SPONSORS 

This episode is sponsored by  @Namawell  To get your Nama juicers and other machines at a discount, use code CHANTAL10 for 10% off! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NAMA! 5 YEARS GOING STRONG!!!

And if you haven’t already listened to my conversation with Nama founder and CEO Dan Sheehan, make sure to go back and catch that episode as well. We had a beautiful conversation around health, lifestyle, and creating tools that help people bring more nourishment into everyday life.

@IM8Health  : 3rd party tested and NSF approved! Get 10% off here: https://www.im8health.com/CyclesWellness10 

https://www.lumen.me: the most progressive metabolism switching tracker! Use code Cycleswellness for 20% off 

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Get 15% off with my code LIVELEANHEALTH (without worrying about customs) 

USA https://nuzest-usa.com/cycles Code 15% CYCLESWELLNESS 

Want to know about your body composition and health?  @humehealthglobal  

https://www.humehealth.com CODE:  CYCLESWELLNESS

Perimenopause, and need help? work with me and Mira for your own hormones report monthly ; don;'t guess when you can know:  Get my discount here https://mira-fertility.pxf.io/DWmPvn 

Get 20% off with my discount 2CYCLESWELLNESS20 

So today we really dive into : 

What do we really want? What are we longing for? And how often do we actually stop long enough to listen?

As women move through perimenopause and into menopause, so much can shift — our bodies, our priorities, our relationships, our sense of identity, and sometimes even the life we thought we were supposed to want. In this episode, I talk about why learning to listen to our own desires matters, how disconnected we can become from them, and why reconnecting with what feels true to us can be such an important part of our emotional and overall well-being.

This is not about chasing every impulse. It is about becoming more honest with ourselves, paying attention to what keeps calling us, and allowing this stage of life to become a time of deeper self-awareness rather than simply something to “get through.”

I also share a few personal reflections on where I am right now and what I am learning along the way.

If you would like to go deeper and work with me, the best place to connect right now is on Substack, where I’m preparing some exciting new work and resources for you. http://www.cycleswellness.net 

You can also follow me on Instagram and YouTube, and if you prefer to watch rather than listen, the video version of this episode is available there too.

Thank you for being here with me, and I’ll see you again next week for another conversation on women’s health, hormones, wellness, and everything that comes with navigating this stage of life

Women’s health + holistic living for everyone
Where wellness meets real life

Follow, rate & share to support the show 🌿

@thewellnesswoman

Ladies , Are you over 40? Follow me on my Substack and work with me www.cycleswellness.net

You’ve tried the early bedtime. You’ve put the phone down. You’ve done the meditation. And you’re still lying there at 3am, or waking at 5am unable to go back, or finally falling into something that passes for sleep only to wake up exhausted.

Here’s something worth knowing: when sleep goes wrong during perimenopause and menopause, willpower and good intentions only go so far. Because the problem isn’t simply your habits, it’s your chemistry. And sometimes your chemistry needs a little support while it finds its new normal.

This week we’re talking about two things: the supplements with the strongest evidence for sleep in this life stage, and the wind-down routine that makes everything else actually work. Because a supplement taken in the wrong context, at the wrong time, is a fraction as effective as one taken as part of a deliberate evening ritual.

Magnesium

If there is one supplement I would want every woman in perimenopause to know about, it is magnesium, specifically magnesium glycinate or bisglycinate.

As estrogen declines, intracellular magnesium levels fall alongside it. Magnesium is involved in over 300 processes in the body, including GABA signalling (your brain’s main calming neurotransmitter), melatonin regulation, muscle relaxation, blood sugar stability, and the ability of your nervous system to actually switch off at night.

When magnesium is low, the system that is supposed to calm your brain and body for sleep becomes less efficient. That tired-but-wired feeling, exhausted but unable to land, is often a magnesium story.

The largest placebo-controlled trial to date on magnesium bisglycinate, published in 2025, enrolled 155 adults with poor sleep and found that 250mg of elemental magnesium daily produced a significantly greater reduction in insomnia severity scores compared to placebo within four weeks.

The glycinate or bisglycinate form is worth choosing specifically, it is gentler on the gut than citrate or oxide, and the glycine it is bound to has its own calming, GABA-related effects, meaning the compound does double duty. Current evidence supports 200–400mg of elemental magnesium taken 30–60 minutes before bed.

Most women notice reduced nighttime waking within two to three weeks, with deeper benefits building over the following month. Always check with your healthcare provider first, particularly if you have kidney concerns or are on medication.

Ashwagandha

Ashwagandha is an adaptogen, a plant compound that helps your body regulate its stress response rather than simply suppressing it. Because disrupted sleep during menopause is so often driven by cortisol spiking at the wrong time of night, this is where ashwagandha earns its place.

A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in women aged 45–55 taking ashwagandha root extract for 56 days found significant improvements in menopausal symptoms including sleep disruption compared with placebo. A separate 12-week RCT specifically in postmenopausal women taking 600mg daily found significantly greater improvements in sleep quality, menopausal symptoms, and body composition compared with placebo, with an excellent safety profile.

Benefits are more pronounced after at least eight weeks of consistent use. This is not a quick fix, it works gradually by helping bring your cortisol rhythm back into alignment. But for women whose sleep disruption is driven by that early-morning cortisol spike, it is one of the most well-evidenced natural tools available.

And L-theanine — worth knowing about

If your sleep issue is specifically about getting to sleep, racing thoughts, inability to switch off, L-theanine is worth considering. It is an amino acid found in green tea that promotes calm alertness without drowsiness. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 randomised controlled trials in 897 participants found that L-theanine significantly improved subjective sleep onset latency, daytime dysfunction, and overall sleep quality scores. At 200–400mg taken in the evening, it works gently, often noticeably within the same night.

It is not sedating. It does not knock you out. It simply turns down the mental noise that is keeping you awake.

Now — the wind-down routine that makes all of this work

Supplements taken while your nervous system is still in fight-or-flight mode will always underperform. The ritual matters as much as what you take.

60 minutes before bed: dim everything. Overhead lights off, lamps on. This signals to your melatonin system that the day is ending. During perimenopause, when melatonin production is already declining, this matters more than ever.

Take your magnesium now. 30–60 minutes before you want to be asleep.

No screens. Not “try to reduce screens.” No screens. Blue light suppresses melatonin. Read a physical book, listen to a podcast or music, or sit with a herbal tea.

Something warm. A warm bath or shower an hour before bed works physiologically, it raises your skin temperature and then allows it to drop, mimicking the natural temperature fall your body needs to move into deep sleep.

Herbal tea. Passionflower, valerian, lemon balm, or chamomile. Not because they are miracle cures, but because the act of making and drinking something warm and intentional signals to your nervous system that the day is done.

Write it down. Spend five minutes before bed writing everything that is unfinished or worrying you. Getting it out of your head and onto paper reduces the mental load that keeps your nervous system alert when it should be resting.

Keep it consistent. The same routine, at roughly the same time, every night, even weekends. Your circadian rhythm runs on consistency, and every time you stay up two hours later on a Saturday, you pay for it through the following week.

Sleep is not a luxury during this transition. Every symptom you are managing, brain fog, mood, weight, energy, is made worse by poor sleep and better by good sleep. You deserve rest. And the right support, taken in the right context, can make a real difference.

Inside the paid membership this month you can join the Inner Circle, where we go deeper but also I will be sharing exact dosing protocols, how to stack these safely, what to do when nothing is working, and a sleep tracking tool to identify your specific pattern. Join us for €9/month or €72/year.

Feeling like you need more personalised support?
I offer 1:1 sessions where we dig into your specific symptoms, history, and what your body actually needs.
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Few foods have been subjected to as much nutritional fear-mongering as soy.

One minute we are told tofu is a healthy source of plant protein; the next, social media is warning us that soy will “mess up our hormones,” increase estrogen, cause breast cancer, damage the thyroid or feminise men.

But, when we move away from headlines and look at human clinical research, a very different picture emerges.

Soy is not only a nutrient-dense food; it is one of the most extensively researched plant foods in the world. Foods such as tofu, tempeh, edamame and soy milk provide high-quality protein alongside minerals and other beneficial plant compounds. And one group of compounds in particular, isoflavones, is responsible for both much of soy’s controversy and some of its most interesting potential health benefits.

First, let’s clear up the biggest misconception: soy is not estrogen

Soy contains isoflavones, including genistein and daidzein. These are classified as phytoestrogens.And this is where much of the confusion begins:

The word “estrogen” in phytoestrogen has led people ( including doctors) to assume that eating soy is equivalent to adding human estrogen to the body and it truly isn’t.

Isoflavones have a molecular structure that allows them to interact with estrogen receptors, but their biological activity is much weaker and more selective than our own estradiol. Their actions can also differ according to the tissue involved.

Researchers increasingly describe soy isoflavones as behaving more like selective estrogen receptor modulators than simply as “plant estrogen.”

A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of 40 randomized trials involving 3,285 postmenopausal women found that soy isoflavones did not significantly alter estradiol, FSH, endometrial thickness or vaginal maturation index compared with controls. The researchers concluded that soy isoflavones appear to act differently from endogenous or exogenous (pharmaceuticals) estrogen.

So the statement that “soy raises estrogen” is an enormous oversimplified inaccuracy, and in clinical trials, it simply isn’t what we see.

Myth: Soy causes breast cancer

This is probably the most damaging soy myth of all.

The concern originated from laboratory animal research in which high concentrations of isolated isoflavones sometimes stimulated estrogen, sensitive pathways.

A mouse is not a woman, and the metabolism of isoflavones differs between species. This is why ethical vegans like me, who love research, believe that we should test on consenting humans only. Eventually we have to anyway, but by that time, the wrong information is shared with the public and the medical field, which has most doctors already not educated in nutrition.

When we examine human evidence, the picture changes dramatically.

The American Cancer Society states that “soy foods do not increase breast cancer risk, including among women at higher risk” . It notes that: “ human research has found soy consumption either associated with a lower risk of certain cancers or with no effect on cancer risk” .

What about women who have already had breast cancer?

The evidence does not support avoiding tofu, tempeh or other traditional soy foods either. The American Cancer Society states that: “eating soy foods does not appear to increase the risk of breast cancer recurrence, while some research suggests it may actually be associated with a lower risk of recurrence”.

Important note: There is an important distinction here between whole soy foods and concentrated isoflavone supplements. The safety evidence for foods is considerably stronger, while high-dose supplements should not automatically be treated as equivalent to eating tofu or edamame. This thinking is also for other micronutrients, that in isolated form may be worse for our wellbeing.

Soy may be particularly interesting for women after menopause and PCRM, led by Dr Neil Barnard has found incredible benefits.

For women approaching and moving through menopause, the discussion around soy becomes even more relevant with ovarian estrogen production declining, changes in cardiovascular risk, bone turnover and body composition becoming increasingly important.

Soy offers an unusual combination: high-quality plant protein plus naturally occurring isoflavones... and a “nutrient” we so often forget: Fiber. We know the microbiome itself, the gut bacteria we are learning so much about, are responsible for a healthy immune system and response.

We often forget this: we ALL have cancer cells in our body at any time. Our immune system is responsible to seeing them as rogue and stopping them. A healthy gut microbiome contributes to their health.

Bone health is another area researchers have investigated extensively.

A large 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 63 randomized controlled trials of isoflavone interventions in postmenopausal women. It reported significant improvements in bone mineral density in the lumbar spine, femoral neck and distal radius. Benefits were particularly apparent in interventions lasting at least 12 months and containing sufficient genistein.

A separate umbrella review of meta-analyses also found improvements in bone mineral density in the lumbar spine, femoral neck and total hip among peri- and postmenopausal women receiving isoflavone interventions.

That doesn’t mean tofu is a treatment for osteoporosis. Bone health depends on many factors and resistance and impact exercise, adequate protein, calcium, vitamin D and other nutrients among them. And protein is such a wonderful source of protein too.

Telling menopausal women to avoid soy because of its “estrogen” is not supported by the evidence and it shocks me when MDs say this to their patients. Especially in oncology. I truly believe that particularly in oncology, education with NEW and sound human trials is paramount.

Soy also stands apart nutritionally from many other legumes as it contains all nine essential amino acids and can make a substantial contribution to daily protein intake. I eat 400 to 500g of tofu and with all my vegetables i meet my protein needs fully. This makes tofu, tempeh, edamame and soy milk particularly useful for people eating predominantly or entirely plant-based diets

Unlike many animal protein sources, whole and minimally processed soy foods provide protein without dietary cholesterol and are low in saturated fat.

The American Cancer Society describes soy foods as sources not only of protein but also fibre, healthy fats and nutrients including potassium and magnesium, and if tofu is calcium set, it will also offer that benefit.

For women in midlife, maintaining adequate protein becomes particularly important for preserving muscles and bones.

Your heart may benefit too

Soy has one of the better researched relationships between an individual food protein and cholesterol.

A major meta-analysis examined 46 controlled trials picked by the US FDA, in its evaluation of soy protein.

At a median intake of approximately 25 g of soy protein per day, soy reduced LDL cholesterol by approximately 3–4% compared with non-soy protein controls.

That may sound modest, but nutrition does not work through one magical food.There is also a second benefit: what soy replaces.

Replacing foods high in saturated fat with tofu, tempeh, edamame or soy milk can improve the overall composition of the diet beyond any intrinsic cholesterol-lowering effect of soy protein itself.

But doesn’t soy feminise men?

This unfounded claim refuses to disappear. Fortunately, it is also remarkably easy to debunk.

If normal soy consumption meaningfully feminised men, controlled studies should reveal changes in testosterone or circulating estrogen and they don’t.

An updated meta-analysis evaluated 41 clinical studies examining soy protein and/or isoflavone exposure in men. Researchers assessed total testosterone, free testosterone, estradiol, estrone and sex hormone-binding globulin.

They found no significant effect on any of them. Importantly, the result remained unchanged when researchers examined different isoflavone doses and study durations. So no: eating tofu does not turn men into women....

I cannot believe I have to actually write this out....

What about the thyroid?

This myth requires a little more nuance.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of 18 randomized studies found that soy did not significantly alter the thyroid hormones free T3 or free T4. There was a very small increase in TSH, and the researchers concluded that the clinical significance of this change, if any, was unclear.

There is, however, an important practical consideration for people taking levothyroxine: foods, including soy, can interfere with absorption of the medication if consumed too close to the dose. That is an issue of medication absorption, not evidence that tofu is destroying the thyroid. Also, the solution is to wait before consuming soy after levothyroxine, and this can be discussed with your medical provider.

What about menopause symptoms?

Here we need to resist exaggerating the evidence in the opposite direction.

Soy is sometimes marketed almost as a natural replacement for menopausal hormone therapy. The research does not justify making that claim.

Clinical trials examining soy and isoflavones for hot flushes and other vasomotor symptoms have produced inconsistent results. The Menopause Society’s evidence review notes substantial variation between studies in the products, doses and formulations used, along with methodological limitations.

Some women may find soy helpful, but it shouldn’t be sold as a guaranteed treatment for hot flushes.

And that distinction matters. Defending soy from misinformation doesn’t require turning it into a miracle food. It simply requires representing the evidence accurately. Also, I want to repeat this: there is no one single silver bullet.

Whole soy foods versus isolated supplements

This distinction gets lost repeatedly online so let’s clarify:

tofu

tempeh

edamame

unsweetened soy milk

soy yoghurt

miso

Are not metabolically identical to swallowing a concentrated high-dose isoflavone extract.

Most people do not need to chase enormous doses of isolated phytoestrogens to obtain the benefits associated with soy-containing dietary patterns.

I favour whole or minimally processed soy foods as part of a varied plant-rich diet, as per list above and when I choose to consume a protein powder, I will choose hemp or pea, instead of soy.

Another increasingly popular argument is that soy should be avoided because some soy products are “processed.”

But processing is not a meaningful measure of a food’s health effects on its own. Also because there is a difference between processing and ultra processed foods.

Turning soybeans into tofu involves soaking, grinding, heating, coagulating and pressing them. Fermenting soybeans gives us foods such as tempeh and miso.

Humans have processed food for thousands of years.There is an enormous nutritional difference between minimally processed tofu and an ultra-processed product containing refined starches, sugars, oils and additives as a mix. Calling them both “processed” tells us remarkably little about their physiological effects.

The bottom line

Nutrition science rarely supports the extremes that perform best on social media.

Soy doesn’t need to be worshipped, and it certainly doesn’t need to be feared, but accumulated human evidence tells us that soy foods:

1. provides high-quality plant protein

2. can help lower LDL cholesterol

3. does not appear to increase breast cancer risk;

4. appears safe for breast cancer survivors when consumed as foods;

5. does not feminise men or lower testosterone;

6. do not behave in the body like simply consuming human estrogen;

7. do not appear to meaningfully disrupt thyroid hormones in people with normal thyroid function

8. There is a workaround for people on thyroid medication

9.May offer additional advantages for bone health during and after the menopausal transition.

10. It offers fiber as well as complete protein.

There are exceptions. Someone with a soy allergy obviously needs to avoid it.

But for most people, there is little scientific justification for fearing a block of tofu.

Please choose organic and non GMO for the planet and sustainability

Perhaps the more useful question isn’t: “What will soy do to my hormones?” but rather: “What happens when I replace some of the foods in my diet with beans and tofu? “

I will continue on another article for you! :)

Interested in how to actually cook with soy, build it into your daily meals, and understand exactly how much your body needs at this stage of life? That’s exactly what we go deep on inside the paid membership — along with monthly live sessions where food, nutrition, and lifestyle are based on fun and delicious science. Join us for €9/month.

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It’s about learning to listen to the voice within us — a voice that, for many women, may have been muted for far too long.

I welcome author and coach Marta Keller to share her powerful and deeply relatable journey of rediscovery, ambition and stepping into a new chapter of life.

This is a conversation I think so many of us will see ourselves in.

SPONSORS 

This episode is sponsored by  @Namawell  To get your Nama juicers and other machines at a discount, use code CHANTAL10 for 10% off!  

@IM8Health  : 3rd party tested and NSF approved! Get 10% off here: https://www.im8health.com/CyclesWellness10 

https://www.lumen.me: the most progressive metabolism switching tracker! Use code Cycleswellness for 20% off 

 @Nuzest  https://www.nuzest.co.uk/LIVELEANHEALTH 

Get 15% off with my code LIVELEANHEALTH (without worrying about customs) 

USA https://nuzest-usa.com/cycles Code 15% CYCLESWELLNESS 

Want to know about your body composition and health?  @humehealthglobal  

https://www.humehealth.com/CHANTAL53458 Get 35% off 

Perimenopause,  and need help? work with me and Mira for your own hormones report monthly ; don;'t guess when you can know:  Get my discount here https://mira-fertility.pxf.io/DWmPvn 

Get 20% off with my discount 2CYCLESWELLNESS20 

ABOUT MARTA 

Marta Keller is a former lawyer whose work expanded into transformational leadership and building nervous-system capacity for sustainable change. She guides high-achieving women in midlife who have spent years supporting other people’s goals and ambitions and are now sensing there is more for them.
At the center is a return to themselves, a chance to listen more closely to the yearning beneath the question, “What do I want?” From there, they can begin to recognize and move beyond the invisible patterns that have been holding them back, and create a bold, meaningful next chapter that fits who they are today.
An avid hiker and high-altitude trekker, Marta believes preparation can only take us so far. Sometimes we need to step outside the familiar and into an experience that shows us we can handle uncertainty, see ourselves differently, and discover what we’re capable of.
 

To learn more about Marta, find her on Substack: https://substack.com/@martakeller

Women’s health + holistic living for everyone
Where wellness meets real life

Follow, rate & share to support the show 🌿

@thewellnesswoman

Ladies , Are you over 40? Follow me on my Substack and work with me www.cycleswellness.net

For as long as I can remember, menopause was presented as an ending.

You lose estrogen.
You lose progesterone.
You lose your periods.
You lose your fertility.

And underneath all of that, quietly, persistently, is a much more damaging message that nobody says out loud:

You lose your value… (BS)

I believed that story for longer than I’d like to admit. Even as a naturopath. Even as someone who had spent years studying women’s health. The cultural conditioning runs that deep.

Then I came across something that stopped me completely.

I was listening to Dr. Mindy Pelz, one of the most prominent voices in women’s hormonal health right now. I like her for many of her wisdom pieces, though we are on two opposite sides of the spectrum. She promotes meat and even at times, questionable options of processed (jerky) meat that is crazy to me… whilst I work with plants only, because it can be done and it can be done right!

But on one of her videos, she mentioned something called the “Grandmother Hypothesis” in the context of menopause.

I had to stop what I was doing….Because if she was right, everything we’ve been taught to feel about this transition is built on the wrong story.

And it started , of all places, with killer whales.

The evolutionary mystery nobody talks about

Here’s something that should be bigger news than it is.

From a purely evolutionary standpoint, menopause doesn’t make obvious sense.

Most mammals remain capable of reproduction for the majority of their adult lives. Evolution tends to favour whatever keeps a species reproducing. So why would nature produce a creature, a human woman, who spends a significant portion of her adult life after her reproductive years have ended?

For decades, scientists couldn’t fully explain it.

Then they noticed something extraordinary.

We’re not alone.

A small number of toothed whale species, killer whales, belugas, narwhals, false killer whales, and short-finned pilot whales, also have females who live for many years after they stop reproducing.

Think about what that means.

Two completely different species. Evolutionary paths that separated tens of millions of years ago. And both arrived at the same biological strategy: females who outlive their fertility by decades.

That is not a coincidence.

That is evolution trying to tell us something.

Maybe the point was never just reproduction

This is where it gets beautiful.

The Grandmother Hypothesis proposes something that sounds simple but is actually profound.

At a certain stage of life, a female may contribute more to the survival of her family, and her genes, by supporting the children and grandchildren already alive, than by continuing to produce more offspring.

Her biological contribution doesn’t disappear.

It changes.

A major study published in Nature in 2024 looked at toothed whale species and found something remarkable. Menopause in these animals didn’t evolve by shortening the reproductive lifespan. It evolved by extending the overall female lifespan, creating more years after reproduction ends.

More years to contribute.
More years to protect.
More years to guide.

The evolutionary story isn’t “you are finished.”

It’s “you are needed for something else.”

The menopausal grandmother who kept her family alive

I want to tell you about killer whale grandmothers, because I think about them often.

Killer whales live in tight, intensely social family groups. And older females, the post-reproductive ones, hold something the younger animals simply cannot manufacture overnight.

Experience.

They know where the food has been in hard years. They remember what happened last time conditions changed. They can guide the group. They can share resources. They carry decades of ecological memory that keeps the whole family alive.

Researchers have actually measured this.

Studies of resident killer whale populations found that having a grandmother alive significantly increased the survival of her grandchildren.

And the survival benefit was greatest when the grandmother was no longer reproducing herself.

She wasn’t producing babies.

She was keeping everyone else’s babies alive.

Let that land for a moment.

Wisdom is biological capital

Here’s the part I want you to sit with.

We live in a culture obsessed with female youth. Our reproductive years are celebrated. Our younger bodies are marketed. Fertility is wrapped up in femininity in ways most of us don’t even notice until menopause arrives and we suddenly feel invisible.

But evolution doesn’t measure value through a cultural lens.

Evolution measures what helps a group survive.

And in highly social species, the kind that depend on cooperation, memory, and intergenerational knowledge, an older female is not a liability.

She is an asset.

She has survived hard things.

She has made mistakes and learned from them.

She has accumulated knowledge that younger members of her community haven’t had time to gather yet.

That knowledge is not decorative.

It can keep people alive.

And I want to be honest with you here

I’m not going to romanticise menopause.

I lived through perimenopause myself. I know what it can take from you, sleep, clarity, patience, the feeling of being at home in your own body. I stopped looking in the mirror for eight months. I didn’t recognise myself.

That was real.

And the symptoms are real.

Sleep disruption. Temperature dysregulation. Mood changes. Brain fog. Cardiovascular shifts. Bone and muscle changes. These deserve to be taken seriously, treated properly, and not dismissed.

So when I say menopause can represent power, I’m not saying the symptoms should be pushed through or minimised.

I’m saying something much bigger than that.

A woman’s reproductive capacity and a woman’s value are not the same thing.

And evolutionary biology gives us very good reason to question why our culture has spent so long treating them as if they were.

The grandmother may have helped build humanity

The Grandmother Hypothesis is one of several complementary evolutionary explanations for why menopause exists. Scientists are still investigating the full picture. But substantial research across anthropology, evolutionary biology, and animal behaviour suggests that older women can meaningfully increase the survival and reproductive success of their descendants.

Contemporary evolutionary models increasingly combine grandmother effects with other mechanisms, including reduced reproductive competition between generations, and the value of accumulated knowledge during periods of scarcity.

That nuance makes the story richer, not weaker.

Because it tells us that menopause may not be an evolutionary error at all.

It may have survived across generations because older females continued contributing something important enough to matter.

Not another pregnancy.

Memory. Knowledge. Resources. Guidance. Protection. Care.

And suddenly “menopausal” sounds different

Imagine if this were the story girls grew up hearing.

Not:

You’re young. You’re fertile. You’re valuable.

Then:

You’re older. You’re menopausal. You’re fading.

But instead:

Your biology moves through seasons. During one season, your body may have the ability to create life. During another, everything you’ve learned from living becomes one of the most important things you can contribute.

I love that.

Because menopause doesn’t erase the woman you were at 25.

It contains her.

Along with the woman you became at 30. And 35. And 40. And 50.

Every difficult thing you survived.
Every skill you built quietly, over years.
Every person you’ve loved.
Every version of yourself you’ve had to let go of to become who you are now.

That’s the thing about wisdom.

You cannot rush it.

You have to live long enough to earn it.

And perhaps that’s one of the most honest ways I know to reframe menopause.

Not as nature quietly removing a woman’s usefulness.

But as evidence that female usefulness was never limited to reproduction in the first place.

A note on the science: The Grandmother Hypothesis is one of several complementary evolutionary explanations proposed for prolonged post-reproductive life. A major 2024 comparative study published in Nature found that menopause in toothed whales evolved through longer overall female lifespan rather than shortened reproductive lifespan. Separate research in killer whale populations has demonstrated measurable survival benefits associated with post-reproductive grandmothers.

If this resonates with you, I write about this every week inside Cycles Wellness — the science, the real experience, and the practical tools to help you navigate this transition on your own terms.

Start Feeling Like Yourself Again →

This episode is sponsored by  @Namawell  To get your Nama juicers and other machines at a discount, use code CHANTAL10 for 10% off!  @IM8Health  : 3rd party tested and NSF approved! Get 10% off here: https://www.im8health.com/CyclesWellness10 

https://www.lumen.me: the most progressive metabolism switching tracker! Use code Cycleswellness for 20% off 

 @Nuzest  https://www.nuzest.co.uk/LIVELEANHEALTH 

Get 15% off with my code LIVELEANHEALTH (without worrying about customs) 

USA https://nuzest-usa.com/cycles Code 15% CYCLESWELLNESS 

Want to know about your body composition and health?  @humehealthglobal  

https://www.humehealth.com/CHANTAL53458 Get 35% off 

About Steven

I particularly love Steven’s message around positive masculinity, challenging the idea that strength has to mean dominance, aggression or disconnection. Instead, he represents a version of masculinity where strength also means compassion, responsibility, protecting the natural world, respecting animals and looking after the planet we all share.

He is  the creator of Plant-Based Academy, where he helps people navigate plant-based fitness and nutrition and shares practical, protein-rich vegan meals and resources. He also has a vibrant instagram page where he shares great vegan content too 

Follow him here : https://www.instagram.com/steven.willliams/

Today I talk about Steven’s own journey  the experiences that shaped him, the evolution of his beliefs, his personal transformation, and ultimately what led him to become vegan. We also explore how that decision changed far more than simply what was on his plate; it became part of a much bigger transformation in the way he sees himself, masculinity, health, animals and his relationship with the world around him.

So this is a conversation about food and fitness, yes,  but it’s also about growth, identity, compassion and what real strength can look like.

Women’s health + holistic living for everyone
Where wellness meets real life

Follow, rate & share to support the show 🌿

@thewellnesswoman

Even if maybe not perfect, sleep was a reliable nightly outcome. You’d get tired at a reasonable hour, fall asleep without too much trouble, wake up feeling like yourself.

And somewhere in your forties that just... stopped…. Now your energy is all over the place. You’re exhausted when you need to be alert and wired when you desperately need to rest. You crash at 4pm and can’t switch off at 10PM. Your body feels like it’s running on a completely different schedule to the one you actually need.

It is. And there’s a reason for it.

You have an internal clock, and right now it’s being disrupted

Every single cell in your body runs on a roughly 24-hour cycle called the circadian rhythm. This internal clock governs when you feel sleepy and alert, when your body temperature rises and falls, when cortisol peaks to wake you up, when melatonin rises to wind you down, when your digestion is most active, even when your immune system does its repair work.

It is not a metaphor. It is a real, measurable biological system, and it is exquisitely sensitive to hormones.

Here’s what most people don’t know: estrogen and progesterone are deeply involved in keeping your circadian clock running on time. Estrogen supports the sensitivity of your brain’s master clock, a tiny region called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, to light signals. Progesterone has a calming, sleep-promoting effect that helps anchor the rhythm at night.

As both hormones decline, that beautiful internal timing system starts to lose its precision. Your melatonin rises later than it should. Your cortisol spikes at the wrong time, often in the middle of the night. Your body temperature regulation becomes erratic. The whole rhythm shifts, and you feel it in every part of your day and night.

This is why perimenopause and menopause so often bring not just poor sleep, but a wholesale change in how your energy moves through the day. It’s not burnout. It’s not depression. It’s a disrupted clock.

Why light is the most powerful reset tool you have

Your circadian rhythm is set, and reset, primarily by light. Specifically, by the presence of bright light in the morning and the absence of light at night.

When light hits your eyes in the first hour after waking, it sends a direct signal to your brain’s master clock: it’s morning, start the day’s hormonal cascade. Cortisol rises appropriately. Melatonin production is suppressed. Your body knows where it is in the 24-hour cycle.

When you don’t get that morning light signal, because you wake before dawn, spend the morning indoors, or wear sunglasses the moment you step outside, your clock drifts. And a drifting clock means everything that depends on it drifts too: your energy, your hunger, your mood, your sleep.

This is why one of the most evidence-backed things you can do for your sleep and energy right now costs absolutely nothing.

Go outside within the first hour of waking. No sunglasses. Even on a cloudy day, outdoor light is many times brighter than indoor lighting and more than sufficient to set your clock. Even ten minutes makes a measurable difference.

At the other end of the day, dim your lights in the evening. Swap bright overhead lights for lamps. Reduce screen brightness. Signal to your brain that the day is ending, because right now your melatonin system needs all the help it can get.

The timing of everything matters more than you think

Here’s something that surprises most women when they first hear it: it’s not just sleep that’s governed by your circadian rhythm. It’s when you eat, when you exercise, even when you take certain supplements.

Eating late at night, particularly large meals within two hours of bed, disrupts your metabolic rhythm and raises your core body temperature at exactly the time it needs to be falling for sleep to deepen.

Exercising too late in the evening raises cortisol and body temperature and can delay sleep onset, particularly for women whose stress response is already dysregulated.

Even exposure to cold and warmth follows a circadian pattern, a warm bath or shower an hour before bed actually helps you sleep by raising your skin temperature and then allowing it to drop, mimicking the natural temperature fall your body needs to move into deep sleep.

Your body is not random. It is rhythmic. And working with that rhythm rather than against it is one of the most powerful things you can do for how you feel, not just at night, but across the whole day.

Start tomorrow morning

Tomorrow, before you do anything else, before the coffee, before the phone, step outside. Stand in the daylight for ten minutes. You don’t need to do anything. Just be in the light.

Do it every morning for a week and pay attention to whether your evenings start to feel different. Whether tiredness comes a little more naturally. Whether the 3am wake-up shifts even slightly.

This is free. It requires nothing. And the science behind it is some of the most solid in sleep research.

You deserve to feel rested. Not eventually — now. And understanding what’s actually happening in your body is the first step to getting there.

If you want to go deeper, the exact timing protocols for eating, movement, and light exposure, the specific supplements that support melatonin and cortisol balance during perimenopause, and how to rebuild your circadian rhythm step by step , that’s all inside the paid membership. Along with a quiz from last week to help you identify exactly what’s driving your sleep disruption.

For €9/month you get all of this, plus a monthly worksheet, a video from me, and a live Q&A where you can bring your actual questions. I’d love to have you in there.

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About Nelson 

Nelson Campbell is an author, filmmaker, entrepreneur and plant-based nutrition advocate. He is the son of Dr T. Colin Campbell, the renowned nutritional biochemist and co-author of The China Study. Nelson wrote and directed the 2015 documentary PlantPure Nation, which explores the health potential of whole-food, plant-based nutrition and the political and economic forces that have limited its adoption. Following the film’s release in more than 100 US cities, he founded the nonprofit organisation PlantPure Communities in 2016 and also established PlantPure, a food and nutrition-education business. Nelson and his wife, Kim Campbell, now live in Saluda, North Carolina, where they are developing a community-based model for sharing plant-based nutrition. 

Through PlantPure Communities, they also host small, immersive retreats in the Blue Ridge Mountains that combine nutritional education, plant-based food, nature and community connection. Before entering the plant-based movement, Nelson spent approximately 25 years as a business entrepreneur. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in economics from Cornell University. He is an experienced public speaker whose work encompasses nutrition, economics, public policy and social change. He also writes on these subjects through his publication at NelsonCampbell.com. https://plantpurecommunities.org/about-plantpure-communities/ 

The Whole Truth: The Hidden Agendas Behind Decades of Health Misinformation—and What to Do About It 

The book investigates how commercial interests, institutional structures and prevailing scientific biases can influence the funding, interpretation and communication of nutrition research. 

Dr Campbell draws upon more than six decades in nutritional science to examine how reductionist thinking and powerful vested interests have shaped nutrition policy and public understanding. In the final section, Nelson broadens the discussion beyond nutrition science. He examines how these ideas can be communicated to a wider audience and proposes a community-led, bottom-up approach to change—connecting individual health with political participation, social responsibility and collective action. It is both an exposé of the forces behind health misinformation and a call for people to reclaim their agency and help build a healthier, kinder and more connected society. 

Get the Book https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Whole-Truth/T-Colin-Campbell/9781637747551 

Kim Campbell's Books 

PlantPure Comfort Food

 Kim’s latest cookbook transforms familiar comfort-food favourites into nourishing, whole-food, plant-based dishes. It includes more than 100 recipes designed to provide all the flavour, satisfaction and warmth of traditional comfort food without relying on animal products. Several of its recipes are connected with From Food to Freedom, the award-winning documentary that follows people with type 2 diabetes as they experience the effects of a medically supervised, whole-food, plant-based lifestyle intervention. 

 The PlantPure Nation Cookbook 

The official companion to the documentary PlantPure Nation, this cookbook brings the film’s science-informed approach to nutrition into the kitchen. It features more than 150 approachable whole-food, plant-based recipes created for individuals and families who want to make healthier eating both practical and enjoyable. 

PlantPure Kitchen 

Inspired by the grassroots movement that grew from the documentary PlantPure Nation, PlantPure Kitchen offers more than 130 recipes alongside practical guidance for adopting a plant-based lifestyle. Kim shares techniques, meal ideas and helpful kitchen strategies designed to make whole-food, plant-based cooking simple, affordable and delicious. 

https://www.plantpurenation.com/collections/books

Women’s health + holistic living for everyone
Where wellness meets real life

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@thewellnesswoman

You’re doing everything right.

You’re eating more plants. You’re moving your body. You’re trying to get to bed earlier. And yet some days you wake up feeling like you’ve gone ten rounds, puffy, achy, foggy, irritable, and you genuinely cannot figure out why.

Here’s something that might explain it.

Inflammation and hormonal disruption run on the same track. When your body is dealing with chronic low-grade inflammation, the kind you can’t see or feel directly, every symptom you’re already managing gets louder. Hot flashes more intense. Joint aches that won’t quit. Brain fog that makes you feel like you’re wading through mud. Mood swings that seem to come from nowhere.

And the frustrating thing is that inflammation is often being quietly fuelled by everyday foods that seem completely harmless.

This isn’t about being perfect

Before we go any further, this is not about restriction. It’s not about following another set of rules or feeling guilty every time you eat something off a list.

It’s about becoming aware of what might be turning up the volume on symptoms you’re already exhausted by. Because once you can see the connection, you get to choose. And that choice feels very different from being told what you can and can’t eat.

What inflammation actually looks like on your plate

Most of the foods that drive inflammation aren’t obvious. They’re not the foods you’d immediately label as “bad.” They hide in things that are marketed as healthy, including vegan and plant-based products.

Here’s what to look out for:

Ultra-processed plant foods. Vegan sausages, packaged snacks, meat alternatives made with long ingredient lists, emulsifiers, flavour enhancers, and refined protein isolates. These aren’t whole foods, they’re engineered products, and your gut knows the difference.

Refined sugar. It shows up everywhere, in sauces, flavoured plant yoghurts, granolas, cereals, and drinks that look innocent. Sugar is one of the most direct drivers of inflammation in the body.

Alcohol. Even one glass regularly is pro-inflammatory, disrupts your sleep architecture, and interferes with how your liver processes hormones. This one is worth being honest with yourself about.

Refined white flour. White bread, pasta, pastries, crackers, these spike blood sugar fast and feed inflammatory pathways in the gut.

What actually calms inflammation down

The good news, and there really is good news here, is that a whole food plant-based diet is one of the most anti-inflammatory ways of eating on the planet. The research consistently shows it reduces inflammatory markers in the blood, supports the gut bacteria that actively calm the immune system, and lowers oxidative stress throughout the body.

You’re already most of the way there. This week is just about closing the gaps.

The foods with the strongest anti-inflammatory evidence? Berries of any kind. Walnuts. Turmeric with black pepper. Ginger. Green tea. Dark leafy greens every single day. Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, which contain a compound called sulforaphane that actively supports your liver in clearing excess estrogen.

And legumes, beans and lentils, every day without exception. The research on daily legume consumption and longevity is about as unambiguous as nutrition science gets.

One thing to do this week

Go through your kitchen this week, not to throw everything out, but just to look. Check the ingredient lists on the things you eat regularly. If a product has more than five or six ingredients and several of them are things you wouldn’t cook with at home, it’s worth finding a simpler swap.

Just awareness. That’s all this week asks for.

Because when you start seeing the connection between what’s on your plate and how you feel in your body, that’s when everything starts to shift.

Paid members get the full inflammation protocol this week — the audit checklist, the exact swap guide, the anti-inflammatory power foods list, and what the research actually says about each one. All below the paywall, or join for €9/month.

Feeling like you need more personalised support?
I offer 1:1 sessions where we dig into your specific symptoms, history, and what your body actually needs.
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This episode is sponsored by Namawell the BEST cold press juicers , blender and milk makers , on the planet with the revolutionary J2 being the most amazing Bulk juicing champion. To get your Nama juicers and other machines at a discount, use code CHANTAL10 for 10% off! 

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Watch my my Women Health series with HUME 

About Paul 

Paul shares how his journey began as a young athlete who suddenly faced serious digestive struggles,  and how that experience forced him to separate “fitness” from true health. We talk about the early days of modern raw food culture, and what he learned by watching long-term practitioners succeed,  and sometimes make mistakes in this space.  We also go deeper into practical lifestyle foundations, from food to mental and spiritual health.  Paul offers a grounded angle on sprouts, fermented foods, and doing the best you can with your environment. Paul also helps people  grow food at home and connect to nature.  Whether you agree with every viewpoint or not, Paul’s perspective is a reminder to stay thoughtful, stay honest, and keep learning. 

 Follow 

Paul Nison and explore his work http://rawlife.com 

 Paul's YouTube Channels: @rawlifehealthshow‬

‪ / paulnison 

‪@FruitfulTrees‬

‪@TorahLifeMinistries‬

Women’s health + holistic living for everyone
Where wellness meets real life

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@thewellnesswoman

www.cycleswellness.net  to join my group and learn more! Subcsribe for FREE! 

Women’s health + holistic living for everyone
Where wellness meets real life

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@thewellnesswoman

I want to talk to you about something that genuinely excited me when I first learned it, and still does, honestly, because it means so much of what we need is already available to us.

Your food talks to your hormones. Not in a vague, wellness-buzzword way. In a real, documented, physiological way. And when it comes to estrogen specifically, the hormone that’s been quietly running the show for most of your adult life and is now shifting in ways you can feel, certain foods have the ability to support, modulate, and even partially compensate for what’s changing.

I know that might sound too simple. Bear with me.

First : what’s actually happening with your estrogen right now

Whether you’re in early perimenopause and your estrogen is swinging wildly from day to day, in the menopausal transition where things are getting more unpredictable, or postmenopausal where estrogen has settled at a consistently lower level, you’re dealing with a body that has less of its most versatile hormone than it used to.

Estrogen doesn’t just regulate your cycle. It protects your bones. It supports your brain and memory. It keeps your cardiovascular system healthier. It influences your mood, your sleep, your skin, your joints. When it declines, or fluctuates erratically before it declines, you feel it everywhere, which is exactly why perimenopause and menopause can feel like your whole body has changed at once.

Because it kind of has.

And here’s where food becomes genuinely interesting.

Phytoestrogens: nature’s gentle hormone modulators

Plants contain compounds called phytoestrogens, literally “plant estrogens” , that bind to your estrogen receptors. They’re much weaker than your own estrogen, roughly one hundredth of the potency, which is actually the point. They don’t replace estrogen. They modulate it.

In perimenopause, when your estrogen is erratically high on some days and crashing on others, phytoestrogens act as a buffer, occupying receptors during the peaks and dampening the extremes. In postmenopause, when estrogen is consistently low, they provide a gentle supportive signal where there was previously none.

This is why the research on phytoestrogen-rich foods, particularly soy, consistently shows benefits across both stages. Reduced hot flushes. Better sleep. Improved bone density markers. Improved cardiovascular markers. These aren’t small effects, and they’re produced not by a supplement or a drug, but by food.

The most powerful phytoestrogen sources are whole soy foods, tofu, tempeh, edamame, and unsweetened soy milk, and flaxseed, which contains the most potent class of phytoestrogens called lignans. Two tablespoons of ground flaxseed every day is one of the simplest, most evidence-backed habits you can build at this stage.

I want to address the soy fear directly, because I hear it a lot: the concern that soy causes cancer or disrupts hormones. This is not what the research supports for whole food soy consumed in normal dietary amounts. The evidence is actually in the opposite direction, populations with high whole soy consumption consistently show better menopausal outcomes and lower rates of hormonally-driven cancers. If you have a specific diagnosed hormonally-sensitive condition, that’s a conversation to have with your provider. But blanket soy fear? Not evidence-based.

Your liver is part of this story too

Here’s the piece that surprises most women: supporting your estrogen isn’t just about what you eat to add phytoestrogens in. It’s also about what you do to help your body clear estrogen properly.

Your liver is responsible for processing and clearing used estrogen. If it’s sluggish, which stress, poor sleep, alcohol, and processed food all contribute to, estrogen metabolites recirculate instead of being cleared. In perimenopause this can worsen symptoms like breast tenderness, bloating, heavy periods, and mood swings. In postmenopause it affects how well your body maintains hormonal balance overall.

Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage), contain a compound called DIM (diindolylmethane) that directly supports healthy estrogen metabolism in the liver. This is one of the reasons I’ll never stop talking about eating your greens. It’s not just fibre. It’s hormonal support.

A gentle but important note

None of this replaces a conversation with your healthcare provider about whether hormone therapy is right for you. Food is powerful, genuinely, measurably powerful, and it works alongside whatever decisions you and your provider make together. It is not an either/or.

If you’re on any medication that affects hormones, thyroid, or blood sugar, always check with your provider before significantly increasing soy or making big dietary shifts.

Your action step for this week

Add two tablespoons of ground flaxseed to something you already eat every day. Stir it into your morning oats, blend it into a smoothie, mix it into a soup. Ground only, whole flaxseeds pass through undigested. That one habit, done consistently over weeks, builds real cumulative hormonal benefit.

It’s small. It’s easy. And it’s genuinely one of the most evidence-backed things you can do for your hormones right now.

If you’re not yet a member, this is a good week to start, I share science like this every single week, always in plain language, always with something practical you can actually do. Join free below and you’ll also get my Perimenopause Survival Checklist as a welcome gift.

And if you want to go further, if you want the specific foods, exact daily amounts, the liver support protocol, and the full phytoestrogen guide I use with my 1:1 clients, that’s all waiting for you below the paywall.

Paid members this week get a complete downloadable guide covering every food that supports estrogen, how much to eat, how to use it, and the liver clearance habits that make the whole thing work better.

Membership is €9 a month and you save 30% if you join for the year. That’s less than a single supplement that probably isn’t doing what this food can do. And it includes the weekly protocol, a monthly downloadable guide, a monthly video from me, and a live Q&A where you can bring your actual questions. It is, genuinely, the closest thing to working with me, at a fraction of the cost.

You can upgrade right here if you’re ready - see below :)

You are not powerless in this. Your plate is one of the most direct lines of communication you have with your hormones. And you deserve to know exactly how to use it.

With you in this,

Chantal 🌸

Naturopath · Holistic Nutritionist · Cycles Wellness

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This isn’t a personal failing. This isn’t you being lazy or undisciplined. This is blood sugar, and during perimenopause and beyond, it becomes one of the most disruptive things happening inside your body, often without anyone ever explaining why.

Here’s what’s going on.

The hormonal connection nobody talks about

Estrogen does a lot more than regulate your cycle. One of its quieter jobs is keeping your cells responsive to insulin — the hormone that moves glucose from your blood into your cells for energy. As estrogen declines, your cells start to become less sensitive to insulin. This is called insulin resistance, and it means your body has to work harder to process the same foods it handled easily a few years ago.

The result? Blood sugar swings that are more dramatic, more frequent, and more exhausting than before. You spike after meals, crash an hour later, and spend the rest of the day chasing energy that never quite arrives. Over time this pattern also drives weight gain around the middle, worsens hot flashes, disrupts sleep, and amplifies mood swings.

The good news is that food is one of the most powerful levers you have here. Not a perfect diet — just a few consistent habits that make a real difference.

Six things that actually help

1. Lead with protein and fiber, not carbohydrates alone. Pairing starchy foods with protein or fat slows how quickly glucose enters your bloodstream. A piece of fruit with almond butter lands very differently than fruit on its own.

2. Eat your greens first. This is almost embarrassingly simple, but the research is solid — eating vegetables at the start of a meal meaningfully reduces the blood sugar spike from everything that follows. Start dinner with a small salad or some raw veg before you plate up the rest.

3. Don’t skip meals. Long gaps between eating raise cortisol, which raises blood sugar — even without food. Regular meals keep the system steadier.

4. Move after eating. A ten-minute walk after your main meal dramatically improves how your cells take up glucose. You don’t need a gym. Just movement.

5. Choose whole grains over refined. Oats, brown rice, quinoa, and barley release glucose much more slowly than white rice, white bread, or pasta. This isn’t about restriction — it’s about choosing the version that works with your hormones rather than against them.

6. Try the vinegar trick. One tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water before a carbohydrate-heavy meal has good evidence behind it for reducing post-meal glucose spikes. Worth trying. Check with your provider first if you’re on blood sugar medication.

What to eat freely — and what to limit

Not everything affects blood sugar equally. Here’s a simple way to think about it:

Eat freely: leafy greens, broccoli, courgette, cucumber, all beans and lentils, berries, whole grains, nuts and seeds, avocado, tofu and tempeh.

Limit: white rice, white bread, white pasta, fruit juice (even fresh), sweetened plant milks, refined breakfast cereals, alcohol, and ultra-processed vegan snacks — even the ones marketed as healthy.

None of this is about being perfect. It’s about shifting the balance enough that your blood sugar stops running the show.

Start tonight

Before dinner this evening, eat something green first. A small bowl of salad, a few cucumber slices, some rocket — whatever is in your fridge. Do it every evening for seven days and pay attention to how you feel after meals. Less sluggish? Clearer? Less likely to reach for something sweet at 9pm?

That one habit alone can change a lot.

If you’re on medication for blood sugar, thyroid, or any hormonal condition, always check with your healthcare provider before making significant dietary changes.

You are not imagining the energy crashes. Your hormones have shifted, and your body is asking for something different. The beautiful thing is — whole plant foods are perfectly designed to give it exactly that.

Paid members get the full blood sugar protocol this week — exact meal timing, a deeper food list, what to eat before and after movement, and the specific supplements that support insulin sensitivity during perimenopause. That’s below the paywall if you’re already a member, or you can upgrade for €9/month.

Feeling like you need more personalised support?
I offer 1:1 sessions where we dig into your specific symptoms, history, and what your body actually needs.
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If this is new for you, if food used to “hold” you for hours and now it barely takes the edge off , I want you to hear this clearly: it’s not a willpower problem, and it’s not you “losing control” of your eating. It’s your hormones, and there’s a real physiological reason for it.

As estrogen drops through perimenopause, your cells become less responsive to insulin. That means the blood sugar swings you might be feeling, that crash-and-burn energy dip, the shakiness before a meal, the sudden “I need food NOW”, are happening more easily and more dramatically than they did even five years ago. Your brain reads that crash as an emergency, regardless of how recently you actually ate.

This is also often the same season where the scale starts moving in ways that don’t match your effort, where your usual portions stop feeling like enough, and where snacking out of nowhere starts happening, usually mid-afternoon or right after dinner. None of that is a character flaw. It’s chemistry.

Here’s the encouraging part, especially as someone living plant-based: fiber and protein together are one of the most powerful tools we have to settle this down, and whole plant foods deliver both in the same bite. When fiber is fermented by your gut bacteria, it produces compounds that trigger your body’s own appetite-suppressing hormones, the same satiety signals protein triggers. So a fiber-rich plant meal isn’t just “good for you” in some abstract sense; it’s actively recalibrating the hunger signals that perimenopause has scrambled.

And no, you are not missing out nutritionally by skipping animal protein. All plants contain every essential amino acid your body needs, the “incomplete protein” idea is outdated. What matters more right now is making sure you’re getting enough total protein and fiber, consistently, as your needs shift. Huberman Lab

A simple starting point for tomorrow: Build breakfast around a fiber-rich plant protein: oats with ground flax and hemp seeds, or tofu scrambled with veggies and a side of beans. Notice how you feel two hours later compared to your usual morning. Steadier? Clearer-headed? Not already thinking about your next snack?

That’s not a coincidence, that’s your body responding to what it’s actually asking for right now.

If you’re on medication for blood sugar or thyroid, check with your provider before making bigger dietary shifts.

You are not imagining this. You are not “losing your grip” on eating. Your hormones have changed, and how you eat can change right alongside them — fully plant-based, no exceptions needed.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE GUIDE HERE

If you want the exact protein-and-fiber targets, food list, and timing I use with clients to stop the afternoon crash for good, join the membership below :)

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After 16 years of relationship, the longest relationship of my life, and 9 of marriage, I have come to see that the compromises we make for love may become some of the greatest barriers to connection, pleasure and agency as women move through their 30s and beyond.

And the impact of those compromises will not necessarily show up in our labs when we don’t feel well! But it does show up in how we feel nonetheless.

As I review my lawyer’s draft of my divorce agreement, I realize that what I am ending is not only a marriage. I am ending the compromises I made for love, and the compromises I had been making since childhood.

I had learned to place my happiness inside a box built from a belief system that was never truly mine.

I married at 36. Although I did not feel ready, I persuaded myself that it was the right decision. We had already been together for years. He had left the job that sponsored his right to remain in the UK, and he seemed ready to walk the same path as me.

Surely getting married made sense?

So I compromised with myself.

There had never been a proposal. Deep inside, I felt that, once again, I had not truly been chosen. I was the safe option for a man who was frightened of change and deeply attached to the comfort of his habits.

But I could not see that then, and I had no idea how quickly I would begin paying for that compromise.

By then, I had left banking and was teaching yoga full-time while continuing to coach and study. I was building the life that felt right to me, yet I carried tremendous guilt because I knew my partner resented the steps I was taking.

Somehow, he began believing that I owed my transformation to him, that without him, I would never have changed my life, even if I did know that was only partially true.

Living together certainly made some things easier. But had I been single, I would still have found a way.

One thing about me is that when I decide to do something, it happens. Perhaps not as quickly as I would like, because I have fears too, but it happens.

When I met my husband, I thought he was brilliant. He was , however, emotionally unavailable and true to being an only child, very focused on what HE wanted!

He struggled with commitment. So when, after six months, he called me his girlfriend in public, I was ecstatic.

Here was this emotionally stunted man, and somehow I had managed to become his girlfriend simply by being myself.

Or so I thought.

In reality, I had already begun making myself indispensable by fixing everything and caring for everything.

Yay, me!

I saw nothing wrong with being the carer. People needed care, didn’t they? My parents certainly had.

We saw each other when it suited him. The relationship fitted around his life, and I convinced myself that this was acceptable because I cared for him.

I said yes to all of it.

Not because it was what I truly wanted, but because somewhere inside me, I believed that asking for more might cost me the relationship.

So I settled for breadcrumbs.

Yes, I felt that I was never his number one. But at least I was a number, right? I existed in his life. I was making his life better, and he was helping me relax, slow down and become calmer, too.

On the surface, anyway.

For years, I was terrified of losing him and the relationship. Even when he cheated, I forgave him.

And I truly did forgive him. I do not resent the act itself anymore.

What I now regret is that I did not forgive him and still walk away.

Forgiveness does not require us to remain in a situation that has betrayed us. We can release our anger without abandoning our boundaries.

The first time it happened, he did not ask for forgiveness. Instead, the conversation became about his trauma and the healing he needed to do.

And so we began working on him.

I became the therapist, the emotional support system and the endlessly understanding partner. He shared some things and changed a little, but the focus remained on him.

The second time, he apologized, but not because he appeared to understand the depth of the pain he had caused me. He was sorry because he had decided that he needed to become a better version of himself. for himself and for God.

I did not yet understand the magnitude of what would follow, but ultimately, that realization began to unravel everything.

Nothing was about me.

But how could I expect him to make it about me when I did not even make it about me?

The Pattern Beneath the Relationship

This is not only my story. It is one of the oldest stories women carry, and it is rarely limited to romantic relationships.

We compromise our bodies, careers, time, pleasure and sense of worth.

Our attachment patterns can amplify those compromises. Mine were an entangled mixture of insecurity, avoidance and almost nonexistent boundaries. My childhood had shaped me that way, and since 2023, I have worked every day to heal those parts of myself.

The realization landed like a giant drop of water hitting a still lake, sending ripples across everything I thought I knew:

I was the common denominator in everything I disliked about myself, my life and my relationship.

That does not mean I was responsible for another person’s choices or behaviour. It means I had to acknowledge the ways I had abandoned myself, tolerated what hurt me and remained where my needs were repeatedly dismissed.

I had voiced my needs and concerns, but they were shut down. So, little by little, I shut them down too.

When I was physically unwell, I did not receive the support I needed. My behaviour was questioned and invalidated, and very little care was offered in return. When I asked for help, the response I often received was, “Ask God for guidance.” or, gaslighting! Who doesn’t love a sprinkle of gaslighting?

But I did not need spiritual instructions. I needed my human to hear me. I needed my partner to care.

Perhaps that was simply too inconvenient.

Yet as I began healing physically, something else started happening: the internal healing began too. I could finally see the patterns I had been repeating.

Then I began noticing how many other women followed similar patterns, not because there was something inherently wrong with us, but because society has spent generations teaching women to be agreeable, accommodating and easy to manage.

Patriarchy cannot comfortably coexist with powerful women who know their worth, trust their intuition and refuse to disappear.

So we are taught to become smaller.

As I listened to the compromises other women shared, I recognized so many of them in myself.

These are the ten I can finally see clearly:

1. The Compromise of Productivity

“I can only rest when I have achieved enough and cared for everyone else”

The problem was that moment rarely came. There was always another person to help, another task to finish or another qualification to pursue. Rest was never something I deserved simply because I was human. It was a reward I had to earn, and I was constantly moving the finish line. Moreover, it was something I needed permission for. I grew up in a household where rest meant laziness.

2. The Compromise of Looking Great at all times

"If I remain thin, attractive, youthful and disciplined, I will be safe from rejection"

I am almost 45. I am thin but also strong, disciplined and attractive, and I am choosing to be single.

I now understand that no version of my body can guarantee that another person will value, respect or remain faithful to me. My appearance is not an insurance policy against abandonment. I just look the way I personally like.

3. The Compromise of Being Easy Going

“Keeping the Peace matters more than telling the truth”

But false harmony tore me apart inside.

Whenever I silenced what I really felt to preserve the peace, I created conflict within myself. It did not feel peaceful. It felt like lying, to him and to myself.

4. The Compromise of Self-Abandonment

"If I reject my needs first, perhaps it will hurt less when somebody else does”

This was neither deliberate nor conscious, yet it ran my life for years.

I became so skilled at anticipating what everyone else needed that I stopped asking what I needed. When others eventually failed to show up for me, the abandonment felt familiar, because I had already abandoned myself and experienced since childhood! I still, to this day, don’t alleyways know what I like.

5. The Compromise of Silence

"If I do not ask for too much, I will not lose the relationship"

I lost myself instead.

Silence did not protect the relationship. It simply protected it from the truth. When I did voice anything it was rejected and contradicted with prophecy, scriptures and beliefs.

6. The Compromise of Competence

"If I can manage everything alone, I will never have to experience the vulnerability of needing someone."

My competence became both my strength and my armour.

The more capable I appeared, the more difficult it became to ask for help. Eventually, everyone assumed I needed nothing, including me. But the one time I asked for help, as I was drowning, I was let with resentment and bother.

7. The Compromise of Accommodation

"If I make myself easier to love, love will stay."

I adjusted, excused, forgave and made space. I tried to understand every wound behind every behaviour.

But love that requires one person to become smaller is not secure love. It is an arrangement held together by self-erasure. This is typical between insecure and avoidant attachment styles too

8. The Compromise of Being Chosen

"If somebody chooses me, perhaps I will finally believe that I am worthy.”

That person eventually chose me, yet the invalidation within the relationship left me feeling more unseen than ever.

Being chosen by someone else cannot heal the wound of not choosing ourselves. We can choose ourselves though.

9. The Compromise of Emotional Labour

"It is my responsibility to anticipate everyone’s needs, regulate their emotions and hold everything together.”

I carried the emotional weight of the relationship, translated feelings, searched for explanations and tried to create opportunities for healing.

Yet when I needed that same care the most, I felt alone and unheard.

10. The Compromise of Certainty

"If I can find the perfect diet, protocol, qualification, relationship or answer, I will finally feel safe inside my body and my life."

Yet even now, I sometimes punish myself when life does not look the way I believe it should.

Healing is also learning to remain kind to myself when there is no perfect answer—when life is uncertain, unfinished and beyond my control.

What No Laboratory Test Can Measure

As a naturopathic practitioner, I spend a great deal of time thinking about hormones, inflammation, metabolic health and the nervous system. These things matter deeply.

But I am becoming increasingly curious about something no laboratory test can measure:

• How many times does a woman override herself in a single day?

• How many times does she feel a “no” inside her body but say “yes” to keep the peace?

• How much joy and pleasure disappear, not because her body has failed her, but because she has been taught that belonging requires her to become smaller?

Our compromises can shape our stress, our behaviour and how safely we inhabit our bodies. But not every emotional truth needs to be turned immediately into a diagnosis.

Some truths need to be witnessed before they can be explained.

I do not have every answer. I am still learning every day as I navigate emotions that move from sadness to anger, from frustration to gratitude.

Yet I am happier than I have been.

I have pleasure in my life. Although I am single, I feel blessed rather than alone.

Pleasure begins long before the bedroom.

It begins when a woman listens to herself and acknowledges what she wants and deserves.

It begins when she stops negotiating away her needs and starts trusting her God-given intuition.

It begins when she understands that boundaries do not make her difficult, honesty does not make her unlovable, and choosing herself does not mean she has failed to love somebody else.

Sovereignty is not the opposite of love.

It is what makes honest love possible.

Millions of women inherit an agreement that nobody formally writes down or teaches us: surrender small pieces of yourself in exchange for approval, harmony, security and belonging.

We rarely notice the cost because we pay it gradually, depleting our fund till we run on empty.

Until one day, perhaps while reading a divorce agreement, or meeting our Dark Knight of the Soul, we realize that we have become experts at caring for everyone except the woman living inside our own body.

I am ready to end that agreement! I am ready to release the old trauma, expectations and beliefs that never belonged to me in the first place.

What agreement are you ready to break?

Want to go even deeper with personalised support? I work with a small number of 1:1 clients each month to build a plan tailored specifically to your hormones, history, and lifestyle.

Book a discovery session →

🌸 Feeling like you need more personalized support?

I offer 1:1 sessions where we dig into your specific symptoms, history, and what your body actually needs.

Book a session →

Today’s conversation is one that is deeply emotional, but also incredibly important—because behind the closed doors of testing laboratories, thousands of animals are still suffering in the name of research.

My guest today is the wonderful Ella Magers: a lifelong animal advocate, plant-based athlete, founder of Sexy Fit Vegan, author, speaker, coach and podcast host. Ella has spent decades helping people align their daily choices with their deepest values—but her advocacy extends far beyond food and wellness.

This episode is sponsored by Namawell the BEST cold press juicers , blender and milk makers , on the planet with the revolutionary J2 being the most amazing Bulk juicing champion. To get your Nama juicers and other machines at a discount, use code CHANTAL10 for 10% off! 

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About Ella 

Ella  has continually used her voice, her platform and her physical presence to fight for animals, including beagles bred for and confined within testing facilities. Beagles are commonly chosen for laboratory testing precisely because of their gentle, trusting and forgiving nature—and that makes their exploitation particularly heartbreaking.

In this episode, Ella shares the reality facing these dogs, the work being done to bring them out of laboratories and into loving homes, and what freedom looks like for an animal who may never before have felt grass beneath their paws, received a gentle touch or been known by a name rather than a number.

We also talk about what sustained activism really demands, why we cannot look away simply because the truth is uncomfortable, and how each of us can help create a future in which scientific progress no longer depends upon the suffering of sentient beings.

This is a conversation about courage, compassion and the extraordinary resilience of these beautiful dogs. But above all, it is a conversation about freedom—and why we must continue fighting until every cage is empty.

TAKE ACTION 

https://www.marchforanimals.org 

https://www.ellamagers.com

https://www.instagram.com/sexyfitvegan/

Women’s health + holistic living for everyone
Where wellness meets real life

Follow, rate & share to support the show 🌿

@thewellnesswoman

www.cycleswellness.net 

Women’s health + holistic living for everyone
Where wellness meets real life

Follow, rate & share to support the show 🌿

@thewellnesswoman

We’ve made it to the final week of Month One, and what a foundation you’ve built. You’ve started tracking your cycle, your symptoms, and your food and mood. This week, let’s bring sleep into the picture, because for so many women, disrupted sleep is one of the very first signs that perimenopause has arrived.

If you’ve been waking at 3am for no clear reason, lying there wired and exhausted at the same time, or just generally feeling like your sleep “used to work” and now doesn’t, I want you to know there is real, well-documented biology behind this. It’s not just stress, and it’s not just aging.

Your brain’s sleep control center runs on estrogen

Here’s something genuinely fascinating: the part of your brain responsible for regulating your sleep-wake cycle , called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) , is rich in estrogen receptors. So is your body’s main thermoregulatory center. This isn’t a coincidence. Researchers describe estrogen as a master regulator that helps your brain respond at multiple timescales to keep things like temperature, sleep, and circadian rhythm coordinated. When estrogen starts fluctuating unpredictably in perimenopause, these tightly coordinated systems can fall out of sync , which is part of why sleep, temperature regulation, and mood often unravel together. PubMed Central

Progesterone matters too — and it’s complicated

Progesterone actually has a calming, sleep-promoting effect on the brain. It acts as a neuroactive steroid that, via its metabolites, has a potent sedative and hypnotic effect on the central nervous system. But ,and this is the kind of nuance I love sharing, progesterone can also raise core body temperature, and elevated body temperature itself disturbs sleep, creating a confusing push-pull effect where the hormone is sleep-promoting in one way and sleep-disrupting in another. ScienceDirect

Melatonin gets caught in the crossfire too

This part explains a lot: sex hormones help sensitize neurons to melatonin, so as estrogen levels decline, melatonin production tends to drop too , directly contributing to perimenopausal sleep disturbances. A comprehensive narrative review covering studies through 2024 confirmed that fluctuating estrogen and progesterone affect sleep quality, while hot flashes and night sweats disrupt sleep further and circadian changes, reduced melatonin, and mood shifts all compound the problem together. Importantly, this isn’t a rare experience, researchers note perimenopause symptoms broadly affect 80–90% of women, so if your sleep has changed, you are very much in good company. MDPI

Why this matters for you, practically

This isn’t just background science for its own sake, it’s permission. Permission to stop blaming yourself for “bad sleep hygiene” when the real driver might be hormonal. And it’s a reason to keep tracking: pair your sleep notes (quality, wake times, night sweats) with your cycle data from Week One. Many women notice their worst sleep clusters in a specific cycle window, that’s useful information for you and your provider.

A both/and note

Whether you and your provider eventually explore options like hormone therapy, or you lean toward natural sleep support, or a combination of both, understanding why your sleep has changed takes away so much of the self-blame. We’ll go deep on specific sleep strategies and supplements next month, so for now, just notice and track.

This week’s gentle action step: Add sleep quality, wake times, and any night sweats to your tracker. You’re building a complete picture now.

Your sleep isn’t broken. Your hormones are just renegotiating the terms and understanding that is the first step toward feeling like yourself again.

With you in this,
Chantal

🌸 Feeling like you need more personalized support?
I offer 1:1 sessions where we dig into your specific symptoms, history, and what your body actually needs.

Book a session →

Thanks for reading!

Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work as well as your checklist

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Your Sleep Support Toolkit: What to Try Tonight, What to Track, and What to Ask For

You now understand why your sleep has changed. This week’s paid section is short and practical, a toolkit you can actually use, organised by what you can do on your own, what you can add in, and when it’s time to ask for more help.

THE PROTOCOL

Your sleep environment — the non-negotiables first

Before supplements, before anything else, your sleep environment needs to work with your thermoregulation, because as we covered in the free section, estrogen and progesterone both affect your core body temperature. Hot flashes and night sweats are not just uncomfortable, they are physiological wake-up signals your brain cannot ignore.

• Keep your bedroom between 16–18°C (60–65°F) — cooler than you might think. This is the temperature range most consistently associated with better sleep onset and fewer night wake-ups in menopausal women

• Use layered, breathable bedding — bamboo or linen over synthetic. You want to be able to throw a layer off without fully waking

• A cooling pillow or mattress topper is worth the investment if night sweats are frequent — this is not a luxury, it is a sleep intervention

• Keep a small fan or open window on your side of the bed if your partner runs cold — your temperature needs and theirs may no longer match, and that is completely normal

The wind-down window — 90 minutes before bed

Your brain needs a signal that the day is ending. In perimenopause and postmenopause, when cortisol is already dysregulated, this transition matters more than it ever did before. The goal of the wind-down window is to lower cortisol and core body temperature simultaneously.

• Dim all lights after 9pm — bright overhead lighting suppresses melatonin. Use lamps, candles, or amber-tinted bulbs

• No screens after 9:30pm — or use blue light glasses if screens are unavoidable. Blue light directly inhibits melatonin production at a time when melatonin is already declining

• A warm bath or shower 60–90 minutes before bed — this sounds counterintuitive but it works. The warm water raises your skin temperature, and when you get out, your core body temperature drops rapidly, triggering the sleep-onset signal your brain is looking for

• No alcohol after 7pm — alcohol feels sedating but it fragments sleep architecture, suppresses REM sleep, and worsens night sweats significantly. If sleep is your goal, this is one of the highest-impact changes you can make

Supplements that have evidence behind them

Always check with your healthcare provider before starting any supplement, especially if you are on medication. These are the ones I find most useful clinically at this stage:

• Magnesium glycinate — 200–400mg, 30–60 minutes before bed. This is my first recommendation for almost every client with disrupted sleep. Magnesium supports GABA — your brain’s main calming neurotransmitter — and helps lower cortisol. Glycinate is the most absorbable and gentlest form on digestion. Take it with a small amount of food

• L-theanine — 100–200mg, taken with magnesium before bed. An amino acid found naturally in green tea that promotes relaxed alertness and supports sleep quality without sedation. Particularly useful for the “wired but tired” feeling that is so common in perimenopause

• Ashwagandha (KSM-66 form) — 300–600mg, taken in the evening. An adaptogenic herb with strong evidence for reducing cortisol, improving sleep quality, and supporting the HPA axis — the stress-hormone system that is often dysregulated in perimenopause. Give it 4–6 weeks to show its full effect. Check with your provider if you have thyroid conditions

• Melatonin — 0.5–1mg, 60 minutes before your target sleep time. Note the dose — most over-the-counter melatonin is far too high (3–10mg). Research consistently shows lower doses are more effective for sleep onset, and high doses can actually disrupt your natural melatonin rhythm over time. Start at 0.5mg and only increase if needed

📚 RESOURCES WORTH BOOKMARKING

These are tools and trackers I recommend to clients — free or low cost, genuinely useful:

Tracking your sleep:

• Oura Ring — the most accurate wearable for sleep staging, HRV, and temperature tracking. Particularly useful for spotting the nights your temperature spikes with a hot flash even if you didn’t fully wake. Not cheap but worth it if sleep is a significant issue

• Whoop — subscription-based, strong on recovery and HRV data, good for spotting patterns over weeks and months

• Free option: Sleep Cycle app — uses your phone’s microphone to track sleep phases and wake-up quality. Not as accurate as a wearable but useful for spotting patterns without spending anything

Understanding your hormones and sleep:

• “The Menopause Brain” by Dr. Lisa Mosconi — the most accessible, science-backed book on what estrogen decline does to the brain, including sleep. Written by a neuroscientist who researches this specifically. Highly recommend

• “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker — the foundational sleep science book. Read alongside Mosconi for the full picture

For tracking food, mood, and sleep together:

• Bearable app — specifically designed for symptom tracking across multiple categories including mood, sleep, food, and energy. Free version is genuinely good. Allows you to spot correlations across weeks of data

• Clue or Natural Cycles — if you are still cycling, these apps track cycle phase alongside symptoms and can help you identify whether your worst sleep clusters in a specific hormonal window

If you want to go deeper on the HRT conversation for sleep:

• The Menopause Society (menopause.org) — the most credible, up-to-date resource on hormone therapy evidence. Their position statements are written for patients as well as clinicians

• Balance Menopause (balance-menopause.com) — Dr. Louise Newson’s UK-based resource. Excellent evidence-based content on sleep, HRT, and perimenopause specifically. Free symptom checker and downloadable resources

⚡ THIS WEEK’S ACTION STEP

Tonight, take magnesium glycinate 30–60 minutes before bed — 200mg is a good starting dose to begin with. If you don’t have it yet, order it today and in the meantime dim your lights and put your phone face down by 9:30pm. One intervention, tonight. Track how you feel on waking tomorrow and add it to your sleep diary.

🔬 SCIENCE SPOTLIGHT

A 2023 meta-analysis reviewed 19 randomised controlled trials on magnesium supplementation and sleep quality. It found that magnesium significantly improved sleep onset, sleep duration, and sleep efficiency — with the strongest effects seen in older adults and people with baseline magnesium deficiency, which as we know is extremely common in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women.

The mechanism is direct: magnesium regulates GABA receptors in the brain — the same receptors targeted by many pharmaceutical sleep aids — and also suppresses the HPA axis, reducing the cortisol that keeps you wired at 3am. It additionally helps regulate core body temperature, which as we covered in the free section is one of the primary drivers of night waking at this stage.

Takeaway: Magnesium glycinate is not a wellness trend. It is one of the most evidence-backed, low-risk sleep interventions available, and most women at this stage are deficient in it.

💛 CHANTAL’S CLIENT INSIGHT

One of my clients came to me at 53, postmenopausal, waking consistently between 2 and 4am and unable to get back to sleep. She had tried melatonin , 5mg, which is a common over-the-counter dose, and felt it made no difference. She was exhausted, frustrated, and beginning to dread going to bed.

We made three changes: dropped her melatonin to 0.5mg taken 60 minutes before her target sleep time, added magnesium glycinate at 300mg alongside it, and she committed to no screens and dimmed lights from 9:30pm. We also dropped the glass of wine she’d been having to “help her relax” — which, as we know, was doing the opposite.

Within ten days she was waking once instead of three times. Within three weeks she was sleeping through most nights. She told me: “I thought I just needed more wine and more willpower. Turns out I needed less of both and more magnesium.”

Your sleep can change. Sometimes faster than you’d expect.

📅 THIS IS WEEK 4 — YOUR MONTH 1 Q&A IS THIS WEEK

This is your final newsletter of Month 1 — and your live Q&A is happening this week. Bring your sleep questions, your tracking observations, anything from the past four weeks that you want to dig into. I’ll be there live to answer in real time.

Your Month 1 Worksheet PDF is also available to download now — it covers all four weeks of tracking tools in one place.

Download your Month 1 Worksheet

Want to go even deeper with personalised support? I work with a small number of 1:1 clients each month to build a plan tailored specifically to your hormones, history, and lifestyle.
Book a discovery session →

This episode is sponsored by IM8 Multivitamins : 3rd party tested and NSF approved! Get 10% off herehttps://www.im8health.com/CyclesWellness10 

Lumen the most progressive metabolism switching tracker! Use code Cycleswellness for 20% off 

Check out my intro to Lumen on You Tube

Namawell the BEST cold press juicers , blender and milk makers , on the planet with the revolutionary J2 being the most amazing Bulk juicing champion. To get your Nama juicers and other machines at a discount, use code CHANTAL10 for 10% off! 

Want to add some extra nutrients to your morning routine? 

Check out @Nuzest EU /UK https://www.nuzest.co.uk/LIVELEANHEALTH Get 15% off with my code LIVELEANHEALTH (without worrying about customs) 

USA https://nuzest-usa.com/cycles Code 15% CYCLESWELLNESS 

Want to know about your body composition and health? Check out the HUME Pod, 99% DEXA accuracy at home https://www.humehealth.com/CHANTAL53458 Get 35% off 

In this conversation, we go far beyond the idea of “what diet should I follow?” and explore something much deeper: how to build a way of eating that truly supports you — physically, emotionally, socially and practically. Because no matter what dietary path you choose, whether it is fully raw, high raw, whole-food vegan, or simply a more plant-rich way of living, one thing is often overlooked: community matters. The people around us, the support we receive, and the examples we can lean on often make the difference between a short-term attempt and a lifestyle that actually feels sustainable. Chris and I speak about how to look at diet through the lens of nourishment rather than restriction. Is your diet giving you what you need? Is it energising you? Is it supporting your digestion, your mood, your movement, your joy? And where do supplements fit into that conversation — are they necessary, are they a “no-no,” or is the answer more nuanced? We also unpack some of the common misconceptions around the 80/10/10 diet, Dr Douglas Graham’s work, and the idea that raw vegan or fruit-based eating is extreme, impossible, or lacking. We talk about what people often misunderstand, what needs to be done properly, and why education and support are so important. Most of all, this episode is about inspiration. It is not about telling everyone they must be fully raw. It is not about dietary perfection. It is about inviting more plants onto the plate, building confidence with vegan food, and helping people feel excited rather than overwhelmed by the possibility of eating in a way that is more aligned with health, compassion and vitality. So whether you are fully raw, high raw, vegan, plant-curious, or simply looking for more colour, freshness and life in your meals, this conversation with Chris Kendall will give you plenty to think about — and hopefully, plenty of encouragement to keep building your own supportive, nourishing plant-based path. ABOUT CHRIS Chris Kendall is the founder of The Raw Advantage, where he shares raw vegan recipes, coaching, consultations, recipe books and programs designed to support people on raw, high-raw and plant-based lifestyles. His site lists resources including Raw Vegan Consultations, one-to-one consultations, groups, workshops and presentations, the Raw Vegan Lifestyle Success System, free recipes, recipe books and meal plans. Books and recipe resources: 101 Frickin Rawsome Recipes, 50 More Rawsome Recipes, TRA Retreat Treats, Naturally Rawsome Dressings, Naturally Rawsome Sauces eBook, Frickin Rawsome Pizza, Raw Truths: Exposing the Top 10 Myths Sabotaging Your Raw Food Journey, 21 Day Seasonal Raw Vegan Meal Plans, Rainbow Island Cleanse, and The Raw Fooders Winter Survival Guide. Coming soon: The Model Diet and the 80/10/10 Masterclass Learn more at https://therawadvantage.com Follow Chris www.youtube.com/user/ck1nsh www.linkedin.com/in/kendallchris www.facebook.com/tra.kendallchris www.twitter.com/#!/therawadvantage www.instagram.com/therawadvantage

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Where wellness meets real life

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By now you’ve started noticing patterns in your cycle and your symptoms — beautiful work, by the way. This week, let’s add one more layer: food and mood.

If you’ve noticed that some days you feel calm, clear, and steady, and other days you’re white-knuckling your way through a 3pm energy crash with a desperate craving for something sweet... I want you to know this isn’t a willpower problem. There’s real, documented physiology behind it.

The estrogen–blood sugar connection

Research has consistently shown that estrogens play a protective role in maintaining insulin sensitivity, and reviews note that estrogen optimizes insulin activity by enhancing glucose uptake and reducing insulin resistance — which is part of why premenopausal women tend to have greater insulin sensitivity than men of the same age.

As hormones shift in perimenopause, this protection becomes less stable. A large community-based cohort study tracking women through the menopause transition found that diabetes risk increased during the premenopausal-to-perimenopausal years, alongside measurable declines in insulin sensitivity and pancreatic β-cell function over time. Mechanistic research adds more detail: one population study found that estradiol levels were positively associated with both fasting glucose and HbA1c (a marker of average blood sugar over time), particularly in women approaching or past menopause. nih

Even within a single cycle, estrogen and glucose move together — one continuous glucose monitoring study found that blood glucose and food cravings shifted across menstrual cycle phases, tracking with the fact that estrogen is typically lowest during menstruation and highest around ovulation. As cycles become erratic in perimenopause, it makes sense that this steady rhythm gets disrupted too. PubMed Central

It’s not just blood sugar — cravings are real and documented

If you’ve noticed stronger cravings lately, you’re not imagining it. Research on the menstrual cycle has found that women experience increased cravings for sweets and carbohydrate-rich foods, along with more frequent emotional eating, during hormonally shifting phases of the cycle — and women generally prefer high-carbohydrate, sweet foods during the phases when progesterone is more dominant. One proposed mechanism is that carbohydrate-rich foods increase the availability of tryptophan, a precursor to serotonin, which may temporarily improve mood and emotional regulation — which is a pretty compassionate explanation for why we reach for the bread basket on a hard day. nih

Why tracking the two together helps

This is where it gets practical and genuinely useful: connecting what you eat with how you feel afterward — energy, mood, cravings, focus — turns vague “I feel off” days into a pattern you can actually see. Pair this with the cycle and symptom tracking you’ve already started. Over a week or two, you’ll likely start noticing things like: a slump that follows a low-protein lunch, or irritability creeping in after skipped meals.

What to jot down

• What you ate (roughly — no perfectionism needed)

• Mood and energy 1–2 hours later

• Any cravings, and what they were for

• Where you are in your cycle

A both/and note

None of this means cutting out carbs or fearing sugar, that’s not what the research supports, and restriction often backfires. It simply means understanding your own patterns so you can work with your body instead of feeling blindsided by it. If you’re managing diabetes risk, PCOS, or are on any related medications, definitely loop your provider in; blood sugar patterns in perimenopause are worth a real conversation with them, not just a lifestyle tweak.

This week’s gentle action step: For 5–7 days, jot down meals alongside mood and energy an hour or two later. Look for your pattern, not a generic rule.

You’re not imagining the crash. You finally have language ,and now data, for it.

With you in this,
Chantal

🌸 Feeling like you need more personalized support?
I offer 1:1 sessions where we dig into your specific symptoms, history, and what your body actually needs.

Book a session →

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work as well as your checklist

Subscribe now

Want more? Want to know HOW to solve the issue? How to talk to your doctor and what panels to ask for?

Become a Member of Cycles Wellness for only 9 Euro per month or 72 Euro a year , saving you 33% for high value, community building and support on your perimenopause and beyond, journey!

Your Food and Mood Protocol: What to Do Once You Start Seeing the Patterns

You’ve been tracking. You’re starting to see the connections. Now let’s turn that data into a system , one that works with your hormones instead of against them, keeps your blood sugar steady through the day, and stops the crash before it starts.

This is the exact framework I use with clients at every stage — perimenopause, the menopausal transition, and postmenopause. The blood sugar picture looks slightly different at each stage (more erratic and unpredictable in peri, more consistently flat but stubborn in post), but the protocol is the same.

THE PROTOCOL

Step 1: Identify your personal crash window

Before you change anything, look back at your tracking from this week. Ask yourself:

• What time of day does my energy reliably drop?

• What did I eat in the 2–3 hours before that crash?

• Was there a meal I skipped, or a gap longer than 4–5 hours between eating?

• Did a craving follow the crash — and what was it for?

Most women have a predictable crash window — usually mid-morning or mid-afternoon — that directly traces back to what happened at the meal before. Once you find yours, you have a target. Everything in this protocol is aimed at that window.

Step 2: Build every meal around this sequence

This is the single most impactful structural change you can make, and it costs nothing. Research from glucose scientist Jessie Inchauspe shows that eating food in this order at every meal reduces your post-meal glucose spike by up to 75% — without changing what you eat, only the order:

1. Vegetables first — eat all the vegetables on your plate before anything else

2. Protein and fat second — your legumes, tofu, tempeh, nuts, seeds, avocado

3. Carbohydrates and fruit last — whole grains, starchy vegetables, fruit

The fibre in vegetables forms a kind of mesh in your digestive tract that slows the absorption of glucose from the carbohydrates that follow. Your blood sugar rises more gently, your insulin response is smaller, and you stay steadier for longer. Do this at every meal this week and notice what happens to your crash window.

Step 3: Observe how you react to carbohydrates alone

Every carbohydrate source you eat will impact you differently. If you notice a persistent (over 2 hours) rise in glucose from your meal, or track your metabolic flexibility and you don’t see a switch between fat and carb burn and back, then maybe it is time to reconsider.. what carbs are you having? And should you have carbs with protein or fat alongside it? This is buffering. Here’s what it looks like in practice:

• Fruit on its own → spike and crash? Try fruit with almond butter or a handful of pumpkin seeds → observe if you have a slow and steady rise

• A grain alone → spike and crash? Maybe add avocado and notice within 2 hours → sustained energy

• A handful of dates as a snack → spike and crash? Dates with walnut halves → manageable perhaps?

The combination of fibre, protein, and fat slows gastric emptying and maybe you need this to feel more satiated long term, meaning glucose enters your bloodstream more slowly and your body has time to manage it without the emergency insulin surge that causes the crash. This is not metabolic reality for all women, but this is why we pay attention.

Step 4: The strategic 3pm snack — non-negotiable

If your crash window is mid-afternoon, the solution is not willpower at 3pm. It’s what you eat at lunch, and whether you have a strategic snack in place before the crash hits.

Do not wait until you’re desperate and reaching for whatever is closest. Instead, eat a small, intentional snack at around 3pm, before the crash arrives, built around protein and fat:

• 1 tablespoons of almond or peanut butter with celery sticks

• Hummus with raw vegetables

• Edamame with a pinch of sea salt

• A small tbsp of mixed nuts and a couple of squares of dark chocolate (85%+)

The goal is to keep blood sugar stable through the afternoon so you arrive at dinner calm and in control, not ravenous and reactive.

Step 5: Manage your morning cortisol window

Cortisol naturally peaks in the first 30–45 minutes after waking — this is normal and healthy. What’s not helpful is adding caffeine into that window, especially if you are stressed already. It amplifies the cortisol spike and raises blood sugar before you’ve eaten a single thing.

This matters more in perimenopause and postmenopause because cortisol and estrogen are in constant conversation. When cortisol is chronically elevated, which chronic stress, poor sleep, and blood sugar swings all contribute to, it further suppresses the already-declining estrogen and progesterone. Managing your morning cortisol is hormonal support, not just a coffee habit tweak.

The practice:

• Delay your first coffee by 60–90 minutes after waking

• Move your body for 10 minutes within 30 min of waking - use that glucose from the morning cortisol.

• Eat breakfast before or alongside your first coffee

• Make breakfast protein and fiber forward, aim for at least 20g of protein at your first meal. the beauty of plants is that you never skip the fiber even with the protein.

Step 6: Move after meals, even for 10 minutes

A 10-minute walk after eating is one of the most evidence-backed blood sugar interventions that exists, and you don’t need a gym, equipment, or a plan. Movement after eating causes your muscles to take up glucose directly, bypassing the need for insulin to do the job. This measurably flattens the post-meal glucose curve.

If you cannot walk, stand up and do light movement, washing up, tidying, anything that keeps you on your feet for the first 20 minutes after eating. Sitting still immediately after a meal is the worst thing you can do for post-meal glucose.

Step 7: Use your tracking to test, not to judge

Now that you have the protocol, use your food and mood diary as a testing tool. For each change you make, track:

• What I changed

• How my energy felt 2 hours later

• Whether the crash came, and how severe

• My mood score that afternoon

You are running a personal experiment with a sample size of one, yourself. Your data is more relevant to you than any general study, because it reflects your hormones, your body, and your life. Within 5–7 days of consistent tracking alongside these changes, most women start to see a clear picture of what works for them specifically.

What to expect and when:

Most women notice the afternoon crash easing within 3–5 days of eating in sequence and pairing carbohydrates with protein and fat. The morning clarity usually improves within a week of delaying coffee and eating protein at breakfast. The cravings, the desperate, urgent ones, typically reduce significantly within 10–14 days as blood sugar stabilises. They don’t disappear entirely, and they don’t need to. But they stop running the show.

⚡ THIS WEEK’S ACTION STEP

Tonight, decide what you are having for breakfast tomorrow. Make sure it includes 20g of protein, overnight oats with ground flaxseed, hemp seeds, and chia seeds, or a tofu scramble with black beans and vegetables. Set your coffee next to it, not before it. Eat first, then coffee. Just that one change, tomorrow morning. Track how you feel at 10am and compare it to your usual. That single data point is the beginning of your pattern.

🔬 SCIENCE SPOTLIGHT

A 2022 study found that the order in which food is consumed at a meal significantly affects post-meal glucose and insulin responses — independently of the total calories or macronutrients consumed. Participants who ate vegetables and protein before carbohydrates showed dramatically lower glucose spikes and smaller insulin surges than those who ate carbohydrates first, even when the meals were nutritionally identical.

This is particularly significant in perimenopause and postmenopause because of what happens downstream from every glucose spike: an insulin surge, followed by a cortisol response, followed by a drop that your brain reads as a genuine emergency, triggering cravings, irritability, and fatigue. Every spike adds to the cumulative inflammatory load, and estrogen’s natural buffering of that process is no longer as reliable as it once was.

The researchers noted the effect was consistent across body types, ages, and metabolic starting points, meaning this works regardless of where you’re starting from.

Takeaway: You don’t have to change what you eat to change how your blood sugar behaves. Start with the order, and build from there.

💛 CHANTAL’S CLIENT INSIGHT

One of my clients came to me at 47, in perimenopause, describing what she called “the 3pm monster.” Every afternoon, without fail, she became irritable, unfocused, and desperate for something sweet. She’d been managing it with willpower and feeling like she was failing every day she gave in.

When we looked at her food diary, the pattern was immediate: a light lunch at 12:30, usually a salad with very little protein, and then nothing until dinner at 7pm. A six-hour gap, a low-protein anchor, no afternoon snack. Her 3pm crash wasn’t a character flaw. It was a blood sugar event that had been scheduled into her day by her meal structure.

We made three changes: we added a protein source to her lunch (a tin of chickpeas or half a block of tofu), introduced a 3pm snack of almond butter and apple, and she started walking for ten minutes after lunch. That was it. No calorie counting, no restriction, nothing removed.

Within five days the 3pm monster was significantly quieter. Within two weeks it was essentially gone. She messaged me to say: “I thought I just had no self control in the afternoons. It turns out I was just genuinely running on empty.”

Your cravings are not a character flaw. They are feedback. And now you have the tools to answer them properly.

📅 MONTHLY EXTRAS REMINDER

Your Month 1 live Q&A and monthly video are coming later this month, I’ll be going through food, mood, blood sugar, and your tracking questions in real time. If there’s something specific you’re noticing in your own patterns that you want me to address, reply to this email. I read every one and I’ll make sure it gets covered.

Want to go even deeper with personalised support? I work with a small number of 1:1 clients each month to build a plan tailored specifically to your hormones, history, and lifestyle.
Book a discovery session →

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About Kiko

Kiko Miwa is a Japanese raw vegan chef, guide, interpreter, author, and the creator of a weekly raw vegan café in Kyoto.

Her journey into raw veganism began over 22 years ago following a series of serious health challenges while living abroad. After exploring conventional and alternative approaches to healing, she discovered the power of raw, plant-based nutrition—a path that transformed not only her physical health but also her relationship with food, nature, and herself.

Having lived in Japan, the United States, the Bahamas, Costa Rica, and France, Kiko brings a global perspective to wellness while remaining deeply rooted in Japanese values and culture. She is passionate about creating simple, beautiful, and nourishing recipes using whole, unprocessed ingredients that make healthy living enjoyable and accessible.

A former business and personal coach, Kiko stepped away from coaching with a promise to herself: she would return only after creating the kind of life she had always dreamed of. Today, she is living that dream and is passionate about helping others create lives filled with health, purpose, joy, and a deeper connection to nature.

Through her YouTube channel, podcast, writing, and café, Kiko shares practical insights on raw vegan living, longevity, mindful eating, and holistic well-being. She is the author of Namadō – My Raw Vegan Journey, which combines her personal story, practical guidance, and 10 signature recipes, and Namadō II – Raw Journey Through Ups and Downs, a more intimate reflection on the challenges, lessons, and practical wisdom she has gained over more than two decades of living the raw vegan lifestyle.

Kiko believes that food is a way of reconnecting with ourselves, each other, and the natural world. Her mission is to help others discover that a healthier, more joyful, and more peaceful life is possible.

• IG: https://www.instagram.com/namadokiko/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@namadokiko

• Website: https://nama.ovh/

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