75: Perimenopause and Cravings: The Connection and the Solution

Raise your hand if your cravings have gotten worse in perimenopause?

Like finding yourself standing in front of the pantry at 9:00 PM, wondering how you ended up halfway through a bag of Hershey’s Kisses or chips after a perfectly healthy day? If you’ve been beating yourself up for a "lack of discipline," it's not your fault, and I need you to listen to this!

In this episode of The Family Fork, we are diving deep into cravings during perimenopause. I’m pulling back the curtain on why those intense, out-of-the-blue cravings hit so hard during this stage of life. We’re moving past the "mean girl" inner dialogue of guilt and shame and getting curious about what’s actually happening under the hood.

We’ll explore how fluctuating estrogen and progesterone are taking your blood sugar on a roller coaster ride, making your brain scream for fast-acting fuel like sugar and carbs. I also share my personal journey with gut health—specifically Candida overgrowth—and how those "microbes" in your belly might actually be the ones calling the shots. This episode helps you figure out how to stop restricting and start stabilizing.

In This Episode:

📌 Mindset First: How to swap guilt for curiosity, and identify the feelings you’re trying to avoid with food.

📌 Cravings Intensified: Why hormonal shifts make your hunger signals turn up to max volume.

📌 The Cortisol Connection: How your "invisible load" as a busy mom keeps your cravings running high.

📌 Gut Health SOS: Signs and symptoms of bacterial imbalance that drives that insatiable need for sugar

📌 Eat More Food: Why the "eat less, exercise more" mantra is actually triggering your body to panic and crave calorie-dense foods.


More Support For You

Free Guide: Get Started With Anti-Inflammatory Meals
Free Guide: Quick and Easy Anti-Inflammatory Snacks
🙋‍♀️ Work with Me
⭐️ Connect on Social
🥑 How I Cook Just 3 Nights/Week
🧠 Mindset Framework to Stop Relying On Willpower or Motivation

Transcript

Hello there, my friend, and thanks for tuning in today to the Family Fork. If you are new to the podcast, I have had a lot of new listeners come on board in the last couple of months. So welcome to you, and I hope you are finding the information here to just be really, really helpful and valuable for you as you navigate perimenopause and juggling your career and your family and all of the things. So.

No matter when you've come on board, I am super excited about today's episode because we're going to have a good heart to heart conversation about something that I know is probably driving you crazy right now. We are talking all about those intense, like out of the blue, get out of my way type of cravings that seem to have come on really strong in perimenopause. So I want you to picture this for just a second.

nine o'clock at night and your house is actually pretty quiet. You have survived a day of meetings and school pickup and you've gotten through family dinner. Maybe you've done a load or two of laundry and you are finally ⁓ sitting on your couch, taking a deep breath. Maybe you've got a favorite TV show on and then it hits you. Kind of starts like a little whisper. ⁓ you know, what would be good right now? Maybe something sweet.

And before you know it, you're standing in front of an open fridge and you're looking for something. And at this point, if you've been here, you know, you're not just looking for like a little snack. You're kind of on a mission. I know for me, it's always Hershey's Kisses. No, they're not in the fridge, but that's the thing I want. My body wants to default to. I don't know what it is about those little like chocolate things wrapped in silver wrappers. I wish I could just get rid of them. I try and stick to dark chocolate and

know, say it's healthier, but once that craving takes over, is so hard to let go.

Maybe for you, it's not chocolate. So maybe you're the person that really wants that like salty, crunchy fix, know, potato chips that are at the back of the pantry, or maybe it's candy like Skittles or Starburst. For some of you, it's that nightly glass of wine or a nice cold craft beer that feels like such a good reward for making it through the day. Or maybe you're someone who sort of defaults.

to craving kind of the heavier stuff like pizza or fast food, something that's more on like the fatty side, but it feels really comforting. So whatever it is for you, you just have to know you're not alone. We have all been there, I'm there. We all struggle with this challenge.

science has actually shown us that cravings don't just happen in perimenopause, but they actually increase in intensity. Great, right? It's like someone turns up the volume on your hunger signals. If you've been listening to The Family Fork for a little while, you might expect that I'm going to jump right in to how to tackle those cravings. But we are changing things up. Before we talk about the food on your plate, we have to talk about

the thoughts in your head. So with that, we're going to dig into your mindset and we're going to do that first because I need to teach you how to explore what your brain is actually thinking and feeling in those really like intense craving moments so that you can finally start seeing the results. I know you have been working so hard for.

In this episode, we're going to dig into why your brain and your nervous system make these cravings literally feel like a matter of survival. We'll talk about how perimenopause impacts cravings, why your gut health might actually be sending these like SOS or smoke signals. And most importantly, I'm going to give you some really simple solutions that you can implement today to start taking back control.

So let's get right into it. Now, when it comes to cravings, I want you to really sit down and think back to the last time one really hit you. You know, for many of us, especially in perimenopause, that might've been like 20 minutes ago, right? I want you to recognize what feelings come up for you in that moment when you are actively having a craving or maybe right after you've just given into one. Because after working with women for so many years,

There's a couple of very common, very heavy feelings that I tend to see that often bubble up when you've given into the Hershey's Kisses or the bag of chips or that extra glass of wine.

One of the most common feelings I hear women talk about is guilt. It's that internal dialogue that kind of sounds like a mean girl in your head. Like, why can't I just put the food down? Why can't I just say no? You feel so guilty for giving in and that guilt almost always morphs into something bigger. Like you start feeling embarrassed or maybe like, you start feeling embarrassed.

or maybe you even feel ashamed that you can't quote unquote do better. So I wanna share a story with you that a friend of mine told me years ago. And it's a story I've never forgotten because I think you will be able to relate in some way. And it also illustrates how powerful these cravings can be. So my friend had been eating this delicious and decadent chocolate cake. It was like had this thick, wonderful frosting and

she was enjoying it so much and she just couldn't stop. And she actually got to this point where like she was afraid she was gonna eat the whole thing. So in this desperate attempt to stop herself, she decided to throw away the whole cake and she put it in the kitchen trash can and walked away and she thought, okay, great, I solved that problem.

But later that evening, that craving for the cake was so intense. It literally was all she could think about. So she went to the trash, pulled out the cake and started eating it again. Now, can you imagine the feelings in that moment if you've ever done something similar? Like you've gone overboard with cake or you've downed an entire bag of Cheetos in one setting, mindlessly finished off a container of ice cream.

you know that feeling and we're going to label it as shame. It's such an uncomfortable thing to feel and in that moment you might start asking yourself, my god what is wrong with me? Where in the world is my discipline? Another feeling that I see women feeling is just flat out frustration. You feel like you are doing so many things right.

You're dialing in your nutrition. You're hitting your step goal. You're listening to this podcast. And yet it feels like you are failing because you can't walk past a bag of chips without sticking your hand in there. And you start to feel so frustrated and overwhelmed with how to actually make progress. Here's the kicker. When you start feeling that shame and that frustration, the very first place your brain goes is to assume that you

have some sort of like character flaw. You just assume, you know what, I'm so unmotivated or I'm lazy or I'm just so inconsistent.

So I wanna pause right here and let's clear this up. If you have been saying to yourself, what is wrong with me? I want you to hear me very clearly. Absolutely nothing is wrong with you. It's not that you're undisciplined. What you are experiencing is this combination of a very smart brain trying to protect you and a body that is going through massive hormonal changes.

Think about it this way, your brain, we know it's designed to conserve energy. It doesn't wanna use any more energy than it absolutely has to. So when it comes to those really difficult feelings like guilt or shame, your brain is actually trying to avoid those feelings by giving you this like quick hit of dopamine from the food that you're eating. So let's say like you ate Hershey's Kisses, which this is my problem.

when that craving hits and then the guilt starts to creep in and your brain says, ⁓ wait a minute, I don't like this feeling. Let's just move on. Let's just say, you know what? I can't figure this out. I don't know what my problem is. I must be undisciplined. And then we're gonna stop trying because even thinking about it is too hard.

your brain is also wired to avoid hard work. And let's be honest, not giving into a craving when it feels really, really intense, that is hard work.

whether it's chocolate or salty snacks, your brain is smart. Your brain knows that giving in to that craving will make you feel satisfied and satiated right now in this moment. Asking your brain to do the opposite of that, it doesn't want to. You are literally trying to push against your primitive survival-based wiring. So before we move on to the physical aspect,

of cravings, I just want you to sit with that information for a minute. And the next time a craving hits, instead of reaching for guilt, I actually want you to reach for a little bit of curiosity. I need you to ask yourself, huh, what feeling am I trying to avoid right now? Am I stressed? Am I overwhelmed? Or am I just kind of looking for an easy button because my brain is tired?

understanding that your brain and your nervous system are just trying to find the path of least resistance. That's that first step in taking your power back.

But I also want you to know the why behind the physical drive, because as much as it is a mindset game, there's actually real science happening in your body during perimenopause that just makes this feel like an uphill battle. So let's talk about what's actually happening under the hood from your hormones all the way to your gut health.

we can agree that you are not in fact a person without any willpower or discipline. I know this about you already. And as much as I believe in the power of mindset, I also know that you can't like positively think your way out of a powerful and strong craving. If you feel like your cravings have shifted from kind of a gentle suggestion to a loud scream in the last couple of years,

There's a reason for that. It's perimenopause. ⁓ Dr. Mary Claire Haver, who's someone who I love following, she actually calls this time the zone of chaos. And I love this term because it perfectly describes how it feels to be in perimenopause.

One day you're feeling just fine. And maybe the next day you're crying over a commercial or you're snapping at your family and you just want to sit on the couch and eat an entire sleeve of Girl Scout cookies. It is a chaotic time of life. Here's why. Your hormones, specifically estrogen and progesterone are on this complete roller coaster. So when estrogen starts to drop or it fluctuates wildly,

it takes your blood sugar regulation along for the ride. So have you ever noticed that like you can eat the exact same thing you ate five years ago, but now you eat it and an hour later, you're kind of irritable or hungry for a snack. That's because your body has stopped handling glucose the way that it used to. So your insulin sensitivity is changing. When that blood sugar crashes,

your brain, it's not going after a salad. It wants some like high energy, fast acting fuel like sugar and carbs.

That craving is a physical representation of a hormonal dip and it's a battle that you are not gonna win just by trying harder.

but wait, there's more. We also have to talk about stress in this stage of life. I know you are a busy mom, you're a professional, and you carry a really heavy, invisible load. You are the one who knows when kids have practice, when the dog needs to go to the vet, and why your boss is stressed out. And that constant unending pressure keeps your cortisol levels really elevated.

Now cortisol is your stress hormone and it has a direct connection to your blood sugar because when your cortisol stays high, your body thinks it's like in this state of emergency or fight and flight.

And so what does a situation like that require? Fast energy. So again, that's like sugar and carbs and fat. Plus less estrogen in perimenopause means higher levels of cortisol.

So when you are standing in your kitchen at four o'clock in the afternoon, you're exhausted after a long day of making decisions and you find yourself reaching for cheese and crackers. That is your biology trying to refuel your system that feels like it's under attack.

It is really important for you to understand that this hormonal disruption is a physical reality in your body. And there are things we can do about it, like hormone replacement therapy or shifting your nutrition. But the reason I started this episode with mindset is that you have to have the right sort of internal foundation to navigate this journey of getting your hormones regulated.

I wish it was, but it's not as simple as just taking a pill or hormone replacement therapy and magically cravings are gone. It is a journey and it takes time for you to figure out your new normal. And if you're beating yourself up every single time your hormones take a dip and they trigger a craving, you're just adding more stress, which is more cortisol.

The goal here is not being perfect. It's understanding the why behind the cravings. Because when you understand that your brain is reacting to fluctuating hormones and blood sugar, you can actually stop taking it so personally. You can look at that craving for pizza or chocolate and say, ⁓ okay, maybe I'm having a hormonal fluctuation or maybe my cortisol is through the roof right now. What is it that my body

actually needs in this moment.

Typically, the answer isn't found by pulling that cake out of the trash. The answer is actually a little bit more stability. So before we get to solutions, there's one more physical piece of the puzzle. And it's something I like talking about because it was a huge part of my own health journey.

we have to talk about your gut health. Sometimes those cravings, they're not even coming from you. They're coming from the trillions and trillions of tiny little microbes that are living in your digestive tract, which is your gut. Now I've talked about this on the podcast before, but the health of your gut microbiome dictates the health of your entire body. We're talking about physical health, mental health, and even

those cravings that feel like they have gotten so intense. Now, one of the reasons you might be experiencing these really relentless cravings for sugar or carbs is that you have an imbalance in your gut.

So this was my experience. In my own health journey, I discovered that I was struggling with something called Candida overgrowth. So Candida is a type of yeast that lives in everybody's gut all the time, but it has to stay in perfect balance. Problem is in perimenopause, when our hormones start fluctuating, our gut microbiome has a much harder time maintaining that delicate balance.

So when you get an overgrowth of a yeast like candida, it literally feeds on sugar. So those really, really intense cravings that I had for like carbs and sugar, it wasn't that I was being weak or undisciplined. It was actually a physical drive from my disrupted gut microbiome. The yeast was basically phoning into my brain and saying, hey,

I need some fuel right now. I need that fuel in order to make me grow.

If you feel like your cravings are a physical pull that you literally cannot push away, it might not be a lack of discipline. It might actually be your gut.

And the struggle is that it's like this perfect storm when your hormones are dysregulated as what happens in perimenopause, it actually increases inflammation. That inflammation causes further dysregulation in your gut, which leads to, you guessed it, more cravings. So it's this cycle that can feel really impossible to break unless you know what you're looking at and looking for.

Now, while we're taking a peek at the gut, I also want to talk about some of these external factors too. I'm not one to demonize food, but we really do have to be honest about processed foods. Those large food companies, spend billions, yes, billions with a B on scientists who it's their entire job to make food more craveable. They

look to and create something called the bliss point. It's this perfect combination of salt, sugar, and fat that actually overrides your brain's ability to say, no thanks, I'm full. If you're eating things like Oreos and Pop Tarts or highly processed chips, even fast food, you're fighting against a product that was designed chemically by scientists

to make it hard for you to say no. Again, it is not your fault to want more of that food because they were engineered that way. This is why it's so important to lean into anti-inflammatory whole foods. It's about actually giving your body a chance to hear its own hunger cues once again.

All right, a final reason that you might be struggling with cravings, you're not eating enough. So I want to be really clear with you. 1500 calories is definitely not enough energy for an adult woman to sustain her daily life, manage stress, get her walks in and keep her hormones happy. It's like that old school adage from the 90s that you should eat less and exercise more. does not apply. It's wrong.

In fact, when you restrict your calories too much in hopes of maybe fitting back into those genes you love, your body actually goes into panic and it thinks that you're starving. And what it does is it responds by sending out signals, cravings for the most calorie dense foods that you can find.

It seems like over the years as women, especially we've really lost our ability to hear our actual hunger signals. I mean, think about the last time you had a craving. Could you tell the difference between it's a craving or I'm actually hungry? Here's a little trick that I love to use. When that hunger feeling hits, I want you to ask yourself, what a handful of baby carrots or a

a piece of plain cooked chicken, would that satisfy me right now? If the answer is ⁓ no, I just want some Hershey's Kisses, then it's likely a craving or some emotional regulation that needs to be addressed. But if you can actually say like, ⁓ yeah, carrots, that sounds really good. Your body is telling you that it is genuinely hungry and it needs fuel.

We really have to get back to learning how our bodies feel when they're empty versus when they're just seeking a head of dopamine. So please, please stop restricting your food. Go back to eating whole single source and anti-inflammatory foods and don't cut out the healthy fats. Don't cut out the carbs. Your body needs that fuel to keep those cravings at bay.

Okay, so far we've covered a lot of ground from how perimenopause impacts cravings to the hidden messages that might be coming from your gut. And I know it can feel a little bit overwhelming and you're probably thinking like, don't even know where to start to fix all of this. So here's the good news. You don't have to do it all at once.

I want to give you a lot of hope because there are very concrete ways to crush these cravings in perimenopause that do not involve feeling restricted or feeling deprived. That's good news, right?

I have a few ideas for you that are things that you can start doing today, not next Monday, but right now. So you can start feeling some relief pretty quickly. First, and I know this sounds so simple, you maybe are rolling your eyes, but you have to drink enough water.

As we talked about earlier, our bodies are not always great at distinguishing between I'm hungry and I'm having a sugar craving or I'm actually just dehydrated. So believe it or not, by the time you feel thirsty, your body is already dehydrated and that can trigger a stress response that's gonna lead instantly to a craving. So for most of you,

For you, I want you to aim for around 100 ounces of water every day. That's gonna flush out toxins, support your metabolism, and most importantly, it's going to quiet those signals that you might mistake for hunger.

Next, we have to talk about restriction. I want you to stop under eating. If you've been stuck in this cycle of skipping breakfast or just eating a small lunch only to like dive face into a bag of chips at four o'clock in the afternoon, we have to break that cycle. It's okay. And actually I prefer it and recommend it to eat four or five smaller, more nutrient dense meals throughout the day.

So I know with my clients and students, when they know that there's another delicious anti-inflammatory meal coming in just like two or three hours, it takes away that panic from their nervous system. And it reminds your brain, hey, food is coming. We don't need to hunt for sugar.

And speaking of anti-inflammatory food, if you haven't already, I want you to be sure and grab my 21 day anti-inflammatory meal plan. I'll link to it in the show notes. It is a total game changer for stepping away from the processed foods and really easily prioritizing whole foods that are going to stabilize your blood sugar.

Now I am a mom, I'm a grandma, I'm realistic, and I know you're going to want a treat because I do too. So your next move is to find some really good anti-inflammatory swaps for your favorite treats. You do not have to give up every food that you love. You just need to find a version that doesn't increase inflammation or spike your blood sugar.

I have a really cool anti-inflammatory snack guide. It's a lot of snacks that you can actually buy at the grocery store. So I'll also link to that in the show notes. There are treats out there and you'll see in the guide that are amazing, like high quality dark chocolate and minimally processed snacks. All of these are going to satisfy your mental need for a treat when you feel like you're craving something without sending your body into a tailspin.

If you feel like you had your water and you've eaten some snacks, but the food cravings are really relentless, it might be time to explore some gut health testing.

So remember my journey with candida overgrowth? There are also other things like SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, lots of gut disruption that can really drive sugar and carb cravings.

So in my household, my husband, my daughter, they can tell you, I have this trick where I'm looking for gut imbalance. So if you go to the mirror and you stick out your tongue all the way, if you see a thick white film on the back of your tongue, that can often, not always, but that can often be a sign of an imbalance in your gut. So if you see that, you might benefit from some gut health testing.

So feel free to reach out to me at the Ashley Malik on Instagram and I can share with you some resources or recommendations for testing because I think getting that information is a great starting point so you know how you can better support your body through the cravings.

I also want to ask you, are you a stress eater? Raise your hand if you reach for food when life feels overwhelming or sad or you're bored. So if this is you, learning to manage your stress is actually a metabolic tool because when you reduce stress, you reduce cortisol. And when you reduce cortisol, you stabilize your blood sugar.

So this year I subscribed to the Calm app to help regulate my stress. seriously, I am obsessed. Part of it is because I love Jay Shetty and his meditations and his voice are just incredible for grounding your nervous system. So whether you choose the Calm app or a five minute walk, or you do some deep breathing, it's important that you find a way to lower that internal alarm.

because you'll actually find that it helps to reduce some of the cravings more than any diet ever could.

Finally, I want you to keep a journal for this next week and don't make it complicated, make it easy. I just want you to jot down when you're having a craving, think about what else was happening because you might find, am I more snacky when I'm stressed or do you get a lot of cravings right before your period if you're still having one or are the cravings constant like all the time? So this isn't about judging yourself, right?

It's actually about collecting data. If you journal and you write down all the cravings, this data is gonna show you some patterns. So if you have cravings that are like 24 seven, you might really be looking at some gut health issues. But if the cravings often hit in the afternoon after a big team meeting or meeting with your CEO, you might be looking at stress and cortisol.

Once you have that data, you can then choose the right solution and stop guessing so that you can help yourself with those cravings.

So let's bring this all home. ⁓ We have covered a lot today. We went from the psychology of pulling the cake out of the trash to the biology of cravings in perimenopause.

If you're sitting there thinking, great, Ashley, I honestly thought I was just losing my mind or that I had horrible discipline. I really hope that this episode has kind of been like a deep breath for you because it's true that in perimenopause, some of your cravings are a direct result of that hormonal disruption. Your estrogen is shifting, your insulin is being finicky and your cortisol, it is totally running the show.

But as we've talked about, it is so imperative that you start looking at your thoughts and your feelings around these cravings. If you can move out of that cycle of guilt and shame and into a place of curiosity and collecting data, you are going to have a much easier time figuring out exactly what your body needs to feel balanced and steady again.

So remember that giant toolkit of solutions that you can start using the minute you turn off this episode. Let's review. So number one was to hydrate. You wanna get that water in and aim for 100 ounces a day. Number two, eat enough. Stop eating 1500 calories. Your body needs more fuel than that. Number three, choose anti-inflammatory.

Focus on those whole foods that aren't going to increase inflammation because more inflammation is gonna mean more cravings. Number four, reduce the stress. You wanna lower that cortisol through meditation, pick up the Calm app, listen to Jay Shetty, or even just take a few deep breaths.

And number five, I want you to keep a journal this week. Be your own detective. Check it out. Is it stress? Is it your cycle? Do you have cravings every time you skip breakfast? What are those patterns? Because that is what's gonna help you find the answer.

I really hope this has been a super helpful episode for you. I know that cravings are a huge reality in perimenopause, but they don't have to be your entire reality. When you can identify how you think and how you feel about yourself in these moments, you're going to gain the power to change the outcome. I am really proud of you because I see that you're doing the work to prioritize your health.

And it's not just for you, but for your whole family. If you're like me, you're the heart of your home. And when you feel good, everyone wins.

Have a wonderful, empowered feeling week. I want you to grab those guides and the show notes if you need a little bit of extra support and I will see you right back here next week.