At the time I was undertaking PhD interviews with mid-life women and listening to their stories about their ‘healthy ageing’. Many of their stories sounded familiar. Low energy, worsening moods, lack of sleep and for some, weight gain. As well, most of us weren’t getting the long-term relief from supplements and medications, such as menopause hormone therapy and endless supplements. Even though I was a university lecturer and experienced nutrition and exercise practitioner at the time, I had no answer to reducing my symptoms.
I didn’t feel like “me” and with no relief long-term from HRT and supplements, I decided with my knowledge of physiology and lifestyle strategies that have come out of a new area of research called ‘epigenetics’, I had to figure out how to “get back control of my menopause weight, health and wellbeing”.
So, I’ve put together the jigsaw of menopause and looked at every typical symptom and placed these up against scientifically evidenced lifestyle-change strategies that are specific to women in their menopause transition. This is because most other health, nutrition, exercise and lifestyle strategies take a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. This no longer works for us as we are in a completely different hormonal environment compared to younger women and males. As I solved each piece of the puzzle everything began to make so much sense. When I woke up one morning after sleeping all night, I was so ecstatic!
Using all my knowledge and experience as a health and exercise lecturer, I filled in the pieces that other health professionals couldn’t answer. As I embarked on this quest that I silently called “My Menopause Transformation” I came to the realisation that there were things that I had to change and even for me, this was the hardest aspect. What I began to understand as I worked through my women’s healthy ageing research was very simply, that the messages that women our age have received for years about how to eat, exercise and manage our health, no longer suit our changing hormonal environment as we transition into and through menopause – the end of our reproductive life-stage. As our reproductive hormones change, other hormones step-up their production to try and re-balance the internal environment and the increased activity of these other hormones, can send our sleep, hot flushes, night sweats, moods, cholesterol and liver function into chaos.
When I began to better understand the role that these other hormones have on our symptom and health chaos that arrives in menopause, I began to look at all the lifestyle solutions that I needed to put into place to reduce my symptoms as I transitioned through menopause.
“With this new knowledge, I slowly built a new tool box of daily lifestyle strategies to not only help me to readjust my body to match my menopause hormonal changes, but to break old in-grained lifestyle habits and create new ones for the next 30 years of living I still want to enjoy!”
All of these powerful strategies are what I have for you in both of the MyMT programmes – ‘Circuit Breaker’ for thinner women to break the circuit of their symptoms, and ‘Transform Me’ for larger women to lose their belly-fat. What a difference these strategies made – within a year my weight had dropped, but more importantly, my blood pressure, cholesterol and inflammatory markers were normal again. Even my Doctor was interested in what I had done to turn around my worsening health at this time of life!
If this sounds like you, then I want you to learn what to do too. After years as a leading educator of Personal Trainers and a practitioner of health and exercise promotion in New Zealand and Australia, I also know that health change is hard. So with ‘My Menopause Transformation’ (MyMT™), I have developed two 12-STEP Lifestyle Behaviour-Change Programmes . These contain the simple, easy to apply solutions in 6 online modules delivered over a 12 week period. You learn in your own time at your own pace, then what you do is put my strategies into action, fitting them around your day-to-day lifestyle.
Women in their mid-life often get ‘forgotten’ by those working in fitness, health and lifestyle change professions. Yet, women are living longer and as my PhD participants said, ‘we don’t want to age like our mothers.’ But to age healthily requires a change to our current lifestyle because the environment we are living in is not supportive of the health women need to aspire to as they age. As I have found, it can be a tough time knowing what to do during menopause and how to make the changes that matter when you still have work and family commitments as well. This is why I believe that education is the starting point for change. But so too is support, motivation, and having a step-by-step plan you can trust. My years spent pioneering the New Zealand personal training industry has taught me this! That’s why when you come on board, you also receive 3 months of complimentary coaching and support via my ‘coaching community’. That’s where you will find me nearly every day.
You can change your symptoms and your health during menopause without the need for HRT or a cocktail of medications and supplements. And if you are already on HRT or anti-depressants, you can get off these with your Doctor’s support and without a return to the worst of your symptoms, when you action the lifestyle changes I propose.
MyMT offers you the ‘how-to’ step-by-step plan to turn around your symptoms of menopause.
If you are overweight, as I was, then you need ‘Transform Me’ – a fantastic 12 week programme with all the information you need to reduce your menopause belly-fat.
If you aren’t over-weight, then I have ‘Circuit-Breaker’ for you, which again, teaches you how to reduce your menopause symptoms, turn around your sleep, your health and your happiness in this exciting 12 week programme.
Both programmes are on-line and all the information has taken me hours of research, so you can trust it. After years of being there for others, mid-life is YOUR TIME NOW.
MyMT™ has arrived to bring the topic of menopause out into the open. For too long it’s been a silent topic. I have developed both programmes to support you into your healthy future years, by firstly, turning around the internal inflammation and hormone chaos that menopause can cause and secondly, providing you with the support you need to get the results you want. It’s all discrete and all on-line. The information is in 6 modules which you access via the member-only sign-in on the website, and comes complete with extra information and motivation via my private coaching page on facebook. If you aren’t sleeping and if menopause symptoms are getting you down, then I look forward to meeting you.
Wendy Sweet [PhD] / MyMT™ Founder & Lifestyle Coach
