E48: You Don't Need a New Life | Restoring Capacity in Midlife

Before you make a life-changing decision, ask yourself one question:
Am I seeing my life clearly... or through the lens of depletion?

If you've ever thought:

•  "Maybe I married the wrong person." 
•  "Maybe I need a new career." 
•  "Maybe I've lost myself." 
•  "Maybe my hormones have ruined everything." 

...this episode is for you.

In this special extended episode of Unmute Your Midlife, we are bringing together an entire five-part series exploring one life-changing truth:

Just because something feels true doesn't mean you've found the real root cause.

You'll discover why exhaustion, hormonal changes, chronic stress, caregiver burden, nervous system overload, and even weight loss can dramatically influence the way you experience your relationships, your identity, and your future.

Inside this episode we explore:

   Why symptoms are often signals—not the problem itself
   How estrogen, sleep, and nervous system overload change perception
   Why many women mistake burnout for relationship failure
   The surprising psychological effects of GLP-1 medications
   Why brain fog isn't always a motivation problem
   The hidden concept of capacity that changed my own life
   An introduction to my RED Method for rebuilding energy and leading yourself again

This isn't about convincing you to stay where you are.

It's about making sure you don't make permanent decisions while living in a temporary state of depletion.

Because sometimes...

The life you're trying to escape isn't the problem.

Your capacity is.

Your next step:
If this episode named something you've been carrying quietly start with the 14-Day Energy Pattern Audit. It's the fastest way to see exactly where your energy is leaking so you know what to address first.
👉 Grab the 14-Day Energy Pattern Audit

Ready to go deeper? Book an Unmute Session and let's map out what recalibration actually looks like for you.
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Transcript

Before You Blow Up Your Life...

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever been absolutely convinced that you knew what the problem was? Like maybe you thought, I just need a divorce, or I hate my job, or I've lost myself, my hormones are broken. Maybe you get down on yourself and start thinking, I'm just lazy, I'm just depressed, I probably need to move. Or you might totally throw your hands up and say, I just need a completely new life. And maybe you're right, but maybe you're not. Because one of the biggest mistakes I see women in midlife make is confusing symptoms with root causes. And I'm not just saying that from what I observe in other people, I'm saying that from what I observed in my own walk of life. I want to talk to you about something that could save you years and years of unnecessary suffering. Just because something feels true doesn't mean you've identified the real problem. I'm Joyce McCall. This is Unmute Your Midlife. Let's keep moving.

The Mistake Most Midlife Women Make

SPEAKER_00 0:57

So, like I said, I really do have a sincere concern for midlife women when it comes to this. As a nurse, I've seen it happen over and over, and it almost happened in my own life. As a wife, as a mother, as a woman who's lived through perimenopause, as someone caring for aging parents, I have watched women make decisions, life-altering decisions, from a state of depletion. Depletion is a terrible place from which to make life-altering decisions. Because when you're exhausted and overwhelmed, when your body is inflamed, you're sleep deprived, you're hormonally dysregulated, you're stressed out, you're grieving, or you're just plain old burned out, everything looks like the problem.

Why You're Treating Smoke Instead of Fire

SPEAKER_00 1:40

So let me paint a picture for you. Imagine you're in your kitchen and you see smoke. You smell something's burning, the smoke detector starts squawking at you. You don't walk over and rip the smoke detector out of the wall. I hope. You look for the fire. The smoke isn't the problem. The smoke is the signal. Yet there's so many women out there who are treating smoke. They're not looking for the fire, they just keep treating the smoke. And what do I mean by smoke? I mean the irritability, the brain fog, the resentment, the lack of motivation, emotional reactivity, that feeling of hopelessness. Those are signals. The question is, what fire are they pointing at? We're in this crazy age where there's all this awareness now about menopause, and that's great. Women have have needed to be included in medical conversations for a long time. A woman enters perimenopause, she starts to gain some weight, she starts feeling tired and disconnected, she gets emotionally flat, and so she thinks, My hormones are ruining my life. Now, hormones absolutely matter, but what if she's also, in addition to the hormone dysregulation, what if she's also only sleeping five hours a night? What if she's working 50 hours a week or more? What if she's taking care of her aging parent or both parents, or her parent and her spouse's parents? What if she's taking care of a parent and some kids? What if she's not eating any real food but just drinking caffeine all the time? What if she's never getting outside in the sunshine and touching grass? The hormones might be part of the story, but they're probably not the whole story.

One Doctor's Advice That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 3:18

I've talked about my red method, and there's a reason why sleep is the first pillar of the red method. It's recover, energize, direct. Recovery is so vital. And I've got tons of blog posts and past episodes of this podcast that talk about what happens during sleep. If you aren't recovering, everything else gets distorted. When women consistently sleep poorly, they are going to experience the brain fog, the low motivation, the anxiety and irritability, low libido, emotional reactivity, um, really poor decision making. And they start thinking, I just don't feel like myself anymore. Well, I can 100% relate. I went through this, I was ready to leave my husband, leave my kids, leave my life, and just go start over somewhere on my own. And when I went to the doctor, he said, do not make any rash decisions. You have reactive depression from sleep deprivation because I was only sleeping about three to four hours at night. And yes, there were some other things going on. There were some boundary issues in my marriage that we needed to work on. My kids were kind of at that point where they didn't need me as much, but when they needed me, it was usually for something really big. And I was, I was feeling a little lost and I was mostly frustrated. I was frustrated and exhausted. And that's what sleep deprivation will do to you. I don't know if I've mentioned this. I have narcolepsy, so I take medication to stay awake during the day. But another side effect or or comorbidity with narcolepsy is insomnia. And so I can't take anything for insomnia because then my narcolepsy meds won't work the next day. But sleep hygiene is something that has to be a priority in my life. And thank goodness for my doctor who said, Look, I want you to go on an antidepressant for one month. I'm gonna put you on the lowest dose they have, and you're gonna sleep, and you need to sleep. You need to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. And do not make any decisions about your life until after that month is over with. If you still want to leave your husband after you finally had some good sleep, go right ahead. Don't make that decision right now where you're sleep deprived. And you know what happened? I started taking the medicine. I only took it for a month. I started to sleep, and suddenly my life didn't look so impossible anymore. I was able to have some true heart-to-heart sit-down conversations with my husband about two weeks after I started taking the medicine. You know what I did the first two weeks? I slept. And my sweet husband, I would be sitting in a chair watching a movie, and I'd fall asleep, and he would like make the boys be quiet. He would turn the TV down, he would be like, Let mom sleep. Mom needs her sleep. He walked on eggshells for that month to try and make sure I got caught up on my rest so that I could start acting like a rational woman that he knew deep down I still was. So rest and recovery, so highly important. Okay, another one that I can relate to is midlife women are usually simultaneously caring for their parents or their in-laws, their children, their grandchildren, their spouses. I mean, even though your spouse is an adult, there's things you do for your spouse. There's things your spouse always does for you. That's good. That's that tug and pull that you have in the relationship that's looking out for each other. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. What I'm saying is that it's another source of depletion. But we women, we think we have to take care of everyone. And so it's no wonder that we feel exhausted. Again, the problem isn't that we're weak, the problem is that we get overloaded. You can't continuously pour from yourself without replenishing. You know, empty cup doesn't have anything to pour out.

Could Burnout Be Disguised as Something Else?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Uh sometimes I see burnout masquerading as a bad marriage. You know, there's a lot of women who think that they have fallen out of love. They think their marriage is a problem. And sometimes it is. There are some bad marriages, there are some abusive marriages, but sometimes what they have is just overwhelm and depletion. When your nervous system is overwhelmed, everything feels irritating. Everything feels demanding and heavy, but you assume that it's the relationship itself that's broken. So before you do that, before you assume that and throw in the towel on someone who has vowed to be your partner, ask yourself have I been recovering? How's my sleep? Have I been nourishing myself? Am I eating real food? Have I had any margin for downtime and relaxation? Am I getting together with my friends to let loose and get my oxytocin flowing? Because burnout 100% changes your perception of your reality. Okay, the fifth example I want to talk about today, GLP1s. They are amazing, life-changing medications. I am not against them at all. But some things I've noticed, and I'm gonna do another episode that dives deeper on this, but people, not just women, are losing weight on these GLP1 medications. And there are incredible health benefits as far as you know, the lowered blood pressure, lowered cholesterol, lowered, lowered blood sugar, um, reduced risk of disease. But weight loss alone does not automatically create fulfillment. And I think sometimes people walk into that experience thinking when I lose weight, it's gonna solve everything. It doesn't heal loneliness, it doesn't repair any of your identity loss or identity issues, it doesn't automatically create a sense of purpose in you, it doesn't rebuild uh relationships that have been strained for a long time, it doesn't teach you emotional regulation. So the number on the scale can change, but your underlying struggles will still be there if you're not working through them. You know, there's so many people that have lived in survival mode for so long that they just think that's who they are. It's not okay. Let me tell you, chronic overwhelm is not a personality trait, it's a pattern, and patterns can be identified and interrupted. You were never designed to operate at maximum capacity every day for decades. So when you start feeling like life is out of control, your body is communicating with you. Your nervous system is communicating with you. The question is, are you going to listen? So before you blow up your life, take a pause. Get curious and ask better questions. Instead of saying, you know, what's wrong with me? Say, what is this trying to tell me? Instead of saying, why am I failing? Um, you're not. Ask yourself, which system in my body needs better support? Instead of thinking your whole life is falling apart, ask yourself, am I really seeing the whole picture? You could even ask um people that are close to you, that know you, that see you day in, day out, the ones that go to church with you or work with you, or you know, the other parents on your kids' ball team. I mean, I wouldn't lay out my whole life to them because that could be a mess. But you know, you could say, Do you see something I'm not seeing? Because I feel a little out of control right now. You you never know what a non-biased observer will pick up on. But the important thing to know is that these symptoms that you're going through, they're messengers. Wise women will learn to investigate before they automatically react. So I always give you one thing to implement. This week's challenge is very simple. You're just going to create a symptom inventory. I love these little index cards. Throw them in your pocket or your purse. And as things come up, jot it down. You know, what are you really frustrated about? What and who are you blaming? What feels broken? One of the things that women have the most trouble with is articulating what it is they're really feeling or going through. And so it's hard for other people to understand because they can't communicate it. They can't, they're just like, I just feel wrong. I want to help you find the language to describe what's happening so that your loved ones can help you, so that they can empathize with you better and understand what you're going through. You want to be thinking about as you're doing this inventory over the next week, what else could be contributing to the way you feel? What other things have you not considered, like sleep, stress levels, nutrition, loneliness? Are you getting around other people? Because if it's just you and your four walls, that will drive you up the wall. Are you experiencing caregiver burden from taking care of other people? Are you grieving because you've lost someone recently? Are you experiencing burnout with your job or your responsibilities? How are your hormones? Do you do you feel like they're shifting? Are you taking any HRT? Are you still having periods? Are you moving your body? Because our bodies are made to move. If you're not getting out and walking, if you're not getting to the gym and exercising, if you're not doing intentional load-bearing activities, you're gonna suffer. And the goal this week is not to solve any of this, the goal is just to observe, to get curious, make observations, and jot them down. You're not fixing anything, the job is just to notice it. Midlife is not a season for impulsive decisions, it is a season for deeper understanding. Sometimes the thing that you want to escape isn't really the problem. Sometimes it's just the smoke signal. So when you identify with the real root causes, everything changes for the better.

Before You Decide Your Marriage Is Over...

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Have you ever looked at your husband and thought, oh, I can't stand the way he's chewing? Or why does he have to breathe so loud? Why does everything he does irritate me? Or maybe you've gone even deeper and asked yourself things like, have the two of you grown too far apart? Are you falling out of love? Did you marry the wrong person? Before you panic, I want to ask a different question. What if the problem isn't your husband? What if actually you're exhausted? Now, let me be clear. There are unhealthy marriages. There are relationships that need repair, there are situations involving abuse, addiction, or chronic disrespect. That is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something a lot more common. Good women in generally good relationships who suddenly find themselves feeling irritated, agitated, disconnected, resentful, or emotionally flat, and they don't understand why. I've talked about many times before how women tend to enter midlife carrying more than they ever have before. They've got aging parents, adult children, maybe grandchildren they're helping with, work responsibilities, home responsibilities, community responsibilities. There's that hidden toll of emotional labor that we've discussed before. Then a real doozy enters the picture. Hormone change, specifically estrogen decline. See, people, women, men, healthcare providers, some of them, they don't realize that estrogen affects more than reproduction. You have estrogen receptors in nearly every cell in your body. Sometimes estrogen is the catalyst for some other reaction. But estrogen influences your mood, your sleep, your stress response, your brain function, your emotional regulation, your connection, patience, resilience, so many physiological things. As estrogen fluctuates and then declines, a lot of women notice that they suddenly have way less buffering. Things that used to just roll off their back now can suddenly feel so overwhelming. Minor frustrations start to feel big, their tolerance shrinks, the emotional recovery takes longer. And it's not because they're suddenly being difficult, it's because their physiology is changing. Now, if there's one thing I wish every midlife woman could understand, sleep deprivation alters perception. When you're tired, you become more reactive, less patient, you're not as able to access your empathy, and you're going to be more likely to interpret the situation more negatively, more critically. And when I say critically, I mean you're going to assume the worst of the other person. Probably yourself too, but definitely of the other person. And yeah, there's all these women who are they're trying to evaluate their relationships while they're functioning on fragmented sleep. And remember what I said, you should not make life-altering decisions from a state of depletion because that's like trying to judge the quality of a painting while you're looking at it through dirty glasses. So another factor that comes in is your nervous system. Um I like to talk about what I call nervous system load. Your nervous system is constantly evaluating based on your situation, your surroundings, your mental capacity, your physical state of being. Am I safe? Do I have enough resources? Can I handle what's coming next? So when life becomes really overwhelming, the nervous system starts to shift into uh this protection mode. And when you're in protection mode, you don't connect with other people. If you are able to connect, it definitely feels harder to do. It doesn't just come naturally. Your curiosity disappears. You don't stop and ponder. Well, I wonder why that's happening. Instead, you just jump to conclusions, you make assumptions, your patience just kind of like dwindles to nothing. Your compassion for other people, empathy for other people's side of things, it kind of dissipates. And then everything in your life starts to feel like one more demand. Demand, demand, demand. That's how your brain, that's how your nervous system interprets all of the demands on you, even if it's coming from someone you love. And we have to be careful about resentment, because resentment a lot of times will enter the picture here when you're in this depleted state with a reduced capacity. It's not because your husband just forgot one thing. It's because you're carrying 50 things. You're managing the appointments, the meals, the grocery shopping, the schedules. If there's any caregiving involved, it's probably you, that emotional labor that is hard to account for. You know, you care about what everyone thinks of the Christmas card that you sent out, or the fact that you didn't send one out. You care about whether or not your family participates in the homeowner's association or whether you were able to bring a side dish to your small group's potluck. Obviously, I'm speaking in blanket terms. I know there are couples where those things matter more to him than to her. And there are some couples where they don't have time for any of that stuff. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. If this, if some of the things I say to you don't apply to you, that's okay. Just go back to the main point or the goal of what we're trying to get to the root of. Okay. Give it me a little grace if you can. But my point is, no one sees the full load that the woman is carrying in the family. Eventually, her nervous system starts to say, I cannot carry one more thing. So the resentment isn't always about the other person, it's more about the weight of what you're carrying. So we've all got these little devices, right? And there are days when you're really watching that battery meter because you know you're not going to be home for several hours, and your battery just keeps getting lower and lower and lower. And you're trying to figure out how am I going to recharge this so that my phone doesn't go dead before all of my events and appointments are done. Well, let's think of your own bandwidth that way. Think of your emotional capacity the same way you think of uh your phone's battery. When you're fully charged, you have capacity. You can juggle all kinds of things, you can handle whatever life throws at you. You know, when your phone is fully charged, you can have every app open. You can be talking on the phone, you can be watching YouTube videos while you're reading your email. But then what happens when the battery starts to get low? We start closing apps because we've got to save our battery. Bingo. When your capacity starts to get low, you can't be patient anymore. That's another app that has to run, right? So, what what other apps are you gonna close? You're gonna close down your flexibility, you're gonna close down your kindness, you might close down your desire to connect with other people. Oh, we're on an airplane mode right now because we are running out of capacity. I know that there's plenty of women that I've encountered in my world who have said, I just don't love him anymore. But a more accurate statement would have probably been, I don't have anything left to give him. Those are two different problems. I remember the title of this was Do I hate my husband or am I exhausted? So before you decide that your marriage is the true root issue, ask yourself, how am I sleeping? How stressed am I? How much caregiving am I giving to others? How much emotional labor am I carrying? Am I trying to get my relationship to compensate for my exhaustion? Have I lost connection with myself? You need to ask yourself those questions because the answers matter. You need clarity on what is happening in your life, on what is causing you to feel the way you're feeling. I always give you one lever to pull each week, one thing to try and implement. So here it is. You're gonna do your own little miniature energy audit. I know I've got the energy pattern audit that you can do that's like got your little checklist and everything, but this is uh less formal. This is just a little self-checkup for yourself. For seven days, keep track of your sleep quality, your stress level, what's your energy like, what's your mood like? I want you to jot down things like, did you get irritated? What was happening to irritate you? When you when you do feel irritated, stop and think, how did I sleep last night? Have I eaten today? How many glasses of water have I had? You know, the basic things. Just be observant of what's happening when these overwhelming emotions come up because we're looking for patterns. We're not looking for perfection, we're not trying to fix anything. We're just looking for patterns because awareness creates options. I used to always hear the phrase awareness is curative. Yes, with some things. With this, I'm gonna say no. Just knowing about it and just knowing what's causing it is not gonna fix it. But awareness is gonna give you options because right now you can try different things. You're oh, I'm gonna try this supplement, oh, I'm gonna try this new practice, oh, I'm gonna try this meditation technique. You're just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. But when we stop and we do a purposeful, observant data collection on ourselves, we can identify what the patterns really are. Then we have options. Then we know, well, if it's this, then I can definitely do that thing to fix that pattern and then see what life is like. If you want to do just a less formal checkup on yourself, just track how's your sleep? Are you eating? And when you get like an overwhelming emotional feeling, jot it down. Like what was happening, and then what was your state of being up to that point regarding did you get sleep the night before? Had you eaten that day? Had you been drinking any water? Had people been piling and piling and piling on you, and this was like the straw that broke the camel's back. Just keep a little journal for seven days. That'll give you enough data that you can like start to pick out some of the patterns. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself in midlife is refusing to make permanent decisions while you are in a temporary state of depletion. Maybe your marriage does need attention. Maybe it needs some repair. But before you assume that you have fallen out of love, make sure you're not just running on empty.

What Happens When Food Noise Goes Quiet?

SPEAKER_00 22:19

What if losing your appetite changed more than just your eating habits? What if it changed your whole relationship with pleasure, with comfort, with reward, with desire, with yourself? We're going to talk about something that has fascinated me, both as a nurse and as a midlife woman, watching the explosion of GLP1 medications. And let me be clear from the beginning: this is not an argument for or against GLP1 medication. For many people, these medications have been or can be life-changing. They've improved their blood sugar control, they've reduced the food noise, they've supported them through significant weight loss, improved their overall metabolic health, which is going to improve their long-term longevity. So this episode is not about whether or not you should take them. What I want to focus on today is understanding that when you change your appetite, you may also be changing other things, especially up here in your brain. And if you are considering these medications or you're already taking these medications, then you deserve to have all of the information. So over the last couple of years, as GOP1s are being used by more and more people, I have heard women describe something kind of fascinating. You know, as a girl who grew up with diet culture in the 80s and 90s and who was an athlete and in dance and always trying to watch my weight. What do we know? The minute you start a diet, that's when somebody has a birthday party and they bring cake, or that's when your mom invites you over for a homemade chocolate pudding. So it's not just that people are saying that they're eating less. I'm hearing people say things like, I don't even think about food anymore. Like it is a non-issue. I don't have cravings. Sometimes I completely forget to eat. And I might even hear some of them say, like some of the wine moms, oh yeah, I don't really even feel like I need that anymore. They don't enjoy the other things either, like shopping. They don't feel that pull to go spend an hour wandering around the aisles of Target or combing through the clearance racks at Kohl's. But then sometimes I'll even notice them say that they're just not that interested in anything anymore. Like they don't just lose their propensity to overeat, they lose the propensity to overshop, overindulge in other things. They don't just lose their interest in food, they might lose their interest in in sex, they might lose their interest in hanging out with friends, with doing hobbies that they used to really enjoy. So all of that got me wondering what happens when the food noise goes quiet? Because let's be honest, food was never just food. Food wasn't just feeding your body. I mean, we don't just eat when we're hungry. We eat when we're celebrating. We eat when we're sad. We eat when we're bored. We don't come home from work after a stressful day and grab a bag of chips or a bag of jet puffed marshmallows because we need the nutrients in those items. We do it because we're looking for relief. Food is woven into our lives. It's comfort, it's connection, it's tradition, it's culture, it's a reward, it's entertainment, it's a hobby for some people. It's a way to manage stress or get pleasure. And sometimes even it's just a routine. You don't eat because you're hungry, you eat because, well, it's lunchtime. I'm supposed to eat now. So for a lot of women, food becomes one of the reliable ways to trigger dopamine release throughout their day. And so when your appetite changes dramatically because you're taking this medication that affects your dopamine, it makes sense that other experiences are affected as well. Okay, let's get just semi-nerdy here and talk about dopamine. Dopamine is your feel-good chemical, but that's not entirely an accurate way to describe it. Dopamine is more about anticipation, motivation, seeking, wanting. It's part of what drives us towards rewards or pleasure or novelty, towards experiences that are going to make us feel good. Food activates those pathways. For some people, shopping activates those pathways. Alcohol can activate those pathways. Social media, or even uh video games, you know, for boys, scrolling for everyone. There have been tons of studies that show that that kind of engagement activates those pathways, those dopamine pathways. Achievement can activate those pathways. You know, that's why some people are so motivated to achieve because they want the dopamine hit. Generally, human beings, we are wired to seek reward. That's part of our survival. And it's also part of how we experience joy.

The Hidden Cost of Weight Loss Nobody Talks About

SPEAKER_00 26:52

So the reason all of that matters is because there have been reports from people who take the GLP1 medications that sometimes the changes go far beyond food. Researchers are now actively exploring those effects, but some of these individuals are reporting that they have a reduced interest in alcohol, a reduced compulsion in shopping. They have noticed reduced impulsive behaviors, if that's something that they struggle with before. And then just reduced cravings in general for anything that you might have a craving for. I know we probably still have a lot to learn about why this happens and how significant it is, but it's definitely raising some fascinating questions about reward pathways and human behavior. Because think about it, if the volume gets turned down on the form of one reward system, then what else is changing? So here is a question that I think more women need to ask. If food isn't providing comfort anymore, then what are you feeling now? And I think even if you're not using a GLP one, but you are losing weight or have lost weight, this is still something that could be healthy for you to examine in your own life. Because as we said, food is a way of self-soothing. So if we're not eating as much food as we used to, then we're not self-soothing with that method now. So what's taking its place? How are you getting your comfort if you're not getting it from food? I mean, food did a lot of different emotional work for people. Sometimes it soothes loneliness, sometimes it soothes stress, sometimes it soothes boredom or give you an excuse to take a break. I mean, sometimes we use it as a reward after carrying everyone else's load all day. You come home, you're like, I deserve that. Fill in the blank, whatever your favorite treat was. So when you take that coping mechanism out of the picture or the need for it becomes quieter, then the emotions that were previously buffered by feeding our face, they're going to become more noticeable. This reminds me of when my dad gave up smoking and he said he'd be um standing around with the guys on their smoke break. He didn't know what to do with his hands. Like he didn't miss the nicotine, he didn't miss the cigarette anymore. He definitely didn't enjoy the smell of the cigarettes anymore, but he still didn't know what to do with his hands. And this was before they had fidget spinners and fidget rings and stuff like that. And so we were all trying to figure out what to tell him to do with his hands in those situations. So while everyone is talking about losing pounds, nobody's really talking about losing a relationship. I mean, if you kind of had a relationship with food, it was a routine, a comfort, an identity. And when you shed a large amount of weight and you shed those eating habits, it's almost like you're losing a companion. Because for some women, you know, food has been a companion for decades. It's been their Friday night treat. Say the glass of wine after work, the reward after a hard day, comfort during grief. So when those rituals change, there can be this unexpected adjustment period. I mean, maybe even grief, you know, because it is a loss. You might miss some of the things. I was really getting into making these decorated cookies. And now I kind of only do it when there is a special occasion or someone requests them from me. I don't just do them all the time for the fun of it because I can't really eat them. I could, I can, I have the option, but like I don't want to sit and eat a dozen cookies. And so I don't want to make them and have them sitting around all the time. And I don't like how all that sugar makes me feel. Like it literally makes me feel sick. And so this hobby that I was getting really good at that people looked forward to, you know, getting my cookies, now I'm not making them very much. I mean, it's been a couple of years now, but initially I was like, Oh, I kind of miss making my cookies, or I miss, you know, not always having cookies in the fridge to pull out and give to somebody, you know. And that's that's a silly thing. But then again, it's not because I didn't even really realize until I started doing this, you know, deep thinking about all the subject of today's episode that it was something that I kind of lost. And then you think, well, what are you filling your time with instead? You can be grateful for your improved health. I am definitely grateful for my improved health, for my increased energy, for knowing that I am doing right by my body so that I can have a better long-term, you know, longevity, that I'll be able to keep my independence, that I will be able to prevent dementia. I mean, maybe, maybe not, but I'm doing all the things I can that I know of to prevent cancer, dementia, the things that I've seen attack my family that I don't want to go through. And so I am grateful for my improved health. I am grateful that the food noise isn't such a struggle anymore. But I can also acknowledge that something is different. Kind of like both things can be true at the same time. Because I do find myself thinking, like when there's a special occasion, you know, I used to go maybe to the bakery. If I didn't make my own cookies for them, I would go to the bakery and get one of those cute fancy cupcakes. And now I don't do that because I think, well, I don't want someone to give that to me because, you know, I don't want to eat that stuff on a regular basis because I don't want to poison my body. And so if I don't want to do that to myself, I'm certainly not going to do it to the other people I care about. So I have to come up with other ideas like, well, would they want a book? Would they want a journal? Would they want an experience? And then you used to go out for ice cream as a family or snow cones. And now that's like, well, do I want to do that? How much sugar haven't had today? Not because I'm being like legalistic about my weight or anything, but because I'm being protective about my brain. I know what sugar does, excess sugar. I know what excess sugar does. So you have to rethink how you're gonna celebrate things. It's definitely food for thought. Which brings me back around full circle. So many women who have struggled with their weight, they think to themselves, when I lose weight, everything is gonna be better. I'll be happier, I'll be more confident, I'll feel more fulfilled, I'll be more loved. They might think I'm gonna be more secure, I'm definitely gonna be more successful. Then the weight comes off and they discover something really surprising. They're still them. They're still themselves. It's the same person. The same skinny person was inside the bigger body. They probably still have the same insecurities, they may still have some of the same relationship patterns, they may still have some of the same emotional wounds that they had before. Weight loss changes the body, but they have to do identity work if they want to change their life. Just because something feels true doesn't mean that you've identified the root cause. If you're experiencing major shifts in your appetite, in your desire, in your motivation, in your reward or your pleasure while you're going through weight loss, with or without a GLP one, but especially with, get curious. Observe, you know, I like to look for patterns. Take some time to journal, even if that's not your thing. Make sure that you're reflecting on the changes that are happening. Don't rush to conclusions. Don't assume that every change means something is wrong. Don't assume that every emotional shift is going to be permanent. And last of all, allow yourself some time to understand what you're experiencing. Grab a piece of paper or your journal. I want you to journal on this one question. What am I hoping weight loss will solve? Now be honest. Don't just write what sounds good or what you think someone else would want to read. Because you're the only one reading it. But write what's true. I mean, how are you hoping to feel? Are you hoping to feel confident? Are you hoping to feel more visible, more desirable? If you want to be more desirable, then to who? Your husband? Everyone? Are you thinking it's going to make you feel safe or more accepted? More worthy? Are you thinking it's going to give you more energy? The reason you want to ask yourself these questions and know what it is you need, what you're looking for, because sometimes the answer that you're looking for has very little to do with the number on the scale. And you need to understand that. Remember, the weight loss changes the outside appearance, but identity work is what's going to change the things going on inside. Again, GLP1 medications, they are changing lives. For many people, they're providing tools that never existed before. But every tool comes with a ripple effect. And the more we understand those ripple effects, the more empowered we become. Weight loss might be the most visible change, but identity is your biggest change. And if this midlife season is teaching us anything, it's that the goal is not just to shrink your body. The goal is to understand yourself.

Why Brain Fog Isn't What You Think

SPEAKER_00 35:08

We're talking about brain fog, decision fatigue, and emotional exhaustion and how they have nothing to do with motivation. Have you ever walked into a room, forgotten why you're there? Duh, we all have. Do you open your phone and you immediately forget why you opened your phone? And so you just start scrolling instead. Or you're reading something, a book, newspaper, magazine, you read the same paragraph over and over, and then you're like, why can I not comprehend what I just read? I think my worst one that I hate dealing with is I cannot remember names anymore. If I see someone and I like they have a name tag near their face, that does help me remember their name better. But still, people that I've known for years, I'll look right at that. I'm like, I can't remember their name. I know who they are. I can see their name. I just can't read it. I don't know how to describe it. Like, it's there, it's on the tip of your tongue. So elusive. When that happens, we can start to think, what is wrong with me? Am I lazy? Am I losing my mind? Am I losing my edge? Is this just aging? Maybe none of those things are true. Maybe you're just overloaded. One of the most damaging stories women tell themselves in midlife is I should be able to handle this. But let's look at the reality. You're managing your health, your spouse, your household, your children, your aging parents, your work, your calendar, medications, appointments, responsibilities, your future. And somehow you've convinced yourself that all of this should be easy. So I live in Tornado Alley, and a lot of people have generators for their houses so that when the power goes out, they can still keep a few things running. Interesting thing happens with these generators. You know, you can get like a whole house generator, or you can get one of those small gas-powered ones. Well, you can't plug your whole house into the gas-powered one. You can plug a few things in. So what happens? You plug in, say, your deep freeze because you don't want to lose your food. Well, you're not gonna be able to add your TV, your computer, your wireless internet. You know, you're not gonna be able to add all those things because the more you add to the generator, the more you bog it down, it's gonna run out of gas faster, or it's just not gonna work at all. That's kind of how your midlife brain gets. Like it can only power up so many things at one time. The more demands you put on your brain, the more performance drops, the more things get forgotten, things take longer to accomplish. And it's not because your brain is broken, it's just that your system is overloaded. It doesn't have anything to do with your intelligence or your motivation. The problem is completely bandwidth, capacity, trying to stretch something farther than it was meant to go. As women, we tend to carry a lot of invisible weight. Um, a lot of our responsibilities, they're not physical, they're mental. You know, we have to remember to pick up the birthday cards, what time to be at the family gathering, whose birthday is this month, what do they like for gifts? What's so-and-so's favorite color? We've got to remember our appointments, our spouse's appointments, our kids' appointments if they still live with us, our parents' appointments if we're the ones taking them. We're usually the ones that have to write the thank you cards or send out the Christmas cards. We're the ones who typically do the meal planning and the grocery shopping. We might even do the bill paying, you know, the setting up the auto draft or the writing out the checks, whichever way you still do it. These are all things that we've got to take care of before our workday even starts. This is emotional labor. It's a cognitive load, it's invisible labor, and sometimes it is exhausting. So here's one of the reasons why we struggle with brain fog in midlife. And it's funny because I see some men's struggle with brain fog too. Brain fog doesn't necessarily mean something is physically wrong. I mean, sometimes it does, but a lot of times it's a signal. It's a signal that your brain is processing more than it has the capacity to handle. So you'll notice some memory slips or attention sliding. Um, your focus will weaken, your decision making slows down, you just have trouble pulling the trigger on some things, your patience might shrink, suddenly everything feels a little bit harder. It's not because you're failing, it's because you're full. Capacity. You may have heard me talk about before how decision fatigue is a very real thing. Every decision requires energy. What should I wear? What should we eat? Should I call mom? Should I buy that? How should I answer this text message? Should I say yes to that event or no? I mean, we make hundreds of decisions every day. And eventually, when you're trying to remember all these things and juggle all these things, your little brain starts to conserve energy. And you'll notice it because it looks like procrastination, avoidance. You might prefer scrolling over doing what you're really supposed to be doing. You might catch yourself feeling really numb about things because you're just done feeling like there's no capacity left. So you have no feelings left to offer. So you're just numb. You could struggle with some indecision. That's not laziness, it's not indifference, that's depletion. But a lot of people don't realize cognitive overload doesn't just affect your productivity, it affects your identity. You start thinking that you're just not disciplined enough, you just don't care enough, you lack motivation, that you're losing your capability, that you're falling apart, you're losing your value. And I can't stress enough that those conclusions are very inaccurate. None of those things that you're telling yourself about you are true. The truth is actually much simpler and much less demeaning to yourself. The truth is you have been carrying too

Improving Capacity with a Nightly Brain Dump

SPEAKER_00 40:26

much for too long. So this is part four in a series, and this is definitely going to connect with next week's finale. But this week is really focusing on capacity. Capacity is your ability to think clearly and adapt, to solve problems, to regulate your emotions, to make decisions, to love yourself, to lead yourself. And unfortunately, capacity is not unlimited. There is a ceiling. So when your capacity shrinks, everything becomes harder, including things that used to be easy. I have one simple thing for you. It's called a mental unload. You're gonna need, hopefully, you have gotten yourself a notebook by now, because I'm always telling you to journal things, right? If you don't have a notebook, grab some index cards. Because every night when you settle down to do your bedtime routine, oh, you take five minutes. And I want you to jot down everything that's an open loop in your brain. Everything. Tasks that you're trying to remember, worries that you're carrying, reminders that you need to tell yourself, appointments that you've got to keep track of, conversations that you need to have or that you need to that you had and you need to tell your spouse about, or you know, whatever. That's just another category. Conversations, ideas that you have, any responsibilities that are weighing on you. Basically, you're gonna do a brain dump. Five minutes. Everything that's floating around in there, it's gonna keep you awake that's going to be a suck on your energy once you jot it down. It's like you're emptying it out of your head onto the page because your brain was designed to generate information, but not necessarily to store endless amounts of it. If you if you need a picture in your mind as you're doing this, picture as you jot these things down on paper that you're closing a tab. You know, are if you're like me and you get on the internet and you search all these things and you end up having like all these tabs open across your Internet Explorer or your Google search or whatever you're using. And I always hate to close the tabs because I'm like, well, I'm not quite done with that one. I have a lot of bookmarks too, because eventually I do close the tabs, but I make a bookmark so that I go find it again. That's what we're doing here. The brain dump is you're making the bookmark for the thought. Okay. So as you jot it down on paper, you're closing a tab. What happens when you close a tab? You free up capacity. Now suddenly a computer is not having to process that page anymore. You're creating space. You're creating space for creativity, for better patience, for more connection with other people. You're creating space for clarity in your thinking and for joy in your, where do we feel joy in your spirit? Most importantly, you are clearing up space for you so that you can hear your own thoughts and feel your own feelings. Because you need to know you're not lazy, you're not weak, you're not losing your mind, but you might be carrying a cognitive load that no human being was designed to carry, at

The Day Everything Finally Made Sense

SPEAKER_00 43:11

least not indefinitely. So, our goal, we're not trying to become more productive, we're trying to become more supported. I want to talk about a season in my life when I thought everything was wrong. I thought my marriage was beyond repair, I thought my body was beyond repair, something was wrong with my motivation, something was wrong with my energy. Just overall, something was wrong with me. And maybe you've had a season like that too. The kind where you look around your life and you think, I just can't live like this. I don't recognize my own life. Or you might think, man, I wish we could go back to 10 or 15 years ago. Things were pretty good back then. When you get to that point, you start to wonder if everything needs to change. Luckily, I got to a point where something shifted and I realized it wasn't my life, it was my capacity. So somewhere in the last decade, I really Got to a point where I was struggling. Perimenopause had arrived, but I didn't know that. I hadn't been educated about perimenopause and knew that someday this thing called menopause was going to happen to me, but that's about all I knew. All I knew was that it's the point in time where you quit having your period. You might have some hot flashes. You might have to carry around a fan like the little grandmas. That's all I knew. And I was a nurse, but I didn't work in women's health, so I didn't know about it. And to be fair, most of the doctors don't know about it because it's not something they really get a lot of education on during their residencies or during med school. I know some of that is changing now. I really hope that they don't limit their efforts of educating providers to providers that are in women's health because it affects all areas of your life, not just your urology and your gynecology. So primary care providers definitely need to know about it. Neurologists need to know about it. orthopedics need to know about it. Because, like, for instance, they were going to send me for carpal tunnel surgery and I ended up going to PT and OT. And the thing that really, really helped me was when I got on hormone replacement therapy, suddenly my hands got better and I avoided the surgery altogether. But if I hadn't pushed to get on HRT, then I wouldn't have had improvement and I would have had surgery. And would that surgery have even fixed it? Or would I have had another joint problem, you know, six months later? It's all interconnected. That's my point. That's my soapbox for that. Back to capacity. You know, my sleep wasn't very good. I was not sleeping. And we all know how important sleep is. My energy was kind of dwindling. Like I was one of those people who just go, go, go, go, go, and just do so many things. And suddenly I like had no motivation to do anything because I just knew it was going to drain the life out of me. I was definitely in a state of grief because I'd lost my dad and my sister. My children had, you know, first they hit high school and didn't eat me as much, and then they like moved completely out of house. And so I was an empty nester before I was ready to be. And I was navigating the empty nest. And then we brought my mother-in-law in to live with us because of her dementia. It was just so many changes. And I started burying myself in work because I liked being productive. Productivity was my identity. Achievement was my identity. And I was definitely succeeding in that area in the workforce. But I also like started gaining all this weight. And I've always been an athlete, and I could not muster up the stamina to do a long bike ride. I was started having heat intolerance because I had to go on this cholesterol medicine. Just so many things hitting me at once. And I really felt like I was kind of fading, like I was turning invisible. I was definitely feeling a little lost and disconnected. So what you should learn from my story is that there's a dangerous thing that happens when you're depleted. You start telling yourself these stories in your head. And the stories in our head are always, almost always, worse than reality. So we start telling ourselves that our marriage is a problem or that our body is the problem, our job is the problem, our family is the problem, aging is the problem. We always try to put a label on the source of the problem. And when you're really exhausted, everything starts to look like evidence to support your theory. Every inconvenience becomes more proof. Every frustration becomes another confirmation. And every challenge becomes another reason to believe that you have built the wrong life. So let's define capacity. It's very important we speak the same language, right? Capacity is your ability to adapt, to recover, to think clearly, to regulate your emotions, to handle stress, to connect with the people in your life, to make decisions, to lead yourself. Capacity is that space in between what life demands and what you're able to carry. When that space shrinks or disappears, everything feels overwhelming. I mean, let's imagine you're carrying a backpack. Like, oh, this is cool. It's very nice. Don't didn't we all love to get a new backpack at the beginning of the school year when we were growing up? So then let's throw a few responsibilities in there, a few obligations, a few challenges. Okay, well, it's still pretty manageable. I mean, I feel it's there, but I can handle it. And then life starts adding more weight. Marriage, children, career, aging parents, health concerns, financial stress, maybe some grief. If you start losing people, the hormone shifts. Oh, well, well. One by one, life keeps adding things to your backpack. And those things, they start to feel like bricks in there, not little pieces of paper, heavy bricks. The problem isn't that you're weak. The problem is that you didn't realize how heavy the backpack was getting. And neither did anyone else around you. And so we make this big mistake in midlife as women that we assume that because something feels heavy, it must be wrong. Heavy doesn't always mean wrong. Sometimes heavy just means overloaded. You know, if something is wrong, it requires

The Framework That Changed My Midlife

SPEAKER_00 48:37

escape or change. But when something is overloaded, what it needs is support. So my experience, my recovery through it, this is how I developed the red method. Wasn't created in a boardroom, wasn't created by a bunch of clinicians. This was created because I wanted a framework that would help me rebuild my capacity. So through trial and error, I came up with this. Red is for recover, E is for energize, D is for direct. Pretty much everything that you need to thrive in midlife falls into one of those three categories. They all matter. So recover. You cannot outthink sleep deprivation. You can't mindset your way out of chronic exhaustion. You can't use positive thinking to overcome a nervous system that never gets to rest. Recovery always comes first. The next one is energize. Your body needs inputs, it needs protein, it needs fiber, it needs movement, needs all the aspects of nutrition, including supplementation. It needs support, it needs fuel because your body can't create energy from emptiness. So movement, exercise, kind of falls in both energize and direct because sometimes we exercise as a way to build our body, to improve our bone and muscle structure. And sometimes we exercise as a way to regulate our nervous system. Direct is where your leadership lives. That's your stress management, your boundaries, your emotional regulation, your community. You need your time with your girlfriends to go have your girls' night out because when women get together and are able to talk, it reduces cortisol levels, it um causes a spike of oxytocin levels and gives you your happy hormones. It's good for you. So I give you permission to have a girl's night out. Just don't go overdo it on the alcohol because then you're gonna feel bad the next day and you're gonna undo all the good that you just did. Direct includes it includes movement when you're doing it for emotional regulation. It includes making intentional choices,

Before You Decide What Needs to Change

SPEAKER_00 50:29

not because life is gonna get easier, but because you're gonna be better equipped to handle it. So one thing that surprised me was that circumstances in my life did not magically disappear. Nothing changed. The environment did not change. I changed. My mindset changed. I still have all the same responsibilities I did before. I'm still caregiving, I still have challenges, I still grieve the loss of people when I lose them. I still miss my dad and my sister. I'm still aging every day, like the rest of you. I still face uncertainty. But I carry all those challenges differently because my capacity is different. When your capacity grows, your perspective changes, hope returns, patience increases, your relationships improve, the ability to make decisions becomes so much clearer, and life becomes manageable again. And that's the work that I do inside Unmute Your Midlife. I lead other women through these three phases so they can stop negotiating their needs. They can learn how to recalibrate themselves, get their energy back, get their authoritative voice back. They can learn how to lead themselves with confidence. It's not about weight loss. Although if you need to lose weight, you might lose some weight. It's about so much more than that. I want you to answer this question. Where is my capacity leaking? Not, is my life broken? But where is my capacity leaking? You know, is it your sleep? Is it your stress? Is it your nutrition? Is it boundaries or a lack of boundaries? Is it that you're being kept in isolation? Is it that you're overburdened with caregiving responsibilities? Is it that you have grief that you're not working through in a healthy way? Are you overcommitted? Start there because awareness creates options. So this whole series began with a warning. Don't make permanent decisions based on a temporary state of being. And I want to leave you with a final thought. Before you assume that your life needs to be completely dismantled, try and ask yourself whether you actually need to have your capacity rebuilt. Sometimes the life you're trying to escape is not the problem. So you may escape and you go off and you try to start over, but the problem went with you because the problem wasn't your life, the problem was your capacity. You can't carry everything with an empty tank. And when you restore your capacity, when you do the identity work that you need to do to be a leader of yourself, you might discover that you didn't need a new life, that you already have a great life. But what you needed was a stronger version of you to live that life that you have. That's what was true for me. That might be what's true for you. If you're ready for structured implementation, unmute your midlife is where we do this kind of work. You can schedule a free unmute session put in by the best plan for you. And while you're here, click on whichever link to video pops up for more awesomeness. But I'll be back with more new stuff next week. Thanks for listening.