The Nutrition Rules I Don’t Believe Anymore (Especially in Midlife)

Cleanses used to sound like a fresh start. Eating perfectly organic used to feel like doing it “right.” And generic meal plans used to seem like the answer.

After nearly 30 years in nutrition and cooking, I’m sharing a truth that might feel a little uncomfortable: a lot of popular wellness advice is not helping midlife women—it’s leaving them underfed, overwhelmed, and convinced they’re the problem, when the strategy is the problem.

In this episode, we break down the detox cleanse myth and why your body already has built-in systems doing that work every day. I also share why I moved away from “just tell me what to eat” meal plans and toward teaching real-life meal building—so you can look at your plate and know it works for your body, your preferences, and your actual schedule.

We also talk about calories and weight loss through a more complete midlife lens, including what the conversation around GLP-1 medications is revealing—and why sleep, stress, hormones, and muscle all matter if you want results that actually last.

From there, we get into fitness and metabolism in menopause: why cardio alone isn’t enough anymore, and how strength training supports bone health, stability, confidence, and a stronger metabolism as you age.

I also share my updated perspective on organic vs. non-organic food, and why perfection can quietly become a barrier to eating enough fruits, vegetables, and truly nourishing yourself consistently.

We wrap up with the principles I come back to again and again: simple cooking, growing what you can, paying attention to hunger, and practicing real self-compassion.

If this episode helped you take a breath and rethink things a little, make sure you’re subscribed, share it with a friend who feels stuck, and leave a quick review so more women can find Real Food Stories.

And I’d love to know—what’s one nutrition rule you’re ready to let go of?

Transcript

Welcome And Spring Mood Shift

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. How's everyone doing today? Well, we're in that messy middle, I'd say, of spring, right? I don't know where you live, but here in the Northeast, it's a little hormonal, to tell you the truth, right? We're in spring, but it's warm one day and cold one day and snowing one day and raining one day and sunny the next. And we're just kind of in it right now, which is a little stressful. I don't know if you feel this way, but we've had a long hard winter, and I am very much looking forward to some warm, sunny weather. It really does so much for me to help improve my mood and just my feeling of renewal and restarting in spring. I love having the April kind of restart. So I'm really looking forward to that, and I'm sure that you are too. Now, before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to also mention a little housekeeping. I want to talk about my well-nourished woman membership because I'm so excited about it. And April is going to be a big month. We're really going to start kicking things off. I've been sort of playing around with it a lot for the past couple of months. And full disclosure, I did have a surgery in December that sort of backtracked me a little bit, but but it's moving along, and I'm just trying to really figure things out. So it's so wonderful and great. And I am really excited about it. The membership is really a place where we can all go deeper with all of our midlife and menopausal stuff. What to eat, our food, our real life, our midlife health, cooking, and just the conversations we don't always have space for here or in social media land where everything feels a little surreal. Now, it's not about rules or perfection, right, at all. It's really about learning how to actually live in this way, in a way that feels sustainable. So if you're listening to this and thinking, yes, I want to gather with a group of like-minded women who can kind of get me and talk with some vulnerability and some truth. And this is maybe what you feel like you've been missing. I will link this in the show notes and just get ready for April. We're going to do some big kickoff stuff. I have cooking classes and office hours and QA's and just a lot of topics we're going to be diving into. And I'm really excited about it and hope you are too. So I will link that in the show notes. Okay. Now, today's episode is a little bit of a vulnerable one for me because I have been doing this work in the nutrition and cooking field for a very, very long time. I mean, like half my life, long time. And I have taught the classes, I have done cooking classes, I have done it all. I have worked with many, many clients. I have built programs and workshops and webinars. I've created meal plans. I have done all of it. And things have definitely changed over the years. And when you've been in a field like this for a while, something interesting happens. You start to realize that some of the things you once believed, like when I started out, for example, or at least just went along with because that's what everyone else was doing, some of those things just don't hold up anymore, right? The things I used to really believe strongly might not be the things that I subscribe to anymore. And it's not because I don't care. It's not because I wasn't trying to help or that, you know, a new trend has come along. It's just because nutrition and especially women's health has been so full of trends, so full of extremes, and so much oversimplification. So today I want to walk you through what I have changed my mind about over almost 30 years of being in the nutrition, wellness, and health field. And also what I haven't changed my mind about, what I what I will like die on my hill for. So, because these are some things that I just believe strongly now more than ever, that really have never gone away. So let's first talk about the things that I really used to subscribe to, and I'll tell you why when I talk about them. The first one was doing cleanses, like a spring cleanse or a fall cleanse or a winter cleanse. So there was a time when this word cleanse was everywhere, right? Juice cleanses, detox programs, detox teas, the idea that you needed to reset your body. I used to use the word reset a lot. And I like the word reset in a way. I mean, I like having sort of a resetting at certain times of the year, like now, like in the spring. But I used to use the word cleanse an awful lot. And I definitely just went along with it. I thought maybe it had a place. Maybe it helped people feel like they were starting fresh. But I don't really believe that anymore. Because your body is not waiting for a cleanse to start working. Cleanse sounds so antiseptic or that something's wrong with you. You're dirty and you need to get cleaned out. And it's just not the case. It already knows what to do. Your body, right? Your liver, your kidneys, they're doing their job every single day to help you detox and just keep yourself balanced. And what I've seen over time is that these cleanses often leave women feeling depleted, underfed, and thinking they've done something really good for themselves, when in reality, they've just really stressed their system. Now, I used to do cleanses, but not those radical detox, three days of juicing cleanses. But in any case, I used to call it a cleanse. And it was really just, you know, to kind of get back on track, but still, I don't like the word. So, really, because for what actually works is really much less dramatic. It's eating real food and it's eating real food consistently. It's about nourishing your body regularly, it's not swinging between extremes. That's the real reset. Right? Three days of just drinking juice is not going to do anything for you except make you miserable. I guarantee that. It's not going to help you reset anything. It's not going to help cleanse out your body. So consistency first. All right. The other thing I used to do quite a bit when I first got into the nutrition field way, way long ago, is I used to give out meal plans. Just generic meal plans. And I know why, because that's what people were asking me for. They feel helpful, they give you structure, they tell you exactly what to do, right? Just give me a meal plan. Just tell me what to eat, is what everybody always used to say to me. But here's what I've learned: generic meal plans don't teach you how to eat. They just teach you how to follow. And the second life gets busy, or you have to go out to dinner with your girlfriends, or you don't have the ingredients, or you're just not in the mood, or something in the meal plan is nothing that you like, or your husband doesn't like to eat that. And then it all starts to fall apart. And I used to see that a lot. It just would fall apart after a while. But people wanted plans. They wanted the tell me what to eat. But the truth is, your life doesn't fit into a template, right? So what I believe now is that women need to understand how to build meals for themselves around what they like to eat, not what I like to eat and what I think you should be eating, but what you like to eat. What I want women to know is how to look at a plate of food and say, okay, I've got protein, I've got fiber, I've got something satisfying here, and this works for me. Not for Heather, but for you. I also want women to know how to cook a few simple things that they actually like. We don't have to become gourmet rock stars in the kitchen, right? We just need to know a few simple basics. That's what gives you the freedom, not a rigid plan that I am telling you to follow. Okay, the next thing that I used to really push a lot harder than I do now is calories as the only focus. Now, calories are important. I have talked about this frequently in the last couple episodes when I've talked about GLP1s and how you lose weight on a GLP1. And really, the way you are losing weight on a GLP1 is that medication is turning off your hunger signals. And in turn, you are eating less food, which means you are reducing your calories, which means you are losing weight. That is how it works. But there was a time when everything came back to calories. And if you want to lose that weight and you want to keep it off, we have to add in a few other things now. So I still believe calories matter. I want to be really clear about that. But what I used to overlook is how incomplete that picture is, especially for women in midlife. We're sort of a whole different uh generation now. So you can't talk about metabolism without talking about muscle. You can't talk about weight without talking about sleep and your stress and your hormones. And what I see so often is women eating less and less and feeling worse and worse, low energy, frustration, feeling stuck. And what I believe now is that metabolism is something that you support through strength training, through eating enough, through consistency, not by constantly cutting back and hoping that that works. Because when you consistently just cut back on your calories and don't do the other work, like lift weights, talk about your sleep, your stress, you are just not doing yourself any favors. And it's really hard to maintain that. So that's where I've changed my tune in the last couple of years. My next thing that I don't totally subscribe to anymore is cardio as your main fitness strategy. Now, along with calories, this goes just right along with that. So for years, when we were younger, the message was just move more, do more cardio, burn more calories, take the spin class, take the boot class. And again, it's not that movement doesn't matter. Of course it does. But what I didn't emphasize enough back in the day was strength training. I just was thinking calories and movement. And now I feel the difference personally, and I see it in women I work with. Muscle changes everything. Because muscle, the more muscle you have, supports your metabolism. It supports your bones, your stability, and your confidence. The more muscle you have, the stronger your metabolism is. And that is everything when we are getting older. We want to maintain our muscle. This is not optional anymore. This is not like, yeah, look, go lift a couple of like two-pound weights. This is really a requirement and should be more the emphasis than the cardio. Go take walks, go ride your bike, go do whatever you want. That's great. But definitely add in some strength training. So if you've been stuck in that cycle of doing more and more cardio and not seeing results, it might not be about doing more. It might just be about doing something different. Okay. My fifth thing that I used to really latch on to back in the day was that everything, well, not everything, but organic eating. That almost everything should be organic on your plate. So this was a big one for me. I used to really subscribe to the idea that most of your food needed to be organic or local or perfectly sourced. And I know that there was a big movement. Oh, when was that? 10, 15 years ago, about just like local farmers and and and just local was the best. And listen, I am a huge proponent of gardening. I grow a lot of my vegetables in the summer, and I am here for it. But and I grow them organically. I value those things a lot. I like supporting local farmers. I like supporting just local. And if and if I can eat organic, that's great. I love growing my food. I love going to the farm stand. I love knowing where my food comes from. But what I've seen over time is that this can become just another layer of pressure, another way to feel like you're not doing it well enough. And for a lot of women, it actually becomes a barrier. They feel like if they can't do it perfectly, then they won't do it at all. And the bottom line is that what we know now is that it's more important to just eat your fruits and vegetables rather than focusing on organic versus non-organic. So what I believe now is that access and consistency and actually eating real food matters more than trying to be perfect with organic. You're never going to be perfect with organic, trust me. So if it's organic, great. If it's not, that's still great too. We cannot let perfection get in the way of actually nourishing ourselves. So I have let that go. I love to garden. And I tell people all the time: if you have an opportunity to even grow a pot of herbs on your deck, do that. It just tastes good. It tastes better. It's so great going into your garden and just picking a fresh tomato or some lettuce and snipping some herbs. There's something about it that really makes you feel connected to your food. But if you don't have the opportunity, that's okay too. As long as we're eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and good for you fiber and our protein and everything. Okay, so I've made my confession, gotten those out of the way. And you know what? The thing is, trends come and go all the time in the world of nutrition. I mean, you have, if you've heard of me speaking, you know that this is one of my small obsessions, is just calling out some of the wellness nonsense on social media, because there is a ton of it. And it's not going to go away anytime soon. I mean, it's just going to like start ramping up. So I feel like it's almost my job to like make sure that people know what's the truth out there. So for me, over the years, over my almost 28, almost 30 years of being in this field, I have had some core principles that have never left my side. Okay, that have I have never wavered with. So what do I believe now? What did I always believe? And if I had to bring it all together, it would look like this. I believe in cooking, first and foremost. Not complicated cooking, but knowing how to make real food for yourself. This is a life skill and it matters more than ever. We have to know how to cook our food. It doesn't have to be complicated, but simple, good tasting food because this is what keeps you coming back for more. This is what makes you motivated to eat healthy food, is when you know how to make it taste good. Not the restaurant, not somebody else, but you. You know you can go into your kitchen and cook some basics. Make a really great drizzle or dollop or sauce to go on your salmon. Okay, because we can't eat plain salmon every single day or plain grilled chicken and salad, right? We want to mix it up. So we have to be cooking. And I've always believed in that. I have been cooking in this field for, I like I said, half my life. So I still subscribe to it. Like I said before, I believe in growing some of your own food. If you can, even if it's a few herbs on your deck, even if it's just a small garden, there's something incredibly grounding about growing your own food. It feels so good to plant some vegetable seeds and watch them grow and then eat them. It is incredibly satisfying. The other thing I will always believe in is strength, strength training, building muscle, staying strong, supporting your body as you age, not just for the sake of weight loss or anything like that, but for so many other things. Strength and muscle support your bones. When we get older, we have to realize how to get up off of a chair. I mean, this takes our muscle. So I really, really do believe in the power of strength training. And I also believe that calories count, but they're not the only thing that counts, but they do count. And we can see that with what's going on with the GLP ones. Okay. If there's ever been proof that calories in, calories out, this is it. I also believe in tuning in to your hunger signals. Okay. I have always believed in this: that we have to get very aware of when we are hungry, if we are physically hungry versus emotionally hungry, and not ignoring it and not fearing hunger, right? Just understanding our hunger. I think this is absolutely key to helping you eat healthy and to helping you lose weight. All right. And maybe I think the most important thing that I have always believed in is compassion for yourself. And this one is not easy for so many people because so many of us women are used to dieting and beating ourselves up and getting confused. And there's so much noise out on the internet and so much conflicting advice. So many expectations placed on women, especially in midlife, that it's more than ever is it important to have some self-compassion. It is the foundation for everything. This is hard work, staying healthy, aging well, feeling energetic, getting good sleep, figuring out our hormones. It's hard work. And we have to be very, very easy on ourselves. And beating yourself up has never once helped. Not once. I guarantee that. So those are the things I am dying on my hill for that I always have that has sort of formed the base of what I do and how I do it. All right. So if you've been feeling like you have tried everything or like the rules keep changing, you're definitely not wrong. Right. Because some of my rules have changed over the years, but some of them have stayed exactly the same. Those are my grounding foundations. And I think the best answer is not to keep chasing the next trendy thing, because there's a million of those. It's to come back to what actually works. Those things that support your body, that fit into your life, that actually you can sustain and that feel good. And that's what I will always come back to here as well. Okay. I hope everyone has a great week. And think about what helps sustain you and what's always kind of been something that you have fallen back on. I'd love to hear from you. Have a great day, everybody.