“When I was a Les Mills Instructor in the Netherlands” messaged Tineke to me, “I wanted to always work harder and do something extra. Maybe to impress others? But I have come to the point that I don’t have to impress anybody but to just enjoy the moment as I do my exercise.
It was a hard lesson to learn, but now I’m much better at ‘living in the now’ and not putting so many expectations on myself. I didn’t understand how much menopause would affect my fitness and that how I exercised, would affect my weight gain. I stopped all higher intensity exercise until I was sleeping all night, thanks to you. Now every morning I walk and I do other body-weight exercises instead.
“Every morning when I wake up I now follow your routine and I’ve been changing my diet to suit your advice. I eat with my family and the thing is, even with the food changes I made, it never felt like a ‘diet’.
With moving to New Zealand from the Netherlands, I was having too many dairy products, so I reduced my milk intake and eat more avocado now as well as follow your principles for my nutrition in menopause.
The best advice however, was the timing of food especially at night. I have a wonderful sleep now. That was the best advice along with what you told me to change my exercise from what I was doing.
I am sending you two pictures. One taken in September, 2019 when I moved to New Zealand and the other taken recently. It is both me. But I feel and also look like a different person.
I was 86kg in the first photo and this morning I’m at 70kg. My joint pain is gone too as I followed your advice for reducing inflammation.
When my husband took this photo, I wanted to share it with you. I thought to myself, “Who would understand my happiness? And I thought of you.”
Tineke B., was from the Netherlands – now New Zealand.
When Tineke sent me this story, I asked her if I could share it with you all. She agreed. What I wanted to share was the change that she had in her beliefs about how to look after herself now that she is in her menopause transition. That’s what I love the most about her email to me.
As a busy working mother, she was exhausted. However, her beliefs about her exercise and nutrition were still ingrained from her time working as a fitness instructor. But back then she had oestrogen. In peri-menopause, she has less oestrogen production.
As such, there are numerous changes that occur to muscles and joints and following years of teaching exercise, her body was tight, tired and inflamed. This was making her menopause symptoms worse.
With menopause, comes changes to all of our cells and tissues, including muscles. The ability of these tissues to function, absorb and metabolize nutrients changes as well. Many of you may be experiencing gut changes, which makes nutrient absorption even more challenging, especially if you are doing a lot of heavy, intense exercise on more than 2 days per week, as Tineke was doing.
Our move towards post-menopause is a time when we can acquire inflammatory changes too. Once we understand this, then we can begin to change our daily routines and nutritional choices to allow our body to adjust to these changes.
It took me a long time to convince myself that when something isn’t working, it’s time to challenge our beliefs. Tineke was the same.
“The moment you change your beliefs, is the moment you rewrite the chemistry of your body” states Dr Lipton in his book.
As he mentions, “genes and DNA do not control our biology. Instead they are controlled by signals outside the cell, including energetic messages emanating from our thoughts. This means that the power to create a healthy, joyous life lies in our own hands, not our genetics. When we transform our thoughts and our beliefs about some of the things we do every day, we transform our lives.” [Bruce Lipton, Author: ‘The Biology of Belief’]
Thank you Tineke for believing in yourself and your power to ‘do things differently’ – and for agreeing to share your incredible journey with the MyMT™ community. You look strong, healthy and … transformed! I can feel your happiness from your photo.
The purpose of the MyMT™ programmes is to give you the knowledge and actionable steps, as well as the right problem-solving support, to take back control of your symptoms and your health or weight as you move through menopause. you achieve this through making small adjustments to your lifestyle.
When you’re ready, I would love you to join me via the My Menopause Transformation website.
