This month’s ‘three things I love’ theme is menopause.

What can I possibly love about menopause you ask?

Well, no more periods is the big one, along with never having to worry about getting pregnant again!

The less than positive aspects are real too though. I won’t list all the symptoms related to menopause because you probably know about them. If not, check it out here.

My three recommendations this month are videos about some aspect of menopause. Weight gain, localized use of estrogen and strength training for hormonal balance.

Whether or not you are in menopause, you are long past it,  or even if you are man, there are things about this life stage for women we can all learn.

I chose these aspects to focus on because they are things I have some personal experience with. I am not a doctor or a nutritionist and I am sharing these in the hope of helping, not prescribing.

1. Gaining weight at menopause is extremely common. This is a short video about what to do about that. Yes Jillian Michaels is kind of obnoxious but she is pretty spot on in this video. You may hate her or love her (or maybe never heard of her !) but she has this advice about menopause and weight loss. Your body is no longer getting prepared every month to procreate. yay! But the downside is you need less calories than you did before – that process was metabolically costly. 🙁  The thing she doesn’t say is that her waist will thicken also when she goes through menopause – and that is a good enough trade off for never having a period again IMO.

 2. The title of this video is not good! The real  topic is what lack of estrogen after  menopause (a long period of our lives god willing!) does to the tissues of the Vulva and Urethra. You may or may not experience dryness.  Use of lubricants is a somewhat separate issue and one I might write about another time. It is a long video so you can fast forward to about 27:36  where this doctor really makes her case.

As we get older, we need to keep these tissues robust and topical estrogen is something you may talk to your doctor about.

3. Last one is a video about weight training for women. It is also kinda long so at 3:47 in the video is where Tyna Moore, ND, DC talks about seeing personal benefits of weight training.  My story is not the same as her’s but I have also really felt the personal benefits of strength training. I think it is super important for bone density and overall strength.

Let me know what your experience has been in the comments below!