Episode 422: How I’m Training for Perimenopause as a 42-Year-Old Woman with No Symptoms with Erin Holt
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
Perimenopause is having a moment. Despite what you see on social media, not every symptom you experience in your late 30s or early 40s is automatically due to perimenopause.
Erin gets into the four areas she’s been personally focused on for the past few years: mindset, muscles and metabolic health, labs, and inner work. She also talks about why cardiovascular health needs to become a much bigger part of the peri conversation and why getting your thyroid checked is not a one-and-done situation.
Consider this your no fear mongering take on perimenopause with plenty of tough love, a little sacred rage, and a reminder that your body is not a liability to be managed.
P.S. Erin’s 2-day masterclass, Her Body Keeps the Score, is happening August 26th and 27th. Learn the practitioner framework for seeing the whole woman behind hormones, periods, preconception, postpartum, perimenopause, and beyond. Grab your ticket here!
In this episode:
Why perimenopause is caught between medical gaslighting and over-medicalizing women’s bodies
Erin’s realistic, conscious, and “not psychotic” protein approach
The HRT nuance Erin wants more people to make space for
The cardiovascular wake-up call every woman in her 40s needs to hear
Erin’s fitness routine for glucose, metabolism, bones, and future-you health
Air hunger, heart palpitations, and why you need to stop sleeping on your thyroid, especially after 40
Resources mentioned:
Applications for the Fall 2026 cohort of The Funk’tional Nutrition Academy are now open! If you’re ready to become a certified functional health practitioner, apply now.
Join Eat To Achieve, Erin’s 21-day self-study nutrition program for just $49.
Episode 357: Before You Jump to HRT - What Your Perimenopause Symptoms Might Really Mean
Want more of Erin?
Subscribe to Erin’s Substack for a no-nonsense space about health, entrepreneurship, and manifestation.
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Women right now are kind of asking, well, hey, what are my hormones doing? And how do I fix them? And I don't know if that's the right question to ask. I think what we should really be asking if we feel off is, what are the systems of my body doing? So we're thinking about things more holistically and less siloed. And what I'm really trying to help people understand is that despite what you might see on social media, not every symptom you experience in your late 30s and early 40s is due to perimenopause. Like, just because you're in the perimenopause menopause window doesn't mean your symptoms are solely due to hormone decline. There are a lot of other things that can cause the same symptoms that we attribute to perimenopause. We have to make space for that conversation too. And this line of thinking does not take HRT off the table as a healing tool, but it does widen the scope of how we view women's health.
Welcome to the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast, spelled with a K, because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach, creating a new model that I call Intuitive Functional Medicine™, where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self-trust. Your body already knows how to heal, and this show is going to show you how. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend because you never know whose life you might change.
Hello. I'm so happy to be back here with you guys. We've been going pretty hot and heavy with the business episodes lately. Today we're getting back into the clinical stuff, and I'm going to share with you how I've been training for perimenopause.
Perimenopause is a huge topic. I literally can't hang out with anybody, any friends, any colleagues, anyone without them asking me about it. So I figured I would share what I've been doing. We did get a ton of great feedback on the business episodes, so I just want to say, if you love the business stuff, and you want more of that, one, we do a lot of that in FNA if you're a practitioner. So we pair the clinical trainings with a lot of business trainings as well. But to get on over to my Substack, because that is really where I'm sharing a lot more of the business side of things. So I'm sharing a lot of behind the scenes of my own business and my own life, basically sharing my stuff so you can steal what applies to yours. I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in business mentorship, but I also have run my own company for 15 years now, so I've got a lot of tricks of the trade.
And I also am a human being running a business. I'm a female founder, and that comes with its own set of stuff to navigate. So I'm really talking about the parts of scaling a business that are not always talked about, both from the inner work perspective, but also the outer work perspective too. Like, you know, strategy. It's honestly the place where I am sharing stuff that I don't talk about here on the podcast or on Instagram. So if you are looking to expand your life or your career in any way, you You need to be on my Substack. It's linked in the show notes. So say hi to me over there.
Okay, but for today's topic, are you ready for it? This is going to be my approach to perimenopause as a 42-year-old woman with no symptoms. There are 4 very specific things that I've been doing and I've been focused on that I think are really paying off. So I want to share them with you here today. Now, what is super interesting to me is that we did a few posts on this on Instagram that went viral. delish. Like, I was like, I'm a 42-year-old woman that doesn't have perimenopause symptoms. And some people got big mad, like big triggered, which I was totally not expecting. So I spent a lot of time thinking about why.
I get really curious when stuff like this happens. And I think my hunch, my theory is that we have just all become so collectively committed to the idea that to be a woman necessitates struggle. To be in a woman's body is synonymous with suffering and pain and discomfort. Like, why have we so widely accepted that as truth, as the only truth? I'm not saying that's not real for some people, but we've collectively all cosigned on the fact that like, this is our experience, period. To the point where if a woman is not having that experience, if a woman is operating outside of that belief system and that paradigm, it makes people fundamentally come undone. So we've got this spectrum where on the one end, in medicine, women's health is completely ignored. Women's needs, women's feelings, women's symptoms are completely dismissed and diminished. I've been talking about the medical gaslighting of women for over a decade now, so I think you're picking up what I'm putting down.
And then on the other side of the spectrum, there's this overmedicalization of women's bodies. Like, we treat women's bodies as a liability to be managed. So rather than looking at a woman's body as a full interconnected working system that is designed to grow and to transform and to fluctuate and to change and to cycle and to heal when given the right circumstances, we're like, liability, problem to be fixed. And I'm finding that perimenopause is kind of caught in the undertow of all of this. It's almost like just as birth control was positioned as the answer for any hormone situation any woman had, it's kind of like HRT, hormone replacement therapy. HRT is being positioned as the answer for any symptom a woman like 35+ is experiencing. And to be clear, I am not anti-HRT at all. I always have to post that disclaimer.
And P.S. Side note: one of the beautiful things of Substack, not to keep harping on that, is that I am learning how to outgrow the knee-jerk reaction to post 25 disclaimers to every single thing that I say, which is really, really, really how we've been trained on Instagram. That is like the culture of Instagram is like everything you say, there's like 25 people with their what aboutisms. Well, what about this? And what about this? And you didn't say this. And oh, you hate this because you said this. It's like exhausting. And so there's like a beauty in having some stuff behind a paywall where it's like you can just say words. It's very freeing.
But anyway, my disclaimer for today is that I am not anti-HRT. And in fact, there is a whole generation of women that lost access to HRT for 20 years, and that is so real. And if you're listening now and you're part of that generation, like, there's a real righteous rage, a sacred rage, and even a grieving process that comes along with that. And I wanna speak into that. I wanna acknowledge that. What's real and true is that HRT can reduce cardiovascular risk. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. If you're not thinking about your cardiovascular risk now and you're in your 40s, like, you got to.
But it was pulled off of the table for a lot of women because it was deemed unsafe, HRT. So that is real and true. And also what feels real to me right now where I'm standing as a 42-year-old woman, I don't want to be part of the generation of women that were put on HRT as like this fearmongering response. There's this tsunami of clinicians that are saying, even if you don't have symptoms, even if you feel amazing, even if you are thriving in your health, you gotta get on hormones now because dun dun dun, here comes the boom. And I just can't with that like fearmongering sitting duck energy. Like you have no agency your health. You have no control over what happens to you. You just have to sit and wait.
And this is the only solution. And I just— I'm not saying all clinicians are saying this, but there is this wave and this undercurrent of message that at least that's how I'm perceiving it. And I really do not like to make choices from a fear-based response that has never, not once, served me well in my life and my career or in my body of health. And again, from where I'm standing, I am years My dog, years into nervous system repair, into immune system repair, into metabolic health work, and I feel fucking great. And so I personally question, I personally wonder how HRT would impact the balance that I have worked so hard to achieve. And I can't justify and get behind doing something, adding something to my body. Right now when I already feel so well and have worked so hard to get here. And I think it's okay for me to question that.
I think it's okay for me to speak into that. And I'm actually super weary, wary, wary. What's that word? I'm super skeptical of anyone telling me that it's not okay to question that. I really, really, really am. And that might not be your perspective, your perception, your reality, your experience. And that's totally, totally fine. But I do want to speak into this because I think that this conversation is like not really being had in a lot of places. And I would love to kind of push it a little bit more to the forefront.
Again, not to say one thing is right and one thing is wrong, but can it be okay for us to discuss and to question these things and for all of us to have our own unique experience because we all have our own unique lives and health histories and bodies? And like, isn't that kind of what we're doing here in functional medicine, in root cause medicine, in holistic health? It's the practitioners that have been 10 toes down on this that are leaning so heavily into the HRT camp that I'm like, wait, what? I don't know. It's surprising to me. Anyway, there's a shit ton of women coming into perimenopause right now. And by the way, perimenopause as a definition is basically just the transitional period before menopause. And it can last for years. It can last all the way up to a decade. So it can be a long period. And so many women, you probably, if you're listening to the show, can relate to this.
You're like, how did I get here? I have all of these symptoms. How did I get here? Without understanding that, and I'm going to borrow a Deanna Minnick term here, we have this endocrine timeline, and each decade essentially informs the next. So symptoms rarely just pop out of nowhere, even if they feel like they do. That's pretty rare with the human body. And I think treating them like they do, is really overlooking the complexity and the intelligence of the female body. And so women right now are kind of asking, well, hey, what are my hormones doing? And how do I fix them? And I don't know if that's the right question to ask. I think what we should really be asking if we feel off is, what are the systems of my body doing? So we're thinking about things more holistically and less siloed. And what I'm really trying to help people understand is that despite what you might see on social media, not every symptom you experience in your late 30s and early 40s is due to perimenopause.
Like, just because you're in the perimenopause window doesn't mean your symptoms are solely due to hormone decline. There are a lot of other things that can cause the same symptoms that we attribute to perimenopause. We have to make space for that conversation too. And this line of thinking does not take HRT off the table as a healing tool. But it does widen the scope of how we view women's health. Anyway, I'm all hot to trot on this topic because I've been working on next week's 2-day masterclass called Her Body Keeps the Score: A Practitioner's Framework for Seeing the Whole Woman Behind the Hormones— Periods, Preconception, Postpartum, Perimenopause, and Beyond— a 2-day deep dive into women's health across the lifespan. So I'm teaching that next Tuesday and Wednesday, August 25th and 26th. So many of you guys have already signed up.
We were so pumped. We opened the cart and you guys just started like gobbling this up. And I was so excited because— can you tell I'm kind of excited to talk about this? I've got a lot to say. So I'm excited that there's so many of you guys are ready to match my freak. I just feel like it's going to be a conversation that's going to hit a little bit different. I'm going to talk about the way that I view things, like kind of big picture concepts. It's a little different than the way a lot of people are viewing women's health right now. My goal My hope, my intention is that it's gonna feel to you like remembering.
Like it's less me teaching you something and it's more helping you reactivate something that already lives inside of you. I really see this as a conversation for true healers. Like if you are someone who feels like your medicine is part of the future, this one is for you. So that's gonna be day 1. And then on day 2, we'll talk about how all of that informs how we're actually practicing in practice with our clients. We'll get a little bit more into the nitty-gritty, how we're approaching each phase of a woman's hormonal lifespan. We'll talk about certain conditions that involve hormones like PMOS, endometriosis, Hashimoto's. We'll get into specific lab testing, nutrient considerations, lifestyle considerations, ways that we're actually supporting clients.
So super pumped about it. Grab your ticket.
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All right, with all of that said, let's tuck and roll into what I'm doing to train for ye olde perimenopause. I started thinking this way about 3 years ago, like, what am I doing to train for this period, knowing that it's coming, knowing that, that this hormonal fluctuation and transition is inevitably going to come, what can I do to get myself into the best shape, the best position to navigate it? The thought process kind of being, I don't want to create a mess for my future self to clean up. That's kind of how I think about health in general. I'm not waiting for shit to hit the fan and then try to like retroactively do damage control. I am thinking more proactively about things. You know, health a major value of mine.
I invest a lot of my time and energy into maintaining a strong body of health. My body and I have been through a lot together. So I'm always going to prioritize taking care of her, showing up for her. And that's how I live my life. But also knowing some of the risks that can happen as we age, I really wanted to get ahead of that. So that's kind of my overarching philosophy and why I call it training for perimenopause. But there are 4 things that I've done that have really, really, really worked in my favor so far. And as this list grows, like, I'm gonna keep you guys in the loop of everything that I'm doing.
So if anything changes, you know, the podcast listeners will be the first to know. But the 4 things boil down to mindset, muscles and metabolic health, labs, and the inner work. Those are the 4. I'm going to start with mindset because hello, it's me. So mindset is like attitude, perspective, outlook. And I kind of talked about this already. But my outlook on perimenopause is really an intentional strategy. So I wanted to share it here.
So, many of you guys know that I have a membership called Manifest Your Health, and it is the method that I use to put autoimmunity into remission. And what we're doing is essentially creating a healing space of possibility. We're creating a mindset that always assumes a healing outcome. It's what we call the expectant state. We expect that healing is available to us. Healing is on the table for us. And we also reframe negative labels. And so we're able to separate out A diagnosis from a prognosis.
So to use myself as an example, when I was diagnosed, how many years ago? 11 years ago now. Gosh, what is time? With systemic sclerosis, I saw the labs. I wasn't arguing with the diagnosis, but I heard the prognosis and I said, yeah, that's not me. That's not going to be me. That's not going to be my story. There's another option available to me. There's another path. And then And like I said, we have this healing space of possibility, like anything is possible.
And the reason that this is so important, because we know that what somebody is told about their ability to heal can really impact their ability to heal. What you're told to believe about something will influence how you experience that thing. And this is very, very true for prognoses of diagnoses and labels. We're also uncovering the reasons behind symptoms, so how it relates to other aspects of your your life beside just your health. So if we have symptoms, we're looking at our past, we're looking at our relationships, we're looking at our thoughts and our beliefs and our patterns, not just what's going on in the physical body. That's part of it, but it is not the whole enchilada. And then we're exploring emotional, energetic, and even spiritual sides of symptoms, of illnesses, and of healing. So that's all of the work that we're doing in Manifest Your Health.
That is how I put autoimmunity into remission, and it's how so many others have done the same using this methodology. People are reversing things that they were told were absolutely impossible to reverse. And so I have proof of concept. I have proof of concept that this approach works not just in myself but in others too. And so I thought to myself, gee, if I could do that with autoimmunity, why couldn't I use that same logic and that same approach with perimenopause? Again, we know that what we hear about our condition really impacts how our experience of that condition is going to be. So when we are positioning perimenopause as this like medical problem, as this diagnosis, like this disease state, then that's really gonna influence how we interface with it, how we experience it. And if perimenopause is like 7 to 10 years, that's like a big-ass chunk of our life to sort of just be okay with suffering and struggling and feeling like shit. And I was like, what if I had a different outlook? Like, what if I just took a different outlook on this? Like, I actually don't have to accept this narrative that suffering is inevitable.
And there's actually some interesting research to suggest that cultures who value aging don't have such severe menopause symptoms. And so I got really, really curious about that. Now, of course, the eventual ovarian decline of hormones is a real thing. I'm not going to pretend that it's not. And I'm also not going to pretend that you can just mindset your way out of that. But I was more so like, can I go into this with more of a positive outlook rather than just expecting the worst? And I think I'm reflecting on myself. I think that like question everything is becoming more and more and more of a motto for mine. And I don't know if that's a function of age or if that's a function of being in the wellness industry for so long that I take nothing at face value anymore, or it's some combination of the two.
But I really I have approached this, and I continue to approach this, challenging what everyone is telling me that my experience is going to be and has to be. It's the same exact shit I did for autoimmunity. I'm just taking it into perimenopause. And so far, I think it served me pretty well. So one was my mindset. Number 2 is muscles and metabolic health. So I think about hormones in like a hierarchy. There's sort of an order of operations of what you address first.
We're going to talk about this in masterclass. But insulin is really the hormone at the top. That is like the starting point. And, you know, I think it kind of competes with adrenal hormones for top billing. I think we could kind of argue that till we're blue in the face. Blood sugar swings can contribute to adrenal hormone dysregulation, but stress can also really impact blood sugar and insulin signaling. So maybe they both have top billing. And I'm not going to spend too much time talking about stress here because I feel like It's just, I don't know, nobody wants to hear it anymore.
People are like, yeah, stress, it's hard. It's making my hormones worse. We get it. But I will say that focusing on adrenal health, specifically focusing on nervous system regulation for me, and specifically checking my overwork tendencies, since that tends to be the main source of stress in my life, and putting guardrails in place for the, when those tendencies pop up, that has been something I've really been working on for the past 2 years. I'm going to come back next week to talk to you guys more about that because I know so many of you can relate. Ambition and burnout can really go hand in hand, and that shit will for sure catch up to you in perimenopause, my girly pop. So more on that next week. But, you know, I just want to say stress matters.
Nervous system health matters. It's going to impact the rest of your hormones. It's going to impact how you feel in perimenopause. You know, that's all real. Anyway, not what I'm going to talk to you today about. I'm going to talk to you about insulin. Insulin as a hormone. When we start to go through the perimenopause transition and hormones fluctuate, we can see estrogen drop, we can see it peak, and then over time estrogen steadily drops into menopause.
And then we have low estrogen. It's that drop of estrogen that can increase insulin resistance. And just as a refresher for you, insulin is a hormone released by the pancreas that helps to lower blood sugar. So we eat food that raises blood sugar, insulin is signaled to drop blood sugar, take glucose and put it where it needs to go. And cells can become less responsive to the hormone insulin. This is what is known as insulin resistance, where the cells become resistant to it. So that leads to high blood sugar levels because the cells aren't absorbing glucose without that insulin response. And then the pancreas basically overcompensates by pumping out more insulin.
So then over time, we start to see high levels of insulin as well. So we can see high blood sugar, we can see high glucose. This is how it would show up on labs. We can see high fasting glucose, we can see high hemoglobin A1C, and high fasting insulin as well. And that is an insulin-resistant picture. Insulin resistance is metabolic. So really, any type of high blood sugar picture on your labs indicates that your metabolism is dysfunctional, which is extraordinarily common in America. It's like most people— I forget the stats, I don't have them in front of me, but I want to say it's like 93% of US adults have some type of metabolic dysfunction.
It's bad, guys. So insulin resistance is an inflammatory process, and it opens the doorway for cardiovascular disease risk. Did you get bored? I feel like for a while, Especially when I was like really like first studying functional medicine. I'm like, I want to learn about the gut. I want to learn about hormones. I want to learn like all these like cool things. Like cardiovascular is boring. Snooze.
Is this just me? Are you guys picking up what I'm putting down? Well, anyway, what I'm about to tell you should shock you. And all of a sudden you should really be thinking about the health of your ticker because cardiovascular disease kills 1 in 3 women. Like, holy hell. That is bad. If there were a rally cry that I could give all women right now, it would be this. I'm gonna give it to you. Ready? Don't wait until this becomes an MFP, a major fucking problem. Get ahead of this.
Make this your priority now before it becomes a major league problem. If you've ever been told that you have high blood sugar, high fasting glucose, high insulin, high hemoglobin A1C, fatty liver, if any of that is true for you, this needs to be your number one priority. There are other cardiovascular labs. You know, we're actually— I'm pretty sure we're gonna get into more of those on next week's call. We are, we are. Not the point of today's show, but there's other ways to assess for cardiovascular risk if you have it in your family. What's the opposite of earmuffs? Take the earmuffs off, perk up, listen, listen to me now. This is a big deal.
Make it your number one priority. I would do whatever it takes. Honestly, if I didn't have enough baked-in self-accountability, which is totally fine—self-awareness is crucial. A lot of people need accountability to support them. There's nothing wrong with that. It's totally fine. If that were me, I would do whatever it took to hire a practitioner to help me to start to reverse this, to build the correct habits to unwind that process. So much of cardiovascular risk is actually in your control.
That's the good news. Good news, you guys. It's our habits, dude. You know, like, you can change those. It is based on the food that we're eating, how we're moving our body, how we're sleeping. It's our stress. It's how much toxins we're being exposed to, how many toxins we're being exposed to. Truly, truly, truly, a lot of it is in our control.
And the earlier we catch it, the better. The earlier we start to build these habits, the better. The other thing is that lowering estrogen as we age and as we get closer to menopause can also increase cardiovascular risk. risk. Menopause becomes a huge turning point for women for cardiovascular disease. So HRT might very well be part of this conversation for sure. Like, please talk to your doctors about that. But just getting on HRT is not going to override all of those other things.
It really has to be an and both. So we have to work on these things, we have to work on our metabolic health, and then maybe bring in HRT if estrogen is dropping. Now, I know not Everyone is a candidate for HRT. I completely know and understand that. So if that is you and you're listening to this and you're freaking out, just know that what I'm going to outline is also going to be so supportive for you lowering that cardiovascular risk. Okay? So start building these habits now. The best time was yesterday. Second best time is right now.
I know this sounds like tough love right now, but I promise you, one day you're going to thank me for my tough love. I'm pretty sure you will. Okay, so what does this actually look This looks like eating a whole foods diet. Remove the processed foods. I am a stickler here. Like, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room and flexibility for me here. The foods you eat literally build your body. So prioritize feeding yourself well.
Focus on protein and plants. Plants because they offer fiber, which is good for your gut health. It's gonna help you clear out hormones. Also because of phytonutrients and phytochemicals and antioxidants. Great for your liver, great for your mitochondrial health, great for your overall hormone production. Good stuff. Okay, good stuff. And then protein.
Listen, are you sick and tired of talking about protein? I hear you. Okay, just know that I am right there with you. So here's my approach with protein. Be conscious about it, but you don't have to be psychotic about it. I have put on muscle mass. We're going to talk about that in a second here. I have put on muscle mass and I prioritize protein, meaning I get it at every meal, but I am I'm not counting the grams of protein that I eat every single hour of every single day. I am not blending cottage cheese into everything that I eat.
I am not cramming turkey breast into my purse. Like, it doesn't have to be that serious. Shoot for about 30 grams a meal to start. Start there. Work your way up if you need to. But I just feel like the protein conversation has got a little unhinged. And this is coming from a nutritionist who's been a nutritionist, I don't know, for like 20 years. Okay, so just keep that in mind.
Also, we're talking about metabolic health, so you've got to eat in a way that supports your blood sugar regulation. No skipping meals. Seriously, stop skipping meals. It always backfires. I shoot for like well-balanced protein, carbs, and fat. I'm not like, again, not psychotic about this. Like if I eat a salad and there's no carbs, like no starch on it in one meal, like I'm not going to panic about that. But I'm also not like eating a slice of toast or eating a bagel or eating a bowl of cereal and calling that a meal.
Like never that. I never do that. If I'm doing a rice cake, I will have almond butter on it. You know, like there's no naked carbs is what we like to say in practice. And that is just very true for me. I would eat an apple that has some fiber, but rarely am I doing that just like solo. So that's my approach. That is the point of this whole episode is me sharing what has worked for me.
So take that, you know, as you will. If you struggle with food and you just need If you need a good, solid, comprehensive nutrition plan, that is what Eat to Achieve is. It's $49. It's literally how I've been eating for a decade plus. I don't really put too much stress or thought into my diet these days because I'm like, I have a dial. This is what works for me, and it could work for you too. So if you need help, that is there anytime you need it.
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Let's switch into talking about muscle mass, because muscle mass is— or lack of muscle mass and loss of muscle mass is a huge contributor to insulin resistance.
Huge. Muscle is storage for glucose, so when muscle mass decreases, the amount of tissue available for glucose uptake decreases as well. And so low muscle mass is directly tied to insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction. And what we need to be aware of is muscle mass can diminish and decrease as we age. It's called sarcopenia. We lose muscle as we age, and if we want to prevent this from happening, we really have to get ahead of this. We have to actively counteract that. And the best way to do that is through strength training.
So I have, over the past 3 years, really, really prioritized strength training. I strength train 4 days a week. I progressively overload. So that means I'm getting stronger and stronger and stronger. You know, the dumbbells that I used to— that used to be really heavy for me are no longer heavy for me. That's how I know that I'm like gaining strength. I can see it. I can see physical or Visible muscle growth, but I can also see strength growing as well.
Consistency is queen here, you guys. Just keep showing up. Just keep showing up. I feel like that is like the best thing we can do in life. This is probably— if I could boil anything down to one piece of advice, like, just keep showing up. Good for relationships, it's good for business, it's good for your health. Just keep showing up. Good for muscle mass.
Just keep showing up. 25 minutes is better than zero minutes, you know. So like, I do it 4 days a week. I usually will lift for 60 to 75 minutes. And if I only have 25 minutes, I'm gonna do 25 minutes. I'm not gonna say, well, I can't do 100%, so I might as well not do it at all. No, just show up. Just keep showing up.
Just keep coming back. One of the things that I've done with my exercise is create an environment where I can keep showing up, where I am not getting injured. I used to get really Really injured or go through cycles of getting injured and then having to sideline myself. So I was kind of inconsistent with it. And lifting the way that I'm doing it just feels so good for my nervous system. I've talked about rest-based training before, especially for those recovering from adrenal fatigue, where you do a set and then you recover, and then you do another set and then you recover. You give your body plenty of time and space to recover. When I lift on my own, Either at my house or at the gym, it really allows me to take the appropriate rest time that I need.
And I find that when I do this, I can build strength in a way that I couldn't when I was pushing myself or powering through things really super fast. So like when I was going to studio classes, it was fun to be in a community, but I was kind of beholden to what the instructor was doing versus like what my body actually needed. Last year, I did an exercise class at a studio where I used to practice a lot, and it was lifting combined with cardio in the heat. And, you know, I'm a pretty fit person and I can keep up, and in a class setting, I will push myself. But so I did push myself in the heat, and I just felt so awful after that class. I was completely laid out for the next 4 days, and I just couldn't even exercise for 4 days straight, which is obviously my body and my nervous system's way of saying like, hey, you pushed it too far. And I just think how I used to approach And I used to approach my workouts like that a lot, like primarily like that, like pushing myself past my capacity. And so, like I was saying, I went through seasons and phases that really impacted my ability to be consistent because I would push myself and then I would crash, or I would push myself and get injured and then have to sideline myself.
And I just have not experienced that level of burnout, that level of fatigue, or that crash since I've really prioritized Heavier lifting. So that's just something to consider for yourself if any of this resonates with you. When I was doing those cardio mix classes regularly, I just didn't see my body change. I think that in order to put on muscle, to release fat, to change our body composition, which I know is a goal for many people, our nervous systems have to feel safe enough to do that. And if you're constantly constantly pushing your body past its capacity, the nervous system is never really going to feel safe. So that is my ode to lifting and to prioritizing muscle mass. Because I do have cardiovascular disease in my family— my father had a heart attack at 45, his father died of a heart attack at 55— it's something that I take very seriously. So I'm thinking about different ways that I could support my heart health through my exercise, and one of ways to do this is to make sure that my heart rate gets elevated every few days, or like 2 to 3 days a week.
So I don't love cardio because for all the reasons I just described, I have a tendency to push myself too hard and then crash. But if I'm doing quick hits like treadmill sprints or hill sprints— so my daughter runs cross-country, and when we're at our lake house, there's this huge hill, and my husband Does hill sprints with her. And I did those a few times and it's so hard, so hard, but I do it and I feel like my lungs feel alive and my heart is pumping and my blood is pumping and I'm like, we are fully alive here. But if I did that and only that, I would totally burn out and crash. So a couple of times a week I am getting my heart rate up. I'll also work some jumps and hops into my strength training, jumping exercises. can be supportive of bone health. But I'll tell you, really, the best thing you can do for your bone health is building muscle.
Bone health, my dudes, not super sexy, not super glamorous, but we got to start thinking about it. Bone health. All right, number 3 is labs. I stay on top of my labs, and I think you should too. So I don't exactly remember the time I— I want to guess it was like about a year and a half ago now. I started feeling a little off. I started feeling a little wonky. I I recorded a whole podcast episode, episode 357.
I talked all about it and what was going on and what I did. But during that time, I ran my labs, I looked at my gut, I looked at my hormones, I did basic blood work, including a full thyroid panel, and I figured out what was going on and I got it all dialed and I started feeling better. But I'm such a huge advocate, I'm such a huge proponent of women getting their thyroid looked at. That is what was going on with me. And so I just want to scream this from the rooftops all of the time. Get thyroid checked and get it checked throughout your lifespan. This is not a one and done where you're like, oh, my doctor checked my thyroid once and it was fine. No, no, no, no, no.
Thyroid physiology can really fluctuate. So a great example of this is during the postpartum window, because it is not uncommon for women to experience postpartum thyroiditis months after giving birth. And this can go almost up to a full year. Autoimmune risk can go up at this time, including Hashimoto's. And these symptoms are often missed because, you know, it just Written off as like postpartum fatigue or postpartum new parent stress. That's how my autoimmune condition got so overlooked, is because I, I was just told like, yeah, you're a new mom, this is super normal. Again, we have normalized women feeling like shit. You're a mom, you're a woman, you're going through hormone stuff, of course you feel like shit, that's normal.
Bye. No, no. So I always advocate for getting your thyroid checked and then Once you hit 40, we can see a lot of women start to develop thyroid issues. It's wicked, wicked common. And again, this is not always flagged because sometimes on labs it just looks like suboptimal thyroid levels that are not flagged, but it can still really make you feel like shit. Luckily, I've got an eagle eye, so when I was looking at my own labs, I caught it right away. I'm like, oh, this is part of my problem. And sure enough, it was.
So even though Yeah. And even though your thyroid numbers have historically been fine, we can start to see things kind of like dwindle down once you hit 40 or like around 40. And this can really impact how you feel. So why is that the case? Why does thyroid issues ramp up post-40? The thyroid is so sensitive to everything else going on in your body and your life, quite frankly. So it's really sensitive to your diet. It's sensitive to your nutrition. It's sensitive to your toxin exposure and to your liver health. It's sensitive to what's going on in your gut.
Other hormones can impact your thyroid. It's super, super sensitive to the stressors in your life. And so, all of these things can influence the thyroid. And think about by 40, you've had 4 decades of all this going on under your belt. And going back to what Deanna said, each decade informs the next. So, whatever's happened in those 4 decades can kind of compound your exposures. And all of that can really show up through thyroid underfunctioning. So that's part of the reason that it can be pretty darn common once we hit 40 to see our thyroid kind of like dwindle out a little bit.
When your thyroid is underfunctioning, I'll call it that. I'll call it underfunctioning or underperforming because I'm not talking about a diagnosable thyroid disease. These are just like numbers on lab look suboptimal. But even when that's the case, you do not feel well. You feel like you're running through molasses. It feels like the lights are turned off. We can also see heart palpitations. That's a pretty, pretty common one.
And heart palpitations can be written off as perimenopause, but if you have heart palpitations, always look at your thyroid as well. Because when you catch these things, then you have the opportunity to optimize those levels, bring those levels back up. And you can do it through diet, you can do it through lifestyle, potentially through supplementation, and maybe even medication. But when you do that, when those numbers get optimized, you can just start to feel so much better. It's like the lights get turned back On. That was totally my experience. I take 3 very specific thyroid supplements, and when we were up in Maine last month, I actually ran out. Normally I'm like Johnny-on-the-spot, and I just didn't count my pills and I ran out.
So I was like, all right, well, sometimes it can be helpful to take a little bit of a break. And this is not medical advice, by the way, at all. Kind of like reset the receptors. Am I saying that right? Reset the receptors? Yeah. Yeah? Receptor sites? Anyway, whatever. Sometimes it can be helpful to take a break. So I'm like, let me just take myself a break. And it was like 2 weeks, I think, all in that I was off of them.
And boy, oh boy, I felt weird. I started to get air hunger. Do you guys know what that is? It's like when you kind of struggle to take a breath and you're yawning a lot because you're just trying to get more oxygen in. So I started getting air hunger. I started getting heart palpitations. I felt just stuff in my chest is the best way. I was very aware of my chest. I was like, kind of had difficulty sleeping.
I felt all jacked up. And I was like, what's going on? Is this the full moon? Like, what is this? And I was like, maybe this is like an energetic upgrade. And then my Fullscript order arrived, and I got my supplements back, and I started taking them, and all of those symptoms went away. So not so much a full moon energetic upgrade. upgrade in more so thyroid physiology, as it would turn out. Actually, this week on Substack, I am sharing my full thyroid protocol, the actual supplements that I used. Again, we'll link that up in the show notes. But these are the exact supplements I've been taking for over a year.
And so if you're interested in seeing what I'm doing, I'm writing about that over on Substack. But either way, I really advise getting a full thyroid workup. I think that's like our main takeaway here. Get other labs done, but don't sleep on your thyroid. It's part of the basic blood work that we do on every single one of our female clients that get lab work, because in my view, it really is that important. And just as a little reminder, a full thyroid panel includes TSH, T4, ideally free and total, T3, ideally free and total, TPO antibodies, thyroglobulin antibodies. We also like to see reverse T3 and T3 uptake. I mean, good luck asking your doctor for those, They probably won't order them, but getting a T3 and a T4 and a TSH and the antibodies is a pretty great start.
Okay, the last thing is the inner work, because this is so for real. I listened to Jane Hardwick-Collins on a podcast, and she was talking about progesterone. So progesterone is our feel-good hormone. I mean, all of the hormones are feel-good hormones, but progesterone is kind of like anti-anxiety. It helps us sleep, it helps calm us down. And she referred to progesterone as a mild sedative. She says it's the hormone that keeps a lid on things. And progesterone is really the first hormone to drop consistently in perimenopause.
And when this happens, it's like the lid comes off. I kind of like think about it as like Pandora's box gets opened and anything that you have shoved down below the surface, anything that you have suppressed or repressed or pushed down because you're like, I don't got time for that, I don't have capacity for this— any of our unresolved experiences, emotions, conversations, words that were left unsaid, all All of that kind of bubbles on up to the surface. And it's like looking you right in the face. And it's like, how about now, bitch? Let's go. It is time, my dude. You can't ignore me anymore. You got to look at me right head on, square in the eye. Here I am.
I actually posted something on Instagram a few weeks ago. And it turns out a lot of people can relate to this feeling or this experience. And, you know, I wonder— this is a theory, this is a hunch— I wonder if we can perhaps start to prepare for this transition by doing the inner work early on, really tending to those inner pieces and those inner parts and that unresolved stuff, tending to our wounded inner child, whatever language you want to use. Obviously, like, this is my whole jump-off. I've been doing this shit for 20 So I have been doing this work a long time, and I wonder— I have no data to back this up, to be clear— but I wonder if that's perhaps why I'm having a gentler time, especially on like the mood and the emotion and the psyche side of things. You know, the most underdiscussed cause of chronic stress, in my estimation, is being inauthentic, not feeling safe enough to Truly express who you came here to be in putting so much of your energy into playing a role or wearing a mask or trying to present to the world who you think the world wants you to be, trying to present a more palatable version of yourself to the people around you. Authenticity is really being the author of your own story. But many of us are unwittingly letting other people write our story for Or we're spending all of our time and effort and energy writing other people's story for them.
Hello, eldest daughter. Hello, moms. Hello, codependency, my old friend. You can't be the supporting character in someone else's show. You can't be living out a script that somebody else wrote for you and feel fully expressed. And I think that perhaps, mayhaps, this is a time period period that really has us reckon with that fact and that truth, and really asks us, forces us to ask ourselves, who am I? Who did I come here to be? Who do I want to be? It's like waking up inside a Talking Heads song and being like, how did I get here? This is not my beautiful life. There is this really cool concept in TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, called the Bao Mai. And it's an energetic link or communication line between The heart and the uterus.
And at puberty, this link opens up and energy flows from the heart down to the uterus. So the heart is nourishing the uterus. And at menopause, the baomai reverses direction and energy flows from the uterus up to the heart. The uterus now nourishes the heart. So what was once a flow that allowed us to procreate becomes a flow that allows us to use our own creation energy to nourish our own spirit, to nourish our own heart, to take care of our own selves. Energy moves away from procreation and toward self-care. There's this shift from caregiver to self-care. So how I have also been training for perimenopause outside of like trying to get jacked and running my labs is asking myself, how can I show up and feel more authentically expressed? How can I tend to my own heart? How can I do more of what makes me happy? What makes my heart happy? I treat pleasure and joy and fun and peace as required nutrients, along with those phytochemicals that I was talking about earlier.
I'm really working on anchoring in the belief that life gets to be good, and I get to feel good, and my desires are worthy. Many of us have a lifetime of messages that teach us the exact opposite of that. And the way that I see it, this can be the invitation of perimenopause if we let it. And listen, if you're listening to me and You're like, fuck all that noise, just give me the HRT. I'm tired. Shut the fuck up. Cool. You know, like, that's totally fair too.
But I just feel like we are missing some really, really deep medicine that this time is potentially offering us if we are not willing to look at all of this stuff in part 4. Okay? And if you are picking up what I'm putting down, if you're into this conversation, if you feel that part of you is really ready for this kind of work, kind of becoming fully yourself, then I do wanna invite you inside my membership, Manifest Your Health. It's nervous system regulation, it's subconscious rewiring, it's inner parts work, and it's really allowing you to reconnect with your body, but more specifically reconnect with your body's natural ability to heal and your ability to be like fully expressed. So lots of ways to get more air bear time if you want it. We've got Manifest Your Health membership. We've got the masterclass coming up next week. That's 2 days, Tuesday and Wednesday. And then we also have Substack.
I'm writing to you guys over there. So would love to see you in all the places and spaces. And of course, I'll be back next week with another barn burner of an episode. Love you guys.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind, this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget, subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.