Ep.90 Dyna Vink, Certified Health and Nutrition Coach

Calm the Chaos

Dyna Vink is a certified health and nutrition coach who refused to give in after her doctor, dietician, and trainer gave ineffective advice on how to navigate perimenopause. She now coaches women through her site Holistic Nutrition Lifestyle

Dyna started her journey as a director of marketing with several high-tech companies over the years. She had what some may consider a dream job. But in her thirties started to stumble which affected her confidence and belief in herself. Different symptoms starting coming up and she didn’t know what to make of them and hadn’t connected the dots to the “change in life”. Dyna shares with us those symptoms that she was experiencing and how she was working on her own towards trying to find a “magic pill”. Even at her annual check-up, the doctor proceeded to fat-shame her and prescribed a crazy diet of processed foods. She knew that this was not the path to gaining back her overall health.

It was after consulting her doctor, trainer, and dietician that she started to dive into reading women’s aging literature so that she could understand what was going on with her mind and body. She started to make some small changes and focused on a lifestyle approach after all the other exhaustive options.

It was after her journey, research, and education that Dyna felt that she would like to become a health and nutrition coach so that she could help other women through this challenge. Dyna feels that we should be talking more about perimenopause and menopause in our daily lives. It’s nothing to be shameful about. She makes herself available through coaching and education.

We discuss how Dyna intakes a new client and how every client’s situation is handled uniquely and there is no “cookie-cutter” approach. Dyan’s focus is a lifestyle approach and to think of food as medicine.

Food is one of Dyna’s first pillars that she focuses on because it’s so important to our overall well-being and the good news is that this is something that we can control. If we can control the way we eat and resolve some symptoms and problems like inflammation, bloating, joint pain, brain fog, and sleep then it’s a big win for our overall health and well-being.

Another pillar that Dyna focuses on with her clients is quality sleep. Many women come to her stating that they are having issues with weight gain and one of the first questions is, are you getting enough sleep? Sleep is not only vital to your physical health but to your overall weight loss. If you don’t get enough sleep then your cortisol levels go up and that’s a stress hormone that over time can be very toxic to the body. If you can’t get proper sleep then your body can’t perform the general maintenance of removing dead cells and rebuilding tissues.

Dyna makes available on her website an article: Eleven Foods Ladies in Peri-menopause should never eat. I will go ahead and put a link to this article in the show notes!

We discuss exercising for health and exercising for weight loss and how that affects women in perimenopause and menopause. Dyna also shares a client success story which is a great reminder of how we treat our overall health and wellbeing.

So what about the women who are listening that have already gone through the menopause journey and are on the other side? What should we be concerned about moving forward? Dyna shares that a focus on bone and muscle strengthening is very important as we get older and we should not let this area of our practice slide. And please don’t forget to work on your balance! There are many practices and exercises she shares that can help us to stay focused on keeping this an area for commitment.

Dyna closes by leaving the listeners with a challenge and tips on being successful. Are you ready to take her up on this for a short period of time? I know that I have been focusing on her challenge and already seeing some changes in my overall health and well-being.

Resources and Links

Connect with Dyna Vink

Get the Article: 11 Foods that ladies in perimenopause should never eat.

Connect with Deborah Voll

Take The Midlife Quiz

Passion and Purpose Digital Workbook