It’s never too late.

Is this just how it’s going to be now?

If you’ve started wondering whether you’ve missed your chance to feel good again - this one’s for you.

Because no, you’re not too old. You’re not past it. And you haven’t left it too late.

Key takeaways from this episode:

• Why all your effort (fasting, lifting, tracking protein) might not be working - and what to do instead
• The real reason your symptoms have built up over time (hint: your body’s not broken, it’s just not being supported the right way)
• What it means to stand at a “fork in the road” in perimenopause - and how to choose a path that supports your health for decades to come

This episode will help you shift the way you see your body and this stage of life, and show you why now is actually the perfect time to make a change (even if you’ve tried everything before).

Sneak peek:

“Perimenopause is a fork in the road - literally and figuratively. What you do now? It matters. Not in a pressure-y, perfect way - but in a hopeful, you’ve got more control than you think way.”

If you’ve been doing everything you were told to do and still feel flat, foggy, tired and like nothing’s working - press play on this one.

It’s not too late. It’s just time for a new approach that works with your changing body.

Listen now to hear what your body’s really asking for - and how to respond in a way that actually works.

Links & resources mentioned in the episode:

• Book a free Clarity Call
• Learn more about Metabolic Balance
• Follow Sarah on Instagram
• Episode 46: Why ‘normal’ isn’t good enough for your health anymore.

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

Have you been thinking: maybe this is just how I'm gonna feel from now on. You're exhausted, you sleep's patchy at best, but yet eating well trying to look after yourself, staying active, doing your best to hold it all together and keep all those balls in the air, but stop making a difference.

You're still feeling rubbish and each time that you try something new, it feels like you're running uphill in stilettos. If that's you, you are in the right place because today I'm gonna give you a little pep talk. I'm talking about why it's not too late to feel better in perimenopause and beyond, so wherever whatever, wherever you are at, whatever phase you're at, please stay with me.

Stay tuned into the end because I'm gonna share with you some information that's really gonna help shift your mindset. And that's helped lots of my clients take action without guilt or overwhelm and, or feeling defeated and giving up. What's the point? 

Welcome to episode number 87 of Chaos to Calm. Is it Too Late to Start Feeling Better? I'm Sarah the Perimenopause Naturopath, and I've helped hundreds of women over 40 navigate perimenopause with confidence so they can 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, well this is the place for you, my friend, because each episode I share with you my views on what's happening in your body, why you're feeling the way that 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.

Let's set the scene for today's episode. I know you've been trying to do all the right things. If you're like the women that I talk to each and every day, you might have been fasting for 16 hours, getting your 10,000 steps in a day, lifting heavy weights, hitting your protein target, staying hydrated, taking the supplements, cutting the sugar, and you're doing all of that on top of maybe paid work.

Raising kids, playing family, Uber driver, keeping the house running, doing the food shop meal, prepping, cooking from scratch. It's a lot. I'm talking with my friends this morning about everything that we do and why we're always feeling tight. One of my friends gave me a book that she'd got from the op shop called Grumpy Old Woman, and she said when she read it, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry or a bit of both because it was quite funny and very relatable.

But relatable because someone was calling out or acknowledging all the mental and physical labor that we do and kind of highlighting that no wonder we're grumpy. It seems like a pretty reasonable response to what's going on in our life and what we're expected to do, which is a lot. And I, when I'm speaking with women and they're doing all of these things, they're making so much effort.

I think it's a common misconception that I'm working with people that don't know how to look after themselves or aren't interested in looking after themselves and need me to tell them how to do it, because most of the women that I talk to and work with actually really conscientious about trying to look after themselves and do all of those right things.

But even with all that effort, things aren't changing or shifting. Their weight, your mood, your sleep, it's all staying the same, which is in the bin, and then you get that little voice of doubt. Yeah. Maybe I've missed my window. Maybe it's too late. Maybe this is just what getting older feels like.

And of course I'm older because I'm in perimenopausal menopause. But I want you to press boards on that thought for a moment, because really it's just not true at all.

So really what's going on is that you are not broken, you're not old, you haven't missed your chance. It's not too late. Because perimenopause isn't just about your hormones changing and your hormones are not like an island in the stream isolated from all the rest of your body.

Perimenopause and menopause is a full body shift, a full body transformation and change. So you're not just dealing with irregular cycles and a period that's changing. You're navigating increased inflammation, joint pain, stiffness, hot flushes, sweats, changing blood glucose management, insulin resistance, gut and brain changes so musculoskeletal systems changing.

Our gut, our brain, our nervous system is changing. It's becoming more reactive to stress. How we sleep is changing, and that impacts our capacity to recover, to deal with stress, to do all the things that we used to do, pretty much okay. And that's why those old strategies, the things you used to do to look after yourself, like cutting calories or cutting out wine and a bit and sweets and things like that, doing a bit more at the gym.

They don't work anymore. They don't make any change or not significant change in your body. And so what used to help you feel better in your thirties might now be making things a whole bunch worse. And it's important to know. It's not you. You're not lazy, you're not doing it wrong. It's not a lack of willpower or discipline or any of those things.

You've just never been shown how to support this version of your body. And I would even argue that we've never been shown how to support any version of our female body because everything that's tested or researched or done is done on men, and we are not little men. We, we are very, very different.

So yeah, I would say those things like you, if you've got a husband or partner and he wants to lose weight, he can go to the gym a bit more or cut calories and bang, there's some kilos gone. He's back down and comfortable in his pants again. Just happened to my husband the other week, he'd had an office job and he gained a little bit of weight and change and had to move up a size in his work shorts.

Next minute he's back on the tools and within a week, those bigger size shorts are too big for him. He didn't even really cut his food. He just moved his body more, and it works for him. So yes, it might work for them, but it doesn't work for us. So I don't think we've ever been shown how to support our bodies.

 What I want you to know about perimenopause is that it is a fork in the road, literally and figuratively. And so your body is really responsive to how you eat, sleep, move, manage stress. So it's the time when we get to switch genes on or off in our body.

And this is called epigenetics. I mean, you don't need to know what that means or deeply into it, but just know this, that what you do now can influence your metabolism, your mood, and your health for the next 40 to 50 years, for the rest of your life. So you're standing at a fork in the road and what you do now, it matters not in a pressury perfect way.

Oh gosh, I didn't do it at that time, so I've missed the boat, or I mucked it up this day and yeah, and so that's it. Too bad. So sad. I've missed my opportunity. Not at all. I don't want you to think of it like that at all, but what I want you to know is that I want it to be a hopeful, like you've got more control and more opportunity than you think kind of way.

So if you're thinking, eh, I think I already missed that fork in the road, you haven't, even if you're already in menopause, maybe the fork has passed, but it's not too late because you're never too old. It's never too late. Even in your fifties or sixties, your body is still gonna respond to the support and nourishment.

It's going to respond to you refining what you eat, drink, and do to provide it, the nutrients and the building blocks that it needs for your best hormonal health to help support your nervous system, your brain health, your gut health, your musculoskeletal system. It's just, it's never too late. If we think about my client, Kate, so she came to me at 52.

She was already in menopause. She was tired, gaining weight, like she couldn't lose it, foggy headed. And honestly, for a long time she'd thought that's just how it's going to be. But I inside there was that small part of her that was like, that's not how I want it to be. And so when we met and we chatted.

It sparked up that hope for her. I told her never too old. Never too late. We can always, your body's always gonna appreciate anything that you do for it. So yeah, we talked, we reviewed her symptoms those beautiful messages that our body gives us those little flags, that waves, they need some help over here.

And digging into someone's health history, spending time with them to get to know that in depth and put the pieces together alongside of bloods. I love blood tests and I've done podcast episodes and blogs before on blood tests, and you know why normal isn't enough for you why you want optimal ranges and things like that.

So yeah, with her blood, her health history, looking at her symptoms and what sort of the most important things to her, what she wanted to resolve and put that together and created a personalized nutrition plan. For her with I used Metabolic Balance to help me do that, and that's what changed my life and helped me lose 20 kilos and my perimenopause symptoms and basically get my life back.

So yeah, helped her implement that when she started implementing her metabolic balance plan. And this is something that really works with your body not against it. So not trying to push it back into being what it was at 30 or 20 or anything like that. It's giving it what it needs right now for a reset and rebalance.

So within, yeah, the first few weeks she messaged me and she was like. Oh my gosh. I've had my first night of sleep, like solid sleep. I did not wake up. I went to sleep and I woke up when my alarm went off. She was like a different person. And I know that's was the same for me once I slept through the night again.

It's literally life changing. It's not an overstatement for that at all. It feels like magic, but you know, it's not magic. It's just using the right strategy for her and for her and that phase of life there as well. So, I love talking about metabolic balance and personalized nutrition. I think it's really powerful.

And when you are working with someone that you know, can guide you through how to use it well and how to get lots of information from it, you learn a lot about your body, what it likes in terms of foods and drinks, and what you eat, drink, and do. And that's why I use it inside my program, the Chaos to Calm method.

If you wanna find out more about metabolic balance, I'll put the link in the show notes there as well. 

I'm always happy for you to message me on Instagram and chat to me about it and, or what your body's telling you it needs as well. So here's some tips on what you can do next, 'cause I think if you are feeling like it's too late, this is kind of just how I am now. This is it, it's only gonna get worse.

Here's five things that you can start doing right now to shift how you feel. And you don't need to have a total life overhaul to start shifting that, not at all. So first of all, I want you to stop blaming yourself. It's not your fault. You are not lacking discipline or willpower. You've been doing your best.

We are always doing the best that we can with what we know, with the knowledge that we have. But you know, it's just that you've been taught the wrong framework. You've been taught a way that doesn't work for our bodies. So that's my second tip, is I want you to start listening to your body, your symptoms and messages.

They're not totally random, they're not just annoying things to just suppress and get rid of. I want you to get really curious, like what's your body trying to tell you with these symptoms and start tracking your symptoms please. If you're not already tracking your period, you should start doing that.

Please. All of this data around your symptoms if you want to track your food, if you have food intolerances or you think that your symptoms of food related, track your food, track your mood, track your poo. Your food, mood and poo and your other symptoms there as well because once you've got that solid data even if you don't understand it, you can take it to a naturopath or a health professional and they can help you interpret it and understand it.

So my third tip is I really want you to ditch the just try harder mindset. You don't need more discipline, you don't need to white knuckle it through those cravings or through feeling hungry and not eating for another 16 hours or something, whatever your fasting window is.

I want you. What you do need though, is a new strategy. You actually need something that fits with your phase of life and works with your changing body. Now, the fourth thing that I want you to know is or do is reframe midlife and perimenopause as a pivot, not a decline. I am wondering if when you hear the word pivot, are you thinking of that friend's episode when Ross and Rachel are trying to move the couch up the stairs and he's pivot.

Pivot. Anytime I hear the word pivot straight away, that's coming in my mind. So it is a powerful reset point. Is this a chance to build your health that carries you forward for decades? And if you are already in menopause, that's cool. Like I said, it's not too late. It's never too late. You can always pivot, changing what you eat, drink, and do to really support and nourish your body. And it will always give you thanks. Like that investment will pay dividends for the rest of your years. So it's, yeah, it's never too late. You're never too old. You can definitely, always benefit from those changes. 

So the fifth thing that I would say to you is that you are unique. We're all unique. Our genetics, our genes is, are all different as well. And so that's why you really need a plan that fits you. So we really strongly encourage you to think about having a plan that personalized to you. Sure your principles might be the same as someone else's in terms of how to eat, but and, maybe even when to eat.

But what you are eating, what you're drinking, what you're doing really needs to be personalized to you and your health history. What's happening in your blood biochemistry right now? I think that's like your best, your gold standard of care and the gold standard to help you feel great now through perimenopause and beyond for the rest of your life to have that really healthy, active, strong old woman body.

So this is what I do in my one-to-one, my high support personalized program, the Chaos to Calm method, and as I said, it features metabolic balance, personalized nutrition, which I really strongly feel very passionate about in its power to help you feel amazing as well. And that's where I'll look at your bloods through that functional lens that gives us the opportunity for prevention as well as treatment of what's out of range now, but working on preventing that dysfunction turning into a disease.

And we look at your health history and your symptoms and your food, sleep movement, mindset, all of those things to build a really strong, deep understanding of what's actually driving how you are feeling right now. And then I create help you create a plan that you know. Factors in all of those things and is doable for you and not overwhelming, but really powerful to create that change, that reset and rebalance that you want and need.

So yeah, you can feel amazing through perimenopause and beyond. So if you are nodding along, yep. Yeah, I really wanna understand my body better. I mean, like knowledge is power, right? So I'd love to invite you to book a free 20 minute clarity call. We'll have a chat through your symptoms, your lifestyle what you're eating, drinking, doing that sort of thing, and explore what your next steps might be.

New pressure, no obligation. It's just a conversation to see what's possible for you. And what might be the best option for you in terms of changing how you're feeling. And yeah it's, not too late. Hopefully you've got that idea today. It's never too late. It's just really time for a new approach.

And yeah, that's I feel really strongly about that, that we've been led up the wrong garden path and we really need something that's actually really gentle, nourishing, supportive really nurturing for our bodies. Our bodies work hard we've made another person, we've made milk and fed that person.

We've mothered, we do all these things. Our bodies these symptoms are usually just telling us that I need some love and support too. And we can get lost in all of the everything else that's going on and all the caring we're doing for everyone else. We can really forget about that caring and nurturing for ourselves.

So thank you friend for joining me today in today's episode of Chaos to Calm. Is it too late to start feeling better? Hopefully you know the answer's no. And I hope you found the episode helpful, so please do make sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss future episodes. And while you're there, I'd be really grateful if you left a review or shared it with a friend. It helps more women find the show and also to feel empowered in perimenopause and beyond because perimenopause isn't a cliff you fall off. It's not like being dragged to the edge of the cliff and menopause, that's it, you are done. It's a transition. And it could just be the start of your most amazing chapter yet. I tell everyone that my fifties, this is the most amazing chapter yet. So until next time, friends, keep transforming your perimenopause from chaos to calm.