EP211 Are you drinking because your hormones are in survival mode? with Period Whisperer Bria Gadd
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The first step to changing your relationship with alcohol is to understand it’s not about the alcohol. This is about your relationship with yourself. You’ve got to stop being so judgmental of yourself and instead move into curiosity and compassion because there are legitimate reasons that explain why you drink the way you do. And none of them include that you are weak and lack willpower. And one of the most powerful tools that I teach in my program
00:27
is how to use language to shift your perspective of cause and effect. Instead of saying, I’m stressed and tired because I drink too much, which elicits all that self blame, try shifting that to, maybe I actually drink too much because I’m tired and stressed. Just notice the subtle shift of energy there. That’s the energy that pulls you towards solutions that actually solve this problem.
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My guest today is Bria Glad, also known as the Period Whisperer. And we’re gonna be talking about the real reasons why so many high achieving women hit a wall in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Because the strategies that made us successful for so many years are actually working against us now. Forcing yourself to exercise even though you’re tired. And under eating because you’re trying to lose weight. And running your life like it’s a marathon with no water breaks.
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causes your body to accumulate what Bria calls a health debt. You’re spending more energy than you actually have. And that not only wreaks havoc on your hormones during perimenopause and menopause, it also increases the intensity of alcohol cravings because it’s stressful and you need relief. This is an honest conversation about why you need to listen to the whispers of your body before they become screams.
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so that you actually have the energy and enthusiasm and motivation to live your best life.
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My name is Colleen and I’m a mindful drinking coach helping high achieving professional women permanently reduce their alcohol consumption by 80%. Join me each week for evidence-based holistic strategies to regulate your nervous system, balance your dopamine, and activate the growth mindset that makes you so powerful in other areas of your life so you can stop worrying about losing control and trust yourself again.
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Get happy, not sober. It’s not about the alcohol.
02:38
Welcome back to the show, everybody. And I just want to say happy spring. It is a beautiful May day as I sit here recording this. And I’m actually dressed and ready to go because I’m getting in the car to drive down to Indiana University tonight because my third child, my daughter, is graduating from college. And somehow there’s two ceremonies, not one. So I get to go to watch her walk tonight and tomorrow night, which I think is a little bit excessive. But whatever, I’m so proud of her.
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And we’re moving her into a new apartment and she’s starting at a new job. And I just couldn’t be more excited. I love this time of year. As I walked my dog this morning, our favorite place to walk is this preserve in the woods. And I just love spring in the woods, like all the birds song and all the critters are out making their nests and the smell in the air, that fresh green and all the flowers. And of course, of course the foliage is.
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taking over so it just feels luscious and full of life. And as much as I do enjoy being outside all times of year, even in the snow and sometimes the rain, don’t get crazy, but I just love the energy that I feel in my body. It’s connected on a cellular level. When it’s sunny and warm and I get to be outside, it just makes me happy. So I just wanna nudge you if you haven’t been outside today, no matter what the weather is where you are.
04:05
Get outside because you guys, are animals. We need movement and sunlight and fresh water and fresh food. Like taking care of ourselves doesn’t have to be that complicated. And I know starting my day every single morning with a walk outside, I think is responsible for at least 80 % of my mental health. So I highly encourage, maybe while you’re listening to this, get out of your chair and go move outside and breathe. And before we dive into the episode,
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I just want to call your attention to there is a link in the show notes that if you want to apply for a discovery call, because you’re ready to reduce your drinking by 80 % so that you can wake up feeling like the day is at your beck and call. And you just want me to tell you what to do because you’re tired of wasting your time and energy trying to figure it out on your own. Because if you could do it on your own, you would already be doing it. This truly is a thinking problem.
05:03
And the more you focus on your drinking, trying to drink less or not at all, the longer you’re going to struggle. And I will stop and acknowledge that for some people, it actually is easier to just quit. My approach isn’t for everybody. And that’s why we do screen our applicants very carefully to make sure that our program can work for you. But if you are invited to join, then you’re going to be welcomed into a discrete group of high achieving professional women.
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who’ve been using alcohol to cope with their stress. They don’t actually have a lack of willpower, as they’ve suspected. They have too much willpower. They need to get emotionally sober so they can work harder instead of smarter. They have to learn how to set boundaries, take better care of themselves, manage their time, prioritize their own needs, and go for what they really want in life instead of wasting their precious time and energy running on a hamster wheel.
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My program can give you the tools that you need to actually deconstruct the neural pathways that cause you to choose instant gratification over long-term satisfaction. I can teach you how to retrain your brain so that you believe that you are powerful, happy, and free. And when you believe that you are powerful and happy and free, you drink like somebody who’s powerful and happy and free. So if you’re tired of struggling to get sober or you are on and off the wagon,
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Or if you are enjoying a period of sobriety and you’re worried about reintroducing alcohol because you think you’re gonna slip back down that slippery slope, just imagine how different life would be if you learned how to completely trust yourself. Not to be perfect or to never make another mistake, but you trust yourself to learn from your mistakes because you’re no longer under the impression that something is wrong with you. My program is truly transformative.
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And I have so many clients that have literally altered the trajectory of their life and truly understand now it’s not about the alcohol. It’s about having the tools and the practices and the habits to manage your mind so that instead of being a victim of your emotions and changing your mind every time your mood changes, you become the master of your emotions. A woman who knows her own mind and is able to interpret her cravings for what they really are.
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not the desire to drink alcohol, but a desire to feel relaxed and supported. This is what it means to be emotionally sober. You’re no longer going to believe everything you think or treat your feelings like they’re facts. And these are skills, skills you can learn. And science shows the easiest way to change your mind is to join a tribe of like-minded people who are working towards the same goals. It’s actually easy and fun to change when you’re doing it in a group.
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And as it took me five years to develop this program, working full time around the clock with hundreds of other women helping me see what worked and what didn’t work, the idea that you can figure this out all by yourself in between everything else you’re doing is very unrealistic. So get into the show notes and apply for a discovery call if you are even kind of interested in hearing more about the program.
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whether you end up joining or not, you’ll walk away with a very clear understanding of what it actually takes to complete the change process so you’re not going back and forth. All right, let’s dive into the episode. Brea, I’m so excited to have you on the show, have the period whisperer and the hangover whisperer have a conversation. Before we get into that though, will you just do the honors and introduce yourself to the audience?
08:39
Yes, for sure. Thanks for having me here, Colleen. I love that you’re the hangover whisperer. I love the content you put out. think all the women who have heard this and I think they should just go share that, you your podcast right now, because what you offer is so valuable. So who I am, I am a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and I specialize in female hormones. And I’m a mom and I kind of come from like a fitness and nutrition background. And then everything kind of changed for me. Of course, when I
09:08
started to reach these magical ages of midlife. Yeah. Yeah. And I come from functional and integrative background, also holistic health coaching. So I understand the big picture and what holistic even means. Can you talk a little bit about why you call yourself the period whisperer? Because I feel like I understand, but I want to make it clear where that’s coming from.
09:32
Yeah, for sure. I love that question. Around the age of 35 for me, I started to notice kind of a shift in my clients who were all around my age. And then I started to notice the same shift in me where it was this just overall more fatigue. I was more tired, more.
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cranky, more moody, having more cravings, needing to, you know, choose other things to help me cope more often, which I know you talk about so well here on the podcast, changes in my period and ultimately just not sleeping very well. And that has sent me to my healthcare practitioner myself, because I was like, well, I’m in the wellness industry. I mean, if I don’t know how to fix myself, what’s going on here? And you know, I got perfect blood work and perfect everything else and was told I was the picture of health and
10:16
That was kind of this pivotal moment for me that had me recognize like I had missed messages from my body for years. When I started to understand functional health, I started to understand the female body and our hormones. It was just this real eye opening of I waited until my whispers were screams before I did anything about it. So really the period whisperer comes from, I think, learning to teach women to certainly use their cycle, but teach them to trust their own body and hear the messages that their bodies are whispering.
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before they turn into those screens. Yeah, it is such a product of our culture that we just keep moving, keep going, know, treat headache with acetaminophen, treat tiredness with caffeine, you know, treat overweightness with, guess I just better work out more. Can you talk about some of the whispers and what it is that you were ignoring?
11:08
that we just assume something is wrong with us. Like if we have low mood or energy, it must be our husband fault or our kids are crazy or it’s our work. Like we never think to look internally and see what’s really going on. And we just attribute this attribution errors. We attribute our symptoms to things that are going on externally. Can you talk about the symptoms? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I have to definitely talk about our actual cycle. So for any woman cycling.
11:36
You know, I did not know these things several years ago that I know now, but you know, things like heavier, cloddier periods. I mean, any change in your period is a message from your body that something is different, especially if you’ve had a very smooth period or a pretty expected consistent period, even if it’s not perfect, but it’s like, okay, it always comes on this time. It always lasts these days. So any changes in like color flow or texture are often indicators, you know, I think we just often ignore them.
12:04
as women or we think or we’re told that they’re normal or sometimes we’re put on birth control. And ultimately they’re an indicator of the body that there’s a hormone imbalance, something going on there. So heavier periods are typically an indicator of estrogen, more estrogen than progesterone. What causes that? Because, you know, how do you begin to even kind of figure that out? And then what in the world would you actually do about it? What causes it is often stress at the end of the day. You know, I think this the source of
12:34
All things for us in our health is going to be stress, but not necessarily. I just have more emotional stress in my life. It could be stress load on the body from maybe some of the food that we’re eating, stress load on the body, cause we’re not sleeping enough, know, stress load on the body from too much caffeine. So I think when we’re trying to call out very specific messages from the body, when we are tired, sure, we might still choose caffeine, but we should always take the time to think like.
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Okay, why am I so tired right now? What has changed? Did I have a poor night’s sleep? Can I change that for the future? You did I maybe eat not the best? Can I change that for the future? So it’s always coming back that way. I know for years, I honestly was so ignorant of my own power to control things, just like the inputs to the system, you know, that manage the outputs, my fatigue level or my energy or my mood.
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And it just never occurred to me that I would just not be tired. I had four kids and I was just busy and running all the time. So it never occurred to me that it wasn’t normal. I used to think I was so funny. would take the crap, like an old school coffee maker, the big eight, 10 cups, and I would just carry that around instead of a coffee cup as a statement to the world of, I’m gonna push through this, but I am that tired. And it never occurred to me
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that I wasn’t supposed to be tired. You know, I think we generally normalized just taking supplements, taking medication, drinking caffeine to get through. And I know for myself, I was so afraid to stop doing some of that because I thought I’d never get up. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a real fear. There’s a lot of that around working out. I always think of working out as it’s a choice to spend and invest energy, but you might not.
14:25
have that energy to invest and it’s hard to be able to pull back on it because we’re worried about what that might result in. But the reality is if we don’t have the energy to spend to invest there, then we’re just putting our body in debt. Okay. So what I heard you say is if you’re too tired to work out, maybe you shouldn’t work out. Correct. And I get that. We’re going to put a wedge in that because I know for myself, if I was used to working out, I would be afraid I’m going to get fat. When I look back in my thirties,
14:54
If I got off track with my exercise, then I would probably be drinking more, probably be staying up later. So the wedge that I want to put in is, okay, you just said if you’re too tired to work out, maybe you shouldn’t be working out. But then what do you do instead, as opposed to just say, fuck it and go drink a bunch and stay up too late watching TV, get fat and hate yourself. Like that would be what I would have done. Yeah, I think honestly, I think a lot of women should just be sleeping in more.
15:23
Most of us are setting alarms earlier and earlier to get their workout out, especially if you four kids or any amount of kids, you’re like, well, this is the only time I’m gonna get it in. And really, we can’t make it through the day without caffeine, then we probably need a little extra sleep, or we take that energy and prioritize our nutrition a little bit before we try to, again, invest this energy money that we don’t actually have in something that we can’t actually pay for.
15:50
Can you talk a little bit about what the health debt is? Yeah, we really see this come to a head in perimetapause because perimetapause is really just another workload on the body. It’s like any transition, right? move, you change jobs, you have a kid, you get divorced, you get married, just more energy requirement for us, right? And the way we’ve been raised with culture is we’re kind of redlining our energy supply and demand at all times.
16:14
So then we have this transition that comes in, a perimenopause, and the body is suddenly like, oh, I have more to do. And we slip into this energy supply and demand deficit. And that is what I call health debt. Because when the body doesn’t have enough energy supply to meet the demand of what we’re asking of it every single day, then we start to have symptoms. It starts to kind of rob energy from other parts of the body. Ultimately, I think of it calling like we’re almost slipping into
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survival mode and that’s kind of the beauty of our body. She’s really designed to survive. We often think like, oh, I’m getting older, I’m aging. It’s like, actually your body is a damn cheetah and she is a survivor and that’s what she’s trying to do right now. And so what do we do if we were thrown into the Hunger Games or on a deserted island? Would we go for a run? No, that’s a really bad idea. We would conserve, we’d look for food and water and we would conserve and that’s exactly what the body does in health debt.
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she shuts down all non-essential personnel that require energy. So there goes our reproductive system and there starts our changes in our period and our libido, like that’s not required for survival, out it goes. And then it conserves and this is where some of our weight gain can kind of pack on. This is where our intolerance to certain stressors that maybe we could handle, you know, for a while, like maybe you’re able to handle certain food or maybe you’ll be able handle some alcohol and now you can’t. You know, that’s where that really starts to come in is when we’re in this
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survival mode in the body. think so many of us live in survival mode for years. And what I love to say is like the strategies that got you here created success. Nothing has gone wrong, but they’re not going to take you to the next level. The strategies of skimping on your sleep, know, skimping on your diet, skimping on self care, overbooking yourself. I know that for most of my audience, we are very high functioning, high achievers type A.
18:13
And it’s like, you can be a perfectionist when you’re a kid, when your mom has to pack your bag and tell you to go to bed and does your laundry. But then we come out into adulthood and then we have kids and we’re raising little perfectionists while also still maintaining our own state of perfection. And you just get to a point in midlife where the wheels start falling off the bus. Like you cannot keep doing that. But then how do you deal with the fear that if you stop
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Or something has to change. I wouldn’t have even known what to change. Four kids were in travel soccer. I’ve got to be up here at 7 a.m. and here at 11 p.m. and picking up people at 4 a.m. It’s not like I could just stop living my life. So how do you help women shift their perspective on their own capacity? Because it’s really hard to realize the strategies that got you here are not gonna get you there. I certainly think pointing out the fact that
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what you’re doing clearly isn’t working. Like, yes, it got you there, but it’s the same stuff that actually got you here also. So if you’re suffering right now and like, I think bringing awareness to that recognition and then again, getting really clear on the fact that it is not calories in calories out, it is energy supply and demand. So when you look at that all of a sudden, you think about your life and you’re like, okay, if I’m gonna ask Olympic levels of output of my body, I’m gonna have to treat myself.
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like an Olympian, which means regular massage. It means like really nailed nutrition. means, you know, proper rest days and stretch and cross training. And so we have to really, I take that like 10,000 step view and be like, okay, how much energy do I have to spend on this? And if I’m in a suffering place, then I actually don’t even have energy to be spending. So I think sometimes those perspective shifts happen. And the last one I would say is,
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because perimenopause adds this demand, I believe this is our gift. It’s like our call to action into YouTube.0. It comes right now because right now, 40s, 50s, we’ve got decades left to do anything we wanna do. And we don’t have kids to raise necessarily as much anymore. So like, this is your opportunity, I think. And it’s even more exciting because it’s our opportunity because we’re not gonna be hormonally hijacked for the next 40 years, right? In the name of reproduction.
20:39
Life gets really good if we deal with it. Yeah, I feel like what we’re all chasing through 20s, 30s and 40s is the trophy goes to the woman who can put up with the most shit and still smile. Yeah. And I think perimenopause, menopause, I think you run out of fucks to give. You start getting really realistic and like, this isn’t fair. And also this is bullshit.
21:06
Yeah. And you start waking up to this. I mean, I’ve gone through two divorces. I just go to the doctor and get on an antidepressant so that I wouldn’t be so angry. Like I’m doing so much work. Things are in balance. I’m not pursuing my own dreams. And it’s like, that’s a call that’s coming from inside the house. I rightly blamed my ex-husbands, but in reality, I was the one not taking care of myself. I was the one not meeting my needs. I was the one that was not being honest about what I really want.
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because I didn’t think I could do it all because I thought I had to do it all. So it’s just really, it is a time of life to really come into yourself. Can you talk about some of the basic changes that most women find they need to make? What are the low-hanging fruits with behaviors? When you think about this idea of health debt, it’s like, we got to get out of debt first before we can start investing in things. And I think we’ve gotten really far away
22:05
from like our kindergarten basics of health. You know, we’re out here trying to push and do an hour long workout, but we’re missing some of these key basics, which is what holds down the fort and foundations of the health in our body. So I kind of come back to what are these four key pieces that honestly, if you look out into the wildlife in the world, animals do this every day and animals don’t have the same sickness and disease that we have because they hold down the fort of their health. So one of course is sleep.
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And I think this is when it can be controversial because often it’s like, well, I can’t sleep. I’m trying to sleep and I can’t. I think we just need to hold space for our sleep in a consistent manner. I always think regular, doesn’t have to be perfect, but like regularly, are you going to bed at an appropriate time? Are you creating enough space where you’re not getting out of that bed for eight hours later, ideally, you know, most of the time? Or nine or maybe time. Yeah. mean, if we got a debt to pay ladies.
23:04
Yes. You need to be in bed like nine hours. I love that you said that. Yeah. The more the better, you know, the more it’s better, but let’s call it a minimum of eight, no more of the seven anymore. Like we need at least eight. What are you doing for that hour before bed? Right? If we’re watching scary, excitable shows, that’s going to cause problems for our sleep. You know, we want to just bring it back to that. Let me hold space for that sleep. Number two is nutrition. Like kindergarten foundations of nutrition. Are you eat?
23:32
three to four times a day. I mean, we grew up with three meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and maybe a snack. Like, let’s bring it back to the basics. And everyone always wants to know like, well, how much to eat? I’m like, I don’t know, your body knows. So let’s enough in that meal so that you’re full for four to five hours until the next meal. If you didn’t do it today, okay, do it tomorrow. Let’s just add it all in there. So like some real foundational pieces of like, let’s at least get these key pieces in in our nutrition. Movement wise, you...
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probably like me do a lot of sitting in front of a computer and talking to people all day, right? don’t, are the days where we’re out like hunting and gathering or working on a farm. So before we’re out there looking at fitness luxury bodies, like, are you even moving seven to 10,000 steps a day? Are you stretching and expanding and functionally moving your body? You know, I’ve got so many high achieving women who are like happy to do an hour long like.
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body crushing workout, but ask them to do some yoga and they’re like, hell no, I can’t do that. So like functional stuff that our body has to move in before we do these things. And then finally, the last pillar of our health is pleasure. Ultimately, this is a massive source of energy for us. If you’re so stressed, nothing’s very pleasurable. So then we might need to focus on reducing stress, like active stress management reduction or joy or pleasure.
24:56
but it has to happen every day or most days. You think about the times when we’re trying to do 100 things and I sit across from women and I’m like, what was the last time you did for fun? And the time we don’t even know what is fun for us. I went and saw a girlfriend last weekend and she is very fun and happy. She’s actually a manifestation coach. Her favorite word is juicy energy. And I would tell you that I am super optimistic and happy and peppy and fun.
25:26
But being around her made me realize how intense I’ve gotten. And at one point I looked at her I go, no, no, no, I’m really, really happy. I’m so happy. And I was just like, whoa, I was being funny. But that’s kind of how I felt in contrast. And just looking at myself, what am I doing for pleasure? I don’t even know. That sounds so foreign.
25:49
Just since I’ve been back in a week, I’ve been putting on music and dance, like just little tiny things to like reconnect because I’ll have what she’s having. She’s just a whole vibrational level higher than me. And I have no problems. I’m very clear on who I am and what I’m doing, but I’m real intense. I’m like, I’m gonna need to dial that back a little bit, for sure.
26:13
I wanted to circle back to something else you talked about as far as eating. I know with me, I had eating disorder until probably mid-40s in terms of at least if you qualify thinking. I went from being bulimic for 20 plus years into a much healthier version of orthorexia. I was like a full-on staunch vegan, but at least I was eating healthier foods, so it was a move in the needle in the right direction.
26:41
But I see so many women, the big mistake they make because of this midlife thing with their hormones and they are gaining weight, that the first instinct is to starve yourself. And how much I’ve learned about my own hormones and like just the need for protein. Like I was an intermittent faster and I would have like said that jokingly like, we don’t call it anorexia anymore. We call it intermittent fasting. It’s fine. It’s fine. Like all the doctors say it’s fine. But you know, can you just speak to
27:09
what a woman really needs in terms of nutrition. Yeah, yeah. think again, that regularity is really key and mostly to because the front line of defense for our hormones is going to be having a healthy circadian rhythm and a healthy blood sugar. How do I have really regular blood sugar? And when you wake up in the morning, if you’re not eating within two hours, that
27:33
is gonna call upon more cortisol in your body at a time when we already have a lot, especially if then you’re gonna add in some caffeine and that is a massive energy suck on your body. So the most important thing, let’s just, let’s eat a breakfast, minimum of 20 grams of protein. Most women need like 30, 40, and even 50 at breakfast in the morning. Only you’ll know when you try it and figure it out and pay attention. And like fats and carbohydrates at breakfast, all the things.
28:00
And carbohydrates, we think of pasta and breads. I’m like, no, carbohydrates are your veggies, are your fruits, know? Yes, they’re your grains. But having all of the macros and just taking a week or two to notice how much of each helps me feel full and satisfied to the next meal. Because we can start with these standards of like, we probably need one gram of protein per pound of body weight, you know, each day, but we might not. It depends on how much you move. It depends on how much muscle you have.
28:27
So I really like to think, okay, let’s start at 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal. Let’s start at 25 to 45 grams of fiber per day. And like a serving of fat at each meal. Let’s keep it really simple, know? So each protein, each fat, each of your carbohydrates, and then just pay attention for the next hour or two. Does it keep you full and satisfied? Do you have good energy? Do you have circular thinking? And now are you already thinking about food? Because your food should satiate you so much so that
28:56
Your energy is good until you start to be hungry again when you have a hunger cue and you’re not really thinking about food obsessively in between. I’ll kind of focus on this. Did my food come from the earth or did it come from human hands? if it’s manmade versus, you know, God made, like can we start with food that’s whole food? And we have a little bit of everything at each meal and did I eat enough of it to the next meal? If we can just kind of start there.
29:23
we can get there pretty quickly if we have the capacity to pay attention to it. Or just a meal prep thing. Like I’m looking at doing that because I work so much and I find myself eating granola for dinner and that’s not a thing. And so like, I’m like, okay, Colleen, it’s okay. I’m gonna get you some food so that you don’t have to think about it or stress about it. So I think maybe even just, you know, getting something to support you so you don’t have to think about it and it’s ready made. You know, these days like,
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Go to chatGTP, we have amazing AI these days. Put in the things, the foods you like, how much protein you want in each meal and ask it to spit out a seven day menu for you. it will get a 3D printer and print out a chef to make it for you. That’s all true. Then you hire your chef. You could do that as well. But if you’re trying to wonder it for yourself, but yeah, these meal delivery services can be amazing for that too.
30:14
You know, so kind of know your strengths and decide where you want to grow right now. Well, and anybody that’s like kind of even stressed about budget, the cost of not eating well is so much more expensive because what you’re speaking of the alternative is getting sicker and tireder and then needing to have medications. And then we get into chronic disorders and disease. Like maybe you can’t afford to not get a meal prep service. Yeah.
30:40
Absolutely. It’s kind of the reallocation of your budget again, which I feel like comes back to that health debt example. It’s like, how do we get out of debt? Where’s a smart investment of our energy money? The hardest thing to bridge is changing the allocation of your resources from investing in the problem to investing in the solution. know, like waking up tired because you stayed up too late drinking and you’re not eating well.
31:07
And so you’re downing caffeine and you’re just stuck in this cycle. It’s like you have to pull out and go through the uncomfortable days to, yeah, it takes time and you have to allow yourself to be tired first in order to sleep well. And most of us, it’s very hard to tolerate any discomfort because we don’t allow ourselves to stop and slow down long enough to get through it. But you got to turn the wheel the other way and you have to slow it down, stop it and then really
31:36
move it in the opposite direction. If you are living in a pattern of reactivity, like all your energy is going to cleaning up yesterday’s bad decisions. You don’t have anything left for today and tomorrow. Yeah, love that. It’s always so important to have some compassion during this time. Like I always did my clients, if I could take any woman out of her life to like Costa Rica to a retreat for even six weeks, I could change her health. But
32:04
We do have a hundred things in our responsibility bucket right now. So we have to have a compassion for the fact that the little bits of time is where we’re going to work on the healing or the growth, like you’re talking about, to stopping that wheel and turning it the other way. So let’s at least respect it’s not going to happen overnight. I think that’s so important. And to realize that in as little as six weeks, I mean, let’s not oversell.
32:30
that. But I mean, you can make massive changes in your life. You just have to stop poisoning yourself, stop neglecting yourself, stop denying yourself. You have to make changes. But the sooner you stop turning the wheel in the wrong direction, the sooner your hormones come back online. Let’s circle back to the hormones a little bit. What does it look like to be healthy in perimenopause and menopause? What is normal?
32:55
or what is ideal and then what is a sign that you are in a health deficit? Yeah, I love it. I mean, I think any symptom that’s impacting your life, keeping you from doing what you want to be doing in your life or accomplishing the sign of health debt, because we’re not able to accomplish what we need, something’s not right. But certainly if you’re not pooping every day, if you’re not sleeping well most of the time. So I do, to answer your question, I do believe women can...
33:25
transition, go through this ovarian retirement, we’ll call it into this next phase of menopause with minimal, we’ll call them. don’t think I could guarantee none, because I think again, all transition requires energy of the body and it creates a bit of stress in the body. But it’s like, I really love that 80-20. If only 20 % of the time you’re like, oh, this is different, this is off, I don’t feel the best, but I can accommodate for it, we’re good.
33:52
But I do think part of the empowerment of trusting your body and knowing your body, there’s a lot of value in, you know, whether you work with a functional practitioner, getting your hormones tested so that you understand, like, so for someone like you, Colleen, you feel good. So what does good look like in your numbers? So that if all of a sudden you stop feeling good, then you know really quickly how to get back there. So that kind of knowledge and analytics of yourself can be really powerful if we want to stay on track for peak performance.
34:21
Yeah, and I would like to stay on track. Where I am thinking about it is that they say there’s a window where you would want to start some sort of hormone replacement therapy. And if you miss it, you miss it. And I do not like to miss windows when it comes to my skin, feeling youthful. I don’t have any symptoms. I feel great. So it would just be more protecting my future self. Yeah, kind of like biohacking. That’s really what we’re talking about, I think.
34:50
We are living longer and longer and longer. So we don’t have a lot of case studies of what it’s like for a woman to live without higher levels of estrogen and progesterone 40, 50 years that we’re starting to get to now. So I think when we’re thinking about the opportunity of starting some hormones, some bioidentical hormones, it’s like a biohacking tool. Let’s test it. Let’s see how it feels. Maybe you’re like, hey now, I’m way less intense. Maybe that you’ll notice that.
35:19
But we want to do that underlying work first, which you’ve done. So here you are. Now it’s like, okay, if I want to get from an eight to a 10, or I want to stay at a 10, how do my hormones play into that? And I just want to speak to the woman who is in the deficit listening, because it feels like such a high mountain to climb and so many changes.
35:40
And I guess what I want to say is it’s one thing at a time. I didn’t become a 51 year old woman who takes no medication and sleeps like a fricking baby and is happily divorced. I didn’t get here, but it doesn’t matter where you are. It matters what direction you’re facing. Like if you know where you’re going, then you just take the steps today, you know, and just cut out the coffee. Like that’s one thing that I gave up years ago.
36:05
If I come to your house and you offer me a cup of coffee, I’ll have one. I’m not like anti-coffee, but I don’t drink caffeine every day. Yeah. And I have so much more energy. I notice if I do have coffee, I’ll feel a little tired and wired. There are so many things that you assume you need that is actually shooting you in the foot. And again, not anti-caffeine. I just prefer myself, my body, my sleep without caffeine.
36:28
I was like that with fitness. Like I was, you know, always, you know, it worked out six days a week, 45 minutes a day, no matter what, it was always intense. Like I had to sweat. And I mean, now at most I’ll weight train four days a week and there’ll be weeks where I don’t, but my body is fitter, leaner, healthier, more mobile than it ever was in my twenties now that I’m well into my forties. So. Well, you’re still beating me. I have yet to get into the weights, but I will tell you, I teach something.
36:57
called the low bar method. You should set your goal at something you will actually do. And a couple months ago, I decided I needed more cardio, like the walking super nice. I walk my German Shepherd every day, but I was like, I need to sweat. And here’s my big workout. Wait for it, don’t write it down, because you won’t have to. I get up, I run one mile. I run one 10 minute mile every day. And that gives me, like, I feel toned again. I feel like I’m in cardiovascular health.
37:27
I feel like I look good. It’s like, you would be amazed at how little you can do. Like my workout reg, I do 20 pushups and I run one mile. And I know I could do more for my bone health getting older and I’m gonna work on that. But it’s just amazing how little you can do to maintain something when you’re not shooting yourself in the foot in so many other ways. No, I’m with you. I think one of the...
37:53
like messages of perimenopause and menopause is less is more. Less is more. Less is more with alcohol too. And that’s actually one of the strategies I teach going from an all or nothing, go big or stay home. Let’s do this. To less is more. And also with alcohol. Let’s go ahead and circle just into alcohol’s relationship with hormones. Do you have any tips or thoughts on alcohol and hormones? I tend to have a glass of wine or two.
38:22
on the weekends, one or both nights. Like is that damaging? What’s your thoughts on alcohol? Yeah, my whole perspective on alcohol is again, it’s an investment that you have to decide if it’s gonna be right for you or not. I think your body’s gonna tell you if it’s not right for you, for sure. I look at it, Colleen, like, okay, we understand that there isn’t a lot of nutritional value. In fact, out drinking alcohol does create an energy demand on the body.
38:51
Yeah, it’s a stressor. It’s got to clear it. calls up calls for cortisol. That’s literally what it does. It’s a depressant. calls for cortisol. So the way I look at it is what are your goals right now and what’s going on in your life? Like I will tell you that going out and having some drinks with friends brings me so much joy and energy that that will be worth the investment of the couple of drinks that I have.
39:18
Do I think drinking alone every night is gonna, no, I think that’s why I never, I don’t ever drink alone because it’s like, okay, that’s not an investment for me that makes it worth my while. I think when you’re healing as well, it’s just, it’s another thing where it’s like, well, is this worth it right now to heal? Cause it’s slowing, it’s putting you further in debt, I guess is the way I like to think about it. So just know that that’s what it’s doing and decide, do I have the money or budget?
39:45
in my energy to spend on this right now. love that framework because it’s not that alcohol is good or bad or right or wrong. It’s just that it costs. Yeah. There’s a cost. Can you afford it? And I know for myself, when I’m really stressed out, the last thing I want is a drink. To your point, if I’m with friends, now sometimes I do drink alone because I’m single and I don’t need to go out. If I want to have a nice glass of wine, I will have my dinner and I will have my wine. But I never think of it
40:14
It’s like, can I afford this? Is this serving me right now? And when you just start to think of all the behaviors, just, and taking care of yourself and thinking less is more. Less is more. Absolutely. And you can use this, the same concept of like, is this worth it in any area of your life? Like even with nutrition, especially, find it’s, but if you’re going to stay up late and binge watch some TV, okay. Is it going to be worth it?
40:43
deficit that you’re gonna have. Like just get into that habit and then be empowered in owning that decision. You know, I think it’s like, cause then you’re like, well, I made this decision. So I’m to take a nap tomorrow. And that’s what it is. You know, like we move on. The thought of paying yourself, you know, when I used to think about self care, I used to think my ass is a size two. My, my blonde highlights are done. My makeup is amazing. What more do you want from me?
41:10
I thought that’s what self-care was. And now I understand that self-care is, no, I’m taking care of my body. It’s a human body, just like babysitting a two-year-old, except I can drive and buy vodka. So there’s a bit of a difference there. But understanding that if you want your body to function and you want your mental health to function, like your health, I often think like the limiting reactant in a recipe, if you put all the ingredients for cookies in, but you don’t have enough chocolate chips,
41:39
Your cookies are not gonna be as good. And as we go in, if you’re running out of the ingredients that make better skin or manage your emotions or your mindset or keep your bowels moving or your immune health, like if you’re not putting in the ingredients, you’re not gonna be able to get out good health. Yeah, 100%. I agree with you. And I think, you you’d ask me like, how do we shift the mindsets of women? I’m like, let’s all be really honest about the fact that
42:08
Pretty sure almost every woman listening here either has had a child or a pet. We nail taking care of our children and our pets. We make sure they have a bedtime. We make sure they get a walk-in or outside playtime. We make sure they have nutritionally-silled food. We make sure they have fun social time. Why aren’t we doing this for ourselves? I know.
42:29
I’m going to call my mom and ask her if I can move back in, but I don’t think she’s going to let me. She can make my meals and make sure I go to bed. Come out and be like, give me those potato chips and get your ass to bed, young lady. I’d be like, okay. It wouldn’t be nice to live with a mom or something, but we don’t take care of, we don’t take, I love that because I raised four children and it was so important that they had vegetables. Eat your broccoli and now I’ll go days and then nobody gives me no broccoli. Right. Exactly. So it’s like we got to.
42:58
really own this relationship with our own body. It’s the most important one we have. It’s the one that takes us everywhere in this world. And we get so much out of it as well. I mean, I think we take better care of our cars than we do our body oftentimes. Yeah. Well, Brea, I so appreciate this conversation. Can you let us know where to find you and anything else you want to share?
43:21
Yes, thank you. Thanks for having me. This has been fun. I really love your energy. I also have a podcast which Colleen’s going to be on. So make sure you come and check out that episode. It’s called the Period Whisperer podcast where we dish all about really all things hormones, specifically in midlife. You can come find me as well on Instagram at bria.underscore.period.underscore.whisperer. Thank you, Bria. Thank you. All right. That’s it for today’s episode.
43:47
I love you so much for the fact that you are still listening. It just shows how hungry you are and how much you can do when you just set your mind to exposing yourself to high quality information and feeding your brain good strategies and tools and ideas that allow you to shift every single day, just moving in the right direction. And I’d ask that you pay this episode forward if you found it valuable.
44:14
Please share so that some other woman who’s looking for door number three, know, door number one is no change, door number two is you need to get sober, and door number three is all of this. It’s not about the alcohol. Share the show on your socials, text it to a friend or share it in a group or just tell a friend that this is the best damn podcast on the planet and it’s so helpful. And I appreciate you doing that. That is how this show grows is organically, word of mouth or thumb to thumb, if you will.
44:44
So thank you so much for listening. I love you all and I will see you on the next episode.