In this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, host Christie Walker welcomes Maureen Brintnell, a certified personal trainer specializing in menopause, nutrition, and wellness. The discussion focuses on the complexities women face during perimenopause and postmenopause.
Maureen shares her personal journey, emphasizing the integrated approach to managing health during this life stage, which includes sleep, stress management, nutrition, and fitness.
They also touch on the importance of aligning health practices with the Catholic faith and managing alcohol consumption during midlife and beyond. The episode highlights the need for a holistic, supportive approach as women transition through this phase, ensuring they can thrive physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Don't miss learning about Maureen's program, "The Catholic Midlife," designed to support women in integrating fitness, nutrition, and wellness into their lives with faith as the foundation.
You can find Maureen on Instagram: https://instagram.com/alphamommafit
And on her website: https://alphamomma.ca/
I'm here for you. I'm praying for you. You are NOT alone!
Please subscribe to this podcast so you won't miss a thing!
Join the Sacred Sobriety Lab: https://sacredsobrietylab.com
Drink Less or Not at All FREE Guide: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63a4abe81488000c28b9ba89
Follow me on Instagram @thecatholicsobrietycoach
Visit my Website: https://thecatholicsobrietycoach.com
In this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, host Christie Walker welcomes Maureen Brintnell, a certified personal trainer specializing in menopause, nutrition, and wellness. The discussion focuses on the complexities women face during perimenopause and postmenopause.
Maureen shares her personal journey, emphasizing the integrated approach to managing health during this life stage, which includes sleep, stress management, nutrition, and fitness.
They also touch on the importance of aligning health practices with the Catholic faith and managing alcohol consumption during midlife and beyond. The episode highlights the need for a holistic, supportive approach as women transition through this phase, ensuring they can thrive physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Don't miss learning about Maureen's program, "The Catholic Midlife," designed to support women in integrating fitness, nutrition, and wellness into their lives with faith as the foundation.
You can find Maureen on Instagram: https://instagram.com/alphamommafit
And on her website: https://alphamomma.ca/
I'm here for you. I'm praying for you. You are NOT alone!
Please subscribe to this podcast so you won't miss a thing!
Join the Sacred Sobriety Lab: https://sacredsobrietylab.com
Drink Less or Not at All FREE Guide: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63a4abe81488000c28b9ba89
Follow me on Instagram @thecatholicsobrietycoach
Visit my Website: https://thecatholicsobrietycoach.com
Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the go-to resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives, women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I am your host, christi Walker. I'm a wife, mom and a joy-filled Catholic, and I am the Catholic Sobriety Coach and I am so glad you're here. Women's bodies go through a whole host of changes over the course of our lives and it can be kind of confusing at times, especially if we haven't received the information or just dialogued with our moms or grandmothers or sisters or friends about what we can expect during the different stages of change for a woman's body. And so for those of us in midlife it can be even more confusing because it seems like there's very little information about all the things that are happening to us and we can start to feel like we're going crazy, like we're falling apart, and I can assure you that it's all normal and you are just fine. And my guest today, maureen Brintnell, is here to provide information and encouragement and pour love into you so that you can journey through menopause and beyond and thrive.
Speaker 1:Maureen Brintnell is a certified personal group trainer specializing in menopause, nutrition and wellness. Facing challenges during perimenopause, and guided by her Catholic faith, maureen embarked on a journey of study and prayer to discover a holistic approach to health and well-being that aligns with her Catholic beliefs. In her program, the Catholic Midlife, maureen empowers women to navigate the menopause transition, prioritize their health and envision a fulfilling future through a comprehensive approach which encompasses key pillars such as sleep stress management, nutrition and fitness. Sleep stress management, nutrition and fitness. Rewriting the narrative around aging, with a focus on creating a purposeful and positive story. So, thank you so much for joining me again, maureen. It's great to have you here. Well, thank you for having me. Well, well, to kick us off, why don't you give us a bit of your story and how you got into doing what you are doing?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, my story started shortly after I had given birth to our eighth child and I'd actually seen a picture of us on vacation. I looked at this photo of this strange woman holding my baby and was trying to figure out who this woman was. It took me just a second but it was. Oh my, that's me. And it had been that long since I had paid any attention to myself, since I had looked at myself, that I didn't even recognize this woman anymore. So that kind of started a very long two steps forward, one step back journey for myself. And in that, of course, as I'm getting into my 40s, perimenopause, unbeknownst to me at the time was sitting here. I had automatically gone back to doing all the things I had done when I was younger to lose weight and none of it was working and it was leaving me feeling very just beaten down and you know I've failed at this again and really just trying to give up and then finally just grew stubbornness maybe, but starting to really look into what is going on, because there has to be an answer for me. You know, as a Catholic woman, I do believe that if we're still here, we have a purpose right. We're still part of the church military. We're still here for mission, we are still here to serve, and so I started looking into it and really kind of opened my eyes to this period, menopause journey which, like most women and like you mentioned in your intro, we don't have a lot of preparation for, we don't have a lot of information going into it. So a lot of us are kind of into it. We're experiencing things that we might not be actually tying to our, you know, our perimenopause journey. Once I got that piece kind of figured out and I had taken my personal training, certification and then went back and did a specialization on midlife and the menopause transition, it really became clear to me even in that lots of great information. There's some studies coming out right now.
Speaker 2:The conversation was really starting in the health and wellness world about women in midlife and perimenopause and menopause. But, like most things, especially in women's health, I found that the Catholic mindset had been shut out of the conversation. I found that the Catholic mindset had been shut out of the conversation when I was looking for, you know, some help for some of my symptoms. I was getting prescribed things like IUDs. I was getting prescribed yoga to relax and things that were just not in line with my beliefs.
Speaker 2:So again, I was left feeling very rejected, beaten down, like this is it, this is my life? Just get involved now. And then again being reminded no, no, I'm still here, which means that there's an answer for me. And so that's what really started this journey of study and prayer and discernment to figure out, because, you know, if I'm going through it and then the Lord is going to walk with me, he is going to show me how to get through this and continue to be able to show up for my children, for my husband, for my church, for my community. And that was the process that kind of led to the birth of the cast of Midlife.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing your story, maureen, and I think that so many can relate to that. One of the things when you were talking that came up for me in my mind is it's not even just about our body changes, which are significant and impactful. But then there's how we have to deal with oh my gosh, I'm out of childbearing years now. Right, I mean, how do you help women with that aspect? Because that can you almost have to kind of grieve that part of your life before you can move forward.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that's part of this whole perimenopause case. It's a transition, right, but it's not just a transition in our reproductive system, but it's a big transition in our identity as well. And, like you said, we're moving out of that childbearing year and, like for me, for so long my identity was wrapped up in being a mother of this you know, large brood of homeschooled kids. So that was my identity and that's who I was. And as the kids are getting older, they still need you, but in a different way. And so, yeah, it's like who am I now Like? What am I called to do?
Speaker 2:So that's actually one of the aspects that we work on is going back to what are our strengths, what are our interests, you know, what do we like to do? What feeds our soul, what feeds our energy, what feeds our mind? I mean, what is God calling me to do in this next stage? And then, as we begin, you know, with all of the other pieces that we work on in terms of our physical strength and our mental clarity, we can start with that, starting to put together this idea of what we might be being called to Like. How do we get called to show up for our families and our friends and our community in this next stage, and that's always really exciting to see women start figuring out okay, you know, I'm not so busy with all of these little ones anymore. I have time, I have mental space, so how am I going to show up? And some of the ways they start showing up, this is actually really quite exciting to see. You know, just like I said. You know, like, say, catherine, you were created to be, you will set the world on fire. So, as they begin to rediscover who they were created to be and yeah, just setting the world on fire, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm sure that that's probably one of your favorite parts of the work that you do is just seeing that beautiful transformation, because it does. You go from like that, like my twins are going to be seniors this coming year, so there's part of me that's just like grieving that part, you know, and my youngest is going to be in middle school and so it just I just kind of grieve each of those phases. But, like you said, there's so many things that I've realized that I can do because my kids are at the stages that they're at now. So I think, looking at it that way, and I love that you incorporate that into the work that you do with your clients and through your program, because it is so exciting and I always tell people you know, there's so much freedom in letting go because then you get to discover, you know you say no to something and you say yes to something else, so you let go of something like one part, but then there's this whole other part that gets to happen.
Speaker 2:The tricky is when you're in midlife.
Speaker 2:For a lot of women who are struggling like it's not just kind of the winding down of their reproductive function, but, you know, their motivation is affected, like it very much affects how our brain operates.
Speaker 2:So you're going to see a lack of motivation. A lot of women in this stage feel a lack of self-confidence, their self-esteem is at an all-time low stage, feel a lack of self-confidence, their self-esteem is at an all-time low and that's tied into, like I said, the brain changes but also the poor sleep, the body composition changes and so it's difficult in the beginning to say, oh woman, you were made for so much. When you know, when they're saying to me things like I feel like I'm at war with my body or I'm broke. So that's why all of the pieces have to be working together. We're working on the rest and recovery, we're working on the stress management and the fitness and the movement and the nutrition, and all of those pieces have to kind of be in little ways we don't want to overwhelm this isn't shock and awe but in little ways improving, so that we have the physical energy, the mental energy, the emotional energy to then face okay, what's next?
Speaker 1:and set, start setting those goals and start working towards those goals so, yeah, and that sense, and that's why the work that you do is just, it's so intriguing to me because it's not just you're not just focused on one thing, it's like a holistic approach to the whole woman, mind, body, souls, and all of that.
Speaker 1:I think that that's so good.
Speaker 1:We view things differently through our Catholic lens, so it's so nice to have someone who kind of speaks our language. When I talk to clients, they are like well, I sought you out because you're Catholic, because you understand what I'm talking about, what I'm going through, and I know that you're not going to lead me down some path, like you were talking about IUDs or yoga or you know all of these, maybe a new age practice that you're like, I don't know about that. When they come to you, they know that they can trust you to lead them in a way that aligns with their faith and everything else. And so I think that is so, so important, especially as we're transitioning into this next phase of our life, how, when you started through perimenopause, you were just trying to do and I think we all do this we try to do the things that have worked in the past, and then you're like this isn't working anymore. So what do you wish that all women knew as they start to enter that phase and kind of journey through that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I wish we knew so much as we started Brant. Yeah, traditionally a lot of the messaging that we get is that you know, weight loss is key. Right when, when most women first contact me and I say, okay, what are your goals, what are you looking to get? A lot of times I'll hear weight loss and we go a lot deeper with that, because then the question is why? Why do you want to lose weight? Then we get to real issue. Then we get to really what she wants and a lot of times it looks like I want to feel good again, I want to have energy, I want to feel confident, I want to be able to feel good in my clothes, I want to be able to run around with my kids and my grandkids and things like that At the surface level, when they're thinking back to the last time they felt good, back to the last time they felt they had energy. Maybe they were, you know, a few pounds later. So it, I want to lose weight and of course, the world tells us that that's important.
Speaker 2:A lot of the messaging from fitness street is eat less and move more. You know like you've got to slash those calories right down. You've got to cut out an entire food group or don't eat after a certain time of the day. And there's all of this messaging that really just says to women just eat and move more, and if you did that right, you wouldn't do this right. And here's what happens in mid-life. That doesn't work. So we've got women who are already struggling where all of the changes, they're already struggling with a lack of energy, they're already struggling with that decrease in self-confidence, and then they go back and they do the things like they slash the calories and then they're on the treadmill killing themselves for an hour and it doesn't work. And you know we women, you know how a lot of us are it's like okay, I guess you know this is my fault, I'm not doing it well enough. And so what I want women to really understand as they're coming into nightlife is that it is so much more about managing our stress, learning to rest and relax, fueling our bodies the way it needs to be fueled. And, yes, strength training absolutely is important. Cardio, having that cardiovascular health that's important too. But it all again has to work together. We have to be fueling our bodies properly.
Speaker 2:And when I start with a lady and we start talking about nutrition and I start talking to them about eating. We don't do diets, we don't do good food, bad food, they're cheating meals or anything like that. Because you know, food is food. Food is here to fuel our bodies, but it's also here for us to enjoy right and like the family culture. A lot of people have a lot of cultural attachment to food and things like that.
Speaker 2:So we want to be able to allow ourselves to do our peace with food, peace with our bodies, or what women find is two, three weeks in they're saying I can't believe I'm eating more than I've ever eaten, but I'm sleeping well, I have more energy, I'm not losing it on the kids at three o'clock in the afternoon and they're just blown away. Because it's really hard to make that switch for everything we've been conditioned. Since we were like eight years old. We've been getting this idea that you know you have to be lent, don't take up too much space and be very, very thin and don't eat. And if you're not starving and if you're not beating your body up, then you're not working hard enough. I'm not. I'm saying no, take it easy, relax, just develop peace with your body and peace with food, and changes that you're working for will come.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's such good advice. And you're right about our culture and the world and all the messaging that we get from a very early age, right? We even sometimes, unfortunately, see our moms going through that and then they're modeling it for us and then we take that upon ourselves. Later, of course, there's magazines and TVs and movies and all of that, and then, yeah, we reach this midlife and all of a sudden, all these things are happening to us and we're not able to shed the pounds like we used to, and I love that. You're like.
Speaker 1:That is not the focus. The focus is being healthy. Scale doesn't matter. It's how you feel in your body, how you feel about yourself and all of that. It doesn't have to do with a number or you don't have to look perfect. It's about being healthy. I think that that's the best approach to everything. Right, it's just if you feel healthy and we're all different. God created us all differently. We're not all supposed to look a certain way anyway. We're all different shapes and sizes and that's such the beauty. So you've touched on a couple of things that women can expect, like weight gain is something, but that just happens, and then sleep is impacted Some other things that women can expect, just so that they don't feel like body, they're at war with their body, like you said, or that they're falling apart. Just let's get it out there so that they know.
Speaker 2:well, it's interesting because when we think about like estrogen specifically, you know we think about that as one of our sex hormones, so we kind of tie it to our reproductive system. But we actually have estrogen receptors throughout our entire body. We have it in our brain, you know, in our bones, we have it in our urinary tract, our digestive system, everywhere. So when we are in perimenopause which is those years would be up to 10 years or more leading up to your menopause date when that estrogen is on its way out of your system but it doesn't go out slowly and gently, right, it's a little bit of a party up and down and up and down, and up and down, ultimately declining. That means that we are going to be experiencing some signs and symptoms of that fluctuation outside of our reproductive system. So women are going to experience changes in their brain, like brain fog or, like I said, you know that decrease in self-esteem and motivation and things like that. But they can also start experiencing joint pain, urinary incontinence, but then other weird things like a ringing in the ears or a metallic taste in your mouth or sometimes they get just little like electrical shock feelings kind of in their finger.
Speaker 2:There's actually probably probably about four dozen common symptoms of perimenopause and they affect your entire body. But, like I tell a lot of my ladies, I always say test, don't guess. So if there's a symptom that is concerning you. One of the very common ones that a lot of women get is heart palpitations, and so they can go through this whole to the doctors. They're very concerned and upset about these heart palpitations and do all the tests and their heart comes back fine and the doctor's like nothing wrong with you, it's all in your head, and they send this poor woman home still very much struggling with heart palpitation and at that point it could be like your perimenopause and that could be how perimenopause is showing up for you. So there's a lot of different ways that it can show up or start throughout your entire body in this lovely 10 years before your day of menopause you mentioned date of menopause because when we talked before I was surprised I had never heard that menopause is a day like one day.
Speaker 1:So can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I think most of us think that perimenopause is one thing and then we go through like a whole menopause. But that's not the case.
Speaker 2:You're right. Yeah, absolutely. So we have our date of menopause and that is actually so. Menopause is actually just one day and that is the day that you have not received your cycle for 365 days, so one full calendar year. That day is your date of menopause. So every day after that, you are in post-menopause and you will spend the rest of your life in post-menopause. You are in post-menopause and you will spend the rest of your life in post-menopause.
Speaker 2:And then, like we've been talking about, in perimenopause, that's that 7 to 10, sometimes less years leading up to your date of menopause, where you know those hormones are fluctuating and changing to get ready for menopause. And so what happens for a lot of women to get ready for menopause. And so what happens for a lot of women, you can reach your date of menopause. You know, anywhere from like 48, 55 would be a normal range. So if we can just hit the low end of that range and say, let's say, your date of menopause, you're going to be 48 years old and your perimenopause starts 10 years ahead of time, you can be experiencing some signs and symptoms of perimenopause in your late 30s.
Speaker 2:And what I hear from a lot of women is they'll go to their doctors and they'll say this is going on in the doctor, we're too young for menopause. Yeah, she's too young for her day with menopause. She's not too young to be experiencing these signs and symptoms, for this date is coming and then obvious threats are after menopause. Then you're in post-menopause for the rest of your life. So women can live a third of their lives in some stage of menopause, which is why it's really important that we do talk about it, that we are knowledgeable about it and that we take it seriously and that we take action, Because, like I said, this is the third. For some women, it could be half of their lives. If they perimenopause in their 40s and they live into their 80s, that's half of their life spent in this stage. So we want to know what's going on. We want to be able to take action so that we can live this next stage as fully and functionally as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such helpful information. So one of the things when you were talking, a question that came for me I was pretty late in getting my menstrual cycle. So does when you got your menstrual cycle impact when you start perimenopause or not?
Speaker 2:really, a lot of women can look to their moms. They want a general idea of when their mom kind of went into perimenopause or menopause. That's usually a better indicator. It's not going to be like a hard and fast rule, but a lot of times when they're talking to their mom about their perimenopause and menopause journey, you'll start seeing some commonalities and what you are experiencing and what you're going through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's kind of what I was looking for. So that's really good to know. So look to your mom and maybe even your grandma, is it, yeah? And just kind of see what that maternal age was, and you'll get a good idea probably. So that's very helpful.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because when we are 13 and 14 and our periods are first startled, you know we do have we tend to have conversations with older sisters and female family members about that. So we kind of know what's going on, we kind of know what's happening. But when I talk to women I'm like have you talked to your mother about her perimenopause or menopause and said no, we've never, like it just was never spoken about, it was never talked about. And you know, maybe you should go back and have that conversation with her now and just see what she remembers about it and start kind of getting a little bit of information about her journey and what she went through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's such good advice because it doesn't necessarily come up in just regular conversation. I know that I've had conversations with my mom about medical things and she's like, oh yeah, that happened to me. And then this is I'm like I know the habit, do you? But I mean it just never came up. She's not like, oh, by the way, when I was 35, well, you know. So sometimes you have to ask and, like you were saying, when you're going through it, as you bring it up, then that can maybe refresh their memory because if it's been a while since they've gone through it, they might not remember.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot more knowledge now about the journey than what our mothers and our grandmothers had. So for a lot of times when they were going through perimenopause, did they know that it was perimenopause that they were going through? And so I know, did they tie that into that menopause journey? And for many of them, you know they didn't. They just felt tired or they felt angry or whatever was going on with them at the time, but not tying warm. And I find even now with women, especially before they have an understanding of what's going on, there's a lot of shame around some of the things that they're experiencing. Some of their physical symptoms, like incontinence, but a lot of the emotional symptoms too, like the rage, like the depression. They come to me with a lot of shame. There's still stigma around it. So if it even now that we're having these conversations and the shame and the stigma is still there, then how much more so was that for the previous generation, without all of the understanding of the connection right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny because I got my kids watching the Waltons and there's one episode when Mama Walton whatever her name is thought she was pregnant and she was like having all of these like her forgetfulness, all the like she was having mood swings and all this stuff, and it turned out she was not pregnant, she was going through perimenopause. And then I remembered seeing it on another show too, maybe it was Little House on the Prairie, I don't know. That's kind of something that women probably thought, because some of the symptoms can seem a little bit like that, you know, if you lose your period or you're being nauseous having nausea or you know certain things it can.
Speaker 2:You can be like, oh, my goodness, am I, am I pregnant? And I never realized that the sore breast septum missed a period and their breasts are sore and they're like, oh, is that it? I'm 46. Is this possible? And so, yeah, that's usually a place where they would go to Fear-wise. It's just like am I pregnant? And even now, when it is shown on media, it's often played for laughs. It's often played for laughs A lot of sitcoms and things like that and they go back to the hot flashes and the rage attacks and the woman running out and diving into the snow to cool down and everybody gets a good laugh at that and it can be funny. But what women are going through has so many other levels and layers. The occasional sitcom representation probably doesn't do it justice, right.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. Don't look to sitcoms for any good, solid information about menopause or anything like that. Most of the women listening here on my podcast are trying to reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption. Our health is the number one reason to reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption. In what ways have you seen, in the work that you do and from your vast knowledge, how does alcohol impact women during this transition? Because I know I've heard women say since I don't drink, I haven't experienced this. But I've heard other women say like I just don't have the same tolerance, I feel worse. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Speaker 2:So alcohol does affect women differently as they age. What a lot of women find, you know. What I found is that for me, having that second glass of wine at night meant that I was going to have increased perimenopause symptoms, so I was going to have hot flashes at night, I was going to have disturbed sleep and I was going to struggle with things like anxieties the next day. The other thing, one of the things that women have to deal with in perimenopause is a decrease in bone density, and if we want to talk later about postmenopause and the risks, bone density is a big, vulnerable need to be very aware of, of course alcohol is going to increase the rate of that decline, and so what happens, you know, with, with a lot of women now is when they start it's like, okay, we can do this, but don't ask me to give up my wine or my gin and tonics or whatever it is, and so of course, it has to be your client led. But once they start on this journey and they start feeling better and we become more mindful about how we're feeling in different situations, and then a lot of them do get to the place where they recognize too that alcohol hits them quicker in midlife and the effects last longer and it stays in our system longer. And so, whereas a woman, maybe before midlife, could have two or three glasses of wine and feel okay, and now she's having one glass, she's feeling right-handed, she's feeling drowsy, she has the hangovers the next day. So just for those reasons alone, a lot of women get to the point where this is just not worth it for me, on top of all of the other health reasons why they might want to be considering giving up that dependence on alcohol.
Speaker 2:But it's interesting because for a lot of women, when I first start talking to them, alcohol has become more of an anesthetic than it was for the enjoyment. Because we're going through so many changes, a lot of them we don't understand. You know, we're struggling with sleep, we're struggling with anxiety, we're struggling with our mood, and alcohol, especially with this barmy mind culture, has really been sold to us as the answer to that. And it's not. But a hundred times more so, it's not in midlife it. Yes, you have that glass of wine, you sit on the couch, you're going to feel drowsy, but your sleep is going to be so disrupted and you are, you know, just, are you going to be up at about two or three in the morning with your mind racing about nine on you and different things. So once they become aware of that, a lot of them will make the decision on their own that you know what I want to decrease the amount of alcohol I'm taking in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find that a lot of the women that I work with, they go into it saying, well, I want to still have one drink a week and then, just as we process through because, again, all my work is client led I don't tell anybody what to do or how to drink or not drink or anything like that.
Speaker 1:I really believe that everyone has to discover the level of sobriety that works for them. And it's interesting because people will say to me what is a healthy relationship with alcohol? And I'm like I can't really use that word when describing alcohol. But if you want to talk about a normal relationship with alcohol, I will say it causes the least amount of chaos, or no chaos, when you're deciding to take it or leave it. So from a health perspective, as a health professional, is there a healthy level of alcohol? What I'm asking is is there any amount of alcohol that a woman can consume that gives her body a chance to metabolize it in a way that you know she knows she's not going to feel that great, like you were saying? But is there like a hard and fast rule or does it just depend?
Speaker 2:It is so individual and it's a lot of other factors come into it too. How hydrated are you? You know, are you drinking your water while you're having the drink? Have you been in that day? And your body mass and all of these things are going to current right. But the other thing is that in midlife for a lot of women, their drinking increases and it increases again.
Speaker 2:We go back to a lot of the emotional issues and a lot of the emotional struggles that women in med life are experiencing, like the depression and the anxiety. And so when we're using it for that, probably not a healthy amount, there's probably not a healthy amount of alcohol that we can use, but we're using it to deal with a lot of these struggles that we're having. But you know, all things being equal, if we're just talking about wanting to be able to have a lot of these struggles that we're having, but you know, all things being equal, if we're just talking about wanting to be able to have a glass of wine with sucker, that's going to be very individual For me. I can have a glass of wine very occasionally. I've said this.
Speaker 2:There's so many things that come into play If I'm well hydrated, if I'm well rested and if dinner is early enough, then I can have that glass of wine and have it kind of be metabolized, at least partly, through my system before I try to go to sleep. So there's so many things that kind of come into play, but it's hard to say, like in anything in women's health, one size fits all right. It really comes down to their relationship with alcohol. Why are they using it, why are they drinking it, and what is it doing for them and what is it doing to them? And then they have to kind of come to a decision on their own as to how much you want to consume, if they want to consume any at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and many of them do discover it's just too. It's too hard to moderate. I don't like how I feel the next day. There's all of these factors. But again, if it's, if you have that in your life and it's not causing a lot of chaos and you can deal with the ramifications, because, I mean, we all choose. I am not like a super clean eater all the time I get my nails done. You know super clean eater all the time I get my nails done. You know I do things that I know are not great for my health either. So we all make those choices based on you know what we want to do and our goals, I guess. So I feel like people sometimes look at me like just tell me how much I can drink and that you know and I'll do that Well it's true.
Speaker 2:A lot of women will come to me in the beginning and say tell me what I need to do, or give me a meal plan. Tell me what I need to do in order to feel better again. I want to feel alive again and if it were that simple, I would have made the PDFs and mass distributed it already. So individual it was so based on so many other aspects and what their individual journey is like. And even with the alcohol, it's not even just a matter of how it's making them feel or why they're using it, but again it goes back to their family, culture and their social circles and how much of that is built around alcohol. And at a time when maybe they're not feeling very confident and they're not feeling very strong, to make that strong statement, you know, in their family or publicly, is another challenge, right. So we kind of have to work through that and navigate that, like everything else, in a way that's going to be sustainable for them in the long run.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. There's so many different factors that come into play, just like with our health. There's no hard or fast rule for any of it. It's just planning, preparing, testing, getting curious and just trying it out and say do I feel, how do I feel Like I did this now, how do I feel? And adjusting along the way. And honestly, I think that's something that's fun about it, because you're learning about yourself, you're learning how your body works and for me, it makes me even more in awe of God and how he designed us. Our bodies are just so incredible and the way that everything like works together and I don't know. I just I love the whole like just testing things out and seeing what works, what works for you, and not in this whole midlife journey.
Speaker 2:This is what it's about. It's this journey of rediscovery who are we, what works for us, what food tastes good to us and sits well in our systems. And that mindfulness around how we're fueling our bodies, what we're putting into our bodies, how we're moving our bodies, how we're resting ourselves, how we're taking care of our spiritual health it can be like this incredible journey of rediscovery. We're going to be like oh my goodness, I am an amazing person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it gives you so much hope and then you don't feel so depressed about how everything is changing and you can see it from like the beautiful aspect. It is Like one of my another guests said, our bodies are redesigning. So I like that Like we're just redesigning. You know, we're becoming who we're supposed to be at that time of our life and our bodies work the way that they're supposed to at that time in our life. We're not supposed to be child bearers into our 90s.
Speaker 2:I will tell you, I had my grandson over for a sleepover on Saturday night and I love him. He's such a good boy and he's 11 months old, such a wonderful baby. But I realize now why women under 50s do not have babies, because I loved having him over, but I was exhausted for days afterwards. So yeah, there is an intelligence to the design.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. So we've talked a lot about perimenopause and kind of going through that journey, but what can women expect when they transition into that post-menopause phase? After they've had that one day of menopause, then what can they expect and how should they treat their bodies after that?
Speaker 2:So this is really important because you had mentioned before this redesign and what's really incredible is what they have found now is that our brain actually redesigns, it rewires itself to be able to function without the levels of estrogen that we had before. So a lot of women going into postmenopause will see an alleviation of a lot of those perimenopause symptoms. A lot of them see relief from the hot flashes, from the anxiety, from the mood disorders. But what happens is our risk for other things increases. So when we talk about losing that bone density, which starts kind of in our 30s, would become at a greater risk for osteoporosis. So we hear about older people, you know, falling and breaking a hair. The vast majority of that time it's a woman who has done it. She has fallen and she's broken her hair. When you talk to health care providers who work with women in their older years, up into hospice care, they talk about the four thieves longevity and joy and quality of life in women and the four thieves are the osteoporosis. Osteoporosis so that chronic pain, that risk of fracture, you know, and it's not just their hips that are breaking, it's their ankles, it's their spine, it's their shoulders like our bones become very much less dense and more prone to fractures. So osteoporosis, osteoarthritis we lose a lot of the protective, anti-inflammatory elements of estrogen. Our collagen production is down. So osteoarthritis again, chronic pain. And then we're dealing with cardiovascular issues because, you know, we don't have the same protection in our heart that we had before. And then the last one is incontinence. When a woman is struggling with incontinence, her world gets very small, right, like we don't go out and we don't socialize and things like that. So the point of really taking care of ourselves and starting to pay attention to these signals in perimenopause is to set us up for health and wellness well into postmenopause so that we can start mitigating those risk factors. When we're working on things like strength training, when we're working on fueling our bodies appropriately, we're helping preserve the bone density, we're helping preserve our cardiovascular health. And, yes, part of the program is working on that pelvic floor, on strengthening that pelvic floor, so that we don't have to deal with the incontinence. So the signs and symptoms of perimenopause can alleviate, but we should still be taking care of our bodies.
Speaker 2:If you are in postmenopause and you haven't started that, it's not too late. It's not too late. You're not too old. We can build muscle. We can start working on these things and improve the quality of life. That's something I don't want people to say well, I'm too old, it's too late for me. I've worked with ladies who are 76, 77 years old and it's incredible what they can do, the way the quality of life becomes. I mean have spent 20, 30 years looking after all of the people and looking after all of the things. 30 years looking after all of the people and looking after all of the things, and then perimenopause starts and I need to take care of myself, and so we start attending to these little signs and symptoms and we start taking care of ourselves.
Speaker 1:I love that you mentioned that and I think a lot of women will appreciate it, because you're right we just serve and serve and serve and especially as our children are younger, they really need us. But as we we get older, pretty soon our body is screaming at us like I need attention now, and that's kind of what perimenopause is doing for us, like you need to now, it's time for you, you need to take care of yourself once they understand her.
Speaker 2:Okay, if I take 20 minutes to myself, if I go and I take that walk or I really prioritize my sleep, how much better am I equipped to show up for these people that I want to serve the next day, when I'm rested, when I'm not struggling with stress, when I'm not struggling with chronic pain and all of those things?
Speaker 2:So once they realize that and they're able to start giving themselves permission to take care of themselves, and then they can see how that benefits everybody around them.
Speaker 2:But it's hard for women who have basically poured out of an empty cup for so long to say, okay, I'm going to take 20 minutes to myself. That doesn't seem very natural to a lot of women, and so it's really about learning again to do this in small steps so that it's sustainable, so that it feels natural. Because if I were to give you, right off the hop, an hour-long workout and a menu plan that you had to cook separately from the meals you were cooking with your family, you might be able to do that for a week or two, but it's not going to be sustainable because that's not where your heart is. Your heart is sitting at the table with your family and eating with your family and spending time with them. So it has to be, like you've said before, very client-led, very small steps towards that, and then they start feeling better and then it becomes easier for them to take care of themselves.
Speaker 1:Those small steps are important and for some of us overachievers, we just want to go all in at once. But, like you pointed out, you can burn out and you can maybe do it for a week or two or maybe even a month, but then after that you're like whoa, I can't sustain this. So I think I like how you're saying you just kind of like do those small steps and then ramp up from there. I think that's so, so helpful. Thank you so much, maureen, for being here today. So I just know people are going to want to learn more about you. Your Instagram is one of my favorites that I follow, so thank you for that, and let people know where they can find you, about your programs and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2:People know where they can find you about your programs and all that good stuff. Okay, so yeah, my Instagram is where I'm most active and that is alphamomafit, and look me up there on there and connect with me. I would love to hear from everybody. My website is wwwalphamomafitca. I'm in Canada, so it's ca. I run this program. We're actually in our third week now, 12-week program called the Catholic Midlife. It's all online, but it's all of those things that we've talked about today developing that vision for ourselves, the nutrition, the fitness, the wellness, and incorporating it in a way that works in every one of the individual situations. Yeah, we're having a great time this session. We'll start another session in the fall, so if you're interested in learning more, reach out. I would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Thank you so much, maureen, for all that you are doing for women, for our health, and just for all the information that you provided for us today, thank you, thank you so much for having me. Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic Sobriety coach, and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coaching that I offer, visit my website, thecatholicsobrietycoachcom. Follow me on Instagram at the Catholic sobriety coach. I look forward to speaking to you next time and remember I am here for you, I am praying for you.