There are many things you can do to help yourself stay abreast of these changes. Anti-aging therapy can help by promoting optimal levels of crucial hormones in your body, but there are also a few tactics you can use on your own to promote a sharp mind with age. Keep your memory keen during andropause or menopause by:

• Getting repetitive. If you hear, read or think something that you really want to remember, reinforce your memory by writing it down or saying it out loud. Use a planner, notebook or smartphone app to record important dates and notes, then consult them later to refresh your memory. You can also do this in person—if you meet someone new, help yourself remember his or her name by repeating it back in your greeting (for example, “It’s nice to meet you, John.”)
• Learning for your whole life. Research shows that advanced education can improve your brain’s functioning into old age by helping you make a habit of staying mentally active. However, you don’t have to be in school to learn something new. Keep challenging your brain by discovering new facts about the things you do and the world you live in. Your job may already keep you mentally stimulated, but you can supplement this by reading and writing regularly, taking classes, doing puzzles and learning new skills.
• Engaging your senses. The brain has an easier time remembering things when it associates them with different senses. Every time you do something, help yourself remember by providing your brain with as many different sensory cues as possible. If you’re cooking a new dish, smell the spices you use and focus on the different flavors you taste. If you’re trying a new workout, pay attention to the way it feels to move your body or watch your movements in a mirror.

Memory changes can be frustrating during menopause or andropause, but there are many things you can do to preserve your mental acuity.

Chronic fatigue is one of the most common menopause symptoms. In Rochester Hills, women at all stages of menopause are seeking support to help them stay awake, but many are looking in the wrong place. Fatigue develops during menopause as a result of hormonal imbalances, and if you don’t do anything about it your drooping eyelids may hang around for years.

Hormonal imbalance causes fatigue by disrupting sleeping habits. It can do this in a number of ways, like:

• Causing night sweats and hot flashes that will wake you up during the night
• Prompting insomnia
• Increasing anxiety levels
• Increasing your risk of depression
• Causing you to be more sensitive to pain that keeps you awake

Fighting Fatigue during Menopause

When menopausal fatigue is your problem, the standard dose of caffeine isn’t going to be much help. A cup of coffee can perk you up after a few hours of missed sleep, but hormonal imbalance runs deep. Aside from keeping you up at night, decreased hormone levels can reduce your natural energy levels.

Anti-aging treatments like hormone replacement therapy can restore hormone levels to their proper stages and naturally improve your energy levels. Along with your anti-aging therapy program, there are a number of lifestyle changes you can make to fight fatigue the natural way.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Cut out caffeine. The natural upper can actually cause more harm than good. If you need something warm to drink in the morning try a cup of green tea instead.
• Drop the temperature. Hot flashes can make moderate temperatures feel uncomfortable. Work with your body when this happens by having fans around that you can use to cool off quicker.
• Exercise more. Exercise can naturally increase your energy levels following your workout, but can also leave you ready for bed at the end of the day. This can improve your sleeping habits and increase your alertness during the day.
• Try relaxing. Journaling, deep breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation and meditation are all great ways to reduce stress, which could cause additional fatigue if you aren’t careful.

Menopausal fatigue can wear down your spirit, leaving you feeling mentally drained and ready to go back to bed. Use some of the above techniques to increase your interest in day-to-day activities.

Anxiety is a state of apprehension at perceived threats that can cause debilitating fear, irritability, insomnia and inability to concentrate. Anxiety causes the body to boost adrenaline in a fight-or-flight response, which can lead to physical symptoms like sweating, muscle tension, elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, dry mouth and dizziness. Those who suffer from severe anxiety may also experience panic attacks, which can make you feel like you’re losing control or even having a heart attack.

If you’ve started to experience anxiety during menopause in Rochester Hills, anti-aging therapy may be able to help by bringing your hormone levels back into balance. Though anxiety can feel overwhelming, there are also many things you can do on your own to keep it under control, including:

Breaking Down Your Problems

The issues that cause us anxiety often feel insurmountable. Instead of fretting over how you’ll try to leap your problems in a single bound, start dividing them into more manageable chunks. Make a list of the problems that cause you anxiety, then list smaller steps you can take to overcome each problem by order of difficulty. Start from the easiest step and give yourself as much time as you need to complete each task. Remember that progress will take time and that the symptoms of anxiety, though alarming, cannot cause you physical harm.

Finding New Ways to Relax

For frequent anxiety sufferers, it helps to learn a few techniques that promote a calmer state of mind, both long-term and in the moment.

• Deep breathing is something that anyone, anywhere can do. Though even a single deep breath can be powerful, this practice will help most if you have a quiet spot and a few minutes to yourself. Sit and focus on drawing deep abdominal breaths.
• Yoga is well-known for its ability to foster a peaceful state of mind. It can also be a great workout, which will help you ease stress through exercise. To get started with yoga, it’s best to find a compassionate and informative teacher who can help you learn the basics.

Something as simple as reading a book, listening to music or calling a friend can also help you keep anxiety from becoming overwhelming. If you begin to experience severe and chronic anxiety during menopause in Rochester Hills, it may be best to seek some help—talk to Dr. Waller for guidance.

Unfortunately, many of us do not have much time to spare. Fast food and TV dinners are no longer an option for you, but these products emerged as solutions to a common and frustrating problem: you can’t always spend your entire evening preparing a five-star home-cooked meal.

Still, there are many solutions to this problem that don’t involve getting dinner from a drive-thru window. If you learn a few ways to speed up the cooking process, you can treat yourself to healthy meals without spending all your time in front of the stove.

It will be much easier to eat right and save time if you:

Organize

Spending 10 minutes searching for the right spatula before you even start cooking wastes valuable time. Instead, take a few minutes now to get all your ducks in a row by:

1. Sorting your tools. Similar utensils should be kept together in a place close to where they will be used. Appliances you use frequently can be kept on the countertop for easy access. Tools you use only rarely should be kept somewhere out of the way.
2. Sorting your ingredients. During your HCG program you will need to stock your home with healthy foods, and it will help if you keep your fridge clean and organized. Store fresh ingredients you’ll use frequently front and center in the fridge and pantry. You can keep a running list of currently stocked ingredients on the door of your fridge.
3. Making weekly meal plans. Turn every dinner into a no-brainer by plotting out the week’s meals in advance. Consider what you’ll cook for every meal and head to the store to buy all the ingredients you’ll need at once.

Modernize

In the 21st century, we have technological tools that make every task easier. Sometimes all you need to speed up the cooking process is a new appliance like a:

• Crockpot. This slow-cooking contraption can be left on for hours without supervision, cooking a delicious meal with little input from the chef. If you prepare all your ingredients beforehand and start up your crockpot in the morning, you can have a hot meal waiting when you get home.
• Rice cooker. As the name suggests, these machines are designed to make preparing rice easier, but this isn’t their only useful purpose. Much like a crockpot, you can add the ingredients for a soup or stew to a rice cooker, hit the button and come back later for an easy meal. You can also sauté or boil just about anything in a rice cooker.
• Microwave. Perhaps this one is obvious, but remember: the microwave can be used for much more than just reheating leftovers or nuking a frozen meal. Microwaves are excellent for everything from thawing meat to quickly boiling vegetables.

With the right tools and strategies, your cooking experiences can be truncated significantly, giving you more time to devote to other important things in your life. How else have you helped yourself cook quick meals that would meet your medical weight loss doctor’s approval? Tell us in the comments!

If you are not careful, stress can seriously derail your efforts to look and feel younger. Your anti-aging doctor in Rochester Hills can help you develop tools to overcome stress as you follow a healthy lifestyle. One of these healthy strategies is exercise.

Aerobic Exercises Reduce Stress Levels

There is much more to a cardio workout than the buckets of sweat you’ll produce after a run. Aerobic exercises are actually proven to benefit your mental health, as well as your physical health. Part of the reason for this is that aerobic exercise produces endorphins, hormones that are known to boost mood and essentially increase happiness.

Endorphins are actually responsible for the famed “runner’s high,” the euphoric sensation you feel after an intense run. This rush of endorphins is known to dissipate stress, working together with the physical effects of running that improve heart health and blood circulation on their own, taking a trifold approach to stress busting.

You don’t need to go for a run to experience this type of endorphin boost. Other types of cardiovascular activity include:

• Swimming
• Walking
• Bicycling
• Ice skating
• Dancing
• Kickboxing

Exercising every day will predispose your body to handle stress better. That means your morning workout can actually help you power through the day with better mental energy. Exercise can also help you relieve stress in the moment. When you are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, depressed or just generally frustrated, remove yourself from the situation and go for a brief walk. Getting a quick release of endorphins and separating yourself from the situation you are in can help you to gain new perspective as you find healthy ways to cope with your stress.

Stress can stifle anti-aging efforts and even lead to worry lines and fatigue. Before reaching for a snack to calm those nerves, try going for a walk. It is a better plan for anti-aging therapy, and will likely soothe your stress better too.

While you are focusing on medical weight loss in Rochester Hills, it will be in your best interest to avoid refills. Refills make it more difficult to count calories, ultimately blurring the line between portion sizes to an even greater degree.

Refills are fundamentally problematic. Portion sizes are already out of control. Most fast food restaurants serve sodas that are twice if not three times the size of a proper portion. The chips and bread we are served when waiting for our meals at restaurants are already divvied up in servings that are too large. But somehow one oversized portion isn’t enough—more keeps coming!

Even if you start out with a proper portion size, just one refill on an item can double your intake. Yet when we sit down at the end of the day and think about what we had to eat and drink, most people will think of the soda they had with dinner, not the seven sodas they had after all the refills were counted up.

When you are out to eat, try avoiding refills by having a strategy in place. Here are a few tips:

• Your best bet is to not drink soda at all. The drink is loaded with sugar and bad for your health. If you are going to have soda, tell your server you only want one glass and that you will switch to water after that.
• Use a plate when eating bread or chips. Again, you should try to refrain from eating these items at all, but by putting just one portion on your plate and leaving your snacking to that you can prevent refill confusion.
• Just have one plate. If you are at a buffet, there is no reason to go through multiple plates. Put your entire meal on one plate and take your time eating it. You can also ask your server if there are any non-buffet items on the menu that you can try instead.

Refills are tricky business. While eating out your server will pop by your table and swap out an almost empty glass of soda for a new cup of sugar fizzing to the brim. As you talk with your friends mindlessly at a Mexican restaurant, you might go through two or three baskets of tortilla chips. When at the buffet line it seems normal to take a small portion of everything you see, and then go back for more of what you didn’t try on your first trip. Keeping the above tips in mind can help you stay in control of your diet.

All of this information is at your fingertips every time you bite into a potato chip or take a swig of soda, but if you are like most Americans this isn’t something you look at regularly. During your medical weight loss program in Rochester Hills it is time to start slowing down before indulging in a snack and evaluating just what the nutrition label has to say. Doing so can boost your weight loss efforts and give you the knowledge to stay in control of your diet.

To get started with this healthy habit, here are a few simple tips to help you read nutrition labels correctly:

• Start at the top. When it comes to your weight loss efforts some of the most important information you can glean from a nutritional label is at the top. This includes the portion size and the calories per serving. Don’t make assumptions about how many portions are in your snack bag. Read the label to make sure your 150-calorie afternoon snack isn’t actually a 450-calorie diet buster thanks to the “servings per container” size.
• Track the nutrients that matter. Talk with your weight loss doctor about what nutrients matter to you and your weight loss plan the most. The top nutrients to watch for are often fat, carbohydrates, protein, fiber and sugar. If you are struggling with obesity-related conditions, things like cholesterol and sodium may also be important to watch for. As a general rule, more fiber and protein and less sugar and fat will make for the healthiest snack.
• Get your vitamins. If you are going to be eating a snack you are best off benefiting from it nutritionally. Instead of opting for an item that is only good for its taste, try to find a snack that has a lot to offer at the bottom of the label where the nutrients are listed. Nutrients like vitamin A and C as well as iron and calcium are often found in healthy snacks and can benefit your health as you overcome hunger.

What do you look for when you are reading over a nutrition label?

In Rochester Hills, medical weight loss is more than a diet—it is a commitment to a healthier way of life that is driven by strong lifestyle habits and regular healthy decisions. When you first start out with your medical weight loss program you will undergo a long series of transitions until you realize that you are living an overall healthy lifestyle, free from many of the habits that may contributed to excess weight.

Maintaining your weight loss after your medical weight loss program comes down to making a series of healthy choices day in and day out. Sometimes it is hard to predict what those choices will entail, but in most cases you can prepare yourself for the obstacles that lay in front of you by predetermining what your choice will be when the situation occurs.

Here are a few tips for making healthy choices in Rochester Hills:

• Make a grocery list: The food store is a hotbed of temptation, especially if you aren’t careful about what you are purchasing. Impulse stands crowd out even the healthy aisles of the store, while the inner aisles will call out your name to break your meal plan. To avoid making ill decisions always have a grocery list and make the decision to stick to it. Also, do your best not to shop when you are hungry to avoid letting your stomach overpower your reasoning ability.
• Have “fast food” ready at home: Know that there are going to be nights when you won’t have time to cook. Something will come up and just having a meal planned for the evening won’t do. Have back up “fast food” solutions in your freezer. This might include healthy leftovers that just need to be heated up, frozen low calorie dinners or plenty of produce so you can make a smoothie. These simple options will help you stay out of the drive thru lane.
• When faced with two paths, take the stairs: Every day you will be faced with small decisions that will impact the amount of activity you are engaging in. Some of these decisions are small, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator or parking farther away from the store than necessary. Other decisions can impact you even more, like choosing to walk the dog instead of letting him or her run through your backyard, or deciding to watch TV at the gym from the treadmill instead of on your couch.

Staying strong and making the healthy choice when faced with daily decisions is a great way to boost your confidence as you are losing weight. Dr. Waller can help you develop more healthy strategies to lose weight during your medical weight loss program.

This is why having a home gym can be so valuable. With a way to exercise at home, any spare moment spent in your home can become an opportunity to build your fitness. You’ll never have to pay membership dues, you’ll never have to wait for equipment and all the gear will be tailored exclusively to your own needs and interests.

Though building a home gym can seem like a lofty dream during your medical weight loss program, it doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Even those with tight budgets and limited space can begin building a workout area of their very own by following a few simple steps.

Looking for a Location

You may already have a spot in mind for your gym: your underutilized attic, the empty corner of your garage or basement, that spare bedroom being used for storage space. You don’t need much more than six square feet to start putting together a workout area of your very own, so start thinking of potential locations. Just remember that convenience is key—for the best results, you will need to keep your gear set up and accessible at all times.

A good atmosphere can also make a big difference. If your gym space is dark, cluttered and stuffy, you’ll have a tough time staying energized and focused during your workouts. Windows can greatly improve the ambiance of your workout area. If your workout space doesn’t have a window, then it can help immensely to make the place feel more open with mirrors, houseplants and good lighting. You should also have access to at least one electrical outlet if you hope to use a wired exercise machine, fan, TV, stereo or computer.

Stocking Up

Your gym will only be as valuable as the workouts you get there, so it’s important to fill your gym with equipment you’ll use often and effectively. For some people, this means investing in a treadmill, exercise bike or other major workout machine, but it isn’t always necessary to commit so much money or space to a single item. You can still get an all-around great workout with simple tools like:

• An exercise mat
• A stability ball
• Light free weights
• A jump rope

Once your gym is stocked, use it as often as possible and never stop improving it. The more you put into your gym, the more you’ll get out of it, so spend your free time making it the perfect place get the workouts you’ll need during medical weight loss.

If you want to maintain a healthy lifestyle long after your medical weight loss program draws to an end then it is time that you learn healthy cooking strategies. Eating a home-cooked meal every night is more economical than eating out, and since you control what goes into the dish it can turn out to be a whole lot healthier too.

Learning how to cook healthily can help you improve the health of your entire family as you lose weight. And best of all, many healthy cooking strategies taste just as wonderful as if you were dining out. You may even discover that you prefer the taste of eating in!

Here are a few simple strategies to keep in mind as you are learning to cook:

• Plan meals ahead of time. After a long day at work there is nothing more tiring than figuring out what to cook for dinner. At this point your stomach will already be grumbling and the idea of defrosting meat will sound torturous. Plan your meals at least one day ahead of time so you can get home and know exactly what you are making.
• Use herbs and spices to your advantage. Considers these ingredients to be a form of free flavoring. You will likely find that there is absolutely no need for cheese and buttery sauces when you use items like rosemary, thyme, paprika or lemon zest. Herbs and spices have nutritional benefits of their own and are low in calorie content.
• Plan your meals in sections. The easiest way to put together a meal is to think of your plate. Every meal should have vegetables and protein. Mix up the same old choices by rotating veggies or cooking your meat in different spice selections night after night.
• Take turns. Make cooking a family affair. Everyone develops different cooking styles, so you might find that eating lean protein dishes like chicken three nights in a row isn’t so tiring when it is prepared by three different people. This will also limit the burden placed on one cook preparing food every night.

If you are new to healthy cooking, do yourself a favor and invest in a quality cookbook. There are plenty of cookbooks available that focus on healthy ingredients while tailoring tastes to a certain cultural cuisine.