Perimenopause & puberty: simple ways to support you and your daughter’s hormones.

Two hormone-ravaged brains under one roof? No one warned us about this!

Perimenopause is hard enough on its own - now level it up by adding in a teenage daughter going through puberty, and suddenly, your house feels like a hormonal war zone. Mood swings, tears, interrupted sleep, emotional outbursts over things that make no sense… sound familiar?

The good news? The same things that support your perimenopausal hormones can also support hers. And in this episode, I’m breaking down exactly how to make that happen.

Key Takeaways:

• How to reduce the chaos in your house by supporting both your hormones and your daughter’s, without crazy diets, strict rules, or meal-time battles.
• The #1 food mistake that makes perimenopausal symptoms (and puberty mood swings) worse, and what to do instead to keep blood sugar and hormones stable.
• The truth about the “vegan trap” in puberty and perimenopause - why iron and calcium matter more than you think, and how to make sure you’re both getting enough.

Sneak Peek:

“Two hormone-ravaged brains in the one house, but only one of you gets the luxury of extra sleep. And spoiler… it’s not you.”

If you’re feeling exhausted from riding this hormonal rollercoaster alongside your daughter, this episode is for you. You’ll walk away with simple, practical steps to support both of you - without overcomplicating meals, stressing over food, or adding another thing to your already full plate.

Links & Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

• PerimenoGO – My step-by-step food and lifestyle-based program to guide you to thrive in perimenopause (while still making meals that work for your whole family).
• Follow me on Instagram for more perimenopause insights and tips: @theperimenopausenaturopath
• Episode 59: The Perimenopause Diet
• Episode 48: Phytoestrogens
• Episode 56:

Find out more about Sarah, her services and the Freebies mentioned in this episode at https://www.ThePerimenopauseNaturopath.com.au

• The Perimenopause Decoder is the ultimate guide to understanding if perimenopause hormone fluctuations are behind your changing mood, metabolism and energy after 40, what phase of perimenopause you're in, and how much longer you may be on this roller coaster for.
• For more, follow on Instagram at @theperimenopausenaturopath.

WORK WITH SARAH THE PERIMENOPAUSE NATUROPATH:

• PerimenoGO (because who wants to pause anyway?!) A self-guided program to help you reverse weight gain, boost energy, and reclaim your mood — without extreme diets or cutting carbs. Perfect for women who want a realistic plan that fits around kids, work, and actual life.
• The Chaos to Calm Method: A 1:1 personalised program for women who want a more personalised plan and support — especially if you’ve got 10kg+ to lose, other health issues, or feel like your body’s just stuck. Includes comprehensive blood testing and analysis, Metabolic Balance ...

Transcript

Wouldn't it be awesome if the things that you did to help yourself in perimenopause could also help your teenage daughter navigate puberty with fewer mood swings, better periods, and more energy? I know perimenopause can feel like a chaotic mess, feel like a hot mess. But if you have a teenage daughter going through puberty at the same time, it can feel like an emotional war zone in your house.

Don't ask me how, I know. The good news though, and I am here to tell you today, is that the same things that support your hormone health can also support hers. How cool is that? Does that feel good? What a sweet relief to end the battlefield that your home has become. And also you'll wanna stay tuned until the end, because I'm gonna share the biggest mistake I see women making when it comes to their food and hormones, so you can avoid it and also help your daughter to do the same and avoid the same problem.

If we haven't met, Hello, I'm Sarah, the Perimenopause Naturopath, and I've helped hundreds of women over 40 navigate perimenopause with confidence, feel great in their bodies and reclaim their mood and energy. So if you are feeling like you're changing hormones or hijacking your mood, energy, and weight.

And you want to change that in a holistic way, then this is the place for you. Because each episode I share what's happening in your body, why you're feeling the way you are, and how you can change that with actionable advice to help you move from chaos to calm and feel more comfortable in your body. Welcome friend to episode number 84 of Chaos to Calm.

So exciting. So close to a hundred. And I still feel like I'm not running out of things to talk about. I was worried when I first started the podcast. That would be the case. So today we're talking about how to support your hormones in perimenopause and your daughters in puberty because, it's a new, it's a modern thing, isn't it? And like I knew perimenopause had the potential to be rough when when I was thinking about it. Although it did start earlier than I thought it was going to. Maybe I wasn't quite as prepared for it as I would've otherwise, but what I wasn't prepared for, and I know a lot of you are not as well, is that chaos of going through perimenopause while your teenager, and especially your teenage daughter is going through puberty, their own hormonal rollercoaster.

Like at one point our house, it was just a war zone. There was mood swings, tears, tantrums, broken sleep. All sorts of random emotional outbursts over things that didn't really make sense on reflection. And it wasn't just me, it wasn't just my dean either. One day she was in tears because ugh, nothing to wear.

And the next I'd be all emotional because none of my clothes fit anymore. So I didn't have anything to wear and I felt frustrated and annoyed because nothing was working to help me lose that weight that had come up. And while I understood academically what was happening in our bodies and we tried to eat well, just our general day-to-day diet is at.

Maybe as you'd imagine, maybe not, but is good. But you know, things like getting enough sleep or looking after ourselves particularly I had teens, I also had toddler. So that is tricky. There's a very high demand we homeschool all of those things, so there's a lot of demand and getting enough sleep, looking after myself.

In the thick of those things, it can be hard to maintain. I know that a lot of you struggle with the same, but it's also nearly impossible to take an objective view of yourself and what's going on. But when I did step back, I could see clearly, like as I mentioned, our habits had slipped. What we were eating, how much sleep I was getting, and my teens were getting the stressors in our life how we were handling them.

It wasn't ideal. It wasn't working for our changing hormones. And like I said, this is a modern thing. Our mothers and grandmothers, they were not dealing with this. They had kids earlier, so by the time they hit perimenopause, their children were nearly adults. They'd gone through puberty.

But now more of us are having kids later, which means a modern day struggle, perimenopause and puberty. Under the one roof and the result is chaos. You've got two hormone ravage brains in the one house, but only one of you gets the luxury of extra sleep and minimal responsibility. And spoiler. It's not you.

I probably did not need to tell you that was obvious, but you know, the good news is that what works for your hormones in this phase of life in perimenopause, on this rollercoaster ride also can be really helpful for her. So today I am gonna walk you through the steps the things you can do to support both your hormones and hers.

And I'm really focused here on not making it a no crazy diets, no strict rules or complicated meal plans, because that's really important that we don't put a dysfunctional relationship with food onto our daughters.

All right, let's get into the practical things that you can do to support both of you so your house can feel a little less like a hormonal war zone and much more peaceful. We've got five key areas to focus on that I'm gonna talk about today, but don't worry. It's not overwhelming and I think some of these things I've talked about before, but I just wanna highlight to them.

To you that if you're doing them, they'll be really helpful for you and your daughter. So first of all, we wanna think about, a hormone balancing plate. So thinking about what is going on our plate each and every day, is really important of course. And the way that we feed ourselves and, our daughters, but the way that we feed ourselves, influences or shapes our daughter's relationship with Food for Life. So you probably grew up with fad diets, calorie counting. We had as a kid, I remember lots of talk about good versus bad. That still continues, food doesn't have a moral value. It doesn't make you a good or bad person.

If you eat fast food or processed food or eat chocolate, that doesn't make you a bad person. Not at all. But we still do continue to label food as good or bad or healthy or not. We put a lot of meaning into foods that it's not, and there's food. Even the clean, like labeling something as clean versus not clean.

There's a lot of subconscious messaging around food. When we use words like that, and we've all grown up with that. We now have the opportunity to change that for our daughters and, make it different for them and not put our stuff onto them. But it does take conscious thought and a lot of practice as well.

I think I touched on it in the last podcast, maybe the one before that, episode as well about thinking about or using age appropriate language with our kids to describe the food or why we are choosing the foods that we are. You can talk about things like sugar and say that for me, if I eat too much sugar, I feel jittery or razed, or I get a bit of a headache or I crash later.

And so I might say to my kids, no, I don't really want that today because I don't wanna feel that way later. But other times I'm like, sure, I'll have a lolly. Oh, some chocolate. No problem. We're talking about food and the things that those foods can do for us and how they support us. I always think if we understand why someone wants us to do something or why we need to do something, it makes it so much easier to stick with it.

And food is no different at all. In fact, more I think you really need to understand why you're doing something, what the benefit is to be able to continue to do it. So our plate, that was a really long introduction to it, our hormone balancing plate at every meal. And I have talked about this before in the episode that I did on four Foods that are always on my plate.

The blog version is called The Perimenopause Diet, so I'll link to that in the show notes. But at each meal you wanna include some protein. Because it's essential for, it's like the building blocks for every cell in your body, but it's essential for your metabolism, your muscle, your mood, your brain function to keep you from getting hungry, having cravings, all those things.

Healthy fats to support your hormone production, your brain health, many other things. Phytoestrogens, I have a love affair with them. I talk about them a lot. Did a whole episode on phytoestrogens, which I'll also link to in the show notes. They're those natural plant compounds that really help balance our estrogen and help stop it from going too high or too low.

Fiber. So we got protein, fats, phytoestrogens, and fiber. Most of the F sounds. We need to rework protein so it fits into that sound anyway. Fiber, which is really vegetables is what I'm talking about here. Non-starchy veg, but also starchy veg. Do have room on your plate for sure, especially for teens. They really help feed our gut microbiome.

And support our digestion. They help us eliminate excess hormones or eliminate our hormones in a healthy way so that we don't end up with an excess of, say, estrogen. And they help stabilize our blood sugar in the same way that protein does as well. I did do a podcast episode on the estrogen rollercoaster in recent times, and sorry, I don't remember exactly which number it is, but again, I'll link that to the show notes there as well because we talked about how fiber and, our gut is really important for detoxifying and eliminating excess hormones or our hormones so we don't have an excess. When we have excess estrogen, that's when we get lots of those PMS, heavy periods, rage, irritation, impatience, all those sorts of things.

Alright, so that's what you want on your plate at every meal. Now let's talk about tip number two, which is protein. I wanted to go a bit more in depth into it. I know, it's talked about a lot and we all sort of know, oh, I need protein, but, are we knowing how to look for it or what it is or how much maybe not.

And do we know what it does for us? Maybe not. So I always, protein is non-negotiable. It, you need to have it at every meal. If you have snacks, you need to have protein in that. And so it's really non-negotiable for your health overall, but particularly for balanced hormones, stable moods, and good consistent energy.

Yeah, and like when our kids have a meltdown or when we have a meltdown or we have a tantrum, or we are really just angry and irritated and impatient a lot of the time, that can be around your blood sugar levels and being hungry and just not having the capacity to deal with life our busy life.

Everyone's busy. Our modern lifestyles are busy. We don't have the capacity for it because we are not having a consistent flow of energy. So protein is really important for us. And our teens, not getting enough protein can lead to them being hungry. Tantrum, meltdown, irritation, snapping or being really angry with you, poor focus so it's important for them, for the school.

They've got a lot when they're going through puberty, they're in those years at school of their learning that it's quite important that they can stay focused and concentrate and remember things. And mood swings, like I said, but fatigue as well. So like the energy and the motivation to do the things that they need to do.

I mean puberty the same in perimenopause. You actually do need a whole bunch more sleep and rest. So it is true, they feel naturally tired. It's kind of, preservation technique, I suppose, by their body to, so that it can their brain is being all fully rewired and there's a whole lot of other stuff going on.

Their body just needs more rest or downtime. And so while you might think that they're being lazy. They're doing what their body needs, which is great. We should not ignore what our body wants from us. But I guess it's a fine balance between them. Yeah.

Not doing anything and lolling around for like a cat 20 hours outta 24, and balancing what's expected of them in life and what they need to do as well. So for us women in perimenopause, that's not us, me anymore. Even in menopause though, it's very important because low protein intake can lead to muscle loss.

We already lose muscle mass quicker in perimenopause or particularly late, like late perimenopause and in menopause. So we do need to eat protein to make sure our body has what it needs to build or maintain that muscle mass and, at cravings and, weight gain around tummy as well as the same things for us.

We can get hungry. We can not find it really difficult to focus. We can have those mood swings and we can feel tired. The only difference is we'll probably push through it and just ignore our body. And then snap at everyone and then feel really bad about it and have to apologize later. So we can avoid that need for apologizing and annoyed a avoid feeling bad about ourselves and guilty or judging ourselves by having a palm size portion of protein at every meal.

So that's not your fingers, but your palm itself, including the thickness. That's kind of what you're aiming for in your protein. Sometimes, depending on what you're doing, you might need a bit more. Rarely I would say that someone would need less. So you're looking at that protein rich food is things like those animal products.

Eggs, cheese, yogurt, other dairy if you have it. Tofu, tempe, lentils, beans, fish or seafood meats, poultry. I don't think I've missed anything out. Mushrooms you might find, some sprouts can be protein foods for you there. So some of you might be finding it hard to digest meat or other animal proteins.

As you've gotten through perimenopause, I did a whole episode on that, on why you don't tolerate me anymore. So again, I'll link that in the show notes if you wanna listen to why that's happening and what to do about it. We might notice the same in your teens, and I'm gonna talk a bit more about teens that start avoiding meat.

But just know that ideally, especially in puberty and perimenopause, we do best on an omnivore diet, so that's a mix of animal products and or animal proteins and vegetarian proteins as well. Now, if digestion is an issue, maybe some collagen powder, plain unflavored, unsweetened or some bone broth added to your meals or your smoothies, things like that, that's a really gentle way to add protein.

And the great thing about collagen or what I love about it is that it's hydrolyzed protein, so it's. Already split down into the amino acids. Your body just absorbs it and uses it. It doesn't have to do anything to it. Whey proteins, I don't like to use them. They're very irritating to the gut and the body.

Be very hard to for many people to cope with. Also the vegan proteins, those pea proteins and rice proteins can be very hard to digest. You really need robust digestion, and if they're coming in hot or coming in cold in a smoothie. And that is not supporting doing that. All right, so we will talk a bit about gut health because that's my third tip, and gut health is really important.

It's key for both of you. Because your gut is it's really from our mouth to our anus, but when I say gut, I'm talking about your stomach, your small intestine, your large intestine, and it's more than just breaking down food and getting stuff out of it, putting it into the bloodstream.

It's actually our body's main way of eliminating our hormones when we're done with them. And so if your digestion, your gut function is sluggish, you can tell that by maybe you're constipated, maybe you have reflux, maybe you don't feel hungry in the morning, or you don't, you feel full really quickly.

There's lots of signs when your digestion and gut function is sluggish. But when that happens, estrogen doesn't get properly eliminated. Estrogen gets packaged up by your liver, sent to your bowels, your gut for elimination. If it sits there too long, like if your D gut function is slow, then it gets reabsorbed, it gets broke.

The bond between what it's bound to gets broken, it gets reabsorbed back into your bloodstream, and that elevates your estrogen or creates an estrogen excess, which is again, I talked about that in a recent episode. That is where you get all of those symptoms like bloating, PMS, even acne, mood swings, and breast tenderness, all that sort of stuff as well.

So some basic ways to support your gut health. If you have significant gut issues, I'd just suggest working with a practitioner, it's so much easier and more efficient and quicker, because otherwise what you'll find yourself doing is taking all these foods out and ending up on a very narrow range of foods.

A lot of clients come to me, in the Chaos to Calm Method, my one-to-one program that with the personalized nutrition, because they've got chronic gut issues because they've done something like FODMAPs and then they're stuck on it forever. And it was never designed for you to stick on that forever because it actually ends up starving your microbiome.

So it works against your gut health. Yeah, so they have a really narrow range of foods which is sad like it makes it difficult to eat out or enjoy life and, do all those things. So supporting your gut health. You wanna eat fiber rich foods at every meal. So think this is your veggies.

Like I was saying before, we want lots of veggies on our plate. An easy way to do that to, support your gut health is to eat fibrous foods. Don't be a baby. Eat your vegetables. I don't care if you like them or not, you just need to eat them. And there's lots of ways to make them yummy. Don't overcook them to start with.

And also use your fats and oils, salt, pepper, spices, herbs, make them tasty. Veggies don't have to be dull at all. Veggies are often rich in prebiotics, which helps support and optimize your environment in your gut for your microbiome. Then we have probiotic rich foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefi, yogurt, all these things with live cultures in them.

So make sure you're buying them from the fridge section so they're actually alive, not from the shelf, anything shelf stable has been heat treated. There's no live bacteria in that, so choose them from the fridge. Small amounts at first. Because otherwise you can blow your guts apart. And it'd be very uncomfortable for you and everyone around you.

Yeah, those probiotic rich foods include some of those every day.

And you wanna stay hydrated too. So we also wanna eat our fats, like I was talking about, fats including them on your plate. And I again, I've done a whole episode on that. I'll link to that in the show notes too, with some more direction on, you know what I'm talking about. But fat, when you eat fats and oils, it stimulates bile release in your intestines, and bile is nature's laxative.

So it helps keep your bowels moving and keeps your gut healthy in that way. And if you're not tolerating fats and oils in the same way that you're not toler, you may not be tolerating me, then that blog's gonna be, or podcast episode's gonna be really helpful for you to understand what you need to do about that.

And of course, in managing our stress when we're got too much stress or busyness, our cortisol levels rise and that disrupts your gut function and your hormone balance as well as any of those other things I've mentioned. Okay, so tip number four, I wanna talk about the vegan trap. Perhaps vegetarian included in that too, but this is why this flows on from not tolerating meat or feeling like your digestion's got not going well. Lots of teenage girls go vegetarian or vegan and lots of perimenopausal women go vegetarian or vegan. But without proper planning, you are gonna end up low in iron and calcium and that's gonna worsen your periods, make them heavier.

Is that ironically as our ferritin, as our iron stores decrease, we have heavier periods, we lose more iron. So we get stuck in that vicious cycle there of needing more iron, but losing more iron. So you're gonna feel tired, have poor concentration, your mood, your motivation, everything's going to plummet there.

While you might initially feel better. Being vegan or vegetarian, it's often about because you've bought more vegetables and things into your diet and removed a lot of the processed stuff. Although these days there are many processed vegan and vegetarian foods available in the store. What I wanna say, like I said before, I do strongly feel that we, our children and us do best on an omnivore diet.

So some animal and vegetarian proteins as well. We do need vegetables. I think, I know there's a trend for carnivore. Hopefully that tells you how I feel about that. But anyway, don't come at me. This is research based and backed, and this is what most women do best with and what I see my clients do best with.

Plus, it's also a nice way to live. You get to enjoy eating out. Being out and a wide variety of different foods. So what I wanna say is that if we need to check in and see why are they wanting to go vegetarian or vegan? Why are you doing that? Is it because you feel like you're not tolerating meat anymore?

Then I really want you to listen to that podcast episode and understand what's happening and what you can do about it. Is it moral ethics? I totally understand that. I get that I was vegetarian for a period of time myself. It was also correlated with my worst health of my life. There's a reason that vegans and vegetarians need to supplement with iron and B12 and things like that because our bodies don't make those and you can't easily get them enough.

In a vegetarian or vegan diet, especially not a teen. What I wanted to say is there is there's a wide variety of iron sauces and calcium sauces there as well. And certainly I agree, cow's milk is not necessarily the best place to get your calcium from. But there's lots of other things, sardines, tahini, almonds, dark leafy greens for your calcium, eggs are great for iron as well, but also the easiest for most bodies is the animal proteins to get your iron there as well.

So yeah, if you are teen or you are having heavy periods and you're also feeling really tired and having trouble concentrating in that, you really need to have your iron levels checked. And not just hemoglobin, but your full iron studies ferritin there too. All right, so let's talk about tip number five.

The timing of what you're eating is matters. It's not just what you eat, but how and when you eat as well. I see a lot of skipping meals in the interest of intermittent fasting. Also done a podcast episode on that, so I'll link that below too. Skipping meals just wreaks havoc on your hormones, especially in your forties in perimenopause.

But whether you're 15 or 45, it doesn't matter. Both puberty and perimenopause really require consistent fuel to keep your blood sugar stable and your hormones balanced. So my suggestion is aiming for three solid meals a day, avoiding snacking if you can, because that reduces your gut and digestive function.

It actually, messes with your microbiome, doesn't help it be the best that it can be. Just only snacking if you really need if you're actually truly hungry and not just bored or emotionally eating or getting fomo. So if you're you really are hungry, then sure have a snack.

Make sure that it's always balanced with protein, fat and some you can then have don't just eat crackers as a snack. You just eat lollies or chocolate bars, that's not a snack. We wanna have some protein and fat before we have those things. Yeah. And I always say breakfast, it really is important for us.

It sets us up for the day. It doesn't have to be huge, it can just be a small thing. But use overnight oats or yogurt pots and things like that for your teens if they wanna eat on the run, rather than reaching for a Muley bar or a protein bar, which they're so health washed and they're still full of crap and sugar.

Okay. That's the end. We've made it. So yeah, I'd encourage you if you want more guidance more how do I put this into play every day? And then PerimenoGO is my sort of entry level program for you, lower cost. You still get access to me. And it's sort of tailored for women in perimenopause and menopause.

And I'll teach you how to eat for to balance your, not balance your hormones. 'cause that's not what we're chasing in perimenopause. But I'll teach you how to eat without making it too complicated and it's fine for your whole family to eat the same way you are. Yeah, if you want a code, a sneaky code to get a discount of the full price, then send me a message on Instagram @theperimenopausenaturopath and I'll hook you up with that.

Otherwise, if you want something more personalized. You know that we do blood tests and we look deeper into what's going on for you and a food plan that is in response to your blood tests and your health history. Then the Chaos to Calm Method program that I run is for you. That's we work together over a longer period of time and more deeply understand what's happening there for you.

Yeah, otherwise I'll pop all of those other episodes that I've mentioned today into the show notes for you. I hope you found it helpful. Please do make sure you're following the podcast. Leave a review and share it with another mum who might be navigating perimenopause and puberty at the same time.

So thank you so much for joining me today. Until next time, keep transforming your perimenopause from chaos to calm.