In today's episode, I'm interrupting our recent conversations around perimenopause, midlife, and hormones to talk about something that has been building in the culture for a while now.

This topic is controversial, but it's also harming women of all ages, and someone needs to say something about it because what we are all watching unfold right now around women's bodies, beauty standards and the cultural obsession with getting smaller again is absolutely not a conversation about health and full transparency.

It pisses me off for women.

So today and the following episode, we're going to talk about the physiology of chronic under-eating in the modern skinny era because we deserve better than what's going on right now.

Time Stamps:

(1:14) The Physiology of Chronic Under-Eating

(4:30) The Sophistication of The Female Body

(8:55) The GLP-1 Era

(12:48) #1 Reason Women Are Under-Fueled

(18:55) Metabolic Adaptation

(28:30) The Body's Stress Response System

(33:10) The Skinny Aesthetic Trend

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This Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, other professional health care services, or any professional practice of any kind. Any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk and Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual use of, reference to, reliance on, or inability to use, this Podcast or the information presented in this Podcast. All contents and design for this Podcast are owned by Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC. Always consult your professional team before beginning any exercise or nutrition program.

Today's conversation is a continuation of the recent episodes we've been exploring around perimenopause, midlife physiology, and metabolic health.

Over the past few weeks, we've been unpacking what changes in the female body during this season of life from a physiological perspective, what's actually happening inside the body?

And today I want to dedicate an entire episode to one lifestyle input that starts landing very differently for many women in midlife alcohol.

Now, before we go any further, let me throw out my disclaimers. This episode is not about judgment or superiority. It's not about telling anyone what they should or shouldn't be doing.

My role here is education and support for those who need it. What you do with the information is completely up to you.

But what I hear every single week from hundreds of women through coaching calls, check ins, conversations, the gym and messages is that many women want to feel better. They want more energy.

They want fewer joint aches. They want less inflammation, better moods, improved quality sleep. And they definitely want less body fat.

And what I also hear very consistently is this sentence. I can't tolerate alcohol like I used to.

We'll discuss why this is the case, how the body metabolizes alcohol, and how to pivot alcohol's role in your life in midlife if you are open to a new path.

Time Stamps:

(1:15) Not Coming From A Place of Superiority

(3:20) Your 20's vs Your 30's and 40's

(7:27) Stress Physiology

(9:13) How The Body Metabolizes Alcohol

(22:00) Alcohol Serves A Role In Midlife

(29:02) Working With The SF Coaching Method

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This Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, other professional health care services, or any professional practice of any kind. Any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk and Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual use of, reference to, reliance on, or inability to use, this Podcast or the information presented in this Podcast. All contents and design for this Podcast are owned by Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC. Always consult your professional team before beginning any exercise or nutrition program.

Over the last few years, perimenopause and menopause have finally entered the mainstream conversation.

Hormones are being talked about more openly, and that's a good thing. Hormone replacement therapy is everywhere on social media, and for a lot of women in their late thirties and early 40s, that visibility creates a very fast conclusion.

This must be hormones. Sleep changes, weight shifts, and fat accumulates in the midsection. Anxiety increases. Exhaustion takes over. Digestion, bloating, lower libido, brain fog.

Suddenly, everything gets filed under perimenopause. Here's what I want you to become aware of today and the part my coaching team and I see every single week with women.

Many women are jumping straight to hormones before it's actually time. Hormone decline is real AF and I know this from personal and professional experience.

The symptoms are one hundred percent legitimate, but what many women are actually experiencing is often the result of years of accumulated health being pushed down the road, finally showing up loud enough that it can't be ignored any longer.

In this episode, we'll be discussing the role hormones and your lifestyle foundations play during perimenopause and which one you should prioritize first.

Time Stamps:

(2:40) My Experience with Perimenopause

(5:00) Progesterone and Estrogen

(6:04) Transitions Expose Patterns

(12:08) Importance Of Muscle Mass For Women

(15:25) Sleep and Circadian Hygiene

(16:02) Stress and Nervous System Considerations

(21:48) The Key Is Sequencing

(23:05) Hormones Amplify The Environment They Enter

(26:14) Applying For The SF Coaching Method

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This Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, other professional health care services, or any professional practice of any kind. Any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk and Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual use of, reference to, reliance on, or inability to use, this Podcast or the information presented in this Podcast. All contents and design for this Podcast are owned by Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC. Always consult your professional team before beginning any exercise or nutrition program.

I've coached women's health, nutrition, metabolism, and transformations for twenty five years.

I've sat in the front row of thousands of conversations. I've watched the same themes repeat through different decades, different bodies, different lifestyles, and different levels of discipline.

And in the last few years, perimenopause has become one of the loudest seasons women are navigating. Even when they're doing all the right things.

I live inside these conversations every single week. It's my life's work. It's my expertise. It's what my team and I do relentlessly.

And I have lived it personally.

Perimenopause is fucking hard. It can be disruptive, it can be confronting, and it can absolutely mess with your internal experience in ways you didn't expect.

Even if you're educated, even if you're consistent, even if you've spent years thinking you know your body and two things can be true at the same time.

Yes, perimenopause is fucking hard and you do not have to suffer through it.

You can thrive in midlife.

In today's episode, I'm breaking down what you need to know when it comes to perimenopause, what changes under the surface, and teach you how to think about this pivotal time in a woman's life.

Time Stamps:

(4:40) Framework on Perimenopause

(6:00) I Didn't Soften

(12:35) Leaking Your Own Time and Energy

(13:31) What Is Perimenopause?

(17:34) What's Changing Under The Surface

(24:24) Perimenopause and Sensitivity

(30:35) The SF Coaching Method

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This Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, other professional health care services, or any professional practice of any kind. Any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk and Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual use of, reference to, reliance on, or inability to use, this Podcast or the information presented in this Podcast. All contents and design for this Podcast are owned by Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC. Always consult your professional team before beginning any exercise or nutrition program.

Today's episode is a metabolic reality episode because insulin resistance isn't rare and it's not something that suddenly appears out of nowhere.

If we zoom out and we look at the landscape of metabolic disease, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, non- alcoholic fatty liver disease, insulin resistance sits at the center of all of it. And when we look at the data, close to ninety percent of metabolic disease is driven by lifestyle factors.

This means it's how we eat, how we sleep, how we move, how we manage stress, and how sedentary or active we are over time. That makes this an everyday conversation.

Insulin resistance shows up in women long before anyone ever uses that language. And most women, they can feel it before they can name it.

We'll unpack insulin resistance, how this affects women different than men, insulin signaling, and what we need to do as women to stave off this complex issue.

Time Stamps:

(0:48) Insulin Resistance

(4:15) Gender Differences with Insulin Resistance

(8:30) Insulin and Insulin Signaling

(13:50) What We Need As Women

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This Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, other professional health care services, or any professional practice of any kind. Any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk and Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual use of, reference to, reliance on, or inability to use, this Podcast or the information presented in this Podcast. All contents and design for this Podcast are owned by Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC. Always consult your professional team before beginning any exercise or nutrition program.

Today's episode is an important one, and I want to say that right out of the gate, because this conversation comes up constantly in my work with women across fat loss, hormones, digestion, energy, and long term health.

This episode is about labs. More specifically, it's about what happens when you're told your labs are normal, but your body is clearly telling you a different story. Women come to me every week holding labs ordered by their doctor. Lab work that has been reviewed. It's been stamped as fine blood work that technically falls within the Western range.

And yet they don't feel good. They're tired. They're inflamed. They have symptoms. They're gaining weight. Their digestion is off. Their mood is off, their sleep is unbearable, and something just doesn't feel right in their body.

And I want you to hear this today.

That disconnect is not imagined. Not even a little bit. After twenty five years of working in nutrition, metabolism, hormone health, and lab interpretation, I can tell you that this is one of the biggest blind spots in women's health.

Today, we're going to talk about why normal doesn't always mean optimal. Why symptoms almost always show up before a diagnosis ever does, why timing patterns and context matter more than a single data point, and why so many women feel dismissed because the system isn't designed to interpret what they're actually experiencing.

This is not an episode about blaming medicine. It's an episode about understanding scope, training, and systems.

Time Stamps:

(0:50) What Happens When Your Labs Come Back "Normal"

(4:48) Context and Patterns Matter

(7:04) Systems Are Adaptive Responses

(8:13) Functional and Being Proactive

(9:55) Blood Sugar

(15:00) My Soapbox on Tik Tok and ChatGPT

(15:34) Who Is Equipped To Interpret Labs?

(20:30) Why Women Come To Us For Help

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This Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, other professional health care services, or any professional practice of any kind. Any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk and Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual use of, reference to, reliance on, or inability to use, this Podcast or the information presented in this Podcast. All contents and design for this Podcast are owned by Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC. Always consult your professional team before beginning any exercise or nutrition program.

Today's episode is one I've wanted to record for a while, because it sits at the center of almost every conversation I have with women week after week, inside the gym, inside coaching, and inside long term mentorship.

Women come in asking about fat loss, hormones, digestion, energy. They want a better look at their labs they'd love for them to be explained to them. Interpreted.

They want to understand why a doctor says normal, but their body is telling a very different story through symptoms and day to day experiences that don't line up with what they're being told.

What I've learned after twenty five years in this space is that those questions are rarely separate. They're different entry points into the same conversation, and that's a huge part of coaching.

We help women connect the dots between multiple systems and multiple symptoms, instead of treating each one like it exists in a vacuum.

Today we're going to talk about overlap as a working system because fat loss, hormones, digestion, blood sugar, and insulin resistance are not isolated from each other. I'm going to explain how they work together and why they affect each other.

Time Stamps:

(1:45) Communication Between Systems

(3:19) How I Think About Coaching

(5:55) Crutch vs Mentorship

(7:47) Thyroid Function

(9:35) Chronic Undereating

(10:49) Estrogen Clearance and The Gut

(16:18) SHREDS

(19:30) Thyroid Output Adapts to Energy Availability

(21:55) Recapping The Systems Lens

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Follow Me On Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sarahfechter.ifbbpro/

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This Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, other professional health care services, or any professional practice of any kind. Any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk and Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual use of, reference to, reliance on, or inability to use, this Podcast or the information presented in this Podcast. All contents and design for this Podcast are owned by Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC. Always consult your professional team before beginning any exercise or nutrition program.

If today's episode title resonates with you and is something you've either thought or said out loud, I want you to know you aren't alone. This frustration leads to negotiating with the plan and trying to regain control. What your emotions are failing at is understanding the reality of the scale, what it actually measures, and why it has nothing to do with fat loss. In today's episode, we are going to break down your relationship with the scale, how to break free from the emotional control it has over you, and help you understand what really happens with the process of fat loss.

Time Stamps:

(2:00) The Moment I Want You To Visualize

(5:10) Your Relationship with The Scale

(7:22) How A Coach Talks About The Scale

(14:40) Understanding The Why Behind The Process

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Complimentary Health Content

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Follow Me On Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sarahfechter.ifbbpro/

Check Out My Website - https://www.sarahfechter.com

----------

This Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, other professional health care services, or any professional practice of any kind. Any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk and Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual use of, reference to, reliance on, or inability to use, this Podcast or the information presented in this Podcast. All contents and design for this Podcast are owned by Sarah Fechter Fitness LLC. Always consult your professional team before beginning any exercise or nutrition program.