Don’t let ANYONE tell you these are the “normal” signs of aging! Now is the time to reclaim your life!

• Thinning hair?
• Tired all the time, and tired of being tired?
• Lost your libido?
• Weight creeping up more than you’d like,
  especially on your belly?
• Feel a little foggy?
• Too tired to exercise?
• Pains in your joints?

In a culture that worships at the altar of youth, what can a woman expect once she reaches her forties and fifties? Is it true that aging means gaining weight, lost libido, thinning hair, and increasing aches, pains and physical woes? Absolutely not! This can be a wonderful time of life, if women learn to take care of themselves as well as they’ve taken care of everyone else in the decades before.

Overworked, overwhelmed, overtired, over-committed, this can be the time when it all starts to unravel. The worst part is the authoritative voices, in doctors’ offices, in the news, on tv and in the movies, suggesting that this is how it’s supposed to be. It almost seems like we’re expected to just roll downhill from here. NOW is the time to reclaim your fabulous, vibrant, sexy, successful, fulfilling life!

Being this age does not have to mean a slow inevitable deterioration with increasing debilitating symptoms. And it certainly doesn’t mean the end of our sensuality or sexuality. It can be a time of great vitality, growth and new freedom. These are the years when lifestyle choices really pay out: the great ones and the not-so-good ones. It’s the time to make the changes that determine the quality of your life for the decades ahead. Decide what you want to change, educate yourself about the options, and get support. Don’t accept conventional wisdom about what can and can’t heal. Much more is possible than you think.

The most important issues at this age are healing the metabolism and balancing hormones. What worked in your 20s, when your body was still geared toward growth and reproduction, no longer works. Women who have been on and off diets and up and down the scale for a couple of decades are almost always insulin resistant. Many also have burned out their adrenals from a combination of chronic stress, too much caffeine and too little sleep. The good news is that we are incredibly resilient: all of this can be healed. To get help right now, either click on the Book Now button to the right and let’s get started.

I Can’t Lose Weight!
Women at this age often complain that they don’t eat much but seem to gain weight anyhow, and losing weight seems impossible. If that’s your experience, you are not wrong, but you probably have a damaged metabolism. Healing your metabolism involves identifying and eliminating food sensitivities; balancing protein, carbs and fat every time you eat, according to your current state; reducing your toxic load, including nicotine, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, refined sugars, and caffeine. And don’t depend on soy for protein. Soy suppresses the thyroid, causing further havoc with your hormones. By making consistently good choices you can heal your metabolism and become a more efficient fat-burner. We don’t get healthy by losing weight – we lose weight by getting healthy.

My Hormones Are Out of Whack!
Somewhere in their forties or fifties almost all women start to experience hormonal changes signaling the end of the reproductive years. Hormonal changes are responsible for many symptoms we associate with aging, including dryness, loss of flexibility, aching joints, thinning hair and plummeting libido. Instead of trying to replace estrogen directly, it’s better to lower cortisol, which is always in inverse relationship to estrogen (as testosterone is, for men). Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal glad in response to stress, and stress hormones take precedence over all other hormones, so if you are stressed, your calming and reproductive hormones drop. Lowering cortisol helps bring all your hormones back into alignment. You can do that by: getting more sleep, reducing caffeine, practicing stress management, and taking Phosphatidyl Serine, a naturally occurring phospholipid, which reduces the cortisol response. PS also improves cognitive function and has been shown to reduce age related declines in memory, including name recall. It also helps you lose belly fat. Therapeutic doses of VItamin C help repair the adrenals and lower cortisol levels. There are so many nutritional changes and supplements you can use that will support your healing in this process. I can help you find the right ones from the hundreds that are available, and make sure you get the quality and dosage of supplement that will actually work for you.

Sleep It Off
Want to look and feel younger, lose weight, have more energy, improve your immune system and your heart health? Get at least 8 hours of sleep a night! It’s a myth that you need less sleep as you age. Sleep is the precious time when our body does repair and rebuilding. It’s also the time we stop producing cortisol, so sleep contributes to hormonal balance as well.

Turn Yourself Upside Down
Hot flashes? Night sweats? One of the best things you can do is inversions. There are many reasons to do yoga during these years, but headstands and shoulder stands are truly stellar. Start with 10 breaths, and work up to a count of 100. Don’t do these without warming up first, and if you’ve never done them, you’ll want to find an experienced yoga instructor to help you. In the meantime, you can lie on the floor with your legs vertical, against a wall, and small pillow under your lower back.

Find Your Still Point
Mind-body techniques such as visualization and meditation help us find the calm in the center of the storm. Meditation doesn’t have to mean sitting in unmoving full lotus for an hour, nor does it mean not having any thoughts. There are many forms of meditation and you are bound to find one that suits you if you shop around. Many places, including my office, offer free classes, so compare styles and formats. And you can take a mini-vacation any time by simply taking a few deep breaths while thinking of something pleasurable, somewhere beautiful, or someone you love. To hear two examples of meditation that I teach and practice, click here. To find the next meditation class I am teaching, see the Events Calendar to the right.

Exercise Smarter, Not Harder
As we age, extended cardio is less effective for losing weight and maintaining health. You can lose more fat, support hormonal balance and increase energy by doing exercise “bursts.” Go all out for one minute and then let your heart rate return to normal. Repeat 3-8 times, 3 times a week, and you will produce more human growth hormone and testosterone, keys to lean muscle, and helpful for improved energy and libido. To get the best results in less than 20 minutes a week, and burst with no impact to your joints, I recommend the Xiser.

Make a Commitment to Yourself
Your forties, fifties and beyond can be a time of vibrant physical health, healthy sexuality and sensuality, and pleasure and delight in a full and active life. It all begins with making decisions that support you in thriving in your own wonderful life, and following through with them day by day. Ready to start now? Let me help you with an individualized program to heal your metabolism and rebalance your hormones. You don’t even know how much better you can feel!

Read my article, plus an interview with 2 of my wonderful clients, as featured in the The Times Herald Record on December 23, 2009.

Can Going Gluten Free Change Your Life?

Goodbye to Gluten: Two Who Feel ‘So Much Better’

printed in The Times Herald Record October 7. 2009

Why do so many women struggle with weight loss?  Our crazy culture puts so much value on being thin, and yet we keep getting fatter, with almost two thirds of women now overweight.  As obesity increases, so do a multitude of other health problems, from sleep and digestive issues to heart disease and cancer.

Too often women set a short term goal of losing weight, rather than a long term goal of improving health.  Yet losing weight is an inevitable result of getting healthy.  You will lose weight by getting healthy. You won’t get healthy by losing weight.

If you are tired of dieting, tired of feeling sick and tired, and on the verge of despair, take hope.  It is not your fault, and it is not a “normal part of aging” either.  It is possible to heal your metabolism, lose body fat, eliminate food cravings completely, and even reverse many chronic symptoms.

• Forget the old calories-in calories out model.  It doesn’t work, as experience has probably already shown you.  It may seem effective initially, but as our metabolism adapts to less food, we have to cut more calories and work out longer even to maintain our weight, while at the same time we feel increasingly stressed, irritable and deprived.  Metabolism is complex: it’s more like a chemistry lab than a bank ledger!

• Identify and eliminate hidden food sensitivities. This is essential!  Eating foods your body can’t tolerate causes systemic inflammation and excess cortisol, which tells your body to store fat, particularly around the belly.

• Lose your fear of fats. Studies show people lose weight by incorporating healthy fat into their diets.  Small amounts are essential to every process in your body.  Fat also helps you feel full longer.  Healthy sources include raw nuts and seeds (not peanuts), avocados, olive oil, chia, plus small amounts of butter from grass fed cows, and coconut milk or oil.

• Choose carbs wisely.  How you choose your carbs is key to getting healthy and losing weight. First, try to get most of your carbs from “real foods” rather than processed foods.  Then look at carbs as either starchy or non-starchy.  A little bit of starchy carbs every time you eat will help heal your metabolism, and provide needed fiber and nutrients. Examples are sweet potatoes, squash, cooked carrots, beets, peas, beans and most fruits.  Then load your plate with non-starchy carbs like greens, cukes, zukes, broccoli, etc.  They are alkalinizing, high in fiber, nutrient-dense, and slow stomach emptying time so you feel full longer.

• Get 8 hours of sleep. This may not seem like a weight loss strategy, but it’s an essential one.  Adequate, good quality sleep lowers stress hormones like cortisol, improves insulin sensitivity, and hormonally decreases your appetite.  When we are tired, we make poor decisions and fuel ourselves with caffeine and junk food.  I have seen many women break a weight plateau simply by increasing the number of hours they sleep.

• Don’t graze! If you eat every 2-3 hours, you’ll never have to burn fat!  Work towards balancing your meals so that you are eating every 4-6 hours. This raises your basal metabolic rate (the number of calories you burn at rest in 24 hours) and helps heal your metabolism.

• Try high intensity interval training (HIIT). Research proves short bursts of high intensity exercise are more effective than longer bouts of steady state exercise.  HIIT boosts human growth hormone, revs up your metabolism, and aids muscle mass. It also helps stabilize the hormone leptin, which controls appetite.  Go all out for 30-60 seconds and then rest for twice as long as your burst.  Do this 3-6 times a day, 3 times a week and you will be amazed at the results.  You can do HIIT without any special equipment by jumping rope, doing jumping jacks or sprinting.

Imagine waking each day feeling healthy, energized and confident.  Unflagging energy, sharpened mental focus and freedom from many of the symptoms of aging are possible, in fact quite natural, when you commit to getting healthy.  And it just happens to be the most effective way to lose weight!

© Fran Sussman 2009

Q:  What is the difference between a food sensitivity and a food intolerance?

A:  Here is how I define it (you may find other definitions elsewhere).

A food sensitivity is genetic. You are born with it, and it is lifelong. The only way to successfully address it is to completely eliminate the food from your diet. Some people find this hard to believe. They say “I don’t have any allergies” because they were not “symptomatic” in a way they recognize. A sensitivity is not the same thing as an allergy: it is a different kind of autoimmune response. Of course, many people ARE symptomatic their whole lives; they just don’t attribute the symptoms they’ve experienced to a food sensitivity, or they believe it is normal to feel “slightly crummy”, or have a few chronic health problems all the time.   (See the list below to see if you qualify.) Most people are astounded at how many things clear up once they identify and eliminate their food sensitivities. And most people only have one or two so it’s really not so hard.

A food intolerance comes about in one of two ways. Sometimes it’s from overdoing ingestion of a single food or food family, and our body just says “enough”!  More often it occurs as a secondary symptom of the food sensitivity. In other words, the food sensitivity causes damage to your intestinal tract. Every time you eat it, your body reacts as if it were being invaded by something toxic (which it is), and attacks. The battleground for that is the lining of your intestinal wall, which eventually becomes chronically inflamed, damaged, and may even have holes. This is what is known as “leaky gut”. Then, other food particles leak through those holes, and the body reacts to them as toxins as well, because we are not supposed to have undigested protein particles in our bloodstream. Your system becomes chronically hyper-vigilant and inflamed, causing it to be ever more reactive.  Eventually, if the damage is bad enough, it can begin to look like you are reactive to everything. However, if you identify and eliminate the primary food sensitivity, and do the work to heal the gut and the inflammation, you will soon be able to eat every thing BUT the primary sensitivity, without becoming symptomatic again.

In my practice, the two most common food sensitivities, by far, are gluten and casein (a protein in dairy).  Soy, corn, eggs and peanuts can also be problematic for some people.  

Symptoms caused by food sensitivities can include:
Chronic Fatigue, Lethargy, and Brain Fog.
Migraines and headaches.
Eczema, Psoriasis, and other skin rashes.
Joint Pain.  Body Aches.
Sinus Problems.
Asthma and other chronic respiratory problems.
Irritability.  Depression.  Anxiety.  Brain Fog.
Constipation and Diarrhea.  IBS.  Gas & Bloating.  GERD.  Acid Reflux
Anemia.
Acne.
Chronic Congestion or runny nose.
Dark circles under the eyes.
Growing Pains in kids, particularly behind the knees.