How Hormones & The MENOPAUSE trigger binge-eating

 The changes a woman goes through in menopause are arguably as dramatic and life changing as in adolescence. So, today, I talk about the emotional effects of the menopause. Because this is another thing that might lead to self destructive behaviours. 

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Citations
Articles by Shelley Treacher
A Story About Mood Swings. It's Not You, It's the Menopause!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, this is Shelly Treacher from Underground Confidence. Today I'll be talking about the emotional effects of the menopause. Because this is another thing that could lead you to comfort eating. First, I want to share this comment with you. I've been asked to help with how to recover for real and for good. This person says, I can stay on a plan for a couple of months and then my emotions overwhelm me, and I cave to the comfort of overeating. Can you relate to this? I'm imagining that the majority of you are at least perimenopausal, if not menopausal or postmenopausal women. I could be wrong about this, so please let me know if you're in any other category. I would love to know what you might be dealing with that I can possibly help with. But if you are perimenopausal or menopausal and you weren't much of a comfort eater before, you may now know what this person is talking about. This is a typical pattern for anyone who is a comfort eater and can be tricky for most of us at some time, but in menopause or perimenopause, we get an extra dose of hormone-induced emotion. At the same time as our bodies grow to find it harder to lose weight. So this is another area of life that needs to be understood in terms of comfort eating. I've read somewhere that the changes a woman goes through in menopause are arguably as dramatic and life-changing as in adolescence. And I can certainly testify that this has indeed felt true to me. At the beginning of January 2020, I had my first article published in an international magazine, Better After 50. It was a light-hearted look at the realization that the anxiety and the mood swings that I had been feeling were caused by the menopause. Just before COVID struck, I began experiencing low moods and anxiety attacks. It's only now that I look back, almost two years later, now that I've had hormone tests that seem to confirm that I have actually been through the menopause, that I can see that I have been going through quite a dramatic change. As I said in the article, perimenopausal hormonal mood surges are insidious. The tricky thing about the menopause is that you just don't really know that this might be what's causing your sudden irritability, crippling anxiety, or bouts of depression. Because let's face it, there are a million reasons why that might be happening. From childhood trauma effects to the stress of everyday life, and with the experiences we've all been going through during COVID, it would be really surprising if any of us have not been extra moody lately. But as I said in the article, the moods didn't announce themselves as something that had changed in my body. It just felt like it had always been this way. Nobody tells you that you're going through something specific when you go through the perimenopause or the menopause. It's hard to know what your moods are really caused by, especially with this in the mix. And you can start to question your sanity. When I started feeling these bouts of emotion, I just accepted it as part of my life. With what I teach here about staying with emotion and being curious about discomfort, you can imagine that it just seemed normal to me. But as my moods came on more frequently, more intensely and more suddenly, like I said in the article, I began to wonder whether I'd ever been any different. It's like a personal form of gaslighting. In the article I spoke of this time in my life as a time when I realized that my growth in moodiness might have been caused by hormonal surges. On reflection, I can see that these moods gradually got worse in my life over a long perimenopause, which escalated towards the end of my menstrual life. The lack of education around the menopause and the stigma of talking about emotion, mental health, and women's problems, in my UK culture at least, make all of this so much harder for us to understand and to recover from. When I showed this article to my Facebook friends, so many women of my age came out of the woodwork to agree that they too were disturbed by how moody they had been lately. It was a relief to all of us that there was potentially a reason. So that's the first thing that I want to offer you. That you might be getting into arguments at your local supermarket, staying on the sofa with a glass of wine more often, or crying when you drop something, all of which I can relate to, because you have hormonal spikes or drops. The hormonal effects are real. Then once you understand that, your response needs to be all the same methods of recovery that are needed to overcome any reason for choosing to comfort eat. These all fall under the category of real self-care. In my article, I listed ten things that I did that led to me feeling better. I'm gonna list some of them here for you in a slightly adapted format, but there'll be a link to the article here if you also want to read what I actually did at the time of having an anxiety attack in my local supermarket. It is, as I say, a humorous article with a serious dose of compassion. So my second suggestion, once you know it's the menopause that you're dealing with, is to learn to understand and manage your symptoms. There are so many symptoms that you might experience in the menopause, from panic attacks to joint problems and everything else in between. Each woman can vary vastly from the other, and we're all unique. The oddest one I experience, and I still get this, is an itching in one specific part of my head. It's like an insect is crawling around in a small circle on my head. When I first got this, it was the middle of the night. I shot out of bed and examined my head. I saw nothing. When scratching and pulling up my head in various ways didn't get rid of the sensation, I covered my hair in oil. In the middle of the night, this measure seemed so extreme I felt sure that any insect on my head would be stopped dead in its tracks and then slide off with a comb. But I found nothing. The itching continued. I used various treatments over several days, the itching remained. And then suddenly it stopped. Seemingly unrelated to any treatment. I discovered that this kind of thing can be a nerve disturbance. You guessed it, caused when you have hormonal changes. As I say, I'll never be sure if this is the menopause, the same as all the other symptoms, but it is something I now live with occasionally and learn to manage. The way I cope with this symptom is in the same way as I have also coped with hot flushes, night sweats, insomnia, and heart palpitations. It's the fear of anxiety that these things bring up that can make them so much worse. So my advice is to accept them in the moment as they happen. And just as I've been trying to teach you to be as kind as possible to the part of you that may feel afraid, the part that might think that you're having a heart attack if you've been woken up by your heart beating as fast as if you've just had a scary dream, or you're embarrassed that you're red and sweating on a Zoom meeting, or you're stressed by the possibility of being tired the next day if you don't sleep. Bring yourself back to the present and look after yourself with great compassion for what you're going through. It is normal to at least half the population to go through this at some point. Allow yourself more than ever to follow what your body needs and to adapt your life to that need if you can. Myself, I frequently wake up 4 AM unable to sleep until 6 AM. I've adjusted my working hours to let me sleep in later. I'm lucky that I'm self employed and can do this fairly easily. I know some things can't be changed for you. But some can. And now is the right time to take that inventory. Sometimes I work at 4 AM and sometimes I read a book. But I sense into what it is I actually want to do at that time. Next, if there was ever a time to get up on drinking more water, doing breathing exercises, eating better, being more mobile, and taking more rest, this is it. These things literally affect every aspect of being human, but they especially have an effect on women's mental health in midlife. I know this isn't meaningful to you when the emotion comes and you need comfort from food. But think about it in terms of the benefits. Take time to consider all the ways you might feel if you did a tiny bit more movement, had more hydration, and took time out. Just like with any other form of overcoming a habit, take time to retrain your brain to look for the real gains. This works for me repeatedly. In the last couple of weeks I've got hooked on a decaf coffee in the morning. Do you remember when I gave up sugar? I also gave up caffeine because it made me feel too edgy. Well, I started noticing that the decaf was doing that too. I tried to ignore it for a while, which is natural. The decaf gave me comfort, but in the back of my mind I knew I wasn't really enjoying this edgy feeling I was getting. Eventually the overall way I want to feel won out. I believe this is because I focus on how my body feels frequently, and because I deliberately remind myself of the way I want to feel often too. I practice remembering it consciously. The more you practice this, the more it comes naturally. I just want to mention supplements and treatments at this point, because when it comes to the body and brain, not all things are cured with psychology. I'm not a nutritionist or a doctor, so I'm not going to recommend anything specific, but I do want to pass on a couple of things that I've experienced and that my clients have passed on. I haven't mentioned HRT here because I haven't yet considered taking it myself. I might on the strength that it has been shown to improve certain hereditary health conditions that can be severely challenged at this stage of life. I know that one of my clients would urge every woman to have yourself tested privately to see what hormones your body needs at this time. Personally, I've had a lot of success with some supplements, but also with acupuncture, as well as the methods that I've described in these podcasts. Know that just like any other trauma, your childhood or early life trauma can also be triggered by these hormone spikes and drops. I'll talk more about what a trauma trigger is next time, but just know that you might suddenly find yourself remembering past relationships or unresolved traumas when your mood drops, or as your irritation increases, your dreams might change as well. This is because the dramatic hormone changes can make you feel unsafe, which may remind you or unconscious of other times when you felt that way. So you really do need looking after at this time. Allow yourself to do what you want to do more and to find feeling safe. Follow the need for safety in your body. It's worth mentioning here also that feelings of loss may come up in the menopause. I spoke of loss last time, and just as I would have said then, allow time for how you feel, and a great deal of care. In my article, I focused on getting support for myself. You really need your girlfriends during the menopause. I reached out to my best friend, another menopausal woman, to a group of women I feel supported by, and I did a lot of research into the menopause and into self-empowerment. That's actually partly why I'm here today. With the support I received and my researching, what I found was a desire to speak about what I know helps. My research led me through understanding that hormonal drops and surges may cause anxiety and a lack of confidence. Instead of buckling under that anxiety, I found the support I needed to tap into what I really wanted to do, which was speak out. And so here we are. So be aware that menopause can also be transformational. It's said that the reason the menopause happens is that women in later life are so useful to society, that childbearing would only be an obstacle to that. I've got to say, I do feel that in my middle age I do appear to have found my use. That's not to say I wasn't helpful before, but there's a certain clarity, despite the hormonal brain fog, that seems to come with embracing later life. That's what I wish for you. So today I've talked about how the menopause can be a trigger to comfort eating because of the emotions you might experience as a result of hormone levels fluctuating. I talked about how we first need to recognise and take seriously that this is a dramatic change we're going through. Then I talked about managing your symptoms by staying in the present with them rather than worrying about the effects that they might have on you later. I also talked about following your body's cues for what you might need and readjusting your lifestyle to accommodate those needs. And to include more of what might help you to feel better. Then I talked of potentially re-experiencing trauma and unresolved problems during the menopause. And finally, I spoke of the menopause being potentially healing and transformative with good guidance and support. Thank you for listening today. If you want help with finding your confidence at this stage in your life, have a look at my latest programs. My Stop Come for Eating six-week course is almost full, and there are some places left on my calling in the one course for people who are single or unhappy in relationship. I also really welcome your questions and your comments. You can see that I thrive on introducing you to people in the beginning of the podcast, so please do tell me anything that's on your mind. Next week, I'll be talking about what it actually means when we say that we feel triggered. Thank you. This is Shelly Treacher from Underground Confidence. I'll see you next Wednesday.