Empowering Women’s Health: Navigating Midlife Through Real Food and Community Support for Lasting Wellness

Are you a woman navigating the transformative journey of midlife and seeking to reclaim your joy and health? Join host Heather Carey in this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories, where she delves into the vital connection between food, community, and women’s health. Heather introduces the Well-Nourished Woman community, a nurturing space designed for women to share their personal food journeys and overcome the unique challenges of midlife, including health, relationships, and identity. With her expertise as a culinary nutritionist, she emphasizes the importance of mentorship in learning to cook and eat well, especially for those who may not have had that guidance in their upbringing.

This episode highlights three key areas within the community: the Midlife Lounge, where open discussions about life in midlife take place; the Nourished Kitchen, offering practical cooking support and healthy eating tips; and the VIP space for personalized coaching tailored to women’s health and wellness needs. Heather’s mission is to empower women to take care of themselves, embrace body positivity, and cultivate a healthy lifestyle during this pivotal phase of life.

Throughout the episode, listeners will gain valuable insights into midlife nutrition and women’s health, including the Mediterranean diet, hormone therapy and nutrition, and mindful eating practices. Heather also tackles common weight loss myths and diet fads, providing nutrition advice that resonates with women 40+ looking to overcome food confusion and embrace a sustainable, joyful eating approach. As she shares personal food stories and the influence of family food traditions, Heather invites listeners to reflect on their own food beliefs and culture, fostering a deeper understanding of how these elements shape their health.

Are you ready to embark on your personal nutrition journey and connect with other women who share similar experiences? Heather concludes the episode with an invitation to join the Well-Nourished Woman community, where you can participate in upcoming activities and foster a sense of connection and support. Together, let’s empower women in nutrition, celebrate midlife changes, and nourish our bodies through the art of cooking and healthy eating. Don’t miss this opportunity to transform your relationship with food and embrace the vibrant, fulfilling life you deserve!

Let’s Be Friends
Hang out with Heather on IG @greenpalettekitchen or on FB HERE.

Let’s Talk!
Whether you are looking for 1-1 nutrition coaching or kitchen coaching let’s have a chat. Click HERE to reach out to Heather.

Did You Love This Episode?
“I love Heather and the Real Food Stories Podcast!” If this is you, please do not hesitate to leave a five-star review on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. I’m Heather Carey, and today I want to do something a little bit different. I want to take you behind the scenes to share what I have been building, why I created it, and why I believe this space is going to change the way women experience midlife. Now, for the last couple of episodes, if you got on there and took a listen, I’ve been talking about… food, our kitchens, and the importance of just not giving up on cooking as we get older and into midlife and menopause, because we still need to take care of ourselves more than ever now. And food is really one of the constants in our lives, right? It’s something we have to do every single day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And we might as well make a count because it’s It does count for so much when it comes to our health. Now, it’s one thing to talk about the food and the cooking and to tell you how to meal plan and just create good eating habits. And it’s another to show you how to actually do this and to put it into real life, everyday practice in your own kitchens when you are busy, when you are strapped for time, when you are stressed out, or when you just don’t feel like cooking. Now to. put it into perspective and practice and learn how to create and build habits that stick and that you actually look forward to is something that takes some time. It’s a practice. And we all need help with this. We all need guidance. I’ve said this a million times before. If you did not learn how to cook with your mom or your grandma or someone holding your hand in the kitchen, how do you know how to cook. How do you know what real good food is, actually? Because it takes some mentorship in a way. I mean, I went to cooking school, and I went to cooking school for health-supportive cooking specifically. So I learned everything at that school. I mean, I had other relatives and, you know, aunts and moms who cooked. in the kitchen, and I was always a curious kid in the kitchen, but my skills came from cooking school. So it’s not easy sometimes to know exactly what to eat and how to eat it and how to prepare it. Now, I have been teasing a little bit here and there, but today I have been working on something behind the scenes, and I finally get to share it with you in detail. on the well-nourished woman community and the new offerings that are in there. And I’m so excited about this. And I hope after this podcast and listening to this that you are too. Now, you might know me as a culinary nutritionist, right? I talk a lot about food. I talk a lot about cooking and how we eat can change everything in midlife. But the truth is our lives are about so much more and what’s just on our plate of food, you know, what we are just putting in our mouths every day. And that’s exactly why I wanted to first create the Well-Nourished Woman community. And I did that a couple months ago back in the spring. Now, the Well-Nourished Woman community is a free space. It started out free, and it’s a space where I wanted to gather women together so we could talk about all… the things that happen in midlife, not just the food, and that’s really important, obviously, to me, but everything else, the good, the messy, the confusing, the funny parts of midlife, not so funny parts of midlife that no one really warned us about. I wanted to create a safe container where we could just share and have conversation and have community. Because let’s be honest, midlife is a isn’t just about hot flashes and hormones and should I eat? soy products to get phytoestrogens, or should I go on the intermittent fasting diet, right? It’s about relationships. It’s about your aging parents, your grown kids who still need you. It’s figuring out who the hell you are after all of these years of putting everyone else first. It’s really all of it. And my goal has always been to create a container so we can all talk about it in there. and nothing is off limits. Let me give you a little background about why I even created the Well-Nourished Woman community in the first place. Now, when I first started moving through my own midlife journey back in my 40s, perimenopause, dabbling with menopause in there, all of it, I felt completely blindsided and unprepared for what I was coming to experience. because there was no roadmap. Nobody talked about it. Literally nobody talked about it. I went to my primary care doctor. I’ve told this story a million times on this podcast that she told me that she would rather go to jail than get on estrogen. I talked to a number of gynecologists, all who had different opinions about hormones and what to do and how to manage. perimenopause. And let’s not get started on just my friend group and just like community, local community. I mean, nobody was talking about it. I get a few whispers about hot flashes or maybe a joke or something that we just had to get through and we just had to struggle with for a couple of years. But no one was really saying, hey, here’s what’s happening to your body. Here’s what might happen to your sleep, your mood, your confidence, your energy. your weight, all of it. And that silence was deafening to me. So I remember thinking, if I’m a nutritionist, if I live and breathe women’s health, and I’m still this confused, me, what are the rest of us supposed to be doing? So I started having conversations, and I created this podcast around it, real conversations with friends, with clients. With women, I have interviewed many women on this podcast about it who are all saying the same thing. Why didn’t anyone tell me that this was coming? And that’s when I knew. I wanted to create the space that I wished I had had a decade ago. A place where we could talk about food and health, yes, of course, but also about all the real stuff that comes with this season of life. And that’s how the Well-Nourished Woman came. community was born and how I finally created it back in the spring. Now, let me get into a little more detail about what the Well-Nourished Woman community is and why it’s different from other platforms you might see, especially social media, okay, because you can get all sorts of information on social media. I mean, you could just drown yourself in it all day long. And now that the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, and now that celebrities like Oprah and Gwyneth Paltrow have made menopause more of a thing, you can just drown yourself in information. So I know firsthand that there is a lot of bad information and false information. I wanted to create something that was off social media, okay, no ads. no scrolling, and create something that wasn’t just another online group that you’ll join and forget about two weeks later. It’s a living, breathing community built around connection and honesty and a lot of support. And inside of it, I have now expanded things and I have created three different spaces in there, each designed to meet you where you are at. So I wanted to go into detail just to get clear on what it is and why I’m so excited about this. Okay, first there is the midlife lounge. Now, this is a free space. It’s kind of like our cozy little living room, okay, where we can talk about things and gather and really talk about anything and everything in midlife. Food, yes, but also relationships, careers, menopause symptoms. friendships, purpose, body image, sex life, grief, joy, nothing is off limits here. Okay. I mean, again, my focus is on the health and wellbeing of women. at this age, but this all wraps around it, right? You can’t do one without the other. So you can’t have be in good relationships if you’re feeling absolutely miserable with your hot flashes. You can’t have a good career or friendships or on and on. So I wanted this to feel like the space where you can just take a breath and exhale, where you can ask questions, share stories, vent, and be real without worrying about judgment. Because I can tell you firsthand that if you’re thinking about something that’s on your mind with hormones and symptoms and any of the things I just mentioned, someone else is thinking about that too. So this is a space that has no judgment. Okay, we are all in this together. And I wanted to have women feel just less alone because we’ve all been here, right? We’ve all, and honestly, We’re just better when we do it together. So this space will include some weekly prompts and maybe a mini challenge or two to gently get back into your kitchen or live events, okay, where we can get on Zoom and have a conversation about a variety of different topics. So that’s my free space. Then there is the nourished. kitchen. And this is what I’ve been sort of alluding at for the last couple of weeks and what I’m very, very excited about. Now, this is a paid membership area. It doesn’t cost that much to join, but it’s where we go a lot deeper. And this is where we talk food and all the things that surround it, okay, where we can cook together, eat together virtually, and reconnect with food as a source of strength and joy. and not guilt and confusion, okay? Where we ditch the diets, where we just get into the real world about eating and how to do it successfully and how to enjoy it and have fun. So in the Nourish Kitchen space, there will be live cooking classes that are real and doable, not fancy or fussy, okay? This is about just cooking in the real world so we can… eat healthfully, and also enjoy it. So this is the food that actually makes you feel good, that you feel like you’re doing something right for your body. We’ll have monthly foodie challenges to inspire you to try new flavors and new habits and new skills in the kitchen. You can ask me anything you want. Nothing is off limits in this kitchen space, okay, about tools, equipment, the best things to buy. I get it. It’s confusing. Your kitchen can be as confusing as menopause itself. So there is no limit to what you can ask me. And I want to offer a lot of support around cooking in midlife because our needs have changed, right? We’re not eating and cooking the same way we did when we had a couple of kids living at home and we were just pumping out food, right? Our needs change now. Our weight is changing. Our metabolisms are changing. So we want to pivot a little bit so we can feel good with ourselves. And again, no one’s really teaching us how to eat for the season of life in a way that’s just realistic. OK, you can jump on social media and find 5000 diets that will lead you down a road to nowhere. So this is where food becomes self-care again. Okay, so this is the Nourish Kitchen. It is a paid membership. And I’m going to get to all those details at the end. And finally, there’s the VIP space. Okay, and this is for women who want more one-on-one support. So this is my coaching part, more personalized guidance around nutrition, habits, lifestyle, goal setting, and any specific health concerns that you may have. Because… When we get into midlife, it’s not just about hot flashes and night sweats, right? A whole host of things can happen with our health in our 40s, 50s, and 60s, okay? Our rates of heart disease start to go up, diabetes, cholesterol, cancers, and we need to know exactly how to support ourselves in this time with our health and our food and our movement and… And we can feel overwhelmed and stuck. Okay, so if you feel like you need more one-on-one support, this is the space to do it. Okay, and we can talk about that also a little bit more and how that works. So together, these three spaces create something really special, a layered community where you can come in, connect, learn, grow, and feel seen. All right, so I want to say again. why community, I think, matters so much when it comes to women in midlife and menopause. So I created the Well-Nourished Woman community because I know what it feels like to be the woman who’s done everything right, eaten well, exercised, managed her family, her career, and still feel like she’s lost herself somewhere along the way. Now, we’ve spent decades caring for everyone else, right? And then one day we wake up and realize, who’s taking care of me? Is it my turn to be taken care of now? But who’s doing it? Then comes the next realization that the one person who’s going to take the best care of you is you. Now, sometimes that’s easier said than done, right? When we are out there giving out, it is you Much easier sometimes to focus on everyone else than to have to focus on ourselves. Because the world doesn’t exactly give us permission to slow down and to prioritize ourselves or to talk openly about what’s happening in our bodies or our minds or our lives. And that’s why this community exists. Because midlife isn’t something to get through. It’s something that we have to experience. And we don’t get through it, right? It’s something that stays with us. for pretty much the rest of our lives. And as I see it, it’s a time to reclaim your joy and health and your curiosity and connection. I am really craving a lot of connection right now. And this is just one way to do it, because I know that we cannot do this alone. And honestly, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do it alone. I don’t want to be suffering in silence. So that’s why, again, I built this space and because I felt like I needed to, and I felt like other women really are feeling the same. All right. Let’s talk about some expectations of the well-nourished woman and then the midlife lounge and the nourished kitchen and the VIP experience. So here’s what the well-nourished woman community is not. All right. Because I don’t want you to get confused and think that this is like another diet. It’s not another like diet in disguise. I’m not going to tell you exactly how to lose 10 pounds in two weeks and to starve and suffer. That’s not my scene, and I’m not going to do that. It’s not a space where we have these perfect before and after pictures on the internet and client testimonials like that. And it’s not about comparison. Absolutely not. Or about competition. But here’s what. It is. It’s where we get real. It’s where we learn. We can share. Okay. And we can talk about things that might make other people squirm, but we do it together because midlife is complicated and it’s emotional and it’s full of changes, big ones. And pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. I hear from a lot of women sometimes, they’re just like, oh, it’s just something we need to get through. It’s just something like we just need to tough it out and get through. And I imagine that their moms also were just the same and they suffered in silence as well. And it’s just not the case. We just don’t have to do that. Now, in this space, we’re going to talk about hormones and sleep and weight, of course, but we’re also going to talk about boundaries and relationships and identity, and we talk about what it means to want more. to have some kind of dreams, to talk about what our purpose in life is, just to feel good in our own skin. So I want the Well-Nourished Woman community to feel like a home base, a place you can come to when you’re tired of the noise on the internet and the fads and the fake perfection that’s everywhere online right now. It’s just overwhelming. So here it’s about real women, real food, and real life. So if that sounds like you and you are craving community, please come and join. Now, here’s the exciting part. The doors to the Well-Nourished Woman community are already open. Okay, and I’m going to put that link below, right? We’ve been open since spring. And the other spaces, the Midlife Lounge, the Nourish Kitchen, and the VIP, are opening officially on November 1st to everybody. Now, I am offering today and for the next week a special Founders Price for the Nourish Kitchen, which is the paid part of this membership. because I want… people to join. And I want you to get excited about it. And I want there to be a amazing community of women who feel as excited as I do about this. If you’ve been listening to this podcast today and saying like, yes, like this is what I’ve been missing in my life, like real conversation, real food connection, then this is your invitation. And when you join early, you will get, like I said, the special founder’s price. I’m just offering this for a week, okay? So just think exclusive cooking sessions, printable guides, recipes that you can have, and just a whole bunch of surprises that I know that you’ll love. I think, you know, as the community develops, it’s just going to get better and better. Most of all, you’ll be part of something brand new, something honest and alive and built for women. like us who are ready to thrive in midlife, not just survive it. Okay, so that’s the story behind the well-nourished woman. It’s more than a community. It’s a movement, if you want to call it that. A reminder that we are not done. We are not invisible and we’re not meant to go through the season alone. So whether you come for the food or the conversations or just the company of other women who get it, you are so welcome here. Because nourishment isn’t just about what we eat. It’s about how we live. All right. I am going to put all the information in the show notes. Okay. The links to sign up, the links to get more information and to get going on this. I cannot wait. We’re going to have our first live cooking class the very beginning of November. And the information will be inside of the community. You can find that easily. And… We’re going to get going and I am excited. So thank you for being here with me today, for listening and for being a part of this journey and my journey. I can’t wait to open the doors next week and to officially then open for everyone on November 1st and to see you inside. All right. Until next time, take care of yourself, feed yourself with love, and remember… Nothing about midlife needs to be quiet anymore. Have a great day, everyone. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.