The Perimenopause Show with Jennifer Woodward
Hey there, it's Jennifer Woodward, and welcome to The Perimenopause Show – the go-to spot for all things perimenopause. I'm on a mission to demystify this wild ride, sharing stories, laughs, and maybe a few eye-rolling moments. Whether you're knee-deep in hot flashes or just curious, we've got you covered. Expect real talk, expert guests, and a sprinkle of humor because, let's face it, we could all use a laugh during perimenopause. So, grab your favorite drink, get comfy, and let's navigate this rollercoaster together. This is The Perimenopause Show, where we're turning perimenopause into a conversation, not a crisis.
Learn how to gracefully sail through perimenopause with tips on diet, exercise, stress management, sleep, and supplements.
I upload new episode bi-weekly!
Reach out to me on my Instagram: @jennifer_woodward_wellness
The Perimenopause Show with Jennifer Woodward
Eating for Longevity in the Perimenopausal Phase with Nutrition Guru Marty Kendall
Ever wondered if there's a way to sail through perimenopause with your health intact? Well, wonder no more! Join me, Jennifer Woodward, as I bring on board Marty Kendall, an extraordinary engineer-turned-nutrition guru, to unlock the mysteries of food and metabolic health. We're not just talking aesthetics here; it's about nourishing your body for the long haul. Marty's own story, from fine-tuning his wife's Type 1 diabetes diet to his crusade for nutrient-dense eating, sets the stage for our deep dive into how the right foods can make all the difference in managing hormonal changes.
Now, let's get real about supplements and whole foods—can popping pills truly compare to the rich spectrum of nutrients from the earth's bounty? Marty and I tear into this debate with gusto, serving up truths about what your body genuinely craves to thrive. From the surprising power of seafood to the pitfalls of popular diets like veganism and keto, our conversation steers you toward a diverse, meaty, and vegetable-rich diet. It's about quality scores, not trend scores, and we're here to show you how to stock your plate for maximum satiety and health.
But let's not stop there; let's question the norms and raise the bar on nutrient intake. With an eye on the bliss point and government guidelines, we explore why exceeding the standard RDA leads to better satiety and stronger health. We also touch on how animals, like my pygmy goats and sheep, instinctively know what nutrients they need—hinting that we might just be able to do the same. For the woman navigating the rocky terrain of perimenopause, this episode is a beacon of hope, illuminating the path to optimal nutrition with the enlightening power of protein and potassium. Sit back, and let's unravel the wisdom of nutrient-dense diets together.
Hey, there, it's Jennifer Woodward, and welcome to the perimenopause show, the go-to spot for all things perimenopause. I'm on a mission to demystify this wild ride sharing stories, laughs and maybe a few eye rolling moments. Whether you're knee deep in hot flashes or just curious, we've got you covered. Expect real talk, expert guests and a sprinkle of humor, because, let's face it, we could all use a laugh during perimenopause. So grab your favorite drink, get comfy and let's navigate this rollercoaster together. This is the perimenopause show, where we're turning perimenopause into a conversation, not a crisis. Welcome back to the Perimenopause Show. I'm Jennifer Woodward and I am here today with kind of my new friend, marty Kendall. I mean, this is the second or third time we chatted, marty, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:Hey, Jennifer, really good to chat again. It was so much fun last time.
Speaker 1:Yes, it was, and I reached out to you because I have been following your work for years. You have this fascinating outlook on satiety and protein and minerals and it really speaks to me from a data standpoint. So, before we get into it, I'd love our listeners to learn a little bit more about you, because this was not your first job, right? Tell us about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm an engineer by training and happened to marry well married Monica, who has type 1 diabetes, and I just wanted to solve the question of how we could stabilize her blood sugars and reduce insulin dose and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And started there and just went down the rabbit hole when I realized nutrition is just a numbers game, we can quantify these things to achieve the goals we want. And you know, I quickly realized that the whole world isn't type one diabetic and doesn't need the same approach for type one diabetes. But it's been. How do we optimize our food choices for different goals? And it's been. Yeah, just it's fun.
Speaker 1:So fun, fun. And maybe we're not all type 1 diabetic or type 2 diabetic, but 88 of us are metabolically unhealthy.
Speaker 2:So the work you're doing now has profound implications for the world over yeah, I, I suppose to add to what I said before like when I started looking at type 1 diabetes, it was like let's reduce insulin and blood sugars by it basically equivalented to dialing up the fat to achieve stable blood sugars and smaller bolus insulin dosing. But then I quickly realized that, hey, I've got a functioning pancreas and I need nutrients, and my son and my family. My son got type 1 about 18 months ago now. He's a monster that's huge and taller than me and this wall of muscles. So, um, yeah, no, it's. It's interesting to have to quantify the insulin and blood sugars, which give me some interesting insights. But I realize that the fundamental root cause of pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes is really energy toxicity. We're just eating too much nutrient or low satiety foods.
Speaker 2:That builds up a stored body fat and then we need more insulin to hold all that in storage. And yeah, so that's the quest for satiety and trying to understand within numbers what actually works and breaks through the dogma and confusion that abounds and you know you spend any time on twitter or social media about nutrition. There's so many diverse views and it's like, yeah, what are the unique factors that work for everybody? What pulls it all together is the ultimate question.
Speaker 1:And I know that's a question you've been working hard at trying to solve and getting that information out to people, and I will tell you that is one of the things that really attracted me to your work is there is so much dietary dogma out there. There are so many questions that people have on these different dietary philosophies. No one really is looking at you know, how can I best nourish my body? Everyone's just looking at. How can I, you know, look jacked or look skinny? And so getting right, getting getting you know that fundamental nutrition, and drilling down to not just macronutrients and I've taken your macros masterclass and not just micronutrients, and I've taken your micros masterclass really gives us a better idea of what it is that we're actually doing here with our nutrition. It's not to lose weight. It's not just to, you know, reduce our blood sugar or reduce our insulin is really thriving Like how can we use nutrition to actually feel good? Cause I don't know about you. You know with, with your clients, but I think that most people just walk around generally feeling like crap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they feel lethargic because they're not getting the nourishment. They're getting excess energy, not enough nutrients from their diets. And it's not just looking jacked or shredded or lean or skinny, it's feeling good, but feeling good for the long term. I'm fascinated by Bruce Ames' triage theory. It basically says if you've got minimal nutrients, your body will say I want to survive for the short term and until I get good food, I'm going to use these nutrients to survive today, but neglect the things that it could do if you had more nutrients in your diet to thrive for the long term, to maximize longevity. So you know trying to start a rumor that nutrition is about nutrients and longevity is about nourishing your body. So you feel great and you look great and you can live a long, vital, happy, healthy life.
Speaker 1:Let's dive a little bit more into that theory that aims, put up the nutrient triage theory we talked about last time at the end of our call, but this time let's bring it up at the beginning because it is a really important point. You said the box is going to, you know, prioritize the needs it has today and we'll put off as for later on if we aren't getting sufficient nutrients.
Speaker 1:So can we talk about what some of those things are? You know that the body would prioritize today versus later, and how that could pan out in a person's life it's early days in that research and aims has done a lot of interesting work and he's you know, theorizing that cancer and heart disease and these sort of things, that looking after your body, regenerating your body, won't happen as well if you don't have the right amount of nutrients.
Speaker 2:And I wish somebody else is like 92 or something, still uttering away and, uh, trying to publish papers and do stuff. But you know, I'd wish somebody had picked that up as a body of research to pursue. It just makes so much sense. And I'm trying to add my two cents to the discussion on how do we not just make a supplement stack, which anybody can do, but how do you make your food contain the nutrients you need? That's a more interesting question for me. But yeah, your body will thrive better if it gets all the nourishment it needs for both the short term and the long term.
Speaker 1:Yep, absolutely so. So prioritizing your needs today would be, you know, breathing and digestion, keeping your heart rate going, but prioritizing your needs later would be, you know, that prevention of chronic illness, like you said, cancer, and and you know degenerative, you know neurodegeneration, of a degenerative body in the brain, and we don't really think about that. You know, on the day to day, right, we live in the here and now. We just want what tastes good.
Speaker 2:What feels good right now. Really a lot of those you know Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, obesity, heart diseases all come back to metabolic health, which comes back to not just your ratio of fat to muscle, but it comes back to body composition and not being over fat. You don't want to be anorectically skinny, but you want to be lean, strong and healthy and resilient and that sort of body will thrive for the long term. Not just because it's not going to fall over and break your hip when you're 80 and never get out of the hospital system ever again. It's all the other things that align with feeling good and being able to move and being able to keep fit and feeling energetic and kind of along that lines of just staying metabolically healthy but then also staying physically healthy in the body.
Speaker 1:I know one of the things that first again draw drew me to your work was just your, your emphasis on getting the right macronutrient ratio, specifically protein. So can we go back to the beginning and just talk a little bit about, you know, proteus right, it is the most important nutrient, it means a prime importance, and it's so true. That's what I really try to drill into. My clients is, and we get you eating enough protein every single day. So why is that particularly important? Maybe as a foundation? Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:Protein makes up a large proportion of our body, whether it be muscle or organs or connective tissue and all these things that are critical to feeling good, looking good, having good metabolic health. And you know your muscles are a glucose sink and that's what burns energy so you can cut your calories. But if you don't get enough protein, you're going to be also losing all this lean mass and not be able to burn all that energy. So you're gonna have to back yourself into a corner of lower and lower and lower calories, rather than, if you prioritize protein and prioritize muscle building, you're going to be burning more energy and not have to back yourself into that ominous corner of extremely low calorie intake. You're going to be able to eat more, get more of the other nutrients. But we were talking before.
Speaker 2:I've been diving into all this 620,000 days of data from people all over the world looking at what are the signatures of satiety and eating less, and we usually think of protein, protein leverage as a big deal. But my question from the data is really, is it protein or the things that come with protein? And calcium and B2 and potassium and sodium and even vitamin C pop up as statistically significant nutrients that align with eating less, and then protein, once you take those other things into account, really drops into the background. So, whether you prioritize protein, if you start with prioritizing protein, you're going to get a solid amount of micronutrients, but if you start with going, let's just go.
Speaker 2:You know what micros am I missing? What do I need to prioritize? It's a little bit more complex, but that may be a better place to start to get to the nutrients you really need, and when you do that, you're going to be getting tons of protein. You're going to be getting more than enough protein. So it's it's a two sides of the same coin. That just is endlessly fascinating puzzle for me that I'm trying to see through the matrix and it's I'm getting there.
Speaker 1:You're getting there. Well, and and when you look at nutrition the way you do and try to gamify it for the masses, right, we have these large puzzle pieces that are macronutrients, protein, fat and carbohydrates. But then getting those little you know puzzle pieces makes it a lot more fun. For instance, when I, you know, started studying nutrition, if I asked someone, you know, where do you get potassium, what are they going to say Banana right. Maybe the, maybe the educated ones will say avocado right, but no one thinks you're going to get potassium from meat. But it's incredible that animal products contain potassium. They contain magnesium, they contain, you know, these minerals that we really need to balance our blood sugar and our thyroid and our adrenal glands. So, you know, like you said, it's not just the protein that we're getting when we eat animal products, it's everything that comes with the protein. That's why, you know, I'm not a huge fan of, you know, supplements. Why don't, why don't, we just eat real food? Real food comes with every puzzle piece that the body needs in a bioavailable right.
Speaker 2:And the hormone ratio that we need and our bodies understand exactly. And if you just you go, I'm gonna eat twinkies and take all the supplements that I've heard on the latest podcasts and I've got this drawer. I've got this drawer full of supplements I never use. But if you did diligently take them, you might get a smattering of what you need. You might even cover all the essentials. But there's so many things in food that we don't yet understand or we can't quantify, and you're going to be much better off starting at least with getting the nutrients you need from real food than supplementing if you need to. But most of the time in the micro's masterclass people go oh wow, I realize I don't need all these bottles of supplements and I can just eat food rather than spend 10 minutes every day trying to choke. I choke down all these supplements. I don't swallow pills well, so you know I am trying to choke down these 10 pills after reading about brian johnson and his 120 pills he takes every day and I just go.
Speaker 2:How does he do it. This is crazy. Let's start with food that you enjoy the taste of.
Speaker 1:Instead of his soylent green sludge.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I've done his analysis of his diet with my perfect day report for satiety and nutrient density and I need to shoot it off to him. I keep on refining things, but yeah.
Speaker 1:What did you find?
Speaker 2:That's amazing oh, yeah, I mean he could improve from a satiety and nutrient density perspective without having so many ingredients in his food. You know, it's great if you've got a personal chef that can deliver a pre-prepared meal to you. Yeah, I think if you just added some oysters and caviar or something, he'd be doing a whole lot better, because his vegan diet misses selenium and omega-3 and probably bioavailable protein as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Well, if you're going to be a fascinating dude. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And yeah, interesting idea Like can we, can we take that and build on it? Can we do it in a in a more sustainable way? And I was just thinking when you were saying, saying that if you're going to be living the long life, you might as well, while living the high life, you know, include some oysters in your diet, for heaven's sake.
Speaker 2:It's way more fun yeah, I think oysters and scallops for the thing that he could add to his diet to really fill it out and get more protein and the nutrients he's missing from his current vegan approach. But yeah, he's trying to do it in a, he says, a compassionate way that happens to be a plant-based vegan thing, but he doesn't say the best nutrient density is a vegan approach. But yeah, I just say I don't care if you're vegan or carnivore, let's show you how to get the nutrients you need. And if they get a high diet quality score, they're getting a wide variety of meat, seafood and a ton of veggies that look like a massive bulk in the plate but people go, wow, so few calories in that.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, and that's what you tend to say. You say your diet doesn't need a name, right? We're not really worried about keto. In fact, one of your books is the case against keto. You know why people aren't keto.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wrote Big Fat Keto Liars.
Speaker 1:Big Fat Keto Liars sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's gone surprisingly well and I wish more people would read it. Every time I get on Twitter it drives me crazy. So, yeah, there's no understanding, it seems, of Ben Bickman posted on Twitter the other day that fat doesn't grow without insulin. It's like, yeah, ben, but what living human doesn't have insulin? Every human has basal insulin running all the time and plenty to save the energy from the fat in your diet.
Speaker 2:So it the fact that fat raises insulin less in the short term doesn't mean you can mainline pure fat and turn off your pancreas. It just doesn't work. Like that would be dead if it did. Nature is extremely conservative and efficient and, yeah, you can't mainline. You can't drink oil only and expect to turn into a type 1 diabetic and diabetic ketoacidosis. It just doesn't work that way. I've got two type 1 diabetics in my family that I watch their insulin all the time, and then the basal insulin is 80% of their daily insulin requirement. That nobody accounts for. So, unfortunately, carb insulin model is low. Carb is great for a lot of people, but lowering the fat can also help if you've got more body fat than you need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent, and I've seen that with my own clients. I tend to tell you know my women when they come to me and ask me like why am I not thriving on keto? You know, some of it I learned from you. Number one there are no nutrients in most fats. We don't have minerals.
Speaker 1:We don't have vitamins, so after a period of time the fat itself can be satiating at nine calories per gram. In the absence of things you talk about, like you know calcium and iron and potassium and magnesium the body is just inevitably going to want more and more. And maybe talk next about the. You know protein, energy hypothesis and and a little bit about. You know where cravings come from, but you know better than than anyone you know. But in the absence of insulin, we have a really big problem, right.
Speaker 1:Like a really big problem so insulin is not the bad guy, we just want.
Speaker 2:The only situation we have a complete absence of insulin is a type one diabetic. In diabetic ketoacidosis in the emergency ward you know about to pass out and die because the muscle and their fat is leaching into the bloodstream. But we've always got enough insulin. But yeah, protein leverage hypothesis for Rubenheimer and Simpson. I've talked to them a few times from the University of Sydney and my dream is that we get to publish the nutrient leverage hypothesis to move it to the next step. And I've been chatting to their data analysis off-sider alistair senior and he put me onto this other data so we're getting closer to that, uh. But yeah, that'd be really exciting to get not just the protein leverage hypothesis but the nutrient leverage hypothesis into the mainstream research world. But they realized that every organism eats until it gets enough protein, and whether it be a grasshopper chasing its mate in front of it, that's a bit slow and eats you know, eats the grasshopper in front of it. Or, you know, apes or gorillas or slime mold or humans we all eat until we get enough protein.
Speaker 2:And our modern environment is diluted by refined sugar and refined oils, so we have to these days typically eat more to get the protein we need.
Speaker 2:But more recently they've noted that there's sort of a they call it a break point, I call it a bliss point at about 12% protein where, if it's not a linear effect if you're eating a 5% protein diet say, fruititarian or really hardcore, I'm just drinking oil, keto or whole food plant-based with no oil, those sorts of things if you manage to get a really low protein, your body will go hmm, this is quite a nutrient-poor diet.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to. This tastes sort of awful. I'm going to wait until I get nutrients that I need and I'm gonna eat less now. But if you give me 12 protein, that's just the perfect ratio to to store fat for winter. It's sort of the autumnal perfect macronutrient intake that will help you grow just enough muscle but a lot of fat and store glucose. But then if you move up the scale from 12 to 15 to 20 to 30 to 40 to 50% protein, you're just going to eat less and less and less and less because you're getting the protein you need with less energy. But then back to the question is it just the protein or is it just all the nutrients that we're craving and deficient at that point?
Speaker 1:Well, now you've got my wheels turning again. It almost feels like opening the box of protein. You know, inside the Sandor box now are all of these other you know exciting components that are just waiting to get out, like this is. This is cool stuff, and I love the idea of you know now, now, now now, taking you know this to the next level with a nutrient leverage hypothesis like please keep me informed.
Speaker 2:This is totally very exciting for me yeah, yeah, you get a long way with protein, but there's other vectors of calcium pops up massively of looking at the un fao data, which is from developing countries, and calcium seems to be a massive deal for them, probably because they don't get access to animal products, any dairy. So calcium is a big craving, it seems, or it's very useful in estimating how much we're going to eat, and so I mentioned before that we I mean to break it down, just to look at it simply we're going to crave more of a food that contains the nutrient we're deficient in. So if we're not getting enough calcium, if we've got access to calcium foods, we're going to binge on that food until we get enough. And then, if we've got a food that's nutrient dense, the concentration of calcium is higher. Once we've got enough, we're going to get not really interested in that food.
Speaker 2:Let's look at the next nutrients that I need to prioritize, and our amazing appetite is just solving this equation continually. The optimal foraging theory we just keep on moving around the environment until we get all the nutrients we need. So you can imagine your appetite is trying to go. How do I get calcium? How do I get potassium? I'm low on iron. How do I get that? And I'll keep on eating until I get enough of all those nutrients and it will depend somewhat on what you're currently deficient on.
Speaker 2:But you could go for a very low nutrient dense diet, like I said, you know, fruititarian or drink oil or whole food, plant based with no fat, those sort of things that don't give you nutrients, and you will eat less. But if you don't want to be malnourished, you want to go for the nutrient-dense option, which has a fuller flavor, a more satisfying flavor. That is a signal to your body that you're getting all the nutrients you need. You don't really need to eat that much of these foods because they contain enough energy and a ton of the nutrients you need. So it's just a fun little equation to try and quantify and model. So that's that's. That's fascinating. So I've come up with this two-way regression to model the I'm craving that nutrient, but then, once I get enough, I'm all satiated by that nutrient when I get more than the minimum bliss point amount. So yeah, that's my little brain explosion that I'm going through at the moment.
Speaker 1:So I just dumped that on you and I mean there, I can't even imagine all of the moving pieces for something like that, especially because you know of the just the plethora of micronutrients and vitamins that are out there. Like you probably start with one and then you find you know tentacles that are mixed up with another one, and you know iron and copper, and the interplay of magnesium and calcium, and how the body is so complex, anyway.
Speaker 2:so I yeah, and the question is how to break it down and to make things as simple as possible, but no, simpler is sort of the approach, and at the moment I've got protein, sodium, calcium B1, potassium. I dropped out saturated fat and monounsaturated fat, which only has a very small effect in vitamin C, so there's sort of the different satiety vectors that all have some complementary roles. So if you chase those in your diet you're going to be getting everything else you need.
Speaker 1:Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I just want to, I want to tell our listeners to so Marty's work can be found on optimizing nutritioncom. I'm in the States. We would spell that with a D, but you spell it with an S over there. So go go, because go go find his website, just because what he just said. We're trying to, you know, take these complex concepts and distill them down into the simplest way of understanding. You know again, really, really convoluted topics. Some of that have not even been explored. But Marty's break that down with his engineer brain into a very easy way for you to understand on his website. So I've read I think I've way for you to understand on his website. So I've read. I think I've read almost every single article on your website. Like I I told you I love this stuff. It makes a lot of you know it.
Speaker 2:All your questions are great because you you've read all my stuff. I love it, yeah. And then the end goal is to develop a satiety score that involves micronutrients, not just macronutrients. You can just break it down from zero to a hundred and, yeah, your zero is going to be the hershey's kisses and donuts and cheerios and chorizos and these sort of carb fat formulated foods that have got just enough of all the nutrients to make it palatable but not satiating. And then, at the other end, you've got strong tasting things like the oysters and the liver and the spinach and these sort of things that contain a lot of nutrients without energy. So you go yeah, I'm not going to binge that because it's such a full flavor.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about maybe one of the earlier iterations of what you're discussing right now. What we have in the States is the RDA, the recommended daily allowance for these vitamins and minerals. In australia, new zealand, you guys have a different acronym and I forget what it was, but your work has developed something called the, the oni. So is it the optimal question index?
Speaker 2:uh yeah, optimal nutrient intake. So it sort of complements, just the tidy aspects. But yeah, there's recommended intake and dietary reference intakes and adequate intakes and dietary reference intakes and they're all sort of an estimation of the minimum nutrient intake. You need not to die, or most people not to die, and it's like, oh cool, that's exactly what you need. Just try not to die. Hopefully that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 1:That's where we're at right now.
Speaker 2:That is where we're at right now 95% of people won't die if you get this nutrient intake. Oh great, excellent, that's the best the medical system can do. Okay, what if I really don't want to die today? What if I'm Brian Johnson and don't want to die ever? You know, if I want longevity, if I want to feel great, not just not die, what should I aim for?
Speaker 2:So I mentioned the bliss point before. That sort of that magical intake for protein it's 12%, for calcium at 650 grams per 2000 calories, the sort of an intake that aligns with hyperpalatable food that we tend to binge on more, that it's got just enough flavor and taste and nutrients that we tend to eat the maximum amount of it. And, interestingly, all those numbers you mentioned before, the recommended daily intake and everything we target as the minimum, actually aligns with that bliss point fairly closely. Point fairly closely. So if you go, your nutrigrain or your cocoa pops have been added with iron and b2 and b9 and all these vitamins for health. It's like no, no, they're adding those nutrients so that those processed foods will be palatable, not so bland. You'll go give me the meat and seafood dudes. This is awful. They sort of make it. Add enough nutrients for it to be not objectionable and you'll eat the most.
Speaker 2:But if you want to be satiated, you want to move beyond the bliss point. You want to get a higher concentration of every nutrient and then a maximum of three times the bliss point. We've set an optimal nutrient intake, which is the point at which the satiety benefit of that nutrient tends to diminish. So for vitamin K, I think it's 55 milligrams per 2000 calories is the bliss point. You only need about 100 and it starts to stabilize out.
Speaker 2:So a little bit of vitamin K goes a long way and you don't want to have to munch on a whole lot of green stuff. You just need a little bit of green stuff, just in a little bit of green stuff, to get your vitamin k. For potassium, it just keeps giving and we say, well, three times the bliss point is enough. You don't want to keep on having to get more and more potassium, but it just seems some nutrients are really strong cravings and uh yeah. So we sort of set a stretch target for optimizers. That is a challenge for people to hit all 34 nutrients at the same time but, some people.
Speaker 2:Some people do it, but uh, yeah, it's. It's like the micronutrient master class that we're doing at the moment is just really cool to see people saying, well, I need more of that nutrient. What foods contain it? What meals contain it? And I'm going to eat those. I feel good, I feel full. I can't eat all this food. So few calories, what what's going on, what meals contain it? And I'm going to eat those. I feel good, I feel full. I can't eat all this food, so few calories.
Speaker 1:What's going on here? What is this voodoo? Just for a second, like you were talking about, you know, in first world nations, the government recommendations for these vitamins and minerals. What you have found is they tend to hit what you call the bliss point, which essentially means that their recommendations keep us eating more food, more and more food. Right, because that bliss point? So 12% for protein, ish is the point where you are just unsatisfied enough to continue needing to seek out, you know, more potassium, more sodium, more protein, and so one of the reasons you know so many of us are struggling with our weight because we think in our head. You know well, I'm meeting my RDA here for potassium. You know the government brought it down from 4,700 milligrams to 2,800 milligrams in 2019. But according to you and correct me if I'm wrong I think you say that ONI for potassium is 6,700 milligrams and that is significantly more, you know, than we're.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but 5,700 milligrams and that is significantly more, you know, than we're. Yes, if, but 5,700 per 2,000 calories. So yeah, it's, it's a lot more than the minimum we're recommended to get, but yeah, and yeah, that's exactly right. So the minimum typically aligns with the bliss point that we'll tend to overeat. And bliss point was sort of discovered back in the 60s by Howie Moskowitz, who used to create palatable rations for the army and then realized he could take that and make money out of it with processed food companies like Campbell's, and they did a ton of subject testing with different amounts of salt and fat and sugar.
Speaker 2:And you've probably heard of Michaelael moss talks about the bliss points and it's not just sugar, fat and salt that they're definite major ones. But when I look at it, the data shows it's all the micronutrients have a bliss point and you want to be above that bliss point. If you hit the bliss point, which is the minimum, like the rda for protein is 10, the bliss point, which is the minimum, like the RDA for protein, is 10%, the bliss point is 12%. So if you're aiming for just the RDA for protein, you're likely to hit the bliss point, which is a donut or your lasagna and you're just going to eat the hell out of it.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's something that you know. When one of the classes I teach I tell women you know, the research shows. The current research shows us that the average American woman is getting about 70 grams of protein a day and that aligns with your data. It's about 14% of calories for the average 40 year old American woman comes from protein. That's a small amount, percentage wise, of the diet. I know that that you you recommend eking that up toward 40% of the calories that you're intaking. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Incrementally. Everybody doesn't have to get to 40%. But if you're at 15, try 20. If you're not losing weight, try 25. If that doesn't work, try 30.
Speaker 2:And we tweak you up in our macros masterclass. We say what are you eating now? Let's tweak that, let's decrease this and increase that from what you're currently eating. I think people go, oh yeah, I can do that. I already have those foods in my fridge and my cupboard and oh yeah, that makes sense. I need to dial that back. I need less added fat and more of the meat and seafood and I feel really full. This is great. And if you're losing weight, you don't need to go to 40% 50% protein. But interestingly, we have a lot of postmenopausal older females and they tend to thrive on that 40% 50% protein diet because the calorie intake comes down quite low, because maybe they're not as active, they're not really well-muscled, they haven't been bodybuilding for life, they're not jacked and huge or super active, but they still need the protein with the lower energy intake. So the protein percentage might be up at 40 50 percent and it goes magical. I've, you know, tried fasting, I've tried keto, I've been depriving myself of food forever and this works yeah, it definitely does.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about some specifics. So we we've kind of talked in theory about what this looks like, but so in your micros, in your macros, master class, like what are some of the foods that you know your optimizers are eating? Let's say for breakfast, like what's a, what's a fully optimized breakfast meal that you tend to see?
Speaker 2:Yeah, in macros we tend to see a lot of nonfat. Greek yogurt is a really good breakfast that's. You know I'm after seeing doing 620 your Perfect Day reports of different people manually. Greek yogurt pops up a lot and for breakfast I'll have the low-fat Greek yogurt with some protein powder mixed in, just as a really simple start the day with protein. Simple, quick and easy, but you can do it any way you want. Really you can have the. You know if you're trying to get the protein with less fat than the lower fat omelets or meat or seafood or whatever. But you know, bacon and eggs is probably good if you want maintenance but dialing back the added fat. So that's where the lower fat omelet with egg whites and one whole egg rather than all full fat eggs might help get you the protein without the extra fat yep, perfect.
Speaker 1:And then you know, looking at, I'm just looking. You just put out an email recently about I think I'm saying her name right hopefully miley miley's yeah, that's that's right.
Speaker 2:It sounds like miley saris.
Speaker 1:She's great I think she's a 50 ish. You know woman who just finished up one of your classes and lost about 15 days eating these and she keeps going.
Speaker 2:She just keeps on dialing it in. It's like some people just follow the numbers and keep on losing weight. It's like this is so cool I love it.
Speaker 1:I'm actually looking, I'm looking right here at her perfect day journal. Like some of the foods that she's eating, you know, on the regular it looks like canned salmon, butternut squash, you know, like you said, plain, non nonfat Greek yogurt. She's got some vital proteins, collagen powder in there, sweet potato, watercress, crab eggs, turkey lunch meat, almonds Like these are. If you think of what a healthy whole foods diet would look like, none of these things are, you know, completely outlandish. I mean, I do see. I've tried mussels, cause I know that I was learned, I learned in your class that mussels are really good for me. They're not my favorite but I will eat them. Those are. Those are on her list too, but you know she's she's eating just foods that you can find at the regular grocery store that most people find extremely palatable, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it actually dawned on me this morning when people are going, oh, this seafood chowder that pops up at the top of the recommended recipe list. I love it. I thought that was a bit extreme but you know, people seem to love these really nutrient-dense meals and it sort of dawned on me that foods that contain the nutrients with deficient tins to satisfy something in our head if we get past the ear, that's different to what I usually eat, because they nourish us, us, they taste even better, they taste amazing because they they crush our cravings for the nutrients we need and that's really quite profound, I think. And um, yeah, so in that perfect day report, part one is to say let's look at what you're currently eating, increase that, maybe a little bit less of that, and let's not eat these things. So unfortunately, a lot of the alcohol and the Oreo cookies and the Doritos and those sorts of things don't make the short list. But then the meat and seafood and non-starchy veg tend to get promoted. And then let's fill your calories with the rest of the foods that you enjoy each day. But at the back of the report we put in, here's the recipes from our list of 1700, ranked by the ones that will actually fill your current micronutrient gaps. It sort of makes sense that some would think are fairly somewhat extreme. Some of them extreme because optimizers have gone to great lengths to create amazing creations that are really nutrient dense in some of our challenge. But some of them are quite pedestrian, like you sort of said, the sort of normal foods. They're not weird and wacky, they wouldn't eat every day, but those meals tend to satisfy us because they contain the nutrients we need and people find them delicious.
Speaker 2:You heard of clara davies from back in the 1940s, her experiment with the orphans. Yeah, um, this lady took newly weaned infants in a study that never get irb approval these days, but just in an orphanage she was running she was a nutritionist and just gave them 25 weird and wonderful foods that they could choose from from like cod liver and meat and sauerkraut and, and they all chose different foods and satisfies the needs and they'd never eat the same thing every day. But they all thrived and the kid with rickets kept on chowing down the cod liver until his rickets was cured and then never touched the cod liver again. And it's like our body knows our appetite, knows if we take out the ultra processed garbage in our diet that's made to be hyper palatable and hyper profitable for not your gain, it's for the company shareholders gain. Yeah, the body knows what to do once you take out the noise and give it opportunity to eat the food that needs yeah, kind of going back to our beginning, once you, once you take out the dogma I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1:I have pygmy goats and so I'm thinking about my pygmy goats. I also have sheep and we have our pygmy goats and our sheep separated because if sheep get too much copper in their diet, they die right. If pygmy goats don't get enough copper in their diet, they are susceptible to lung infections and parasites. And so you know, part of the feed. The instructions on the feed packet says you know, allow goats to lick this mineral as much as they want, like the goat when the goat is done, getting enough copper and enough trace minerals.
Speaker 1:and our bodies really are, you know, very well equipped to do the same thing. If you know we're, I don't throw Oreos in my goat pen, right? My goat's not eating, you know, strawberry daiquiri donuts for breakfast. My goat, my goat, has a pretty healthy diet, right A mono diet getting a sufficient amount of minerals.
Speaker 1:And it's so funny because if, if, Duke and Delilah, my pygmy goats, if they start like like what's the first thing that my veterinarian is going to look at? Well, they're going to look at the diet and the feed, and we don't necessarily do that for ourselves, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. Another hero of mine, fred Provenza, has done a bunch of fascinating work with sheep and cattle and just studying how they eat, how they eat and, um, they just go around and go for the sagebrush and all these weird and wonderful tasting things until they get enough to maximize their digestive health and nutrition they need, and they know what to eat, but they tend to eat more. When you mix it all up into a consistent feed they'll eat more of that food. But if they've got a bunch of different foods separated, like lara davis's orphans, will tend to eat just enough, because you know we've gone. Oh, you need a bit of that. I feel like a bit of that. I feel like a bit of that. And it's not in this processed soylent gloop that we just can't stop eating. That's designed to make us eat a whole lot more so sad it is.
Speaker 1:It is so sad. But then there's also you know, like this body of research that you were doing and that you know other people are doing in this space. I love the work of Dr Ted Naiman as well. I know you guys work really closely together and just the yeah, just nutrient density in the diet.
Speaker 1:So that really is, you know, my recommendation getting back density. And and for my audience, for my women like we are talking to 35 to 50 year old women who are struggling with hormone imbalance and don't understand what's going on in perimenopause and the first thing that I am going to go in and work on with my clients, lesson number one is really just optimizing your diet and what does that mean? It means getting. For me, I do like the three Ps in perimenopause. Perimenopause means you need more protein, you need more potassium. Like that is a good place to start, general place to start.
Speaker 2:That is a really good place to start.
Speaker 1:Oh good, it has the Marty Kendall seal of approval. Yes, yes, I love it. What I would like, though, is that you know I'll be sharing this with every single one of my clients. This is a really great discussion on what it means not just to survive but to thrive, and that doesn't mean from a hormonal standpoint, it doesn't mean from a supplement standpoint. It means from the very basic standpoint of, like Marty says, kind of gamifying your nutrition, putting all of those small puzzle pieces into place so your body is optimized from a nutrient standpoint. So, like I said, I've taken your classes, marty. I've taken micros masterclass, macros masterclass I've taken. I've done data-driven fasting before, and these are all very accessible, very, you know, really fantastic programs that everyone has access to. So do you want to share with people how they can find those programs and a little bit more about you?
Speaker 2:Go to optimizingizing Nutrition. There's a bunch of blog posts there, but if you go to the member login, we just clicked over 10,000 members in our Mighty Networks group, which is really exciting, and it's an amazing group of optimizers who just sold out to doing this and supporting each other doing it. So there's a bunch of free resources food lists and meal plans and sample recipe books you can check out. We've got 32 different recipe books and then you can jump in and do data-driven fasting, which is just when and what to eat based on your simple glucose meter, so you can just use your internal fuel gauge to guide when and what to eat, which is really simple, doesn't involve tracking, and then the macros masterclass. Like we talked about, focus on satiety. So we track your food for four weeks and then show you what to increase and what to decrease, and then micros masterclasses.
Speaker 2:You know where everything gets serious and all the all the stops come out and and people try to get all the nutrients from the food they eat and it's a really fun game. It's just a gamified approach to nutrition, of nourishing your body. How do I get more of the nutrients that I need to thrive and pack them into my current energy budget, which tends to generate more satiety. So, yeah, they're all fun little games and a great community and basically feel like I've got 10,000 guinea pigs to demonstrate my theories and how they work, which is a real thrill. So it's a real, real fun game and made a lot of friends with a bunch of funnily. You know, all my best friends seem to be post-menopausal, about 60 years age that they tend to tell their friends and they come into the community. So it's a crazy world but it's a whole lot of fun wonderful, wonderful community you've built over there.
Speaker 1:I've just appreciated getting to be a little part of it and I really appreciate you just taking the time out of your schedule to meet with me today and inform you know our audience a little bit more about well, a lot more, a lot more about nutrients.
Speaker 2:It's been fantastic, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, jennifer. It's been so much much fun. Thanks for having me on again we should do it again. Anytime you ask amazing questions that I go. Somebody's read my stuff. They understand it. This is so cool that's great.
Speaker 1:You know I'm going to be reaching out to you again. Absolutely, we will do this again sometime. I got a lot more questions for you, but thanks again and I appreciate you guys. Um, just tuning in today hey, thanks See everyone, bye.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a wrap for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed our candid chat about perimenopause the good, the challenging and everything in between. If you found this episode as enlightening and entertaining as I did, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a dose of perimenopausal realness. Before you go, remember that you're not alone in this journey. We're building a community of kick-ass women embracing the changes and supporting each other. Connect with us on social media, share your stories and let's keep this conversation going. And hey, if you have a burning question, a topic you'd love us to tackle, or just want to say hello, shoot us a message. Your feedback keeps this podcast fueled and fabulous. Thanks for hanging out with us today. Until next time, take care, stay fabulous and remember perimenopause is just another chapter in the adventure of being a woman. Catch you on the flip side.