HSOS #2: Speak Up Sister: Advocating for Your Health

In this episode, Kim shares a deeply personal story about postpartum anxiety and how it sparked her lifelong commitment to self-advocacy. She talks about the all-too-common symptoms women hide during perimenopause and menopause—and why speaking up matters. You’ll hear the stats, the reality, and a simple checklist for what to ask when looking for a doctor who actually listens. 

Let’s talk.

Welcome to Her Season of Strength—where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy—registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman when it comes to aging like you mean it.

This show isn’t about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It’s about building real strength—physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I’ll share straight-talking nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies, and conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin once again.

Menopause is not an ending, it is only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Life update 
• Why women hide symptoms 
• Common midlife complaints no one talks about 
• Kim’s story: postpartum panic, meds, and a brush-off 
• Learning to advocate for your health 
• Why doctors don’t always know it all 
• Choosing the right provider 
• HRT questions to ask 
• How to start small and build confidence 

Links & resources for this episode:

Fit After 50 Plus Program: 8-Week Nutrition Coaching & Fitness Program for women 50+.

Free cheat sheet: "20 Tips to Crushing Menopause

Join my free weekly newsletter list and get a new high protein recipe sent to your inbox every Thursday.

Find me on social media: Instagram I Facebook I Tiktok

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to her season of Strength, where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy, registered dietician, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman. When it comes to aging like you mean it, this show isn't about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles.

It's about building real strength, physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I'll share straight talking, nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies. And conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin. Once again, menopause isn't an ending. It's only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

Hi there and welcome to her season of Strength. I'm so happy you're here for my very second episode. And. This past week, I've been hearing way too many stories from clients and friends about women not being listened to when it comes to how they're feeling and their healthcare. So since I created this podcast specifically to help women find [00:01:00] their voices and speak up for themselves, I thought it would be a great topic for my second full episode.

So, specifically, I wanna cover about speaking up about symptoms. Whether that's hormone related or any other kind of female related type symptoms being heard and getting the care that you deserve. First of all, my question to you is why do you think that we feel we need to just push through and push down when we aren't feeling ourselves?

I've been doing this continuing education course for my personal training certification by Stacy Sims. She's a PhD, exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist who focuses on sex differences in women's health and performance. In one of the first modules, she talked about the history of women and menopause and why there's been such this negative connotation around it and why women feel, kind of oppressed and why, why we talk about it the way we do.

Calling it, the transition and calling it the change, right? [00:02:00] In the later 18 hundreds, they basically thought women became hysterical and insane after they stopped having periods. They literally called it the death of the womb, and they would put women in insane asylums if they started acting more depressed, more anxious, irritable after menopause.

You can see, kind of through history why we have learned to push down our symptoms and really avoid talking about them. Some common symptoms that I find women tend to hide are fatigue, just poor energy levels. Struggle with sleeping that urine leakage when you're sneezing or laughing or struggling to hold it when you have urgency.

Pee in your pants. Brain fog. That short term memory issues, forgetting names, forgetting dates, forgetting where you put your keys. The lack of libido or lack of sex drive, such a hard thing to talk about or to say out loud. And then [00:03:00] those mental health issues the irritability, the rage, the frustration that comes so quickly and easily.

And then not to mention the depression and anxious anxiety. So there's a stat that says 84% of women said that they felt their symptoms were dismissed or misunderstood by their healthcare provider, especially during midlife. That is just absolutely unacceptable. When I was, seven weeks after I had my middle daughter Courtney.

I was 8, 26 years old. I woke up, about an hour after I had gone to Sleep, just absolutely exhausted and I was in a full blown panic attack I had. Extreme anxiety. I was having intrusive thoughts, like just worrying about all of the awful things that could potentially happen to Courtney.

And then Connor was only 20 months at that time too. And it was so disturbing. I thought, I told my husband, I, I thought I needed to go to the [00:04:00] hospital. I thought I was quote unquote going crazy. I called my OB who. Basically called in a prescription for an antidepressant. I think it was Paxil at the time.

They told me, oh, you can't nurse when you're taking this medication. There was no like, why don't you come in? Why don't we sit down? Why don't we talk about how you're feeling? I think they might have told me to go see a therapist. I think I went and saw a therapist and I was just an absolute mess.

I was so scared. I had these little ones at home. I. I was struggling to function in real life. Not to mention I loved nursing my babies and. When they told me, yep. Just immediately stop nursing or else, or else sacrifice your mental health. Right. And with a mom who had severe depression growing up, I vowed that I would never, ever, put my mental health on my children.

I would take care of that myself. Right. So I stopped nursing [00:05:00] and I was just really sad about that. And then the doctor had told me, but you're not, I don't want you on this medication for very long. This is something we will wean you off of. And he didn't give any specifications. Like, I want you on this for three months, four months, five months, six months, right?

So what did I do after four weeks? I was like, well, this must be long enough. I'm gonna go off of it, right? I didn't, I had no idea. Nobody had given me information that, you know what? These medications, you need a six to eight therapeutic win, six to eight week therapeutic window before you can really, feel.

Normal or feel the full effects. Right. And then beyond that, you just need to kind of get back to yourself and start feeling normal. Try to, those panic attacks are just disabling. They're just the worst thing I think I've ever felt. So needless to say, I went off early, I was a mess, and they had to put me on more medication.

And the one thing it helped me to realize through that experience is that I [00:06:00] deserved better care and clarity and information and education. As someone who, works in the medical field, I am all about why things happen and why, our body acts the way it does. But this really was a starting point of me realizing that, this is my body and I am the only one who is going to truly know my body best and advocate for it in that same way.

And I've really tried to teach my children that as well, but. After, working in the hospital for most of my career as a dietician it helped me to realize, doctors are human. They make mistakes, they miss things they don't specialize in. One doctor cannot do everything.

That's why you have specialists, right? That's why you have somebody who does ear, nose, and throat. You have somebody do who does feet. You have somebody who does, women's productive parts. I mean, I would frequently have doctors in the hospital who would come to me for any kind of nutrition related issues.

'cause they would fully admit, you know [00:07:00] what, I had one course of nutrition in my med school. We need to realize that they are not the end all, be all. And there are some doctors that I think will. Cross those lines and be the people that just give information on absolutely everything, even if maybe they aren't the best person to be giving that information.

But it's up to you. You need to trust what you feel. You need to ask questions, and you need to speak up for yourself. 'cause you are your, you're the only one who's going to, you know yourself best. So first, that can start with finding the right provider. That's so important. Find somebody that you feel comfortable with.

Find somebody that sits with you. You don't feel rushed, who takes time to answer your questions. You don't feel dismissed or gaslit with them. They're not poo-pooing your symptoms because if they are, move on, find a different provider. Especially when it comes to things like [00:08:00] hormone replacement therapy or, anytime you have, issues going on with your female parts. Especially if you're, going through perimenopause and you're just noticing some crazy, period fluctuations, super heavy and whatnot. You need to go to somebody who specializes in that and can help you with that. You need to go to a menopause literate provider, somebody who.

Who knows women. I don't know about you, but I prefer females when female doctors or female healthcare providers because I feel that they intimately understand me and my body and what I'm going through. And I also think they take a little more time, maybe have a little more empathy. Around things.

So here are some questions specifically around if, if you are going through some changes and you wanna ask questions about like, hormone replacement therapy, which is a whole other a whole other podcast that I will do at another time to really talk about kind of the ins and outs of that and maybe what current research is showing, but.

For [00:09:00] today's purposes, some questions that you can ask about hormone replacement therapy or specifically menopause care, would be asking a doctor if they specialize in women's midlife health or menopause care. Next would be, ask 'em what is their approach to hormone therapy. There are some doctors that might tell you, oh, this is I'm against this.

It'll increase your risk of breast cancer, because that's kind of something that they've debunked here recently. And they're also, they're finding all the benefits, of hormone replacement therapy when it comes to women's bone health, when it comes to women's cardiovascular health. And a lot of the other negatives or, increased risk of chronic diseases that we're seeing with menopause.

Next question to ask would be, can you discuss the risks and benefits based on your personal history? Maybe you do have history of your mom or your grandma or your aunt who has had an estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. That's definitely something that you want to let a [00:10:00] provider know.

If you are thinking about that, you wanna ask 'em what labs that they're gonna run before they start treatment, what labs are they gonna check? Or maybe what labs maybe they follow up with or monitor. And will you be able to adjust medications if something doesn't feel right? I think sometimes as women, we start these things and then we just go, Nope, it's not working.

And we stop it, right? Without really going back to the doctor and saying, Hey, I have a question. Like, this didn't feel right, or I suddenly felt a little more irritable. Or, this wasn't helping with my, urinary symptoms. Asking them also, are you open to discussing lifestyle based supports too?

Having see, are there recommendations they can make around, food or diet or exercise or vitamin mineral, correcting vitamin mineral deficiencies or herbal supplements. And if not, do they have recommendations for [00:11:00] referring you to a dietician or a trainer who specializes in perimenopause or menopause like me.

So basically, I just want you to understand that, through this podcast is that you know your body best. They, the doctor doesn't know you best. They're seeing how many other patients in one day and it'd be easy to kind of mix up patients and it's hard for them to get to know you personally, especially if you've only seen 'em a few times.

Right? So, you know your body best. If something doesn't feel right, speak up. Especially when you're sitting, sitting with a doctor. Ask questions, if you struggle with speaking up or if you feel nervous about that. I want you to start small. I want you to share one symptom, maybe with your spouse, maybe with a girlfriend, maybe with a another family member or your sister or your daughter.

Tell 'em about one thing that you are feeling or one thing you are experiencing. And if it's [00:12:00] somebody you know, maybe if it's somebody that knows, has gone through it or knows what you're going through, ask 'em a question. Ask 'em about them. Ask 'em, like, have you gone through this? Have you felt this?

What do you think? That communication is huge when it comes to, us feeling anxiety and sadness just around the changes going on with our body because it can be overwhelming, but you do not have to suffer silently. You have a lot of women who are out there experts and friends and family members who are there for you to help support you.

And if they're, and if they're not, reach out to me. Okay? I'm here to help you. I'm here to support you when it comes to this. So if you listen to this podcast and if you felt it was helpful or empowering, or. Or whatever beneficial to you. I would really appreciate if you would share it with a friend or if you would leave me a review and let me know what you think.

Send me a little email at info@strengthennutrition.com. I would absolutely [00:13:00] love it. I will put the link to my free guide called 20 Tips to Crushing Menopause. If you haven't already grabbed that or if you want, a little cheat sheet for this time in our life. Some both nutrition, exercise, lifestyle and fitness type.

Tips and tricks that you can use easy that you can put into your daily routine. I am also just entering into the season for my Fit after 50 plus program, and that is my full exercise and nutrition program. It's an eight week program here this fall, and, if you aren't already on the interest list, you can jump on the interest list.

I will put the link in the show notes to get a little more information and learn a little bit more about that great program for women over 50. And lastly, I just want you to remember that this is about progress. This is not about perfection. If we make one small change over yesterday, that's beneficial.

That is progress. Okay? So stop [00:14:00] focusing on the black and white. Stop focusing on being perfect or it's all or nothing. Types thinking. This is the long term. We're in this for the long haul. And this is your season of strength. Have a fantastic day.