The Group Health Coach: Hormones & Women's Wellness with Paige Edmonds

Paige Edmonds serves as the lead health coach at Dr. Mindy Pelz’s Resetter Academy, where she oversees a vibrant community of 3,000 clients alongside a dedicated team of coaches! The modern health coaching landscape is thriving, creating more opportunities for passionate individuals like Paige.

In this episode, Erin and Paige discuss what a typical day looks like for her, highlighting how she supports both clients and coaches. They dive into an important topic in women’s health: the menopause transition. Their engaging conversation explores the complexities of hormones, questioning whether they should be viewed as needing balance or if our perspective is too narrow.

For health coaches focusing on women’s health and hormones, this episode provides valuable insights. Paige Edmonds brings her expertise and warmth to the show, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in these vital topics!

Episode Overview:

0:00 Introduction to Paige Edmonds
1:12 Welcoming Paige to the Podcast
2:00 Paige's Role with Dr. Mindy Pelz’s Resetter Academy
5:31 Group Coaching
10:09 Private Practice and Client Focus
17:49 Fasting and Hormonal Cycles
24:09 Menopause Transition and Adrenal Health
31:40 Challenges in Women's Nutrition
33:52 Coaching Strategies for Women's Health
36:18 Empowering Women Through Lifestyle Changes
39:27 The Role of Health Coaches in Integrative Medicine
42:37 Virtual Health Coaching: A New Paradigm
50:34 Generational Differences in Health Perspectives
54:10 The Hormonal Hierarchy and Women's Health
56:29 The Power of Oxytocin in Health and Wellness

Connect with Paige:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_thewellnesspaige_/
Website: https://drmindypelz.com/health-coaches/

Ready to turn your passion for health into lasting impact?
Health Coach Radio is your backstage pass into the world of health and fitness coaching, hosted by Primal Health Coach Institute Coaching Director, Erin Power and powered by the legacy of founder Mark Sisson. Each episode is packed with real stories, expert strategies, and practical inspiration to help you grow as a coach and make a difference.

Curious about what’s possible for your own health coaching journey?
Visit primalhealthcoach.com to learn how Primal Health Coach Institute can help you transform lives—including your own—through the power of coaching and ancestral health.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I had a great chat with Paige Edmonds, who is the lead health coach for Dr. Mindy Pelz's Resetter Academy.
Paige helps oversee a community of 3,000 clients as well as a team of coaches.
And this is one of my favorite things about the modern health coaching industry is that we have jobs like this now.
More and more jobs like this.

(00:21):
If you're a health coach who's been practicing for a little while and you have some experience under your belt,
you can find these roles that put you in a health coaching leadership container.
So it was great to chat with Paige about what her day-to-day looks like
and supporting these clients and these coaches.
But we also spend a good amount of time talking about some things in the realm of women's health,

(00:43):
particularly around the menopause transition.
Definitely a hot topic right now,
but we did a pretty good job of getting into some more interesting details about it,
including talking a lot about hormones.
Are they meant to be balanced or are we viewing this in a myopic way?
And how should women approach supporting their hormones through various stages of life?

(01:05):
I know lots of health coaches out there are focusing on women's health and hormones,
so you'll particularly enjoy this conversation.
Please welcome Paige Edmonds.
Hi, I'm Erin Power.
I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator and mentor, and your host of Health Coach Radio.
This podcast delves into the art, science, and business of health coaching.

(01:26):
Whether you're aspiring to land a coaching dream job or to embark on your own entrepreneurial
adventure, we cover it all.
Our mission is to help you grow your career, elevate your income, change the lives of the
clients who need your help, and leave a lasting mark in this rapidly growing field.
It's time for health coaches to make an impact.

(01:46):
It's time for Health Coach Radio.
All right. Welcome, Paige. Great to see you. Thanks for coming to Health Coach Radio. We're
going to talk about health coaching, health, and everything else that falls into your expertise.
And I'm always excited to chat with a fellow health coach. So welcome.
Thank you so much. And same. I am so passionate about this field and I just love this podcast.

(02:12):
So thank you for starting a podcast for health coaches.
Our pleasure. Absolutely. Well, we're delighted to have you because you have a pretty big health
coaching job, actually. You have a fairly substantial role with a really well-known
doctor. I'd love for you to just jump in and tell us a little bit about your role with Dr. Mindy
Pels.
Yeah. Oh, it's wonderful. And just a little background, I worked for almost a decade at a

(02:40):
naturopathic clinic as a health coach. And I learned so much there. It was so perfect for me
at that time. I really credit a lot of my knowledge base to that work. And then I got
introduced to Dr. Mindy's work and how she was teaching things differently from the view of how

(03:03):
should women be focusing on their health. And so I was very attracted to that. And I was like, wow,
no one's really talking about this. This was like five years ago. So I actually shot her a message.
And I said, Dr. Mindy, and I had known her.
We were, the doctor I was working with at the naturopathic clinic was part of a group of

(03:25):
doctors where we were being trained under detox protocols and functional medicine and stuff
like that.
So I had known Dr. Mindy through that group.
So I had messaged her on Instagram and I said, I don't know if you remember me, but I love
what you're talking about.
And I had met with her assistant at the time and her assistant was like, we're lacking in these areas of our company.

(03:50):
And I'm like, these are the areas that I thrive in.
This is what I could bring.
And we just joined forces.
So when I started with Dr. Mindy, it was primarily to help her out with consultations.
So we started with doing like, she was very big into Dutch testing at that time.
We could talk about that if you want.
She also provided a gut test, a heavy metals test, and I'm a nutritionist by trade as well.

(04:16):
So I said, and let's throw in some nutritional consulting, health coaching.
So that's how I first started working with Dr. Mindy is I was her first health coach.
And then she grew, we grew, so we had to add more coaches to our team.
So now my role has transformed into being the lead health coach.

(04:38):
I help manage our team of coaches. Dr. Mindy has also, for two years now, she has gone through a
certification program and has certified other coaches. You don't have to be a coach to become
certified. This is to be certified under her teachings. It's called Fast Like a Girl
certification. And so I play a big role in helping with that part of our company.

(05:03):
We have a membership group where we have almost 3,000 members with us and learning from us and being educated by us.
We go through challenges and we have different events and live calls and Q&A sessions.
So I do a lot of presentations and conducting of that.

(05:23):
I help facilitate our Reset Academy.
That's the membership program.
So I do play a big role in various areas.
And then I have my own side practice as well where I'm still coaching.
I call them personal clients, friends, family, word of mouth on the side.
Nice.
Oh, I love to hear that.

(05:44):
I like hearing that.
I think coaches often do that where we kind of cobble together a couple different practices,
which is part of the fun of this sort of this industry, this line of work.
I'm really, I have so many follow-up questions.
I'm very curious.
So first of all, 3,000 members in the Reset Academy.
So are these members, are they all entitled to coaching?

(06:05):
Is that part
of the deal when they join the Reset Academy?
And how do you facilitate that for them?
That's a really good question.
So we consider it more group coaching.
Okay.
And group coaching is, it's its own ballgame, right?
Because you are speaking to a general audience.

(06:26):
Now, we know that most of our Reset Academy members are women, and they're usually 50s,
60s, 70s, transitioning into menopause or past menopause.
So when it comes to group coaching, as a health coach, I can get very specific with what are
they looking for.

(06:46):
We also have a community page where they can post questions.
So I'm helping out virtually by commenting on their questions.
I can see what are they needing help with, and then I can structure live calls around that.
We do special Q&A calls where they can submit a question ahead of time.
So that, in my opinion, is so much different than working one-on-one with a client and walking them through it.

(07:14):
There's pros and cons to both, right?
So when somebody joins the Reset Academy, we try to make it crystal clear that this isn't one-on-one coaching.
You have the ability to purchase a consultation with one of our coaches.
But even that, in my opinion, Erin, isn't necessarily one-on-one coaching.

(07:34):
This is typically for the person that's like, here's my list of questions.
I'm stuck.
How can I get past this plateau?
Or what protocol should I do next?
Whereas my one-on-one coaching is where I follow up regularly with these clients.
They typically have a lot more that we need to uncover and go through, and it's a process.

(08:00):
It's very systematic.
So I love what I'm doing right now because I get the best of both worlds.
I get my toes in a little bit of both areas.
Absolutely.
I think group coaching is fascinating, I mean, especially with a large community like Dr.
Mindy has because I think the misconception is that it's somehow unpersonalized, but it

(08:21):
can be still quite personalized, providing the clients know that their role is to come in and
get sort of squeeze every drop out of it, right? So they have access to open Q&As, they can submit
the questions on the fly in the program, they can book a consultation and just get some of their
questions answered. And then the thing is too, that they're also learning and implementing

(08:46):
something, right? So they're learning and implementing Dr. Mindy Pelz's protocol,
And then they're coming in to get it fine-tuned inside the group coaching model.
Is that how that works?
Yes.
And the other thing too is community.
Yes.
You
know, I've been coaching for about 15 years.
And I would say one of the biggest hang-ups I find with my clients is they don't have a support system.

(09:11):
They don't have a community.
And so whether it's at home or at work or their friend group, they're getting these constant
reminders of what they don't want to be doing with their health or their lifestyle.
And until you have that community around you of people who are trying to accomplish what
you're trying to accomplish with your health, it's going to be really hard to sustain those

(09:34):
behavior changes.
Whether that's exercise or nutrition or meditation, whatever it may be, you need that community
around you.
And so I find that most people, they don't have it at home.
They don't have it at work.
They may not have that friend group.
So if they can come into a setting where it's a community of other like-minded individuals,

(09:55):
that's the community that can help keep them accountable and sustaining their behaviors.
I completely agree.
I actually think a transformational coaching program has a curriculum.
It has the coaching element and it has a community element, the three Cs, right?
And it's so fascinating because I do group coaching in my practice as well.

(10:15):
And I've had the occasional woman who says, oh, I don't really like participating in groups.
But it's the exception.
Most women are actually eager for that and maybe didn't realize they needed it until it was presented to them.
You know, this
idea of being with like-minded women.
That's so true.
Cool.
Well, what do you do in your private practice?

(10:36):
You're talking about your coaching chops.
You're the head coach for Mindy's team and you do private practice.
What kind of clients do you work with in your own one-on-one clientele roster?
You know, I really find it helpful to focus on one area when you're health coaching.

(10:58):
But I'll be totally honest, where I'm at in my life right now, it's not one type of person
that I'm attracting.
Now, when we're speaking of group coaching, the Reset Academy, that's very much hormones, very much fasting, very much menopause, perimenopause.

(11:19):
With my personal coaching, I had a baby 15 months ago.
And so I'm trying to find this work-home balance and still take care of myself.
So I'm really not trying to have a lot of personal clients.
So right now it's really much just word of mouth and I see a lot of gut health.

(11:41):
I
see a lot of autoimmune and I see a lot of fertility.
Those
would be the
three that I've been working with in the last few months.
Oh, wow. Those are interesting ones.
Fertility is very interesting to me.
I have a lot of peers that work in the fertility space.
I'm just curious how you find that particular category.

(12:07):
What I mean by that is, is it predominantly women that come to you with help with fertility?
They're looking to get pregnant.
And what have they tried and what are they up against, I guess?
What is it they need from you?
So it's a multifaceted approach.
And I find that the women I've seen, they've gone to their doctor because they've been trying for several months.

(12:35):
And the doctor says, we should consider IVF if you've been trying and you can't get pregnant.
And this type of group that are attracted to me, they don't want to go to that route first.
They want to try other things.
And so I think part of it is on my social media, I like to educate. When I got pregnant, I did a lot of posts and videos on how I was supplementing, the things I took before I got pregnant, how I was eating, how my husband's diet changed a little bit, how I supplemented with him.

(13:17):
So the women that are coming to me for fertility, they want a more natural route.
They want to know how should I be supplementing?
What should my lifestyle be like?
And so they're coming to me for those lifestyle changes and supplemental support.
And then Dr. Mindy's work really comes in here because we found that with Dr. Mindy's

(13:47):
testimonies that they got pregnant after following her principles.
I've seen that.
So I kind of walk them through exercising and diet and supplements and stress reduction. Like
these are all very key aspects to being the most fertile that you can be.
So are we talking about hormone health here ultimately? Is that what it comes down to?

(14:10):
Yeah. At the end of the day. Yeah.
Hormone. So I just think the word hormone, hormone balancing, hormone health, this is
And it's not a buzzword. It's an important, it's a very important category inside the health and wellness world right now. We have a lot of requests, for example, from students asking us as a health coaching school to put together a hormone balancing educational course. To me, hormones are so vast, so vast.

(14:36):
Oh, yeah.
So I'd
just be curious to know, where do you sort of – I'm going to just lean on you as sort of the women's hormone expert, if you wouldn't mind, for
the next little
while.
What are some of the foundational concepts around hormones?
I guess when you're working with women, where do you really start when it comes to hormone balancing?

(14:56):
What are the big, big down movers there?
So first, you have to know, are you premenopausal?
Are you perimenopausal or are you postmenopausal?
Okay.
Because depending on if you're having regular cycles, if your cycles are all over the board
or your past menopause, that's going to dictate how you start working on things.

(15:21):
I think it's also important to know what are your symptoms?
What does hormone imbalance mean to you?
Is it simply that you're having trouble sleeping?
Is it you're having hot flashes?
Are you having horrendous menstrual cycles?
Are you trying to lose weight?
And you've heard, oh, my hormones are off and that's causing weight loss resistance.

(15:44):
So what is it?
What are the things you're even struggling with?
So I like to take that first and then use my knowledge base and figure out what is going
to be the most important thing to address first.
I also find it really helpful that you understand their history.
You have a really good intake on them.

(16:06):
You understand what is their diet like.
And so once you can figure out what are their goals, what are their symptoms, what's their history, you then start with what would make the most sense.
So for some, it's they just need to get their blood sugar better balanced.
Some people have just way too much insulin surging through their body, and that's going

(16:30):
to disrupt their sex hormones, their estrogen, their progesterone, their testosterone.
Some people have way too much stress.
Well, guess what?
Cortisol, stress hormone, disrupts insulin, which disrupts our sex hormones.
So maybe the problem is that they have way too much stress.

(16:50):
So I think it's so hard to answer that because it's so dependent on that individual.
Yeah.
It is a super hard question.
I want to validate that because I find it hard too.
What hormones are you talking about?
I also think the idea of them being imbalanced is interesting because I contemplate hormones
to be dynamically fluctuating body

(17:11):
chemicals.
So like
what is balance?
But I think what it comes down to is the lived experience of the woman.
I mean, I'm sure you've heard this phrase.
I hear this all the time.
feeling out of whack,
out of whack,
right? And as far as I'm concerned, that is a legitimate
symptom. Something feels unusual compared to what you're used to. And so getting clear on what that

(17:32):
is, I actually think it's a deeply empowering exercise, irrespective of what protocol you end
up taking on. It's a deeply empowering exercise to encourage a woman to check in what feels off,
why does it feel off, when did it start feeling that way, what would you like it to feel like
instead. So to your point, gather symptoms, gather goals, start to piece together the starting points.

(17:56):
Now it sounds to me, I mean, this is my bias as well, so I don't want to assume that I just heard
this, but it sounds to me like nutrition is a big place to start blood sugar balancing, managing the
metabolic sort of hormones, the impact they have on the reproductive hormones. Obviously, Mindy's
work is in fasting and nutrient timing. Why do women need to fast

(18:16):
differently than men?
So men run on a 24-hour clock.
Women run, well, I should back up.
If you're having regular menstrual cycles, you're running on a 28-day clock.
Right.
Even in perimenopause and in menopause, we run on different biological clocks than men.

(18:41):
Men primarily have to focus on testosterone.
Women have a balancing act of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.
So what we know about fasting is that when it's done in a certain part of a menstrual cycle,
it can be very healing.

(19:02):
For example, estrogen, for healthy estrogen production,
the female body needs to be more insulin sensitive.
So we have better glucose control the first half of our cycle because the female body wants blood
sugar to be lower for proper estrogen production. So fasting is fantastic for estrogen.

(19:30):
You try to fast at the second half of your cycle when we need to be focusing on progesterone
production, progesterone and cortisol do not play well together. When cortisol goes high,
progesterone goes shy. Progesterone is very sensitive to all the types of stressors.

(19:53):
Fasting is a stress. It's a good stress when it's done appropriately. So because men don't
have to focus on estrogen versus progesterone versus testosterone, they can fast day to day
and it's not going to disrupt their hormonal cycle. Whereas women, we try to fast too much,

(20:16):
too often, even if we're postmenopausal, even if we're perimenopausal and haven't had a cycle for
three months, you start throwing too much fasting in, it's going to tank that progesterone.
I love this. I absolutely love this because, first of all, as I'm getting into my menopause transition, I'm starting – it's crazy how late in life I've started to appreciate my cycle. I don't know if you hear that a lot from

(20:40):
women.
Yes.
Yes.
Like literally start tracking my cycle at age 48. Why not? Why not? It's on the way out the door, but let's start tracking it. But what you just said was men are on this 24-hour clock, women are on this 28-day clock.
I actually think this is going to sound super nutty, super kooky, but I love this idea that we're all circadian in a way.
We all have these circadian rhythms, but women also have these lunar rhythms.

(21:04):
And
I think that's one of the most beautiful
things.
Even my clients who are postmenopausal, whether surgically or otherwise, I still believe, this is just my belief, I'd love to know what you think.
We're well-practiced at cycling with the moon.
Do you know what I mean?
Yes.
We've
practiced the art of having a 28-day cycle.
Even if the cycle itself is gone, we're still connected to that lunar cycle a little bit.

(21:24):
So I feel like my clients, even whose hormones have maybe left the building or to a certain extent,
still have the experience of my cravings ramp up or my fatigue ramps up.
And they're confused because they're not technically having a cycle anymore.
But we've always been cycling creatures.
What do you think about that?
Does that sound crazy?
Yeah, I have two thoughts.
So number one, I've had clients where they've gotten a partial hysterectomy.

(21:49):
still have their ovaries. And they're like, Paige, I still cycle. I don't bleed,
but I feel the shifts. I feel more bloated, more hungry, and I don't sleep as well.
And then I feel great for a couple of weeks. And so they're still experiencing that.
And then with our perimenopausal women group that they don't have a regular cycle,

(22:14):
we actually have them follow. If they want to follow Dr. Mindy's principles,
we have them follow the lunar cycle.
So the new
moon would be considered like day one,
the day of your bleeding. So if your circadian rhythm is well balanced with our planets and with
the moon, you should be ovulating around the full moon and bleeding with the new moon. Now,

(22:40):
some women, it's the opposite where they'll bleed at the full moon and then they... Yes. So ovulation
is typically full moon. The new moon is bleeding, but some will bleed with the full moon. And yeah.
I love that. I do recall that from Dr. Mindy's book that I just absolutely geeked out on that.

(23:01):
You know, if
you don't, if you can't
keep track of your cycle, just keep track of the moon.
I think that's very beautiful. I really do. Because at the end of the day, we are nature,
right? And I don't know, from my perspective, when I'm working with women and they're feeling very
down on hormones. And I want them to sort of, and I'm sure you do this too, to some extent,

(23:22):
I want women to kind of almost connect to the actual beauty of the rhythm of hormones,
even when they're being a little bit chaotic. Here's actually something for you.
I've been noodling on this idea that as we enter the menopause transition,
and we're out of our reproductive era, we're somewhat, we're less stress resilient. Like

(23:44):
be, by matter of survival, highly resilient when they're reproductive. And then when we come out
of the reproductive era, we're a little less stressed, which is, you know, you mentioned
earlier that stress and the impact of cortisol and progesterone and estrogen and the way that
these metabolic hormones impact the reproductive hormones. Not only does life become more stressful

(24:04):
when we're older, but I think we're less resilient to it. Do you have a thought on that?
do. I have a lot of thoughts. And Dr. Mindy actually just finished writing another book
that ties in well with this concept. So it's called Age Like a Girl and it'll be coming out in
December, I think, or October. One of the two. And so what is super fascinating is you're spot on.

(24:29):
You are very resilient when you're in your reproductive years by design. When we transition,
I say when your ovaries start to go into retirement, you become less resilient.
But I think there's two big reasons for that.
Number one is once the ovaries are not producing hormone like they should be, or like they were,

(24:52):
not they should be, like they were in their premenopausal years, it's really up to those
adrenal glands to take over that production.
Now, the adrenal glands are bombarded left and right 24-7 with all the different stressors.
Stressors from sitting all day.
Stressors from being around artificial light.

(25:15):
Stressors from not getting outside.
Stressors from being accessible by our workplace, by our phones, the text messages, the stressors
of our diet, the toxins in our environment.
The list goes on and on and on.
And so for women, if we don't start to honor and respect our adrenal health and slow down

(25:40):
in our perimenopausal years, oh yeah, you're going to feel it.
You're going to feel it hormonally.
It's going to feel awful.
Well, then once you actually get into menopause, so once you've had a full year of no menstrual
cycle, you're considered postmenopausal.

(26:00):
So once you have gone through that transition, and this is Dr. Mindy's work, once your estrogen
drops, your progesterone drops, you still have a little bit of that production, but it's so minimal.
With that decline of those sex hormones, you're also losing dopamine and GABA and serotonin and

(26:26):
all these brain chemicals that make you feel really good and happy and resilient to stress.
So your brain is actually changing. So Dr. Mindy's book, Age Like a Girl, which is coming out later
this year, is all about this. What is happening to the brain in menopause? And what is on the
other side of it? Because there's a reason why this happens. And there's a time where things

(26:49):
will balance out. So perimenopause and menopause can be a really rocky ride and that resiliency
can feel like it's gone, but I promise you it will recalibrate once you're actually past it.
I agree. I can't wait. I'm actually already setting my sights on being one of those like
super cool 52 year olds, but it's sort of like, this is, this is a transitional time. And

(27:19):
What's going on? Let's see. But we know it's just overwhelming, actually. It's very overwhelming
to think of the multitudes that we contain. And, you know, I remember when you mentioned that the
adrenals take over once estrogen production has slowed down, the adrenals start taking over.
I had never heard that in my life up until one year ago when I started menopause hormone therapy.

(27:40):
It was like, what? Why didn't somebody mention that? I wish I'd known that before I went into
this, right? Like there's just so much that we're now uncovering. I think this is amazing. I think
we're in an amazing time in women's health, especially post-reproductive women's health,
but it's also honestly overwhelming. I mean, it's honestly to consider all the brain chemistry that

(28:00):
is now in a different state as if we didn't have enough to think about, right? So I'm really
excited for Dr. Mindy's new book, but just in the interest of un-overwhelming people, I almost want
to use the word underwhelm because that's something I like to do in my health coaching practices. I
know you're overwhelmed by everything. Let's try to bring it down to sort of like the lowest hanging

(28:21):
fruit, the minimum effective dose. You know, we have sleep, we have lifestyle, things like toxic
load, you know, time spent outdoors. I'd love to zero in on food personally because that's where I
like to geek out and you're a nutritionist as am I. What foods support hormone production as we go
through the stage of life.
Yeah, we've got some really great lists in Eat Like a Girl. So Dr.

(28:46):
Mindy first wrote Fast Like a Girl to really start to have the conversation about how women
should be fasting differently than men. And then she got a lot of backlash like,
but women aren't supposed to be fasting and it's harmful for women. And what about getting enough
protein and the foods you need to support your hormones. So she's like, oh no, we need to eat too.

(29:10):
Women need to eat. So then she wrote, eat like a girl. So there's some really great resources in
there, but there are certain foods that can help us produce estrogen. There are certain foods that
can help us produce progesterone. And then there's certain categories of foods that help us just
produce hormones in general. So whether that's, we talked about this earlier, like what does

(29:32):
hormones mean? Are you talking about your sex hormones, your thyroid hormones, your adrenal
hormones? What hormones are you talking about? Well, for hormone production, there are 24 key
nutrients that Dr. Mindy researched and found, and those are in Eat Like a Girl. It's a lot of
your amino acid-rich foods, so
there's specific
amino acids, which would be your proteins.

(29:54):
There's the omega-3s, which are really important for hormone production.
You've got various vitamins and minerals.
Minerals are key.
Minerals like zinc and selenium and iodine and iron, these are critical for hormone production.
And then you've got vitamin D and your B vitamins and vitamin C.

(30:15):
So when we can go back to a whole food natural type of diet that's not ultra processed,
we're going to be getting a lot of these nutrients that help us produce hormones.
But let's say you got some hormone testing done and you know that you have low progesterone. I see

(30:36):
this a lot where estrogen is fine, testosterone might be a little bit lower than it, than we want
for like the optimal, the healthy range, but then progesterone is tanked. That's the most common
pattern I see, we know that you need to be eating more carbohydrates

(30:56):
to help
with progesterone
production. So we need things like beans and squashes and sweet potatoes and berries,
tropical fruits to help us produce progesterone. So if you are premenopausal or perimenopausal,
you could be eating those at a certain time of your cycle.

(31:20):
For estrogen, it's a lot of your nuts and your seeds, olives, olive oil. So there are specific
foods that you could eat at certain times of your cycle to really make sure you're producing that
hormone properly. Or you just focus on those key 24 and eat a whole food type of diet and know that

(31:43):
that's going to help with hormones.
It's so interesting because, I mean,
we think about that list of foods and we need our amino acids, we need our essential fatty acids,
we need our carbohydrates. It's like, oh, look, it's the full balance of all the macronutrients.
Oh, look, it's a human species appropriate whole food diet. I mean, as a proud omnivore,

(32:03):
I'm always delighted. I find it really hard to get women to eat that way. I'm going to be
really honest with you. And this is what I do in my practice is I work with women on weight loss
and I try to get them to adequately nourish. Because as far as I'm concerned, especially women
my age, women coming into menopause now, we're these Gen X women that we spent the 90s and 2000s

(32:26):
dieting, not eating, Diet Coke and rice cakes. And to ask women to actually nourish is major
cognitive dissonance, but I'll get fat, but aren't I supposed to fast? Aren't I supposed to be keto?
Do you find you bump into that with women in your community or are they pretty open once they get

(32:46):
into that community? Are they willing to try the beautiful human species appropriate diet? What do
you find?
A mix, definitely a mix of both. And there's still some of that fear around
eating too many calories or too much or too many carbs, like even the carb conversation.

(33:10):
So many women are fearing carbs left and right because of the ketogenic movement. And the
ketogenic movement serves a time and a place and it can be a helpful tool. But to your point,
So many women, especially in perimenopause, are so nutrient depleted that they just need to be eating nourishing foods and eating enough of the nourishing foods to support their hormones.

(33:40):
Yeah.
I did this whole deep dive, and I won't get into the weeds of it here, but I was going – the women in menopause right now are these Gen X women, and we were raised in the diet programming.
But before that, we were the latchkey kids that were consuming processed foods.
so this whole processed foods diet food now we're into this era of life where we really really need

(34:00):
to nourish for the first time ever and it we are like a deer in headlights so there's a just a
really steep learning curve and i want to validate that work that you do the work that i do and
anybody listening who's working with this population of women you know there's a lot of complexity here
we do contain multitudes there's a lot of hormonal stuff happening food is a massively nourishing
component. And I think this is where coaching really shines because telling a woman what to do

(34:27):
when everything inside of her is pushing back against it, it just doesn't work. We have to
have meaningful conversations. We have to have client-led conversations. So I think it's really
valuable what you and your team are doing inside Dr. Pelz's community because, you know, I envision
these 3,000 members, these women who are desperate to understand their bodies, but also don't even

(34:52):
know where to start.
It's a
lot of work. Exactly.
It is a lot of work. And as a coach too, it can be
overwhelming. So I love what you said about let's start with the basics. Let's get the foundational
principles of healthy living. Start working on that first. Work on sleep. Work on hydration.

(35:14):
Work on movement.
Work on balancing your blood sugar.
And your hormonal stuff is going to clear right up.
It's a small subset of people that need a very specific type of diet, like a very low-carb diet.
Or there's a subset where they have to go carnivore to help calm down an autoimmune response.

(35:36):
Those diets can be so helpful.
But at the end of the day, the more I learn about nutrition, especially for women, the
more I believe, just go back to eating from the earth.
Just get a whole food type of diet.
Eat enough.
Make sure you're eating foods that aren't ultra processed.

(35:57):
And you don't have to be so strict about grams of carbs versus grams of fat versus grams of
protein.
It just throws so much more confusion in it.
But you're right.
So many women just don't even know where to start.
And it's, yeah.
So that's why Dr. Mindy in Eat Like a Girl, she does have like food plans and guidance

(36:20):
around that.
So we're often referring our members to one of her books for more information in that
regard.
What an amazing resource.
I just, I think it's fascinating.
So you've really, you know, there's a lot of empowering shifts that need to be made with women as they enter this stage of life and try to opt into some of these changes that feel uncomfortable.

(36:44):
In your experience, what has been some of the most empowering shifts you've seen women make when they start sinking their lifestyle in an effort to sort of balance or manage hormones?
What are some of the empowering experiences or ahas women have had that you've noticed?
You know, the number one thing that I have noticed, and we actually get feedback from this, so we do different experiences, we call them live resets.

(37:11):
We do
this every other month and we offer it to all the members in the membership.
And we have several live calls and we give them a plan to follow and we do a survey at the end.
You want to know what the number one biggest improvement they report?
It's
confidence.

(37:31):
No.
Confidence.
Confidence.
Can you believe that?
If you are more confident, you set better boundaries.
You stand up for yourself.
You carry yourself different.
You look in the mirror.
You like what you see.
How cool is it that by shifting your diet, and I don't like to use the word diet, you're

(37:53):
shifting your nutrition, you're shifting your prioritization of sleep and movement.
you get more confidence like that just is a ripple effect to everything else in your life
that is the ultimate outcome that we want from health coaching right so when you said confidence
i think my first thought was oh like body confidence but no no you're talking sort of

(38:17):
this global confidence which which would be another way of describing self-efficacy or
self-determination which is i know what to do and how to do it and i have the resources to do it
incredibly empowering. That is the desired outcome of any coaching relationship. I mean,
obviously the physical outcome, the improvement in health markers, whatever it might be,

(38:38):
but the self-determination, the self-efficacy is what we want to nurture in our clients so that
they can do it on their own. This idea of graduating them back into their own lives
with this renewed confidence or for the first time confidence is the absolute outcome we're
all looking for. That's incredible. That's so palpable.

(38:58):
Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. We try to,
and learn this from Dr. Mindy, but a lot of her languaging when we teach our clients that type of,
we'll just call it a protocol or that experience is we want to teach you to never have to go on a
diet again. Yeah.

(39:20):
Oh, gals, we really do need to stop dieting. It makes me, it breaks my heart and
also fires me up to consider that the women who are now currently, like I say, going through
menopause, we have been really embroiled in dieting for a long time. It's very exciting
to hear that you've got this massive community that you're managing and these women are coming

(39:41):
through feeling an improved level of confidence. And I just, that really excites me for womankind.
I guess. So I'd love to dive in a bit more to the coaching that you do in terms of being the lead
coach. So you have a team of coaches under you. Are you mentoring them? How do you work with those
other coaches in that container?

(40:02):
Yeah, mentoring would be a good way to describe it. I help
facilitate there. So they also do live Zoom calls and they're the ones that really the coaches that
I'm in charge of are the ones that are in the community answering the questions.
They're the ones that are doing the one-on-one consultations. So they'll often come to me with,

(40:28):
let's just say, a question about hormones or whatever the coaching question is, and they want
a second opinion or they want my thoughts on it. So there's a lot of mentoring that happens in that
regard. And I kind of coordinate their responsibility. So I help coordinate like

(40:51):
what type of topic calls they should be doing, what type of consultations they should be doing.
So
it's
a unique. I haven't been in this role very long. It's been about a year, year and a half.
and I'm learning a lot as far as leadership goes because I've always been a coach under a doctor.

(41:13):
So to be the mentor was a whole new paradigm.
Yeah. Well, here's the reason I asked that question.
One thing that I'm very excited about as a health coaching educator
and a health coach who's been in practice for 15 years is that the health coaching industry is,
we've noticed a shift, and you probably noticed this too.

(41:34):
In the early days, it was the private practice.
Or, you know, in your case, you went to work under a naturopathic doctor.
That was sort of the exception.
You know, if you managed to find a doctor who was hiring a health coach, it was a miracle.
Now we're seeing a lot more integrative medical approaches where health coaches are coming in as part of an integrative team.
But what we're also seeing is exactly what you're doing with Dr. Mindy.

(41:57):
So we get a thought leader in the health and wellness realm, Dr. Mindy.
She brings on a health coach. Soon her community grows and the health coach needs to have help. There needs to be more health coaches. Now what we have is this role where you're the lead health coach, the head coach, the coaching manager, the coaching director. It's just really interesting to me. I think it's fascinating that the role that you have exists. And so, you know, you say I've been in this role only for a year, a year and a half. I'm still trying to figure it out. But the thing is these roles are new. They're relatively new.

(42:30):
Yeah, that's such a good point.
and you're kind of an early adopter of it.
You know, I'll never forget. So I, it was during
COVID. So 2020, I forget if it was April. And I remember getting an email and I was, I was
starting to get burnt out at the clinic. And I think it was physical, but also emotional, mental.

(42:55):
I was, I was supposed to move on. I learned what I needed to learn and I needed to grow,
expand my wings. And so this email popped into my inbox and it said, virtual health coach wanted.
And I was like, what? Virtual health coaching? Like my mind was just in a box of, if you're a

(43:17):
health coach, you're meeting people in person, in a clinical setting, because that's all I knew at
that
time.
And I didn't know that there could be an expansion of our job. Like you said, I mean,
you could take this type of profession in so many different directions now, and you could use it for

(43:41):
any sort of adjunct to whatever that clinic is doing or another provider like health coaches
and chiropractors will come together. And yeah, so that really opened up my mind when I saw that
email come through that there was a virtual health coach position open.
Yeah. Well, that was something

(44:02):
that really changed during the lockdowns was the move to telemedicine. And a lot of people had that
realization that they don't have to necessarily be in the room with their healthcare provider to get
what they need,
which has really opened it up for health coaches. But also just the health coaching
industry in and of itself has really grown. So you're overseeing this team of how many coaches

(44:24):
are there on the team?
Right now there's three. There's one that's also, we call her a coach.
She's in training.
She's going back
for her master's right now. So there's a team of four.
And then Dr. Mindy has certified over 1,000 individuals in her Fast Like a Girl certification

(44:45):
program.
So my role for that primarily is I come once a month and I do a live session, a live Zoom
session with them.
It's very much Q&A based.
So they can submit questions ahead of time.
I do provide some coaching tips and tricks in with that too.
So it's kind of like their continuous education.

(45:08):
So I wouldn't say that I completely manage all of our 1,000 Fast Like a Girl coaches,
but I do play a big role in continuing their education and helping them on their coaching business path.
Wow. Amazing.
So there's 1,000 Fast Like a Girl coaches?
Yeah.
We had over 700 in 2024 and I think like 400 in 2025 that got.

(45:34):
And
it's
all
different backgrounds.
So we have a lot of health coaches that are also Fast Like a Girl coaches, but we had members of our community just want to learn more.
We've had doctors.
We've had all different mental health professionals join just to kind of add more experience into their background.
Okay.
So they've come through Dr. Mindy's sort of certification program.

(45:57):
Got you.
Okay.
Wow.
Fascinating.
Cool.
This is really amazing.
It's so interesting.
I'm really grateful to be able to speak with you, Paige, because I love the work that Dr. Mindy does.
And because I'm also a health coach for women, it's encouraging to know that the women in the Fast Like a Girl community,
I'm sorry, the Reset Academy, are getting the support they need from coaching when they need it.

(46:22):
So I'm really grateful.
I always love chatting with coaches, but I also just wanted to take a moment to chat with you as an individual.
I'm just curious what got you into health coaching.
Do you have a health journey that brought you to this line of work?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Pain to purpose story as
most
of us do. So, you know, it's really if I had to

(46:42):
pinpoint what's fascinating is there when I turned 18, there was something that overcame
my obsession with nutrition. I cannot even remember if it was a magazine article or something,
but I just like I started reading about nutrition and I couldn't get enough. And 18 is when I went
to college. And so when I went to, when I picked the college, I didn't pick it for nutrition. I just

(47:07):
picked the college that I got into and it was a good college. And they had a health education
major and a nutrition minor. And so that wasn't my first path. My first path was actually psychology
because I was really interested in psychology as well. And we know psychology and nutrition
and health coaching, they all go hand in hand. But I remember being very overwhelmed after one

(47:31):
of my psychology classes and thinking, I don't, this doesn't feel right. So I switched degrees
and I got into the health coaching and nutrition path. Well, I loved it. I ate it all up. In my last
semester of college that I, it felt like my health just crumbled overnight. And when I look back,

(47:53):
I can actually pinpoint what changed. But I went from feeling really good to no longer sleeping.
I had really bad anxiety.
I had this dizziness.
I would only describe it as feeling like I was tipsy, like off alcohol, but it was all
the time and it didn't feel good.
And I just didn't feel like myself.

(48:16):
So I got a bunch of blood work done.
I was diagnosed with a hypothyroid.
So I had hypothyroidism.
The doctor was like, here's a prescription for levothyroxine.
Why don't you take this?
I'll follow, you can follow up in six months and we'll go from there. And I'm like literally 21 or
22 and I'm like researching levothyroxine and hypothyroidism. And I'm like, this is something,

(48:39):
if I start, I'll never get off of it. Like this is something I'll have to continue. And that's
actually how I met the naturopathic doctor. So in my area, there was a naturopathic clinic and that's
that I was like, you know what, I'm going to try this naturally. I'm not fully against medication.
I'll get on it if I can't correct it. Well, my whole mind was blown once I started working with

(49:02):
this naturopath. And we got my thyroid labs back in normal. I was feeling a million times better.
And that's how I got the job is we developed a relationship, a client or patient doctor
relationship. And I told him my background and what I was studying. And it all fell into place.
But it was a combination of the passion just kind of came to me when I was younger.

(49:30):
And then the health experience is what ignited it.
Wow.
You were quite young to have your pain-to-purpose journey.
That's interesting.
I think there are probably, I'd be curious what you think there.
Well, to your own point, that you have this natural curiosity and interest in health and wellness that sort of underpinned.
and then to have the experience of your thyroid basically shutting down at such a

(49:53):
young age.
You know, it's interesting for me though.
So, you know, you got the gist when I asked the question, what's your story?
How did you get into this?
And you said, don't we all have a story?
And we do.
I always think about the health consumer who feels like you felt and thinks that's normal,
doesn't have the natural curiosity or critical thinking or whatever it is that health coaches

(50:18):
have, the people who gravitate toward health coaching have to say, I don't think this is
normal and I'm going to go chase down some answers. How do you impart that wisdom or do you think you
can? This is a loaded question. Do you think it's possible to impart that wisdom on every human or
do some of us just naturally possess more of this natural curiosity and wanting to understand the
body? What do you think? What's your hunch?

(50:39):
I feel like it is a personality trait. Like you
have to have a certain drive and determination. That doesn't mean that you can't get healthy if
you don't have drive and determination. I think it just depends on how far are you willing to go.

(51:00):
I also think it's generational. So I've worked with varying ages of people and I find that,
not to stereotype, but a lot of people in their 60s and 70s, they have been taught to do what
the doctor says. The doctor is right. Don't argue. Don't disagree. The doctor knows everything.

(51:23):
So that generation has, in my experience, been a little bit more challenging to work with. Now,
the women that come to the Reset Academy that are that age, completely different. They have
completely different thoughts and mindsets. And that's probably because of our marketing and how
we attract that type of group. But it is very generational too. So I find my generation, I'm 33,

(51:49):
it's a different ballgame. We start, we're questioning things. We aren't getting our
answers met. And we are on a mission to find out other alternatives and options. So I think it's
partially personality. I think it's generational. Those are the two things, in my opinion.

(52:12):
The generational thing is fascinating, actually. I hosted a health coach meetup a few weeks ago in
Austin, Texas, and we had about 30 of our health coaches come. And I sat next to a girl at this
dinner who was 19 years old and was a graduate of our health coaching school. And I was astonished
because I thought, this is my own bias, oh, people become health coaches when they kind of

(52:37):
get sick and then get better. And they want to impart this wisdom on the world. But what we're
generationally seeing is these younger generations, and you're a younger generation than I am as well,
but the natural curiosity that peaks earlier and the want for solutions before it gets bad.
So the fact that this is becoming a career path for younger generations that are not going to accept, they're not going to accept, blindly accept medical information or health information.

(53:07):
They want, they're seeking to understand.
So I think that generational piece is really fascinating, really interesting.
Which is great.
We need it.
Yeah.
We, I mean, we're biased, but we need this.
I completely agree.
I think it's interesting to contemplate, and I've contemplated this a lot since I met this gal, which is right at a high school, her actual vocational training was not university.

(53:30):
It was health coaching school.
So this is going to be her career.
And she's young enough that she hasn't even necessarily suffered her own ill health.
And maybe she never will.
Can you imagine that?
Like the next generation of health coaches are healthy humans that have been healthy and have an interest in understanding of health from jump instead of having to come through it the hard way, which is, I think, really interesting.

(53:55):
I mean, yeah, it's really cool.
I love hearing these stories.
That's why I wanted to ask for yours because I think the health journeys are so fascinating.
Yeah.
So just to kind of bring us around here to the finale of this conversation, we talked about a lot of stuff today, coaching, women's health.
We have a lot of listeners who are zeroing in on women's health and shout out to anybody

(54:16):
listening who's not doing that. Don't worry. We've got episodes for you too, but this is a big one
right now. What is one habit you recommend every woman implement today?
Oh, it's such a loaded question. So we already talked about nutrition, so I won't go there.
I really think the cortisol and stress piece needs to be addressed.

(54:42):
There is something called the hormonal hierarchy.
And it's how certain hormones influence others.
So at the bottom of the hormone hierarchy sits our sex hormones, our estrogen, our progesterone, and our testosterone.
And we know that estrogen, progesterone, testosterone affect our mood, our sleep,

(55:04):
our emotions, our gut health, our immune system even. There's links. Our brain health,
our focus, our ability to lose weight. So we blame our hormones on that. But guess what?
There are hormones above the sex hormones that dictate how the sex hormones function.

(55:24):
It's the bottom of the hierarchy, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone.
Right above that is insulin.
This is going back to the blood sugar.
If we don't have balanced blood sugar, if our blood sugar is a roller coaster, that's
going to impact our sex hormones.

(55:45):
Well, there's a hormone that sits above insulin and it's cortisol.
So we could be doing all the blood sugar hacking, all the blood sugar balancing.
eating perfectly, whatever perfect is, eating so clean. But if we can't get that cortisol to come
down, blood sugar stays a little bit higher.

(56:06):
If
blood sugar stays
a little bit higher,
sex hormones start to get a little wonky. There's one more hormone above all of them.
Don't tell me. Is it melatonin?
No, but that would be an important one too. I don't know where it falls in the hierarchy.
I'd have to think about that.
Would it be – I'd have to look back at how cortisol and melatonins are they – they're

(56:31):
inverse, right?
So if cortisol is high, melatonin goes low.
So I would probably put melatonin – oh, and then when we have melatonin in our body,
we're insulin
resistant.
Yes.
So melatonin would be in between
those two.
I think it's between cortisol.
Yeah.
I think it's between.
Yeah.
But I want to know this boss hormone.
Which is this boss hormone?
Is it thyroid
hormone?
It's oxytocin.

(56:52):
Ooh.
What? Oxytocin. Guys, we get oxytocin by being in nature, by having a fun conversation.
Like you and I are getting a lot of oxytocin right now. Our pets, animals, cuddling, hugging,
connection, community, sunshine. It goes back to just healthy living. So coaches, if you're

(57:19):
overwhelmed, start with the basics. Your clients are going to feel so much better by prioritizing
movement and sunshine and connecting with their families. That gets their cortisol down. So I
answered your question with stress, but if I had to answer it again, I would go back to
get more oxytocin, seek out oxytocin.

(57:41):
Whoa. That's fascinating. I'm obsessed with this
because I think about this from the perspective of biological imperatives.
I do geek out on the ancestral health stuff sometimes a little, maybe too much, but it's like the biological imperative.
So reproduction, very biologically imperative.
But above that would be metabolism, you know, fuel partitioning and keeping the species alive.
So insulin.
And then, but above that is actually survival, right?

(58:03):
So we've got cortisol, that survival hormone.
But even above that is the love, is the collective consciousness and community and the freaking solar sun, you know.
I absolutely, absolutely love that. That is such a human way of looking at it, really.
And I think what I think is beautiful about that, why I'm geeking on it, is because the

(58:26):
commoditization of health and hormone health and women's health makes us feel like we need
the supplement or the weighted vest. But what we actually need is to reconnect back to the
imperatives of our biology. And one of the biggest one, to your point, is anything that supports
It's oxytocin, which is love and connection and feeling oneness, really

(58:48):
fascinating.
And part of a community.
Yeah.
You know, don't they say like loneliness is the number one
predictor
of death or something?
Like I don't have that quote completely right, but
it's such a missing
piece.
I had this conversation with my circle of friends who are also my age.
I came back from a health conference and Ben Greenfield spoke on the loneliness epidemic,

(59:15):
whatever we're going to call it.
And I listened to that talk, fully clutching my pearls, and came home and said to my friends,
we're going to die of loneliness if we don't get our accident here.
So we're in the group chat trying to plan a walk in the mountains.
We need to quit saying no.
We need to start saying yes.
We're going to die of loneliness.
That became very, very, very important.

(59:35):
But I really love how you establish this as the hierarchy of hormones.
That is a beautiful thing.
Amazing.
Because the sex hormones, although crucial and definitely chaotic for this stage of life, there's other hormones influencing them.
It's not like you're stuck with this sex hormone situation.

(59:57):
You have a sort of path of influence to make those hormones behave differently to a certain extent.
And like you wisely said earlier in the conversation, like sometimes trying to pinpoint and fix one hormone or balance one hormone, it's like throwing a shot in the dark because hormones are literally in and out and up and down and all over.

(01:00:20):
So yes, we have our three sex hormones throughout the month, but there's other things at play here.
And those other things are so important, more important than trying to balance your sex
hormones.
Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Very cool. Okay. Paige, tell us where we should track you down,

(01:00:42):
track down Dr. Mini Pals, all of the places to track down, all the things we talked about. Give
me the laundry list of connection points here.
So you can find me on social media. I have an
Instagram and Facebook page. It's at the wellness page. So play on word name is
Paige and then the
wellness page.
You

(01:01:02):
know, that one came to me in a float, flotation
session.
Yes. And then Dr. Mindy,
I mean, you'll find her everywhere, but go check out Fast Like a Girl, Eat Like a Girl,
if you resonated with the lifestyle aspects. You can go to Dr. Mindy's website,
drmindypels.com. You can learn more about the Reset Academy. We do have a directory of all of

(01:01:24):
our Fast Like a Girl coaches. So that's a great resource. We are probably not certifying another
round of coaches until spring of 2026. So there is a wait list for that if you wanted to join. So
go follow Dr. Mindy on her website or social media, get her books. Oh, her podcast is fantastic,

(01:01:45):
The Resetter Podcast.
Yes, that it is. Oh my gosh. Well, amazing stuff, Paige. This is great. I'm
as to your coaching practice, your personal expertise.
We get to learn a lot about coaching,
but also about health, women's health in this case.
Very, very powerful topic.

(01:02:05):
And I really do want to thank you for your time.
I've learned a lot and I enjoyed our conversation today.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
It was so much fun.
I love these conversations.
All right.
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(01:02:28):
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