#2 Managing Menopause Workshop at the Dirt Diva’s MTB Festival in Aberfoyle with Kelly Ludwig

One of my clients, Susan Cameron, put us in touch with Leanne at Dirt Diva’s MTB and Gravel. With their annual festival planned for 8th and 9th June, we were invited (and delighted) to deliver our Managing Menopause workshop on Sunday afternoon.

A group of slightly tired (they’d ridden halfway round the Queen Elizabeth Forest) ladies joined us for a two part session focusing first on Behaviour Change: managing your menopause with me, then on Food and Mood: eating to beat your symptoms with Kelly.

Amongst the topics covered in my session, we looked at comfort zones shown in the diagram below. During menopause women often feel the changes they experience lead to a lack of motivation, raised anxiety, lowered confidence and self-esteem. Amongst group of ladies attending, whilst they had experienced these issues, they were working directly to combat them by attending the Dirt Diva’s Festival; challenging themselves by learning new skills and seeing the fun and opportunity in meeting new people and exercising outdoors.

Kelly’s session about Food and Mood: eat to beat your symptoms covered an array of information with my take home message about how our body regulates sugar. Kelly described our blood sugar level or blood glucose level as the amount of sugar in our blood. It needs to be kept within a certain range to remain healthy. When it spikes or drops, the body goes into a state of emergency activating the stress response. When the stress response is activated, the stress hormones cortisol & adrenaline are released. This stress response impacts every organ system in the body and with survival as a priority any process not relevant to helping you survive is relegated. That’s not good news for our hormones. Regulating oestrogen, progesterone & testosterone is put on the back burner which could lead to troublesome and typical menopause symptoms like low libido, PMS type symptoms, fat around the middle, increased appetite and acne.

If you want more information about behaviour change and endurance coaching contact me; vicky@the-sports-counsel.fitness; Kelly, https://www.facebook.com/kellyludwigcoaching/, or mountain biking; Dirt Divas, https://www.dirtdivasmtb.co.uk