think that's so key. When I was a medical student in the 80s, they just started doing gastric banding and operations and everyone thought this was the best thing for obesity, but these poor women, I don't know why it was usually women, well, I do know why probably because they were menopausal, but they would come back a few months later and their nails would be breaking, their hair would be splitting, they would be having headaches, just feeling dreadful, because they're

not getting the nutrients at all. And in the 80s, we didn't really think about the gut microbes either and how important they are. But I think your book's very interesting. So the midlife method is very different visually and also content to the midlife kitchen. And the midlife kitchen is a very beautifully photographed book with some amazing recipes for anyone that hasn't seen it. And a very simple recipe as well actually, which I think is really good when you're busy and there's options as well. We did want to make them really doable because the one thing I hear over and over again

is a lot of this kind of health food and health food cookbooks have a million ingredients and people just cannot be bothered to be soaking beans and doing this that and the other. So we have a thing in the book called The Midlife Manifesto, which is kind of our guiding principles for the book. And one of those was that they be very doable. So you can just open that book and you're like, yep, I can make that. Yeah. And it actually is, and I actually, I don't eat meat and I have three children and a husband

and they do eat meat. So I cook differently for them and for me. And well, two of my children have just got, or all three actually have just gone back to school. Which is lovely. But, you know, the last few months I've been cooking again for everyone. And the older two are teenagers. So it's like having three adults as well. So I'm constantly cooking different things, which is fine.

It's my choice not to eat meat, but to have something that's easy as well. And that will last as well. So a lot of your recipes I can do double and then they'll last. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's just say to be like leftovers is kind of money in the bank, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah, too, three. So make it more in the fridge.

Yeah. But the midlife method is interesting because it's a bit more. like a sort of text, but really, there's a lot of factual information and then you can see the research that you've done. And I think it's really key because you do touch on hormones, which obviously is music to my ears, but you also talk about exercise as well and also some narrative about, you know, the types of food to eat about the gut microbes, everything else because, you know, I think in the past we used to think as food is fuel and of course it's fuel. But then we've been sort of punishing ourselves with food, thinking about weight loss and everything else.

But actually, food should be pleasure, but it should be pleasure not just because we enjoy the taste, but actually it gives us freedom to have a really healthy life. And I think that's what I got out of the book, which I hope is something that you had hoped for as well, because I think it is really important that we see food in a much bigger picture and what it can do for us. And, you know, we do change. Our metabolism changes. But our enjoyment of food, but our enjoyment of food, should never change as we get older, should it? No, I mean, I always say that my main aim with the midlife method is to enable people to manage their weight through a love of food

and actually is a very food-focused book. So whereas a lot of diets are about don't eat this and don't eat that, this is very much about focus on all the amazing things that you can eat that are really delicious and satisfying. And, you know, the things that aren't so nutritious for you doesn't mean you can never eat those. It's a balance. So there is room for everything as long as most of the time you're eating the right things. And it doesn't have to be diet food, as people might associate. You know, it can be really gorgeous, healthy food, things that you

would look forward to eating. And I hope that when people pick up the book, like you say, it is a textbook in that sense, because I wanted to give everyone the background to why we tend to put on weight and midlife. So it's kind of like knowledge as power. Once you know what's going on, you can address those things. And that's why I wanted to speak to experts in their various fields about this, because although I'm a food writer and I do have a nutrition qualification, my main skill is recipe developing, developing healthy recipes. I'm not a hormone expert, which is why I spoke to you, because I wanted to have experts and I feel explaining why these things are important. And also, the other thing I'd like to say is that

that food is very, very, very important. But when it comes to your hormones, it's not an HART replacement. So there's a lot you can do with food. There's loads you can do with food. But if you're having very difficult time in your perimenopause, you do need to actually go and talk to someone like yourself and it may be that you have to go into hormone replacement therapy. And that might actually help you with the weight gain that you've been experiencing, perhaps. So it's not a substitute for that. It's another layer. Absolutely. And I think that's really important, Sam, to sort of reiterate because there are a lot of people out there saying that you can improve your symptoms with food. And actually, you know,

the menopause is about a hormone deficiency. And some people, obviously, who have spicy foods that trigger a hot flush, of course it makes sense to reduce spicy foods. But actually, the reason that they're having a hot flush is their estrogen deficiency. So even if they have a hot flush or not, they've still got an estrogen deficiency. So it's a reason. So it's a It's also looking at how food can help with your health. So whether you take HRT or not is a completely different conversation. Because, you know, if I take HRT, which clearly I do, fine. I still eat healthily.

If I don't take HRT, well, actually, I need to eat healthily because I've got this risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, dementia, which all can worsen if you don't eat properly. Yes. So actually, food is important whether you take HRT or not. And you're absolutely right. A lot of women push on weight. because their body is craving estrogen. And the fat cells are produced more

because they want to try and help by producing a really awful type of estrogen actually in fat cells. And you shouldn't really, you know, you can't really counteract that kind of weight gain just by simply cutting calories because you're not really getting to the root of the problem there. So what I wanted to do with the midlife method is say, this is an effective way to lose weight,

assuming that you don't need any medical interventions. And the way we can do that is by being very inclusive. A lot of weight loss programs tend to focus on things like cutting out carbs and cutting out food groups or eating within certain timeframes or what have you. And that can suit certain people's psychologies, but it's not necessarily the most sustainable way of doing it. And I do think that you do need a supply of complex carbs. within the context of a healthy balanced diet. And it does help to support your endocrine system

and all those things that are going on in the body. And it's not about reducing it to certain foods like, you know, if you eat broccoli, it's good for hormones. Or if you eat soy, it's good for hormones. They do have elements to them that can be beneficial. But really, it's a synergy of everything that you're eating that's important. So that you get the variety of the plant-based foods that you're balancing your macros. So you have some good carbs, but you also have plenty of healthy fats, and you have a decent amount of protein to support your muscle mass, et cetera, et cetera. So this all ties into it. And what I've tried to do in the book is say, this is all the kind of sciencey stuff. This is sort of what's going on. But actually, I've done all that thinking for

you, and I've put all that into the recipes, so that you don't really have to think about whether you're getting 30% protein in this or 20% fat in that. No one can live their in that way. And no one can be constantly counting calories either. So while calories are important to the weight loss equation, it's more about having a calorie awareness rather than a strict kind of calorie counting mentality. Yeah, which is so important because there are different types of calories, aren't there? If I had 100 calories of cashew nuts or 100 calories of mars bars, it's going to have different effects in my body. But there are a lot of people that starve themselves because they're so worried about the weight that they've put on,

which actually can make things worse as well. So what are your sort of successes there? What feedback have you had from women that have managed to either lose weight, not actually always lose weight? It's about changing the shape of their body as well. But what are people said that has really worked for them? Well, if people are really interested in this, they can go on my blog, which is midlife method.com.uk.

And there's a lady on there called Jodie, who has been my, I call her my Midlife Method guinea pig. because I really wanted a real life example that people could see someone doing it in real time and they're talking about the challenges and she's got, this lady has two teenage sons and she works full time. So she's a busy lady. And so the book contains a four-week plan. You don't have to do it that way, but if people like structure, then there's a four-week plan you can follow. And she did the four-week plan in January.

And every week I checked in with her and we did a blog post together. And she started off about a stone over where she wanted to be. And it took her two months to lose that stone. And I've just literally checked in with her. I did a blog post this week actually just to sort of catch up with her two months down the line. She's managed to keep that stone off. And she said the main takeaways that she had from it, the two main habits that have changed are meal planning.

So actually planning what she's going to eat. looking at the recipes on the book on a Sunday. She shares out the cooking with her sons and her husband, which I think is incredible. I mean, well done you. She actually got her teenage sons cooking from the book. And she said, not only does that mean that she eats healthily the whole way through the week

and she's got, you know, soups made for lunches and things like that, but it also is, there's more family harmony because they know what they're going to cook, they know when they're going to cook. And she said it's just sort of taking all the resentment out of her kitchen life. And the other thing she said that she took away was that she realized she was basically eating through sheer force of habit. Her portion size was too big. And actually she could be satisfied with less. And that's one of the things I talk about.

Say there are five elements of healthy eating that I talk about. One of which is the calorie awareness that I mentioned before. Another one is this volume control. Whereas if you think about just eating perhaps 20% less across the, the board, which is kind of an easier thing to do, you can retrain your body to be satisfied with less, and it has a really big impact. And she said she's actually, when she thinks back to it, she's astounded at the fact she would have, like, two thick slices of toast, slathered with butter, whereas now she can easily just have one and a scraping of butter. And it sounds like

a small thing, but I think she was just, had got into lots of habits and lazy ways of eating and was just eating more than she needed to. So that's just a couple of really small examples. I mean, there's been loads of other ladies who contacted me. And men, men are doing this, but it's usually because their wives are getting them to do it. So it's not a book specifically for women. I do talk about men in the book as well. So if there are any men listening, it's not just for the ladies. But, you know, I'm just having a lot of feedback to say, the main benefit with it is it doesn't feel like you're on a diet because even though the recipes are calorie controlled, because I've been quite careful to do that, you feel like you're eating proper

food in decent amounts and you're eating three proper meals a day. So it doesn't feel like you're depriving yourself and it doesn't feel like you're eating weird diet food. And I think that's really the recipe for success because it's a way of eating that you can sustain and you can carry on into the future. And once you've hit your sort of happy weight, I call it, whatever that is, and we're all different, but whatever your happy weight is, then it's a really easy thing to then maintain in the future. Once all those switches have flipped about volume control and eating with awareness and, you know, what foods are caloric? Which ones do I need to limit? Because quite often even healthy foods can be quite caloric. And it doesn't mean don't eat them. Of course you should

eat nuts. But you shouldn't be eating a whole bag of almonds every day, for example. You know, about understanding where your energy is coming from. And sometimes they say just little light bulb moments for people that can have a really big difference in how they eat going forward. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's so much pressure to lose weight, but lose weight quite quickly and just sort of have really quick wins. But you're absolutely right,

and it's adjusting so that you can continue because there's so many people, men and women, who do these yo-yo diets. And every time they're yo-yo, they actually, usually, a few kilograms more than their first weight, so they lose weight, great, goes back on. And then there's this mental turmoil that goes on. And then they spend their whole lives thinking about food. And, you know, I love food, but I don't want it to be taking up most of my life.

I've got the menopoles to think about, obviously. But I also, I'm very busy. So you're absolutely right. I plan my food. I know what I'm going to have for lunch and supper for the next two or three days. And often it's because I've made a big batch or I've made for the freezer. So it's just there. So if I'm hungry, the last thing I'll do is go and eat biscuit because it's an

empty canary in my mind. So I'll eat my supper slightly earlier if I'm hungry and then it will fuel me until the next day. Yeah. And that will come back to this idea that also I talk about a lot, which is eating with awareness. In another way, it's mindful eating, but sometimes people get a bit confused about mindful eating, what is that? So I prefer to call it eating with awareness. So all those things that you just mentioned about, you know, just grabbing that snack,

mindlessly or you know your meal time isn't that far off so just have a glass of water and dinner time will be around. Quite a lot of that mindless eating is just habitual and it's once you break those patterns of behaviour, that's really the key. And it's things we can all do if we're tuned into our appetite and tuned into what our body needs nutritionally and that's just, that's kind of just practice and repetition. And so that's why this book's called the Midlife Method, rather than the mid-life diet because I don't want it to be something that people do for two or three

weeks. I want it to be a process of change so that those kind of habits can become second nature and ingrained and you get to the point where that is just how you live your life and then the weight will naturally stabilise and stay at a level that you're happy with. Yeah, and I think that's so important and so true. And people can get very, their routine can change quite quickly and then their routine with food can change. And we're just hopefully in the UK coming out of such a horrendous time with COVID and lockdown and working from home. And I've read so many different reports about the weight gain that's happened across the country for children, for adults. And when you're not busy, food can fill up a gap, can't it? And I think the first lockdown,

we did a lot better with exercise and so forth, whereas this time people have just hacked off really and stressed and sad. And so, it's going to take quite a while for people to relan their eating habits, aren't now, I think. Yeah, it was interesting. So this book actually came out in December because traditionally, as you know, January is the month where people sort of jump on the healthy bandwagon. And say in publishing terms, weight management, weight loss books generally come out end of December, beginning of January. And mine did. But it was interesting because there was a very different pattern this year because as the book came out, the lockdown 3.0,

whatever they call it, in the UK, happened. And I think people are just like, oh, I'm not sure I can really focus on lifestyle change when we're just about to go back into lockdown. And fair enough, I mean, I think I would have been a bit like, I've just got to get through the day. So I totally get that. And actually, I wrote a piece of The Telegraph last week, which is kind of March is the New January, because everybody feels now that they're, you know, they do feel a bit more hopeful. They do feel like they can refocus on their health goals. you know, the kids, like you say, just gone back to schools. There's perhaps a little bit more leeway there to think about yourself and your own

sort of health objectives. And so it's actually been quite interesting with this book. It's sort of almost having another lease of life now in March as people sort of switch back. Which is so important. Absolutely. I think also there's a big narrative, and we've known this for a while, but thankfully the media are just learning or talking about it is about obesity is such a risk factor for mortality from COVID. We've known this for a while, but actually it's a real wake-up.

You know, none of us want to die, but none of us want to restrict other people because of COVID. So we have to take responsibility. I really feel, I mean, you know, you can argue that the government should take some responsibility, but we as individuals have to take responsibility for the obesity rates. And it's very easy to eat badly, and it's very cheap. You know, bad food doesn't cost much money. But actually good food can be cheap if you're clever with it as well. But it's actually re-learning, isn't it?

What you can turn into a meal with not much money and not too much effort. And certainly a lot of your recipes are not expensive recipes, are they? Not at all. And it's all very normal ingredients. There's nothing in there that's going to scare the horses. You know, you don't have to go to obscure health for your shops. It's all just carrots and tomatoes and, yeah, just things that you're going to find on the shelves. And I do think actually a lot of, there's a lot of this sort of time poor narrative

and there's a lot of this sort of, you know, it's too expensive to be healthy narrative. And I think quite often is that just blurring the picture a little bit? Is it really just an excuse not to sort of face up to this issue? Because it has to be faced up to. And I think the one thing that COVID has done is made it okay to talk about obesity in a health context. Because I think before it was always, if you talk about obesity, it was getting confused with fat shaming and all this kind of thing. And it's not that. You know, when I talk about obesity in the book, I'm just talking about it as a condition.

You know, for whatever reason people might find themselves obese and there can be lots of reasons for that. And they do need to be addressed. My book is quite a mainstream book. So it's for the likes of you and I, midlife women, who might want to drop a few pounds. But if you have more serious issues, there might be psychological reasons, anyone who's got an underlying medical condition or if they've had eating disorders in the past, they might just need additional help and support. And the government needs to make that support available. So it operates on two levels. And I did notice this week actually in the headlines that the government, or Boris,

had announced a £100 million obesity fund that was going to be made available for tackling the obesity crisis, which is great. They mentioned slimming schemes that. slightly had me worried. What form are these slimming schemes going to be? But I hope that they will consult with the right people and actually get some programs going that are going to be effective and do target the education side.

And don't just focus on gimmicks. No. It's a very fundamental issue and it needs to be tackled properly. So there is an opportunity to do that and there is a conversation happening about obesity now. which I think has to be had. Absolutely. And I think it's important, but, you know, as a healthcare professional, I had very little training for education about food and about nutrition,

about the health benefits of eating well. And sadly, it's not really changed over the last 30 years or so that I've been a doctor. And it's a real shame because it's a missed opportunity. You know, every single patient I see, I will ask them what their diets like. And they're quite shocked, actually, because we know from some study, we did even menopoles or women, only 24% were ever asked. about their nutrition or their exercise, which for me as a doctor, it's really important because you can't just look at one thing in isolation.

And it has such a knock-on effect to health generally. You know, we're talking about in the context of midlife weight gain, but in terms of eating, well, just generally for your overall health at whatever age you are, I would have thought it would need to be the starting point of most GP discussions. Absolutely. I mean, you know, obesity is now overtaken smoking is the communist cause for all cancers, which is quite scary. So there's a lot that needs to be done. And so certainly buying your book is a real starter.

So either the midlife kitchen or the midlife method or both of them actually are well worth having my bookcases. Well, I just hope it helps people to get over that midlife. You get stuck in that midlife rut with your weight and just don't know what to do. And I just want people to approach it in a really positive way. I just hate to think of women going off onto these crazy fan diets. And it just becomes so all-encompassing. It's such a toxic diet culture.

And I just want to turn away from that and say, you know, you just don't have to go down that road. Just embrace healthy eating. And not only, I mean, the book is called The Midlife Method, How to Lose Weight and Feel Great After 40. And the emphasis is as much on feeling great as losing weight. Yeah, brilliant. So thanks ever so much for your time today.

It's been really informative. Thanks, Sam. Thanks so much. Just before we end, could I just ask for three tips? So I always do a sort of three take-home tips, so you're not going to squirm out of that. So if I just ask for three tips for women who have, and men, who have listened to this and think, right, one of the first three things I can change to really go on the road to a healthier diet that might help or healthier food plan, if you like, that might help me lose weight.

Well, I suppose the first one, if we're talking about food, I would strongly. urge people to think about the balance of the food that they're eating. There's so much chat about restrictive diets and I really want to. I mean, of course if you're allergic or you have any kind of intolerance, you do have to be restrictive or for ethical reasons. But I would urge people to not just cut things out of their diet willy-nilly because they've read something that there are certain benefits. Generally speaking, for most people, having a healthy balanced diet with complex carbs, lean protein and healthy fats is the best way to go. So that's the first thing. I think exercise, I want to talk a little bit about exercise because that underpins all of this,

really. And I think a lot of people in midlife particularly miss a trick in the fact that they don't do any strength training. So I speak to a lot of midlife people and they are doing plenty of walking and, you know, it might be doing a Zumba class here and there, but they're not actually doing any strength work with weights or resistance. So that's another thing. And I think my third thing would be to just embrace the eating with awareness that we were talking about. Eating with awareness isn't about being picky and choosing certain foods over other foods. It's actually giving yourself permission to eat well. And that's, you need to give yourself permission to eat well. Allow yourself to enjoy food. Allow yourself to choose those foods that are going to nourish

body and actually make you feel fit and well. So I think these are my three kind of midlife method messages, I suppose. Brilliant. I think that's so important. And, you know, we are totally in control of what we eat. No one else can control us with that. So it's really important. We do take control. So thank you ever so much today, Sam. It's been great. Thank you. Thanks, Louise. Thanks so much for talking to me. For more information about the perimenopause and menopause, You can go to my website, menopausedoctor.com.uk, or you can download our free app called Balance, available through the App Store and Google Play.