Ep. 77 Why Feeling Put-Together Isn’t About Motivation—and What Actually Works

Hey Friend,

Have you ever felt like everyone else makes health, discipline, and balance look effortless—while you’re over here exhausted and overwhelmed?

Here’s the truth no one says out loud:

👉 “Effortlessly healthy” is a lie.

In this week’s episode of The Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast, we’re talking about what actually creates lasting change—especially for women 35+ navigating hormone shifts.

🎧 Listen to the full episode:

Why Feeling Put-Together Isn’t About Motivation—and What Actually Works

Inside the episode, I break down:

• Why the most grounded women rely on structure—not motivation

• How identity drives hormone-friendly habits

• The difference between goals and systems

• Why clutter (physical, digital, and mental) impacts your energy and follow-through

• How to take one powerful step toward the woman you’re becoming in 2026

Your body isn’t failing you.

It’s communicating.

Let’s learn how to listen.

In health,

Tracy Erin

Before You Go…

✨ Join The Balanced Hormone Solution

If you’re done guessing, white-knuckling, and starting over every January—this is your next step.

Inside BHS, I’ll help you:

✔️ Decode your hormones with functional testing

✔️ Build systems that stabilize energy, mood, and weight

✔️ Stop surviving and start showing up as the woman you know you’re meant to be

Transcript

0:01

Somewhere along the way, we were sold a lie that the most elegant, healthy, put together woman, they just wake up like that. That real health should feel effortless. That discipline means nothing's wrong, that if it feels hard, you're doing it wrong. But friend, that is not true. That woman that you admire, the one who looks grounded, calm, vibrant, steady, she's not effortless. She's intentional. And today I want to show you how to become her without burnout, perfectionism, or shame. In this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the exact steps to becoming a new version of yourself in 2026, the one who feels calm in her body, steady in her energy, and just proud of how she shows up. We're talking about identity goals, systems, and resets, not hustle, definitely not punishment, and not pretending.

Speaker 5: 1:08

Welcome to the Balance Hormone Solution Podcast. If you're a woman 35 plus feeling exhausted, struggling to lose weight, and wondering where your libido went, this is for you. I am Tracy Aaron, a functional medicine practitioner who helps women balance their hormones naturally. Without prescriptions, guesswork, or trending Nonsense.'cause here's the truth, your symptoms aren't random. They're signals. And if you know how to listen, you can fix the root cause and start feeling like yourself again. If you're ready for real solutions, let's get to it.

1:48

Hey friends, so welcome back to the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast. I am your host, Tracy Aaron, a registered nurse, a hormone health specialist, and somebody who deeply believes this. Your symptoms aren't random, they're signals and the way that you show up in your life. Your energy, your follow through, your level of overwhelm. It's not a character flaw. It's biology meeting bandwidth. So let's actually talk about what creates change. If you're like me, you have groups of women in your life and you might be tempted to look around and think, wow, she's got it all together. She's just. Different than me. She's more disciplined, more motivated, more organized. But what I've learned through my own healing and through thousands of other women, it's this, those type of women that we're all looking at on the outside, they're not relying on motivation, they're relying on structure. But when your hormones become dysregulated, that structure, which feels so hard to jump right into, it feels restrictive. That's where we need to change our mindset around that because it's not restrictive. It's actually what we need the most. It's supportive. So let's stop chasing this idea that being effortlessly healthy is achievable, and start building a life with some structure and simplicity so that we can be healthy and be the woman that we want to be. So here's where it all stop, starts the exact steps. To a new you. I'm gonna lay it out in four points right here, and I'm gonna make it very, very simple for you.'cause this is a task that can feel overwhelming and very daunting, especially at the beginning of the year. People are setting New Year's resolutions. They're deciding who they want to become for the year, what their year wants to look like, and maybe they're planning things out. But this is where we start. Before you put a vacation on the books, before you start. Planning, like the physical, where you're gonna be, type things, decide who you're gonna be. And that's my first point, is decide your identity. And yes, you can actually just decide it. Okay. Healing starts with who you believe you are, and that is because you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your identity. So in 2026, I want you to start in this month, in January with this identity statement. I am a woman who no qualifiers, no trying, no hoping. I am a woman who.dot fill in the blank. What is your most pressing desire? What do you most want to become? We need a standards check.'cause that woman that you want to become, she has standards. So what behaviors no longer fit this woman? What does she do differently on ordinary days? What are her decision points? How does she prepare instead of react? This is a big one for moms. I have five kids, I homeschool. They also go to some classes outside the home and there's a thousand decisions I find that I have to make on a daily basis. And if I wanted to, I could just sit back and react as everything came towards me at breakneck speed. But that's not the woman that I wanna be. I actually wanna be proactive and not reactive, and that means that I have to prepare. So how do we get into the place where we can be proactive instead of reactive? Right? That's what we're talking about today. So how does this woman, this, I am a woman who, dot, dot, dot, whatever you filled in those blanks, how do you, how does she protect her time and her energy? This is a good question to ask yourself.'cause yeah, time is money, blah, blah, blah. Time is also your essence. It's all you've got. What are you doing to protect and maximize your time? How do you show up in a room? How do you protect your energy? How do you keep from others draining you or the life that you live from draining you? I like to think of it like daily alignment, right? So like when life feels rushed, we ask ourselves, is this how I wanna show up? And we have to do it daily. Something new. Something new needs my attention. Somebody else calls me, something else needs to be done, right? Is this how I wanna show up? Is this how I wanna show up? It becomes a muscle memory until you are showing up the way that. That woman in 2026 shows up. So this, this is not mindset fluff, okay? This is nervous system work. This is like root cause. When we actually shift this, we shift everything else. So my second point is that once you've kind of identified that identity. You're really clear on that. We need to turn it into goals because vague intentions are what create the overwhelmed woman when we're not really clear on who we're trying to be, what we're trying to be, what our time is worth to us, and what kind of energy we wanna walk into a room with. Well, you get what you get, right? That's what I tell my kids. You get what you get and you don't throw a fit. But let's not be that overwhelmed woman. Let's be the woman who knows how she wants to walk into that room. Therefore, we need goals. We need to turn that identity into goals, right? So for example, your body feels safer when the expectations are clear. When we know what is expected of us. When you invite people over for a party and you tell them exactly what to expect, they feel better about it. Nobody wants to show up at a party in a tuxedo when everybody's in sweatpants and hoodies. Right. That doesn't make us feel safe. We wanna be clear on what is expected of us. So we want more energy. Well, some actionable steps. I eat protein within an hour of waking. I want to feel calm. Okay. So I walk outside every morning. I set the stage for clearing my head and for, uh, just planning. I, I, I'm not inundating myself with podcasts and news and email and social media. It gives me a stage of calm. I want balance. Okay, well then stop skipping meals. Sunlight becomes non-negotiable, right? So whatever it is, like goals should feel grounded, not grandiose, like you can't ever achieve them. So number three is that we all need a system that supports us, right? This is where most women fail, and it's not because they're weak, it's because they're unsupported. So structure reduces decision fatigue and thereby cortisol. So like keep it simple, simple food rhythms. Morning light and movement, make it non-negotiable. A weekly planning ritual. Some people are so overwhelmed at the tasks ahead of them, but it's mostly because of what they don't know they have to do. And so if we don't name it, we can't manage it. Sometimes just by writing things out on a weekly basis, here's what I have to accomplish this week. We can really talk ourselves down from a ledge of that overwhelm and realize we can handle this. Oftentimes it's that unknown, which is the most stressful part. What about some default meals? Can you keep some staples in your pantry, in your freezer that you know you can always put a healthy meal together in under 10 minutes? Get three of those and always have those groceries. How about some bedtime cues like set yourself up for success. We want quick wins here. Systems. These systems in place. This is how you love your future self. So the last point is like evaluate and reset, right? We have to do this constantly. We have to find what works and keep doing the things that work. So clutter in our lives is quietly shaping how we shut up, how we show up. And I wanna explain to you how this happens. So here's three areas in particular that we might wanna look at. Clutter in order to reset physical your kitchen. Maybe you always have dirty dishes in the sink and making another meal just feels so overwhelming. How can you reduce clutter? How can you cook with less pans, less ingredients, less utensils? How can you have a system where you do dishes immediately after the meal is done? Not saving it for the morning, right? Nobody wants to make 30 grams of protein breakfast, two cups of vegetables, one cup of berries in a dirty kitchen, first thing that they wake up, right? What about your supplements? Can we organize them? Can we get a supplement box so that every Sunday afternoon we're setting things out for the week? Tuesday morning rolls around, we know exactly what we should be taking and need to be taking for our best and highest health. We're not making that decision yet. Again, it's been made for us by ourselves. Earlier in the week, right? Your closet. You ever feel like you don't know what to wear? Like you don't have enough clothes? Maybe you have too many options. Where can we reduce clutter? Digital, right? Like your phone. Those apps you haven't used in the last six months, you're probably not gonna use'em in 2026, your inbox, right? Don't be that woman who has a hundred thousand emails waiting to be read. Just go through like the most recent. 50 of them. I bet you're gonna see a ton of repeats, unsubscribe. Just deal with it. Set a timer for 10 minutes. You don't have to deal with all a hundred thousand emails, but definitely unsubscribe to the ones you get the most of. That's a low hanging fruit win, right? Your notifications, turn'em off. Turn group texts onto silent. How about mental clutter? Old stories we have in our minds, things we tell ourselves like, I'm so bad at consistency, or I always dot, dot, dot, whatever it is. That's just how I am, right? I get'em. I get the stories that we have. I get why they're there. They're survival strategies. But here's your permission. You are allowed to upgrade. So here's your one action step this week, write out your 2026 identity statement. Choose one system that supports her, not 10. Not a full overhaul, just one, because healing isn't about doing more. I know it can feel like that.'cause you see a whole lot of things out there that you quote unquote should be doing. It's about doing what matters consistently. So the woman you want to become isn't waiting for life to feel easier. She's out there building a life that supports her. With systems that she can keep up with, right? So you don't have to do this alone. I'm glad that you're here. We'll talk more about this in 2026, and I am here for your total and highest success. See you in the next episode.

Speaker 7: 13:30

That's it for today's episode of the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast. If this resonated, don't just listen. Do something about it. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you know another woman who's tired of feeling like a stranger in her own body. Send her this way for more support. Check out the show notes. I've got resources to help you get started. Just remember, your body isn't broken, you just need the right tools. See you next time.