The problem with being drawn into alluring diets promising quick weight loss is that they don’t work.

On average, weight loss attempts last four weeks for women and six weeks for men, and have a 98% fail rate!

While I’m not a fan of diets, I’m also aware that, if ‘nothing changes, nothing changes’, so what’s the answer?

My philosophy is an approach that takes into consideration the uniqueness of each woman, something that an off-the-shelf diet cannot do.

So to individualise a diet and lifestyle plan the following 3 factors need to be considered.

1. Your health goals.

While this may sound obvious a generic diet does not account for individual health needs or stages of life.

The women I work with are approaching menopause and have different nutritional needs than women in their 20s and 30s.

For example, estrogen has a protective effect against heart disease, and when our levels decline in menopause, our risk of heart disease increases to the same as men (1in 2 of us will die of heart disease a totally preventable lifestyle disease!).

So accounting for these risk factors plus individual conditions such as thyroid issues, low iron, or osteoporosis, means a thorough analysis is necessary.

Then there are the different menopause symptoms a woman may be experiencing and you now have a multi-factorial approach being required.

Hence why the latest Women’s Weekly ‘Lose 10kg in 10 weeks’ won’t work for most women in mid-life.

2. Your relationship with food.

Understanding the way you relate to food is imperative to creating a sustainable lifestyle that you enjoy.

We live in a society that is saturated with hyper-processed food that has been developed with the perfect amount of fat, sugar, and salt to keep you coming back for more.

This bliss point of processed foods hit the same part of the brain as drugs and alcohol, and creates a dopamine hit – no wonder we can’t stop at ONE square of chocolate or ONE chip!

I say moderation is hogwash!

Because we’re never talking about moderating broccoli are we???

In essence, we need to learn which foods trigger our taste buds and set up our environment accordingly.

And this is NOT about shaming or judging ourselves and saying we are weak-willed or lack self-discipline, it’s about understanding that almost NO-ONE can stop at one bite or one square of these lab-engineered foods that give us a dopamine hit.

For some of my clients is not keeping chocolate in the house (that’s me!) for others it’s the Smith’s chips, for others it’s alcohol.

3. Your life.

Taking into consideration your current situation, whether you’re at home most of the day, or not, your desire or lack of to be in the kitchen, kids, and partners, all need to be factored into the equation.

I work closely with my clients to individualise their plan so that we don’t rock the proverbial boat with family, or partners, with the strategic adjustments that we make.

This is why my starting point with all my clients is the meals and recipes they are already eating, we do NOT reinvent the wheel, we tweak what they are already doing.

With the knowledge of knowing and experiencing what works for you, you can create flexibility, so dieting and deprivation become a thing of the past.

Taking charge of your health and no longer being at the mercy of changing hormones is the key to easing into menopause.

If you like what you’re hearing then take advantage of my Menopause Assessment a complimentary 30-minute consult and we’ll talk about what a personalised diet & lifestyle plan looks like for you.

My Plant Protocol for Menopausal Weight Loss teaches women how to choose foods that are going to support their health in this season of life and help their body release unwanted weight.

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