Ep1 - Let's Talk About Babies, Breadcrumbs, Besties

Get to know your hosts in this introductory episode of Can We Just Talk About This? Listen as Corey and Mandy share their stories. Learn what to expect from this conversation-format podcast. But most of all, know you’re not alone in perimenopause, and there’s a circle of girlfriends waiting for you on the pod! 1 Establishing a Rhythm: Corey and Mandy set the stage for their podcast, highlighting their intention to engage in weekly conversations for their dedicated listeners. 2 Navigating Life’s Complexities: Mandy delves into her personal journey, discussing her experiences at Hardin Simmons University, The Citadel, The University of Kansas, and her evolving passion for science, women’s health, and the nuances of perimenopause as the Director of the Human Performance Lab at University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. 3 The Unpredictability of Life: Corey shares reflections on life’s unpredictable twists, reinforcing that our paths are often winding, especially when navigating health, fitness, and perimenopause. 4 Digital-age Connections: The conversation takes a light-hearted turn as Mandy shares a story about forming a connection online during her academic years. 5 Personal Tales and Bonds: Corey dives into her birth stories (some sensitive topics here) and beyond, offering listeners a glimpse into her professional and personal life, and her perimenopause.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey girlfriend, it's time for Can We Just Talk About This, where real talk meets real

(00:09):
life in the world of fitness and health during perimenopause.
I'm nutrition, strength and hormone coach Cori Jackson, and I'm chatting with my brilliant
friend, coach and exercise physiologist Dr. Mandy Parra.
Whether you're in your 50s like me or your 30s like Mandy, we're here to navigate the
ever evolving journey of life, motherhood and perimenopause together.

(00:33):
So pull up a seat, get comfy, and let's talk about this.
Hello and welcome.
This is the first of, well, what I hope to be, many chats among girlfriends experiencing
perimenopause.
I've been talking about the menopause transition for about three years now, about as long as

(00:57):
I've been aware that I've been in perimenopause.
And what's become really apparent to me is that women don't have ready access to information
about what's going on physiologically during this phase of life.
And what I've learned over the course of my life is that information truly is empowering.

(01:20):
My goal is to empower you to embrace the changes you're going through with grace for yourself,
grace in your relationships, and in your health and fitness.
For many of us, it's not easy, this menopause transition, but knowing we're not alone somehow
makes it less heavy.
This episode is essentially a getting to know you chat.

(01:44):
I ask Mandy questions and she asks me questions.
We are truly hearing each other's stories for the very first time with you.
So just some highlights here.
I briefly share my birth stories.
I have two adult sons.
And I'm sure you'll be able to tell that some of the experience was hormonal foreshadowing,

(02:04):
so to speak.
And Mandy leans in to learn from my experiences, my symptoms, my lifestyle that has led to
some of these symptoms, and then also to celebrate the menopause transition as an empowering
life passage.
In the end, our hope is that you find community here and support, that you learn something

(02:28):
that you can use to make your perimenopause easier.
All right, enjoy the show.
Welcome Mandy Parra.
Thank you so much.
I'm so excited to visit with you today.
Yeah, yeah.
This is going to become a weekly habit.
So I just wanted to get to know you and let our audience get to know you a little better

(02:49):
because you are truly an expert in the stuff that we're talking about.
Let's just chat a little bit through an introduction.
Let me know how, just tell me about your passions.
Tell me about your profession and what you do, what you know.
Oh, wow.
So I really feel as I was thinking through my past to start to predict and say all the

(03:10):
things that I've done in my lifetime.
I feel like it's been a really, like most of us, a windy road to finally get to where
I sit today.
And I'm really excited about all of the things that I was able to experience until finally
decided that science and women's health was really the place that I wanted to land.

(03:30):
So I started out as an undergraduate at Hardin Simmons University.
So really school school in Abilene, Texas.
And I played volleyball there.
So I was a student athlete and I really got involved with the strength and conditioning
team there.
So I really, I love volleyball, but the weight room is where I really started to thrive and

(03:52):
ended up not playing a whole lot.
But they kept me on the squad because I really loved pushing everyone in the weight room.
And so I started to realize, maybe this is actually where I'm linked.
Maybe this is where I want to stay.
So I started working with the other athletes and I started following the strength coach

(04:14):
around all the time and let me be more involved in the weight room and eventually helped me
to start coaching and helped foster me through coaching.
And so I needed an internship at the end of my degree.
And so I ended up going out to South Carolina, to Charleston, South Carolina, and worked as

(04:36):
a strength coach for a military school.
So it's a school called The Citadel.
So it's a D1 school out there and it was actually the first female to be able to work in the
weight room.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.
They have a long history of male leadership and such a rich military history there.

(04:57):
So I learned so much through my time there as a strength coach.
So I love strength coaching and decided to get my master's in strength initiative.
So I went to Baylor University and started my master's and that's where I really started
getting involved with research.
So I worked in the weight room a ton and then spent the rest of my graduate assistantship

(05:17):
starting to understand nutrition and strength condition research.
Eventually decided that if I wanted to have a long-term career, that I probably should
find something that I can use my life and not just my body.
And so I started doing research and decided to do my PhD.
I did my PhD at OU in metabolism and body composition and that's amazing people there.

(05:44):
And then ended up stopping for a little while and I was a manager at a lifetime fitness
for one year.
So I took a little foreigner sabbatical, if you will, and then went back to KU, University
of Kansas, Rock Chalk and then a partner with inverter unit recruitment.
I'm a true neuro-muscular and muscular physiology person for sure is where I finished out.

(06:10):
And within there, there's been a lot of passion in coaching and understanding women.
And I know that kind of runs parallel to your passions is really understanding and helping
women see their full potential.
And not only that, but understanding that we are really complex.
Yes.

(06:31):
Yes.
And that's the winding path.
Yeah.
I always say it's like a circuitous route.
There's no such thing as a linear travel through transformation, through health, through life.
It's always winding and circuitous and wouldn't it just get boring though if it were straight

(06:52):
life?
I have to have the ability to be able to adjust and adapt and all the things.
I feel like that's where we grow too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Tell me about when and where you met your husband and when you got married and your
family life, all that.
Okay.
We have a pretty fun story.
I guess I'm right.

(07:12):
I think sex stories are fun.
All right.
But we had a fun story.
We met online while I was doing my PhD.
We met through an online dating app and it was probably my second week on the online
dating app.
And I said, I am done with this.
Online dating is not for me.
I went on one really terrible date and it was a night marriage date.

(07:35):
And then the next date my husband asked was, I really want to take you on a date.
I really think you'll be fine.
We're going to make this work.
I haven't said okay, I'm deleting the app and this is where I'm done.
So it went on a date and he was the amazing gentle man and wonderful man that he still
is and totally just fell in love with her.
We were engaged within six months and then married less than a year later.

(07:58):
Oh wow.
And so we have three babies now.
Callan is eight and then we have a three-year-old and an eight-month-old.
So we have a very busy lifestyle right now.
For sure.
Wouldn't trade any of it though, would you?
No, not at all.
So have you discussed how you met Wes?

(08:20):
Have not.
Let's do.
I would love to get back.
We got married in 1994, a long time before dating apps.
So we met at church.
It was one of those things that I decided after everyone has horror stories about dating
and relationships.
So I decided after a few of those, that was it.

(08:42):
I'm done dating the next person.
I even consider dating.
I'm going to have to, you know, this is it.
We're done.
I'm not looking around anymore.
Of course, as a young person, you don't always stick to those decisions.
And so I did date a few people.
But Wes and I met in church and it was love from the beginning, but just like every other

(09:09):
person you have the stuff you have to work through.
But because we knew it was love at the beginning and the passion of youth and everything, we
got engaged right away.
And then we broke up.
And then we started dating again and then got engaged again really fast.
And then we broke up.

(09:30):
We did that a few times.
And finally, third time's a charm.
We realized one day that we're dating, but it's not, it's totally casual.
There's not a lot of pressure.
There's not a lot of stress.
We're not fighting.
There's none of the stuff that caused us to have friction before.

(09:50):
So we realized, okay, this is working.
This is actually working.
And we took the time though, and you know, as opposed to getting engaged within two weeks,
we got engaged within six months.
And then we were married within a year.
So our stories mirror a lot in that respect.
But this was before-
You made him work.
I did.

(10:11):
But I ain't done right.
Well, it's funny because it started completely opposite of that.
I asked him out.
I love that.
Yeah.
I've always been like, who cares about these societal roles, gender roles and all that
stuff?
That doesn't matter.
If I see something I like, someone I like, I'm going to go after it.
I had a bit of a masculine energy as far as stuff like that.

(10:32):
Your personality, you're not expecting anything less than you said.
I'm going to go for that.
And I did.
And it broke.
It all works out in the end.
And we've been married for 29 years this last May.
We'll be married 30 years in 2024.
We have two sons.

(10:53):
Nathan was born in 96.
He'll be 27 in September.
He is a practicing architect now.
And Luke, our youngest, just turned 24.
He is a mechanical engineer.
And he's just started in his first big professional job.
He graduated this last May.

(11:14):
Yeah, it's been an interesting trip.
The thing that I noticed on marriage has just been fun.
We love to work together.
We love to play together.
Obviously you're not successful at anything that isn't.
Everything that is worth it is going to be hard.
And so we have to work on it for sure.

(11:35):
But it's never been hard to work on.
We both have wanted it the whole time.
And it's fortunate to learn early on that it's not 50-50.
It's 100-100.
That's what my stepdad told us.
Good advice was that it's never going to be 50-50.
You can't just give half of this.

(11:55):
You have to give your whole self to it to make it work, to make it go.
And I heard recently it's not even 100-100 because sometimes you don't have 100% to give.
And if your partner comes in and says, I'm at about 75, I don't have enough energy to
give more, then that's when you pick up the slack.
And those are fun little life lessons.

(12:20):
I am going to resist the urge though to be the sage advisor.
I think you should be because I feel like even just having spent some time with you
and Wes together, I love your relationship together and the way that you interact together
and just your genuine care for each other and even the way that watching the way that

(12:44):
you guys handle any kind of conflict.
So it's always fun to watch.
And I see you in not a sage advisor, but obviously as an amazing mentor and a great person that
just you are fierce, you could get what you want.
And so I always love hearing your side and your advice.
So being a chapter behind you in motherhood and in those and all of the big things.

(13:10):
I definitely look up to and look forward to hearing all of the things that all of your
experiences and how they play a role in the person that you are today.
And I want to hear, I want to hear more about what got you here.
So I know a little bit about your story and I know the nuts and bolts.
So that the how did you arrive here and tell your passion for women's health?

(13:32):
Okay.
Okay.
Wow.
Back to the long circuitous path.
I always say that I was a late bloomer.
I do everything backwards.
We got we weren't early.
We didn't get married early.
I was 25 when we got married.
So that's that's as far as today's standards go.
That's not necessarily that old.

(13:53):
I grew up in a small town in Texas in the 80s.
I was in high school and I graduated in 1989.
So if you ever saw Friday Night Lights, that was very similar to my upbringing.
Girls were raised in to get married, even in the 80s.
That seems like not that far long ago.
I'm used to hearing that story from my mom's generation.

(14:15):
But that was actually my experience too.
There were some girls that were pursuing interests in chemistry and taking anatomy and physiology
classes in high school.
I took the very most basic thing that I had to have the requirements to get out of there.
My main focus and interest was in music.
So I was a trumpet player and I was classically trained and I wanted to continue doing that.

(14:41):
The school that I chose to go to was Dallas Baptist University.
And I was studying instrumental music education, although my number one passion was for performance.
But again, being convinced by society, my dad, other reasons, I was convinced to do
education because it was going to be a steady gig.

(15:04):
Yeah.
And really now there's a lot of research that has come out that shows it wasn't until blind
auditions started occurring in orchestras that women started having actual representation.
And now it's about a 50-50 split in the music world.

(15:24):
But before when the conductors and the people that made the decisions to let someone in
could see the musician, then it was mostly, it was all men, really, maybe one or two.
That didn't break until about the 70s or 80s that we were talking about.
I know it's not infiltrated so far.
Oh gosh, yeah.
Even into music.

(15:45):
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
It's hard to believe that women in this country could not get their own credit card without
their husbands signing for it until the 70s.
Yeah.
I mean, it goes so deep.
It's so layered.
And I know we'll get into that.

(16:05):
But anyway, so I grew up in the 80s.
And it was one good thing that my dad said, you should go to college, yes, but at least
you should study this.
And it didn't really help that when I broke up with my long-term boyfriend of two and
a half years, that my dad told me I really liked him.

(16:26):
And he would have been the guy I would have chosen for a son-in-law, period, for my sister
or for me.
It was one of those things that helped me realize, okay, I'm fighting an uphill battle
hill, but battle here, but it is totally worth it.
And I knew that I wanted to stand on my own two feet, no matter what.

(16:48):
After a year at Dallas Baptist studying instrumental music education, the powers that be at that
university decided to cut that major and focus mostly on choral programs and music programs.
And that makes sense for the type of college that it was.
And my mentor and my band director was pink-slipped and I decided this place is no longer for

(17:12):
me.
And I moved to Austin without a plan at all.
And so that's where I have put down roots.
That's where I met my husband and life just started to take off.
We got married, poor, broken young, and just built our way up.
And he was driving home from work one day and just said, when we're talking, having

(17:36):
a conversation, we both, we had moved to a suburb by that time, bought a house, had two
kids.
One of them was already in elementary school.
The other one was getting ready to go into elementary school.
And he says, have you thought about going back to school?
And something resonated with that one statement so deeply that I didn't even have to think

(17:59):
about it anymore.
I decided that was when I needed to do that.
But this was after I had two babies, obviously, and they were both kind of challenging pregnancies.
Luke's delivery was, the delivery was complicated.
Nathan was born by a cesarean section, but I decided I wanted to have Luke naturally
or vaginal birth after cesarean.

(18:22):
And yeah, but I didn't do anything to prepare myself for that at all.
There was no extra core work.
There was no extra strengthening.
There was no massage of the tissues, none of that stuff.
And this was also at the very end of the episiotomy craze.

(18:42):
The labor was long and difficult.
And I don't usually tell this story, but I guess it's good to go ahead and get it out
here.
The main reason I don't tell it is because if there are women still having babies, I
don't want them to know about this because I don't want it to change their opinion about
their motherhood.
But it was a 30-hour labor.

(19:04):
Yeah, 30 hours.
And I was on pitocin and it wasn't really working except for the fact that it was causing
both mine and the baby's blood pressure to spike and crash.
And we both ended up with a fever towards after the 24-hour mark is when my water broke
and the 24 hours later, that's when you have to start worrying about infection.

(19:25):
So we both started running a fever and they gave us Tylenol to bring the fever down.
But that caused our blood pressure to crash and I started losing consciousness.
So then they gave me ephedrine to bring me out of that.
And finally, when it was time for the delivery, they gave me the episiotomy and it tore all

(19:45):
the way through, stem to stern.
Cory.
On top of that, we thought Luke was going to be a girl, the same doctor that...
That also told us that Nathan was going to be a girl.
He didn't get a new drum suit.
The only thing is his drum suit.
In his paperwork, he says, now we don't determine sex with the ultrasound anymore.

(20:08):
And he was using the same machine and everything and I should have known.
But especially fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
I actually believed him.
So Luke was nameless for about 30 minutes, but we did come up with the name quickly.
In my drug-addled state, we finally were able to land on something.
But anyway, we went home after your normal typical time in the hospital.

(20:33):
I'm still healing.
But then my healing took a turn and I started developing a fever.
And I told the doctor, I just felt toxic, like everything infected.
I felt like I had something going on in my blood and in my digestive system.
It's not uncommon for a woman after that kind of procedure to deal with GI issues, particularly

(20:58):
constipation.
This was pretty severe.
I was afraid to push because of all of the damage that had occurred with the episiotomy.
But then I finally did force the issue when my son's pediatrician was in the same building
as my obstetrician.
So I showed up after a pediatric visit to the doctor's office without announcement,

(21:26):
without an appointment.
And I heard him saying from the background, what's she doing here?
She already gave birth.
Why is she here?
And then there's finally talked him into letting me back.
And so he diagnosed me with post-eclampsia, which I'd never really heard of until that
point.
Really?
I haven't heard of that.
Yeah.

(21:47):
So I went to the back of the incision and the stitches and found an abscess.
So we went directly to the hospital, which is walked across the way.
Fortunately, my stepmom was with me, so she was able to take care of Luke and pick up
Nathan from daycare.
And I was readmitted.
And the procedure that we agreed on was they removed the stitches and abraded the incision

(22:14):
site three times a day for cleaning.
And we did that for three to five days.
I can't remember now.
It's been so long.
And then they sewed me back up again.
And then I had to recover in the hospital.
So I was in the hospital for 10 days after Luke was born.

(22:35):
He was two weeks old by the time I was readmitted.
So he couldn't stay with me, obviously.
So at this time, Wes was working at Dell, which was a 45-minute commute for him from
where we lived, down I-35, which is the most traversed, highly trafficked highway in the

(22:56):
Austin area.
And I think it lands Austin in the top 10 worst cities for traffic.
Yep, it's bad when we're right there.
Pretty regularly, at least annually.
So there was no other way to get there at that time.
So he was having to drive back and forth, taking Luke and Nathan, taking Nathan to daycare,
taking Luke with them to a babysitter.

(23:18):
But then he took a...
And this was also the first year of the Family Medical Leave Act being extended to the fathers.
And so he took time off.
And so he was able to take care of the boys at that time and come visit and this and that.
He tells stories about having bottles of sanitized water with the little packets of formula that

(23:39):
were like a liquid IV, but it was formula.
And he would mix that up in the car in traffic.
And Luke would be...
We didn't have a passenger side airbag, so he'd have Luke back facing in the passenger
seat driving in traffic, feeding him a bottle.
So it was a hardship for all of us being that happening.

(24:01):
But I used that.
I have to look back at that because I think of it as a breadcrumb for my hormonal symptoms
and the different things that I go through and my sensitivities even now.
So that's part of why I think it's important to talk about your birth stories and to talk
about your sex life, talk about all of those things because they do impact your hormone

(24:24):
environment.
But after that, I had a lot of weight gain.
I wasn't really fitness minded while I was having babies at all.
There was a compulsion to lose weight, obviously.
So I did start a few very ill-advised crash diets, taking supplements, taking fat burners,

(24:46):
eating about 800 calories a day and working out twice a day, trying to lose weight.
I did lose about 15 pounds in a matter of three weeks like that.
But then that set me into a clinical, what they called a chemical depression, not clinical.
There was a period where I was getting five hours of sleep a week for months, months like

(25:10):
that.
And this was not because the baby wasn't sleeping.
This was me.
I wasn't sleeping.
And then I would have run a low-grade fever as if I was having an immune response to whatever,
anything.
And I would look at my life and look at myself and I'd know I'm not sad.
I'm not depressed.

(25:31):
So whenever a doctor recommended that I get on antidepressants and a sleep aid, I thought
that's weird because I'm not depressed.
That's why he said, no, this is a chemical depression.
You're experiencing endocrine disruptions.
And I didn't know what that meant at that time at all.
And I'm also a victim of white coat syndrome at that point.
I'm not asking questions.

(25:52):
And so I just went along with it at that point.
I thought that antidepressants were a crutch.
They were for people that couldn't handle their stuff, that didn't deal with their emotions
and their issues and had to have a prescription for them.
But I took it and I'm so grateful I did because it was night and day, the difference and the

(26:14):
change.
And so when I was in that course of treatment was when I discovered actual true intentional
workouts and good balanced nutrition, I found a plan that you might be familiar with written
by Bill Phillips called Body for Life.
It changed a lot of people's lives, mine included.

(26:34):
And I learned how to modulate intensity.
And it was the first time I ever really strength trained and ever really tried to get strong
and build muscles.
First time I really recognized how important muscle is to metabolism.
At that point, it had always been how can I get small and how can I get light?
It's just like a lot of women in my generation.

(26:55):
That was the main thing that we were looking for.
We're always on a diet.
There's so much eating disorders in that generation.
But that was the first I started eating so much.
That was also during the five to six meals a day and balanced protein with carbohydrate
and very little fat.
And those things are not necessarily things that I would advocate for now with my experience

(27:19):
in my education.
But that's what really changed my life.
It's a common story in fitness because of the good I experienced from it.
I went into it.
I was fascinated with nutrition and metabolism and how exercise impacts metabolism and that
impacts nutrition and the things that you need to do for your body when you're working

(27:41):
out and this and that.
I went back to school and I ended up with a bachelor's degree in biology and a minor
in biochemistry.
Completely different from music, right?
I love that your brain works like this, right?
Because mine is not this creative, this beautiful.

(28:02):
You're looking to be...
I wanted to be an orchestral musician.
And I don't even know how to say it.
But then you move to the hard sciences.
I just love that transition and I always appreciate people who can move in that spectrum.
I feel like my brain started in science and it's pretty much geared towards science forever.

(28:24):
And so what a neat transition.
You got to sit.
What a great combination to bio and biochem together.
Now did you stop there?
I feel like you have more training.
Okay.
What else?
What can next for you?
I had an undergrad experience.
I started thinking I wanted to go to medical school and become a doctor.
When you want to help people, that's the place that people go.

(28:46):
I didn't always stay with fitness and kinesiology.
I tried it, but then I felt like I was surrounded by the football jocks and the...
Yeah, thank you.
You said it or something?
Not me.
I always felt that I'm a head doctor.
I love me some.
Looking through the curriculum, I had already had a taste of biology and I'd had a taste

(29:10):
of some of the hard science theories and the rigor was actually interesting to me.
Then I started looking at the curriculum for kinesiology and physical therapy and it was
stuff like taping for injuries and a couple of things that just...
When I looked at it on surface value, I was like, I'm in my 30s.

(29:33):
I want my money's worth here, make it worth my while.
I changed gears and went the medical school route.
But I learned...
I land somewhere in between here though, because I bounced off that MCAT like three times.
I took it three times and no one was interested.
That's it.
Thank you, not your round.

(29:54):
Yeah, exactly.
After I graduated and I'm waiting for responses from medical schools, I started talking to
my undergraduate research advisor who was in the nutrition department at my alma mater.
She convinced me to pursue a master's degree in nutrition so I could work with her on some

(30:16):
thesis research as a post-baccalaureate degree to get into medical school.
It wasn't until I graduated with that degree, and you probably understand this because you
have children working as an academic.
I had children as a student trying to get them through their transitions, get them through

(30:39):
their elementary school, trying to figure out how I can take night classes, how I can
take summer classes, all of the things.
Well, it wasn't easy.
I'm not complaining.
It was a privilege because there are so many women that want to be able to go back to school
and do the fun things that I got to do, but they can't.
But it was hard.
I always say there's this phrase, I don't know if it's still used or not, but the whole

(31:04):
first world problems, MRI thing.
I hate it though because it minimizes the problem.
It's still a problem.
And if you minimize the problem, you're just going to stuff it down and contribute to a
stress load.
There was stress and it wasn't easy.
And of course, my natural go hard or go home, the overachiever that I am, I had to make

(31:26):
it harder.
I had to pursue biology and try to get into medical school.
But by the time I graduated from my master's degree, I was 43.
And I realized the return on investment for medical school is rapidly diminishing here.
And at that time, my youngest was almost, he was 18, almost 18.

(31:49):
And he had gotten bit by the bodybuilding bug.
He was five when I did my first competition and I don't know how, I've always had a gym
in the garage and he got interested in it.
Most boys when they're in school, if they're skinny, decide they want to lift weights and
get thick.
And he did that.

(32:09):
And then so he decided he wanted to do bodybuilding and we found him a great coach.
And it was a lot of fun getting him through that phase.
But so cool.
Getting him through the whole prep and the show and getting back into that environment
after I had done it a couple of times, felt like a lifetime ago, I got bit again.

(32:30):
And I decided, why am I thinking about medical school?
Why am I doing all these other things when my real passion is fitness?
It finally came full circle and I got back into fitness.
I took about six weeks of just concentrated full-time job preparation to sit for the certification

(32:52):
exam.
Got my certification.
But that master's degree in nutrition is what really opened the doors for a lot of things.
But I was determined.
My original intention, I'm very entrepreneurial in spirit.
And my original intention was to work as a independent personal trainer, most likely
doing most of my stuff remotely online.

(33:12):
But I knew I wanted to get some in-person experience or else I wouldn't be able to
give my clients a good, a true good coach.
So I decided to get that in-person experience.
And I tell you what, working in the big box gym, it was just a year and a half, two years.
But I trained just about any type.

(33:35):
I was pretty in demand because of the master's degree.
Your credentials are killer.
And thank you.
Definitely, there was one other trainer who had a master's degree and his was in Kines
and he was also a sports and a strength and conditioning coach.
So his credentials really lined up with yours, except he didn't have the nutrition piece

(33:56):
like you and I do.
But we were both in pretty high demand, but he ended up going a more group coaching route
and I went more, I combined them.
I did this in school.
I did my undergraduate research in another department than the department I was in.
And then in my career, I started doing all the cross training too.

(34:18):
I don't know, I guess I'm a bridge builder.
So I had to combine.
I was training clients.
It was a part-time load of clients, but I also did group instruction.
And they're two different things.
The group instruction is all led from the front.
So you're doing the workout with the class.
And group coaching, the kind I did was doing the workout with the class because I coached

(34:41):
a spin class.
And so you do it with them also.
And I was training, doing my own strength training at the same time.
I felt so unstoppable.
I felt like Wonder Woman.
I'm working out some days, twice a day, just because it's fun.
And then I start realizing this was, I was 47, 48, across that time.

(35:03):
Changed my body again.
My original transformation was 2003.
I was 28.
And during that time, I never gained all of the weight back, but I did go up and down.
And there are seasons in life, so it's not going to be a focus.
You're going to have to do other things and you can't always focus on it.
And whenever it's that tight control that achieves that physique, that tight control,

(35:27):
if you can't maintain it, is going to slip.
And so it's not a sustainable result.
But that's what I discovered that my results were not sustainable whenever I start throwing
all these other stressors in life.
But I did get it back because I was working out twice a day because it was fun.
Yeah.
So did you have the same kind of like when you worked out that hard, did your body start

(35:51):
fighting against you?
It did.
At any point?
Yeah, it did.
But it was in little things that I didn't recognize at that point.
I started having Achilles heel pain and I thought, it's my shoes.
I need to get a new pair of shoes.
I started noticing that the weekend wasn't long enough to recover from all of this.
And it had been when I first started.

(36:13):
And then in the final thing, the thing that really got my attention was I threw my back
out.
And my lower back had been a problem for a little while off and on.
But this time, I had just, it was a Friday, I was recovering from my workouts.
I had just done a boot camp.
I was feeling great.
I was changing my sheets on my bed, bent over, and it just spasmed.

(36:37):
And I couldn't stand up straight.
I couldn't sit down.
I couldn't do anything without pain.
And this was a Friday.
And I have a tendency to lean more towards holistic, I'm going to take care of this.
There's things I can do at home to take care of it, make myself feel better.
But I couldn't get into the positions that I knew would stretch out my back the best.

(36:59):
The things that I know work for me.
And I was driving a two seater, a very low to the ground sports sports car.
I loved that car, loved it, but I couldn't get in and out of it.
And I had to go to a staff meeting.
And that was when I realized, okay, this is bad.
I couldn't get to the bathroom by myself.

(37:24):
I felt disabled.
It was horrible.
There was so much pain.
But we finally ended up in an urgent care on a Saturday.
And I got a prescription for a pain medication, but it took two weeks to fully recover from
that.
I had to give my classes over to someone else in big box fitness.
If you're not working, you're not making money.
And it was only two weeks, but still, it was enough for me to recognize that's a big deal.

(37:48):
So those were the first signs for me.
The things that really uncovered perimenopause for me, I decided I was going to do a comeback
and do another bodybuilding show in 2019.
That uncovered everything.
Prior when I had prepped for competitions, I'd never entered a minorea.

(38:08):
My cycle never stopped.
This one it stopped for three months.
And I think it was more the workload because I wasn't fully...
I was definitely in low energy availability at that point.
I think it was probably a sign of red S. But my calories weren't as low as most athletes

(38:30):
when they experienced red S.
It was hard for me.
But you were at this time still at the gym.
So were you still working at the gym?
At the end.
And your calories were low.
Because there you are walking all day.
You're probably hitting 14 to 15,000 steps a day.
Oh, and...
Teaching exercise.
I was also teaching sports nutrition at the university.
That's a high stress thing we've got.

(38:53):
Your workouts on top of your steps and your stress load have to be just astronomical.
So I'm sure your caloric intake...
Yeah.
...peels low, quote unquote.
Yeah.
How?
And at the final...
What?
I think it's going to resonate with a lot of women because I feel like we get to these
points in life and we don't see the side.

(39:16):
We just don't see all those tiny little warning sides, especially with personality types that
are similar to both of our...
Heart drivers.
Do you know by the way, what is your enneagram?
Have you done an enneagram to us before?
No, I haven't.
I'm still excited to hear what yours is.
We're learning a lot about it right now.
And enneagrams, we have them almost like an archetype for each one.

(39:39):
And so I would be interested to hear yours at some point.
To look at yours.
But these personality types that drive through things that are overt and straight up achievers,
I feel like these females, and we all do this as women and as mothers, we try to fight through
everything and prove to everyone that we are everything that we can be.

(40:00):
Right.
We want more.
I can do this.
Whereas I feel like men have a better almost self-awareness in that...
You know what?
That's too much.
I'm going to slow down.
Maybe.
I think you are joining on me as long.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
I used to take that scripture that says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens

(40:23):
me.
And I would apply that to, I can do all things all at once.
All the time as well as any other.
It's all along, all the time.
Yeah, that was me.
Until suddenly I'm crying in a basket of laundry watching TV at 1030 at night going, why am
I not in bed?
I have a 430 a.m. workout.

(40:43):
I'm trying to do all of the noticed things.
Which I have all been there.
The bodybuilding competition was, I have blamed it for a while on throwing me into perimenopause.
But what you point out that there are these little signs that you start getting that in

(41:04):
the rear view mirror, that really makes sense.
That's really what was happening.
But I didn't really recognize them until after the show.
And I'm coming back from it.
You start eating like a normal human.
You start not exercising as much.
And at that point also, I decided I'm going to go ahead and quit this big box gym class
and teaching job.

(41:25):
And I'm no longer teaching at the university.
It was a one semester gig.
And I'm going to start my own business.
And I'm going to do in-person training all for myself.
And it wasn't growing as fast as I needed it to.
And the anxiety was just, when you're a hard driver and you're up against circumstances

(41:45):
and obstacles and all of these things are pushing back on you, you start, it doesn't
make sense.
Why is nothing working the way I want it to?
And there's just this added layer of anxiety that your expectation adds to.
And so I would find myself driving to clients to train them at their homes in tears the

(42:05):
whole way because I'm not managing.
I wasn't managing my stress.
I wasn't managing my anxiety.
And that was when I first started going, there's something up here.
This is unusual because I've never really battled this at all.
Like I said, back to my birth stories, it was a chemical depression.
I wasn't sad.

(42:26):
I wasn't having trouble emotionally with my mental health.
And now all of a sudden, I can't get out of this hole.
I didn't know what was going on.
So then we sell our house and relocate into Austin at the end of February, 2020.
And we downsized into an apartment.
We had always had this bucket list item of what's it going to be like?

(42:49):
We want to live in a condo downtown without kids.
Our empty nest is going to be a party nest or something.
I don't know.
We just want it to be close to the action.
And so we rent an apartment close just to try it out.
And then the world just shuts down and gyms close and coffee shops close.

(43:11):
If you're able to get into a restaurant, it's outside.
Oh, and universities close.
And so both kids came home and we're living four adults in a two bedroom apartment.
And coaching goes online.
Classes go online.
There were people that were able to make fortunes doing Zoom yoga.

(43:35):
And I was just unable to make that jump because I didn't have the space for it.
I can perform.
Put a camera in front of me, I'm a ham.
But it just didn't work because I didn't have the space.
It wouldn't have been fair to this guy that's trying to finish his architecture degree from
home.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
That's another first world problem, although it impacted the whole world.

(43:57):
2020 stole a lot from all of us.
And helping Nathan to work through that and acknowledge it was super important for me
to acknowledge it.
My coaching business took a hit.
We had all these fun travel plans and they took a hit.
I know I'm preaching to the choir.

(44:18):
I know everyone had an experience.
But at that point, that was when I started noticing that I'm not managing my mental health
well.
I'm not managing stress.
And cortisol is just out of control.
There's so much regulation issues happening here.
I had ended up having to have surgery on a toe, which is a toe.

(44:40):
It sounds like it's the big deal.
The recovery was horrendous trying to get past that.
Oh, and I throw my back out again while I'm in a boot.
Thank you very little 2020.
But on the plus of that, when my perimenopause became evident, when the brain fog got bad

(45:01):
again, when the insomnia got even worse, whenever I'm not recovering from workouts, I started
adding belly fat unlike I ever had before.
That's when I started going, oh, this is hormonal.
And then I asked a little precursory dig in the research.
I started realizing in just a few years, there's going to be 2.4 billion women impacted by

(45:25):
the menopause transition around the world.
What kind of services are there for them?
And are there ways to get past this?
Are there things that they can do for themselves, that we can do for ourselves, that don't involve
pharmaceuticals and doctors?
Because let's be real, doctors aren't really listening.
It's better helping.
Yeah.

(45:45):
Yeah.
No.
It's not going to be.
Thank goodness.
Most of us are getting past the women's health initiative back in the early 2000s, but it's
still not great.
Every woman has the experience of getting their blood work done because they feel awful.
They don't have energy.
They can't keep up with their work.
And the results come back all within range.

(46:06):
Everything's fine.
You're fine.
Yeah.
So go home.
Yeah.
But you're good.
You're good.
I don't know what's wrong.
I can't diagnose it.
It's non-emergent, which is something I heard.
I was having heart palpitations last year.
Last summer I was having heart palpitations and I couldn't figure out what was wrong.
So I ended up in the emergency room and the doctor says, this test came back negative,

(46:28):
this came back negative, this came back negative.
So you're free to go.
And it's, but I'm sitting here having heart palpitations.
What's wrong?
He says, I don't know what's wrong, but it's non-emergent.
It's no longer an emergency case, so I can't treat you.
Okay, bye.
Yeah, pretty much.

(46:49):
And then since then, Oprah Winfrey, who has this massive platform, has come out and said,
this was my problem too.
And I was on, I saw so many doctors, I was on so many prescriptions and no one thought
to say, oh, you know what?
This is a sign of perimenopause.
Okay.
So it was for me too.
I had that same experience.
I went to a cardiologist, I wore the Holter monitor for two weeks.

(47:11):
I did a stress test and it came back in conclusive because I have a low normal blood pressure
and I've had issues.
Most athletes do.
You have low resting heart rate, low blood pressure.
Then I've had some syncopees.
I've passed out with it in the morning because probably over-hydrated, all the stuff that

(47:31):
you learn as you go.
They didn't want to put me on beta blockers.
Thank goodness they didn't want to put me on beta blockers.
But I had to do a heart catheter to rule out blockage.
And when he gets in there, he says, this is textbook.
These are beautiful.
This is the clearest arteries I have ever seen.
And that was when I finally go, okay, this is not anything else.

(47:57):
This is menopause.
This is perimenopause.
It has turned my life upside down for two years and no more.
I'm not going to do this anymore.
So I did all of the stuff that I'd been learning to help other women, to help my clients.
I started finally applying more to myself.

(48:18):
Amazing, right?
We finally have been through a term of room.
This is for me too.
Yeah, yeah.
It's so weird.
Do what I say, not as I do.
Right, right.
We all know that.
So I finally just realized that if I'm experienced this, if I'm a scientist and I'm a researcher,
and I'm a fitness person, and I'm experiencing this, this dearth of knowledge, it's so hard

(48:46):
to get to the data, to the stuff that can solve the problems, then what about everyone
else?
Why aren't we talking about this?
I'm such an avid podcast listener.
I'm a huge fan.
I'll listen to things for fun and for education.
And I realized no one's talking about this in this way.

(49:07):
So that's what we're here for.
We're going to talk about it.
Yes.
I love it.
And I love that introductory of just all of the things that you have experienced that
finally point to these symptoms of perimenopause that are just so elusive.

(49:27):
And we talk about this a lot in research that the perimenopause is just this elusive beast.
You can't even with her blood metrics through survey data, there is not a validated way
to predict perimenopause in women in research.
And so I think that it's important that we start talking about it.

(49:48):
And really I want to highlight my age demographic where I'm moving into, I'm about to move into
my forties.
It's time.
I already have friends in perimenopause that haven't been diagnosed perimenopause.
A lot of those are lifestyle factors, a lot of those things are things that I probably
could have said based on the way that you're living, I can see your hormonal profile is

(50:09):
going to start to take very soon.
But the things that I don't think that we are alerted to and obviously the medical system,
is it keen on these metrics or these early signs of perimenopause?
So I think it's an important conversation for my generation and even solution to lean
into yours and say, okay, help me to understand what can we learn from you so that we can

(50:35):
really start to drive awareness around it so that we don't have to suffer as badly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Part of my life mission now is too many women in my generation didn't learn a thing about
this from their mothers because their mothers didn't learn about it.
It was a dirty little secret that women went through in silence.
Even if they did have a group of girlfriends to talk about things, there was just so much

(50:59):
silence.
Mothers weren't telling their daughters about it.
Yes.
And mothers and school assemblies all tell your young daughter about your changing body.
We just finally watched the movie, the adaptation of the book that my generation grew up on,
Are You There, God Is Me, Margaret.
So cute, so beautiful.

(51:23):
Everyone has that school assembly.
Everyone knows what to look for with the period and with the training bras and all of those
things.
But there is no school assembly for this second puberty known as perimenopause.
There isn't a What to Expect When You're Perimenopausal book.
And I don't believe it's adequately celebrated either.

(51:45):
I feel like it is an amazing transition.
And you're right.
It looks like a second awakening, a second puberty, moving into a new stage of life.
And because it is so elusive, because it is just not talked about, it's absolutely not
celebrated adequately.

(52:06):
And I think that hopefully we can also bring some awareness to the fact that there's a
lot of good things that can happen after that.
Changing the conversation around it is so important because there's this raging debate
right now.
Menopause is a disease or menopause is not a disease.
It's a natural phase of life.

(52:26):
And that's where I land.
This is a natural phase of life.
Yes, my hormones are changing.
Yes, my fertility is changing.
I talked to a woman recently who does this medical training program for hormone providers
that her mission, what they do, the whole goal is to start a woman's cycle up again.

(52:47):
So she's having women that are 60 years old with 400 units of estrogen running around
in their bodies, convincing their uterus that they still need to bleed once a month.
And there's no biological reason for that.
There is no fertility there.

(53:08):
There's not an egg, but their skin looks better.
I just operate to each their own.
Every woman should have the right to choose what they do in their treatment, in their
transition.
I have always wanted to do this, to do what I can for myself without medical intervention

(53:31):
or with minimal medical intervention.
I know that there are things that I can do with my fitness, with my lifestyle that empowers
me to take care of my own health.
And that kind of goes back to this is going to be a long haul to stand on my own two feet,
but it's a battle worth having.
I don't really want to submit to another form of patriarchy.

(53:53):
That may sound a little strange, but medicine has been a very patriarchal system.
There in the 1920s, this isn't that long ago, 100 years ago, the clitoris disappeared from
Grey's Anatomy, it's just gone and it didn't get elucidated again until the 90s when a

(54:16):
female medical student, I think she was a physical therapy student actually in Australia,
finds out, hey, wait a minute, I know this body part exists, I have one.
Why can't I study it?
So she elucidated it.
Thank you.
I love that, and it's no wonder that we're not understanding the hormone flux and the

(54:39):
pulsatile nature of the cycle.
And it's no wonder that we're not embracing the cycle when we are in a society that is
built around the male hormone cycle.
And I'm not a dyed in the wool radical feminist, I'm not.
I am so grateful for the sacrifices of generations before me that were.

(55:00):
Absolutely.
If I weren't for that, then I couldn't do the things that I do.
You and I wouldn't have advanced degrees.
But at the same time, I'm proud of being a woman.
I love being feminine.
And I think that there's a lot of power derived from that.
And I think that there's importance in the genders, in the sexes.

(55:20):
There are different things that I have strengths in than my husband does, and vice versa.
And without that, we are not a working partnership.
So if I decided to be him, or he decided to be me, then we're missing something.
And that's the way we have always lived our lives.
That's the way we've always worked as a married couple, as a family.

(55:41):
But I'm still going to call out stupid stuff like medical patriarchy.
It impacts entire society, all of our society.
And just recently, the fact I floated earlier about the blind auditions in orchestras, and
that's the only way that women became part of the music scene.

(56:01):
That was something I read in a book called Invisible Women that was written in 2018 about
data science and how women are basically discriminated against just because of the way that data
is reported in every area of life.
It's a valuable read, Invisible Women.
So pick it up.
I know, that sounds like a good one.
Because Epic III said a lot, right, in exercise science, even research.

(56:27):
And most of the time, it's just because, wow, it's too complicated to add women into this.
Because when we do, it makes our study more expensive because we then have to understand
these pulsatile hormones throughout the cycle.
When are we testing them?
And when are we going to have differences in holo profiles that we have to control for
in order to do a certain intervention?

(56:49):
And man, I can understand, right?
In one lens, I can see where, as especially a male who may not understand hormone cycles
appropriately, right?
Right.
And has never experienced a hormonal cycle.
Can sit there and go, wow, hormones are high here and low here, but this could happen,

(57:09):
this could happen, and it could absolutely change from our acts and the effects of it.
So I can see through one lens why it's really hard, but I can also see that we've got to
increase the awareness.
We've got to make sure that women and their hormones are more visible so that we can educate
others better so that we can get even better peer review and better analysis of some of

(57:33):
these research studies.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So I think it's so important.
Yeah.
Oh, and just to be clear, I'm not blaming any person because of their sex or their position
or anything like that.
I do think it's a matter of practicality that it's been called that.
This is going to, like you said, it'll make the study more expensive.

(57:57):
That's why women have been excluded from a lot of the research because of the cycle,
because it is a confounding factor, because it makes things harder, makes things more
expensive.
And surely we can...
They're people, right?
They have most of the parts are the same.
So surely we can just apply what we learn in men to women.

(58:19):
It's been a false assumption that has caused more harm than has helped.
And I don't think any person is to blame.
I think a system is to blame.
And that's what we're working against.
Yeah.
But we met in the course of all of this at a sports nutrition conference that you were
hosting at your school, and I remember being just blown away by all of the knowledge and

(58:44):
the research because here I am coming up in this research.
It's really hard to find the stuff.
I'm finding some stuff, but it's really hard to find it.
Like I said, a bridge between normal lay people that don't even think about fitness necessarily,
the kind that I coach.
And then here's me, I'm still a lay person, but I'm a professional.

(59:05):
And then here's academia.
And to be in this place where this research is being not only done, but being celebrated,
it was just, it was so fun, but we didn't meet till the end of the day.
And so by that time I was brain fried.
I can imagine I gave you the best impression.

(59:26):
You did actually.
So I loved meeting you both at the conference for sure.
So this conference is at my university.
I'm at a small D3 university and absolutely love it here, but I have colleagues here and
then outside of my university who are in the trenches, I would say, of research.

(59:47):
So there are one, and our research works as our one institution, research one institution.
You're paid to do research pretty much.
And then you teach a little bit, but they buy out their teaching loan and they get to
do research.
And most of those are funded by places like NIH, the DOD, big grants, big research.
And so thankfully a lot of my colleagues were willing to come here to do a conference here

(01:00:12):
at EMHB, Rayheron Baylor in Belton, Texas.
They all came to our small town here from just big name R1 universities to deliver their
research for a Texas ACSM and then the International Society of Sport Nutrition Symposium.
So it was awesome.
So I had a friend, Abby Smith Ryan, who's an amazing researcher for women's physiology,

(01:00:34):
is one of my good friends and she was presenting on some game out physiology research that
she had been doing.
And we, at the end, they asked a question since I talked a little bit about, Hey, what
are you doing to combat or be able to research women who are in perimenopause?
Because she and I are both entering into this elusive window.

(01:00:55):
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
And waiting.
And I know that is definitely on her radar as well.
So we discussed that and I think that's what really triggered Corey and Wes to say, Oh,
we may need to visit with this person more.
So afterwards, I do remember, I think Wes ground me first, introduced himself and then

(01:01:16):
Corey promptly after.
Corey remembers it from her side as being maybe a bright, foggy day.
I couldn't complete a sentence.
It was not pretty.
It was so funny and I think that coming from a very articulate woman, a very intelligent
woman that she probably felt like she was having an off day, but to someone from the

(01:01:37):
outside looking in, she came off.
Absolutely all those things.
Very articulate, very put together, very knowledgeable.
And I, there was nothing in our interaction that made me go, Wow, that lady is crazy.
She can't even put a sentence together.
So I think that's important from outside looking in that I knew immediately that they had a
lot of care, that they were very interested in learning more about menstrual cycle.

(01:02:01):
And they told me just a little bit about some projects that they were working on and I immediately
just went, yes, I would love to visit with you.
I think I was what, eight, am I eight months?
Yes.
Yes.
Maybe that was why you didn't notice the brain fog because that's a whole nother set.
Full teaching and research alone and two at home and one on the way.

(01:02:26):
Yeah.
We discussed challenging.
But yeah, I didn't notice that.
I have never noticed from my side, I know there are days that Cory's like, I'm having
trouble finding words today or I'm having trouble with my brain fog today.
But it's never been something that I have said, Whoa, Cory's got brain fog.
He's not with it today.
That's comforting.
She's always with it.

(01:02:48):
That is definitely comforting.
Thank you for telling me that.
When I'm coaching clients, I'm following back on the phrase, man, words are hard because
you got to do something in the moment to explain why you can't remember this body part that
you're working.
I think I have a mentor and a professor here now that he was my mentor in undergrad and

(01:03:10):
he is one of the most brilliant men in the world.
So he's our biochemistry background, gene goes all the way down gene expression levels
for muscle physiology.
And he's just, I completely adore him.
And he is so intelligent that he will stop and get lost in his brain for a little bit.
And out of sheer respect, right?

(01:03:31):
You don't ever write.
What is that?
What are you trying to talk about?
What is it?
You let him find that word because it's going to blow your mind.
And so it always reminds me that it's okay.
That silence is just fine.
And it's okay to stop and find you a word.
And because again, as females, we don't want to ever be seen as unintelligent or not being

(01:03:52):
able to find a word because we struggle with that already.
The figure sucks.
We don't, we're not as intelligent.
So I think we fight those stereotypes sometimes, but I'm always reminded that I think everybody
struggles that with words sometimes.
And if you just can give space in a conversation, I think it's important to try to let someone

(01:04:14):
else have that space to catch up or to let them let you find your word is important.
Nice.
Because brain fog and word salad are part of the whole suite of symptoms of perimenopause.
And it's one that I've been experiencing for a few years.
And that's probably something we'll talk about a lot as we go through these conversations.

(01:04:38):
Why don't we discuss a little bit about other things that we'll talk about?
What else can we expect, do you think, from can we just talk about this?
Oh man.
So I know that we've talked about navigating motherhood in some of these situations.
So bringing back on the two of us, some of our strengths, I definitely think navigating

(01:05:01):
motherhood and hormones and work life balance and understanding how your exercise and your
nutrition and your work life balance, we've talked about the stress load and how all of
those things pull together into one.
And they actually all impact your hormonal profile.

(01:05:22):
They all impact your mental fortitude, if you will, and what you can withstand.
I think that the very backgrounds between the two of us, I think it's so fun because
even though we are two separate, and absolutely don't have the exact same experience, we do
have a bunch of big pillars within our life story that I think are going to help us to

(01:05:47):
be able to connect and relate some of our stories to other people.
So I'm excited to community to do that, everywhere from bodybuilding, as a competitor as well,
and just running the mill of a personal training lifestyle and how easy it is to run yourself
into the ground.
I think lots of women experience that too, of just how hard can I push myself until I

(01:06:10):
give out.
Right.
And I feel like our connection might be a microcosm of a lot of women, especially in
our society.
And I can't say for other cultures necessarily because I don't have that experience, but
just think we met almost randomly.
I looked up this ISSN seminar and was fascinated by it.

(01:06:32):
I was looking into getting certification with that body and dragged my husband with me on
a Saturday to this little bitty university, 45 minutes to an hour away from us.
We have to leave the house before seven to get there.
And then we just randomly meet you.
And it really wasn't random as far as my philosophy, my life view goes, but it was to think that

(01:06:54):
we have so many commonalities in just that one little random meeting that have come out
in this working relationship.
There's bound to be other women that have a lot of the same, like you said, pillars,
which shows me almost as concretely as scientific evidence shows me, validity to different theories

(01:07:20):
and to different experiences.
So it's not necessarily a random controlled trial.
It's not necessarily anything that's been published in a journal, but it is, I think
that it's really important to recognize the life experiences of people.
And that's part of what I want to talk about in this podcast because we have such a life

(01:07:44):
shared experience and women through generations have had a shared experience.
And because it's true in our experience, then it's true.
And it drives so much more for sure.
And I think it's important also to talk about, like you mentioned earlier, how what I am

(01:08:04):
experiencing now can be a forerunner, I guess.
It can foretell things for you and for your friend group, for your girlfriends, because
I wasn't as prepared and it wasn't my mom's fault.
She wants to talk about everything long before I want to.

(01:08:25):
I asked her a basic question when I was six and she thought it was time for the talk and
I was so uncomfortable.
She was too, which is part of why it was uncomfortable.
And that's been the case all the way down through every different phase of life and
ready to tell you.
Yeah, exactly.

(01:08:46):
I love you, mom.
I think that's a big driver and a big motivator for me too, is I want to see other women prepared.
And that's been part of my professional motivation.
This isn't rocket science.
Fitness and nutrition isn't necessarily rocket science.
But the internet, the fitness industry, so many voices have complicated it for people

(01:09:07):
who are experts in other areas and don't have time to think about all this.
They rely on us to bring them truth.
They rely on us to bring them the scientific evidence and to be able to show them how to
apply it to their lives.
And the goal of can we just talk about this is to actually talk about it in ways that

(01:09:29):
people bring things that people really can apply to their lives, whatever age they are.
And maybe they could have these aha moments.
Now I know that you and I have both had throughout our career, oh man, that was a sign of this.
And I wish I had talked about it with a girlfriend.
I wish I had let someone else know and brought someone else into the conversation so that

(01:09:54):
they could have helped me through.
Or we could have known.
And so hopefully we end up being that girlfriend that shares with you and maybe helps you realize
what's happening in your old life.
It even makes you feel like you're not alone in the experience.
So important because it is a shared experience, because there are so many commonalities and
because knowing that you're not alone and knowing that this is a normal phase of life

(01:10:20):
impacts the severity of your symptoms and impacts the experience altogether, that's
important as well.
And that's what you can expect from can we just talk about this.
I love that.
I love that.
Can we just talk about this?
Yes, ma'am.
Okay.

(01:10:40):
So next week, can we just talk about big rocks?
We'll just talk about the things that you really need to do to get in and to have in
place to make big changes in your health and in your fitness.
And it's not the little stuff and it might surprise you.
I think so.
I think they'll be very surprised by some of the things that don't really think impact

(01:11:03):
it but overall picture it's a big thing.
Yes.
Thanks so much for talking about it with me.
I sure needed the time we spent together and I hope it left you feeling good too.
If you enjoyed the episode, please like, subscribe and share it with your friends to bring other
girlfriends into the circle.
And hey, let's do it again next week.

(01:11:25):
The show is on the next drop every Monday and you might even find a Quick Chat Friday
for $5.