Nutrition and Health for Middle Aged Men - Lurata Lyon

Our first female guest, and the first guest of 2023, is Lurata Lyon.. Many of us start the new year, with the goal of getting healthier and fitter. So we invited Lurata along to talk about nutrition and give us hands on tips.

However she also gave us a lesson in resilience, gratitude and strength of human spirit. 

As a survivor of civil war in the former Yugoslavia, Lurata endured the trauma of being held captive, starved, tortured and abused. Eventually escaping to the United Kingdom, she had to retrain herself to eat properly. She worked hard to educate herself and is now a qualified personal trainer and nutritionist. 

Working with charities to tell her story, she is now also a motivational speaker and written a book about her journey - “Unbroken” - which comes out soon.

Our conversation largely centred around how we should treat our bodies when we reach middle age. How do we best fuel our bodies? How can we reduce or avoid the dreaded beer bellies?

A lot for her is about the mindset, e.g. do you go to the gym to build muscle and lose weight or is it about having fun and getting fit? Are you manly enough, having enough muscles? How can you use language differently to make a difference? 

In short, the focus should be using exercise and diet to feel good, with weight loss a side benefit.

Food is so important to compliment a good exercise regime. She explains how we cannot function without carbohydrates or protein. The combination of both is important, and to calculate how many calories you have eaten to understand how much you eat and which food carries how many calories. 

And even small amounts of exercise like 30 or 45 minutes are enough to go to the gym. But with anything, it’s fine to have ‘bad food’ in moderation, like bread or even alcohol. The quality of food is important.

Even Lurata advised us to let our hair down and enjoy ourselves every now and then. We spoke about salad, and she said if you only eat salad you wouldn’t get all the nutrients the brain and body needs. The brain needs carbs and fat to function.

Regarding supplements, Lurata suggests magnesium but also predominantly black seed oil. On our episode on nutrition, David and Volker spoke about their various supplements at length. 

After the age of 30, we lose muscle mass and it is our job to maintain muscle mass. Small changes, e.g. taking the stairs instead of taking the lift, will help you to grow and maintain muscles. Being active is key to a long and healthy life.

Drinking is another topic in terms of ‘empty calories’, as beer and wine contain a lot of calories. Unfortunately, we often want to eat with booze, as it increases our appetite because it contains so much sugar. As Lurata suggests we can go for it but then be more reasonable on other days. Again, it is all about the right balance, and building the right habits. She also gave us some hints on intermittent fasting.

Unfortunately we had to cut it short, as we ran out of time. Maybe we will get Lurata in again sometime soon.

You can find out more about Lurata on her website or contact her via LinkedIn.

As always, please let us know what you think and reach out with any guests we should get on to deep dive into this topic? Any feedback is appreciated, just email podcast@manupdown.com 

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