My life changed dramatically surrounding my mother’s health and her eventual death in 2022. It propelled me into making changes to look after myself and improve my own health needs.

After her passing, I looked for a ‘Programme’  specifically for women that promised results for a healthier life. I found one such programme and started to make the adjustments to my pantry, cooking habits, eating habits and exercise.

Sustaining for the most part, good nutrition patterns and found it helped me to look after myself. The routine and not having to think too much about what and when to eat was helpful. However, when it came to others cooking for me, I got what I was given and not what was prescribed in the programme. This became a challenge in maintaining any work I had acheived, but also detrimental to long term effectiveness.

How it began

At the beginning of 2023 I decided to make more definite changes; to start practicing more what I preach if you will. One of those things that needed attention was my nutrition. Over the past few years I’ve become sensitive to more food groups, and after some camera investigations, it showed pretty much gut inflammation all the way through. It was no wonder my guts regularly felt the way I imagined a snail crawling through salt might!

Having put myself on the pathway that many of you have, I sought out nutrition and mindset help to aid my transition over to a healthier version of me. This is how Forty-Fy Your Life became my mission. A community of like-minded people searching for the holy grail of health!

Throughout this period, I was seeking an alternative way to exercise and I found Claire, who I introduced to the Forty-Fy Your Life group, and you may have taken part in one of her challenges. Her daily routines are designed for ladies of appropriate age and ability, and I also joined a local weekly evening Yoga class and enjoyed that very much.

Fasting

In preparation for making changes, I changed to intermittent fasting – something I’d learned through a diploma in ‘understanding and caring for the diabetic patient’. I realised that this was a good thing for everyone to do. I fast most days for 12 hours and in more recent weeks 16+hrs, but demands on my life don’t allow me to sustain this. I thought very hard as to why I wanted and needed to make changes. More on this another time but be assured I have had to, at times, work consciously on my mental attitude/state in the process… After all, I am only human.

Protein

The plan I originally started saw me eat more protein than I ever had before in one day! And eggs… well I am surprised I don’t now cluck! I weighed myself most days, measured myself weekly and over 6 months I shed 1.5 stone and around 70cm from my body. I felt better in myself and encouraged that this ‘diet’ suited me.

Exercise

Exercises that accompanied this programme were HIIT style and although only 30mins, 4x a week, I struggled to maintain it – 1 such exercise needing several days to recover. HIIT for ladies my age, not used to this style of regular exercise is not appropriate. I also suspect that I have a few genetic issues that affect my hip health, the exercises just made me fully aware of the weakness in this area. So pretty much the changes I saw were just down to diet and nutrition.

This programme suggested their own brand of supplementation which was:

1. Very expensive, and
2. Contained wheat and not gluten free, again I had to opt out of this part of the programme.

Mindset

Mindset was also purported to be covered in this programme but what I really witnessed was super charged energy from a very buff, American programme owner in pre-recorded videos. You know the ones, uber bouncy and not fully aligned with my physical or mental state at starting the programme!

Each week I reported back to my allocated trainer with the measurements, and each week I got back a return email which for the most part was a ‘copy and paste’ response. Two weeks to the end of my paid-up cycle I was switched to a new trainer, which was a bigger communication disaster! Despite conversations with the previous trainer to cancel the subscription, I found they had subscribed me for a further month and the direct debit didn’t stop until I highlighted that the payment being taken – thankfully I was able to get refunded!

When I left that initial programme, I found another which helped me fine tune my nutrition. It comes with supplements suitable for my dietary needs, BUT super expensive, mostly down to import taxes from USA so wasn’t sustainable for longer than 6 months.

On the plus side, this programme had better community support and a friendlier recipe book and overall, the programme was designed with midlife women in mind who’s metabolism is slowing down.

I subscribed for a couple of months but didn’t really embraced it fully due to the turmoil I found myself in with my mother’s passing.

Where am I at today?

Had I not taken the decision to make changes for myself and follow a similar path of discovery that is outlined in Forty-Fy Your Life, I would probably still be blinkered to how my own nutrition and mindset impacted my health and wellbeing.

You see, despite my education and knowledge in the field, like many I looked outwardly rather than inward before making changes. In my lengthy search for programmes, I have a fabulous UK based programme with exceptional support and loving it!

Of course I’ll be sharing my findings and knowledge with you in the Forty-Fy Your Life facebook group and future blogs.

If you’re interested in finding out more please get in touch.