Leading nutrition expert: Why women should think about ageing well, not losing weight

Dr Stacy Sims wants to change the narrative around woman and nutrition.
When it comes to nutrition and what you put into your body, one leading expert wants us to think about ageing well, not just how skinny we look at the gym.
American Dr Stacy Sims is a world-renowned expert in nutrition and fitness, having written several books on the topic and has taught and spoken on the subject around the world. She’s now based in Mt Maunganui and holds a research associate position at AUT University.
Speaking to Francesca Rudkin and Louise Ayrey on their NZ Herald podcast, The Little Things, Sims said that when you want to think about nutrition, telling people what to eat isn’t helpful as there are so many cultural factors that feed into that.
Instead of thinking about food, Sims wants people to think about their gut.
“We know that the gut microbiome loses a significant amount of diversity when we start hitting perimenopause and the postmenopause. And with that, there’s an impetus for craving simple carbohydrates, putting on a lot of extra belly and other body fat, losing our lean mass, having cognitive issues, having immune issues. We can see things coming out with cardiovascular problems, like all of a sudden, someone who hasn’t had any issue with cholesterol now has high low density or the quote bad cholesterol.
“It all comes down to the gut.”
Sims said women also need to think about their protein intake, which has not been discussed as much as carbohydrates and fat.
“I want people to remember that the recommended daily intake of protein is based on the least amount that you should be consuming to prevent malnutrition.
“Around 50, 55g is recommended every day for women, that is the bare minimum, and when you start doing exercise, you start lifting weights, you need almost twice that. ”
When it comes to nutrition, Sims also believes losing weight shouldn’t be the focus for women as they get older. She wants them to think about how they are ageing.
“When we look at how we want to age, because women for the most part outlive most men, and we are an ageing population and we want to age well. So that’s the whole rhetoric going around about longevity.
“So we’re talking about taking care of the gut microbiome or increasing protein. These are really important for ageing well. And it’s not about looking good in a bikini because summer’s coming. We lift weights because we see that that improves our cardiovascular health. It’s also really good for maintaining our bone, improving our muscle mass.
“But we also see that it helps with what we call neuroplasticity, so it keeps those motor patterns going in the brain, which really does help slow cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s risks. So when we talk about this, we’re talking about what can we do now to make us feel good? That then feeds forward to 10, 20, 30 years down the track.”
And there’s one myth that Sims wants to break when it comes to staying healthy – how much water you should be drinking each day.
“That whole eight to 10 glasses of water a day comes from a marketing campaign in Japan. There’s no truth to it. So when we think about hydration, we think about eating watery fruits and veg, coffee contributes, tea contributes, plain water contributes.
“It’s more about having small sips of fluid throughout the day rather than big gulps of water. So people walking around with the litre water bottles are actually, effectively, dehydrating themselves when they’re trying to consume so much fluid because it becomes too much and the receptors in your body are like, ‘Whoa, this is way too much water’, so you end up peeing out more than you absorb. So when we’re talking about hydration, it’s just being aware that you want to have water throughout the day.”
Listen to the full episode of The Little Things for more from Stacy Sims on what to know about nutrition.
The Little Things is available on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. The series is hosted by broadcaster Francesca Rudkin and health researcher Louise Ayrey. New episodes are available every Saturday.