96 - Embracing Perimenopause: A Journey Through Cyclical Living and Intuitive Eating with Kate Williams Stone pt 2

Embark on an empowering exploration with Kate Williams Stone as she shares her transformation from confronting weight stigma to becoming a beacon of support for women navigating Peri-menopause. Together, we unearth the essence of cyclical living and intuitive eating, revealing how syncing with our menstrual cycle's four phases can revolutionize our relationship with food, body image, and productivity. For women over 40, this episode promises guidance and strategies to redefine midlife transitions with grace and self-compassion. Your feedback fuels our conversation, so send your thoughts and let's continue this vital dialogue.

As we banish the myth of a universal 24-hour productivity cycle, Kate illuminates the natural 28-day hormonal rhythm that can liberate us from societal expectations of relentless efficiency. Understanding the ebbs and flows of our energy and mood across the menstrual seasons unlocks the potential to align our lives with our bodies' innate patterns, mitigating burnout and promoting holistic well-being. We also delve into the growing trend of cycle syncing in the wellness industry, advocating for a balanced approach that doesn't overemphasize diet. Tune in for a passionate exchange of knowledge and resources that will not only enlighten but also equip you to thrive through Perimenopause and beyond.

Mentioned on the show:

Kate's Instagram
Kate's Facebook
Kate's website and free guide to nondiet perimenopause

Menopause.org

Free Workshop

Is this perimenopause or am I losing my mind?
A non diet perspective to midlife

Friday February 16th at 1pm ET/ 10 am PT
on zoom

www.KateWilliamsStone.com/freeclass

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:49

Hey, welcome back to the show. In this episode I am joined by Kate William Stone. Again, this is part two of a two-part series that we did about Peri-menopause. In this episode specifically, kate shares how she got into the Peri-menopause coaching world, the intuitive eating world, how those fit together and this very interesting concept of cyclical living, using the four phases of our menstrual cycle, and how we can apply that to our lives to maybe get some more benefits from it. And I will say, my mind was blown during this section, and so I really hope you get a lot out of this.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Kate has agreed to come on and do other episodes, so if there are things that you want more information on, jot those down while you're listening to this episode, shoot me an email with that information, questions, feedback, and we'll bring Kate back on to answer all of that stuff. So let's get on to part two with Kate William Stone. You've mentioned a couple different things about your own experience with Peri-menopause. How did you get into this as a coach and helping other women work through this, and then how did that like anti-guide intuitive eating piece also make its way in? That's a loaded question, sorry.

Speaker 2: 2:17

I know it's a lot, but it does actually really inform my work, my story, how I got here. So I had uterine fibroids, three large uterine fibroids which were causing excessively heavy periods, and this was during COVID. So we weren't really leaving the house and I think that's what kept me delayed on getting help for so long, because if I had had to go to the office I would have realized like wow, this bleeding is like really out of control, like I kind of can't be far away from a bathroom, like yeah, bad, but we were home so I didn't quite realize it. I was also extremely iron deficient as a result of the heavy bleeding, which can cause really bad brain fog and fatigue. And it did for me like extreme fatigue and brain fog. And so I finally, oh, I went to my primary care doctor, said I'm having these symptoms, along with the heavy periods, kind of bloating headaches, like could this be perimenopause, like something is off? And her answer was no, you're too young, I'm trying to think. At the time I was 41, 42. She said but did you know that you've gained 10 pounds during COVID lockdown? And I was like, hmm, I was like I kind of did Thanks, remember that I have an eating disorder past too, and I think some other people might have gained 10 pounds during COVID lockdown. I mean, just like to frame it up. And so then she sent me on my merry way, did refer me to a gynecologist and in the note said you know, maybe you're iron deficient because you're experiencing all this fatigue. Well, I ended up canceling the next three gynecologist appointments because it was bleeding so heavy that I couldn't leave the house.

Speaker 2: 4:27

When I finally got to the gynecologist, my iron was so low. She's like, yeah, you're like extremely iron deficient and you have fibroids. So that it just started me navigating the healthcare system, the weight stigma, like all of it, and I was like, oh, like this is going to go down a different way for me. Like you know, that kind of college was good as far as the iron deficiency. But then she offhandedly mentioned, like, have you ever considered a hysterectomy? And I'm like, well, no, because this is like the first time I'm talking about it with anybody. Like it just rubbed me the wrong way, the whole thing. And so then I did end up getting a uterine fibroid embolization to control the bleeding. Then I ended up getting an iron infusion which literally brought me back to life.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Like I'm a huge advocate for iron infusions and my hematologist said Do you know, my practice is 80% perimenopausal women who have extremely heavy periods and are iron deficient and once they hit menopause, I never see them again. Wow, yeah. And I was like, oh, shouldn't we be talking about this more? Navigating all of that in my personal story, I came out the other side and I'm like, okay, women need more education, more advocacy, more support. Like we need to normalize these experiences. I wish I had someone to talk to about, like what was going on with my periods and the changes and who to talk to. And and then also the piece around weight stigma right, like if I had been in a different frame of mind and not had 20, 20 years of eating disorder recovery behind me, that could have taken me on a very different path.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Yeah, and thank goodness that you did have all of that history behind you. Not everyone is that lucky, though.

Speaker 2: 6:26

Yeah, a new study that I just was reading yesterday actually said there's a 7.7 increase in eating disorders in midlife. So we're seeing a peak in eating disorders in teens and then also women over 40.

Speaker 1: 6:44

It's not just you know, most of the listeners are of adult age. It's not just our daughters and our nieces that are struggling with this like it, and it shows up in ways that we don't necessarily think, or it's also scary to admit. Hey, I have problems with my food.

Speaker 2: 7:04

Yeah, yeah. So you see this perimenopause transition as like an invitation for women to approach their food in a totally different way, like their relationship with food and body. Well, it's. It can be painful and uncomfortable to live in, like a changed body and like all of these changes we're talking about in the body. Like I'm not saying it's comfortable, but it can be an invitation like maybe how I've been doing this for the first half of my life like isn't working and maybe I want to do it in a different way for the last half.

Speaker 1: 7:43

Yeah, so how do you do that with your clients? How do you bring that or transition into that intuitive eating space, rather than this diety meal plan?

Speaker 2: 7:54

Yeah, I mean so we get to like, really start to learn how to trust our bodies and our body wisdom and then tune in to like what feels good for our unique body and quite possibly that's changing during midlife and there are ways nutritionally to support a perimenopausal body without diet culture thinking you know, there are things we can add to our plate that really our bodies can benefit for from, but not like, oh, I have to take these things away from my plate. Yeah, so we walk through the whole intuitive eating process and that healing journey. I just see this perimenopausal point as the time when maybe women are open to receiving a new message and it just really pisses me off All the negative ads out there shaming women's bodies like.

Speaker 1: 8:54

And then offering weight loss as a solution for a natural transition in life.

Speaker 2: 9:01

Yeah, yeah, and the weight gain, weight changes in midlife. Like we don't know actually what causes it yet, like people will throw out their different theories, but again, we. There's not enough research out there that really shows why women's bodies change or why women gain weight during midlife. There's theories of like we're less active, you know, we're not chasing young kids anymore, we're at home more. That's a theory. There's a theory that with the hormonal changes in estrogen and progesterone, that our body is actually retaining more fat because fat is an estrogen receptor.

Speaker 2: 9:46

So the midsection weight gain could be this hasn't been proven yet, but it could be actually our body's way of retaining some of that really life affirming estrogen. I mean, that makes sense, right? So here we are demonizing the midsection, but it could be actually our body's like oh, if I hang on to a little fat, like you're going to get more estrogen. That's great for bone health. That is what happens could be. There's also a theory out there that some of the weight gain could be really protective for bone health. So the number one cause of death for women over 80 is a hip fracture.

Speaker 2: 10:28

And then complications from the hip fracture. Yeah, they never recover from the hip fracture. So bone health becomes really critical for us as we age and there is a theory that some of the weight gain or weight changes could be to protect our bones, Because women who are in smaller, more petite bodies tend to have like compromised bone health right More likely to have osteopenia, osteoporosis. Who else is also can have, you know, compromised bone health. Women with an eating disorder history.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Yeah, and I like that you put that history in there, Because even though you might be 20 years out from recovery, some of those effects linger on. And also another point of like we mentioned that it's not just it's not just our teenage daughters that are having eating disorders. I have women in their 50s and 60s that come to see me for eating disorders.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Yeah, so it's a conversation to have with your doctor around bone health and bone screenings as you age.

Speaker 1: 11:38

One of the things that I wanted to circle back on from what we were kind of chatting about before we hit record is this idea of cyclical living. Can you say more of what that is, because I know that's kind of jamming out on that.

Speaker 2: 11:55

Yeah, so cyclical living is the operating system for a female body. If you have a uterus, like that's the operating system. It's our 28 day hormonal cycle. That's our cycle. So we are cyclical beings.

Speaker 2: 12:13

As women, the world is set up for male bodies, surprise, surprise. So the expectation is that we wake up every morning and do the thing. That is our day, and then we go to bed and we wake up and we repeat, repeat, repeat every single day. And guess what? That's how a man's hormone cycle works. It's a 24 hour cycle and it's pretty consistent like that. Yeah, every 24 hours. That's their hormonal cycle.

Speaker 2: 12:45

We have a 28 day hormonal cycle. It's very different. So if you have ever had a moment where you're like I feel like my body doesn't match this world, like I don't fit in in the way I'm operating, in my energy levels, in my cognitive function, like all of that, yes, that's because you have a 28 day cycle. We're not supposed to do the same 24 hours on repeat, over and over and over again. So when we understand our 28 day cycle and the four phases of the 28 day cycle and how they shift, how they change, then we can access our power, our productivity, like, oh, it just normalizes the whole female experience and it's life changing.

Speaker 1: 13:36

That, Kate, is so refreshing to hear. I think again, my brain is like because one of the things that I have always told myself that I struggle with is consistency of I. And then I'm like no, I know myself that I will do like a bunch of things and then I will do a bunch of other things, and then I will rest, and then I'll do a bunch of other things, and it's, it's this. I used to joke that I would like binge on certain things. I also had binge eating disorder for a little while. So that's just how I do life is. I just do a bunch of one thing, but actually what you're saying is that, no, that's, that's kind of how I'm supposed to be based off of what phase I'm in because of my cycle.

Speaker 2: 14:33

Yeah, exactly. So the simplest way to describe it is the four phases of your cycle are like the four seasons of the year. So think of, like your period, your bleeding as winter, then the follicular is your springtime, like planting seeds for in the fertile ground for growing, then your summer is your ovulation. So like high peak energy, super social, like the time to like give the presentation at work or do the podcast interview, you know like you're like I love people, I want to be out and about. He's my best friend. That's what I would say Exactly. Good mood, high energy and then, finally, luteal phase, is the fall or autumn energy, where you're like harvesting, you know, wrapping things up, checking off the to-do list, like great productivity time and then when you're complete with that, you go back to winter and rest.

Speaker 1: 15:35

That makes so much sense and it like suddenly this like guilt and shame cloud has just did, and I hope listeners are having that same experience, because I know some of you listening and you've shared similar things with me.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Yeah, to me it changed my relationship with rest. Yeah, like an honoring that rest and trusting the rest, like that experience of like, oh my God, I need rest and I can't do anything else and I have no ideas left, and trusting that, if I allowed my body and mind to rest during that time, that the ideas and the energy would come back.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Is this something that you know? Now that we're tracking our cycles, is this something that we can start to track and then, to the best of our ability, start to put some of that into practice? Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 16:42

Absolutely. What did that look like? Tracking your cycle, knowing which phase you're in? Because, honestly, before cyclical living, I thought I was bleeding or not bleeding. It's either on or off.

Speaker 2: 17:00

Yeah, no, there's four phases, like we talked about, and then there's different ways you can feed yourself. Cognitive function and tasks operate in different ways. So once you know where you are in your cycle, I mean you can't be like 100% about this, like I'm not, like, oh sorry, I'm not ovulating, so I'm not doing this podcast interview. Like you know, like life continues. But I will look at like, okay, when am I possibly going to be ovulating? Let me schedule the social things then, and then when I think I'm going to have my period, let's cancel some things and be a little less scheduled. So there are absolutely ways that you can use this cyclical living to your benefit, but I think, overall, the main thing is that I it normalized my experience of living, that I wasn't broken, that I just had a female body in a world that wasn't set up for my female body, and it changed my relationship with rest and trusting that.

Speaker 1: 18:12

I'm so glad you hit on that, because so many women struggle with that rest of if they take any time off of work, if they take any downtime for themselves. There's all this guilt and shame that comes in. If I'm not being productive enough, there's something wrong with me. Why can't I be more efficient? Why can't I be more effective? But what you're saying is like no, that's a natural part of our cycle and if we, if we lean into that rest and trust that we're going to come out of that phase, yeah, we're going to get to the spring and the summer again.

Speaker 2: 18:48

Yeah, I think it's the reason we see a lot of burnout in women, because it's we're going against our intuition, thinking that we have to be consistently productive, not realizing that consistently productive looks different in a 28 day cycle.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Yeah, consistency doesn't mean everything is the same every single day. No, no.

Speaker 2: 19:18

The one thing I want to speak to is this cycle syncing is a buzzword in the wellness industry right now, mainly around food. There are some ways that you can feed yourself differently during each phase. I tend to focus on that part, the least in the non-diet perspective. There is a wellness trend out there, very focused, of course, on the food and eating the right foods for what phase you're in in your cycle and especially if you have an eating disorder or disordered eating past. I would stay away from that wellness trend because it seems to me that it's adding more food rules than ease. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:08

And, like we talked about before, if you're familiar with intuitive eating at all, a lot of that is trusting and listening to what your body needs and knowing that as your body goes through these four phases, it's going to communicate different needs to you and you just honor that. But also letting go of some of the guilt and shame of there are going to be times where you just naturally want more sugar or carbs. There are going to be times where you naturally want more vegetables or protein and that if within the month things even out, we're getting what our body wants and needs.

Speaker 2: 20:47

Yeah, well, and even zooming out on our nutrition, right, like looking at the nutrition from a month's perspective rather than a meal's perspective or a day's perspective, that over the month, what did you eat most of the time? Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:06

When I was a kid probably eight, nine, 10, somewhere in that prepubescent phase my mom was really concerned about my eating, because I would go through phases where I would eat nothing but one food for a week, week and a half on end, and then the next week I would be onto something else. And then I would be onto something else. And she took me to the pediatrician and he said exactly that which, going back to the eighties, and a male doctor to say, okay, but in the course of a month is she getting sort of this balanced diet? And mom's like, yeah, actually she is. And he's like, okay, then you don't have anything to worry about she's fine.

Speaker 2: 21:50

The thing related to appetite that's interesting in cyclical living is in the luteal phase, which we characterize as like PMS. Like before your period, your appetite increases in the luteal phase because it's preparing to bleed, and when I learned that I was like oh so PMS cravings are actually the body's natural appetite, but we've demonized it. Okay, got it.

Speaker 1: 22:21

And there's a real reason behind why our appetite increases. It's because our body is preparing to shed the lining of your uterus and menstruate. Our body needs extra energy, minerals, vitamins for that to happen and keep our body in homeostasis. So we've talked about what perimenopause is. We've talked about kind of how wellness culture has come in and sort of co-opted some of the stuff and things to stay away from. We've talked about cyclical living and how to kind of incorporate mindful eating and intuitive eating in that. What else do you think is really important for listeners to know?

Speaker 2: 23:09

We talked a lot about, like the medical and physical experience of perimenopause, but I think there's also an emotional, mental and spiritual experience going on and a lot of times we're only addressing the physical. So like thinking about like why you would go to the doctor versus like having a perimenopause coach or other support, like the things to go to your doctor for blood work, your mammogram, your pap smear, blood tests for vitamin deficiencies, autoimmune thyroid and hormone replacement therapy, which is absolutely like a tool and a resource that women should educate themselves about because it's underutilized.

Speaker 1: 23:57

There's no shame, no, no shame in taking a person.

Speaker 2: 24:01

No. So I just want to plug that like make your own decisions but educate yourself. But what your doctor can't do is address like the mood swings, the not feeling like you're in your body anymore, or kind of feeling like out of your mind, like am I losing my mind? What's going on? Like your doctor is operating in a broken system too. They don't have the time, energy or resources to address the emotional and spiritual experience that you're going through. This new relationship with food and how to support your body and there's a lot of talk about like food and exercising in the right way during perimenopause, but how do you do that in a way that doesn't feel obsessive and restrictive? And another diet that's like causing even more disconnection from your body. So I think we're expanding our resources, but just to acknowledge like there's a physical experience and there's a big emotional piece to it too that needs to be addressed and supported.

Speaker 1: 25:13

Thank you for saying that because, yeah, our primary care, our physical doctors, they're not well versed in how to handle that side of things. So having a coach, having a counselor, some other provider that can help walk with you through that is really beneficial.

Speaker 2: 25:31

Yeah, because we're really creating a whole new identity in midlife. Right? It's this in between phase where I'm like, well, I don't feel young anymore, but I don't feel old, and what is old anyway? And why do I have all these negative associations with being old? And eventually I am going to get old, if I'm lucky enough to keep living every day. So how am I going to navigate?

Speaker 1: 26:00

that transition, and that's where somebody like you, who's been through this both in a personal and a professional standpoint, can really be beneficial.

Speaker 2: 26:11

Yeah, and those things that maybe you notice are different but you wouldn't go to a doctor's appointment for. But like that's what my clients are always saying to me. They're like I'm experiencing this symptom, this brain fog, this body change this, like you know, period change, like is this normal? And I'm like, yes, it is. And just to hear it's normal, like everyone can just exhale, like we all just want to normalize the situation and the experience.

Speaker 1: 26:42

Kate, if people want more information from you, if they want to know how to work with you, how can they find you?

Speaker 2: 26:49

If you can find me on Instagram, my handle is Kate W Stone. It is me there. No bots, no assistants Like message me there. Reach out to me Some of your questions. I would love to connect and then my website is KateWilliamsStonecom. And if you go to my website, I have a free guide, which is your non-diet guide to perimenopause, and in there I have a list of the symptoms that we went over today, the definition of menopause and also some hormone supporting habits that you can incorporate into your daily routine that are not diet culture, BS, Awesome.

Speaker 1: 27:31

Awesome and I'm anticipating a lot of feedback on these episodes. So if we have a lot of feedback, would you be interested in coming back for a future episode to kind of brush up on some of that stuff Of?

Speaker 2: 27:48

course I'd be honored. Thank you, this has been such a fun conversation. I love talking about this every single day.

Speaker 1: 27:56

Yeah, I can tell how passionate you are about it because I know you listeners can't see, but her face lights up every time she talks about this.

Speaker 2: 28:05

It gets really excited about something and the hands start going like like mind you, so totally totally, and I'm seeing in the media these days, everyone's like why is no one talking about perimenopause, why is no one talking about this? And I'm like what are you talking about? I talk about this every day and my whole feed is like menopause, perimenopause and I'm like where are these women Like? They need to find this conversation.

Speaker 1: 28:29

So let's do what we can to share Kate's information so that these other women who are entering perimenopause, going through perimenopause, can find good information. From a non-diet perspective, absolutely Awesome. Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes for you so that you know if you're driving, have your hands in the dishwater, whatever. You can come back to the show notes and find them and I imagine we'll bring Kate back on in the future. Thanks, sabrina, thank you Kate.