March 27, 2025 • 32 mins
(00:00:00) Breaking Through Perimenopause: Reclaiming Strength, Confidence, and Health After 50 with Tammy Temple
(00:02:52) Perimenopause
(00:11:32) Power Programs
(00:22:10) Educating on serving sizes
(00:25:26) It's not just a quick fix diet - how to alter with behavioral changes
In this empowering episode, Hailey interviews her client, Tammy Temple, who shares her transformative experience navigating perimenopause, weight gain, and the struggle of doing everything "right" without seeing results. Tammy reveals how small but impactful changes in her training and nutrition, combined with expert guidance and science-backed strategies, helped her overcome hormonal shifts, anxiety, and stalled progress. With persistence, she lost 17 pounds and regained confidence in her body. Tune in for an inspiring conversation on resilience, adapting to change, and finding what truly works for health after 50.
(00:02:52) Perimenopause
(00:11:32) Power Programs
(00:22:10) Educating on serving sizes
(00:25:26) It's not just a quick fix diet - how to alter with behavioral changes
In this empowering episode, Hailey interviews her client, Tammy Temple, who shares her transformative experience navigating perimenopause, weight gain, and the struggle of doing everything "right" without seeing results. Tammy reveals how small but impactful changes in her training and nutrition, combined with expert guidance and science-backed strategies, helped her overcome hormonal shifts, anxiety, and stalled progress. With persistence, she lost 17 pounds and regained confidence in her body. Tune in for an inspiring conversation on resilience, adapting to change, and finding what truly works for health after 50.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ladies, are you ready to transform your fitness journey? The
shred Happens Challenge is here, a powerful six week program
designed for women over forty who want to build strength,
shed fat, and feel incredible. Starting April twenty seventh, you'll
get personalized calorie and macro targets, expert led video calls,
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Speaker 2 (00:21):
Jim and home.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Choose from thirty or sixty minute sessions and follow beginner
or intermediate plans that fit your lifestyle. Plus, you'll join
a supportive online community that keeps you motivated every step
of the way. Spots are limited. Visit haleyhappensfitness dot com
to join the waitlist. Today, Hey everyone, this is Haley
(00:46):
and I'm Lara and welcome to the body Pod. Hi everyone,
it's Haley Today on the body Pod. I have something
special for you and quite different than the other podcasts
that we air. Today is a powerful episode where I
(01:09):
sit down with one of my personal one on one clients,
Tammy Temple, to discuss her transformative journey through perimenopause, weight gain,
and the frustrations of doing everything right without seeing results.
Tammy shares how she overcame hormonal changes, anxiety and stalled progress.
(01:32):
By making small but impactful adjustments to her own training
and nutrition. With expert guidance, science, back strategies, and persistence,
she reclaimed her strength, lost seventeen pounds now twenty actually,
and regain confidence in her body. Tune in for an
inspiring conversation on resilience, adaptation, and finding what truly works
(01:57):
for you and your health after fifty All right, welcome Tammy.
I'm so excited. So this is the first time that
I've ever had a personal client on to kind of
tell their story, and I could not think of a better.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Person to invite than you. So welcome to the body pot.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Thank you, Hayley. I'm really happy to be here and
to share my story.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yes, so we have been working together since the first
of September. Yeah, one on one, and I guess let's
just start from the very beginning. I want you to
take us back and rewind and start with your journey
in the last couple of years and kind of go
over you know what your experience has been before we
(02:50):
started working.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
It's almost embarrassing to say that I really didn't know
what perry menopause was like. Now, on the other side
of it. I can look at you and say, I'm
not sure I even knew what perimenopause was. Four and
five and six years ago. I knew my cycle was changing,
(03:16):
and I knew the inevitable eventually, I'm gonna stop having
a cycle. But my journey, I would compare it to
if you looked at a slight switch plate on a
wall and it had two switches. I've had two really
significant phases, and the first time that switch went off
(03:40):
was probably about spring of twenty twenty one. And I've
been an endurance junkie all my life. I'm a middle
of the pack person. So it's not like I'm out there,
you know, running races, podium, you know, getting on a podium,
none of that. It's always been about this is how
(04:02):
I take care of my head, my stress. So I
started to notice that, you know, my run times were slowing.
I felt that I needed a lot more recovery. I
was getting injured a lot, and like really stupid things
my calf, my hip flexer, things that I had never
(04:24):
experienced before. And then I also started to get this
little pouch around my belly, and I'd never had that before.
Almost simultaneously, I started to have anxiety creep up, and
in the middle of the night, I'd wake up and
(04:45):
I'd catastrophize my life, you know, like at two in
the morning, I would start this second guessing everything and
monkey mind and this is not like me at all.
And I at that time too, started to get a
little bit of night sweat. So I reached out to
what do I do? I reach out to my coaching world,
(05:07):
and I get connected with Purple Patch out of the
San Francisco Bay area, good friends of mine. They immediately
put me in touch with a running coach, Emma Briggs
with Endurance Explorers. Fantastic person, and Emma basically said, ah,
I know what to do with you. You need to
(05:27):
read the book Rore and understand where you're at in life,
and also let's start building in some sit training, some
hit training. I've always had strength training that was more
of like a periodization style, so everything she recommended seemed
(05:49):
normal to me, nothing out of the box. When I
started reading Roor, I immediately became the biggest fan of
doctor Stacy Simms and Seline Jaeger, and I consumed everything
they were talking about. Adaptogens became my friend and between
emma and adaptogens and just staying on top of all
(06:13):
the latest and greatest research that held my symptoms at bay.
So all of the anxiety, the night sweats, things like that.
That really started to back that off, and I saw
my run speeds come back, I saw my injuries start
(06:34):
to go away. After about a year and a half,
that second switch went off. So now the adaptogens were
not working, and I was back into that mix of
now I'm up in the night, I'm sleeping super light,
(06:54):
I have no energy in the morning, I have brain fog,
I can't make sense of, you know, putting sentences together.
Like at a certain point I really thought, do I
have a serious problem here? Like I had a hard
time functioning even with work, so that that was starting
to become alarming. And then the next piece of that
(07:21):
was the next piece of that was I did a
bunch of lab work, and my inflammation markers were off
the charts. My cardiac lab work was off the charts,
like in an alarming way where my endocrinologist was like,
let's get you in for a cardiac scan and make
(07:44):
sure everything is okay. I'm a really healthy eater, I'm
a clean eater, so to get lab work like that
was really scary for me. And also at that time
I had now little belly pouch turned into ten pounds.
(08:05):
And by the time I right before I learned all
about Hayley, I went through my second round of lab
work and my labs had not moved at all. So
what I had done with my endocrinologist was her immediate
(08:29):
reaction was, let's consider putting you on hormone therapy. The
hormone therapy, just a little bit of estrogen, some oral
progesterone will help you with your anxiety. It will help
you sleep better, deeper, longer, and it will start to
(08:50):
back off some of those night sweats. So I went
on hormone therapy for about a year, and it is
a short term solution for a short term problem. It
really got me over the hurdle, and I felt like
with hormone therapy I had retained some of my quality
(09:14):
of life, but the one thing that hadn't moved was
my lab work and the scale. By the time I
got to you, I had gained seventeen pounds over two years. So, yeah,
this is someone who I've always been fit. I've always
(09:38):
been active, and my eating, my activity none of that
had changed so out of nowhere. I felt like on
that second switch that went off here, I was I'm
doing everything that I'm supposed to be doing, and now
I've got seventeen pounds on me and I don't know
(10:01):
what to do. So I had I listened to the
Huberman podcast with doctor Stacy Simms, and that's when I
heard about the new program that you and Stacy had
put together, Power Happens. So I start doing Power Happens.
I'm loving the program. It's great, and I think you
(10:24):
guys came out with the first program was sixty minutes.
The second program was thirty minutes, and I thought, oh well,
I'll go into the thirty minute program. And I don't
need to be doing you know, hours in the gym.
All I need to do is get in and get out.
So a thirty minute program, let's see what that's all about.
(10:46):
And it wasn't helping me move. It wasn't helping me
move the needle and out of sheer desperation. I sent
you a message through your app and I think I
asked for a nutrition consult.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, which is so funny because like I like, I
wasn't taking anyone this last year was so bananas to me.
And you know, I really don't even promote that I
do one on one. It's kind of on my website,
but I really just pass it off to other coaches
because I just haven't had the time, and I.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Like I just was like I sure craft, yeah, oh sure, I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Gonna take tammy.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And then when I met you, I was like, oh
this there was just a genuine connection. But let's talk
about what was your age when you had started, you know,
with the running company versus when you you know, you
found me on Huberman podcast and learned about the power programs.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, so let me think spring of twenty twenty three,
I was fifty two. Wait, let me do the math.
Sixty eight to fifty two?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
How old are you? What? What the hell is wrong
with me?
Speaker 3 (12:12):
This is something you'll obviously say.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
This is what I have every time because I'm in
the thick. I'm forty seven. I'm in the thick of
the brain fog perimenopause. And now everyone who has meetings
with me weekly, they're just like, okay, hey, they I'm like,
what was I saying?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Sentence?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Okay, hello, Spring of twenty twenty three, I was fifty three.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Okay, so now you're I'm fifty six, fifty six.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
So did you feel like, as all of these things
were happening over the years, this is just how I'm
going to be because you're exercising regularly.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I mean, you know, you eat healthy.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
We figured that out right when we first started working together.
But there were some things we learned along the way.
But okay, so here you are and you're just like, well,
but the scale is still not moving and I've gained
this way. And for you, there was a there was
an emotional, you know, connection with like, I just want
(13:21):
to feel myself Like I don't want to be twenty
year old, twenty years old again, but I want to
feel like myself and I don't recognize myself.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So let's begin there.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
For sure, I think that a lot of women say,
in my activity level, in my activity behavior, our first
step is to reach out to someone that's an expert
(13:56):
that can help me. And then the next piece of
it is to ingest everything you can possibly ingest to
learn to understand, to be able to speak this new language.
And that's exactly what I did for four years. I
(14:16):
was consuming everything I possibly could to understand what I
was going through, how to adjust my behavior, how to relearn,
and also I was surrounding myself with professionals that could
help guide me in this phase. So by the time
(14:37):
I reached you, I was a broken person. I really
felt like, is this where is this my new normal now?
Like had my years of just being able to be healthy,
thinking about my lab work, of being able to be active,
(15:01):
thinking about my injuries and my ability to go out
and run and just enjoy the outdoors and have that
stress reduction, Like, has all of this change now? And
I have to take this hard right and start going
down a new path. So I was broken when I
(15:24):
got to you, And I think at one point I
captured just an overview of my perimenopause journey and I
shared with you it might make me a little teary
that I was hiding out in like blousy summer dresses,
in blousy pants and loose tops, and I wouldn't even
(15:48):
change in front of my husband anymore because I felt
like I'm just disappearing into our wall. You know, I
didn't feel good about myself.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
And that was the most emotional part when you wrote
that is that resonates because I hear this so much
and maybe not in that depth when people just originally
reach out to me, but they're just like they just
feel defeated.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, and it's like I'm doing all the things.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So I have to say when I started to initially
work with you at first, I was like, sometimes this
is the hardest client to have because if you really
are nailing everything and you're doing it all right, like,
how do we make movement?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
You know, are you.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
An outlier of something is happening that is out of
my scope of practice, or can we take the information
and education and can we really just try to dial
in a few things and see if we can get
the scale moving.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
In a healthy way.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So I was very direct about that, and I hope
that you would back me on this and you feel
the same way that I wasn't, Like, all right, Tammy,
we're gonna cut you to nine hundred calories a day.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
You're gonna lose weight because you would, but at a cost.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, Well, to coincide with.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The emotion around.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
My new normal at that time was a concern for
my health and as I said, my cardiac numbers had skyrocketed.
So now all of a sudden, you start having those
conversations with your endocrinologist about certain supplements to help bring
that down. Then the next conversation is statins. You know
(17:52):
that for someone who has never been had to rely
upon medications, I've been healthy my whole life. You start
thinking about I don't want to go down that track,
like I've fixed everything that has come up for me
in my health by peeling back the layers and looking
(18:14):
at what am I consuming, what is my lifestyle, not
immediately looking for a pill. So in addition to into
that concern about oh my gosh, my weight and my activity,
like how do I get this back? Was also about
my health.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So when we first started, I remember you the first
couple of weeks and I'm like, all right, clearly you
eat well, but we really want to dive into what
does that look like? And I will say right now,
there's no perfect macro split, but there are macro ranges,
and so we really talked about like hitting that protein number.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yes. But then also.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I think, and this is not for everyone, because I
know there's a lot of women with eating, you know,
with disordered eating that can't go down this road. But
for someone you know, I wanted you to get a
scale and actually way because you're like, well, I'm having
this protein shake, it's great. But then when we started
to in put the calories. I remember you coming to
(19:20):
me and you were like, Hayley, my morning smoothie was
like seven hundred calories and I was like, okay, well,
what did you think it was maybe four hundred? Okay,
So there's almost like your deficit right there.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
And you it was healthy food and this is not like.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Every you know, all of those foods just because they're healthy.
We still have to tailor in some things if we
want to try to get some movement in a healthy way.
So what did you learn about that first month?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah, so you know, some of the messaging that I
had received over the course of the last few years
was also about letting go of counting calories, letting go
of tracking, because again, people like me who have this
(20:14):
activity lifestyle, it's always about what are my nutrition windows,
what's my timing around nutrition, what am I consuming? What
are my macros?
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And that can spin a short out.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
So over the course of these last few years, I
had let that go. And what I realized when I
bought my little thirteen dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Mood scale was.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
I had lost connection with what a tablespoon actually was,
or what three ounces or four ounces or six ounces
of meat actually was. And that was a huge awakening me.
(21:03):
At the time that you and I connected, I was
willing to do. It's like, well, what the heck, what
do I have to lose. I'm going to follow her
path and her direction and if in four months I
go absolutely nowhere, okay, but what.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Do I have to lose?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
So to take a couple of weeks and really familiarize
myself with announce a cup a whatever. It wasn't brain surgery,
you know, it just took a little bit more time.
And it was a huge awakening that I had really
lost sight of what a serving is. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, And I mean I think that's the important part
is I don't recommend calorie counting, and I mean I
never did up until I got into the space and
I started working for myself with someone and then you know,
morph to where I am today. But it is an
educational tool to be used at a certain time, not
year round, not obsessively, not taking all of like you know,
(22:04):
your food scale on vacation, and you can never relaxed.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
It is teaching.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
How do we look at the education to see what
those serving sizes dial it in and then we have
the freedom to have more of this lifestyline approach. So
since we've been working together since September, how much weight
have you lost?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
I've lost seventeen pounds, which I every week.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
It's like cheering and I want to cry because when
I look at your when I look at your measurements
since September, it's now, you know, the first part of January,
we are down four inches from your in your waist,
almost five inches on the thigh, an inch and a
(22:47):
half on the hips, and two inches above the navel.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Down five inches. That's massive. I know, it's massive.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
And the weight loss is seventeen pound sounds amazing and
it is. It was done over, you know, thirteen to
fourteen weeks, so this.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Is like when you look at it, but I'm like,
you put in the work. You did the work. It
was not always fun, but you stayed the course.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
And did you ever feel like it was erratic, it
was aggressive, that you felt like crap, Like you were
just like I can't do this anymore. How did you
feel during this process?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I know for myself that it usually takes about four
six ish six eight ish weeks before I start to
see movement. It's like my body holds on, it doesn't
know what's happening, but then all of a sudden, once
that domino hits, then I start to see movement. And
(23:52):
so the first four to six weeks, you know, we
would see little shifts. I was just happy to have
an advocate and talking to you once a week. I
don't think it ever felt hard. It never certainly never
felt like a slog. I didn't feel like I'm depriving
(24:12):
myself because I mean, you can get full on protein
pretty quickly and a bunch of vegetables. Like if you're
sitting down and eating junk food, that's one thing, but
if you're eating healthy food, you're gonna feel satiated. So
(24:35):
it never felt like a slog to me. I think
once we took my second round of measurements the end
of September, and even though I wasn't seeing a ton
on the scale, I saw the inches start to move.
That catapulted me a bit. And then I think I
(24:55):
went out about that time and I bought my own
in body scale so I could start to see the
visceral fat, I could see the muscle mass, I could
see the actual body fat. So then it became about
tracking the data and I was I was in and
then the numbers started to move, and we I think
(25:18):
every time we talked it just felt like.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I was like, I'm more excited than you.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Okay, maybe I'm second second more excited, But I mean,
it's been such a lovely journey, Tammy, because again, there
hasn't been It's not like this quick fixed diet like
this has been behavior changes. It's been dialing a few
things because at first, the first month, we didn't move
a lot, and we had to kind of shift and
you're like, oh, okay, now I realized how much was
(25:46):
in this that I was adding. Maybe a little bit
too much. So let's just tailor it down. Let's make
it so that it works for my lifestyle. Sure, there's
still like what we talk about every week is compromise.
Where do you want to spend that? Do you want
to go out and you know, have a glass of wine. Okay,
well then we program that in, but we do have
to still give that give and take of what's important
(26:08):
to me in my budget. And now we're not in
that fat loss phase anymore. We're trying to transition you
out safely and appropriately to where you know you're not
having to but now you have the education and you
know what you can view and see on your plate
and what that looks like, and maybe swapping out some
(26:28):
choices some behavior changes there because you were already really healthy.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
But we've also worked through a lot of rep ranges.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, you know, worked in a way to where programming
is still stimulating you and challenging you, but it doesn't
always look the same. That it kind of fluctuates through
different what programming should look like, it shouldn't always be
the same. So I've just loved having you on as
(26:58):
a client because it shows that at fifty six, you.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Know you're not relying.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It's like, no, you don't all everyone doesn't have to
be on hormo therapy. Everyone doesn't have to, you know,
do this or whatever, but that when you follow a system,
it works.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, so I would I would maybe bring up three things,
and one is around deprivation. I never deprived myself throughout
everything that we did. In our caloric recommendations, you said
early on, just stick with the big rocks. Prioritize your
(27:42):
protein and prioritize your strength training, and it will fall
into place. There were nights I'm gonna throw myself out
here under the bus. But I like canned whip cream.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
That's all hello.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
So there were nights I would I'd be at a
point and it's like, well, I have fifty calories left
in my bank and I have a little sweet tooth.
I'm going to do I'm going to do that. Or
I probably went several weeks without drinking just because I
know enough that that's a slippery slope for me and
(28:22):
it opens the door to snacking. So once I got
to a certain point, my husband and I would start
going back out again. And you know, I worked around
having wine, or I worked around having a specific meal
or dessert. I just knew the next day it would
(28:43):
show up on the scale. So I never felt like,
oh my god, I have to wait six weeks before
I can have a piece of pumpkin pie. That was
never our approach. So the other piece of this, which
is significant is I had my blood worked done and
in November, and I was talking earlier in our conversation
(29:05):
today about my cardiac numbers and those cardiac numbers now
have come down significantly, so I am trending back towards normal.
My inflammation markers are spot on, my functions are spot on,
and that blood work is trending back to normal around
(29:25):
my cardiac lab work. So that is a huge deal
for me.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, massive.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, Well, in partying, what would some words of advice
be for anyone else who's maybe been in your situation.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Or feels how you have felt.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, there's a lot of information out in our you know, hello,
in our feeds, you search one thing and all of
a sudden, it's like you have information about supplements, about
out training styles. My feeling is that build your advisory group,
(30:09):
like get your professional resources, find people that you trust,
take in a lot of information around this conversation with
Perry menopause, and listen to your gut. My opinion is,
as much as it is important to take in a
(30:31):
lot of information, it's also really good to just listen
to your gut too and see what feels right for
you and for your lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yes, well, Tammy, thank you so much for having this conversation.
You've been such it has been such an honor for
me to work with you.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
You've been just like textbook.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
With you, you have done the work and I want
to make sure that everyone And I was like, doesn't
mean that it's easy, but you've done the work, and
you've put in the time, and you've put in the energy,
and you've put in the trust, and I'm just I'm
thrilled with the results that we've had and I'm excited
that we now get to transition you out and you know,
(31:19):
build up on those calories.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
We stayed very modest the whole time.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
But we got the results that exactly how we should
And I just appreciate you trusting in me, and I
appreciate you sharing your story because again I hear about it,
and it's one thing for me to say it, but
it's another to hear, you know, some actual clients come
forth and know that you can get results after fifty.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Thanks Haley, And I'm really looking forward to now turning
the corner and focusing on more and more strength and
getting my running speeds back to where they were and
just different goals. Yeah different, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Well, thank you so much, Tammy, thank you for sharing
your story, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
five star review and sharing the body Pod with your
friends until next time.
Ladies, are you ready to transform your fitness journey? The
shred Happens Challenge is here, a powerful six week program
designed for women over forty who want to build strength,
shed fat, and feel incredible. Starting April twenty seventh, you'll
get personalized calorie and macro targets, expert led video calls,
and flexible workouts for both.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Jim and home.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Choose from thirty or sixty minute sessions and follow beginner
or intermediate plans that fit your lifestyle. Plus, you'll join
a supportive online community that keeps you motivated every step
of the way. Spots are limited. Visit haleyhappensfitness dot com
to join the waitlist. Today, Hey everyone, this is Haley
(00:46):
and I'm Lara and welcome to the body Pod. Hi everyone,
it's Haley Today on the body Pod. I have something
special for you and quite different than the other podcasts
that we air. Today is a powerful episode where I
(01:09):
sit down with one of my personal one on one clients,
Tammy Temple, to discuss her transformative journey through perimenopause, weight gain,
and the frustrations of doing everything right without seeing results.
Tammy shares how she overcame hormonal changes, anxiety and stalled progress.
(01:32):
By making small but impactful adjustments to her own training
and nutrition. With expert guidance, science, back strategies, and persistence,
she reclaimed her strength, lost seventeen pounds now twenty actually,
and regain confidence in her body. Tune in for an
inspiring conversation on resilience, adaptation, and finding what truly works
(01:57):
for you and your health after fifty All right, welcome Tammy.
I'm so excited. So this is the first time that
I've ever had a personal client on to kind of
tell their story, and I could not think of a better.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Person to invite than you. So welcome to the body pot.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Thank you, Hayley. I'm really happy to be here and
to share my story.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yes, so we have been working together since the first
of September. Yeah, one on one, and I guess let's
just start from the very beginning. I want you to
take us back and rewind and start with your journey
in the last couple of years and kind of go
over you know what your experience has been before we
(02:50):
started working.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
It's almost embarrassing to say that I really didn't know
what perry menopause was like. Now, on the other side
of it. I can look at you and say, I'm
not sure I even knew what perimenopause was. Four and
five and six years ago. I knew my cycle was changing,
(03:16):
and I knew the inevitable eventually, I'm gonna stop having
a cycle. But my journey, I would compare it to
if you looked at a slight switch plate on a
wall and it had two switches. I've had two really
significant phases, and the first time that switch went off
(03:40):
was probably about spring of twenty twenty one. And I've
been an endurance junkie all my life. I'm a middle
of the pack person. So it's not like I'm out there,
you know, running races, podium, you know, getting on a podium,
none of that. It's always been about this is how
(04:02):
I take care of my head, my stress. So I
started to notice that, you know, my run times were slowing.
I felt that I needed a lot more recovery. I
was getting injured a lot, and like really stupid things
my calf, my hip flexer, things that I had never
(04:24):
experienced before. And then I also started to get this
little pouch around my belly, and I'd never had that before.
Almost simultaneously, I started to have anxiety creep up, and
in the middle of the night, I'd wake up and
(04:45):
I'd catastrophize my life, you know, like at two in
the morning, I would start this second guessing everything and
monkey mind and this is not like me at all.
And I at that time too, started to get a
little bit of night sweat. So I reached out to
what do I do? I reach out to my coaching world,
(05:07):
and I get connected with Purple Patch out of the
San Francisco Bay area, good friends of mine. They immediately
put me in touch with a running coach, Emma Briggs
with Endurance Explorers. Fantastic person, and Emma basically said, ah,
I know what to do with you. You need to
(05:27):
read the book Rore and understand where you're at in life,
and also let's start building in some sit training, some
hit training. I've always had strength training that was more
of like a periodization style, so everything she recommended seemed
(05:49):
normal to me, nothing out of the box. When I
started reading Roor, I immediately became the biggest fan of
doctor Stacy Simms and Seline Jaeger, and I consumed everything
they were talking about. Adaptogens became my friend and between
emma and adaptogens and just staying on top of all
(06:13):
the latest and greatest research that held my symptoms at bay.
So all of the anxiety, the night sweats, things like that.
That really started to back that off, and I saw
my run speeds come back, I saw my injuries start
(06:34):
to go away. After about a year and a half,
that second switch went off. So now the adaptogens were
not working, and I was back into that mix of
now I'm up in the night, I'm sleeping super light,
(06:54):
I have no energy in the morning, I have brain fog,
I can't make sense of, you know, putting sentences together.
Like at a certain point I really thought, do I
have a serious problem here? Like I had a hard
time functioning even with work, so that that was starting
to become alarming. And then the next piece of that
(07:21):
was the next piece of that was I did a
bunch of lab work, and my inflammation markers were off
the charts. My cardiac lab work was off the charts,
like in an alarming way where my endocrinologist was like,
let's get you in for a cardiac scan and make
(07:44):
sure everything is okay. I'm a really healthy eater, I'm
a clean eater, so to get lab work like that
was really scary for me. And also at that time
I had now little belly pouch turned into ten pounds.
(08:05):
And by the time I right before I learned all
about Hayley, I went through my second round of lab
work and my labs had not moved at all. So
what I had done with my endocrinologist was her immediate
(08:29):
reaction was, let's consider putting you on hormone therapy. The
hormone therapy, just a little bit of estrogen, some oral
progesterone will help you with your anxiety. It will help
you sleep better, deeper, longer, and it will start to
(08:50):
back off some of those night sweats. So I went
on hormone therapy for about a year, and it is
a short term solution for a short term problem. It
really got me over the hurdle, and I felt like
with hormone therapy I had retained some of my quality
(09:14):
of life, but the one thing that hadn't moved was
my lab work and the scale. By the time I
got to you, I had gained seventeen pounds over two years. So, yeah,
this is someone who I've always been fit. I've always
(09:38):
been active, and my eating, my activity none of that
had changed so out of nowhere. I felt like on
that second switch that went off here, I was I'm
doing everything that I'm supposed to be doing, and now
I've got seventeen pounds on me and I don't know
(10:01):
what to do. So I had I listened to the
Huberman podcast with doctor Stacy Simms, and that's when I
heard about the new program that you and Stacy had
put together, Power Happens. So I start doing Power Happens.
I'm loving the program. It's great, and I think you
(10:24):
guys came out with the first program was sixty minutes.
The second program was thirty minutes, and I thought, oh well,
I'll go into the thirty minute program. And I don't
need to be doing you know, hours in the gym.
All I need to do is get in and get out.
So a thirty minute program, let's see what that's all about.
(10:46):
And it wasn't helping me move. It wasn't helping me
move the needle and out of sheer desperation. I sent
you a message through your app and I think I
asked for a nutrition consult.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, which is so funny because like I like, I
wasn't taking anyone this last year was so bananas to me.
And you know, I really don't even promote that I
do one on one. It's kind of on my website,
but I really just pass it off to other coaches
because I just haven't had the time, and I.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Like I just was like I sure craft, yeah, oh sure, I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Gonna take tammy.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And then when I met you, I was like, oh
this there was just a genuine connection. But let's talk
about what was your age when you had started, you know,
with the running company versus when you you know, you
found me on Huberman podcast and learned about the power programs.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, so let me think spring of twenty twenty three,
I was fifty two. Wait, let me do the math.
Sixty eight to fifty two?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
How old are you? What? What the hell is wrong
with me?
Speaker 3 (12:12):
This is something you'll obviously say.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
This is what I have every time because I'm in
the thick. I'm forty seven. I'm in the thick of
the brain fog perimenopause. And now everyone who has meetings
with me weekly, they're just like, okay, hey, they I'm like,
what was I saying?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Sentence?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Okay, hello, Spring of twenty twenty three, I was fifty three.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Okay, so now you're I'm fifty six, fifty six.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
So did you feel like, as all of these things
were happening over the years, this is just how I'm
going to be because you're exercising regularly.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I mean, you know, you eat healthy.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
We figured that out right when we first started working together.
But there were some things we learned along the way.
But okay, so here you are and you're just like, well,
but the scale is still not moving and I've gained
this way. And for you, there was a there was
an emotional, you know, connection with like, I just want
(13:21):
to feel myself Like I don't want to be twenty
year old, twenty years old again, but I want to
feel like myself and I don't recognize myself.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So let's begin there.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
For sure, I think that a lot of women say,
in my activity level, in my activity behavior, our first
step is to reach out to someone that's an expert
(13:56):
that can help me. And then the next piece of
it is to ingest everything you can possibly ingest to
learn to understand, to be able to speak this new language.
And that's exactly what I did for four years. I
(14:16):
was consuming everything I possibly could to understand what I
was going through, how to adjust my behavior, how to relearn,
and also I was surrounding myself with professionals that could
help guide me in this phase. So by the time
(14:37):
I reached you, I was a broken person. I really
felt like, is this where is this my new normal now?
Like had my years of just being able to be healthy,
thinking about my lab work, of being able to be active,
(15:01):
thinking about my injuries and my ability to go out
and run and just enjoy the outdoors and have that
stress reduction, Like, has all of this change now? And
I have to take this hard right and start going
down a new path. So I was broken when I
(15:24):
got to you, And I think at one point I
captured just an overview of my perimenopause journey and I
shared with you it might make me a little teary
that I was hiding out in like blousy summer dresses,
in blousy pants and loose tops, and I wouldn't even
(15:48):
change in front of my husband anymore because I felt
like I'm just disappearing into our wall. You know, I
didn't feel good about myself.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
And that was the most emotional part when you wrote
that is that resonates because I hear this so much
and maybe not in that depth when people just originally
reach out to me, but they're just like they just
feel defeated.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, and it's like I'm doing all the things.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So I have to say when I started to initially
work with you at first, I was like, sometimes this
is the hardest client to have because if you really
are nailing everything and you're doing it all right, like,
how do we make movement?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
You know, are you.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
An outlier of something is happening that is out of
my scope of practice, or can we take the information
and education and can we really just try to dial
in a few things and see if we can get
the scale moving.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
In a healthy way.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So I was very direct about that, and I hope
that you would back me on this and you feel
the same way that I wasn't, Like, all right, Tammy,
we're gonna cut you to nine hundred calories a day.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
You're gonna lose weight because you would, but at a cost.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, Well, to coincide with.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The emotion around.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
My new normal at that time was a concern for
my health and as I said, my cardiac numbers had skyrocketed.
So now all of a sudden, you start having those
conversations with your endocrinologist about certain supplements to help bring
that down. Then the next conversation is statins. You know
(17:52):
that for someone who has never been had to rely
upon medications, I've been healthy my whole life. You start
thinking about I don't want to go down that track,
like I've fixed everything that has come up for me
in my health by peeling back the layers and looking
(18:14):
at what am I consuming, what is my lifestyle, not
immediately looking for a pill. So in addition to into
that concern about oh my gosh, my weight and my activity,
like how do I get this back? Was also about
my health.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
So when we first started, I remember you the first
couple of weeks and I'm like, all right, clearly you
eat well, but we really want to dive into what
does that look like? And I will say right now,
there's no perfect macro split, but there are macro ranges,
and so we really talked about like hitting that protein number.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yes. But then also.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I think, and this is not for everyone, because I
know there's a lot of women with eating, you know,
with disordered eating that can't go down this road. But
for someone you know, I wanted you to get a
scale and actually way because you're like, well, I'm having
this protein shake, it's great. But then when we started
to in put the calories. I remember you coming to
(19:20):
me and you were like, Hayley, my morning smoothie was
like seven hundred calories and I was like, okay, well,
what did you think it was maybe four hundred? Okay,
So there's almost like your deficit right there.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
And you it was healthy food and this is not like.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Every you know, all of those foods just because they're healthy.
We still have to tailor in some things if we
want to try to get some movement in a healthy way.
So what did you learn about that first month?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah, so you know, some of the messaging that I
had received over the course of the last few years
was also about letting go of counting calories, letting go
of tracking, because again, people like me who have this
(20:14):
activity lifestyle, it's always about what are my nutrition windows,
what's my timing around nutrition, what am I consuming? What
are my macros?
Speaker 2 (20:25):
And that can spin a short out.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
So over the course of these last few years, I
had let that go. And what I realized when I
bought my little thirteen dollars.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Mood scale was.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
I had lost connection with what a tablespoon actually was,
or what three ounces or four ounces or six ounces
of meat actually was. And that was a huge awakening me.
(21:03):
At the time that you and I connected, I was
willing to do. It's like, well, what the heck, what
do I have to lose. I'm going to follow her
path and her direction and if in four months I
go absolutely nowhere, okay, but what.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Do I have to lose?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
So to take a couple of weeks and really familiarize
myself with announce a cup a whatever. It wasn't brain surgery,
you know, it just took a little bit more time.
And it was a huge awakening that I had really
lost sight of what a serving is. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, And I mean I think that's the important part
is I don't recommend calorie counting, and I mean I
never did up until I got into the space and
I started working for myself with someone and then you know,
morph to where I am today. But it is an
educational tool to be used at a certain time, not
year round, not obsessively, not taking all of like you know,
(22:04):
your food scale on vacation, and you can never relaxed.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
It is teaching.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
How do we look at the education to see what
those serving sizes dial it in and then we have
the freedom to have more of this lifestyline approach. So
since we've been working together since September, how much weight
have you lost?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
I've lost seventeen pounds, which I every week.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
It's like cheering and I want to cry because when
I look at your when I look at your measurements
since September, it's now, you know, the first part of January,
we are down four inches from your in your waist,
almost five inches on the thigh, an inch and a
(22:47):
half on the hips, and two inches above the navel.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Down five inches. That's massive. I know, it's massive.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
And the weight loss is seventeen pound sounds amazing and
it is. It was done over, you know, thirteen to
fourteen weeks, so this.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Is like when you look at it, but I'm like,
you put in the work. You did the work. It
was not always fun, but you stayed the course.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
And did you ever feel like it was erratic, it
was aggressive, that you felt like crap, Like you were
just like I can't do this anymore. How did you
feel during this process?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I know for myself that it usually takes about four
six ish six eight ish weeks before I start to
see movement. It's like my body holds on, it doesn't
know what's happening, but then all of a sudden, once
that domino hits, then I start to see movement. And
(23:52):
so the first four to six weeks, you know, we
would see little shifts. I was just happy to have
an advocate and talking to you once a week. I
don't think it ever felt hard. It never certainly never
felt like a slog. I didn't feel like I'm depriving
(24:12):
myself because I mean, you can get full on protein
pretty quickly and a bunch of vegetables. Like if you're
sitting down and eating junk food, that's one thing, but
if you're eating healthy food, you're gonna feel satiated. So
(24:35):
it never felt like a slog to me. I think
once we took my second round of measurements the end
of September, and even though I wasn't seeing a ton
on the scale, I saw the inches start to move.
That catapulted me a bit. And then I think I
(24:55):
went out about that time and I bought my own
in body scale so I could start to see the
visceral fat, I could see the muscle mass, I could
see the actual body fat. So then it became about
tracking the data and I was I was in and
then the numbers started to move, and we I think
(25:18):
every time we talked it just felt like.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I was like, I'm more excited than you.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Okay, maybe I'm second second more excited, But I mean,
it's been such a lovely journey, Tammy, because again, there
hasn't been It's not like this quick fixed diet like
this has been behavior changes. It's been dialing a few
things because at first, the first month, we didn't move
a lot, and we had to kind of shift and
you're like, oh, okay, now I realized how much was
(25:46):
in this that I was adding. Maybe a little bit
too much. So let's just tailor it down. Let's make
it so that it works for my lifestyle. Sure, there's
still like what we talk about every week is compromise.
Where do you want to spend that? Do you want
to go out and you know, have a glass of wine. Okay,
well then we program that in, but we do have
to still give that give and take of what's important
(26:08):
to me in my budget. And now we're not in
that fat loss phase anymore. We're trying to transition you
out safely and appropriately to where you know you're not
having to but now you have the education and you
know what you can view and see on your plate
and what that looks like, and maybe swapping out some
(26:28):
choices some behavior changes there because you were already really healthy.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
But we've also worked through a lot of rep ranges.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, you know, worked in a way to where programming
is still stimulating you and challenging you, but it doesn't
always look the same. That it kind of fluctuates through
different what programming should look like, it shouldn't always be
the same. So I've just loved having you on as
(26:58):
a client because it shows that at fifty six, you.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Know you're not relying.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It's like, no, you don't all everyone doesn't have to
be on hormo therapy. Everyone doesn't have to, you know,
do this or whatever, but that when you follow a system,
it works.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, so I would I would maybe bring up three things,
and one is around deprivation. I never deprived myself throughout
everything that we did. In our caloric recommendations, you said
early on, just stick with the big rocks. Prioritize your
(27:42):
protein and prioritize your strength training, and it will fall
into place. There were nights I'm gonna throw myself out
here under the bus. But I like canned whip cream.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
That's all hello.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
So there were nights I would I'd be at a
point and it's like, well, I have fifty calories left
in my bank and I have a little sweet tooth.
I'm going to do I'm going to do that. Or
I probably went several weeks without drinking just because I
know enough that that's a slippery slope for me and
(28:22):
it opens the door to snacking. So once I got
to a certain point, my husband and I would start
going back out again. And you know, I worked around
having wine, or I worked around having a specific meal
or dessert. I just knew the next day it would
(28:43):
show up on the scale. So I never felt like,
oh my god, I have to wait six weeks before
I can have a piece of pumpkin pie. That was
never our approach. So the other piece of this, which
is significant is I had my blood worked done and
in November, and I was talking earlier in our conversation
(29:05):
today about my cardiac numbers and those cardiac numbers now
have come down significantly, so I am trending back towards normal.
My inflammation markers are spot on, my functions are spot on,
and that blood work is trending back to normal around
(29:25):
my cardiac lab work. So that is a huge deal
for me.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, massive.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Yeah, Well, in partying, what would some words of advice
be for anyone else who's maybe been in your situation.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Or feels how you have felt.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, there's a lot of information out in our you know, hello,
in our feeds, you search one thing and all of
a sudden, it's like you have information about supplements, about
out training styles. My feeling is that build your advisory group,
(30:09):
like get your professional resources, find people that you trust,
take in a lot of information around this conversation with
Perry menopause, and listen to your gut. My opinion is,
as much as it is important to take in a
(30:31):
lot of information, it's also really good to just listen
to your gut too and see what feels right for
you and for your lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yes, well, Tammy, thank you so much for having this conversation.
You've been such it has been such an honor for
me to work with you.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
You've been just like textbook.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
With you, you have done the work and I want
to make sure that everyone And I was like, doesn't
mean that it's easy, but you've done the work, and
you've put in the time, and you've put in the energy,
and you've put in the trust, and I'm just I'm
thrilled with the results that we've had and I'm excited
that we now get to transition you out and you know,
(31:19):
build up on those calories.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
We stayed very modest the whole time.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
But we got the results that exactly how we should
And I just appreciate you trusting in me, and I
appreciate you sharing your story because again I hear about it,
and it's one thing for me to say it, but
it's another to hear, you know, some actual clients come
forth and know that you can get results after fifty.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Thanks Haley, And I'm really looking forward to now turning
the corner and focusing on more and more strength and
getting my running speeds back to where they were and
just different goals. Yeah different, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Well, thank you so much, Tammy, thank you for sharing
your story, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
five star review and sharing the body Pod with your
friends until next time.
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