It’s the connections that make conferences worthwhile … let me tell you about Sandra Dubs, Wholefood Community Pioneer & Author of the Whole-food Community Cookbook …
Some of you lovely Australian women might have already come across Sandra Dubs. We were chatting together in the trade area of the conference as I finally had time to wander around looking at some of the exhibits after my presentations at the Australian Women’s Health & Fitness Summit in beautiful Melbourne, last weekend.
Sandra asked me what presentations I was doing. “I was presenting my Masterclass on Menopause for Fitness Professionals” I said casually.
“Have you heard of Sheryll Selman?” Sandra immediately asked. “Yes, I have her book.” I said. “She was one of the pioneer’s in this area. Do you know her?”
“Sure do” said Sandra – “She used to live here in Melbourne and I designed the recipes for her book on peri-menopause and menopause, but she has gone back to America now. It was menopause that really sealed the deal on a plant based diet for her too … and if you are into talking about menopause, then you need to look at the Blue Zones research too.”
I laughed. That was when I knew that Sandra and I were on the same page.
I told her that the Blue Zones healthy ageing research under-pinned the entire approach of my menopause transformation programme. Then I went on to explain that I came to this conclusion with my women’s healthy ageing research, because menopause is the gateway to our ageing and post-menopause years. What I was looking for was a template for healthy ageing, and the Blue Zones are the regions around the world where the secrets of longevity have been uncovered.
People living in Blue Zones cultures have uncovered the secrets of longevity.
As I said to the fitness professionals attending my session, we need to forget about the past and look forward into our future, but for women in menopause, it’s really important to un-do the inflammatory chaos that has been building up in our cells and tissues for decades, especially when it comes to our liver [my article on Liver Health is here]. 
That’s what the MyMT programmes teach women to do.
We are the first generation of women to go into menopause in the context of all the changing and conflicting messages around nutrition, exercise, health management and more, and in menopause, when we don’t change our approach to how we look after ourselves, then our symptoms become worse, especially our weight gain, sleepless nights and hot flushes. For many of us, we are stuck in our ways (as Paula was too) and we feel scared about changing how we look after ourselves or we don’t understand how. But in our changing hormonal environment, if we keep doing the same old things that we have always done, then it can become a cocktail of hormonal chaos, because many of these approaches are not designed for menopause.
As I was chatting to Sandra and telling her about MyMT and the 12 week programmes I have developed, which includes information on nutrition from women’s healthy ageing studies, she picked up one of her beautiful cookbooks to show me.
How fabulous. It’s full of beautiful recipes that are plant-based and I bought a copy, there and then. I shared her brown rice paella recipe with the hundreds of women in my coaching pages with her permission. In the 1990’s Sandra pioneered the wholefoods, plant-based cooking industry in Australia and explained to me that she was “just a foodie, who was passionate about food being our medicine.” She then went on to tell me that the catalyst for her, was experiencing lots of health problems and she knew that there had to be a better way to heal herself. So, she became interested in a plant-based diet and worked with the medical team at Monash University to help develop an elective on food as medicine for medical students in the 1990’s (I can’t imagine that happened at that time in New Zealand!).
Anyway, maybe you lovely Australian ladies already have one of Sandra’s cookbooks in your recipe cupboard? I hope so, because it fits in with many of the nutritional approaches that I promote in my 12 week programmes too.
I don’t know about you, but I became so confused about how to look after myself as my hormones changed. Many women I come across are equally confused too. That’s why it’s been my privilege to help them un-ravel this confusion when they come onto the lifestyle-change programmes. As I keep saying, menopause is the ‘gateway’ to the next phase of our life – our ageing. You don’t need lots of medications and supplements, you need to change your lifestyle to firstly, restore your hormonal health and secondly, to move into your new lifestyle to match the changes going on in your body during menopause.
When you have MyMT ™ by your side, you can be reassured that I’ve done the research, all you have to do is come on board. When you do, you’ll discover how to sleep all night, un-do the inflammation in your body that has been building up for decades and as you get towards the end of the programme, you will also get an entire learning module, about all the beautiful healthy ageing strategies that I’ve researched for you, from the fabulous Blue Zones research. I can’t wait to help you.
Wendy x
Wendy Sweet, PhD, is the Founder of MyMT ™ – these are 12 week lifestyle-change programmes which help women to restore their menopause mayhem naturally, with all content evidenced against women’s healthy ageing research.
