Well, today, I’m giving you the 5 essential steps to make your efforts count.

Have you gained weight or been diagnosed with a chronic disease like diabetes,  high blood pressure, an auto-immune disorder or cancer?

Have you tried to make changes on your own but you can’t seem to get the traction to stick with it? Have you thought, ”It’s age, my metabolism, hormones, or (lack of) willpower.”?

While that last statement is partially true, it‘s almost like the opposite side of the “rose colored glasses” syndrome.
It’s that pessimistic view like waiting for the other shoe to drop. When that’s where you are, you can’t clearly see to discern what to do next.

And you’re likely not doing what you know (if you’re being really honest) works consistently or monitoring your actions here and now.

Recently, my client, Suzy (not her real name) shared her breakthrough:

“It wasn’t until I figured out that it was about (what) wellness (really meant to me) that I recommitted to change.” She told me.

She is now eating more whole food consistently and has lost 7 lbs after not being able to lose any weight for many months.

With this in mind, here are the 5 steps that can help you begin your journey:

1. Discern your goal:

What is the end-game? It needs to be bigger than fitting into the size 6 jeans sitting in the closet.
It needs to be more meaningful than what you will look like at the reunion.

What is that thing that you enjoy doing that you want to STILL be able to do . . . at age 80?!

Now I know I’m talking to some people that are only half that age. I’m asking anyway!

Expand your horizons and think about it.
Stark reality flash: You don’t get to choose when or how you’ll leave this earth.

Far too many people spend the last 5-15 years of life in pain and disabled. That could mean your kids changing your diapers or feeding you! How embarrassing!

But if you keep fit, eat right and exercise your brain, you’ll likely evade disability.
If you don’t want to think about life at 80 (or even 90!) that’s all the more reason to do it.

2. Discern your bigger why:

This is tied into but may not be directly related to #1 above.
Do you want to be able to go places & do things with the grandkids or great grandkids you don’t have yet?
What is that thing that, if you could do it then, would make the difference to you? Is it really about leaving ‘a legacy’ (money) to the kids & grandkids?

Or is it more about doing something meaningful while you’re still here? Travel? A humanitarian project? Something meaningful you could do WITH the grandkids or other family members? What is it that would speak to you on the deepest level?

You may need help to dig deep to discern these things. The answers to these questions don’t come easy. Continue to ponder these questions and expand your mind. The answers will come as you engage and define the questions better. A coaching conversation can help you discern your deepest desires.

Now that these first 2 questions are at least out there. . . you can look at some of the physical things that can begin to shift things.
The 3 things I’m going to mention are only a very basic starting point.

They each require long-term effort with constant monitoring to discern what’s working and what’s not. Then tweaking  and re-tweaking  to perfect the changes and keep progress going in the right direction. Again, where coaching can come in in a meaningful way.

3. Begin eating more whole food:

Fruits, veggies, grains, legumes. Whole food is the one thing that seems to be the common factor in areas of the world where people continue to live vibrantly as they age.

Whole food feeds both OUR bodies and our gut microbiome that makes most of the chemicals and hormones we need to thrive. Find some recipes here

4. Begin eating less animal products and processed foods:

How much change you have to make or how little you can get away with depends on many factors:
your age, current health status, genetics and more.

Often, if you’ve been diagnosed with a chronic condition, this change requires that you be extremely strict with it until you give your body a good chance to work at healing the problem.

You may be able to be less strict at some point in the future.

But you may need to look at it like dialing in the numbers of combination lock; (requiring that you be very exacting and strict) at least for now. Constant upgrading & tweaking to dial that last number in takes some work.

5. Move more:

With over 600 muscles in your body, it is designed for movement.

There is evidence to suggest that our hunter-gatherer ancestors spent as much as 16-20 hours per day hunting and gathering. They may have used up to 5,000 calories per day in the process. Compare this to your current lifestyle and you’ll see pretty plainly why we are so overweight.

But like everything else in life: recognize WHERE you are, SET your goal, and MOVE FORWARD each & every day.

Note that due to injuries and other issues you may have to adopt modified fitness goals, but you likely can do more than you think you can. (Be sure to check with your healthcare provider before starting).

So here you have a basic prescription for beginning to put some changes in place.

Keep asking the questions and keep digging to get to the important stuff.

It’s especially difficult to do this digging on your own. Until you discern the correct answers for you, you’re likely to continue to struggle.

Need some assistance? Set up a time to talk.

The post Wellness: The 5 Essential Steps to Make Your Efforts Count appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

By the time Monday came around (my birthday was on a Thursday), I was feeling just a bit bloated and sluggish.

So I returned my clean whole food plant-based eating.  In a couple of days I felt much better.

And I realized I should probably do a little cleanse before the holidays.

That got me thinking about you. And getting you to join me.

Many people throw their healthy eating habits out the window over the holidays.

The average American gains 7 or more lbs. Between Thanksgiving and New Years!

All that effort all year, wasted! Back to square #1.

You can change that for yourself this year by joining my 30-Day Wellness Challenge for the month of October.

Up the ‘ante’ on that healthy eating habit. Or, at least, take the first step.

Maybe you want to: 

• get a handle on that salt or sugar craving    
• address the mood swings    
• reduce your blood pressure or HbA1C    
• find simple answers to hot flashes  
• get some resolve with an ever-expanding midline 

The 30-Day Wellness Challenge will help you go into the holiday season with a fresh lease on your health. You’ll have a new level of awareness & confidence. It’ll be far easier to keep a healthy attitude through the holidays.

You’ll be much more likely to bring that yummy but healthy artichoke dip to the party instead of the cheese and mayo one!

And I’ll provide you with the recipe! It’s not on my website. ; )

30 Days of healthy eating. Simple clean whole food, cleansing smoothies, and tasty salad recipes in my e-book.

Learn the basic what and why of cleansing. 4 short lessons (audios) covering food, exercise, gut health, and your environment over the first week.

Get your questions answered. Meet other health conscious women. Live group Zoom meetings in the Facebook private group weekly. 

Challenges! Weekly workout challenges (competitive and noncompetitive divisions)!

Stay motivated. My texting service  will deliver diet, exercise & inspirational messages to you 3 times per week. 

And more.

The program runs October 4-November 3.

Registration starts on September 15, 2021. Guarantee your spot by contacting me now. 

The post Birthday Celebrations followed by Wellness Challenge appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

I wish I had found them sooner than I did. It would’ve saved a ton of aggravation. 

As women in our society, we tend to think we have no control over it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I hope you’re not one of THOSE women:

You know, the ones with all the symptoms, including threatening to string up their kids for insignificant things.

Can’t blame them. They’re at their wit’s end.

But too many of them are convinced they have no power over it.

They think they just have to suffer through in silence (or with screaming) until they get through it. And that’s just not true.

So today, let’s move beyond the complaining and suffering to some solutions.

I’m going to start with the solutions on the end of your fork.

Because it turns out that there are many foods that have phytoestrogens that will help us regulate hormones.

But there’s a big difference between the phytoestrogens in plants and the estrogens in animal-based foods.

The estrogens in animal-based foods (dairy, chicken, eggs, and more) behave like our own estrogen, only stronger. So they can have adverse effects.

As we move into perimenopause, we need compounds that gently bind to our estrogen receptors but have less estrogenic activity.
This decreases our perimenopause symptoms and also has a positive effect on other systems throughout the body. Phytoestrogens have a variety of positive effects systemically.  They even decrease the likelihood of hormone-related cancers.

So here are 5 foods that are high in phytoestrogens:

1. Legumes: Basically all beans but soy and whole soy products like tempeh and tofu are probably the most concentrated. Organic unsweetened soy milk is also a great source.
2. Nuts: Again, almost any kind of nuts
3. Seeds: especially flax seeds
4. Wheat berries: You can prepare wheat berries similarly to how you would prepare rice. They are nutty chewy alternative.
5. Pomegranates: Many fruits also have varying amounts of phytoestrogens. Pomegranates are one such fruit.

A couple of things to note here:

These products are great for everyone, even guys.

Men have estrogen and estrogen binding sites as well. Because of the way phytoestrogens bind to those sights, phytoestrogens are thought to be advantageous for men too.

This brings up another point: phytoestrogens are typically much better at helping us achieve balance. Prescription hormones, the alternative, may be too concentrated.

And there is very little concern that you can overdo any of the food-source phytoestrogens.

Getting 1-3 servings of these foods into your body on a daily basis can start to make a difference.

In my next blog article, I’ll address Xenoestrogens. They are chemicals in our environment that mimic estrogen and can have horrendous effects on our metabolism.

In the meantime, get in touch if I can help.

The post Take Control of Your Perimenopause Woes appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

But this time it was different.

For weeks before it was almost routine; 2:30 to nearly 6:00 am lying awake, agitated and profusely sweating. Knowing how exhausted I’d be all day because I couldn’t sleep. . .Every. . . single. . . night.

But all that had ended when I started on the bioidentical hormone creams weeks ago.

Indeed it was one of the main reasons I had consented to the hormones . . . 

Hormones that my medical doctor and colleague had convinced me were safe. . . 

Hormones that my research would later tell a different story about. . . 

Yet, here I was, wide awake again. But I wasn’t profusely sweating and I wasn’t agitated. Though I was anxious and scared.  . . at least I knew why. . . 

Over the past several weeks, the hormones had done the trick . . .the hot flashes were gone. . . I felt more even-keeled. . .I wasn’t blowing up at the kids over little things as much.

My brain & my memory were even working better. Gosh, I could even remember why I walked into a room!  

But now there was a new problem. . .the one that had me anxious and scared.

. . .I had gained 20 lbs. in the past 2 months! The result of the hormone cream I was using. 20 lbs. on my petite 5’4” body! At this rate, I’d weigh 200lbs. by year’s end. 

Images of ‘fat Leslie’ danced in my head. I know that sounds vain. But as someone who struggled, mostly successfully with her weight for her entire life; this was NOT an option I was willing to entertain! 

Add to that, the sluggishness I already felt and how much worse it would be. . .

And the joint aches I didn’t want. . .  the result of the excess weight. . . 

And the negative health consequences I knew being nearly double my ideal weight would likely bring. . .

There HAD to be a way I could resolve this without drugs. I resolved to start doing my research the next day. 

That research, over the next several weeks, led me to an understanding of the relationship between food, the gut and hormone balance. Then, as I instituted diet changes, and increased my exercise, the weight began to come off.

. . .My research revealed much. . .a lot of that, I won’t get into right now. . .

Just to say, it turns out that ‘minor side effects’ like weight gain are NOT less common with bioidentical hormones creams.

So eventually, I resolved the issues and put together a food & lifestyle-based approach to balancing hormones and addressing weight and chronic disease. 

A simple approach that’s easily adaptable to multiple health issues and body types.

Now I’m bringing that simple approach to my new Empowered Wellness Membership Program.

The new program is free till February 1st with no obligation. Check it out here:

The post Resolve Menopause Madness appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

In fact, weight gain during the peri-menopausal years is one of the most common complaints I hear as a health coach. My own story about conquering it and what I learned along the way has been one of my major inspirations for helping others.

So, today I want to look at the keto diet. Is a keto diet healthy or harmful for peri-menopausal weight-loss? It certainly IS a very popular answer.

The main features of a ketogenic diet are high-fat foods and veggies. In it’s purest form that’s it.

You restrict (or eliminate) starches, grains, and fruit. Many say berries are allowable but achieving true ketosis with berries usually means limiting them to a cup or less a day. Then you add lots of fat, meats with the fat left on it, dairy, coconut, avocado, eggs, and more; all to push your body to convert to using fat as a primary energy source instead of sugar.

A true keto diet also involves testing your urine several times per day to make sure you’re maintaining ketosis so your body will burn fat as its primary fuel.

And if you cheat, it usually takes about 2 days before you get back to a ketogenic state. That’s the price you pay for an additional piece of fruit or some crackers; two days of standing still!

My first question is a practical one: how long can you do that for?

Personally, the thought of giving up brown rice, winter squash, sweet potatoes and fruit would send me into a frenzy. Those are some of the healthiest foods on the planet. And some of my favorites as well.

As a reference point, Okinawans, who boast the highest percentage of healthy Centenarians (people who live to 100) in the world, get about 60-75% of their daily calorie intake from sweet potatoes! -Of course, they don’t add butter, sugar and other garbage to them!

Carbos are also comfort foods for many of us. And when you really look at it, it’s not the potato that’s the problem, it’s the company it keeps; the sour cream, butter, bacon bits and more that most typically add to it. But I digress, where talking about keto here.

After that, the next question is NOT “does it work?”

The REAL question is “What does it work for?”

The original discovery of the ketogenic was that it reversed epilepsy in children with seizure disorders. However, there are also reports in the literature of children dying from sudden cardiac death caused by selenium deficiency.

 It’s also been well-documented that the ketogenic diet is deficient in at least 17 different nutrients.

But does the fact that it can cure epilepsy in children make it a healthy way for a peri-menopausal woman to lose weight? Or a way to lose weight and fat at all?

Further, can you eat keto and maintain or improve hormones balance and have the energy you need to sustain yourself throughout the day?

And what are the long-term effects of a keto diet? Can it have a long-term positive effect on your health (like eating whole food plant-based can)?

It’s very difficult to maintain a ketogenic diet without eating animal products daily. This means eating high amounts of saturated fats with its negative effect on arterial health and heart function.

Since cardiovascular conditions are already the number one killer in our country already, you might consider:

Do you really want to go on a diet that can increase the chances of you having a heart attack or other adverse cardiac event even beyond what is typical?

And you might also want to be aware that low carb diets, in general, are linked to higher all-cause mortality rates. In other words, all things being equal, a person on a low carb diet is likely to die younger than a person not on a low carb diet.

High animal fat diets are also particularly toxic to the kidneys and the liver. They can also lead to gall stones and increase levels of inflammation in the body. And they are directly implicated in many forms of cancer.

Further, diets high in animal products make it more difficult for peri-menopausal women to maintain hormone balance since they are getting exogenous estrogen from those animal products.

Thus, peri-menopausal symptoms could worsen in some women on ketogenic diets.

So there may be safety, short-term, and long-term factors to consider. And it could make peri-menopause symptoms worse.

Now to the matter of losing weight and more importantly, losing fat weight.

Several studies have compared the fat and lean muscle loss on low-carb diets vs. low-calorie diets. The results might surprise you.

While people on low carb diets lose weight more quickly and perhaps even lose more total weight, it’s well-documented they also lose more lean muscle mass. The title of a 2015 study says it all:

“Calorie for Calorie, Dietary Fat Restriction Results in More Body Fat Loss than Carbohydrate Restriction in People with Obesity.”

My last consideration is about you, as a peri-menopausal woman, having the energy you want and need to make it through the day. The titles of these 2 studies tells it all:

“Blood ketones are directly related to fatigue and perceived effort during exercise in overweight adults adhering to low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss: a pilot study.” In other words: higher ketones in the blood yield higher fatigue levels.

And a more recent study reinforces this point:

“Low carbohydrate, high fat diet impairs exercise economy and negates the performance benefit from intensified training in elite race walkers.”

So, it appears that ketogenic diets also impair energy or, at least the energy needed for exercising.

So there you have it; some considerations to evaluate in regards to high fat, ketogenic diets.

Is there another diet you’d like to get some more factual information on? Comment below and I’ll blog about it soon.

The post The Keto Diet and Peri-Menopause: Healthy or Harmful? appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

“Why does (God/nature) put us through this?!”

“I’m ready to just kill him!” (spouse) and them (the kids). . . .

Red-faced, shirt soaked… .again! “Maybe I should just cancel ALL my clients & business meetings for the foreseeable future!? Oh, wait, I can’t, I have a business to run, people to serve & a family. . . “

“What was I calling him/her about?” “Why did I come into this room?” “Tell me that again. I didn’t quite follow that. The brain fog; again.” “Give me a sec.”

Above all: “Just make it go away!”

Your doctor has told you about ‘the options:’

First of all, your choices, to medicine’s understanding: Bio-identical hormone creams (made from plants) (BHT-bioidentical therapy) or pharmaceutical grade stuff made from pregnant mares’ pee (traditional hormone replacement therapy – HRT).

Seems like there was little choice in that, for me. But truth be told, I just took my doctor’s word… .that bio-identical hormones for peri-menopause would be safer and that they would work. Since the idea of ‘them’ impregnating a mare and collecting her pee so I could eat it in a pill nauseated me, the cream was really the ‘only’ choice. Besides, I’m the anti-drug, natural type.

I now know I could have made better choices; at least for me; choices that included neither of these options. Your choices are always your own in the end. I can’t blame anyone else for my folly. (I’ll tell you more about ‘alternative approaches’ in another article soon.)

I also know; as you soon will, about the risks of ‘bio-identicals’ or BHT.

So, over the next 2 months, my symptoms disappeared! Great! But wait! My clothes. . . they’re all too small! And what’s this!? The scale, it’s going up almost daily… .10 lbs. . . 15 lbs. . . .  20 lbs. heavier in just 2 months… not great! If I kept gaining weight at that rate, I’d be fatter than my mother ever was! (Excuse the irreverence; she’d be ok with it.)

So, (2 months & 20 lbs. later) I start my research! I tell myself, “Next time, I’ll do the research before I act. It was worth a try.” Now (as in today)… I’m not so sure it was. The positive thing that did come from this was the reinforcement of the understanding that what we think we know, and the truth are often two different things: especially in the realm of health & drugs.

Checking out references for ‘bio-identical hormones,’ ‘HRT’ and more:

So: Fast forward: several articles found. Now comes the love/hate part, getting through them! The dry writing bores me to tears but I’ve got to get through. I also know I have to read the entire article since the abstract may or may not arrive at a logical conclusion, the study methods may or may not be designed to draw the conclusions they do, there may be questions about the author’s ties to Big Pharma and more.

Since it’s estimated that less than 5% of medical journal articles represent well done, well-documented studies, sometimes it seems easier to throw all the articles in the air & just pick one to read & believe! But I know that’s no better than where I was before so I started my research! And I slog through & persist.

In order to not bore you tears with all the details, I’ll just summarize a couple of points:

(1) The Cochrane Collaborative (a non-profit whose mission is to do systematic reviews of studies and evaluate evidence in a non-biased way) concludes:

• There is data that is of ‘low to moderate’ quality that bioidentical hormone therapy (BHT) is more effective than placebo.
• There is evidence to suggest higher doses of BHT have more effect but that higher doses come with a higher risk of adverse events.
• No data is yet available regarding long term safety for the most serious risks of HRT: heart attack, stroke and breast cancer (see below for updated info on breast cancer).
• There is no good evidence to say that BHT is more effective than (traditional) HRT and the findings regarding adverse events are inconsistent.

(2) Several Journal articles told me a few things:

• The ‘safety’ of BHT seems to be based on the concept of ‘it’s from (safe) plants so it must be safer’. There is little real data to support this but also not a lot of good data to refute it.
• Some studies conclude that many of the ‘minor’ side effects attributed to traditional HRT, things like headaches, depression & my 20 lb. weight gain happen just as often with BHT.
• Until very recently there was little data about long term health effects. (see below regarding breast cancer).

(3) A study published in The Lancet in August 2019 (too late to help me with my decision but hopefully not you with yours) drew some interesting and scary conclusions.

This was a review of 58 studies involving 143,887 estrogen-positive breast cancer cases and 424,972 controls (without breast cancer) undertaken by The Collaborative Group on Hormone Functions in Breast Cancer in the UK and funded by Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council.

• There is a ‘small but significant’ increase in breast cancer rates from all types of hormone replacement therapy and the risk increases with increased time taking the drugs.
• Statistically speaking, the increased risk has amounted to approx.. 1 million additional cases of estrogen+ breast cancer in Western women since 1990!
• The relative rate of breast cancer for women on oral (traditional) HRT was calculated at 1.33. The relative rate for women using transdermal (Bioidentical cream) was 1.35! In English: a relative rate of 1.0 would represent no increase. A relative of 1.3 actually indicates a 30% increased rate! There was basically NO difference i the breast cancer rate for the 2 therapies!

So, there you have it: in a nutshell; Bio-identical creams have NOT been shown to be safer or more effective and are associated with the same increased rate of breast cancer as traditional HRT.

In my next post, I’ll review a few of the many natural things you can do to begin to regulate your hormones.

Update 2024

There has been significantly more information put forward about hormonal therapy in the past several years. Most of it seems to say that the drug are safer than what’s indicated above. However, I still have serious concerns as most medical/drug research is done by the pharmaceutical industry. They retain ownership of the data and only publish the data they choose to. (Do I hear the terms “bias” and “cherry-picking” here?) You can learn more about that in a book by John Abramson, MD.

The post Bio-Identical Hormones for Peri-Menopause? An Irreverent Look Back appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.

Hormone disruptors are pervasive in our environment and awareness of what they are and why they matter is the first step in avoiding them. Broadly speaking, hormone disruptors are any substance that can have an effect on our hormones. When people think of hormones, they usually think of menstrual cycles, pregnancy and menopause in women and maybe a couple function in men like muscular development and fertility. But we actually have many more hormones and they govern or have an influence on every function in our bodies. From the amount of water we retain (aldosterone) to our fight or flight response ( mainly cortisol) to the hormones that govern our internal daily clock, help us digest food and eliminate waste and more, our hormones play a critical role in our health and hormone disruptors in our environment are wreaking havoc on our bodies and minds.

Hormone disruptors act by occupying the site that a hormone would normally occupy on the cell membrane. Often they act like the the hormone itself, only super-charged; with more activity. They can sometimes bind more strongly to the cell membrane and exert influence for longer periods of time. They may be influencing far more functions than you think as well. Are you aware that most new mothers have detectable amounts of these substances in their breast milk?! Has anyone else besides me noticed that, in general more young men are losing more hair at a younger age than prior generations? (probably hormonally influenced) And dare I say it; young women seem to have more breast development than prior generations (probably also hormonally influenced). In addition, both boys and girls are going through puberty earlier, both men and women are having more problems with fertility. There is  also a connection between hormone disruptors and how much fat we are accumulating on our bodies. (That is not an excuse for all, just acknowledgement that it may make it worse.) All this and more can be due to the influence of hormone disruptors.
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While there are many kinds of substances that can act as hormone disruptors; from chemicals we use to clean with to pesticides, plastics and more, today I wanted to discuss plastics because I think these, overall, are the ones that we can most readily limit the influence of in our lives.

While most people are now aware of BPA (Bis-phenol A), a substance found in things from the linings of canned foods to dental fillings and the fact that it can have hormonal activity, (something I read about and asked my dentist about 15 years ago and was brushed off as crazy!)  it’s likely that other substances will be found to have a similar influence. With the increased awareness of BPA, companies are readily switching to other substances and many of these have not been studied. The solution? Use alternatives to plastic as much as possible. Since these substances can readily leech into your food, store food in glass containers. Use stainless steel or glass water bottles. Never cook in plastic or plastic lined containers. If you purchase prepare food in a plastic container, put in glass before putting it in the oven even if the container claims to be oven-safe.  I like to discourage people from microwaving foods but if you must microwave something, use a glass container. Do your best to purchase food wrapped and stored in substances other than plastic ideally or put them in another container until use if the product isn’t available that way. Another option is always to ‘let your money do the talking’ and not buy things packaged in plastic. And contacting companies to encourage change is always a great idea as well.

This article undoubted just scratches the surface. Got some great ideas or comments? I’d love to hear them

The post Are Hormones Making You Sick & Tired? Environmental Influences appeared first on Dr Leslie K. Empowered Wellness.