Jackie Lynch:“Va Va Voom – the 10-day energy diet”
Part one!
We first came across Jackie at the initial Hot Flush (now Positive Pause) menopause event in June 2018. Jackie is a registered nutritionist and owns the WellWellWell clinic in London. She is very experienced and regularly contributes to the media on nutritional issues. Jackie is also an excellent presenter – despite my many years as a healthcare professional I am not particularly knowledgeable on nutritional topics but the session with her last summer was accessible, interesting, evidence-based and genuinely useful.
Some of Jackie’s points and tips were so useful that they turned my challenging menopause journey around immediately. The absolute best tip for me was to include some protein in every meal to help to stabilize my blood sugar levels and avoid the hunger crashes where you reach for the less healthy foods and start on a downward spiral for a few hours. Jackie is particularly good at giving you practical examples of what you can do to put the theory into action – in this case, to add a spoonful of nut butter to your bowl of porridge. It works! It really does! I am totally converted and even on the very worst mornings I will add some nuts to my breakfast, or shove a handful into my mouth as I run out of the door!
Having benefited so much from this hour-long talk, I decided that I would purchase the book she had written on tackling fatigue and energy loss at any age. True to form, the book is accessible and a pleasure to read. It is brilliantly designed with paragraphs broken up by clear headings, making it possible to flick through the book and cherry-pick the topics that interest you most.
There is an excellent and thorough questionnaire at the beginning, to help focus your mind and analyse exactly what issues you are having. This enables you to monitor your progress and see what behavioral changes are helping you.
The book goes on to analyse what may cause certain problems, including the “big picture” challenges such as pollution affecting your Vitamin C levels to the small details that are easy to change immediately, such as over-cooking vegetables reducing their vitamin C content by around 45%. The combination of knowledge and practical steps is a winning one.
When it comes to following the plan, there is advice on everything around preparation, shopping lists, recipes and the lifestyle changes that will back it up. Jackie is sensible and practical – there is no point having a perfect diet but not exercising, managing stress or sleeping. All these points are covered.
There are two, short-term plans to follow with a maintenance action plan to continue the benefits. The plans are challenging to an extent because they affect everything you eat and drink but it is laid out in detail so there is no difficulty in organizing yourself for it! I have already read the book from cover-to-cover and started to integrate some aspects of it into my life, such as having fibre and protein at every meal, and drinking red wine instead of white wine (due to the lower sugar content). Anyone who advises me which wine to drink is guaranteed my undying affection! How refreshingly positive to have a “do this” attitude rather than a “don’t do this” one ... I generally have a good diet but tweaking it here and there does show daily benefits.
I have now scheduled in a time in March to do the “Energizer plan”, after a ski break where my diet will be less positive and my stress levels extremely high (I am not a good skier) and I will report back with part two after this. I intend to keep a diary of my progress and my symptoms so that anyone interested will be able to see exactly how this excellent book pans out in a real-life scenario.
By Myra (#pelvicroar)