Nutritionist Lisa Marie Bhattacharya arrived at my house last week to build me a nutritional plan, a new approach to this unfamiliar body. My resent crash course in menopause has left me reeling with the lash back of low estrogen: sleep disturbances, dry skin, malfunctioning body temperatures. I’m hot. I’m cold. I’m hot again. For the last 50 odd years I have skipped along blithely managing my health successfully with nutrition, exercise, and rest. I’m a fitness professional, it’s always been easy for me. But what has always worked before is no longer working. It’s like I’m in a foreign country in an unfamiliar car. There are medications to help with low estrogen, but they come with their own host of unsavoury side effects. I want to solve this with what I eat. Enter Lisa Marie.
I was nervous Lisa Marie would ask for the impossible, the inconceivable. Like giving up coffee. Or ditching my one beer with dinner. I prepared myself for the nutritional trenches of self-deprivation. Thankfully a gentle, gradual approach was proffered but she surprised me with other recommendations I hadn’t thought about. It felt like having an architect come and look at my house with renovation ideas that hadn’t occurred to me; a fresh, trained set of eyes to see things I couldn’t. It was empowering. Enlightening. Encouraging. There’s hope for this estrogen deprived vessel after all!
Shopping list printed, I shifted gears, switched up menus and will stay the course for her recommended 6 – 8 weeks. Then we will see if this foreign country called self feels more like home, albeit a different home. Have I given up coffee? Don’t be silly. But it’s less and I take it black now. Let the renovation begin.
