The mid-life health myths women should ignore, by a 52-year-old nutritionist

Being a nutritionist means people tend to make assumptions about how I live. They imagine my fridge is permanently filled with green vegetables, that I never eat dessert and that every meal has been carefully calculated to deliver the perfect combination of protein, fibre and micronutrients, but the reality is rather different. I’m 52 and I’ve worked in nutrition for more than 15 years, but the longer I’ve spent in this profession, the less interested I’ve become in following rigid health rules. I eat carbohydrates, I don’t fast for 16 hours; I don’t have a cupboard overflowing with supplements and I certainly don’t eat perfectly every day. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about my health; quite the opposite. In my fifties, I’m probably more conscious of my long-term health than I’ve ever been, but my priorities have changed. I’m thinking about protecting my muscles and bones, keeping my heart and brain healthy and making sure I have the strength and energy to live the life I want in my seventies and eighties. What I’ve stopped doing is confusing restriction with health. Midlife women are currently being subjected to an extraordinary number of rules about how we’re supposed to eat. We’re told when to eat, when not to eat, which foods cause inflammation, which foods supposedly “balance” our hormones and which supplements we need simply because we’ve reached a certain age. Some of that advice is sensible, some has been exaggerated beyond recognition and some simply isn’t supported by convincing evidence. These are the health rules I happily ignore. Shorts I don’t fast for 16 hours Intermittent fasting has become so closely associated with mid-life weight loss that many women assume they should automatically be doing it. I don’t. There are different approaches to time-restricted eating and emerging research around its potential metabolic benefits, but that doesn’t mean every woman needs to squeeze her meals into an eight-hour window. For me, the more important question is what you’re eating during the hours when you do eat. If a long fasting window means skipping a nutritious breakfast, struggling to consume enough protein during the day and arriving at dinner ravenous, I’m not convinced we’ve improved anything. I naturally leave around a 12-hour gap between dinner and breakfast because I don’t spend the evening grazing, but I’m not watching the clock waiting until a prescribed hour before I’m “allowed” to eat. If I’m hungry in the morning, I have breakfast. This becomes particularly important as we get older because maintaining muscle requires adequate nutrition, including sufficient protein. If fasting makes it harder for a woman to meet those needs, I would rather she focused on nourishing herself properly than congratulating herself for reaching hour 16. There is a world of difference between giving your digestive system a sensible overnight break and believing that the longer you can go without food, the healthier you must be. I haven’t given up carbohydrates If I had a pound for every woman who has told me she is “trying to be good” by avoiding carbohydrates, I could probably retire. Carbohydrates have somehow become shorthand for weight gain, particularly in mid-life. I think that’s partly because low-carb diets have been marketed so successfully, and because cutting carbohydrates can produce a fairly quick change on the scales, as the body uses stored glycogen and releases some of the water stored alongside it. For a woman already worried about changes to her weight and body shape during perimenopause, that can reinforce the idea that carbohydrates were the problem, when the reality is far more nuanced. After all, the category includes everything from lentils and oats to fruit, beans, brown rice and wholegrain bread. I eat all of those foods. Of course, there is a nutritional difference between a bowl of oats and a packet of biscuits, just as there is between an apple and a fizzy drink. Grouping them together simply because they contain carbohydrates makes very little sense. Wholefood sources of carbohydrate provide fibre, vitamins, minerals and energy, while foods such as beans, lentils and wholegrains are staples of some of the dietary patterns most consistently associated with good long-term health. The women I see who have dramatically reduced carbohydrates often tell me they initially feel virtuous, but many eventually find themselves tired, hungry and craving precisely the foods they’ve been trying to avoid. Instead of asking whether a food contains carbohydrates, I think about what else it brings to the plate. A slice of good wholegrain sourdough with eggs and avocado gives me something very different nutritionally from a slice of highly processed white bread covered in jam, despite both technically being “carbs”. Mid-life nutrition doesn’t need another food group to fear. ‘Whenever someone asks me which supplements they should take, I want to know what they’re eating first,’ writes Faye I don’t take handfuls of supplements The supplement industry has become extraordinarily good at convincing women that reaching mid-life creates an entirely new shopping list. There are supplements for menopause, sleep, stress, metabolism, cortisol, energy, skin, hair, bones and almost every other concern we might have in our forties and fifties. I use supplements selectively rather than automatically. Personally, I take zinc, magnesium and creatine. Magnesium has important roles in normal muscle and nerve function, while zinc supports normal immune function. Creatine is one I’m particularly interested in during mid-life because, alongside adequate protein and resistance training, it can support muscle strength and performance as preserving lean muscle becomes increasingly important with age. I prefer to get nutrients such as omega-3 from foods including oily fish rather than automatically taking another capsule. There are absolutely circumstances where supplementation is valuable, particularly when blood tests identify a deficiency or someone’s diet or health circumstances create a specific need. However, I don’t believe a shelf full of bottles is evidence that someone is taking their health seriously. Whenever someone asks me which supplements they should take, I want to know what they’re eating first. If you’re spending a fortune on powders while barely eating vegetables, getting very little fibre, sleeping five hours a night and consuming hardly any protein until dinner, supplements aren’t where I’d begin. Food gives us something pills can’t easily replicate: an enormously complex package of nutrients, fibre and bioactive compounds working together. I also don’t buy foods or supplements because they promise to “balance my hormones”. Hormones are enormously complex chemical messengers regulated by intricate systems throughout the body. No smoothie, seed mix or expensive powder can simply bring them all into perfect equilibrium. I would rather women spent their energy on the habits we know improve their mid-life health, such as strength training and a nutritious diet, than felt pressured to chase every new product promising to solve menopause. I don’t eat perfectly every day This is probably the rule people are most surprised to hear me break. I eat nutritious food most of the time because I genuinely enjoy it, but I also eat dessert, go out for dinner, have holidays and celebrate birthdays without mentally calculating how long it will take to “burn off” what I’ve eaten. I’ve become increasingly concerned by the anxiety I see around food, particularly among women who have spent decades moving from one diet to another. They describe themselves as “good” when they’ve eaten salad and “bad” when they’ve eaten cake. One indulgent meal becomes a reason to restrict the following day, which can create an exhausting cycle of overeating, guilt and compensation. I don’t want food to occupy that much emotional space in my life, and I don’t want it to for my clients either. A healthy diet is defined by what we do consistently over weeks, months and years, not by what we ate at somebody’s birthday dinner on Saturday night. If most of my meals contain vegetables, protein, fibre, healthy fats and minimally processed foods, I am not remotely concerned about the occasional piece of cake. In fact, being able to eat it, enjoy it and move on is part of what I consider a healthy relationship with food. I don’t exercise to earn my dinner Like many women of my generation, I grew up during an era when exercise was frequently presented as a way of cancelling out food. You ate too much, so you went for a run. You wanted dessert, so you needed to “earn” it, and I certainly absorbed some of that thinking myself. There were times when I’d go for a run after eating more than usual or mentally justify a meal because I’d exercised that day. Having run a marathon and completed triathlons, exercise has always been a big part of my life, but when I was younger I was much more interested in what it could do to the outside of my body than what it was doing for my future health. I don’t think about movement that way anymore. I’m more interested in longevity than being as tiny as possible. This means maintaining muscle, supporting my bones, keeping my heart healthy, preserving balance and mobility and having enough strength to remain independent as I age. That means resistance training has become increasingly important to me, alongside the movement I enjoy. I don’t use exercise as punishment for eating, because food and movement perform completely different jobs. Food nourishes me and exercise strengthens me; turning one into payment for the other creates a relationship with both that I don’t find particularly healthy. Faye James is an accredited nutritionist and author of ‘The Menopause Diet’, ‘Perimenopause Plan‘ and ‘High Protein 100+‘