Jennifer Hanway on BEYONDai

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Feeling tired all the time is common, not normal, and Jennifer Hanway's account of the fix is biological rather than moral: willpower is five per cent and biology is the other ninety-five. The female hormonal system is the complicated one, which is why advice built on men fails women; intermittent fasting in perimenopause is, in her words, the worst thing you can do. The program is unglamorous: protect lean muscle, mind minerals like magnesium, treat supplements as supplements, and read body composition rather than the scales, as her own same-weight wake-up call showed.

This is the BEYONDai episode of this conversation: the exchange with Jennifer Hanway produced into a single cut, entity by entity, with the thesis stated and every subject given its own point of view. BEYONDai is our own show, separate from the one the conversation was recorded on, and this is what the episode knits together.

"brands off the top of my head here, but organic, low acid, obviously we don't wanna be adding sweetener."Jennifer Hanway

What the episode knits together

Listen to this episode on BEYONDai: Watch this episode on YouTube · The BEYONDai podcast feed · BEYONDai on YouTube.

Watch or listen to the source conversation: Jennifer Hanway podcast. It was recorded on The BEYOND Podcast with Aleksandra King.

Episode highlights transcript

That are draining our energy every day

Jennifer Hanway: You're an expert in all things, it's holistic skin body care.

Jennifer Hanway: I've worked with Royal Family, I've worked with some Hollywood A list, some musical stars, CEOs,

Jennifer Hanway: Olympic athletes. The things I really work on are metabolism and hormones and energy and skin.

Jennifer Hanway: My name is Jennifer Hanway, I'm a board certified holistic nutritionist and women's wellness expert.

Jennifer Hanway: Why are so many of us so tired? It's a multitude of reasons. I think if everybody's tired, then it

Jennifer Hanway: must be normal. No, it's common that it's not normal. What are the biggest habits that we're doing

Jennifer Hanway: that are draining our energy every day? I think if we can just knock one of those pillars out, if

Jennifer Hanway: we can improve one thing, it has this wonderful knock-on effect of everything.

Jennifer Hanway: We live in a world where we have so much information. We also have so much misinformation. Five

Jennifer Hanway: percent of it is willpower. Ninety five percent is what's happening in your biology. You've wired

Jennifer Hanway: your biology to want those things. How should we be training them? I always say to people if you

Jennifer Hanway: don't like running, you don't know how to run. Dehydration is everything. Nutritionists and health

Jennifer Hanway: coaches working with eating disorders and that's an absolute no. So I always say to people think

Jennifer Hanway: about what you're gonna add in before you take away.

It's does it require a little

Jennifer Hanway: people don't understand is it is the molter it is the one thing that you can do to make your life

Jennifer Hanway: easier. It is the one thing that you can do to give you more energy. It is the one thing to do to

Jennifer Hanway: give you more brain function, to help you sleep better at night. So it's does it require a little

Jennifer Hanway: time and effort?

Jennifer Hanway: Yes, but the benefits that you get from it are are so important from the everyday to living a long

Jennifer Hanway: and healthy life.

Aleksandra King: Okay. So you need to make the decision to I I I'm you're feeling tired all the time. That's not a

Aleksandra King: normal feeling. You shouldn't, right? It's normal to feel tired after you've gone running for five

Aleksandra King: K ten K. But not.

Aleksandra King: Okay.

Jennifer Hanway: normal. No, it's common, but it's not normal. And it's because of all of the external stresses we

Jennifer Hanway: have in our lives these days, it's the fact that we're not prioritising our health and wellness. So

Jennifer Hanway: it's common to feel tired all the time. But it's not normal.

Good and bad news is that our metabolism doesn't

Jennifer Hanway: need to eat some more, what's my quickest, easiest, simplest thing I can do, I'm gonna eat some

Jennifer Hanway: more sugar. And this is why we bounce between sugar and caffeine and refined carbohydrates and

Jennifer Hanway: alcohol.

Aleksandra King: Okay. Okay, so what what happens to our bodies after thirty five, like why can't we maintain that

Aleksandra King: nice slim frame, what's going on?

Jennifer Hanway: What's going on after thirty five? Well okay, so good and bad news is that our metabolism doesn't

Jennifer Hanway: actually lower. So that metabolic rate, the amount of calories that we burn at rest, it doesn't

Jennifer Hanway: actually go down until our sixties. So good news bad news. 'Kay? What's actually happening after

Jennifer Hanway: thirty five for women is it's our hormones changing. So really between the ages of about thirty

Jennifer Hanway: seven and our early forties is that's when we start to move into perimenopause. And we can go

Jennifer Hanway: through all of the perimenopause, menopause, post-menopause, and

Jennifer Hanway: time. So we'll just call it menopause or the menopause transition. So post it's really post thirty

Jennifer Hanway: five most, women find it in their late thirties to early forties is our hormones change. So our

Jennifer Hanway: main hormone changes is estrogen. So we start making less estrogen. We're also making less progesterone

Jennifer Hanway: and less testosterone. Now this has a huge impact on our metabolism. What it really has the impact

Jennifer Hanway: on though is our muscle mass and our blood sugar balance. So for blood sugar, estrogen has its

Jennifer Hanway: wonderful balancing effect on our blood sugar. When the more estrogen we have, or when we have

Jennifer Hanway: healthy amounts of estrogen, pre- menopause, it helps to regulate our blood sugar. When we move into

Jennifer Hanway: perimenopause, then our blood sugar balance starts to become dysregulated 'cause we don't have

Jennifer Hanway: estrogen. The other part is something called sarcopenia, which is the loss of our lean muscle mass.

It's definitely doable

Jennifer Hanway: down. It goes down for women as well. But for men we're not talking about such a complicated

Jennifer Hanway: hormonal system. For women it's the complicated hormonal system.

Aleksandra King: Yeah, it's all the intertwining multitude of why are women so complicated, complicated.

Jennifer Hanway: But I do you know my goal is for women you know I typically work with women over thirty five high

Jennifer Hanway: achievers busy, families, all of the things, traveling a ton and my clients are healthier in their

Jennifer Hanway: early forties or mid forties than they've ever been in their lives. It's doable. It's not easy, but

Jennifer Hanway: it's definitely doable.

Aleksandra King: But you're counteracting that with food and the muscle. So you're fighting it.

Jennifer Hanway: But you're you're optimising it, let's say. Optimising. Because what we think about is we think

Jennifer Hanway: about all of those hormones that I mentioned estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. But the most

Jennifer Hanway: important the two hormones that we have to look after are insulin, which is our hormone of blood

Jennifer Hanway: sugar balance and cortisol, which is our hormone of stress. Exactly. If we can get those under

Jennifer Hanway: control or at least manage them, be aware of them, it can really help everything that's happening

Jennifer Hanway: post thirty five.

All this ballroom dancing stuff

Jennifer Hanway: So yep, you can build lean muscle, you can be completely detrained, and you can build lean muscle.

Jennifer Hanway: Uh y they had a study that was I think it was women in like ninety five ninety six, and they put

Jennifer Hanway: them on a higher protein diet and did strength training, and they put on lean muscle mass. So these

Jennifer Hanway: are these women and then we'd

Jennifer Hanway: start you from not so good. Yeah.

Aleksandra King: And and all this ballroom dancing stuff. So you've your muscle memory is there for sports.

Jennifer Hanway: muscle memory yes, but I will say I personally had a real wake-up call. I was forty two and I'd

Jennifer Hanway: kind of uh you know forty two perimenopause and I'd kind of slid out of my good habits. So for me

Jennifer Hanway: my diet is always on like that's something I find very easy. But I will honestly say I don't love

Jennifer Hanway: strength training. It's pretty boring. It's pretty boring. You know who doesn't wanna be in a class

Jennifer Hanway: where it's like fun music and you're learning dance moves and all of those things. But I was

Jennifer Hanway: a I was at a medical conference and got my body composition done, so that's my lean muscle mass to

Jennifer Hanway: body fat ratio. Now the funny thing is I have weighed within half a pound of the same weight for

Jennifer Hanway: the last twelve thirteen years. I was exactly the same weight, but my lean muscle mass had gone

Jennifer Hanway: right down and my body fat had gone right up. So for me that was a real weight, and I was feeling a

Jennifer Hanway: lot softer in my body.

Coffee is most people's main form of antioxidants

Jennifer Hanway: I get asked about is do I have to give up coffee? Ninety nine percent of the time it's no, but let's

Jennifer Hanway: make your h coffee healthy. The other one I always get asked about is cheese. Um usually that's a

Jennifer Hanway: yes, but we'll do something healthy with the cheese as well.

Aleksandra King: Okay. Yeah.

Jennifer Hanway: So the only people that shouldn't be having coffee is if you're having extreme thyroid issues or if

Jennifer Hanway: you're having adrenal fatigue. Because what coffee does ca coffee has caffeine, it's a stimulant,

Jennifer Hanway: it can tax our energy systems in the body. But for most people we just have to be careful with

Jennifer Hanway: coffee, and we can actually make it a health food. So probably the same in the UK but in the US

Jennifer Hanway: coffee is most people's main form of antioxidants. So

Jennifer Hanway: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Hanway: type of vitamin and mineral, um we need them for everything, for energy production, for fighting

Jennifer Hanway: for your radical damage, the whole thing. Yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we're not gonna do

Jennifer Hanway: nest café Come. on. You're better than nest café. I always say to people, you know, no no, it's it's

Jennifer Hanway: it's funny, my dad drinks instant coffee and I come home and I bring I travel with my coffee. But

Jennifer Hanway: it's not good for you. If we're gonna do coffee,

Jennifer Hanway: let's make it good for you, let's make it a real source of antioxidants, and those antioxidants are

Jennifer Hanway: wonderful for your immune system, for your skin, for your hair, for your energy. So if we're doing

Jennifer Hanway: coffee, we want to do organic coffee. Yep, organic coffee. And then really looking at something

Jennifer Hanway: that if we can get it organic, ideally low acid, that's a hard one to get, um I can't think of the

Jennifer Hanway: brands off the top of my head here, but organic, low acid, obviously we don't wanna be adding sweetener.

Stress right, see your doctor supplement, as needed

Jennifer Hanway: your health care provider first 'cause supplements can be powerful. So there's some foundational

Jennifer Hanway: things that we can all be doing, collagen is wonderful for skin, um creatine is wonderful for our

Jennifer Hanway: lean muscle mass, but really get your diet right, get your exercise right, get your sleep and

Jennifer Hanway: stress right, see your doctor supplement, as needed.

Aleksandra King: Okay supplement, is needed. Okay what, are the warning signs of a burnout?

Jennifer Hanway: Oh um I really think it probably starts way bu I di I never wanna get to someone at burnout because

Jennifer Hanway: what I'm thinking about when I think burnout is I'm thinking adrenal fatigue or adrenal dysfunction.

Jennifer Hanway: So I've actually seen it in a couple of clients and I've seen lab work and really when I'm thinking

Jennifer Hanway: burnout is someone has been in a state of high or dysregulated cortisol for a long time. Then what

Jennifer Hanway: happens is that their body

Jennifer Hanway: stops making cortisol or their cells stop being so um sensitive to it, because they've just been in

Jennifer Hanway: this state of high cortisol for such a long time. What do we start to see beforehand? So always

Jennifer Hanway: feeling tired or a big one is tired and wired. So you wake up in the morning and you're tired, but

Jennifer Hanway: also your mind's racing like you're anxious when you wake up in the morning. Um not having the

Jennifer Hanway: energy to work out, not having the drive and the get up and go, so losing the passion for the

Jennifer Hanway: things that you want

Jennifer Hanway: loved to do. Um

Aleksandra King: All of that's not normal then. You're losing all that passion. Yeah.

Three to four times a day, three to four

Jennifer Hanway: two is about food timing. Now for men, intermittent fasting can be a better tool in a toolbox for

Jennifer Hanway: them because they don't have the compra the complicated hormonal interplay. For women our bodies go

Jennifer Hanway: through enough stress with our hormones anyway, especially perimenopause, lowering of estrogen,

Jennifer Hanway: estrogen progesterone also help our stress levels. For women, intermittent fasting in perimenopause

Jennifer Hanway: is the worst thing that you can do Eat. three to four times a day, three to four

Jennifer Hanway: hours in between meals twelve hours overnights, all you need to do.

Aleksandra King: Yeah, I love that I. love simplifying that 'cause, it does get it does get a b a lot doesn't, it?

Jennifer Hanway: It gets a lot and here's the thing we're al we're always all looking for a quick fix with

Jennifer Hanway: everything and, that's just our society you, know I, get I get cross now when I can't Amazon prime

Jennifer Hanway: something in the same day. So we all want a quick fix, we all want something easy.

Aleksandra King: But let let's quick fix this. So if you're eating badly, you're eating badly, you you know, you're

Aleksandra King: eating too much, eating the wrong kind of food, what can you do? Just what what do you do?

Jennifer Hanway: So I always say to people think about what you're gonna add in before you take away.

Jennifer Hanway: So don't think about the things you can't have. Because number one, what that's gonna do is that's

Jennifer Hanway: gonna set you up for a deprivation mindset. We all know. I mean, you know, I'm forty five. I've

Jennifer Hanway: been through the dieting years of the eighties, the nineties, the noughties. You know, the second

Jennifer Hanway: that you're told you can't have something, what do you want? So the second you're told not to do

Jennifer Hanway: something second, you know, if there was someone standing behind you and I'd be like, don't look

Jennifer Hanway: behind you, what are you gonna do? You're gonna look. So what we wanna think about is where can we

Jennifer Hanway: add abundance to our diets? And this is gonna do two things. Number one, it's gonna give you that

Jennifer Hanway: abundant mindset. Look at all of the

Jennifer Hanway: that I can eat. Number two, it's gonna balance out that blood sugar. So again, that comes back to

Jennifer Hanway: that point of it's not about willpower, it's about blood sugar. So if I say to someone, okay, all I

Jennifer Hanway: want you to do for this first week of us working together is add protein to the meal that you're

Jennifer Hanway: eating. Don't change anything else, just add protein. What they're gonna do is that's gonna help

Jennifer Hanway: them feel so full, it's gonna balance out their hunger hormones, it's gonna balance out their blood

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Narration is AI-generated. Everything said in the conversation is human.