Top Dietitians Share 10 Things Every Woman Over 40 Should Know: ‘Perfect’ Isn’t the Goal

If you’re like me, you love getting advice from a girlfriend. Now imagine your friends are world-class nutrition experts, here to hand deliver the very best health and eating advice straight to an audience of one: you! That’s what my life feels like. As a food writer for Woman’s World, I recently attended the Nutrition News Update conference, filled with the Who’s Who of the world’s top dietitians, and talked to the most trusted voices. There, I asked them a simple question: What is the one thing you wish you could tell women about health or nutrition? I felt encouraged by their answers and I hope you do too. Here are their insightful, life-changing responses.

10 things dietitians wish more women knew

Offering advice on everything from menopause to bone health to weight loss, we’re revealing dietitians’ top pearls of wisdom.

Ditch perfectionism and embrace balance instead

You may know Ellie Krieger, MS, RD, as the host of the cooking series Ellie’s Real Good Food on Public Television or her hit Food Network show Healthy Appetite. While standing poolside at the conference hotel she told me, “My one piece of advice is: Don’t let perfect get in the way of better.” The New York Times bestselling cookbook author explained, “So often, we look at every food we eat as good or bad. We’re constantly judging, and if it’s not perfect, we just sort of throw up our hands and forget about the whole thing.” She recommended, “Get out of that all-or-nothing mentality and instead take a wider-angle view of how your week looks. Every little decision doesn’t have to be perfect, but maybe it just has to be balanced over the course of the week.”

Get your nutrition info from credible sources

Lauren Harris-Pincus, MS, RDN, serves in the U.S. News & World Report Best Diets expert panel. Over breakfast, with the Arizona landscape in the background, she told me, “My best piece of advice to women, particularly women over the age of 40 such as myself, is be very, very careful where you get your nutrition information from.” She added, “Social media is a wonderful tool for people to gather information. However, please make sure that whoever you listen to is credentialed, licensed, has integrity and isn’t trying to sell you something.” She explained, “Unfortunately, there’s so much information on social media that’s harmful to women and people in general because the people providing that information really shouldn’t be providing that information and don’t have the clinical training and expertise to do so.”

Value progress over ‘maxxing’ trends

Samantha Cassetty, MS, RD, is a columnist for TODAY.com. By the check-in counter at the resort, amid the noisy lobby, she spoke about the word of the year: maxxing. “I want women to know that sometimes enough is enough. You don’t always have to be doing more and more and more. So if you want to take a walk without a weighted vest, that’s a perfectly healthy activity. Eating a balanced meal is a great start—we don’t have to eat our body weight in cottage cheese.” She added, “In this world of fibermaxxing, protein-maxxing, optimizing and biohacking, sometimes I think we have to learn that enough is enough. And if you’re doing a little bit, that’s still making positive change.”

Give yourself grace as your body changes

Perhaps you’ve spotted Maya Feller, MS, RD, CDN, giving great nutrition advice during a guest spot on Good Morning America. I chased her down in the hotel lobby, where she told me, “One thing that I wish women would know in general about nutrition and health is that there are different seasons in our life, and our bodies and our needs change as those seasons progress.” Her advice: “Give yourself grace because your nutrient needs will be different in those seasons, and the way that you nourish yourself should also change to match that season of life.”

Protect your bone health (with prunes!)

Frances Largeman-Roth, RDN, is a New York Times bestselling author and a frequent face on QVC talking about health. She shared, “As we age, many of us are thinking about maintaining a healthy weight and also our muscles. But one thing that we don’t think about as much is our bone health.” She encouraged, “You can maintain those healthy bones, those strong bones, by doing weight-bearing exercise like weight training, running, jumping, anything that actually puts an impact on your bones.” She added, “Also, getting your dairy foods, yogurt, milk, cheese, cottage cheese, all that is very important. Your dark leafy greens. And also, guess what, prunes! These all contribute to bone health. So make sure to add that to your list.”

Practice mindfulness around food

Cynthia Sass, MPH, MA, RD, CSSD, a New York Times bestselling author who has appeared on CBS This Morning and The Rachael Ray Show, said, “One thing I wish more women knew about nutrition is actually the power of mindfulness. If you’re not sure where to start, try the STOP technique, which comes from the mindfulness-based stress reduction curriculum.” She explained, “STOP is an acronym. It stands for stop, take a breath, observe—observe your body cues, observe what’s going to align with your needs—and then proceed. That pause may help you naturally gravitate more towards balanced, consistent habits. Not because you should, but because it feels good, and that’s a lot more sustainable than any diet.”

Prepare for menopause strategically

Mandy Enright, MS, RDN, RYT, is an award-winning registered dietitian, yoga, fitness and mindfulness instructor. She shared three pieces of advice for women going through perimenopause, or “reverse puberty” as she calls it. She confessed, “Despite devoting half of my professional life to nutrition and fitness, the fact that we’ve only started really talking about reverse puberty over the last few years has left me feeling unprepared for this life stage.” If she could turn back the clock five years she would do these three things: “Find a gynecologist who specializes in menopause, make strength training more of a regular occurrence than a sometimes occurrence and pay more attention to protein at meals.”

Small daily choices make a big difference

You may have seen Wendy Bazilian, DrPH, MA, RDN, sharing advice on LIVE with Kelly and Mark. I love the wisdom she offers on her podcast: “We experience 1,000 waking minutes each day on average. Have you ever thought about how you’re spending yours? Most of us spend our minutes in the same routine day after day, but we have choices in how we utilize those minutes to live a healthy, fulfilling life.” She added, “The great news is that we don’t need to overhaul anything in order to enhance how we spend our time.” She told me we can easily make meaningful shifts if we “focus on the small daily choices—what I call ‘life’s currency’—that can make a big difference in health and wellbeing.” She emphasizes little tweaks using strategies from her mantra: “Eat well, move daily, be healthy.”

Watch what you ‘digest’ from social media

Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN, FAND, is a Wall Street Journal bestselling cookbook author with 12 published titles and a nutrition expert for FoodNetwork.com. I spotted this superstar in a hotel hallway and had to ask her my question. She said, “The one thing I want to tell women about health—there’s a lot of things—but one thing is when you follow on social media, if any account makes you feel bad about yourself, about your body, just delete it. That is not who you want to follow because you should always feel positive and good about yourself, no matter what.” She added, “Whatever you’re looking for—it could be menopause, it could be osteoporosis, bone health, mom [content], whatever it is—there are so many credible people that I’m happy to share resources to follow people who make you feel good and give you the right information. Because that’s the number one thing—always feeling good about yourself and being positive.”

Smaller isn’t always better

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Harris-Pincus offered me one more kernel of wisdom before she left. “My other piece of advice is that smaller isn’t better. The goal isn’t to be the smallest human you can become. It is to be the healthiest, most productive, happiest, most content human that you can become. And sometimes we do things to get smaller that are counter to those things.” She added, “You can do a lot of things to get smaller that make you less healthy than you were before. So do the best that you can. If your goal is weight loss, if your goal is to take a GLP-1, make sure you do all of the things to boost your health at the same time as opposed to solely trying to become smaller.”

She ended with, “Let’s remember that each human body is different. Every person is different. What works for your friend, what works for your sister, won’t necessarily work for you. So please use your own medical team to handle any of the medical concerns, nutritional concerns that you may have, in order to keep you the safest and healthiest you can possibly be.”

Bottom line on applying this wisdom from dietitians

At the end of the day, the best nutrition advice isn’t about chasing perfection, trends or a smaller number on the scale—it’s about tuning in to what truly serves your body, season by season. Join me by choosing one tip from this list and trying it today—and build from there!