In this episode of What She Taught Me by Go Long, Jill Consor Beck talks to Liz Ward, MS, RDN — a dietician and author of The Menopause Diet Plan. Liz credits her mother's insistence on balanced meals and family dinner — "if one egg is good, three eggs are better," a colorful plate on the table every night no matter her mother's work schedule — for shaping how she fed her own three kids. When her mother got sick in her late 80s, three years of doctor's appointments and hospital calls fell to Liz while she was going through perimenopause herself and raising three teenagers, a pattern she attributes to "I was the female" and admits she still doesn't fully know why she took it on. We get into what her mother's own trade-offs cost her, the impact of her grandparents on her today, and what Liz would tell her three daughters about not worrying their way through motherhood the way she did.
Resources mentioned:
• The Menopause Diet Plan — https://www.amazon.com/Menopause-Diet-Plan-Managing-Happiness/dp/0593135660/
• Liz's Substack — https://substack.com/@menopausenutrition
• Liz's previous appearance on Going the Distance — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3hZdNso07g&t=1084s
More about Liz:
• Author page — https://www.amazon.com/stores/Elizabeth-M.-Ward/author/B001HPCT92
• Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/menopausedietplan
More about Jill & Go Long:
• Sign-up for Go Long's newsletter — https://golong.substack.com/subscribe
• Learn more about Go Long — https://www.golong.me/how-it-works
• Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/justgolong/
• Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/justgolong
• LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/go-long/
Jump to:
00:00 Intro to the series: welcoming back Liz Ward
02:26 Liz's Mom as the Para-Dietician
05:21 Dinner on the Table Every Night, No Matter the Chaos
09:12 Living the Sandwich Generation Dream
11:47 Her Own Career Trade-Off: Falling Behind on Technology and Face Time
13:54 How Liz's Grandparents Set the Standard for Self-Sufficiency
17:11 When Liz Told Her Mother She Was Pregnant with Kid #2 Four Months After Kid #1
19:11 Lessons Learned From the Trenches of Motherhood