If You Want To Understand Your Hormones Better, You Should: Adapt your nutrition to include more animal protein and strength training to improve your metabolic health Acknowledge, embrace and make room for your stress Create routines and habits that enforce healthy behavior and promote longevity   Here is some real talk you may not want to hear: your protective hormones decline with age, no matter how ‘clean’ your lifestyle is. The good news is that if you equip yourself with the knowledge necessary to pivot with those fluctuations, you can become an up-leveled version of yourself after this big hormone transition instead of declining too.   Passionate About Women’s Health Mid-Life Maria, an FDN practitioner, and Kristin, a Board-certified nutritionist, are plainspoken friends and practitioners who share a passion for women's health, especially women's health at midlife. As both are themselves menopausal, they've refined the art and science of thriving as a midlife woman based on both clinical and personal experience. They combine individualized nutrition and lifestyle changes tailored to midlife women's needs with mindset coaching, lab testing, and hormone replacement therapy education to help women thrive so that they can stop or prevent their health from spinning out of control.   Understanding Your Options The key to handling your declining hormones is to understand what your options are. You do not have to suffer in silence, and this can be the best part of your life if you prep your body in the right way. Lifestyle, stress, sleep, and modern life all impact whether your experience with perimenopause and menopause will be really quiet or really loud.  Maria and Kristin aren’t here to tell you the conventional things you are going to hear from your doctor or OBGYN; they are here for real talk, real wisdom, and real recommendations to help you pivot along with your changing hormones.   Deciding That You Matter As women, we want to take care of everyone else, which often leaves us on the backburner. In reality, if you don't take care of yourself, all bets are off for everyone else you are taking care of. By finding habits and routines that add to your longevity and performance, you can inspire the people around you by deciding that you matter and taking action towards that. Perimenopause and menopause are unique experiences that impact everything in your life. By empowering yourself with the knowledge of non-negotiables that you need for your individual body, you can set yourself and your body up for success. Are you ready to take the journey of perimenopause and menopause back into your own hands? Share which of Maria and Kristin’s tips you are going to try out first with me in the comments section of the episode page.   Quotes: “It’s profound the changes that we can make. We have so many levers at our disposable before we want medical intervention. There is no reason for women to have to suffer through these 10-12 years that they do.” (10:54) “I was fully menopausal at 47. If I live to my 90’s, I will half lived half of my life post-menopausally!” (20:02) “It’s accessible, it’s not that hard, it’s just taking the steps.” (31:17) “It’s defining it, embracing it, acknowledging it, and figuring out a way to live with it. There are tools for that. It's not pretending to the world on your Instagram account that you've got this nailed. That's stressful.” (39:41) “Regardless of your choices, figure out what your options are. Get educated, be an advocate for yourself, and make those choices from that confident place of ‘this is what I want for myself, and this is what I can handle'. It doesn't take wealth, it takes knowledge.” (46:37)   In This Episode How your hormones change throughout the four major hormone transitions in your life (13:20) Discover the defining moment of menopause and what menopause really is (19:06) The foundational steps you need to take to pivot with your bodies changes (21:47) Approaches that you can tak