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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
Elly Young on Empowering Sobriety, Hormonal Health, and Taking Control of Your Well-Being
This engaging episode explores the profound effects of alcohol on women's health, especially regarding hormonal balance in their forties. Hosts Jenny and Elly Young discuss personal experiences and invoke strong societal themes surrounding drinking, empowerment, and the importance of self-advocacy.
• Elly introduces her alcohol-free journey and its unexpected outcomes
• Discussion around the societal pressures of “mom wine culture”
• Importance of understanding hormonal balance as women age
• Unique challenges women face when it comes to alcohol consumption
• Insights into cycle syncing to promote better health
• The connection between alcohol and hormone disruption highlighted
• Steps to challenge cravings and transform relationships with alcohol
• Encouragement for women to prioritize self-care and health
• Resources and tools provided for further exploration
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https://www.instagram.com/find_myself_free/
https://linktr.ee/ellyyoung
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Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Still Roses podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I'm very excited to introduce all of you to Ellie Young. Excuse me, ellie is a alcohol free life and wellness coach and fellow podcaster. She hosts Find Myself Free, which actually is accessible on all major podcast platforms. Ellie believes that women don't have to suffer as they age from hormone imbalance, but they can reclaim agency over their mental and physical health by changing their relationship with alcohol and learning to tune into their hormonal health. Women are tired of being told it's just age and, myself included, we're hungry to learn empowering information that will change the trajectory of their health.
Speaker 2:Ellie, welcome to the show. Hi Jenny, Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to have you here. So there's so much about you and what you stand for that I resonate with and I have a one-on-one with, so I'm very excited for you to introduce yourself to the audience and let them know how did you get on this path, what was the catalyst and what are the pivotal things that you really want the audience to know today.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I started my alcohol-free journey kind of unintentionally. Basically, I had pickled myself during the pandemic it was the end of 2020, and I had come out of homeschooling my two boys. I had a kindergartner and a third grader at the time and, like most women can relate, I had a pretty tough time doing that. One of my kiddos had ADHD, undiagnosed at the time, and so we fought a lot. It was very challenging. So that January I was just, I was cold. I was really wanting to do it more out of like. I wanted to lose weight. I was more superficial. I I probably subconsciously knew I had a really unhealthy relationship with alcohol for a long time, but I never wanted to admit that to myself.
Speaker 2:So, it was a dry January and I didn't even make it. I failed. I quickly adjusted it to like I'm only going to drink on the weekends and I'm only going to have two drinks, and I shifted from like hard alcohol to wine. But I found it so challenging and it took up so much of my brain space still that I was like God, what is up with this? This is so much harder than I thought.
Speaker 2:And so in February of that year I started reading quit lit books and I actually hired a coach and I ended up working with a coach for about four months, which was like a pivotal point in my kind of transformation. I never drank again and that was not my intention, and after that I just started feeling so incredibly like well, and I was like holy smokes, I'm turning 40. And this is the best I felt in like a decade, and. But then of course, all the hormone stuff started shifting for me, and so that was kind of. The next part of my journey was really diving into the hormone science and really understanding perimenopause and the big gap in understanding that most women have with alcohol as it relates to their hormone balance and just like what a disservice alcohol is really doing to our mental health, to our physical health, and I honestly, truly believe it's the number one best thing women can do in their forties if they want to just enjoy this next decade instead of having to be just this rollercoaster.
Speaker 1:You know. So, number one yes, the homeschool thing during COVID was like insane. Like yeah, that was, that was like the wildest thing, and I heard across the board parents being like how am I supposed to do this? Like how am I supposed to? For those of us I was fortunate enough that I was already working from home so I was able to keep my job, but then it also meant like all three of my toddlers were all home at the same time and it became a situation where, like, my husband actually had to stop working. So, commending you for being a mom who was present for her children, but, yes, the challenge of having to manage that, especially with a child with ADHD, I have that experience as well. So I, I deeply understand the frustration level there, and then your child also gets frustrated too. So it's just that that's like a whole ball of wax.
Speaker 1:But the the alcohol thing. So I stopped drinking alcohol. I want to say it's probably been about four or five years. Um, I, I think we gave it out, we gave it. I say we like my husband and I did it at the same time. Actually, he was the one who wanted to gave it out. We gave it. I say we, like my husband I did at the same time. Actually, he was the one who wanted to do it first.
Speaker 1:It wasn't even me, um, I was very much the I'm cooking, I'm gonna drink wine while I'm cooking, or I'm I would be thirsty, and instead of actually drinking water, I was like, oh, let me get a Corona. Like like no, that's not what you're supposed to be doing to hydrate yourself. I didn't think anything of it, but at the time I was probably in the worst health of my life. I was maybe like 150 pounds heavier than I am now. I was about yeah, I was about 150 pounds heavier than I am now, and my joints hurt, my knees hurt badly every morning. My back was killing me. I couldn't really move around. My breathing was off, like it was just. It was horrible. It was just bad, bad, bad news.
Speaker 1:And what ended up happening was like my husband ended up giving it up first and he was like we got to do this. And it was really him who was like I'm having issues with my stomach, let's just stop. So I stopped with him because I'm like all right, you know what? Alcohol is not that great. He is actually the one who started doing research and exactly what you said in general.
Speaker 1:It's not even just for women specifically, but in general. When you drink alcohol, it actually deteriorates your immune system. You're literally drinking something that is going to make you sick and it's essentially a poison that you're putting in your body. And it's the wildest thing because it's packaged up into this marketing monster of you. Know, this is a rite of passage, this is something that you know when you get older. This is great, you're going to finally get to do this. And then for women specifically and specifically targeting moms, we have the mom wine culture Right, and that in itself has been, I'm sure, a catalyst to a booming market for the alcohol industry, because we are specifically being targeted.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, it's so much of our cravings to drink stem from this like subconscious programming, and it starts when we're really, really little and where it becomes really predatory You're right, it's in that kind of mommy wine culture where it's like they, they give it to us as our reward for motherhood and they say like this is what you deserve, this is the self-care you need, this is how you're gonna bond with your girlfriends, this is the break that you need. And then you go out and you just punish yourself and then have still have to come back to your family and get up, you still got to do it.
Speaker 2:And you show up wrecked. You're tired, you're hungover, your mental health is now hanging on by a thread, so it's quite literally the worst thing for us. Yet we are conditioned to believe it's like the end all be all of our socialization and like this is how we have fun how we treat ourselves.
Speaker 2:So it's such a mixed bag and I think what I want most women to understand here is like any sort of like tough relationship you have with alcohol, where you're starting to question like, oh my God, do I have a problem? I want to stop you right there and be like it's not a problem. We've also been conditioned to think that it's us and not the addictive substance. We've been conditioned to drink an addictive, toxic substance and it's not you. This is what a toxic substance does to any human brain, given enough frequency, given enough volume, given enough social conditioning. Right, it's hard, because that's what an addictive substance does to you. You crave it because we've been taught that it is the answer to so many different things in our life.
Speaker 2:And I mean when we really pin it down, like when I break it down with my clients, I'm like how many jobs have you given alcohol? Like, okay, I drink it. When I'm bored, I drink it. When I'm stressed, I drink it when I need to come out of my gel.
Speaker 2:It's like on and on, and on and on. And then you ask yourself, like is it really doing a good job? Do I like is so much of my life really hinging on this beverage? It's a beverage at the end of the day, it's a drink in a glass and we're letting it dictate, like oh, I can't have fun, enough fun. Now it's like thing in my glass and you're like when did that change? And so it's like cracking open our subconscious and really starting to like shine a light on all the ways in which we've been conditioned, marketed to, preyed upon by the alcohol industry and just going huh. And once you kind of question it, once you shine that little light, your brain starts to like let new information in. And that's when you start like giving yourself all the science and the education about like what it's really doing to your body. And at the end of the day you're like I don't want to do that to my body anymore.
Speaker 2:You know, it's kind of like I don't want there's a lot of like correlation between alcohol and gasoline. It's like no, I don't want to drink gasoline because I don't want to drink gasoline, and it's like that's kind of we really need to like reverse brainwash ourselves and be like this is what it is. This is what it does to you.
Speaker 1:I want to highlight what you said there about you know how many hats basically are you making alcohol wear, like it is truly just a beverage? I think like the biggest, one of the most interesting challenges not drinking anymore is other people, how they react to it, and my husband and I have noticed that, like the social invitations aren't as forthcoming because we're not in the mix with everybody. Now, we have a great time, we have a wonderful time, and when we go out and everything, we love it. Now, we have a great time, like we, we have a wonderful time and we, you know, when we go out and everything we, we love it. We have a great time. But we're not drinking and everyone around us is.
Speaker 1:And again, like I'm cool with just having like a lemonade, like our water, with like like we really don't care, um, but we've noticed that it's the people around us that seem to take issue and it's interesting because once you stop after a certain time, well, one you don't even crave it anymore. Like I actually just commented to my husband the other day, I'm like you know, I used to kind of have these moments of like I just wish I could have like one drink or I would have this moment of like, especially during the summer. Oh, I just want to have a margarita by our pool and, like, hang out. That doesn't happen anymore. That like urgency and that that need to be like.
Speaker 1:I want something. I don't have it anymore, because all it's doing is subduing your senses. It's giving me a headache. You're drinking calories you don't need. You're drinking sugar you don't need, um, and then, as you mentioned, at in our age range, because I'm turning 41, oh my god, in like a couple of weeks, yay, so I'm turning 41 and I'm becoming extremely aware of what's happening with my body at this point where my hormones at um.
Speaker 1:now I'm tracking my literally I have like a little mood journal and I'm tracking everything for the next 30 days because I'm sensing like a perimenopause thing happening and I'm sensing all these other things. I'm like I'm not going to be putting things into my body that's going to further throw off what I'm going through, like including caffeine, like I'm actually even considering giving up caffeine because of what it does to your hormones. So for women who are, you know, concerned about hormones, and even pre 40s alcohol really does have a huge effect on that.
Speaker 2:It does. And there's a couple different like pillars to hormone balance. And yeah, no-transcript and insulin sit at the top of what's called the hormone pyramid and they essentially dictate the release of your thyroid hormone and then your sex hormones, your estrogen and progesterone, which are those are the ones that are really controlling a lot of your mood and cycle. And so when you're not sleeping and you're super stressed and when you're insulin resistant, like, your estrogen and progesterone are going to be way out of whack, and so that's where a lot of our nasty symptoms come from.
Speaker 2:A lot of what we understood to just be like bad periods growing up was really hormone imbalance and we were all put on pills or we were just like, oh, you're one of the unlucky ones, you just have a really bad period, and it was like no, that was hormone imbalance and we didn't get to the root cause of it.
Speaker 2:Then they just tried to mask it with the pill for us, right? And so now the biggest education I've had on my cycle and my hormones has been now in my 40s, when it's almost like reverse puberty is happening, like instead of us getting all the hormones and puberty, we're now starting to lose them and I'm out of balance and so now I'm starting to understand my entire life through the lens of my cycle. I'm like, okay, it makes sense that during this week these hormones are on the rise. These actually give me certain strengths. I really have to recondition women to believe like hormones don't make you crazy, hormones actually make you really powerful and they give you lots of gifts like creativity, focus, all sorts of different things, and so we can lean into them.
Speaker 2:But we do need to adjust our lifestyles because we're not men, we're not little men. We have fluctuating cycles and the more you can pay attention to what your hormone needs are during each phase, you're going to feel a lot better, and most women can, like, make the shift within a month because it is so intuitive. Because when you are matching your hormonal needs with your nutrition, your exercise and your lifestyle, you're like oh, I feel better because I'm not pushing myself when I shouldn't be pushing myself and I'm not, like you know, socializing when I should be probably just staying home and nurturing myself. Like it's really intuitive and it's a super cool way to live your life. Like it's really intuitive and it's a super cool way to live your life.
Speaker 1:It's um, I just started doing this, like literally what you're talking about, like so I was always um the um, I'm gonna push myself. And I I used to literally say like, well, I'll sleep when I'm dead and I would like just push myself over the edge and then some, just so that I could get everything done. And then three years ago, I had this epiphany, and it was an epiphany moment because I was continuing to live my life like that and I was. I had a bad situation where I was like working these wild hours for like two weeks straight and it it threw me off, it pulled me from my children for two weeks. It like devastated me because I, when I was done with the work that I needed to get done, they were all bigger and it like I like came out of my office and they were just playing in front of in the hallway and I was like, oh my God, they look bigger than they did. Oh my God, like you know, and it was like this kind of rolling thing.
Speaker 1:So for the past couple of years I've been really focusing on trying to be mindful with, like, what am I doing? How am I feeling? I still had to really work to break that workaholic cycle from my system and I feel like it's almost like an addiction for some of us to have that, because there was a lot of times where, when things were crazy at home, I would, because I had all my kids at the same time. So I had my son in 2016 and my twins in 2017. And yeah, so when things would get kind of out of control, work was almost like a solace for me.
Speaker 1:Because, I'm like I can control this. This feels good, I'm in charge, I'm the boss here and I already know what to expect here. The kids I have no idea what to expect. That's really stressful, but this, so I was leaning into that. So now, over the past three years this year I had my.
Speaker 1:The year that I turned 40 is the year that I started to recognize these symptoms of like I'm not feeling great, I do feel run down or I feel I'm you know, being a bitch, for lack of a better word. Like you know, I'm having a rage or whatever it is, and um. And now I know better and I'm living more intuitively to say, like Jenny, you have to lay down, you got to take a nap, like this weekend. Last weekend I was like and this was where somebody else was telling me because of where I was in my cycle she was like oh, it makes sense. Last week and last weekend I was like getting so much done. I cleaned the whole house, I got podcast worked. I was like on fire and I was like really proud of myself and impressed. I'm like, wow, this is awesome. This weekend not so much, still that way this weekend.
Speaker 1:But I think, ellie, you hit it the nail on the head here, where we have to recognize those moments and acknowledge them and not try to fight it so much. So if you are feeling like I don, I don't want to go out, like you have to pay attention to your intuition and say like I need to take a break. Same with alcohol. If you're noticing that when you wake up in the morning like you're feeling run down, you're not feeling well, you're getting sick, a lot, like I mean I'm sure I mean you, you're going to know much more than me like the amount of things that happen to your body that's going to make you feel like trash. Just take away the toxin, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. You know you talked about so many things that I relate to. You know being a workaholic, being a mom and trying to get it all done. I think so many women suffer from this people pleasing drive, not only in our work and our mothering, and it's one of the biggest reasons why we actually do self-medicate with alcohol is because we are not taught that we're worthy when we're resting right, that we have to always be striving, always be self-sacrificing. If you're not self-sacrificing as a mom, then who are you? It's like you're not doing it right if you're not giving everything of yourself sleep depriving yourself and letting everything go in order to support the kids and the family.
Speaker 2:And so then the alcohol becomes our break. It somehow becomes the permission to be like, hey, you're not going to sleep tonight, but you can have this glass of wine, you know what I mean, and it's like wow, like what you really need is like a nap, some self-care, some like decent food, a break, a rest, you know all these things.
Speaker 2:And so it's so twisted that alcohol kind of does become this crutch through that part of our life when we are in the biggest hustle of our entire lives and we don't feel worthy of taking a break, and so we give ourselves a break with this toxin.
Speaker 2:It's so twisted and it's I honestly don't know if I could have given up alcohol when I was in that stage with a young toddler, where you really truly are like sleep deprived and like it's, it's so gnarly hard.
Speaker 2:Right then, I think I I had this dawning, as I was turning 40, because my kids were a little bit older, I had that little bit of finding myself again, finding this little space between me and my, my identity as a mom and like who else am I, and it was like, holy shit, I need to start taking better care of myself. You know, and I want women to believe, that when you make this shift, you're not sacrificing your joy, you're not sacrificing your fun, like there's this whole entire world out there, that we are just really out of practice doing alcohol free, and it's. It can feel if you're always focusing on what you think you're giving up, then your brain is going to look for evidence to support that. Like I'm bored, I'm lonely. This sucks, this is awkward, but if you really allow yourself to be like, I'm going to sleep like a baby.
Speaker 2:I'm going to wake up and rested, I'm going to have deeper, more authentic connections, like, yeah, it's a little bit awkward at first, but it's because you haven't socialized probably since you were in your teenage years without alcohol, yeah, and it starts to wake you up and life becomes amazing.
Speaker 1:It's interesting too, because I think the fear also is like well, people aren't going to like me or my friends aren't going to understand this, and that's actually that's fair. That's a fair concern. However and this is like going to sound like such a mom thing to say it's but it's like, well, if they don't want to be friends with you just because you're not drinking, are they really your friends? And it's a legitimate fear that people have. There's been a lot of moments in my life that were pivotal moments for me, where I knew I was making a decision that people were not going to like, but I would gut check with myself and just say, okay, jenny, are you happy with this decision? Are you at peace with this when you lay down tonight and you put your head on that pillow, are you okay, are you happy in this moment? Because everything else needs to fall away. You're the only one living your life. So if you have, even if you have family members that are heavy drinkers and they're looking at you like you're nuts, you know what?
Speaker 1:In the beginning we felt a little awkward about it. I had my little faux mocktails that I used to have, just so that nobody would give me a problem until I was ready to be like, no, no, for real I don't do this and, honestly, a little bit of a through line there, me being a vegetarian. No one else is a vegetarian. That same thing. People react really poorly to that. So we know, like alcohol, it impacts your hormones but and it does impact your health on a larger scale too Because, as I said, like it breaks down your immune system, you are going to get sick much faster, you're going to get sick for longer, but there's also a higher cancer risk as well.
Speaker 2:Correct, oh, yes, oh yes, absolutely it's, and it comes from again. It starts from a hormone imbalance problem, so I can get a little more into this. So when you're drinking alcohol, your liver has to prioritize detoxing the alcohol first. First and foremost, your liver's in charge of detoxing all the toxins in your body, but when you're drinking alcohol, it like stops detoxing everything else and is like oh, I got to get this substance out of here, like that. And so all of the other excess stuff that's coming in through, like the plastics, the pesticides, the perfumes we're breathing. You know how it's like it's literally everything now is in a hormone disruptor, right? Oh yeah, all of these products are coming in and normally your liver can like do a pretty good job detoxing it.
Speaker 2:But if you're drinking, that excess toxin gets, reabsorbs back, basically back into the bloodstream and it's it's. It's an excess estrogen. And estrogen is kind of confusing for people because women are like wait, I need my estrogen, right? Especially as I'm getting older, my estrogen's declining. So estrogen can kind of metabolize in two different directions. It can metabolize in one that is cancer protective. That's when you're eating, like the cruciferous veggies, cauliflower, broccoli, all those kind of cancer preventative stuff those help your liver. Detox the estrogen into a positive pathway. Detox the estrogen into a positive pathway. All of the other toxins that are bad break down into this type of estrogen that promotes cellular growth, particularly in the breasts. So eight out of 10 breast cancers are hormone receptor positive, meaning they need estrogen to grow. So, essentially, when you're drinking, not only are you preventing your liver from detoxing the bad estrogen that's going to cause cancer, it also raises your stress levels. It also raises that excess estrogen in your body. It's like a double whammy. That's why it's a class one carcinogen.
Speaker 1:The interesting thing here is because I knew this as well, but I wanted you to go into detail here. The interesting thing here is people are hearing this and probably saying to themselves, well, that's crazy. Like, why would this not have the warning label? You know, like, why is this on the shelf even? Yeah, there are so many things Taking out alcohol and cigarettes. There are so many things taking out alcohol and cigarettes. There are so many things on the shelf today that is available to all of us constantly.
Speaker 1:Otc medicines are over the counter medicines. There are food. There are things available that we consume every single day that cause cancer. And if you, I remember when I was growing up, my mother would always comment on like, oh, you know, it's, it's, you know, it was never like this in my day. All these people have cancer today, this, that and the next thing, and it's truly because we are actually poisoning ourselves. Yeah, the food regulations are a little bit different today, or they're not as strict as they were meant to be.
Speaker 1:There are certain things that are just like again available. I'll mention one that I found the other day. I have endometriosis, so my periods are painful and even though they're short now, thank God, they're really painful, even if it's just a couple of days that it's there. So I'm constantly taking over the counter medicine for it. And I happened to just look at the label recently and I'm sure enough, I like kind of just glanced at it and right on the back it said that the product that I was taking is not for sale in California because it has a known product in it that causes cancer. I've been popping these pills like Tic Tacs for years and I read it and I was like what, like, what Like. It's mind blowing. So it is a legitimate thing. And then the other thing too, right, the doubters are going to be hearing this and being like how? But what do you mean? Like again, like there, I'm sure there'd be studies. There actually are studies, but the alcohol industry is a giant.
Speaker 1:And same thing with, if you look at the history of cigarettes in the early days, in the early marketing of cigarettes, it was marketed to athletes. They had what? Babe Ruth smoking cigarettes and he died at 42 from what? Tongue cancer, right, something to that effect. And I saw this I watch documentaries on this kind of stuff all the time like a nerd and they marketed it hardcore, to athletes to young people and just kind of kept on top of it and then slowly there started to be some like suspicion around. Oh, we think it's making people sick. But what the tobacco industry did was they turned around and said no, no, no, we have these experts. And these experts would come out and say, no, there's no way. You know, tobacco would never cause cancer. See, I'm a cardiologist and I recommend these cigarettes and it's like. But the truth of the matter was it was causing cancer and, like now, it has labels and obviously people still do it.
Speaker 1:It's an addictive substance. People have a right to do what they want to do, but at least that label is there now, right, it's legally bound to it. Alcohol is not there yet. It might not ever get there. It may never be regulated in that way because of the industry and because of the giants. And this is an area where, ellie, I am like a broken record with the listeners on this. You have to do research and you have to advocate for yourself. Yeah, like period.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know that's funny. A lot of people do say that alcohol is trending towards the way of the cigarette. You know, the similar thing happened where they tried to come out and with these studies and say, oh, you know, red wine is heart healthy for you, right? I love to make the correlation. It's like drinking red wine for resveratrol, for like the antioxidant health, is like eating three bowls of ice cream for the calcium benefits. You know, really like not the same. And they, the a lot of people have tried to tout to that like, oh, it lowers my stress and it's better to not be stressed because stress is so harmful to your system than it is to like walk around stress. So I drink wine and like I get a lot of people like, oh, one or two glasses is fine, and like I'm not here to to tell people they should never drink again.
Speaker 2:I do want people to go into it eyes wide open, especially women, especially if you're suffering from lots of symptoms in these, in these decades, where we just we're kind of like throwing our hands up and doctors, you know, luckily, luckily, now perimenopause and menopause is getting a lot of attention. There's a lot more products and science and information out there and people are starting to pay attention. So doctors aren't able to gaslight us as much, like our problems don't matter. But so much of this disruption is being extremely like, created, made worse by the alcohol you're consuming, because it's you're not sleeping. It's raising your cortisol.
Speaker 2:So this idea that alcohol lowers your, your stress, I want to be very, very clear. It does so for a 20 minute period. That is when your blood alcohol rises. You get this dopamine boost and it temporarily takes your prefrontal cortex offline. You are, I would repeat, you're like, you are not stressed anymore. The food that was stressing you is still there.
Speaker 2:You just kicked the can down the road to a version of yourself that is sicker, more tired, more anxious, more depressed, and essentially I'll explain the science here because a lot of women don't understand the craving cycle.
Speaker 2:So you get that first little buzz, you get that little dopamine high.
Speaker 2:After 20 minutes it fades and your brain corrects for that out of balance dopamine state by sending out something called dynorphin. Dynorphin is essentially the opposite of endorphins. It makes you feel low and so it creates that out of balance state and then your brain goes oh, I want more, I want more of whatever you just gave me. It actually pulls you lower than your baseline, lower than how you were starting at the beginning, before you started drinking, so you crave it. You feel like, oh, I just need a second drink. You go get that second drink and we don't understand that that depressant effect of alcohol is something called dynorphin and that lasts in your body two or three days. We're essentially trading 20 minutes of a buzz, of a brief relaxed moment, which is really actually just a numbing of your prefrontal cortex for two to three days of anxious, depressed state. And the brain responds to that depressant effect by releasing adrenaline and cortisol, which is why you wake up at 3am with your heart racing, irrational worries, and you have anxiety for days later.
Speaker 1:You know what the other thing is too. Alcohol has what like a half-life right, and so people will say, right, well, I, you know, I drank on Saturday and I drank on like Sunday football or whatever it was, and I'm not going to drink during the week, you know that that'll be my thing. But then they get to like Tuesday, wednesday, and they start to feel like crap, because that's actually when the alcohol is really actually exiting their body and now they're like really coming down and they're basically just coming down. This is just your body is detox again. You're in this little window of oh, I feel really crappy. Well, you know, I'm going to, I'm just going to go and have a drink after work. I feel like, I feel like crap. I'm going to go have a drink, relax, and then you start the cycle all over again, yeah, and then it never stops until you get to a point where you're like either you do it for the rest of your life which I know a lot of people that do Honestly, no shade, I have no problem with it, not like I didn't do it, I, you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 1:But if you're again like what you were just saying, if you're noticing that your body does not feel good and you're, you know, substituting anything else with alcohol. I mean, think of all the things that you could be doing Like I actually think about it quite a bit. Like you know, if I had had all the time back from what I wasted on drinking, I mean, the amount of things I could have accomplished and I wasted so much time. And then you waste so much energy on people that are like toxic, people that come along with you on that journey of like poisoning yourself and it's just a waste all around. And you get to a certain point in your life where now we're old enough that an older and wiser and you do really want to start paying attention to like. How is my body feeling? Like? Where am I going with these things to start paying attention to? Like how is my body feeling Like? Where am I going with these things? I do want to ask you about because I had a note to myself about cycle syncing to balance hormones.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. So that is essentially sorry. My kid just walked in. Ollie, can you please shut the door? Mine did too. That is essentially what we were talking about, where you phase in and out of the different cycles. Nope, I'm on a podcast. Can you shut the door? I'm literally on the thing. Okay, I marked it. You're okay, thank you. He wanted to show me something on his phone.
Speaker 1:I had the same problem. I don't know if you saw me trying to navigate that. It's a mom thing.
Speaker 2:We're mom podcast. It's real. So, yeah, cycle syncing is essentially there's. There's all the different phases of your cycle and they're hormonally very different and a lot of people don't know that. Our hormones love different diets. Like estrogen really likes a lower carbohydrate, high fat, high healthy fats, I should say, lots of cruciferous veggies that are going to help you detox that excess estrogen. And so we can, when you phase in and out of these different cycles adjusting your exercise, adjusting your lifestyle and your diet you can literally work with your body instead of against it. So it's really cool.
Speaker 2:It's actually an author called Elisa Vitti. I highly recommend her book. It's called In the Flow. She also has an app called the Flow App where you can track your cycle and track the different phases and it helps you and this is essentially what a lot of my coaching programs are based on. One, I help you get alcohol free, if that's something you're hung up on, and then we lean into a cycle syncing lifestyle and it's it's game changing different because we're no longer pushing ourselves in times when we should be resting.
Speaker 2:We're no longer, like we're understanding. Like in the back half of your cycle, when progesterone is on the rise, it needs more carbohydrate. Your blood sugar is naturally higher, your metabolism is naturally like revving up and so you need to eat more calories during this time. And so we're like, oh, I'm craving. And then we feel guilty. You know when we want to eat more during this phase. And then we might say, oh, now I need to exercise really hard to like burn it off, or I need to like fast the next day because I ate too much, and so all of this stuff, when we're not paying attention to what our hormones need, we're really just fighting our bodies. And so I was a big faster. I've always been a faster for a long time, trying to do what my husband did and he would like lose all this weight. And I was trying to fast like exactly the wrong times, like when my body you know you're not supposed to fast in the late luteal phase like the day 20 to 28 of your cycle. That's when your progesterone is peaking and you really need carbohydrate. You need to be nourishing yourself. And when stress is high which was what fasting would do to your body cortisol is shy. So if your cortisol is cycling, your progesterone just tanks and that's where you get that estrogen dominance and you feel like crap during that PMS period.
Speaker 2:What I love about cycle syncing is you can actually not have PMS and I've done it for months and months now. I used to get super sore boobs. I heard you say it earlier rage, yep. Rage is a new emotion that you get to experience in your 40s. It's interesting. It's being red like you're going to murder somebody For some reason and you become that like characteristic, like stereotype woman who's like unhinged in her old age and you know, and and all it is is hormone imbalance. It's like unhinged in her old age and you know, and and all it is is hormone imbalance. It's like all mom really needed was like a little space and a nap and to not maybe like a glass of orange juice.
Speaker 1:Like you just needed something, yeah yeah, and it's just.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because I used to think like I was irrational during that phase and I realized now that I was perfectly rational. I just had zero patience left for all the bullshit that I normally deal with, and so it's just like it's just like you're done in that phase. It's an interesting part of life for women because we are, we're done in so many ways and we finally kind of have a little more autonomy because maybe our babies aren't so young anymore.
Speaker 2:We actually get to kind of speak up and start standing up and taking power back in our lives and our health and saying, like, why am I drinking this substance? Why am I pushing myself at the gym when I really need to like just go for a walk with a friend, get some sunshine, drink some water, you know.
Speaker 1:Honestly, yeah, and you know I actually I just did a interview last night and the guest said it was saying the same thing. She's like you know, you really have to pay attention to like where you are in your month. That's why I started this 30 day journal, because I had actually never even heard of the luteal phase until literally last week. Like I had no idea and I was. I mean, it's blowing my mind and it's also really pissing me off that I didn't know about this because this could have been huge for me and it could have been like could have really helped me. So now I know I could pass it on to my daughters. So, learning all this and learning about like where I am in the month because I was saying to, I was saying to the other guests, I'm like you know, I have this 40% of my month I feel like myself, and the other 60% I'm sad. I have a dark cloud week where I'm sad. Anything's going to make me cry. Everything's, everything's gone to shit.
Speaker 1:I'm like why am I podcasting? Why am I worried? Like everything's a big? Why? What am I doing with my life? Yeah, do everything wrong. I start to think about all the mom things I've done wrong. It's just this week of like that I literally feel like there's a dark cloud following me around, and then that week ends. And then I have my trigger week where I'm like, enraged, and everything's making me crazy and I'm screaming at everybody and I know it too. So now I'm like I might I pay attention. I'm like guys, I'm really sorry mommy's having a bad day and I'll like, I'll tell them like I'm like and I explain it to the kids, and then I'll get this like week of of, like, oh, I'm, I'm feeling good, I'm feeling rosy, I'm feeling back in love with life. And then I'll have this kick ass week where I'm like, yeah, but then it all goes to hell again. Like, yes, this is horrible, it's not a way to live.
Speaker 2:Terrible. I mean this is perimenopause, because the basically the ratio between your hormones is what's shifting. That's why they call it balance, Like we want estrogen and progesterone to kind of be working in tandem. They offset one another. And so you can actually fine tune this with cycle syncing and it's really. It starts with nutrition but it also has really about leaning into these different, the exercise and the lifestyle and the energetics of it. So we can never make our life like perfectly line up with our cycle.
Speaker 2:But that's the best thing to do. I would say I start everybody with first, let's track your cycle, and then we forecast out, we look at it and we say, okay, look at the weeks ahead. If you've got like a bunch of kids sports games this weekend and you know you're going to be in your late luteal phase, then maybe you go. Where can I build in some self care here? Where can I make sure I'm going to feed myself and I'm going to get good sleep and I'm going to hydrate? And so it really is about building in these practices. It's funny because I teach all of this science to people and it's kind of like dieting. It's like I know how to eat right Now. How do I actually do it?
Speaker 1:How do I do it?
Speaker 2:When the moment strikes and you're like I just want to eat that pizza, you're like you know, and so the mindset around all this stuff is so, so critical. And it's the same mindset work that I use in my alcohol-free life coaching, because a lot of our relationship with food is subconsciously driven too. We have seen food as a reward, and we have this really complicated relationship as women where we're like food is the enemy too, where we're like I don't want to eat because I want to be skinny, but like if I eat less than I'm doing, I'm a good girl, and if I eat too much than I'm bad, you know. So it's so complicated, it's really bad. And so the whole shift with cycle syncing is to be like we're eating to nourish, we are no longer dieting, we want to feed our hormones what they need.
Speaker 2:And when you start getting it right, you're like, holy shit, I feel so much better and like you don't feel guilty in that week when you should be nourishing and you should be eating more carbohydrate, and so it's not like a free for all, it's not like, hey, go eat whatever you want. It's like, okay, let's focus on nature's carbs, we focus on sweet potatoes, you know, like legumes, grains, healthy grains, and you're just going to feel so much better and you won't blow up during that week because you're actually giving your body the nutrients that it needs. So you won't crave as much of the crap if you're actually going. Hey, it's okay if I eat some sweet potatoes.
Speaker 1:You know it's um, I, first of all, I eat everything you talked about. That's like. What you talked about is like almost like the core base for my diet, because I'm a vegetarian. So I will say, like I mean, I'm not like, I by no means am like the perfect, I don't have a perfect diet at all and I don't even think of it a diet, like you said. Like to me now it's like this isn't a diet, this is just my life and this is how I'm going to eat. And I'm eating mindfully. I'm not just eating a bunch of crap for giving up alcohol if anyone's interested in that and even for cleaning up your diet. Like Ellie's giving a lot of really, really good information here.
Speaker 1:But what I want to say is it can feel overwhelming. This is not a bandaid that you're going to rip off. This is like a phased approach, like this is not something, and even like for us, like me and our household, this was not a cold turkey situation. Like we, especially the vegetarianism, we literally started with cutting out pork. That was the first thing to go. We're like pork, let's get that out of here, cause that's like a really bad thing to eat. Like let's, let's get that out first, and then and then we kind of just slowly went with it. Now everyone else went back to me.
Speaker 1:My husband couldn't take it anymore. He's going into his fifties. He's like I need to eat something, like I can't just go. So but I happen to like it. It makes me feel good, it makes me feel less bloated, I feel more energized. I don't have that fatigue as badly as I used to. Now it's different because of the perimenopause stuff, but like it's still not as bad as it was. Now I have days where, like I will eat carbs and on those days I do actually notice a pretty difference between like the healthy carbs through, like the you know sweet potatoes, as you mentioned, versus like the white starchy carbs. Like there's actually a pretty big difference there. And even like today, like the last two weeks, I do fasting.
Speaker 1:I do intermittent fasting, and somebody told me about it. Over the summer I do intermittent fasting and somebody told me about it. Over the summer I had, I was struggling because I had gained since we moved into our house I gained something like 25 pounds and I was trying so hard to lose it and I was like oh no, like no, no, because you know I had lost so much weight from before. So I'm like I don't want to gain this back, like I need to be really careful here. Nothing was working. So someone told me about intermittent fasting and I gave it a shot. That was the only thing that worked and it felt so good and I had so much energy doing it that it actually made me want to eat healthier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the last two weeks I went on a little bit of a break. I took a hiatus Cause I'm like, well, I did it for like three months straight, like let me just take a little break here. Not gonna go crazy, but I'm just not gonna fast, like I'm just gonna, you know, do be regular and eat when I wake up and everything. And I've noticed that I don't crave what I used to crave and I also noticed like very distinctly how I feel not fasting and I'm like so this week I'm going back to it because I'm like I'm like it was okay to take a break, but yeah, so this is really important.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you brought this up, because fasting is an amazing tool to help you lose weight. It's an amazing tool to help you become more insulin resistant, to help you balance your hormones, but you shouldn't be doing it during particular phases of your cycle, and so, in particular, the late luteal phase days 20 through day 28 or whatever you start your period Again that is when your progesterone is peaking and you need progesterone in order to help you not feel like a hole during those next eight days. It needs to offset the estrogen, so the estrogen is also rising in tandem, but the progesterone should be on top. You should have more progesterone than you do estrogen. And when we don't, when we're starving essentially when we are fasting, when we're starving essentially when we are fasting or even eating very low carbohydrate or even just restricting your calories significantly you're starving out your progesterone. It needs glucose in order to thrive, and so when you don't have enough, you're estrogen dominant, and that is where all the bad PMS symptoms come from, and so it's so crazy that you will actually be less bloated. You will feel better.
Speaker 2:I used to get super sore boobs, like almost like I was pregnant again during my pre-PMS zone and now I don't. And so it's like a game changer and I used to rage out. I used to put an R on my calendar on the days when I thought like this is when I can expect to rage out on people. I will say I feel I still feel more emotional, but in a positive way. It just you feel more sensitive progesterone, you more sensitive. It also makes you want to stay home and like not go out and things like that. So nourishing that progesterone, don't fast during those phases. Dr Mindy Pels is another doctor whose work I really incorporate into my coaching and she has this fasting schedule where I tie it into Elisa Vitti's work. So we're cycle syncing but we're also building in the fasting. So there's days one through 10 are ideal for fasting and then when you go into your ovulation window days 11 through 15, we want to work in some more carbohydrate again. She calls it hormone feasting, which is pretty a cool concept there, but that's because there's a little bit of a blip of podrestrone that you want to nourish. And then days like 15, 16 through 20, there's this other little window again when the hormones are relatively flat and you can go into more like fasting, and then again, as you enter that late luteal phase, that's when you want to be like, okay, reel it in. No more fasting, eat breakfast, nourish yourself.
Speaker 2:Oh, one other thing I want to say about fasting that I have shifted lately is I used to fast and stop eating at like 8pm and then I'd fast until like noon the next day. That's like a typical. Yeah, I've done a bunch of 36 hour fasts. I've done lots of crazy fasts. I've done 48 hour fasts, but I stopped working for me at 43. 40 to 43, it was a game changer. I had a lot of success, like you. 43, something has shifted for me and I felt like I wasn't fueled for my workouts. I'm a big fitness person as well. I played soccer in college, so I like to work out intensely, and so there's this big focus on strength training. Now, right, we don't want to lose our muscle mass as we're getting.
Speaker 2:Protein is so important, and so when you're fasting, it's really hard to hit your protein goals for the day. Trying to get that one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight, that's a lot of protein. It's really hard to hit. You really need to supplement with shakes and things. So if you're fasting that's what I have to do, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I found out that I wasn't fueled for my workout. So I started shifting my fast to I eat breakfast, and then I stop eating at 4 pm, so I'm essentially skipping dinner, which puts me at a 16 hour fast by 8 am the next day so that I can eat breakfast and be fueled for my workout. It was such a difference for me. I had more energy. I felt like I was getting my muscle back. A lot of times when you're fasting, this is what those GLP-1 drugs are doing. You're essentially fasting because you're just not hungry. It's robbing you of your muscle mass. So anytime you're fasting and you're losing weight it's a lot of it is muscle mass. So it's really, really important to build in that protein and try to not work out fasted, especially as you get older. Maybe in your 30s and maybe early 40s you can get away with it. As you get older, muscle mass is so key. Don't work out fasted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I noticed too and it's interesting I didn't again had no idea about the luteal phase, but I will say that I did notice in that week when I was fasting that I would. I'd feel really nauseous.
Speaker 2:And I would start.
Speaker 1:And so, like I would actually kind of like what you did, where you're saying like you shifted your fast and you'd stop eating, I actually had did. I did that like a lot because I was trying to do like a how was I doing it? I would stop eating at like five or six or seven or something like that. It was always. It was always between five and seven that I would stop, and the next day that I'd be like all right, I can eat at like nine, ten, eleven o'clock somewhere around there. And when I would have my cycle, though, like I had to, um, I had to shift that out and I was like playing with the times a little bit to see like where, where am I going to feel the best here? And it is trial and error, like it really is, and because each of us is different, that's why I will say this, that's why science like hasn't really caught up with women's research and all those gaps in care, because our bodies are unpredictable because of our hormones, and it is almost like a tailor made approach per woman, because we are not all the same and it's a what what works for me is not going to work for someone else and like vice versa. You really do have to do a lot of research. You got to figure this out. Ellie is a great resource for that wealth of knowledge. And, ellie, I have to tell you I love the conversation Because I love this kind of stuff. I love talking about this because it's so sorely needed. So many of us don't know about our bodies, we don't know what to do. And then you go to doctors who mean you know they're not up on their research and I mean I just had a doctor this week tell me that I wasn't in perimenopause and I was like oh, please, yeah, ma'am, please, a pause. And I was like oh, please, yeah, I was like ma'am, please. So it's it really. You really do have to come to the table. I actually was the one who was like no, no, no, let's do some blood work here. I am certain like let's go. So you do have to come to the table and be able to advocate for yourself. Ellie is a great resource.
Speaker 1:I'm going to list all of Ellie's information in the podcast descriptions that you can reach out to her and you know, even if it's just a one-on-one coaching session, just talk with her like, figure some things out and then see where you're going from there. This is really critical. Your health is really critical and something that my husband says to me quite a bit and it's across the board. If the mothership goes down, like everybody else goes down with you, we really do hold a lot with us, like we are the ones as much as you know we've been like, you know, the quote-unquote man of the household. No, I'm sorry, but like we're the body and we're the ship and we're the ones who are really carrying everybody. So really paying attention to yourself and your health is crucial for the alcohol, for you know everything else Like it's very critical. Um, yeah, thank you so much, yeah.
Speaker 2:Great. No, no, go ahead. I wanted to point everybody out to a free resource on my website. It's it's called thriving in your forties and it's kind of just like this mini masterclass on hormone balancing and there's definitely an alcohol piece in there, but it's really just to kind of get your head around the science of, like whoa, what is actually happening in perimenopause? What can I expect? It'll explain a lot of things and it'll kind of give you the framework for, like, what are the key most important, like pillars that I need to be focusing on. It's going to streamline it, because I know there's just so much information out there right now, and it really does become quite streamlined if you just start seeing your life and your health through the lens of what your hormones need, and it just becomes a lot more simple from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much. I'm going to link that as well in the description. I really want you guys to look at this and really start paying attention to your health and what you can do to make things better. You do not have to just sit back and let this happen. We can actually have a say here and we can guide our lives the way we want to. You don't have to lean into this. So I'm just putting that out there. You can actually make an effort here and make your life better. You don't have to suffer in silence. Ellie, thank you so much for sharing all this information with the listeners today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, jenny, it's been a great conversation. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Of course, and listeners, we'll catch you on the next one, take care.
