Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Perimenopause: How to Make Yourself a Priority with Dr. Mariza Snyder
Episode Date: October 13, 2025Dr. Mariza Snyder and Dr. Mindy break down the myths and realities of perimenopause! Discover practical lifestyle shifts, from nutrition to setting boundaries, to help you thrive through hormonal chan...ges. They discuss challenges like sleep issues, mood swings, and weight gain, plus the role of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and why lifestyle still matters. Tune in for tips, science-backed insights, and empowering advice to navigate perimenopause with confidence! To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep309 Dr. Mariza Snyder is a powerhouse advocate for midlife women, leveraging 17+ years as a practitioner, author, and speaker to spark a massive movement for women in perimenopause and beyond. With her top-rated Energized with Dr. Mariza podcast (13 million downloads) and a passionate social media audience of over 400K and 8 million monthly views, she's a trusted guide—offering science-backed solutions for perimenopause and metabolic health. Check out our fasting membership at https://esetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.
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On this episode of the Resetter podcast, we're going to talk all things perimenopause.
Now, I've been doing a lot of episodes on menopause, all different versions.
I'm really, hopefully you are seeing that I'm trying to give you a wide perspective.
Because it's a little bit of the wild, wild west out there when it comes to everything from
hormone replacement therapy to libido, to weight loss, menopause.
belly weight, like everybody's got an opinion these days. And it can be a little crazy. So what I've
been trying to do with these podcasts is really niche down a topic. So you can understand how to best
control a certain aspect of your menopausal journey. Whether you are 80 or you are 30, I'm hoping that
each topic that I'm dialing down into, you are gleaning some inspiration and understanding of what's best.
for you. In this particular episode, I brought a dear friend, Dr. Marisa Snyder, to you all,
and she has written a book called The Perimenopause Revolution. And what you're going to hear
in this conversation is, what is perimenopause, when does it start, what are some of the first
symptoms of perimenopause, how can you manage those symptoms? And we're going to really take
this conversation through the lens of lifestyle. Now, at the best of the best of the best of the best of
back end of the conversation, we talk about hormone replacement therapy, which is a very common thing
that everybody wants to talk about. But why I wanted to have this conversation with Dr. Marisa was that
she brings up some incredibly valid points about lifestyle that we cannot overlook. So simple things like
what you eat, when you eat, movement. We talk a lot about the importance of movement for managing
your symptoms, learning how to prioritize ourselves.
learning how to set boundaries and stick to them. So it's a really dense lifestyle conversation
that I feel very honored to have had with her and to bring to you all. And what I'm hoping
you're seeing if you're coming back to my podcast week after week is that I'm open to it all.
And I really believe that each one of us, whether we are deep into our postmenopausal
experience or just about it to enter our peri menopausal experience, we need to listen to all
the experts. And when we need to make a decision for ourselves, you know, the old healthcare system
used to be one where we showed up at the doctor's office, the doctor told us what to do,
and we did that. That is not the healthcare environment we are living in today. So I'm excited to
bring you what may appear as opposing pieces of information, experts that disagree with each
other. But most importantly, I am trying to open up the metapause conversation as wide as I can
so we can look at it from a new lens and that you can understand that you have more control than it
cannot feel some days. So the perimenopause revolution is really such a powerful book and a
powerful idea. And I love what Dr. Mritz has to say about it is the window of vulnerability.
And I can tell you as a 55-year-old woman who's three years post-menopausal, she is absolutely right.
That perimenopause is that moment in which we need to make sure that we're doing the right
lifestyle changes, that we're starting to shift and transform ourselves and the way we behave
because our neurochemical system is transforming and changing.
And a part of that might be doing HRT as well.
So it's a really good lifestyle conversation with a little HRT twist at the end.
Go, if you resonate with what we talk about, please go get Dr. Maitza's book.
You know, it takes a lot out of an author to write a book.
You're getting the deepest perspective in their heart.
So books are the greatest long format to gather this information.
So Dr. Maretsa Snyder, super excited to bring her to you.
And as always, I hope it inspires you and moves the needle forward on your health.
Welcome to the Resetter podcast.
This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again.
If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.
So welcome and I can't wait to have this conversation with you.
Oh, Mindy, honey, I have been looking forward to this for weeks, getting to see your smile, getting to have this conversation.
getting to move the needle for women in a really profound way.
Yeah, thank you.
It's funny, anybody who knows me knows that I love a deep conversation.
I had my mother, my in-laws were in town this weekend, and my mother-in-law moved her chair
right next to me, and she's like, Mindy, I know you like a deep conversation.
Let me tell you what I've been thinking about.
I was like, oh, my God, thank you for knowing me so well.
So I want to, with that lens, I want to bring a deep conversation.
to perimenopause because I think we've gone from a time where nobody was talking about menopause
to everybody's talking about menopause. And I feel like we're settling in on this idea
that the word menopause is a general term. And that actually peri-menopausal transition
and post-menopause has to be treated very differently, even though they all say. And that, peri-menopausal transition,
and post menopause has to be treated very differently, even though they all say menopause.
So I'm super happy you wrote this book because I think we need to double down on perimenopause
being this really pivotal time. So for our listeners that don't know, can you explain when does
peri menopause start? Like how do we know we're in peri menopause?
I love this question, Mindy. And yes, this is the number one question.
I get from patients and my community all the time because the symptoms begin to start. And for some,
it's subtle. For some, it's like a like a Mac truck moment. And they're like, is this, is this perimenopause?
Like, and I feel like there's so many of us that are a little scared, you know, coming into it.
Like, is this actually what it is? So I want to just quickly define menopause and we'll go from there.
So menopause, natural menopause is anywhere between 45 years old and 55 years old. So somewhere, we're going to
fall somewhere in the middle of that. The average age of menopause is 51 years old. I know my mom
went into menopause at 53. And, you know, I'm expecting somewhere in my early 50s. That's where
I'm going to land as well. Now, perimenopause is the transition where our ovaries are winding down
and our hormones are radically declining without permission, mind you. I always say this is without
permission. And this is anywhere between four and 10 plus years. A dear friend of ours, Dr. Sarah Gopred,
I was just talking to her recently, and she was talking about how she's been in perimenopause for 15 years.
Wait, she's still in pari menopause?
Mm-hmm.
Good honor.
She's still holding on.
I'm talking about good reproductive longevity.
She hasn't let me in on that secret.
That's amazing.
And the point is that it's a continuum.
It is a massive continuum.
And it's actually broken into different stages as well because you can imagine.
I've been joking recently and saying, that's not a transition.
That is a freaking career.
Like 10 years of your life?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a long time.
Some of us have multiple careers in a 10-year span.
And I think about in a lifetime, gosh, how much can happen in 10 years for any one of us?
Gosh, how much can happen in one year for any one of us, especially women who are going
through the gauntlet of hormones shifting in the time where we are taking care of everybody else.
So that is perimenopause.
It is that 4 to 10 plus year transition.
It can happen as early as.
as our mid-30s.
Because you can imagine if someone goes into menopause naturally at 46, 47, I know many friends
of mine who went into menopause at 47 and 48 years old.
And they were experiencing symptoms in their mid to late 30s.
But again, because we weren't talking about it, because we were telling women that,
no, there's no way they're too young, often those symptoms, these are even functional doctors,
these are medical doctors who were dismissed in their own.
experience. Yeah, so I go back to my own perimenopause experience and it really hit me hard at about
43 and my first symptom was I wasn't sleeping and I became very like agitated. Like I could, you know,
somebody would do one thing. Like I always think about the day that I got into bed and I swear I could
hear my son chewing his cereal downstairs in the kitchen and I went downstairs and I was like,
what are you doing? It's so loud down here. And he's like, mom.
I was just eating cereal after soccer practice.
And that was about 43.
And we weren't talking about menopause then.
We didn't have language for it.
So help our listeners understand what those early symptoms are because I feel like they,
I felt like the symptoms of menopause in general sideswiped me.
It was like, whoa, I was this way one day.
And then boom, all of a sudden I'm yelling at my son for chewing cereal too, too loud.
having a snack after a soccer practice. Right, exactly. Exactly. Mom, I'm just trying to have a snack
in the kitchen. He's like, I'm just eating. I'm like your existence currently right now. That's right.
He used to step out of this house. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, 43 years old was the year that I was blindsided
by paring menopause as well. And I was just coming out of postpartum. My son was barely two years old.
And I think for so many of us, especially the brain-related thumbs, can feel like an exacerbation
of the daily pain points of everyday life. And so for me, I thought, I was like, oh, this must be
my thyroid or, oh, I must not have recovered well from the postpartum experience. Maybe my,
my stress response system is overactivated again. So I feel like that is so often, it's a yes and
for women in Perry, where as we start to lose these protective shield hormones that, by the way,
our full body hormones. And as that, they become, they just start to crumble. All of a sudden,
we see these exacerbation of symptoms, sometimes things that we had been managing the whole time
that we had had under control until these hormones begin to drop. Other times, I feel like
things were simmering under, kind of under the surface and are finally up for a review. But the big thing
that I hear from women, including myself, it sounds like YouTube, Mindy, is the brain-related
symptoms because this is a neuroindocrine transition. Just like puberty, just like postpartum,
the brain is under massive reconstruction. I call it like a massive remodel. And it is happening when we have
so much, I call this the higher stakes game. Because now our careers are happening. We are running households.
We are managing families. We are in a sandwich generation. This is very much the messy middle.
And we don't have a lot of bandwidth to begin with. Like we kind of need it all to run well.
And when all of a sudden sleep begins to go to the wayside, we are more.
irritable than the normal. We have brain fog and cognitive issues. We cannot remember the words
that we were trying to say, we don't even know why we walked into the room that we deliberately
walked into. All of this begins to help us feel like we're losing it. Like we're crazy. Like,
we don't know what's going on with our bodies. I would say the brain-related symptoms are the
most common symptoms. And for so many women, the most destabilizing symptoms. Because when we are
having to operate at a high level, like most of the women that I've always
taken care of are very high functioning. And when you start to pull the rug from under them in
terms of their cognitive and their emotional resilience, it's like they're thinking, is this early
dementia? Like, what is going on with me? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the hardest, especially when
you're used to keeping lists in your mind. And so, you're not, you're not writing stuff down.
But you can do it, right? And then you can't. And we don't have the support in place or the,
or the knowing that this is going to happen, it can just feel like a reckoning.
I call this the reckoning.
I love that.
And in the book, you talk about it being, perimenopause being a personal catalyst.
And this is something that is super like near and dear to my heart because I think in the zeitgeist right now,
we have so much of a conversation about your suffering, take HRT.
And I'm not dismissing that.
And we should definitely talk about that.
But what I am really thinking through at a deeper level is this is actually a transformational moment.
So when those symptoms appear, when that brain is remodeling, there is an opportunity for you to change yourself.
And I know you talk about this in the book.
So talk to me a little bit like I'm a 38, 39-year-old woman.
And I'm just feeling those symptoms.
what advice would you give about the brain symptoms that I'm feeling?
I would say number one is that right now is the time where you get to decide whether you're
going to prioritize yourself or not.
This is where the body is calling for a new level of support because what got us here
isn't going to get us to the next level, especially the next level of health and emotional
well-being.
So I think that's the first step is deciding that you deserve to feel amazing.
and that you deserve to thrive, that this is going to be a transition, but that you get to level up
your self-care, your sleep, your all of the strategies, the health strategies that maybe you thought
you could get away with up until now. You know, we don't get to get away with that anymore.
Also, this is an opportunity if things are shifting and it feels like it's happening without
permission because there's nothing worse than something being taken away from you or feeling
like it's getting taken away from you and you weren't given a warning sign for it. You weren't warned.
And there have been moments where I have even grieved my earlier version of myself. Oh, me too.
Yeah. The woman who could just like full out sprint and not have to negotiate with herself.
Yeah. Whether she's got capacity later on that day or the next day or the next week. And now I'm having
to really shore up, you know, and ask myself, what do you have capacity for? Yeah. What do you have energy for?
And then the next piece I always tell women is this is the opportunity for you to establish your boundaries, your non-negotiables, your relationships, the things that are going to move you forward in the next half of your life.
And so if there are relationships, maybe it's familial, maybe it's friendships that have not been serving, it's time to set up.
Even the relationship with yourself, if things are coming up for review that you have kept, you've been running from or you've been pushing away,
now is the time to address it. Now is the time to look in the mirror and get clear with what version of you you want to take into the second half of your life. And then number three, I think that big one is anchoring yourself to the health habits and being consistent with those health habits so that you are thriving, not just surviving in this transition, but also in the next. I love that list. I would agree a thousand percent with it. I can, again,
and going back to where I was.
And it's interesting because at 55,
I feel like I'm looking back at perimenopause.
And I'm like, oh, that's where I got stuck a little bit there.
And I got stuck a little bit there.
Now the 39, 40-year-old version of me would have said,
I'm too exhausted to start to set boundaries
and disappoint people.
Like I can't, like, I'm just trying to work
and handle my family life.
And now I need to stand up and tell people, I'm not doing this anymore.
I need to hold boundaries.
I need to prioritize my wants.
I haven't even been taught what my wants are.
I think that that is like that awakening that, and I love you called the book of the perimenopausal
revolution because I don't know if you use the revolution in this way, but the way I read
it is like it's a revolution to start to take care of yourself first.
But that transition, as you know, as a mother.
It's messy.
It's hard.
My son is sick home today at four years old and we debated.
There was such a big part of me that wanted to just send him to school.
He's not super sick.
But my husband and I sat down and we were like, we have to make this work.
We have to make, I've heard him like four times, girl.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
No, it's okay.
Oh, my mama heart hurts for you.
And it's the messy middle.
This is the journey that we're in.
And so, yeah, if you're a woman who's listening and you're in your late 30s, early 40s,
and you just heard me rattle off that list of, like, massive empowerment and stepping into
yourself as a priority and you're thinking to yourself, I'm just trying to have, I'm just trying to
pee by myself.
Right, exactly.
Right.
Because I can't.
That doesn't happen for me in my household because I thought of boundaries.
Peeing by yourself is a definite luxury.
Or even sleeping by myself most nights of the week.
Like that's where I'm at. How many women have little children like me that, I mean, my son's in TK. Right now. Not even kindergarten. We're not even there yet. And so that's where I'm at. And so where I started, one, I had to reconcile. When the changes began to happen, there was a bit of a denial at first. I kept thinking, like, maybe I can fix this. Maybe I can clean this up. And there's a lot of things that I've done to do so. Absolutely. And some days are better than others. I wish I wish all the hormone replacement therapy and all the life.
lifestyle strategies and all the things are going to make every single one of your months that last
week of your ludial phase, magical and incredible, and make it feel like it did back in your 20s.
I cannot guarantee that.
But what I can guarantee is if you even carve out 20 minutes for you, 20 minutes walking, 20 minutes
breathing, 20 minutes reading a good fiction book, or maybe it's a nonfiction book, whatever
brings you joy.
The question I always love to ask myself is, what?
help you feel good right now. Or how would you love to feel in the next 30 days? Like just asking,
I think those types of questions, and I have embedded those questions throughout the book,
in the mindset chapter, in the movement chapter, because it's, I think when we start to ask
ourselves the potent questions that we have to answer for ourselves, that's when we start to make
those decisions about, you're like, you know what, I'm not going to tolerate anymore. I'm not going to
continue this way. And it doesn't have to be a big thing. It can just be a small thing, but it can be
profound. Not all of these shifts need to be massive to make a difference. Some of them can be very,
very small. It was my birthday over the weekend. I my son is... Happy birthday! Thank you. I turned 46 years old.
Ah, nice. And Kingston's sick. And so we canceled all the things, you know, mainly because I knew I had
this beautiful interview with you and I've got a bunch of interviews. But the one thing I was really
clear on was time by myself. I wanted, I want a time to journal. I want a time to go to the ocean.
I want a time to go get my own freaking macha by myself. That is what I was clear on. And so I think
getting, having that clarity about what's going to move the needle for you, even if, again,
it's just a morning routine or it's an evening routine or it's 20 minutes during the day,
whatever allows you to reset your system, I think is a really great place to start. Yeah. It's,
Have you, time by yourself, is that fairly new as you've gone in to deeper into perimenopause?
Oh yeah. And it's probably the most sacred thing I can do for me. Yeah. I have the same thing. And I,
and I pushed against it and pushed against it until I broke. So I just want to point out that
one of the things, I'm an extrovert. I like being around people. I like human connection.
but one of the things that I noticed as I got deeper and deeper into my perimenopause years is
nothing calmed me or made me feel more peaceful than being by myself.
And I think that a lot of that is because as these hormones shift, it's almost like our nervous
system is raw.
And if we get around the wrong people, the wrong situation, stressful events, it's very
difficult to manage it because we don't have the same.
capacity that we had in our younger years. Is that how you feel as well? I think most women,
there's no break. There's no break from work to home, unless you've got a bit of a commute,
but you're in your fighting traffic. So that doesn't feel like a break either. Your nervous system
is just on hypervigilant mode. You're running from one thing to the next, whether that's packing
lunches or making sure there's socks washed. Do you know what I'm saying? That the list is constant
and endless. And I'll tell you what, I can, if I'm in my house, even alone, there's always
things yelling at me. Oh, yeah. Always. I can't go downstairs without seeing everything out of place.
I, you know, dishes that need to be handled. I went downstairs in the kitchen, and I tried to put
dishes on the dishwasher, and the dishwasher was clean, and I was just like, because I was like,
I didn't plan for that five minutes. Yeah. So that, right, exactly. The interesting thing to me
about perimenopause is I do feel like it sideswipes you. Yeah. Because you're just like kind of going
along normal life and then all of a sudden there's you can't sleep and then all of a sudden
little things are annoying you and the next thing you know you're sweating and then all of a sudden
you're gaining weight but you didn't really change anything and it's like year after year there's
just another symptom another symptom you talk about silent shifts can you explain a little
more what that means because of all the menopausal phases I think this is the sneakiest one
which again is why I think it's your book is so important because we need to if we could catch
in this moment, it would make the rest of the menopausal experience so much better.
This is the window of opportunity because it's the window of vulnerability.
You know, women are calling this a zone of chaos or like the transition of chaos.
The reason why we're calling it that is because the symptoms are so loud.
They are so disruptive.
And when I think about the silence shifts that are happening behind the scenes,
I think it's important to note that as you and Dr. Stacey Sims and so many us have said over
the years that we are not small men. This isn't bikini medicine, where hormones are only impacting
our boobs and our ovaries and our uterus. They are, they are neuromodulators, their immune
system modulators, they are changing the gut microbiome, they are helping the bone to remodel,
they are helping muscles to grow and build. They are affecting our insulin levels, our blood glucose
variability. I'm talking every single system in the body is reliant on these chemical messages.
And so when they begin to erratically decline, and for some of us, it is more severe than others, depending on when it starts for us.
Note that there are silent shifts happening that we are not necessarily paying attention to.
And our doctors often aren't looking at as well, including we know that as estrogen drops, insulin resistance goes up.
We know that glucose variability becomes more variable.
And more women get diagnosed with prediabetes in perimenopause than any other transition.
Right? We know that blood pressure is changing. Again, unless you're looking at your blood pressure regularly, you're not going to see that silent creep towards hypertension.
We also know that lipids are going up unfavorably as we start to lose estrogen because cholesterol helps to make our hormones.
Right. Or not making them anymore, right? So that is shifting. Inflammation is increasing, particularly in the brain and in the gut and in the body.
We know that our stress response system is more deregulated than ever before.
Like there's the silent shifts of inflammation, of loss of bone, loss of muscle, metabolic changes, inflammation in the brain that puts our cardio-metabolic health at risk.
And a lot of this is happening well before we get into menopause, although we're not looking at these biomarkers.
We're not looking at the dexas scan.
We're not looking at a lot of these shifts happening until after our period has ceased for more.
more than 12 months. So would you say that the metabolic piece is the first one to work on?
I like this, prioritize yourself and create boundaries and start to create health habits.
Do you feel like the metabolic health habits should be the first door in once you got your self-care
under control? Always. You know, I always thought about this book, you know, Dr. Casey Means,
who's a dear friend of both of ours. I was like, this book is, it's perimenopause meets good energy.
That's what this book is.
Yeah, it's beautiful way to look at it.
Because cellular energy is everything, Mindy.
It's allowing you and me to have this conversation.
It's allowing us to think, to feel, to do, and without the integrity of our cellular energy,
what do we have?
Right.
And if the integrity of our cellular energy is becoming more compromised throughout the
perimenopause transition, the more that we can shore that up in early Perry or at any time
in peri menopause, it is going to set us up for a more thriving,
more energized version of ourselves in the second half of our lives. And so, you know, I think about
how many of us, how many women is, what is it, one in five have polycystic ovarian syndrome? How many
women are coming into perimenopause with some level of insulin resistance or some level of,
you know, mitochondrial dysfunction? What I will say is that if we're coming into perimenopause with
that, if we don't make changes that shore up our metabolic health and our cellular energy,
we are going to be spit out on the other side into menopause, less resilient, less energized,
and less able to function. This is where the chronic conditions begin to arise.
Although they are developing imperiumenopause, it's not until, you literally are late 50s,
early 60s do we really begin to see them present. But by then, it's a little too late.
Yeah, yeah. So if I'm 40 and all of a sudden I just noticed, gosh, I'm gaining belly weight,
what would you recommend like what what i'm hope people are getting is like these early signs are
massively important so i've in 20s and 30s i rocked my fitness 40 all the sudden what's that
belly doing why is that showing up what how do i what would your advice be when you see the subtle
signs of of that metabolic dysfunction yeah because let's let's call belly fat when it is it's a
subtle sign of metabolic dysfunction it is a sign of insulin resistance i would say first thing
is let's get your blood sugar balanced because your blood sugar is your biggest barometer for your
cellular energy. Now I get that body composition changes. No fun. So there's some things that we can
do about that. But I'm always thinking from that metabolic perspective of like how do we ensure
that we walk back that creep towards pre-beates? Because that's that that belly fat,
especially the visceral belly fat, in a lot of ways, it's its own endocrine organ with its own
cytokines, its own inflammation, and it's spiraling even more insulin resistance. So let's start
with the meals. Let's start with protein, fiber, healthy fats, eliminating liquid sugars,
eliminating ultra-process foods. I think we can, no matter what, you know, like what you've been
indoctrinated into with terms of nutrition advice, I think we can all agree that getting rid of
ultra-processed foods is one of the first things that we need to do. And I get how easy it is,
especially in perimenopause when you're like, I'm just trying to get by, but cooking real food,
giving yourself gaps, giving yourself, you know, honor your circadian rhythm, making sure that you're
doing at least a 12-hour fast at night so that you are ending dinner three hours before bed,
and then you're breaking your fast with, again, protein, healthy fats, and fiber so that you
are staying sedated until you are getting to lunch. That's going to be one of the first things that you can do.
next, a big part of this book, two chapters devoted to the perimenopause revolution, is movement.
I've always believed that movement is light. But one of the things that I've walked away from
in my own experience this journey and also helping so many women walk through it,
call it walking through the fire, is that we need to build our lives around movement.
That's what we need to do, especially after meals. We know that new research just came out
that if you were to walk only 10 to 15 minutes after meals, it is actually more effective at
supporting your cellular energy, than a 60-minute walk some other time during the day.
So just those micro-movements after meals makes a profound difference.
It's probably one of the biggest ways that we can balance our blood sugar.
So that's the number one thing I tell people.
One, eat to balance your blood sugar.
Two, move to balance your blood sugar.
And then three, sleep.
Like, it's a million-dollar meeting.
That's a good one, except for how do you get there?
How do you get to sleep?
How do you get there?
I mean, like, I've tried prioritizing it for years and have come up with finally some strategies.
But before we go into sleep, I want to go back to what you said about the Western standard diet.
And I don't want people to miss this.
What I hear you saying is that those habits of going through McDonald's at midnight or...
Poli for, you know, it doesn't even have to...
It can be less insidious.
Yes, yeah. Okay. Or I, you know, I got it. I finally got my soda habit down from 10 sodas a day to one soda a day. All those, and a lot of, I've sat and read a lot of Dutch tests and blood work of people who have just been eating out all the time and even eating out at good restaurants. You're getting the bad oils and you're not getting the organic ingredients. So what I heard you say is that habit might have worked for you up until 40, but when you go into perimen,
a pause, that needs to be something you stop.
Or it needs to be something you're adjusting very quickly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would say, you know, I get it.
I'm a mom who works.
We've talked a little bit about that already.
I'm a mom who's going to go straight in a mom mode after this interview is done.
Like there's no buffer for me today.
And one way or the other, we're cooking.
I'm cooking.
I'm in the kitchen cooking.
Like if there's time spent away from my son, away from doing whatever else I'm doing in life,
it is in the kitchen cooking real food for my family and cooking with my family. I mean,
if that's, and I get that it is a time suck. I get that it is, you know, taking away from all the
other things, but I don't know if there is anything else more invaluable to your health than
actually knowing the food that you're preparing for you and your family and committing to the
time to cook it. And we can get strategic about batch cooking, about, you know, getting roasting and
sauteing. I mean, there's a lot of ways to kind of eat.
even cheat making healthy foods in your kitchen. But time in our kitchen is probably some of the
spent for ourselves and our family. Yeah. You know, a couple thoughts on that. First, a little mama
advice to you. I made sure with my son that he was going to be in the kitchen with me all the time.
I was like, you're not going to grow up and be like, I don't know how to make a meal. And so we cooked
all the time. And do you know, now he's a professional chef. He chose that as a career.
I feel so validated. I'm like, yeah, because from two and three years old,
I was like, you're going to know how to work, you know, be in a kitchen.
So the second thing I want to say, and I always go back to this idea that maybe we got
menopause wrong because the modern world has really taken us out of alignment with our evolutionary
design.
And one of the things we did evolutionary wise is we used our hands a lot.
You know, they had to muddle things because they didn't have, you know, as sharp.
of knives and they had to dig. And one of my favorite interviews on this podcast was with a movement
expert, Katie Bowman, and she was saying that we got to look at being in the kitchen as a form of
fitness because you have to whisk and you have to knead and you have to use your hands. And when we
look at the studies on grip strength and longevity, we know that people have stronger hand strength
and live longer lives. So I think it's pretty cool what you're saying of like go into the kitchen
Like at 40, it might be like put the door to take the DoorDash app off your phone and start to get yourself into the kitchen and start moving, being in there not just for connection and relationship with your family and not just for your health, but because there's a fitness level you can create in the kitchen.
Absolutely.
I mean, we're talking about neat, right?
Not exercise activity thermogenesis, which is a big part of this book.
Because let's be honest, 66% of Americans, adult Americans are not even meeting the movement requirements.
Right. Most of us are very sedentary. I think the average adult clocks less than 4,500 steps a day.
And so that's how I started the first of the two movement chapters was talking about neat,
because we can easily increase our meat with folding clothes standing up, being in the kitchen more,
doing chores around the kitchen, cleaning up after we make dinner in the kitchen. You know,
it's those types of things that add up over time that improve our fitness or at least improve our physical activity.
You know, when I look at the research from the blue zones, they're not,
in the gyms. They're not going to hit classes. They're not doing power yoga. No, they are just moving. They are
kneading. They are gardening. They are walking to the grocery store and grabbing bread and milk and veggies.
They do that every single day. That is just a part of the fabric of their every single day lives.
Is that they are constantly physically active. And so I think we need to be thinking about our life in a way of,
how can I stay in movement? So when I was talking about building life around movement, I didn't necessarily mean
building your life around jump squats. I mean, not that you can't do that. By all means,
after this, I'm going to do a couple jump squats and then I'm going to go downstairs.
But I mean, how can we be in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher, sweeping the floor,
being in the kitchen with our family, cooking meals, prepping meals. That's the type of movement.
You know, again, folding laundry or sweeping the floors, all those types of things that adds up
over time. And I get, that's not necessarily, that's not where you want to always spend your time.
It could be a walk with your family. It can be a solo walk, a voice memoing your best
There's a lot of ways that we can move our body in a meaningful way.
That is not a hit class or time in the gym.
Not that there isn't, I love being in the gym as well.
I was already in the gym today.
But that is helping you to be more physically active.
Do you feel like there's a movement shift that needs to happen as you go into perimenopause
as your hormones?
Like if you're a crossfitter and you're a crossfit champion, can you stay being a crossfit champion?
champion. Can you stay being a CrossFit champion through your whole perimenopausal experience?
I can't. And you know what? Amen to the CrossFit champions out there that are making work or the sprint
champions out there that are making it work. I would say by getting where you fit in. For me,
I was burning out of hit workouts in my 30s well before 43 became my new normal before perimenopause
was really available to me. And all of it's changed.
So I would say, I mean, for me, it's, I love lifting weights. So I think lifting weights and
maintaining that muscle is super important. That is your metabolic sink. But no, let's look at
movement in terms of walking, yoga, mobility. Again, neat. You're just moving your body in a
meaningful way. I think that's where it's at. Keep maintain your muscle, but move, move your body.
And if you don't love, like, I don't want anyone moving in a way that they're just like,
this is awful. I don't want to do this. Like, it should be.
meaningful in the sense that you enjoy it. So for me, you know, I don't, there's some types of
movement that are just for me, but others that I really love. And I think as long as you're loving
what you're doing and it involves you moving your body, I'm a full body, yes. If you were a puddle
on the floor after a workout in the morning and you're not able to function for the rest of your
day or show up in a way that that you want to show up for with the people that matter to you,
with the work that matters to you, then you really need to renegotiate the type of
of movement you're doing. Right. Okay. And so what do you think of these things like rucking?
Rucking has become so freaking controversial, which just, I, even my best friend messaged me
because I got her rucking. She's a couple of years older than me. And she's like sending me all
these articles. Like, I'm so confused now. I don't know if I should ruck or not ruck. And I, I feel like
why are we, why are we attacking rucking? Talk to me about it.
this. I mean, we invest in rucking, it's become the thing. Anytime something becomes the thing,
right? Then it's up for discussion. It's up for debate. I think what's really up for debate is the
claims that are being made that we cannot substantiate fully with research. So, for example,
we also have people using rucking vests while they're working out and, you know, just doing a lot of
things. And so it's, you know, it's interesting, particularly us as women. I think what I really, what I,
What I always point to is how we as women, man, we know how to overdo it.
Yeah.
We know how to read.
That's really true.
Yeah, that's really true.
We know how to take something and then take it to the max.
God forbid, we don't go all the frequent way with something.
So when it comes to weighted best or rucking, I think that there's a lot of benefits.
But I think you have to know your body.
Is it hurting your knees?
Are you finding yourself with more joint pain, more inflammation in your joints?
If that's the case, then I would maybe minimize the amount of rucking.
doing. I mean, specifically for bone density, I think that's the big argument is that we just
don't have enough research to substantiate that it's actually helping us to build bone. You are better
off actually jumping and hopping and weight training when it comes to bone density. So I think
those are the things that are under fires that we're making a lot of claims around it. And we're
kind of blowing it up. And I think women are actually overdoing it and getting a little bit injured.
And so I would just maybe take it back a notch. Walking for, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes with a
ruck with a rucking backpack or with a weighted bass, I think is great. And if it gets you to
move more, even better still. But if you're doing it as your own way of helping to preserve muscle
and bone, I don't want it to negate the fact that you've got to be lit weights and you've got to
be training in a meaningful way at least a couple times a week. Yeah. Yeah. Well said.
Really well said. Let's talk about sleep because I would say, I'll tell you something really
interesting and my followers probably don't even know this. From doing over 2,000 videos on
YouTube, we get a lot of data on what people are watching, what they're not watching, and who's
watching what. If they're watching it? Yeah, exactly. So the two things that I see are challenging
women the most during perimenopause is menopausal belly weight and not being able to sleep.
And I recently came, went down a rabbit hole of understanding why can't we sleep?
I originally thought it was because we were losing progesterone.
And then I found some really interesting research that showed that estradiol actually went up
into the brain and helped the part of the brain that was the internal clock timekeeper
understand where you were in the day.
So when estradiol declines, now the clock is off.
Your circadian rhythm is off.
Yeah.
So that's another one.
my 40-year-old self should have known.
Why didn't somebody tell me that at 40?
I might have not yelled at my son when he was chewing his cereal too loud.
So what do we need to know about resetting our circadian rhythm during these years?
Yeah, I just want to say, you know, estrogen, she needs, she needs all the accolades.
Yeah, she was keeping your tummy tight.
Yeah.
She was keeping your sleep going.
She was keeping your brain sharp.
She was keeping you stable and just having that well-being.
Now, mind you, she isn't the only.
hormone declining, but she is the master CEO of the brain. And I always joke, let's say for 35
years, or 25 to 35 years, that CEO showed up at 9 a.m. every day, and she went home at 6 p.m.
every single day. Like clockwork, rhythmically, your body, if it was one thing that it could rely on,
it was estrogen showing up consistently. And then one day, she doesn't. She doesn't show up to work
until two in the afternoon. Doesn't call in. Doesn't tell anybody she's running late. Doesn't show up until
two. Doesn't leave till 11. Then doesn't come to work until 11 the next day. And then stays until
2 a.m. And then doesn't come to work the next. So it's just this inconsistency, the brain is doing its
very best to try to recalibrate at a time where it just doesn't even know if estrogen's going to show up
to the party or not. That's what's going on. And so circadian rhythm is a major part here.
you know, neurogenesis. So the development of neurons in the brain is being ran and modulated by
our estrogen. Also, our mood, our sleep, our, even how, even our hunger centers are being
modulated by us. And it's not the only hormone, unfortunately, that is declining or, or changing.
We know that cortisol is deregulating, and that can keep us up, especially those 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m.
wakes where it's that little cortisol peak that shouldn't be enough to wake us up, but it is
waking us up, especially if our other sleep hormones like melatonin didn't show up significantly
as well. So we know melatonin is declining, progesterone's declining, estrogen's declining. All of
these hormones are significant to the brain into our sleep wake cycle. So how do we bring it back?
I mean, that's like what do we? Besides HRT? Yeah, besides HRT, like how do we bring it back?
I would say one, number one, it's getting really, really disciplined about our sleep routine.
And I think that's going to be foundational.
Just like movement is foundational.
Just like eating metabolically healthy foods is foundational.
Just like having a circadian fast every single night is foundational.
These things are foundational.
So gone are the days where you can just run into bed and expect to just fall asleep.
That's it.
Gone are the days where you could have your TV on in your room while you go in a bed.
at night. This does it work anymore. So I say, I mean, it's about consistency. It's about
honoring a routine that works for you. So for some of us, it's going to start at 8 o'clock in the
evening. Some of us are going to be at 9 o'clock in the evening. But please, like, set the temperature
for the room, set the lights appropriately, wear blue blockers if you have to, retire the
screens, an hour before bed. Take your sleepy tea. Take your magnesium. Take your sleep supplements.
take all the things. Like, do it all. Like, 45 minutes to an hour before bed and just honor that time.
Like, for me, it's a book. There's something about reading lines on a page. My brain is like,
okay, I get it. You have to say what kind of book you read because you are like, you're the queen of
this genre. And I love it. I love how you're like, you're so, such a fan.
I am. Well, I'm right now, it's the fall. What kind of room? Well, we just turned everything over
this weekend to fall all the things in my house.
So I am reading a witty series. It's called The Discovery of Witches. It actually was a TV show developed. It's a trilogy. So it's a witchy. I'm in my witchy era right now reading my witchy books. So that's what I'm reading. Is it a romantic? Is it a romantic? I hope so. Better be. Because if I'm committing to three books, if there better be something in these books, I'm guessing there is because they wouldn't have made it into a series. I actually, one thing I noticed in perimenopause is I couldn't read.
read nonfiction before I went to bed because it got my brain to stimulate.
Yeah.
All of a sudden, we're already trying to solve the world's problems.
It's already our responsibility to begin with.
So, yeah, don't give yourself a lot of things to have to think about.
Don't, don't try to solve whatever that situation is or especially the person.
Maybe it's like, oh my gosh, I really need to set those boundaries with my mother-in-law.
Whatever that would.
Don't think about that.
You'll be up till 2 in the morning.
I think that needs to be a part of the sleep routine.
I used to see your mother lost to be next to you saying you didn't even ask. She's like, listen, we're going to have a deep conversation right now. Okay. Well, but it was good. It was a good one. It wasn't like a come to Jesus conversation. So. But yeah, but with these personal development books, they can be a little bit. They can require too much of your brain working. So pick a good fiction book. There's so many great fiction books out there. I could rattle off a bunch of my thing now that are just really lovely and don't require a lot of brain efforts. Or it's a sleep routine.
in terms of breath work, meditation, whatever, like, experiment, what works for you?
But the one thing I will say is being consistent.
And the thing that has been the most game-changing for me that I was just really sloppy
and messy with up until this last year or two, it's I go to bed the exact same time every
single night.
I get up at the same time every single day.
If your circadian rhythm is all over the place, you've got social jet lag.
I don't even even progesterone ain't going to get the job done.
Like, you've got to be consistent.
you deserve that consistency.
You deserve and you need that sleep to function.
I don't know about humanity.
Sleep is going to make or break me any day of the week.
For sure.
I can't afford it.
Also, stop the wind down in terms of wine in alcohol.
Like, I know you may think that it's helping you get to sleep.
I have a feeling that this group of women, you're not doing it.
But just in case you are and you think it's helpful, man, put on a Fitbit or a whoopstrap or an oar ring.
Let me tell you, everything is in the garbage the next day.
your heart rate variability, your resting heart rate, your sleep score. I mean, even how you feel,
I mean, get that. There are nights where my sleep, whatever's going on with it, I already feel
hung over in the morning as it is. Like, I don't need alcohol to do that for me.
Yep. You know, a couple tricks I've done on alcohol that I think just to throw it out there is
have it earlier. Have a glass, one glass, maybe at five, but let three, four hours go away,
like let it get metabolized through your system because it's interesting.
that it'll raise your core temperature and then all of a sudden at two in the morning you wake up.
Night sweats. I mean, you want some of those. Alcohol will do it for you. Right. You know. Yeah.
And then the other thing is have it with a really big meal. So it gets like absorbed. So yeah. I was
going to say have it with dinner. Have dinner early. Yeah. You know, this is gone of the days.
Oh, yeah. Gosh, I got a dinner invite for 8 p.m. And I was like, what? Yeah. What?
Yeah. What is this person? Oh my God. All my friends, I love it. Like all my friends that are in Perry,
menopause and menopause. And when we make dinner plans, I'm like five o'clock, right?
Five o'clock. Everybody's- We can all be back by 7.30. Can we just be back home?
Yeah, I just, so yeah, so eating one, our blood sugar, we can, I can feel it. If I eat too late,
my body's like, what are you, what are we doing? Right. What's going on? I was just in Mexico
city two weeks ago and we were at dinner at five o'clock. Nobody. Nobody was at the restaurant.
Like everyone eats at eight o'clock or later. And I'm like, how do people do?
do this. That's how you get a reservation at a really good restaurant. We have like so many times
we've been like, oh, we should go here on a Saturday night. I'm like five o'clock. And my husband,
my husband will be like, yeah, I got a reservation. And then we go in and the restaurants just
packed as we sit there. I'm like, yeah, because we're five o'clock. But I don't understand how
that's possible. There are 20, there's 75 million women in perimenopause and menopause. I know we all got
the memo. Yeah, right. Exactly. I'm so amazed.
These restaurants are packed at 5 and 6 o'clock.
They need a menopausal hour.
They need like a peri menopausal.
Not like a happy hour, but like peri menopausal hour.
No, with a blood sugar friending moth tail.
Because yeah, I mean, you feel it.
I always say anything after 7 p.m. is late night eating.
Let's just call it.
I mean, it's only going to my butt.
Yeah.
You know, like it's all.
I'm not working that off in the gym.
You know, like we're winding down at that point.
So I say, you know, in the dinner, have that.
I mean, if you want the red wine on a Friday night with your Italian dinner, by all means, but do it at five.
In the afternoon.
Yeah, absolutely.
You take three, five of the latest.
Exactly.
Always go for a walk after that meal, so you're metabolizing that.
So that your body is really ready for sleep.
So when I think about sleep, I mean, I'm reverse engineering it from as early as the morning.
Like, I get up and within the first hour, I wake up before my son because, God forbid, if I want any time to myself, it has to be before he's awake.
I go outside.
I get my feet in the grass.
You know, if you want to raise your heart rate variability, get your feet in ground.
And that's going to be the number one way that I know how to do it.
Like if I want to see five points on my heart rate variability, I just make sure that I'm grounding
every morning and every evening.
Be outside, get in nature.
Yes, have your copy to at the same time.
It's a yes and.
I'm not saying you have to do one with the other.
And that is helping to reset your circadian rhythm as well.
So honoring that circadian rhythm is so important.
if you're still struggling again, there's some pretty crazy, I mean, there's some pretty crazy
sleepy teas out there, some pretty crazy sleepy, you know, when I have supplements that I take
personally that help with sleep. And also I cycle progesterone. I mean, I do do those things.
Luckily, I haven't had sleep issues yet in, outside of just motherhood. I feel like motherhood.
Yeah, right. Okay, where, so, so there's a discussion that's going on in the culture right now
that I feel very conflicted on.
And it's really the resurgence of HRT.
And here's why I feel conflicted on it is I feel like it's overshadowing the lifestyle changes
that we need to make.
And all medication.
Yeah, exactly.
And I mean, and I'm just going to be really transparent.
I had a meeting with my OB, you know, her Dr. Felice Gersh.
She's in your time.
She's yours too.
She's mine.
She's the best OB, in fact, we.
I hate sending people to her because then I can't get an appointment.
I know.
I met with her at 7.30 in the morning on a Saturday.
No, she's.
Which I mean, amen to her.
Amen to her.
Being willing to see me on a Saturday at 7.30 in the morning.
Yes.
She's like iconic.
She's in her 70s and I tell her she can never, ever leave practice.
No, she can't die.
No early practice.
We're all, you know, benefiting from what she's saying.
But the other, what we do with HRT with me is,
that she puts me on the lowest dose, and then every 90 days, we check, like, we're still trying
to get the dose down. And so the other day, we were talking about HRT, and she said to me, well,
you know the big pharma playbook, right? And I was like, what's the big pharma playbook?
And she said that, she goes, I've been in practice for so long. I can see it, is they put health
influencers out there, you know, and before it was authors, and then it was, you know, magazine,
people in magazines. Now it's social media.
they put books out there like, hey, this is, you really need to be on HRT, and they create a demand for it.
And as they create a demand for it, then all of a sudden, everybody listens to the demand, and they go rushing to their doctors, and they ask for it.
And this is how we start to get big, you know, big pharma starts to make money.
They did this with OZempic.
They've done this with antidepressants.
They've done it with statins.
Like you put somebody out there saying we need it, and then they create the demand for it.
I'm not saying that the people that are talking about it are bad or being paid. I really want to
make sure I'm clear on that. But where I'm confused and where I may be a little bit sad is that
what's happening is slowly as the HRT conversation is getting louder and louder is lifestyle
is disappearing. And I brought Dr. Mary Claire Haver on here a couple of years ago and asked her,
if you take HRT, is that a free pass from lifestyle?
And she was like, absolutely not.
And so just so we can keep, I feel like the PR agency for lifestyle, and I know you're
a part of this, where do you see this balance of HRT and lifestyle?
How do we ride both channels and use it to our perimenopausal benefit?
First, I want to say that I believe wholeheartedly that women do.
deserve all the tools in the toolbox.
Yeah, well said.
And that we have been denied many of those tools for too long.
And as a result, 66 marine women are on SSRIs and anti-anxiety medications.
And a lot of us are on all kinds of other medications.
As a result of both a combination of lifestyle and not having access to hormone replace
therapy.
Of all the pillars in the book, this is the last pillar.
Because it's an optimizer.
Because I will say, I'm on HRT. I'm obviously working with police as well she does.
You know, I'm on HRT.
She's pro.
And me too. I just want to say me too.
Yes. And I will tell you that when it comes to mitigating my symptoms, it is not HRT that's mitigating my symptoms.
So well said. So well said. Tell me.
It's lifestyle.
Yeah. Can you give an example of that? Because I was actually, and again, I'm just being really transparent.
I was talking to my agent this morning, and she's in her 60s, and she was telling me that a lot of
her friends who are so enamored with HRT are starting to become disillusioned because they were
putting patches on and rubbing creams and thinking that all their problems are going.
Yeah, it's not doing, exactly.
I think we think it's this catch-all band-aid.
I mean, that's exactly what we're in a lot of ways that's the marketing around it,
is that it's the thing that we've been denied, and it's the thing that's going to solve all
of our problems, and it's not.
You know, and I do talk, I mean, it's interesting kind of writing the line because that's literally what this book is all about is one showing you demonstrating how mission critical these hormones are because they are. And we can feel it when they begin to erratically decline. And I think the reason why we really feel it is that it's so erratic. It's not, this isn't a linear decline. It isn't a slow retirement out. It is like a train wreck, you know, unfolding in front of our eyes. It's a roller coaster ride. And it can feel so.
stabilizing. I always want to honor that and I want women to understand why because the fact that
women keep getting gaslit and dismissed when they are going through the subjective brain-related
and body physical symptoms, it just angers me so much. And with that said, you know, I'm not going to
pretend like I was doing all the right things heading into peri-menopause. There was definitely
some work to be had, some cleanup. But most importantly, for me, a lot of it was regulating my nervous
system. My stress response system was on overdrive. And let me tell you, that doesn't lend to any of those
other symptoms leveling out. Like, it makes them worse. I would say that the silent saboteur of all of this
is often a deregulated stress response system. And I get that so many of us are, but let me tell you
what doesn't fix a deregulated nervous system, HRT. So well said. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to say
And I want everybody to hear this.
Like I've tried everything, done everything.
I'm like a human guinea pig.
And the one thing that I know exacerbates my menopausal symptoms, even three years post
menopausal, is when my nervous system is dysregulated.
So thank you for saying that because this is where we're setting women up for failure.
Because that stress response system that is overdoing it, it is causing the sleep issues as well.
Yeah.
It is causing the exhaustion, the burnout, the mood swings, the irritability, the rage.
That is all kind of being, I would say, like, it's like a tornado, right?
It's making things worse, exacerbating those symptoms.
And so if your nervous system is deregated, and goodness knows, if there was a time for your nervous system to be on the fritz, it is during paring menopause.
And I have not found any HRT solution at all to address it.
And so for me, you know, I was I was just getting an interview with by a dear friend a couple days ago. And she said, you know, this interview should just be about walking. She's like, because that is your solution to everything. And I was like it's that I walk by myself. I walk multiple times a day more so because in pari menopause, I have felt like I am always at a tipping point with my stress. It's always kind of at like at the brink of tipping over. And one of the most free.
free, easy, effective things that will regulate me and balance my blood sugar and to help support
my circadian rhythms, it's going to be movement.
It's walking.
And so it's eating to reduce inflammation and to fuel my body.
It's moving my body.
It's protecting my sleep.
And it is carving out time for myself and community.
Those are the needle movers that hormone replacement therapy is not taking care of for me.
Yeah.
Oh, that was so well said. And, you know, when you break down walking, that bilateral stimulation
right left, right left, that helps to actually calm the brain because the brain knows it's like,
oh, you're moving away from the stressor. I, when the, during the pandemic, I became like a walking
nut. I literally, like, any time I got, and I was, so during the pandemic, I was like in my late
40s. So I was in the thick of perimenopause. And every time I was like, oh, my God,
am I going to be able to keep my office afloat? Oh my God. My son had a, he was in his senior year in high
school and he lost all the coaches that were going to sign him for soccer were completely gone.
And I was watching his whole future completely fall apart. I would just put my AirPods in and I'd be like,
out the door. And my husband would be like, you're going again. I'm like, yeah, I know this is my
10th walk today, but this is the only thing that calms my brain.
Especially being in nature. Yeah. Just having that time to yourself.
And it can be by yourself.
It can be listening to a podcast.
It can be listening to a book.
For me, where the juice is really worth a squeeze is sending voice memos to my besties.
Yeah, you do that well.
I'm sending voice a moose to Mindy.
Yeah, you're good.
I'm going to, I'll send you some back when I walk.
It's just, you know, and that, even if you're not able to talk to that person one-on-one right then or in that moment, just even reaching out to ask how a friend is doing.
Because let me tell you, we are in it together.
Yes, we're in pari menopause or menopause or post.
Post menopause, wherever you find yourself in this journey, having people that you get to do this journey with helps you to feel more, just more well in your body, more well in your emotional well-being.
Helps you feel like you're not alone. You're not crazy. You're in this with a team of people that are supporting you who totally get it.
And so that to me, the benefits of movement are so great. I mean, if I could bottle it, I would.
you know, because it's so profound. And, you know, I will say that one of the things I said recently to a friend of mine was that HRT isn't going to lift the weights for you. It's not going to walk you. But I know that some women are struggling emotionally and mentally and they're struggling with the motivation. They're struggling with the confidence and the joy. And they just feel flat. And sometimes hormone replacement therapy can get them back to a state of equilibrium, especially with their brain, that moves them out the door. So I'm
not saying that HRT can't provide a win, but leverage that win towards lifestyle.
Lifestyle is the only thing that is going to guarantee that you are not negotiating with yourself
later in life. It's going to guarantee that you have the freedom to travel and to get out of
your car and to get off the toilet seat and to get off the floor with your grandchild.
That's what lifestyle is going to give you. H.R.T. isn't going to give you that. So I think it's
important that although it's a beautiful optimizer, thank God it's a tool that we can use.
use, please do not stop being consistent with your lifestyle. Do not stop being consistent with the
pillars that are going to move the needle in the most meaningful way. And that is movement, that is eating,
that is optimizing your circadian rhythm, that is community, that is protecting your mental health,
like it's the most important thing ever, that is building in self-care, that is honoring and
prioritizing you. Those are the needle movers. Those are what's going to help you feel more alive
stepping into the second half of your life. Boom. That was my question.
drop. That was so good. So thank you so much. I really, you know, I've done a lot of conversations on
my podcast about HRT of all kinds, the pros, the cons. I've done a lot of lifestyle. I'm really trying
to help people, women specifically, obviously think for themselves. And I just really appreciate
the fact that you are really doubling down on these lifestyle tools. So, so thank you for that.
And I also appreciate that we're now writing books that are separating out perimenopause because it is such a vulnerable time.
And as people are waking up to it, they need to not just start to search for the right doctor, but they need books like yours where they can understand how to start living a different lifestyle.
So thank you.
And with that in mind, how do people find your book?
I'm sure you've got some like giveaways and things like that.
Talk to me about that.
Giveaways. So yeah, so I mean, the book is available right now. I'm guessing for pre-order. But here's the thing. The way that I stack the bonuses, I call it the peri-menopause power toolkit is all of my workout videos, all of my exercise snack routines, meal plans, recipes, self-care, morning and evening routine, all the things that you need to move the needle today so that you feel like a different person in 10 days from now, I built them all into the bonuses. You don't have to wait for the book to get started. You can literally start today.
And that one thing, if you had to walk away with one thing today to start with, is just carving out an extra five to ten minutes for your morning routine and your evening routine just for you.
Because you deserve it.
You deserve to prioritize you.
And if that means a little walk in the morning before everyone wakes up, then do it.
If that means reading a really good fantasy book before going to bed, you get to have that.
It's yours.
So all of the bonuses are there.
You can get the book anywhere books are sold.
but go to Dr.marisa.com forward slash book to get all the bonuses.
And I read the book for Audible.
It's going to be available for a book.
And you can find me also on Energized with Dr. Marisa.
I'm sure I'm going to be having Dr. Mindy Pels back on really.
And you can find me on Instagram at Dr. Marisa, D-R-M-A-R-M-A-I-ZA.
I just adore you.
I feel more energized after this conversation than when I started.
So thank you for everything you're doing.
And everybody go get the book.
and let's all start working on the principals and come together on what's working, what we need
help on. And I just appreciate you. And I hope you get a little break. You don't have to go back
to a four-year-old that's sick. Go do something for five minutes before that happens.
I am. I'm just going to lock myself in the office. Yeah, good idea. If long as I'm in here,
it's fine. Good idea. So appreciate you. We'll leave all those links. And good luck with everything around
the book.
Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode.
I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you.
If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it.
So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.
