Life in Style

We are a style blog so we feature style on nearly all forms - fashion, art, design, interior - but what we rarely feature is lifestyle. I don’t mean how we socialise or how we spend our money, but rather how we live our lives: more specifically our health and wellbeing.

Most of our readers are around our age group - 40’s and upwards - and being in that age bracket brings a whole bunch of challenges younger people don’t experience, or don’t experience for the same reasons or in the same way.

Let’s just get it out in the open….menopause. You sure as shit won’t hear many fashion or style bloggers, even our age, talk about menopause and its effects, which are for many women fucking hideous. I’m 47 and perimenopausal. I have very few symptoms this far other than bouts of severe depression and gradual weight gain. The depression part only lasts two or so days but it’s heavy beyond words. The thoughts in my head are terrifying during these short bouts. For example, when Prince B and I are in the car, I sit and imagine, maybe even wish, we’d have a crash but he escapes unscathed but I’m decapitated. Not just killed, DECAPITATED. Frightening thoughts. Then after a few days they are gone. However the gradual weight gain has a far longer lasting effect.

During lockdown I have been working my ass off to keep the weight off. I have a LOT of beautiful clothes and honestly, I refuse to find myself in a situation where I’m having to sell or give away Rick Owens, Isabel Marant, Ann Demeulemeester and all those other wonderful pieces I absolutely cherish. But without ballet class to attend it’s been hard. I do intense core and weights workouts nearly every day but in my heart I knew my diet was the problem. Because of how fucked up our hormones become at this stage in life, it hugely affects how our bodies process and use food. It affects how we eat and what our body decides to do with that food. It mostly decides to store it like a squirrel saving up nuts for winter! So I knew deep down that sugary treats was my issue.

I eat around 1400 calories a day, which for most people isn’t very much, but my eating habits consisted of no breakfast, no lunch just a little biscuit here and there throughout the day. Maybe some toast in the afternoon or a handful of Fudge Minis. Then I’d eat a proper meal in the evening. I fooled myself into thinking that I ate very little because I was only eating one meal a day and somehow all that sugar during the day didn’t count. I have always eaten this way. I’m a grazer. When I was single I never even ate dinner. It’s fine when you are young and are blessed with a fast metabolism, as I was, but that shit slows to a halt when we reach out 40’s, then almost travels back the way beyond that!

I had to face up to what I eat because the threat of diabetes is real, especially as we get older. As is cancer, as is osteoporosis. Change is hard though. It’s hard changing a lifetime of eating habits on your own. So I decided to try Noom. I knew I didn’t want to diet, I wanted to still be able to eat a treat without feeling guilty and I knew I wanted to loose 7lbs. And Noom seemed like the best way forward.

I am 5 days into the free trial. And so far I LOVE it. It’s app based which really suits me because, well, blogger, and it really motivates me to make good food choices. It also made me buy scales. Weighing myself was the biggest challenge I had to overcome. I only ever weighed myself when I’d visit the Duchess and every time I stepped on the scale I was depressed. I was training so hard in ballet, at the gym, walking, housework, shopping, but my weight would never go down and I knew it wasn’t muscle mass because that wobbly flesh on my stomach and thighs sure as shit isn’t muscle. At my heaviest I was 10 stone which, given I have been 8 stone and 5lbs for nearly my whole life, is a big jump.

So I bought scales, took a big intake of breath and weighed myself. 136lbs. I deliberately did not use stones as my measurement, as I’m familiar with that, so I used pounds only because 136lbs could be 7 stone for all I know. I just knew that was my starting weight. I told Noom what I wanted to weigh and they calculated that it’s 124lbs. It then calculated that I need to eat 1200 calories a day and if I do this (making healthy food choices) I’d reach that weight by early December. Well, I’m 5 days in and I weigh 133.5lbs already. I’ve managed to loose nearly 3lbs in 5 days pretty much by cutting down my sugary treats and making better food choices. I lived on 1400 calorie a day normally so eating 200 calories less a day less is no big deal for me, but it has really made me aware of just how awful sugar and pastries and all that bad stuff actually is.

The app gives you x amount of red (bad) calories a day (in my case 350), x amount of yellow and unlimited amount of green. You log everything you eat and you’re told how many more calories you can have left, You log exercise and it gives you back some calories as you burned some by exercising. Honesty, it’s awesome. I have been out walks every day. I have made better food choices and I feel soooo much happier already. My digestive system is even working better as I used to suffer extreme bloating pretty much every night and since being on Noom I haven’t been bloated once.

FOOD LOGGING

This is what typical food logging looks like for me. Somedays I eat things in the red category and some days I don’t. I try to keep most things during the day in the green zone, using the yellow and red for my evening meal (red includes things like bread, butter etc). As you can see, sometimes I eat gingerbread and I’m totally ok with it. No guilt here.

DASHBOARD AND WEIGHT GRAPH

The app sets you tasks, such as logging everything you eat and all the other stuff you do, such as exercise, weighing yourself and completing a course each day. The course is spending 10 minutes each day reading their articles as this programme is about changing your habits in your brain first and foremost. It’s based on psychology and gives you little tricks and tips to train your brain out of bad habits. CBT basically.

The screen below is what I did on Monday for example. I was on the go all day, with ballet training in the morning and a visit to the dentist in the afternoon, which is pretty far away. I usually take a taxi there and walk back, but on Monday I walked both days and smashed my ‘steps’ goal (which btw you don’t need to do, but by walking you burn more calories and can therefore earn some more calories to eat but walking or exercising is entirely up to you).

Some days I go over my allotted calories and some days I’m under. But I don’t feel stressed about it at all. I see progress and I feel like I’m achieving something, which spurs me on further.

I have another week of my trial then I’m going to sign up for 2 months and see where I’m at. It’s £79 for 2 months, which does seem a lot, but it’s money well spent as far as I can see, if what I’ve experienced so far is anything to go by. I find the app fun to use and some of the articles are useful. I’m not the best person for psychology tricks (too stubborn), so I prefer more practical approaches, such as recipes and measuring calories or knowing what are healthy foods and what aren’t, which Noom also provides.

I might not be able to control the hormonal aspect of the menopause but I can control the physical condition my body is in. Health is wealth and as long as I maintain a strong, healthy body then I armed as best as I can be to tackle menopause when it finally hits.