5 Health Metrics Every Midlife Woman Should Track (No Scales Required!)

5 Health Metrics Every Midlife Woman Should Track (No Scales Required!)

Episode Summary
Most women have spent years focusing on the number on the scale, believing it defines their health. In this episode, I’m sharing the five key health metrics I track that truly matter for women in midlife — and none of them involve weight. From sleep quality to blood pressure, blood glucose, resting heart rate, and cholesterol, these simple and affordable measurements provide deep insight into your body and can help prevent long-term health issues.

I dive into why each metric is important, how to track them in a way that fits your lifestyle, and actionable tips to improve them naturally. You’ll learn how sleep affects hormone balance and energy, how to monitor your heart health without stress, and why cholesterol and blood glucose tracking is essential for women going through perimenopause and menopause. By the end of this episode, you’ll know which numbers to focus on and how to take control of your health in a realistic, empowering way.

Whether you’re looking to boost your energy, manage stress, or simply feel better in your body, this episode is packed with practical advice for midlife women prioritizing their health and lifestyle.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why the scale isn’t the best measure of health and what metrics matter more.
• How to track sleep, heart rate, blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol effectively.
• Simple lifestyle tweaks to improve each metric naturally.
• How these metrics become increasingly important for women in midlife.
• Ways to track your health without stress or overwhelm.

Transcript

0:00

Most women have spent years stepping on the scales. Thinking that number defines how healthy we are. But what if I told you your weight might be the least important metric you track today? I'm sharing the five numbers I track that I truly believe impact my health and could save our lives. Hi everyone and welcome back to the show where we took all things women's health and lifestyle without the overwhelm. Or the pressure to be perfect today. I want to share five health metrics that I track. They don't cost much to monitor, but I truly believe that they could save your life. And here's the twist. Not one of them has anything to do. With your weight, we're going to talk about what those five key metrics are and why they matter, especially for women in midlife. By the end, you'll know exactly which numbers to pay attention to, why they're important, and how to start tracking them in a simple, low cost way that fits into your lifestyle. So let's rewind about 10 years. That's when I made the decision to ditch the scales for good. I realized that with two young girls around me, it wasn't healthy for them to see. Bathroom scales out, anyone stepping on the scales or anyone talking about what their weight might be. Instead, at that stage, I focused on the type of exercise that I was doing, which at this point involved largely running and also some weights, workouts. But then in the last few years, I started focusing more on what was actually going on inside my body and how I was feeling. I made a number of changes to my lifestyle, and this included adding yoga into my workouts. I'd never really been a huge fan before, or not really seen the benefits, but as I got older, I knew that I needed to make sure that I was stretching properly. I started taking cold water dips, going in a sauna. Lying on A-P-E-M-F mat. And even more recently than that, I've started tracking my sleep and also my heart rate, my blood pressure, my blood glucose, and my cholesterol. Now these metrics have given me more insight into my body than any number on a bathroom scale ever could. And I think particularly as we reach midlife, these numbers are even more crucial for us. So let's dive into the first one. Sleep quality. The first metric that I track is sleep quality. Now, I just want to add a little caveat here because I know some people avoid tracking their sleep because it can make them more head up about it or more stressed about it, which means they go to bed a little bit more anxious, which means they're less likely to sleep well. So if you fall into that category, just take this with a general overview of why I do it, what my metrics are. And if it feels like it's a good idea for you, then by all means give it a go. But if not, don't feel any pressure. Sometimes with these things, and I learned this a long time ago when it came to feeding children, it was more a case of looking about how they were doing over the course of a week and how much food they'd taken in during the course of a week rather than any one particular day, because that can just be a little bit too intense and can cause. It's just that we don't really need,'cause in the grand scheme of things, over a week it probably balances out. So even if you are tracking every day, you don't have to look at the results every day. I know that I don't. Sometimes I forget for a few days and then I'll check back in and be like, okay, that's fine. Carry on, come back again a few days later. Then other times I'll go through a phase of tracking it every day, but it's not meant to come with any amount of stress attached to it that would be totally detrimental to what we're trying to achieve anyway. When it comes back to sleep, sleep is more than just hours in bed. It's our body's night repair system, which very much reminds me of the Estee Lauder. I wonder, was there really famous night repair serum? Anyhow, sleep is the cornerstone of health. I think we all know that it's like the Invisible Repair Shop. It keeps everything else working really well. When we sleep well, our hormones stay balanced, which is so important for us. Metabolism studies, again, super important and our brain can clear up toxins that build up during the day. Poor sleep. On the other hand, and again, I don't want to make anyone feel bad or panicky, but it can just nudge up inflammation a little bit. It can raise cortisol and it can affect our appetite, making us crave sugar or carbs just to get us through the day. I had a great example of this the other day. I hadn't slept very well. I think it was because. I stayed at my mum's overnight because she wasn't very well, and I was up with her a few times in the night, and the next day I was all over the place in terms of what I wanted to eat, how I felt. And I did actually go back and look at my tracker, and I saw that I wasn't that many hours down on my sleep, but I think it's because it had been interrupted and because I'd been awake. Sort of between about, I don't know, half past three and half past four, and then I went back to sleep. So I ended up getting up a bit later than I would normally. I don't know, I was just all at sixes and sevens all day. So I know that sleep can be so, so important for us. Now, over the last 30 days, I thought I'd go in and grab some stats to share with you from my Fitbit, which is what I wear to track some of my numbers. So I wear a Fitbit verse of four there. About 179 pounds. I want to say roughly around there. I've had Fitbits for years. I had the two of the basic ones to start with that just in the end fell apart and then I upgraded slightly. I did have an Apple watch for a while, but I must admit I prefer my Fitbit and I've been wearing this one now probably for a couple of years. I guess I'm really, really well with it. So I went in and had a look over the last 30 days just to share some stats with you so that it might give you a bit of a framework, because if sleep isn't something you're tracking at the moment, it might just kind of put some sense of perspective on things for you. So the duration that I'm getting each night is seven hours and 40 minutes, and my average sleep score is 80. I thought it would've been higher than that because normally when I look it's 83, 85, 89. I've had it 91 only a couple of times. Anyway, it's 80, which is fine. This is out of a hundred, by the way, for the sleep score. So I am awake 8% of the time, or 36 minutes in total. My REM is 20% or one hour 33. My light sleep is 56% or four hours and 17, and my deep sleep is usually around 16% or one hour 12 minutes. There's a really cool little function on my Fitbit and I can see how my scores and how the metrics compare to the average for people my age and my sex. So that's something that I find quite handy. I tend to find that I am. Awake for less than most people. I have more deep sleep, and then my light sleep and my REM are a little bit wonky. I have a little bit too much light and a little bit too little REM, but then overall I'm getting more deep, so I don't really know how that balances out. And at the end of the day, it comes back to how we feel about things. But I just think it's interesting to know. A couple of things that I do and that I've mentioned before is that I actually set an alarm to get myself into bed, not just to wake up. It sounds a bit over the top, but it reminds me that rest is really important, and it also gives me a good leading time to get myself and whatever I'm doing upstairs and into bed. So I set an alarm at 9:30 PM. Just to remind myself that I need to start thinking about heading upstairs, I know I'm lucky to be a really good sleeper.'cause my mum struggled massively for years with her sleep. And sometimes I'd speak to her and she'd say, oh, I was up at two o'clock in the morning. I came into the living room and I sat and watched telly for a couple of hours. And I just think that must have been awful because the odd time that I have been awake through the middle of the night, it seems to go on forever, doesn't it? It doesn't happen often, but I know when I was in hospital after having my hysterectomy, I was awake in the night then and it was just. Actually it was quite nice for me. I didn't mind too much that night'cause I was probably high on drugs. But in general, I know from, say, breastfeeding in the middle of the night, they can go really, really slowly. I think setting an alarm so that I get myself up to bed really helps with being a good sleeper, and I'm also as active as I can be in the day, which I think helps as well. But I could just be lucky and for people who struggle massively, I don't want to diminish how awful it must be because it does sound a really terrible place to be. But if ever I did struggle, I guess I would do more of the things that I think already help. So I'd exercise more because movement always helps me to switch off and it, and it tires me out. I'd spend more time in the sauna because when I come outta a sauna, I'm utterly exhausted and it's very good for calming your body before bed. I'd lie on my PEMF map for longer because that makes me really sleepy. It's lovely and warm. Or I'd do some yin yoga, and if all else failed, I'd look into sleep supplements or even a sleep clinic to get to the bottom of what was going on and to try and figure things out. Because I know for me, if I don't sleep well, I'm in all sorts of trouble. It can lead to migraines. It makes me dizzy, it makes me feel sick. It just throws me off completely. I'm utterly useless if I haven't had enough sleep. So that's the first thing, which is sleep. Okay, let's move on to the second thing that I track, which is my blood pressure. I did this recently for a period of 14 days, both morning and evening, and if you don't already know, blood pressure tells you how hard your heart is working to plump blood around your body. The thing about high blood pressure is it can quietly damage your arteries and organs over time, often without any symptoms, and that's why it's sometimes called the silent health risk. The only reference I really got to my blood pressure was probably from when I was pregnant. I know during that period it was around 120 over 70, and then when I adopted a different way of eating a couple of years ago, so more of a. Low carb, low sugar ketogenic lifestyle. I started to take my blood pressure again. Then just out of interest, I think because my husband was probably taking it one day, and I noticed that it was significantly lower than that. Um, and what was interesting that came out of the readings that I've taken recently is that my morning average readings over that two week period were were 110 over 67, and my evening readings were 99 over 67. Which I was really pleased with, and the only thing that I can really link it back to is that change in diet that I made two or so years ago, so what it highlighted to me actually was how much control I could have over some of these metrics. Whereas previously I might have thought that perhaps they were way outside of my control. And I know it's obvious to say that because we hear everything in the news and everything that we read about ways to lower your blood pressure, but then it's different when you actually see it in action. So that I did find really reassuring. Moving on to the third metric that I have been tracking, and that is blood glucose, and this one has been really fascinating. In fact, I'm going to do a whole separate podcast episode on it where I'm going to be diving. Deep into how it works, I'm going to be sharing my results in a blog post with graphs, and also I've got an Etsy download that I'm working on of recipes and a meal planner and a shopping list and all kinds of things if you are tempted to try living a low carb, low sugar lifestyle. Anyhow. Blood glucose is about more than just sugar. When it's stable, you've got steady energy, you have fewer cravings and better focus, which frankly is quite miraculous really. But when it spikes and crashes, you can feel foggy, tired, irritable, and overtime. These swings can lead to insulin resistance, inflammation, and a higher risk of metabolic disease, specifically type two diabetes. And the great thing about tracking your glucose is that it gives you early insight into how your body handles food long before any issues show up in the blood tests is really, empowering data, especially for women in midlife when hormones start to affect blood sugar regulation. So I wore a continuous glucose monitor for 14 days, and my average reading was 4.9, which was considered to be really quite low, and I was happy about that because I do make a lot of effort for it not to be high. So if it had come back high. What I suppose a really good thing is it would've shown me that something was a little bit off kilter and would've meant that some further investigations could have been done. But that is something that I will be repeating in the future as well. The continuous glucose monitors have a lifespan of about 14 days. You get an app that go with them on your phone so you can see your readings and then they sort of just die a natural death. But you can go back and repeat these and you've probably come across people who are diabetic who wear them all the time, so there's no problem in wearing them, and the data that you get from them is very helpful in terms of a useful health metric. Moving on. Metric number four is my heart rate and specifically my resting heart rate. This is something that I have actually been tracking for a really long time because even my basic, basic, basic Fitbit way back in about 2000 and. 1214 told me what my heart rate was. It used to be down at 46 beats per minute. That's probably more when I was marathon training. It's currently 54 beats per minute, which is fine. Your heart rate is a little bit like a daily report card for your body. A lower resting heart rate generally means that your heart is strong and efficient because it doesn't need to work as hard to do its job. And if it suddenly rises, it can be a sign that we're stressed over training, not sleeping enough or coming down with something. For me, it's a bit of a motivator. I think tentatively I might do another half marathon next year, and I've also started swimming more as well, so I'm just gonna be watching to see if that number dips a little bit. But if not being at 54, it's absolutely fine. If you haven't tracked your heart before then, now is a great time to start. Obviously, you can do it easily just by putting your fingers on your pulse and counting for six seconds and multiplying it by 10 or 10 seconds and multiplying it by six or counting for a full minute, or by using a simple tracker. Moving on. Finally, we have got cholesterol. This isn't something that I've ever had tested before, so I was quite interesting to see what the results were that came back. Cholesterol is a long-term marker that tells us how our heart and brain are doing behind the scenes. We all know that being aware of our cholesterol is really important. Actually, I think it probably is one of the smartest things that we can do for our long-term health because it just gives us this little quiet snapshot of how our heart and our arche is, and even our brain are doing behind the scenes long before we might feel that anything is wrong. And that is so true of a lot of these metrics. They're not visible, are they? The heart rate easier to access, but things like blood pressure. Blood pressure can be sky high and we don't know anything about it. Cholesterol can be high and we don't know anything about it. So having trackers and taking the time to monitor these different metrics, I personally feel as a middle-aged woman, I. Very helpful and something that we need to do. Now when it comes to cholesterol, in particular for women in midlife, cholesterol raises as estrogen levels decline during perimenopause and menopause, and LDL, which is referred to as the bad cholesterol. Can also rise as well, even if nothing else in our diet or in our routine changes. So tracking it helps to catch any upward trends early before they become a concern. And that's true about any of these metrics. It's not necessarily what the numbers are, but it's what the numbers do over time because then we can see the differences, we can see any changes, and we can make any tweaks that are necessary to bring the numbers back to where we are advised by our doctors. They should be. So the good news about cholesterol is that small tweaks can make a big difference, specifically eating more omega threes, which you find in oily fish. I think it's the SMASH, an acronym, isn't it? So it is salmon. Mackerel. Chevies. Sardines and herrings are all high in Omega-3 nuts, particularly walnut nuts are good and seeds such as chia and flax seeds. So maybe they're not the most common seeds that you would think of, but chia seeds are great in cheer seed pudding. Flax seeds can make flax seeds, crackers. I've got recipes for all of those coming up in this download that I was telling you about a few minutes ago. Increasing your fiber. Managing stress moving regularly can all shift your numbers in the right direction, and again, often within just a few months. So no rocket science involved, all simple lifestyle tweaks that can make a difference, and cholesterol results are just a compass. They're there to help us to make a choice that protects for future health. Obviously, I'm not a doctor that goes without saying, and there does come a point where medication might need to be involved if levels are too high. I think at the back of my mind, I probably slightly feared cholesterol results. I don't know why. Probably because I'd never had it taken before and because I knew that. As we got older and as we went through the menopause and perimenopause, cholesterol levels could rise. So I think I was probably a little bit scared of those, but actually we shouldn't really fear the results. We should just think of the cholesterol check as another form of self-care. It's simply another way of staying informed about how our body is doing and giving ourselves the chance to stay well for a long time to come. Now, let me share my scores with you from my cholesterol checks. So my overall cholesterol was 4.3. My HDL, which is good cholesterol is two, meaning that 47% of my cholesterol is. HDL, which is well above the minimal desired level of 20%. So that was good news, and my LDL cholesterol was 1.9. So overall I was really happy with those. The doctors were happy with those, and it's just a case of continuing to do what I'm doing and then get it checked to make sure that it's staying around the same. So let's just do a quick recap of the five metrics that I track. The sleep, blood pressure, glucose, heart and cholesterol. None of these are really expensive to track, but they can reveal so much about your health. True. When it comes to sleep, it probably involves wearing a fitness tracker, which will be a little bit more expensive. When it comes to blood pressure. I was lucky my husband already had one, so I just used his, but they are pretty easily affordable. Or we can go into our local GP and take our blood pressure there. Glucose monitor that is more expensive. I think they're around 60 pounds, but what it will reveal about your body is worth its weighting gold. And I will share more about that in an upcoming episode. Your heart rate totally free to track, so that's an easy one to start with. And cholesterol would involve a trip to get a blood test, whether that's down to your local gp, whether it's part of a well woman check, whether it's something that you could perhaps get through work you don't have to track all five today. Maybe just pick one. Maybe your heart rate is the easiest to do, and perhaps if you've already got a fitness tracker, you could start looking at what your sleep is doing as well. And thanks so much for listening. If you're new here, I hope that you've enjoyed this episode and that you pop back next week. And here's to tracking what really matters and not what's on the scales, because frankly, that doesn't tell us very much at all. You take care. Lots of love, and bye for now.