
Chaos to Calm
As a woman over 40, you’re in the busiest phase of your life and probably starting to wonder WTH hormones?! Maybe you’ve figured out that these changing hormones are messing with your mood, metabolism and energy. You want to know, is it perimenopause and will it stay like this (or get worse)? Host Sarah the Perimenopause Naturopath helps you understand that this chaos doesn’t have to be your new normal, while teaching you how to master it in a healthy, sustainable and permanent way. Explore topics: like hormones, biochemistry and physiology (promise it won’t be boring!), along with what to do with food as medicine, nutrition, lifestyle and stress management. All interspersed with inspiring conversations with guests who share their insights and tips on how to live your best life in your 40s and beyond. You can make it to menopause without it ruining your life or relationships! Subscribe to Chaos to Calm on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you don’t miss an episode! New episodes released every Sunday.
Chaos to Calm
The messy midlife: why your body feels so different in perimenopause
Feeling like a stranger in your own body lately?
It’s not just "getting older" — and it’s definitely not "all in your head."
In this episode, I’m breaking down what’s really happening inside your body during perimenopause. We’ll talk about why it’s not just about your hormones dropping, but about the chaos and flux happening behind the scenes. You'll learn how your metabolism, mood, and body are changing, even when you feel like you’re doing “all the right things.” And I’ll explain why calories and cardio aren’t cutting it anymore — and what your body actually needs now.
Key Takeaways:
- The hormone shifts that cause more chaos (not just decline) in perimenopause
- Why your body’s ability to adapt is the real game-changer
- A high-level strategy to help you downgrade the hormonal rollercoaster without overhauling your whole life
Sneak Peek:
“You’re not broken. You’re in the messy middle — and with the right support, you can help your body adapt, thrive, and feel good again.”
Links and resources mentioned in the episode:
- Episode 3: The estrogen roller coaster
- Episode 81: Estrogen excess
- Episode 4: The progesterone decline
- Episode 67: The appetite hormones messing with your hunger
- Episode 53: Insulin’s role in perimenopause
- Episode 42: Cortisol
- Learn more about
Send us a question for the FAQs segment or your feedback, we’d love to hear from you.
Find out more about Sarah, her services and the Freebies mentioned in this episode at https://www.ThePerimenopauseNaturopath.com.au
- The Perimenopause Decoder is the ultimate guide to understanding if perimenopause hormone fluctuations are behind your changing mood, metabolism and energy after 40, what phase of perimenopause you're in, and how much longer you may be on this roller coaster for.
- For more, follow on Instagram at @theperimenopausenaturopath.
WORK WITH SARAH THE PERIMENOPAUSE NATUROPATH:
- PerimenoGO (because who wants to pause anyway?!) A self-guided program to help you reverse weight gain, boost energy, and reclaim your mood — without extreme diets or cutting carbs. Perfect for women who want a realistic plan that fits around kids, work, and actual life.
- The Chaos to Calm Method: A 1:1 personalised program for women who want a more personalised plan and support — especially if you’ve got 10kg+ to lose, other health issues, or feel like your body’s just stuck. Includes comprehensive blood testing and analysis, Metabolic Balance ...
If I were to tell you that your experience of perimenopause isn't just about your hormone levels dropping, but actually about how well your body is able to adapt and adjust to those changing hormones, would that shift or change how you approach it? Mm-hmm. Stay with me because at the end of this episode, I'm going to share a really simple way to start supporting your body so it can better adapt to all these hormone shifts.
And it doesn't involve supplements, hormone tests, or calorie counting or restriction. Now, one of my PerimenoGO clients recently said to me that they wish they'd known this five years ago because it makes so much sense of why everything that they'd tried. None of it was working. And now for the first time in years, they felt like they knew what their body needs were able to give it.
And then were noticing changes. Feeling more like their old self less weight gain, or they're able to stop the weight gain and reverse it, and less of the mood changes and low energy. If we haven't met, hi, I'm Sarah, the perimenopause naturopath, and I've helped hundreds of women over 40 navigate perimenopause with confidence.
Feel great in their bodies and reclaim their mood and energy. So if you are feeling like you're changing hormones or hijacking your mood, energy, and weight, and you want to change that in a holistic way, then this is the place for you, my friend, because each episode I share with you my views on what's happening in your body, why you're feeling the way that you are, and how you can change that with actionable advice to help you move from chaos to calm and feel more comfortable in your body.
So welcome friend to episode number 89 of Chaos to Calm. I've had a nice little break in April and over Easter. Well, when I say a break, I've had a break from podcasting, but certainly not from life. Life has been very busy for me and my kids, and we've been here, there and everywhere on some fun homeschool camps, visiting family helping and our volunteer work that we do through for our lacrosse club.
It's been a very busy month and kind of looking forward to May and settling back into term two and our routine and quieter life. So today in episode number 89, I am actually, I'm sharing what's actually going on in your body in perimenopause because lots of you have been told, oh, it's just perimenopause, but no one's actually explained what that means.
What's going on, how long is it going to last? And if that's you, you're definitely not alone and you're in the right place here because in this episode I'm gonna take back those. Layers and of, and tell you what's actually going on in perimenopause. Not to scare you, but to show you that what you're feeling is explainable, manageable, figureoutable, and totally valid as well.
And so I really, I'm all about helping you understand what's going on. Yeah. And what you need to do about it. And I love explaining to my clients why they've been feeling the way that they have and what's behind it. Because when we understand what's behind things and sure, yeah.
Perimenopause hormone changes is totally part of lots of what's going on for us. But like I was telling a client from the chaos to calm method, my one-to-one high ticket offer today. Yeah my high support offer there. What I was telling her was that when we understand what's going on, why we've been feeling the way that we are, but also why then you need to make these changes.
It's so much easier to make them and to stay with them. And so I'm really passionate about helping you understand what's going on for you, what you need to do about it, and why that's really why this podcast exists. So I am gonna take you right through the process today. And I do have a more in depth, free training on this.
Like why you are gaining weight after 40, the four hormone shifts that you can't ignore. I'll leave the link for that in the show notes so you can go and watch it. If you do want to go a bit deeper here in understanding what to do, why you know, why you've been feeling that way and what to do about it. So let's start with the basics.
Perimenopause. It's the time of transition that leads up to menopause. So menopause is technically that moment when you've gone 12 months without a period. Perimenopause can go for many years before that, like anywhere from two to 12 years. So if we count back from the average age of menopause is 51, you could be starting in your late thirties.
Your early forties, you're definitely not too young for perimenopause and early perimenopause at that time. No one in the past has been talking about it. Conversations are definitely happening more often now, and we are a bit more aware of that, but sometimes Western medicine is a bit slow to catch up and so you might still be told that you're too young for perimenopause, even though you're not you can definitely be chap happening and changing them.
The same client I was talking to about understanding why things are happening and how that helps you stay with the changes. We were talking about how she's in her early forties and she's definitely feeling those changes and shifts and I spoke to another client yesterday and she got told she wasn't in perimenopause 'cause her period was still regular, like at some level, I can't actually understand how that's still happening, how we're still thinking that when we know that early perimenopause can be a time of regular periods. But there's definitely still stuff changing. So you can still get your period regularly, but you might notice it's shortening or it's getting heavier, or you're getting more PMS or all those things.
There's lots of different signs around perimenopause. It does happen before we start to skip periods or our cycle gets longer. Okay. Maybe it's your sleep, it might be patchy. You might notice a change in your energy or your moods. And like I said, your periods might be a bit shorter or heavier or just not their usual self.
And I always like to say your moods are swinging as fast or faster than your teenagers. And it doesn't always feel logical or fair or, and it's also not the end. Let's think about it in that way too. It's, it is, sure it's the end of our reproductive years, but it's the start of the next phase of life, which is all about, I think independence, growth, and possibility.
There's so much available to us as we age and become more independent. We become more independent from our dependence. Okay, so perimenopause, puberty in reverse. You do have adult responsibilities now, so you've probably got a mortgage, you've got kids, maybe aging parents work. You've got lots of things to do.
It feels intense. We don't just get to sloth on the couch or in bed all day. We have to get up and do stuff, and that's what can make this phase of life difficult and perimenopause difficult. So now let's touch on what's happening underneath all of that in terms of our hormone changes. So those key hormones that make us female are shifting and it can feel like your body's rewriting the script. It's changing every few days. It's this is a time of transition and change, and those hormones don't decline sort of steadily. It's a bit more like a rollercoaster. I swing and change around all the time.
So we've got progesterone, which is our calming sleep promoting, I call it our people pleasing hormone. It buffers our stress. It keeps our immune system on track. It does a lot for us, for our hair, skin, and nails, everything. Now that starts dropping early, often in your mid to late thirties. When we start to ovulate less because we make progesterone when we ovulate.
If we don't ovulate, then you don't make progesterone. So as ovulation becomes more hit and miss in your forties, particularly sued as your progesterone, and it impacts many aspects of your body now estrogen, it becomes erratic to describe it nice accurately. One week it's high, the next week it's low.
And so that can mean all sorts of different symptoms for you. One week you might have sore breasts and migraines and the next week you're getting hot flushes and brain fog, which is more low estrogen state. So yeah, it's swinging up and down, roller coastering up and down, and it's a lot slower in its decline.
Testosterone it's not just for men, it's for us as well. Obviously we have it much lower levels and they do that also declines very slowly. And that impacts your motivation, your strength, like your muscle strength and your libido and your motivation. Melatonin also drops again slowly too, but it does significantly change and that's why our sleep can become different and become lighter and less restorative and we might find ourselves.
Having trouble going to sleep or staying asleep there as well. So as I mentioned, they don't decline neatly or predictably. They go at all different rates and that's why it's not just about declining hormones. One of the biggest misunderstandings I see about perimenopause is that everyone's all, oh, it's all about low estrogen and, but actually estrogen in perimenopause can bounce higher than usual higher than higher you've ever had before.
And then crash lower than low too. But the, especially we fill the gap, especially when there's not enough progesterone to balance out that estrogen. So if you think of progesterone is the yin to our estrogens, yang. So it's when we don't have enough progesterone or that gap between the progesterone and estrogen that we have, it's very high.
We get an estrogen excess, a relative estrogen excess. And estrogen excess is what can contribute to things like fluid retention, sore breast mood swings, heavy periods, migraines, and that belly fat that you can't shift as well. While you still might be feeling the impact of the lower estrogen state in terms of brain fog and and fatigue and other things as well.
And yes, even if you are right near menopause, you can actually still experience an estrogen excess. Hmm. So there's this like messy middle phase, and that's what perimenopause is it's a bit chaotic, but it's also we can help support our body to better adapt and adjust to these changes so that it's not, we are not getting all these symptoms because all our cells have estrogen receptors on them.
They all rely on estrogen for their functioning or their regular functioning. So as there's less of that available or when there's more and, then less available, that's what it can have an impact on. So we need to help support our body to get used to not having as much estrogen and still function well.
It is workable to feel good in this phase. It's definitely achievable. You just need the right approach and strategy so you've probably tried all the things that we were taught when we were growing up to eat less, move more, cut out sugar. Maybe you've done a juice cleanse or you've tried fasting.
Remember the lemon detox diet still around amazingly. But you know, if none of them have worked long term, there's a reason and it's not you, you are not the problem here. You are not the fault. You're not doing it wrong or may you know any number of the reasons why we might blame ourselves for something not working.
It's actually not you at all. It's that your strategy is not suitable for this phase of life because these hormone shifts don't just impact your cycle. They'll mess with your metabolism too. And they mess with other aspects of your life, your temperature regulation, your mood, your energy. It's not just about your period.
These hormone shifts are impacting all your cells. As I said, all of your cells have estrogen receptors. They rely on these hormones for their regular functioning. So when they're not there in those levels that they're used to, they struggle. So it messes with all aspects that's why perimenopause symptoms are not just related to your period.
They're all in all the different systems of your body that loss is felt. So let's talk about it a bit more here. The strategy that you need, what you need to do these hormone shifts. All our hormones are interconnected. So it's not just like they're not just islands in the stream.
To quote Dolly, they are all impact is a ripple effect. They're all impacting the other hormones as well. So those hormone shifts, particularly of estrogen, create metabolic dysfunction in our body. And give us a tendency for insulin resistance, which means we have higher insulin in our body and we get stuck in fat storage mode.
Insulin is our fat storage hormone. When it's high, we're in fat storage mode. So one of the things that we need to do is we need to support our body and it's metabolic flexibility so that it can get used to, when we have a lower estrogen state, it makes us more insulin resistant, so the cells are not listening to the insulin in your bloodstream.
And we usually produce more of it like kind of shouting at the cells to hurry up and take the glucose from your blood into the cell so they can do what they need to do. So we need to correct that metabolic dysfunction and get it out of fat storage mode and reduce that high insulin. And often what goes with that is high cortisol in this phase of life.
As I said, I do have a free training where I go a bit more in depth in that it's, I'm finding it a little tricky right now to try and explain this succinctly. But so that you can understand it as well. 'cause it's quite complex, but that doesn't mean it's hard to under, needs to be hard to understand.
I probably just need more words and time to do it, which is what my free training has for you. It's 40 minutes and you can go deep on these hormone changes here. So what you want to do, you want to reduce that metabolic dysfunction. We want to improve the metabolic flexibility, especially in our brain, so that we can think more clearly and not have brain fog.
And one of the ways that we do this is eating in a way that doesn't spike our blood glucose and insulin, which means that we need to have meals balanced with our protein, with our fat, and with some carbohydrates there as well. So skipping meals or toast only breakfast is not the way. If you want to know more about this, as I said, you can watch my free training.
I also have a podcast episode on the Perimenopause Diet where I talk a bit more about balancing your meals in this way. And of course it's what I do with my clients in their sort of DIY, which is PerimenoGO or where I hold your hand and take you through. And we use personalized nutrition for extra extra grunt in terms of helping you feel better, and that's the chaos to calm method.
And one of the other things when we are talking about metabolic dysfunction is that we do want to minimize stress. And here I'm talking about physical stress as well. So that's that hidden stress of over exercising. So if you are thinking, all right, I want to lose weight, I need to eat less and I need to move more.
Which is what we all grew up learning. Then that's gonna be too intense for where your body's at. It's actually gonna create stress for it, which is gonna increase your cortisol, increase your blood sugar, and your insulin, and have the opposite effect. So it's going to put you in a fat, gaining fat storage mode.
Rather than fat burning mode there as well. So eating regularly reduces physical stress, exercising in a way that supports and nourishing nourishes your body, reduces that stress as well as avoiding foods that irritate your body or your gut. But if you are avoiding foods, I do strongly suggest that you work with a naturopath or nutritionist so that you can make sure that you're not missing out on nutrients that your body needs.
All right, so one of the other things, one of, part of the strategy that I teach my clients is we need to smooth that hormone flux. So I talked before about how estrogen is like on a real wild rollercoaster. It's really high and also really low. So we can't necessarily stop them from that fluctuation or change that's part of perimenopause, but we can smooth it out.
So there's a few things that are probably gonna be like, we'll do I, of course that's obvious. Reducing or avoiding alcohol. Ultra processed foods, even late nights, and are important to help do that, and we need to support our liver and our gut to help clear hormones, especially excess hormones when they've been their job's done in our bloodstream, especially estrogen.
So this means using your bowels every day, going to the toilet every day and help eating in a way that helps support and optimize that. And in my opinion and the research I've done, an omnivore diet is the best one for that. Not extremes either way and maybe I should do a podcast episode on that in the future.
I am looking for podcast episode ideas. If you have particular questions or something you want me to talk about, can you please message me and let me know so that I can provide content that's relevant for you. But it also makes it easy for me when I'm answering your questions as well. Yeah. And so smoothing the hormone flux.
We using food as medicine things like phytoestrogens. I've done a whole podcast episode on them, on why I love them. They're really valuable in perimenopause to help smooth that hormone fluctuation. And choosing not just what you eat, but when and why. Thinking about all those aspects of your food as medicine there too.
And yeah, that mental and emotional aspect of food now and supporting your foundation. So we get this is kind of basic. I actually call it the basics, but it's a really powerful, and I think we often, you know, underestimate the power of having the foundations, those basics in place.
But they're really important because when our body has what it needs, and I'm not just talking about food, but sleep, particularly movement, sunshine, water all those things, the better our body is coming from. So it's more able to adapt and adjust to the hormone changes because it's not like working with let's imagine our car only having three tires or three wheels.
That's very difficult for it to function in the way that we want it to. Yeah. So yeah, when we've got that strong, solid base for our body, whereby giving it what it needs beyond nutrition, so this is where we are really thinking about not just what we eat, but what we drink and what we do, and when we, when I'm talking about what we do, I'm talking about getting enough sleep and good quality sleep as well. And reducing our exposure to blue light and getting some natural light get, I'm pointing this way 'cause the window's over there getting some safe sun exposure. And making sure our vitamin D is at a healthy level and and on that, making sure all our other nutrients, iron and that are also, and B12 and B9 and, zinc and other things, making sure we've got that enough nutrients coming in.
But sleep is definitely one of those, and sleep has a massive impact on our hormones and our hormone levels. But also it drives one night of sleep deprivation, which is anything less than six hours will change your approach to food the next day and your cravings and how you feel about yourself and your energy and all the things that you do.
So imagine if you're getting multiple nights in a row of less than six hours sleep. It's very difficult to look nurture and care for yourself in the way that you need to. And it's also really difficult to show up and be the person that you need to be in your life. So, thinking about what you eat, drink, and do you want sleep, definitely.
Sufficient water. Filtered water. Ideally free of chlorine and fluoride. Gentle, consistent movement. So we're looking for strength and flexibility in this phase of life. And of course, nutrient-dense foods. And sometimes having that personalized support to guide your body through to guide you, in helping your body through this transition in a way that works for you is the most efficient and easiest way to do it.
So, yeah, you might be nodding along thinking, all right, I understand it. I understand how my hormones are changing and the impact that's having on my body and in different ways and other areas. But you know, what does that look like for me in my life? Or what does that, what's my unique blend of underlying or driving factors?
Besides perimenopause, hormone changes that's how I help my clients. And PerimenoGO is a DIY version, a self-guided version with some support from me. It's not just another diet. I'm, we're not, sort of meal plan that you just stick with for a couple of weeks and eat on repeat until you like can't bear to eat another salmon meal again.
It's really quite practical and realistic to help you support your body with food and lifestyle changes and to help you try and work out what those other underlying or driving factors are so you can stop sort of guessing around what's going on or, and just start feeling better. So it's quite simple.
It's structured and there's support there as well. So you don't have to do that on your own. Of course, if you want more guidance and support, more handholding and something that's more personalized for you, then please do reach out and talk to me about the chaos to calm method. I'd love to support you through that.
But yeah, so that is I'm always available there to help you understand what your unique. Blend of driving factors is, and then address them as well. So that is all from me today. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode on what's actually going on in your body in perimenopause.
I hope you found it helpful. Please do make sure you're following the podcast so you don't miss future episodes and tips. And while you are there, wherever you get your podcast from, make sure you go and follow it there. While you're there, please rate the podcast, leave a review, leave a question and let me know what you'd like to see more of.
In future episodes, ratings and reviews mean more women get shown the podcast or find it and have the opportunity to transform their perimenopause from chaos to calm. And that my friend is all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening and sharing your time with me today. Until next time, keep transforming your perimenopause from chaos to calm.