The Midlife Feast
The Midlife Feast
#167 - When Perimenopause Unmasks ADHD with Dr. Jen Wolkin
Midlife brain fog and overwhelm aren’t signs of falling apart. It’s really just your biology getting louder. Dr. Jen Wolkin, a Harvard-trained neuropsychologist, explains how perimenopause can reveal ADHD that’s been there all along and why compassion, not willpower, brings clarity.
We unpack how estrogen shifts dopamine and norepinephrine, why hormone swings magnify time blindness and emotional reactivity, and how perfectionism and people-pleasing crumble under midlife’s mental load.
You’ll walk away with simple tools for clearer focus and steadier mood, including protein-forward meals, grazing stations to beat decision fatigue, and scripts for asking for help. This episode is science, validation, and relief all in one.
Connect with Dr. Jen
Instagram: @adhd_with_drjen, @drjenwolkin
Like what you learned? Check out these other episodes!
- Story Session: Navigating ADHD in Midlife & Menopause
- Finding Your Movement Rhythm with ADHD & Perimenopause with Christine Chessman
What did you think of this episode? Click here and let me know!
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📚 I wrote a book! Eat To Thrive During Menopause will be out on October 21st, 2025. Pre-order your copy today and help get the word out!
Looking for more about midlife, menopause nutrition, and intuitive eating? Click here to grab one of my free guides and learn what I've got "on the menu" including my 1:1 and group programs. https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/links
Welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast that helps you make sense of your body, your health, and menopause in the messy middle of midlife. I'm Dr. Jen Salib Huber, intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor, and author of Eat to Thrive During Menopause. Around here, we don't see midlife and menopause as problems to solve, but as invitations to live with more freedom, trust, and joy. Each week, you'll hear real conversations and practical strategies to help you feel like yourself again. Eat without guilt and turn midlife from a season of survival into a season of thriving. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dig in. If you ever thought, why can't I just get it together? Especially as you're hitting your 40s or 50s or older, you're definitely not alone. And for many women, midlife hormones can really crank up ADHD symptoms like distraction and brain fog and forgetfulness, that maybe we're always there, but a little quieter. Or they can make us wonder if maybe we've just had ADHD all along and we're really good at hiding it. Because suddenly things like meal planning, staying organized, or even focusing on a conversation that you're having while you're having it feels so much harder than it used to. If you can relate to any of this, you're going to love today's guest. Dr. Jen Wolken, or Dr. Jen as she's often called on Instagram, is a licensed psychologist and Harvard-trained neuropsychologist. She's also an author, and watch for her new book coming out in 2026. I think that what you'll come away from our conversation with is knowing that our mind, our body, and our brain are deeply connected. And I really appreciate Dr. Jen's refreshingly compassionate approach to understanding ADHD, especially for those of us going through perimenopause and menopause and all of the maybe not so fun stuff that comes with it. So in this conversation, we really dig deep into why ADHD might be showing up. Not necessarily for the first time, because as we talk about, ADHD, if you have it, has always been there, but now it's showing up and maybe it's feeling a lot worse. How hormones play a role: estrogen, progesterone, dopamine, norepinephrine, and some of the practical steps that you can take to just support your focus, your mood, your self-compassion, and some of the things to consider if you're thinking about getting an ADHD diagnosis. So this is part one. Be sure to tune in for part two, which is coming in a few weeks with Diana Reed, who's a dietitian who specializes in neurodivergence and ADHD. And I hope that this is kind of the start of many conversations because I'm definitely not alone in struggling with some of these things as I hear from so many of you. So if there's something that you would like to see covered about this topic in particular, make sure to let me know. Welcome, Dr. Jen, to the Midlife Feast.
Jen Wolkin:Thank you for having me.
Jenn Salib Huber:I'm so delighted to be here. Um, ADHD is a topic that I feel you'd have to be living under a rock, not to at least have seen it somewhere. And if you are in midlife and maybe you're starting to notice that it's harder to focus, or you're starting to feel like the brain fog is more than what you were expecting, or maybe you're just finding it really hard to do the tasks that you used to do. A lot of people are starting to wonder, or you know, kind of maybe seek some extra help and are sometimes surprised, sometimes not, um, when they get a diagnosis of perimenopause. And I've heard from countless numbers of people who say, I had no idea that you could be diagnosed with perimenopause with ADHD and perimenopause, or that in your 40s. I thought this was something that only happened to kids. Yeah. So um, I'd really love to talk to you a little bit maybe about that lifespan or kind of ADHD across the lifespan.
Jen Wolkin:Yeah, I'm I sighed only because there's so much to say. So I'm gonna take a moment and organize it in my brain. There's so many avenues we could go, but let me go here first and you can we can riff on what I say. Okay and you can ask me questions based on what I say. Um yeah, thank you for bringing light to this though, because there's such a misconception. I think people still think that there's adult onset, ADHD, and that's just not true, right? There's no late onset, there's no adult onset. You always had it. It's a neurodevelopmental disorder, whatever disorder means, um, that um even to meet criteria for you've had to had in childhood, have you had to had in childhood, um, it just for so many people, especially women across the lifespan, it shows up differently, and we are often women are often overlooked until these hormonal shifts. So I like to say um there are three main forces that explain why um women are missed in midlife, and that's history. Um I don't know if people know this or not, but until the 1970s, our literal diagnostic criteria for ADHD um were built on the study of white boys in the 1970s, and no offense to them at all. It's just it didn't include yeah, so there's that, right? So the inattentive profile more common in girls were missed, but even if you were hyperactive or had combined type like myself, you were also missed. Um, and then second is what I like to say hidden coping, right? So for so long would it women rely on um scaffolding and social masking and so like external structures and perfectionism, people pleasing. And that kind of just like covers the friction of ADHD until the mask falls away, the floor falls out from under us, and our strategies collapse. And then hormones is the third age, right? So estrogen supports dopamine and neuropernephrine. Um, I feel sad for neuroponephrine. It's like it's like the sibling that never gets talked about in ADHD. But anyway, that's a ADHD tangent. Um, so estrogen is basically kind of like a volume modulator for estrogen and dop, um for sorry, for dopamine and neuropernephrine in the brain. And so when levels shift, especially in perimenopause, ADHD symptoms often intensify. You know, I can elaborate on any and all of what I just said.
Jenn Salib Huber:Well, I think one, I want to say it's super interesting, but also not surprising or shocking that so much of the research and you know was done on boys and that girls were not considered as part of that equation until much later. Obviously, that doesn't surprise me. But, you know, I think that the the masking and the coping are often what collides, like you said, in midlife. You know, I always say that you reach this point, some point in perimenopause, where you, you know, have no more fucks to give. And I think a lot of that overlaps with the challenges of somebody who doesn't know they have ADHD, or even the people who do, but especially the people who have been masking and have been using those maybe maladaptive coping strategies to get through the brain fog, the forgetfulness. And then it gets amplified by not sleeping, by having hot flashes, by experiencing anxiety, depression. You know, it really is just such a big, I guess, just a big mess, you know, when it is all happening at the same time for sure.
Jen Wolkin:I I think it's just that honestly the masks don't hold as much. They they just literally can't, right? So, like they were so adaptive in covering and you know, reshaping some of our ADHD traits traits so that they were less visible to others. Um, you know, sometimes masking is conscious, you know, we deliberately want do it so that we want to fit in, or unconscious, right? Automatically, it's like, you know, it's a trauma response on some level. I know maybe that's provocative to say, but if you were told that you were wrong and in order to survive, you had to be like this, that kind of fits for me. Um, you know, after years especially of negative feedback and being told you're stupid, lazy, crazy, or to use more willpower. And then I think I think what happens is like you said, that the executive function load becomes so profound because in young women, of course, executive function gaps are there, but I think they're less obvious, and that makes sense because at a time of perimenopause, dopamine and estrogen are falling. And while it's not necessarily about the rises and uh the rise and fall, it's a lot also about the fluctuations. We don't talk about that either. Um I, you know, I think for for um for women who are peryslash menopausal, right? The executive load burden is just a lot. And um then sleep architecture and food kind of habits, um, that's your expertise, but eating habits change and they're interrelated, and it's just it's just unsustainable, right? Because even without the hormones, even for someone neurotypical at baseline, going through perimenopause um slash menopause, it's not fun. I mean, a lot of people call me asking for dementia assessments, and I'm not even joking. Um, there are cognitive decline issues, and sleep itself is uh interrupted. And um, you know, their relationship to food changes. So that's without ADHD. And then ADHD, which already has its own relationship, take away perimenopause, ADHD and food, ADHD and sleep are big topics. So already there's vulnerability and it just all crashes. It does all crash. I hope nobody said I was like, No, no, it definitely does.
Jenn Salib Huber:And you know, one of the things that I that I describe about that roller coaster of hormones is that the hormone soup that we make is changing. And so for most of our reproductive life, when we're having regular cycles, you know, we have these predictable highs and lows of estrogen and progesterone, and they're happening on a mostly regular cycle. Obviously, that may not apply if you're using some kind of contraception that interrupts that. But if we just kind of make a sweeping assumption or generalization, and then all of a sudden you get to perimenopause and your ovaries start to sputter, you're gonna have periods of really high estrogen and periods of really low estrogen and periods of declining progesterone. And so we have this hormone soup that is changing, and we have estrogen and progesterone receptors in our brain. And our brain is kind of going, wait, what? What's happening here? And when you tie that into the dopamine and the norepinephrine and even serotonin, and then you layer in not sleeping and like all of these things, it just makes it impossible to continue on in the way that so many people who have, you know, have undiagnosed ADHD have been. And it feels like burnout, I think, for a lot of people. I think for a lot of people, they feel like they're, you know, I've I've spoken to a lot of people who feel like they failed. They're just like, I used to be so good at doing all the things. And now I feel like my brain isn't even my brain anymore. Like I don't understand how it's working. So when we talk at, can we talk a little bit about some of the ways that it shows up in perimenopause that might be different than how it would show up in somebody in their 20s or their 30s? What kinds of things have you seen?
Jen Wolkin:I mean, I think like I said, I think, you know, the estrogen is a little bit more balanced, though. At some point, maybe if we have time, I'll speak to the fact that ADHD does fluctuate, you know, across the lifespan, puberty, postpartum, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Jenn Salib Huber:Oh, let's talk about that because I even heard that.
Jen Wolkin:Even ovulation. Yeah, do you what should I say talk about that? Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah, let's let's talk about it. So I think that you know, ADHD shifts, their symptoms can shift um at different points across the lifespan. We just there's understandably ADHD and perimenopause is trending for a reason. And I'm not taking away the fact that it needs to be, and we need to be having these conversations. And thank you again for you know talking so much about them. However, right, I mean, as um a woman with estrogen, if estrogen is a modulator for some of these, you know, ADHD-related hormones, it's gonna be implicated across the lifespan. So, for example, in puberty, right? So rapid rises can amplify emotional reactivity and volatility, and um, you know, it's just called moodiness. And um, our monthly cycle, symptoms often worsen actually of ADHD, worsen around ovulation. That's when estrogen peaks um and then dips. And then again, in the luteal phase, right? Um, I think, yeah, the late luteal phase, which is pre-that's PMS week. Yes, that's PMS week when estrogen um and progesterone fall together. That's when there's also symptoms that show up more profoundly. And then for those who are postpartum, estrogen and progesterone just kind of crash overnight, and also unmasking the ADHD symptoms that um are frequently just, ah, you're postpartum, you're postpartum, so you're depressed or anxious. And so many people are really struggling postpartum above and beyond what they need to be.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah, and that really just talks to how often we dismiss women's concerns as, oh, it's normal, you're tired, you're postpartum, you're, you know, all these things, without actually looking a little bit more closely at what's happening. Yeah. And there's so much overlap between ADHD and menopause and the mental load. You know, we've been talking, you know, since the pandemic, I feel like there's been more conversations about the mental load that women, you know, typically carry, especially if there are kids, or even just, you know, I've seen, I don't know if it was you who had shared it, but just how so many women feel like they're their partner's prefrontal cortex. Yeah. Um, you know, and so this idea that like now we're struggling to juggle all the things that we probably shouldn't have had to juggle on our own anyway, yeah, it now just feels so hard. Right.
Jen Wolkin:It's such a hard time um in so many ways. And not only is this undiagnosed ADHD being revealed, again, not it's not just coming, it's it's being revealed. You know, there's also there are so many loads, like you said, the mental load, the loss of scaffolding. So external structure that we used to have when we were younger. Um, no teachers, right? No death, fewer shorter deadlines, no necessarily parental oversight. Um, in fact, instead of that, we're almost the sandwich generation where kids are being diagnosed, and then we're caretaking, and the the load just becomes a lot. And then, you know, more and more life demands. On top of that, it's just the perfectionism and people pleasing and masking are just so much harder to sustain under all these heavier demands. Um, right, the caregiving load. And then again, the hormone exhaustion is really real. The executive functions that were always fragile now feel like they're just collapsing. Um, and symptoms intensify, and the working memory slips, and we lose words and misplace things, and planning and time management is harder, and impulsive food choices and spending choices rise, and emotional regulation becomes shakier, and um more irritability, overwhelm, burnout. So it's really a difficult and challenging time where we're dealing with all of this, and then there's that expectation, again, in heteronormative coupling, of course, that there's this default parent uh dynamic where the female partner, sort of who's struggling herself, now has to become the frontal cortex for the entire system of her family. And that's a lot. Um, and that's not a dig on men in any way. That's just to create awareness and to hopefully foster gentle, loving communication where the woman can turn turn toward her partner and say, Hey, this is a lot. I'd love to talk about this. And I don't think, you know, because of there's a lot of trauma overlay too, right? So, you know, the people pleasing or perfectionism, it's always like, I can handle this, I can handle this. And then we don't think that we need to communicate or can communicate, but it comes out somehow, right? It's going to come out somehow, whether we blow up at a partner or um something's gotta give, right? So I think I think having these conversations is just really important.
Jenn Salib Huber:I think the asking for help is really, really hard. And I'm gonna speak from experience here. That, you know, asking my husband, who is by all accounts, you know, he's a great husband, he's a great dad, he like absolutely, you know, we share as a lot of things and in terms of running the household. But I for a long time was carrying much more of the mental load. And I, because I have that perfectionistic coping strategy, it felt like a failure to ask for help. Yeah. You know, and and it was crazy because I did have those breakdowns, those meltdowns. And, you know, I called them my Cinderella moments, where I was just like, I'm doing everything. And he's like, One, I mean, I don't want to excuse that I was doing all the things, but you know, he was like, Well, why didn't you just ask? And that felt like that made it a hundred times worse. But I when I and he wouldn't, he would not understand. He'd be like, Why are you getting mad at me for asking, you know? And it when I dug down into it, I realized it's because it felt like my failure, right? That I had to ask. Um, and so I think that the perfectionism that a lot of us have perfected, for lack of a better description, as a masking and a coping strategy make it really hard to see that some balls need to drop. Like we have to let some balls drop.
Jen Wolkin:Wow, that's so well said. Um, I think even just giving permission to people right now, right? Like this, please let this be a permission slip. Um, because we're so used to hiding our ADHD-related gaps, right? By over preparing, over polishing, and being more rigidly checking things and um creating this appearance of competence and control, even when it's driven, you know, driven by fear of error or time blindness, whatever it is, like that's hard to give up because perfectionism, um, you know, they're not always masking. Obviously, it can also be personality style and and and anxiety. Just want to say that. But in ADHD, perfectionism often, often, I see this often, functions as masks, um, basically to uh cover executive function struggles and then avoid rejection. And then when those masks no longer hold, we feel like we've failed. And I think we've unconsciously felt that, which is why all along, which is why we put up this perfectionistic or people-pleasing mask in the first place. Like we literally, maybe consciously or not, right? We literally thought we can't show who we are, right? Because that doesn't fit the stereotype and that doesn't fit how the world is set up. And so it's like when we finally neurochemical biologically cannot sustain it anymore. It's like it's both this like exhale in this like like hurts so good, you know, and um and also it's just we just feel so, so uncovered and vulnerable and naked.
Jenn Salib Huber:You know, one of my philosophies that uh listeners will be very familiar with is lower the bar. Um, it's like what one day I might get that as a tattoo. I've got it on some merch, but it might actually show up as a tattoo one day. That, you know, we need to lower the bar, we need to let some of those balls drop. And because all or nothing thinking shows up in the diet mentality, with or without ADHD, you know, this idea of how do I now make decisions about food, plan to eat in a way that is nourishing, but also doesn't take up all of my executive function. Cause when people are used to trying to follow a diet, that requires all your capacity. Right. So now the unmasking comes down, but you still want to eat in a way that is going to support your brain health, but you don't want to have it take up all of your capacity. We need to lower the bar and we need to be okay with some of the things that people might call shortcuts. You know, people laugh that I love canned fish so much, but like canned fish is the easiest way to eat fish, and fish is good for your brain.
Jen Wolkin:Like it's laughing because I'm the same. I'm like sardines and tuna and all the things. Do you love sardines? I have to convert the world with sardines and they're so easy.
Jenn Salib Huber:Okay. This is why we get along. So everybody knows I love sardines a little too much, and I'm trying to convert the world. I like buy stuff with sardines on them, but I love them. So there we go. Two people saying sardines for the win.
Jen Wolkin:I know. Literally, we need t-shirts. Like, you know, it must be an ADA, neurospicy. I like my sardines neurospicy, but but let's get into it in terms of calling like talking about the fact that we don't talk enough about, in my opinion, maybe because my world is neuropsychology and um yours is more eating, right? The eating and intuitive eating and um, you know, people don't realize how intertwined that is with ADHD. And I think people like are amazed, almost mind blown. And I've had people say, like, come and say to me, like, I'm so smart and I have X degrees, and I didn't even realize how strongly linked ADHD is with disordered eating and the binge restrict cycles, right? Because, you know, it's such a you know, baseline dopamine that runs low, um, leaves the brain understimulated, and then rewarding behavior like eating sugar or fat, it's it now creates these disproportionately strong spikes. And food becomes this really reliable on switch that fills in the gaps of like this uneven reward system. And when dope eating anything, right? Like eating, eating anything is stimulating and rewarding. Right? Yes, absolutely.
Jenn Salib Huber:And so, you know, people will often say, like, I don't even understand why I'm eating this, I don't even like it, I don't even enjoy it.
Jen Wolkin:Because it's a reliable on-switch, you're filling in the gap of an uneven reward system. And I'm sorry that I interrupted you. I just I get so passionate, right? So so classically me. But um, when dopamine is low and our executive functions are depleted, you know, what do we turn to? Food is the fastest route toward self-regulation sometimes. And I know you said all foods, and I agree. And again, this is your expertise, and I refer to you, though, large amounts of calorie-dense foods definitely provides stimulation and comfort, right? It cuts through boredom, overwhelmed, or emotional stress. I think in general, sugar, carbs, right? Those are going to be the things that light us up a little bit more, though, of course, eating in general. And then after a binge, what happens is I mean, you probably I mean, we are so in shame for using food to you know fill in for boredom and overwhelmed and executive dysfunction that we start to, you know, reset by restricting or tightly controlling our food intake.
Jenn Salib Huber:And that creates a pleasure deficit, which then starts the cycle again. You know, and the interesting thing, what I find interesting about, you know, food and ADHD and the reward cycles and things like that is looking at the research around um, you know, I guess food addiction for or, you know, substance abuse with food. And the really interesting part of that research is that it has not met the criteria to date for substance abuse disorder because there are some differences. And, you know, anything that we find pleasurable, yeah, any food that we find pleasurable can hijack that reward system. Yeah. And, you know, and that's why when people are dieting and restricting and they're not allowing themselves to have pleasurable foods, the sleeve of rice cakes or the box of crackers or anything becomes the target and becomes the reward. Which is why when we're talking about unconditional permission to eat and this concept of food neutrality, we really need to welcome all foods to the table so that we don't create these rewards, right? Um, and you know, this is, I mean, this is getting into a lot of overlap with, you know, eating disorders and disordered eating. But, you know, we all have to eat. And I think that when we welcome the pleasure of eating, when we plan to include pleasurable foods regularly, yes, then what the research tells us is that we need less of them to feel satisfied. Yeah.
Jen Wolkin:Right. And I mean, this is your forte, right? Because eating disorders, I will just say, is not my specialty, but there's also an executive functioning aspect too with food. Yeah, absolutely. That makes it right, like it's not just biological, like it's literally this exact eating becomes this executive functioning task. Yeah. Um that can feel overwhelming, right?
Jenn Salib Huber:When you're oh when you are tapped out, the idea of planning a meal might actually feel too hard. And so just sitting down and zoning out with a box of crackers is like the path of least resistance, right? And so, you know, with with what I see a lot of, yeah, you know, kind of bringing it back to this, you know, the ADHD and the perimenopause and people who only know how to follow food rules, which no longer feels accessible to them for all the reasons, is you know, how do we get back into thinking about how to eat? Yeah. Um, you know, so one of the things that I talk about and need to thrive during menopause is that, you know, we want to have some scaffolding, right? This idea of being able to lead with satisfaction. What do I want? What do I need? And then having the tools to know what do I need to add to my plate? Because if you have a craving for crackers, if you want that crunch and that salt and the Ritz crackers are gonna, you know. Really just hit all those notes. Saying no to that, that's not gonna be helpful. But adding to it, yeah. Some crunchy carrots, um, some nuts, like other things that you can help to build a balanced plate is one of the ways that we lower the bar, but that we still actually put nutrition in the conversation.
Jen Wolkin:I mean, that is why I think Eat to Thrive is the your book is so necessary because, you know, it does combine the science of um menopause, nutrition, and intuitive eating. And that is important because what we don't talk about enough also is introsphen. ADHDers, so I was actually gonna turn it back on you, and I would be like, can you tell me more about um, but we don't talk enough about the fact that ADHDers have a more difficult time sensing our body and our body cues, and that goes for like eating, that also goes for like when we have to go to the bathroom. And and then um, so you know, once we finally realize we're even hungry, then there's this binge kind of um, right? Because like you said, the path of least resistance, we're not we don't get hungry, we get starving because we're just realizing in our body that we need food, right? So, and then impaired response inhibition, so like impulsivity and impaired response inhibition is an executive dysfunction. And then that's worsened by the interoceptive, the poor interoceptive uh awareness. So we don't feel gradual hunger, right? We miss our or our early signals often, right? Which is why for my clients, so often the work is also getting in touch with the body because reg hunger doesn't register as you know, not hungry, or like it, it it does it doesn't register like not hungry, a little hungry. It goes from not hungry to like starving. And by the time the body like literally needs food, it's like where do we go? And the brain grabs whatever is fastest.
Jenn Salib Huber:We call that primal hunger. So in intuitive eating, we call it primal hunger. And when you experience primal hunger, yeah, your brain doesn't care that you planned to take lunch and reheat lunch. It is literally telling you we want like the fastest route to get food into our body. And so when you're experiencing primal hunger, it's very much like having been underwater for, you know, holding your breath underwater for a little too long. And then when you finally come up on the surface, you're like gasping for air. That's exactly the same thing. It's interesting that you brought up about attunement because that, you know, is the one of the foundations of intuitive eating. And I also have noticed that people with ADHD, you know, are really like, I have no idea if I'm hungry, I have no idea if I'm full, I have no idea. They're just like, I don't even know what you're talking about. So when I start trying to coach them to, okay, well, this is what we want to start to notice, they often have a really narrow definition of what hunger should feel like. Because the only time that they recognizably have had hunger is when their stomach is growling. When it's too late, like when it's too late, yeah. Following it and so what I get them to do is we have some, you know, exercises that we do together, and I'll start to say to them, like, when do you first notice that you're getting tired? When do you first notice that you need a break? When do you first notice that you're like looking for something else to do? Yeah. And it reliably coincides with two to three hours after a meal. Yeah. And so, you know, really kind of having some diversity in how we describe hunger and how we describe fullness. And, you know, ADHDers are often quick eaters. I definitely am.
Jen Wolkin:Yes.
Jenn Salib Huber:Um, I'm a card carrying club of that, like I eat faster than everyone else around me. I always have and I always will. But I've also learned that I do need to press pause and give my body 10 or 15 minutes. And but I can only do that if I have full permission to go back and have more if I'm still hungry, which is where the trust comes in. I can stop after a serving of something and wait to see if I'm still hungry. Yes. Um, but for people who are maybe only know the this is what I'm having and this is the only time I have to eat, they have a bit of scarcity around that. That feels like an impossible ask, right? So, really understanding, I think, like what is happening in your brain, what is happening in your body, and developing that interoceptive awareness. Yes. Um, it I mean, it's a great skill whether you have ADHD or not. Um, but especially if you're somebody who is really struggling with that, like I don't know how to eat anymore because it feels like everything is off. Yeah.
Jen Wolkin:I mean, I love that we're talking about this because the interoceptive part is not something that comes up comes up often. And, you know, I think then what happens is that then, you know, we have this primal hunger, like you've said. And but then impulsivity removes if we're gonna practice pausing, impulsivity is going to remove the pause. And then it just becomes this, you know, spiral of you know, skipping, binging, overcorrecting. So, like you said, a lot of the work I do with my clients is learning to pause and learning what your body feels like and um learning, or I forgot how you worded it, but that's so well said about the idea that hunger can feel certain ways. Is that what you were saying?
Jenn Salib Huber:Like hunger is it doesn't always have to be a growling stomach. Like I often tell people if I get to the point that my stomach is growling, yeah, I have about 20 minutes before I'm gonna knock down old ladies and small children to get to food. Yeah. And that is not a place that I want to be making decisions about.
Jen Wolkin:Exactly. So noticing, exactly, exactly. So I guess the idea is that just more noticing of your own, becoming more aware of your patterns and your rights, your interceptive feelings and how that play out, you know, how that plays out with food and just being aware of it with non-judgmental, non-judgmental awareness, right? I think that's the key. That's the master tool is compassion. Without compassion, none of this works.
Jenn Salib Huber:Yeah. Observing without judgment. You know, that's kind of the language we use in my community is observing your behaviors, your thoughts, your feelings around food and how you eat and why you eat and why something isn't working, and just having that curiosity of if it isn't working, why? And what can I try on without committing to doing it for the rest of my life? Because, you know, my brain is gonna go, that's boring, if I have to, if I think I have to do this forever. I think that's really at the core of behavior, sustainable behavior change is not being in the all or nothing state of I have to do this forever, this one way. There's only one way to do it. You know, one last thing about food, because I think a lot of people have um, and I and I've given this tip to a lot of people with ADHD, and they tell me that it makes such a huge difference for them. And that is that if you really struggle with midday fatigue, uh, you know, ennui, boringness, your brain doesn't want to like work in the afternoon. My favorite lunch, and I probably have this like five days a week, is like a bento box style lunch where I have different tastes, textures, you know, foods. And I always kind of when I'm building my little bento box lunch, and I work from home. So, like to be clear, this is like I'm eating this at home, but you can take this to work too. Is what do I want? Do I want something salty, crunchy, soft, smooth, sweet? So that I'm really leaning into the pleasure of eating, but I'm also providing my brain and my body a variety that I can choose from. So it feels like this treat to have this lunch where I have all these different tastes and textures. Not only are those foods, you know, nourishing and like giving my body energy, but they stimulate my brain, you know, they keep my brain awake. Yeah.
Jen Wolkin:I love that. And it's so in line with the way I would um go about working with someone or even myself, um, right? Because I think what we need is like not more willpower, but we can we can create pathways to just better defaults. Like I don't want to tell anyone that they just have to like go plan. How because right, but that's like ridiculous. However, we can learn, like you said, um, to create this system for ourselves where instead of maybe three rigid plan uh uh meal plans where which sometimes collapse under collapses under time blindness anyway, and what we just talked about with our introsceptive experience, right? I think even just small grazing stations, I think that's also what you were, I mean, maybe I'm not saying what you were saying, but that as well, like something with a something small grazing stations, like small, frequent, like pre-portioned foods that can be eaten without prep. And of course, the more macronutrient and dense, you know, I I think humbly the the better, because protein actually helps our executive function. So yeah, I I think that's I think that's really brilliant. And I also often use with my clients the wording try on, right? Like try on. Um you're not married to it, right? Why don't you just low stakes, low key, try on this X, Y, and Z. And I think that just releases automatically so much of the pressure. You're just even for my, yeah, even for my own self, I'll say that. Like, you're just trying this on. And um, that softens it. I love it.
Jenn Salib Huber:I can't thank you enough for this conversation. You know, I feel like obviously we have sardines in common now, so we'll probably have to have another conversation just about that. But um, you know, I think that a lot of people are going to see themselves in our in what we've been talking about. Um, what would you say to somebody who might be hearing for the first time and getting that little inkling of like, um, that sounds a lot like me.
Jen Wolkin:What would you suggest to that person? I would say first, okay, you know, like name it, right? Naming it is often um important because it takes the power away from it, ironically. So, like, okay, this is what might be going on. And once you name it, you know, reach out to someone and then also make sure that you buff yourself up with compassion. And instead of thinking this is a personal failure, reframing this is this is a by this is a real biological thing that is going on. This doesn't mean I'm wrong. This doesn't mean I'm broken. This doesn't mean my brain is broken or just broke after all these years. No, this is real biology. This is our wiring. And I think just reframing that um can reduce some of the internalized shame. And uh then you can go on to like work with someone in terms of strategies. But I feel like the first thing is naming it. Um, you know, reach out to a clinician if you want, if you want a diagnosis. And that's a whole nother topic, right? Um, do we want diagnosis? Was it serve us? Does it serve us? And, you know, et cetera, et cetera. We want that validation. We could do a whole nother podcast on that. But what I would say is again, you know, compassion is the master tool. Name it compassion, and then reframe what's going on as not a failure, but biology and just a time in a woman's life. And hopefully the shame decreases a little bit. And the irony though is that you know, people are always saying compassion, compassion, compassion. You always talk about compassion, Jen. And I'm like, yeah, I do. Without it, there's literally nothing. Because without compassion, our brains feel like they need safety. Our brains feel like they're afraid. And when our brains are afraid, our frontal lobe systems are just more overloaded. And that's the very area where our executive functions, like some of them, it's frontostriatal, but we need our frontal prefrontal cortex, especially for executive functions. And every time we're not compassionate, we are just signaling to the amygdala, there's a threat, there's a threat, which then talks to the prefrontal cortex to try, you know, to try and figure it all out. And it's science.
Jenn Salib Huber:So it's so science, yeah.
Jen Wolkin:So compassion actually isn't just this like cop out kind of thing. It is literally important to help yourself feel better and to even just offload some of the right, not just shame, but then offload the the uh impact on your frontal lobes. I love it.
Jenn Salib Huber:So I always ask my guests, and I think I might know your answer now, but what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife?
Jen Wolkin:Yeah, I mean I should have asked this like just before. I don't think it's the missing ingredient in midlife. I think this ingredient is missing in the trajectory of our lives. And that is what I just said. Like unconditional compassion and radical acceptance that, okay, we might not be where we want to exactly, and we might be grieving where we thought we'd be, we'd we would have been, and we might feel grief over the fact that no one diagnosed us or saw our struggles or that we had to mask and we had to compensate for so long. Um and we get to have all the feels, and if we don't radically just accept it for what it is, we are going to have that much more suffering. And we deserve and we are worthy of even the most minuscule amount less of suffering. And so to me, it's I would say radical acceptance and compassion.
Jenn Salib Huber:I love it. Thank you so, so much for this conversation. Um, I know that it's going to be really helpful to anybody who might identify as having perimenopause or even just know someone with perimenopause who's struggling. I think there's lots of information that they can get from this to share with someone that they love. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you?
Jen Wolkin:Thank you. I feel like I just ranted and there's so much more to say. And of course I'm feeling that way. So I'm just gonna notice it. And um, you can find me at my uh my Instagram at Dr. Jen Wolken or ADHD with Dr. Jen. And uh I'm working on where you can find me after there. Perfect at some point in 2026. And when is your book coming out, by the way?
Jenn Salib Huber:Uh my book is coming out October 21st. So um this episode is coming out in October, because October has this overlap of being menopause awareness month and ADHD awareness month. Um, so this is coming out, I think, just two weeks before my book comes out. So anybody who still wants to pre-order can do that and they can find the link in the show notes.
Jen Wolkin:Yes, please pre-order the book. I mean, I am so heartened to know how many people it's going to help. So thank you. Thank you.
Jenn Salib Huber:Thank you. And uh, we'll put all the links for your stuff in the show notes as well. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Midlife Feast. If you're ready to take the next step towards thriving in midlife, head to menopausenutritionist.ca to learn more about my one-to-one and group coaching programs, free resources, and where to get your copy of Eat to Thrive during menopause. And if you've loved today's conversation and found it helpful, please share it with a friend who needs to hear this and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps so many more people just like you find their way to food freedom and midlife confidence. Until next time, remember midlife is not the end of the story, it's the feast. Let's savor it together.
