How I feed my family as The Perimenopause Naturopath

Think eating well means cooking one meal for your family and something different for yourself? That’s a recipe for burnout.

If you’ve ever found yourself making one meal for your family and something completely different for yourself, just so you can eat “healthy,” this episode is going to change the way you think about food.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
•How to make one meal work for everyone - without being a short-order cook, without food battles, and without feeling like you’re eating salads on your own, 24/7 and missing out on yummy meals.
•How I handle picky eaters and sensory preferences (including what’s worked in my neurodivergent household).
•How to set up simple food systems - from meal planning to getting kids in the kitchen - so that dinner time feels easier, not harder.

SNEAK PEEK:
“There’s this idea that if you want to eat well - to support your hormones, balance blood sugar, and avoid creeping weight gain - you end up eating salads alone while your kids get their usual spag bol. That’s NOT how I do things.”

Eating well in perimenopause should fit into your life - not take it over. In this episode, I’m walking you through exactly how I make this work for my family (without stress or extra effort) and how you can do the same.

Hit play now to learn how you can eat in a way that supports your hormones, energy, and metabolism - without making separate meals or spending hours in the kitchen.

LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
•The Perimenopause Diet Episode
•Phytoestrogens Episode
•Soy Episode
•Episode with Jessica Donovan
•Join PerimenoGO → (Includes my Feeding Your Family guide as a bonus!)
•

Find out more about Sarah, her services and the Freebies mentioned in this episode at https://www.ThePerimenopauseNaturopath.com.au

• The Perimenopause Decoder is the ultimate guide to understanding if perimenopause hormone fluctuations are behind your changing mood, metabolism and energy after 40, what phase of perimenopause you're in, and how much longer you may be on this roller coaster for.
• For more, follow on Instagram at @theperimenopausenaturopath.

WORK WITH SARAH THE PERIMENOPAUSE NATUROPATH:

• PerimenoGO (because who wants to pause anyway?!) A self-guided program to help you reverse weight gain, boost energy, and reclaim your mood — without extreme diets or cutting carbs. Perfect for women who want a realistic plan that fits around kids, work, and actual life.
• The Chaos to Calm Method: A 1:1 personalised program for women who want a more personalised plan and support — especially if you’ve got 10kg+ to lose, other health issues, or feel like your body’s just stuck. Includes comprehensive blood testing and analysis, Metabolic Balance ...

Transcript

Feeding your family can sometimes feel like you're running a short-order kitchen. One meal for you, another for the kids, maybe something else for your partner. Suddenly, instead of nourishing yourself and your family, you're getting burnt out just trying to keep everyone fed, let alone nourished and happy.

I get it. I've definitely felt that way because I haven't always been the Perimenopause Naturopath and I haven't always known what I've known about nutrition, but I always try to look after us. Didn't necessarily have great cooking skills and was often on a super tight budget and honestly, like I said didn't have a great grasp of nutrition, so my older kids haven't always grown up a veggie-rich home But what if I told you that you don't have to cook separate meals just to eat well, especially during perimenopause?

What if the way that you feed yourself could actually work for the whole family without battles, without stress, and without you feeling like you're missing out? And that's exactly what I'm sharing in today's episode, how I feed my family as a Perimenopause Naturopath in a way that's simple, sustainable and works for real life.

I mean, I am a mom of four kids. I don't get much more real than that. So stay tuned to the end because I will be sharing how you can get a copy of my feeding your family guide, where I break this down even further. So you can really make changes at home without overwhelming and with getting buy-in from everyone else there.

If we haven't met, hi, I'm Sarah, the Perimenopause Naturopath, and I've helped hundreds of women navigate perimenopause with confidence to feel great in their bodies and reclaim their mood and energy. So if you're over 40 and feeling like you're changing hormones are hijacking your mood, energy, and weight, and you want to change that in a holistic way, then this is the place for you because each episode I share with you my views on what is happening in your body.

 Why you're feeling the way you are and how you can change that with actionable advice to help you move from chaos to calm and feel more comfortable in your body. So welcome friends to Episode Number 80 of the Chaos To Calm podcast. Today I'm sharing how I feed my family as the Perimenopause Naturopath.

So recently a wonderful woman I know through the homeschooling community, Allie, asked me, Sarah, how do you feed your family? How do you balance healthy eating with kids? And that question really stuck with me because I'm sure many of you feel like that or wondering or think, Oh, well, it's easy for her because she's a Nutritionist or a Naturopath or, or whatever.

And I know that lots of women feel like they have to choose between eating in a way that supports their health or keeping the family happy with their familiar meals. So, and of course, there's, with neurodivergent, we're a neurodivergent household, so I hear you, sensory issues, preferences, sometimes it's not like it's a choice, it's just how it is for children, but I am going to talk to you about that and how to tap into it and how I tap into that as a mum with four kids with different food preferences and profiles each, so yeah, there's often the idea that if you want to eat well, especially as a woman or in perimenopause that, and to support your hormones, balance your blood sugar, avoid the creeping weight game. Then, you're eating salads on your own.

You're cooking one meal for yourself, some poached chicken, broccoli, anyone and something totally different for your kids there as well. So yeah, let's say the kids get their usual bag bowl and you're over there with your bowl of greens and your steamed poached protein. Feeling really left out.

Well, that's not how I do things. It's not how I get my clients to do things either. Because eating well should really fit into your life, not take over. Or not be, make you be excluded from family life, festivities, celebrations, all of those things. So before I get into what I do, here are some things that I don't do.

I'm not a short-order cook. So everyone eats at least the same meal base or is offered the same meal and not small tweaks, but I will make sure that there's something, especially veggie-wise, that each person likes. I definitely don't label food as good or bad. I don't assign a moral value to it because it doesn't have one.

Eating chocolate doesn't make you bad and eating a salad doesn't make you good. We're just eating food. We're fueling our bodies. Some have more nutrients than others. And yeah, I don't do mealtime battles. I gave that up a long time ago. It's exhausting and I don't want to do it. So I don't force my kids to eat things they hate, but I also don't cater to every whim.

And I also keep trying and keep offering. So I teach my kids how to eat well, and I explain to them why, just like I do with my clients, I teach them why I'm asking them to do this thing. So, it makes it so much easier for them to take on something or try something when they understand what it's doing for them, what it's doing for their body.

And you can do this at any age, you can make it age-appropriate, for your kids. What you tell a four-year-old is going to be different to what you tell your 14-year-old, but it's definitely doable and achievable. And so I want them to understand their food choices and, things like how their brain is playing into it and their nutrient levels or, their biochemistry, how that's playing into their food choices.

And I really want them to have a healthy relationship with food and with their body as well. So hence my no good or bad foods. So let me first talk about my food philosophy, and how I built our plates. And yeah, I think this is important to understand my food philosophy before I start telling you about how I make things work day to day.

I'm just going to talk quickly about it today because I've covered it in an episode. My perimenopause diet episode. I will link that in the show notes there as well. So definitely check that out if you want to go deeper into it, but here's the short, quick version on my plate. I always include protein because, for lots of different reasons, but because it helps with my blood sugar balance keeps me full and it provides the building blocks for the cells in my body, that reason or benefit is no different for my kids, my husband, anyone.

We all need protein for those reasons, at least. Healthy fats for our hormone production, our brain function. Again, it helps with your blood sugar balance. They're anti inflammatory. All our cells are made with two layers of fats. So I have actually done a whole podcast episode on fats and I will link that in the show notes as well.

Veggies. So veggies are always on my plate for fiber. They're rich in micronutrients like vitamins and minerals and really great with microbiome, which is quintessentially important for our hormonal health especially through perimenopause as well. But also veggies and their fiber micronutrients and their impact on your gut health is really important for kids, men, to particularly kids and growing bodies because our microbiome creates many of our mood compounds and neurotransmitters.

So they're super important for all ages again there as well. And, there's so many different colours in veggies. They just bring so much brightness and joy to the plate when they're cooked well. And the other thing I make sure I have on my plate are phytestrogens. And their foods It's that rich in plant estrogen-like compounds and they help modulate or smooth out our hormone fluctuations in perimenopause.

Wonderful for us, whether we're in a low estrogen state or a high estrogen state, they help sort of level that out for us. And that's things like flax seeds soy. And beans and lentils and tempeh chickpeas, all those sorts of things. Again, I've done a whole episode on phytestrogens and how much I love them.

And I've also done one on soy as well, where I do cover off, my, I mean, spoiler, I feed it to my kids and I feed it to my boys and I feed it to my husband. So, yeah, I talked through all of that for you there as well. So have a listen to that. And it's linked in the show notes there as well, so that you can get more of an understanding of those phytestrogens.

Now, like for kids and men, the foundations are the same. Protein, fats, a lot of veggies. But I don't focus so much on the phytestrogens for them. If they're eating what I'm eating and, and the phytestrogens are like cooked in or part of the meal, that's fine. That's great. But it's not necessarily a priority for them as such.

So now, my food philosophy or my what my plate looks like. Let's talk about how I actually make this work. How do I maybe I should have named this episode how I get my kids to eat veggies. Maybe that's the problem that people have let me know in the comments I'd love to know what's what's the blocker or obstacle for you and I can maybe do another episode to help you with that there as well.

So I mentioned before I'm not a short order cook I don't do multiple meals at dinnertime. I do one base meal And go from there. So I how I work is in terms of offering the base meal and our jobs as mums, when our kids and babies are little, and it's no different as they get older, is to make the offer, to offer the food that's going to nourish and support their body and give them the, what it needs to grow and, and grow strong and function as it's meant to.

So, but we can also tailor it to their desires in terms of their preferences or sensory needs and that sort of thing. So, Yeah, I'm going to talk about that next, like finding what they like and really leaning into it. But let's say if I'm making a stir fry, I might have mine over cauliflower rice but they might have some noodles, maybe they're not gluten-free, so I can't, I'm a celiac.

I'm not going to eat them. Same meal, slight variation. Yeah. I've recently discovered like those frozen stir fry mixes of vegetables and the kids all like them. They'll happily eat everything that's in that and they're not going to pick through it. Otherwise, if like we're having a stir fry, I leave things nice and chunky.

They can pick out the ones they don't like and pick the veggies they do like. My husband and I, I'll eat second, like come through after them and we don't care what veggies that we eat from there. So that doesn't take any extra effort for me there. If we're having tacos, I'll put refried beans in the mince because that makes it go further and it doesn't cost me as much.

But also they'll get extra fibre. The beans are great for me, phytoestrogens, but also great for their microbiome. They don't mind the taste, the taco, homemade tacos, taco seasoning, or a nice, low like, well, no added stuff thing like mingle are really great there. And lovely flavours.

They don't know there's beans in there. I might put extra or more veggies on mine and skip the wrap, especially if it's not gluten-free. And might have like a burrito bowl, but the kids might have theirs in a wrap. I find if you put stuff in a wrap, you often get more compliance, or on a stick.

Like a kebab. And yeah, they might just have cheese, tomato, lettuce and guacamole or, whatever veg it is that they love. I often find that kids will love uncooked or raw veg a lot. I haven't done any research into why, but maybe it's the crunch, maybe it's the freshness or the taste. Like if you overcook the broccoli, it can taste like farts.

Maybe that's why. So yeah, so I just sort of adjust the meal and make sure, like if one kid, if we're having a roast and I know one kid doesn't like broccoli so much, but I know he really loves roast carrot and he's going to eat a lot of that. Then there are lots of roast carrots out there as well as broccoli and other things.

So there's always, at least one veg or way that they like it there. So that's, my next tip is about finding what they like and really leaning into that. So yeah, my eldest, he doesn't like cooked. veggies. He doesn't like them soft or mushy but he'll eat crunchy raw veg. So, he'll eat lots of carrot sticks or capsicum or a crisp, like a whole big plate if that's what's on the table.

Whereas the rest of us will eat the cooked veg there as well. So, it doesn't take me long to chop those veg and I might cook the same veg for us, but leave them raw for him. So and that's because he, chewing and hard textures and crunching helps him regulate his nervous system.

So maybe that's the same for your child. Maybe ask them, if there's something that they do like, why do you like it? Why does it feel in your mouth? What is it that you like about how that feels in your mouth? And then you can give them more of that, it gives them that same feeling, that same sensation.

So yeah, the way you serve the food matters as much as what I serve. So I tend to put food out sort of buffet style and everyone serves themselves. Like I do believe that it's very important for us to serve ourselves and not be served a portion and told to eat it all. It's definitely not a positive thing that most of us went through in our lives, but, Yeah, that is definitely better if they can serve themselves and be in charge of that.

And then, I tell them, you're going to have more of the protein, say more of the, more seconds, then they do need to have more vegetables with it. You don't get to just eat more meat or more fish and no veg with it. They know they have a plan. And we know how it goes there as well. So another thing I like to do is meal planning.

I've done a whole episode on meal planning, and it means that there's less decision fatigue. I'm less likely to, at the last minute, change my mind or buy food. But also everyone knows what's coming up. So it's on the board at the start of the week. And they like to know that they like to know what's for dinner.

They can just go and look at the board. I don't have to answer all the time. And if they know that they're all, it's not one of my favourites. I guess they're prepped for it, and they can decide to have a different or bigger lunch and maybe less for dinner. But yeah, when I'm planning, I also get their buy-in as well.

So, my next thing or tip that I do is to have my kids in the kitchen. It's definitely gives you fewer complaints. So if for the last over the more than 12 months each week, one of my kids cooks dinner for the family. So, it teaches them life skills. They'll leave home knowing how to cook, and cook from scratch.

They appreciate the effort that goes into meals and planning and thinking of something to cook. And they know how to build a balanced plate when they're thinking about something that they want to cook and say, all right, what's the vegetables you're going to have with that? Where's the protein-rich food?

So they understand the components of the meal in accordance with my philosophy and what the benefit is for those foods, for their body, and why they need them. And they definitely complain, don't complain about a meal that they've cooked themselves and the others are less likely to complain about it too.

And so meal planning and kids in the kitchen and that means that you're not cooking every night Or if you are like if your kids are younger and you need to help them, you've got company there as well. And although it feels hard and sometimes it's really messy at the start It's definitely worth the effort.

The juice is definitely worth the squeeze when it comes to that because just tonight before I filmed this podcast or recorded the podcast, my 18-year-old cooked me a beautiful fish curry. So, so lovely. I could do some jobs and do some other bits and pieces while they were cooking.

And I got to sit down and eat and then move on. So lovely. So yes, the investment in effort and cleaning up after them for many years is definitely worth it and paying off now. Now, one last thing, which kind of falls into maybe my food philosophy but also with how I do kids' meals and stuff is I get that they understand the blood sugar balance and Through their own experimentation and overindulging and lollies and other things at different times They understand what it feels like when you do too much them go too hard or drink too much soft drink and without a meal in front of it.

So, yeah, in my house, cubs don't get eaten alone, especially if they're refined cubs. So they will have some protein first. So they might come and tell me I'm going to eat this and here's my protein mom, they preempt me now, especially my 11-year-old, when she's selling me that she's going to eat something that she's bought with her own money.

So that's the thing to think about as well, when your kids get older and they get their own job, or maybe you give them pocket money and they have their own money to spend, they're gonna buy these things and we either have the opportunity to be part of it with them and help them understand what these foods are doing to their body or how to lessen or soften the blow of those foods on their body.

Or yeah, they'll just do it anyway without us being able to have that opportunity to help them support their own health there as well. So yeah, if my kids are having, lollies or chips or, those sorts of things, then they need to have some protein-rich food first. And that helps keep their blood sugar stable and smooth.

It out so it doesn't spike and crash, and then you avoid behaviour problems and meltdowns and all of that as well. And, you don't need to, I don't feel that that has to be a food fight and if they want to have it, that's fine. I do believe in bodily autonomy for my kids as well, I still have a role as a parent to help them, guide them and make their decisions around that and yeah that's one way that I do it as well with the sweets and the lollies and stuff like that It's not something I would buy or keep in the house all the time.

But if they're buying it, or we have them, I don't know, maybe they've been giving them, given them, then they understand that I want them to eat something that's protein-rich first. And that they know that they feel better when they do that as well. So, it's just the way that we do things and they understand why and that's fine.

Like I said, we didn't get there overnight. This has been persisting over time, lots of explanations, lots of conversations, lots of, oops, you didn't, that didn't happen the way that we wanted it to. Next time we'll do it a bit differently. Lots of reflection and review there as well, but mostly lots of education too.

So I feel like, educating yourself is really important and so that then you can educate your children and help them make great food choices and decisions and helps support their body to thrive as well. And I often say that to my clients that it's a ripple effect. And when you say yes to like learning more and looking after your body, everyone around you benefits there as well.

So yeah, if you, you're thinking, oh, well, I like the sound of that. I don't want to cook anymore, but I'm not sure I need some more guidance or structure. It is what I teach inside PerimenoGO. Inside the program, I'll show you how to eat in a way that supports your hormones, energy and metabolism without having to make separate meals or sacrifices.

That time with your family and eat on your own and feel lonely there as well. So there are lots of recipes in PerimenoGO and they're all really family-friendly really quick and easy as well. So that you don't have to spend hours in the kitchen, but I still get lots of tasty meals there as well. My kids love them when I ask my 11-year-old.

What are you gonna cook for dinner this week? Like it's your night on Tuesday night. What are you cooking? She says Mom, have you got any new PerimenoGO recipes? What can I cook from that? So, she likes them because they're easy and simple but tasty as well. So yeah, when you join PerimenoGO, you get my feeding your family guide as a bonus.

 I teach you in there how to make that one meal work for your family and include like things around guidance on portion sizes and what your kids and your partner need. And even some shop snacks that you can buy that are not horrific, that are great. And some recipes and things like that as well for you, like lunchbox fillers there as well.

So you don't have to buy, but you also don't have to make everything as well. Sometimes I think we get to those extremes. Well, if I'm going to be looking after my family, we're going to eat clean or eat healthy or any of those things. We think we have to make everything all on our own, but you don't necessarily have to do that either.

Yeah, it's not all or nothing. I think we're so, that's that real diet mindset. I know I've talked about it before. I talk about it a lot with my clients as well. Life isn't all or nothing. It doesn't have to be black or white. There were so many shades of grey in there before. So if you would like, nutrition plans and recipes and support to help implement this for yourself, but for your family as well have a look at www.theperimenopausenaturopath.com.au/perimenogo and there's more information about the program there. As I said, I'll drop the resources from today that I've mentioned today about my food philosophy or how I eat and how I encourage my family to eat below as well. And yeah, I just want to remind you to keep persisting, keep trying, and keep offering, because it can take more than 10 tries for your children to accept something new or a different vegetable or to like or taste it. So yeah, to even taste it, let alone eat it consistently. 

So keep trying, keep persisting, keep trying different things. Let them put their own way. Foods on their plate and maybe they need a different sauce or mayo or butter on them or something like that as well. Use those healthy fats to make your veggies really tasty there as well.

But yeah, that's how I feed my family as the Perimenopause Naturopath. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode if you found it helpful, please make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss future episodes. And if you have a minute, please do leave a review. It really helps more women find the podcast or be shown the podcast so that they can have the opportunity to transform their perimenopause experience as well.

So until next time, thank you again for sharing your time with me today. I truly appreciate it and keep transforming your perimenopause from chaos to calm.