Let the Renovation Begin

Mary Letson, Owner Positively Fit Studio

Bowen Island Nutritionist Lisa Marie Bhattacharya arrived at my house last week to build me a nutritional plan, a new approach to this unfamiliar body.  My resent crash course in menopause has left me reeling with the lash back of low estrogen: sleep disturbances, dry skin, malfunctioning body temperatures.  I’m hot.  I’m cold.  I’m hot again.  For the last 50 odd years I have skipped along blithely managing my health successfully with nutrition, exercise, and rest.  I’m a fitness professional, it’s always been easy for me.  But what has always worked before is no longer working.   It’s like I’m in a foreign country in an unfamiliar car.  There are medications to help with low estrogen, but they come with their own host of unsavoury side effects.  I want to solve this with what I eat. Enter Lisa Marie.

I was nervous Lisa Marie would ask for the impossible, the inconceivable.  Like giving up coffee.  Or ditching my one beer with dinner.  I prepared myself for the nutritional trenches of self-deprivation.  Thankfully a gentle, gradual approach was proffered but she surprised me with other recommendations I hadn’t thought about.  It felt like having an architect come and look at my house with renovation ideas that hadn’t occurred to me; a fresh, trained set of eyes to see things I couldn’t. It was empowering.  Enlightening.  Encouraging.  There’s hope for this estrogen deprived vessel after all!

Shopping list printed, I shifted gears, switched up menus and will stay the course for her recommended 6 – 8 weeks.  Then we will see if this foreign country called self feels more like home, albeit a different home. Have I given up coffee?  Don’t be silly.  But it’s less and I take it black now.  Let the renovation begin.