Creatine Benefits For Menopausal Women

Creatine monohydrate is one of the most well-studied, safe, and beneficial supplements available to humans. Yet, many menopausal women squirm at the idea of supplementing with creatine in fear of gaining too much mass. Many midlife women find themselves struggling with weight gain during the menopausal transition and the thought of seeing the number on the scale go up, not down, is horrifying to them. When women think about taking creatine, they often think of their teen boys loading up gaining a lot of muscle mass and bulk, or bodybuilders in the gym lifting hundreds of pounds. This blog is going to break down the many benefits that creatine has for the menopausal woman in hopes that you can shift your mindset and give it a try.

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Jill Foos
Meal Prep In 5 Easy Steps

Meal prepping prepares whole meals ahead of schedule so you can enjoy the ready-made entrees later in the week. Meal prepping is exceptionally helpful if you are trying to eat healthier and make better choices in the ingredients you put into your body.  However, meal prepping is a challenging feat for those with busy schedules. While it saves you time later, some complain that planning, grocery shopping, prepping, and cooking the dishes takes too much time out of their busy lives. You might also want more variety than eating the same dish every day for a week.  Learn how to successfully prepare meals using these five steps in the Jill Foos Wellness blog.

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Jill Foos
What to Expect When Working with a Health Coach

Are you thinking about working with a health coach but not sure what to expect? Health coaches help you bridge the gap between a poor medical diagnosis and real-life strategies to heal, and support you to reach your greater health vision by collaborating with you to build small steps leading to lifelong lasting change. Learn about the myths surrounding working with a health coach.

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Jill Foos
Preventing Bone Loss in Menopausal Women

Just being a woman who will enter the menopause transition opens up the door to declining bone health and bone mineral density loss. Postmenopausal osteoporosis affects 1 out of 3 women. Estrogen deficiency leads to rapid bone loss. The current conventional healthcare model is not set-up to support the prevention of bone density loss, and often overlooks midlife women who need to start a proactive treatment plan that includes healthy lifestyle strategies. Learn how a health coach can support your bone health journey in the JFW blog.

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Jill Foos
Three Ways Health Coaches Help You Get SMART

S.M.A.R.T. goals are a tool that health coaches use to help their clients plan steps to achieve a specific goal. Maybe you are a post-menopausal woman who’s on a weight loss journey and striving to reduce, or eliminate, your type 2 diabetes medications. Perhaps you are a peri-menopausal woman starting to notice weight gain and want to learn how to optimize your nutrition around midlife. Maybe you are a midlife woman who’s been sedentary her whole life, watched your grandmother and mother lose their independence to a nursing home from multiple fragility fractures and you want a strong and mobile body. Many health stories bring both men and women to health coaching for ongoing accountability and support.

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Jill Foos
Why A Health Coach Is Part Of Your Health Equation

Health coaches are part of your health equation wherever you are on your midlife journey. We've been around since the 1950s and are experts in science-backed behavior change. Health coaches can be found in private practice focusing on various health issues, such as autoimmune diseases, fertility, brain health, weight loss, men's health, and midlife women's health. Health coaches can also be found in corporate America, college campuses, health insurance companies, and medical spas.

I don't need to tell you that transitioning through menopause is not an easy task. Fluctuating hormones, weight gain, sleepless nights, increased anxiety, hair loss, loss of libido, and feeling lost in the sea of internet nutrition noise only make it worse. Most women feel so overwhelmed making changes, or failed by the conventional healthcare model, that they just don't try at all. Learn 3 ways in which a health coach can help you connect the dots between your current health status and your greater health vision.

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Jill Foos
Do You Have a Preventive Healthcare Plan in Place?

Our current healthcare model is flawed when it comes to preventive healthcare. Should you break a leg, come down with pneumonia, or be diagnosed with cancer, the current healthcare model is ready and waiting for you. Preventive healthcare is about being proactive to maintain optimal health, which in the long run, saves time and money. Examinations, vaccines, annual lab work, mammograms, and colonoscopies are all examples of a preventive approach to healthcare. The four horsemen of chronic disease states, Alzheimer's Disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, need a more proactive preventive approach than what’s already in place for most humankind. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to the education that’s needed in order to become a proactive health advocate for themselves. If you don’t know what’s missing, or what’s needed, in order to avoid chronic disease states, it’s almost impossible to be proactively preventive in your health journey. Learn how to create a preventive healthcare plan for yourself in four easy steps.

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Jill Foos
How To Interview A Potential Doctor

Are you in the market for a new physician? Are you becoming increasingly frustrated that you are not feeling your best under the care of your doctor? Your doctor's job is to help you avoid chronic disease and pain, and support your goal of good health for as long as possible using a preventive healthcare approach. Your job is to follow a healthy lifestyle, which includes eating a diet that works for you, managing your stress, exercising, and getting deep, restorative sleep. Finding a doctor that you feel comfortable with, who places high regard on a preventive approach to healthcare, and who listens patiently to you, is who you should be working with. Learn what questions you should be asking your potential doctor to see if there’s a match for you.

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Jill Foos
Best Supplements For Pre-Diabetes

Diet and lifestyle interventions are always the first lines of defense when inching toward a pre-diabetic diagnosis. Type 2 diabetes is reversible, even if you weren’t dealt the best genetic hand. Yes, there are genes that are associated with diabetes, but with type 2 diabetes, it’s your lifestyle and diet that will turn those genes on or off. For some people, just changing their lifestyle, including eating a low-carb diet compromised of whole food nutrition could be enough. For others, supplements may be the next line of defense. Below is a list of some of the most beneficial supplements available to people who are on the cusp of diabetes.

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Kristin Smith
Know Your Real Risk of Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is avoidable and reversible. Living a healthy lifestyle is the first and most important line of defense in preventing this awful disease. Checking in with your sleep, diet, stress, and daily movement is the place to start. Not everyone knows where to start, or how to start implementing change. Hiring a health coach, and fitness coach, and making sure you are partnering with a medical doctor that understands the complexity of this disease and the tests available to you, are all critical components to creating a healthy life.

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Kristin Smith
Micronutrients For Hair Loss

Thinning hair and balding used to be an acceptable part of aging among men & women, but now we are seeing it with younger folks on a larger scale. There are many reasons why people may experience hair loss. What if you could know just what your body needs to turn your hair loss around? Testing your genetics and micronutrient status is a robust place to start your hair growth journey.

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Kristin Smith
Staying Healthy During the Holidays

‘Tis the season for the holidays. If you’re already living a healthy lifestyle, then you know how to stay on track during the holiday season. If you’ve recently started a new health journey, staying on track may cause some anxiety in you. Curating a positive mindset and setting intentions are the most important steps to take. These 10 strategies will help you set yourself up for success.

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Kristin Smith
What's Your Micronutrient Status?

Many people take supplements. But, what if you were taking supplements that you don’t need? What if you were taking supplements you actually did need, but not in the correct doses or forms? What if you were missing the boat altogether and taking supplements that your body doesn’t need? People hear about supplements from podcasts, reading articles, their friends and family, and from misinformed doctors and practitioners and end up taking a handful, or two, of supplements that may be doing their body more harm than good. The best way to know exactly what you need is by testing.

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Kristin Smith
An Integrative Guide to Hair Growth

Stress, poor lifestyle and diet can affect hair loss. Genetics, genomics and micronutrient deficiencies also affect hair loss. Testing in these areas may be part of the equation you’ve been missing. This is not where I started, but certainly wished that I had, especially being a health coach. Genetics and genomics play a huge role in overall health and disease. We are born with our passed down genetics from our mom and dad, but that certainly doesn’t mean that they define us. Genomics refers to the study of a person’s genome, or the totality of one’s genes. Micronutrients refers to the vitamins and minerals your body needs in order to produce enzymes, hormones and other essential substances needed for healthy growth and development. All of these factors are directly correlated to hair loss. Learn more about tests that can help you start a more meaningful, effective and personalized path to healthy hair growth.

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Kristin Smith
To Vegan or Not to Vegan?

New Year’s Resolutions come and go. Lifestyle changes made with intention, built on small foundational steps, and with the guidance of a professional, tend to stay. While many people look at January 1st as the start of a new healthy habit, most will quit by week 3 because they weren’t prepared, didn’t do the work to discover their WHY and thought that following someone else’s lifestyle instead of doing what was right for themselves, was a good idea. Becoming a vegan, or plant-based, is high up on many people’s list this year. But, is this the right choice for you?

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Kristin Smith
Juicing: Friend or Foe?

When I start working with a new client, we go over their current lifestyle, including what they eat in a typical day. I find that some of my clients start their day off with a blended juice, either freshly made in their home or at their local juicing shop. Some are looking to lose weight, clear up acne, balance hormones, increase energy and libido, and detox. Juicing in the morning is a better choice compared to instant oatmeal, frozen waffles, or a bowl of sugar-laden cereal when compared to the Standard American Diet, but is it optimal?

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Kristin Smith
Magnesium: The Superpower Mineral

Magnesium is an essential mineral, meaning that our body does not make it and we need to eat foods high in this mineral and possibly supplement with more. Magnesium is needed for over 300 biochemical reactions in the body, including maintaining normal nerve and muscle functioning, supporting a healthy immune system, maintaining a healthy and steady heartbeat, and keeps our bones strong. Magnesium supports the production of energy in our cells, helps our muscles relax and recover from exercise and promotes better sleep.

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Kristin Smith
Low-Carb Diets and Electrolytes

When you transition to a low-carb diet, such as the keto or carnivore diets, you may experience the “keto flu” and not know why it’s happening, or what to do about it. The “keto flu” can make transitioning to a low-carb diet miserable. There’s a transition period that may last anywhere from a few days to several weeks and there are reasons behind this and ways to support you feeling better. When you are eating the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.), your diet consists of many carbohydrates in the form of breads, pastas, muffins, cereals, sugar, soda, chips and other highly processed foods. When you drop the carbs, your kidneys will release water and sodium, resulting in rapid weight loss, more frequent urination and an imbalance of electrolytes.

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Kristin Smith
Healthy Skincare

There’s a plethora of lotions, toners, potions, tinctures, serums, creams, masks, scrubs and more that saturate the walls of our favorite cosmetic stores, health food stores and online shops. Acne, eczema, psoriasis, sun spots, wrinkles, rosacea and loss of collagen are more than skin deep issues for us. They hit us with a wave of emotions that range from feeling embarrassed to feeling hopeless. We all want beautiful, smooth, glowing and youthful skin no matter what stage in life we are at.

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Kristin Smith