Kylie: [00:00:00] Welcome back to episode of the Hormone Hub Podcast, where we talk all things perimenopause, menopause, and have the conversations no one else is having. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode. 

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Kylie: Hello, hello, ladies. It is Kylie Pinwill, your host of the Hormone Hub podcast. And today we are talking about our feelings. We’re talking about anger and rage and feeling snappy and feeling stressed and the big things. I’ve had a lot of emails. I’ve had a lot of messages, a lot of responses to an email I sent out last week about feeling stressed and how cortisol, shows up in our body and starts messing with our health and, just hearing more and more stories of women who are flying off the handle, who are snapping or, getting angry over little things that never [00:01:00] would have bothered them before.

Kylie: And I think, when we think angry thoughts, we feel angry. And then, when we’re feeling a bit irritated or feeling a bit off kilter, every sort of angry thought stacks on top of the next. And before we know it, we’re being irrational in the way we respond to people and the way we respond to life.

Kylie: We sort of tend to then kind of perpetuate that story in our heads. So we make up the meaning of everything inside our own mind. If we’re feeling angry, we start believing in the story that’s made up. Or it might be, for you, it might not be anger.

Kylie: It might be, this little voice saying, you’re not enough. You’re not worthy enough. We start comparing ourselves to other people and we see ourselves as smaller or less than. So yeah, there’s just a lot of negative self talk around at the moment, and I don’t know if Mother’s Day triggered this for a lot of people, but around parenting, around [00:02:00] work it’s just that internal chatter. So, that, that holds us back and creates that stress response. 

Kylie: We might be feeling angry. We might be feeling really tired. We might be feeling overwhelmed, anxious, we might have lost that enjoyment of things that normally light us up. So whether that’s spending time with our kids or our partners or our loved ones, one of my clients said to me, it’s just so hard.

Kylie: It feels so hard right now. And I just want to acknowledge that if you are feeling this way right now, it can feel overwhelming. And you know, I’m right there with you. I know It feels like there’s not much you can do because life is busy and you can’t just stop. You’re, you’re Family relies on you, your partner or your parents rely on you, your business, your workplace relies on you, your bills [00:03:00] rely on you.

Kylie: So I want you to take a breath for a sec and imagine, how would life be or how different would your life be if you had more energy right now, if you felt had more mental clarity right now, instead of feeling overwhelmed, if you were able to tap into feeling more positive and in a better mood right now.

Kylie: If your concentration was better and your ability to focus and finish things was better or, and you had the energy to take care of yourself and feel good and look good. And I know from just working with women and my experience that I’ve had personally and with others, it’s makes a big difference.

Kylie: So life can be an emotional rollercoaster, definitely filled with ups and downs. And for women who do own their own business, it’s with you, wherever you go. [00:04:00] So just coming back from our beautiful retreat in Bali, I was still working while I was away and we had one client who came and she came with a lot of anger, and she carried that anger.

Kylie: And, the more I got to know her, the more I realised she’d been carrying that anger, for a long time. But definitely, when we step back, how we choose to balance our emotions and how we choose to put boundaries in place, definitely impacts the quality of life, our own personal quality of life, you know, work challenges are inevitable.

Kylie: Family challenges are inevitable. It’s going to happen. We might have deadlines. We might have projects that’s taken longer. We might have expenses that we didn’t see coming. And occasionally these kind of stresses and things like that can be good. It gives us the push we need to get things done, but they shouldn’t be constant [00:05:00] and, we shouldn’t be feeling stressed about everything going right. or going wrong, but what we want to do is we want to keep our head in the game for when things do get tough. We don’t let things play on our mind or we don’t immediately go to the worst case scenario. Because our mind is truly the most important tool that we have for our health. Our productivity, our sanity, and how we use our mind impacts everything we do.

Kylie: So avoiding unnecessary overthinking is the key for us to maintain our sanity during this time. So if you have three or more of these things, I want you to consider a wake up call to start taking better care of yourself. First thing, if you are always feeling stressed, if you sort of say, oh, things will settle down once this project’s over, or things [00:06:00] will settle down once, we’ve moved house or things will settle down once, whatever X, Y, Z is, but actually things never settle down.

Kylie: You feel overstretched and overwhelmed. You’re easily set off and irritable and your mind has a million things to do. Okay. So that’s the first one. It’s feeling constantly overstressed. The second one is feeling constantly tired. We tend to think of burnout when we’re bedridden. But really, that’s the very end stage of burnout if you don’t do something about it. Burning out feels like constant tiredness that’s not relieved by sleep or by a weekend away. You doing the bare minimum at work, you just sort of scraping by. And you stop taking care of yourself.

Kylie: You stop doing the things you love. Maybe you’ve stopped exercising or socialising or, catching up with friends who make you feel good or eating well, low mood. Like if you are [00:07:00] feeling low or you’re feeling a bit sour. Or maybe you’re crying or you’re feeling emotional or maybe, everything that your partner or your family does annoys you, you know, there’s more negative self talk.

Kylie: You’ve lost that mode, you lost your mojo basically. So that’s number three is that low mood. Number four is weight gain. That constant feeling of stress and that chronic cortisol overload. disrupts the way our hormones control our weight. So even if we’re eating the same, if you’ve noticed belly fat, or that muffin top, we start dressing in grumpy clothes to cover up because we don’t feel confident, the way we look, it’s time to pay attention to that.

Kylie: And the fifth thing to be aware of is brain fog. So if you don’t have the brain power or the concentration to work through things that normally you’d be on top of, and you need distractions like your phone [00:08:00] or flicking, scrolling through social media, this shows instantly that your productivity has taken a hit, which makes you feel more overwhelmed.

Hormone Hub episode is sponsored by our free hormone help call book in your call today with one of our experienced advisors, and we’ll give you some clarity around what’s causing your symptoms and some simple steps you can use straight away to improve your menopause experience. If you’re ready to take the next step book in a call and find out more about how we can help you have a smoother transition through perimenopause and menopause, let us help you balance out your hormones, reset your metabolism, and get your confidence back so you can live the life you’re meant to.

The link with all the details is in our show notes or over at kyliepinwill.com /hormone help call. 

Kylie: Okay, so they’re the five key warning signals, [00:09:00] and if you’re feeling three or more of these, we need to shift things up. There’s a lot of things that we can do. We can upgrade our physical energy and well being upgrade your mental well being. And when we do these two things, we upgrade all areas of our life, which is easier said than done.

Kylie: And we’ll get to what we can do in a sec. But if you are stressed to the max, if you’re feeling like you’re at the end of your rope, you’re running on fumes, and you tell yourself, after this month, things will settle down. Actually, just check in how long you’ve been saying that for. If you’ve been saying that for the last five, six, seven, eight months, it’s not going to settle down. So instead of waiting for life to settle, there’s a lot that needs attention internally that we can pay attention to, to reduce stress, anxiety, worry, and overwhelm. 

Kylie: If you have been considering working with me this is what we do. So rather than kind of go, on the [00:10:00] ins and outs of the hormone code program. I thought I’d just share some of the results and what it looks like for women. Once we start upgrading different areas of your life and paying attention. I had one client, she lost three dress sizes. Okay. She got her energy back. She now feels like she’s back working optimally at work. She’s much better at home and her whole body shape changed. Another lady who, has her own business, she feels like she tripled her energy and it tripled the impact it does on her business. She’s back enjoying her business, running her business again. Another lady lost weight.

Kylie: She’s down to a size 12. She said she’s feeling calmer with her kids, taking on more business, because she’s got more energy to do that. And she feels confident in herself. Another client, no longer has panic attacks or anxiety. Another client feels that [00:11:00] she’s on the right path because she’s given up smoking and drinking.

Kylie: Another client was ready to quit her high pressure job because of the stress, but now, she’s eased back into it. And, she’s back doing what she loves. And this is just a few examples. All of these were busy women, high pressure jobs, mums, and they knew they needed a predictable plan and a high level of support, which is what we offer in the Hormone Code Program.

Kylie: So this is the only way to work with me, one on one. And if you would like to know exactly what’s included in the Hormone Code Program, like how I monitor your progress, your metabolism, your stress figures, stress triggers, we’ll put the link to that in the show notes. So it’s the Hormone Code Program, and that is how you can work with me.

Kylie: All right. In the meantime, I’m just going to give you some tips to what you can do right [00:12:00] now to prevent stress, tipping you over the edge. First up, we want to turn off your notifications. When I talk to clients about their work, their daily communications, the most common response is, you know, I feel like I have to respond.

Kylie: And I think almost everyone who is in business or, in a, in a high pressure job has struggled with this, but being available to absolutely everyone all the time doesn’t make us productive. It makes us more distractive, distracted. Definitely give yourself some boundaries, allow yourself at least two hours before bedtime when you’re not checking notifications. So this gives you time to wind down. Put your mind at ease, and it helps put in some boundaries for that as well. 

Kylie: My next tip is get it out of your head. So for those who struggle with stress and anxiety, getting things out of your head before you go to bed is exactly what you need. Write down the [00:13:00] plan the night before, before you go to sleep or, just write a list of everything. Get it out of your head. If you are waking up in three o’clock in the morning with what I call busy brain, just write down all of those things that are going on in a loop in your head.

Kylie: It doesn’t have to be a to do list, but it gets it out of your head and gets it onto paper. 

Kylie: The next one is remind yourself that you can handle whatever comes your way. Most of the time we’re our own worst enemies. Particularly if we are trying to overcome anxiety or overcome imposter syndrome, or, we’ve lost our confidence.

Kylie: When we feel like this, we get stuck in a mental loop, and we have to remind ourselves that we’ve handled situations like this before, and we can do it again. When we’re in this state of overthinking or anxiety, it’s the thought of what might happen, which is our biggest thing. Is that [00:14:00] thing actually likely to happen? Nine times out of 10? No, it’s not. But if we feel that we’ve got that underlying anxiety, you know, addressing it early on can be the key.

Kylie: The next tip is to eat in a way that’s going to reduce your cortisol. So as much as stress can feel like it’s overwhelming and it’s out of our control, there’s plenty that is within our control that we can do to reduce our cortisol response.

Kylie: Look at what we can add into our diet. Things like starchy veggies, fruits, whole grains, will help our body relax. Having those foods at the dinner can definitely help with sleep that night. We want to, could be, you know, tempting to go for the carby, the sugary sort of foods, just to pick us up, but that is going to drain our energy.

Kylie: So we really want to make sure that we are supporting that cortisol response. So this is [00:15:00] not the time in your life to go cutting your veggies and cutting your good quality carbs. Processed carbs, yes. Good quality carbs, no. And then what we want to do is make sure that we are doing what we can to support your sleep.

Kylie: So too much high cortisol levels during the day, high cortisol levels at night are going to impact our body’s ability to produce melatonin, which is our sleep hormone. So we want to make sure that we are not skipping any meals. We want to avoid caffeine particularly if you’re sensitive after midday.

Kylie: And if you are sensitive to caffeine or prone to anxiety, try cutting out caffeine for just four weeks and see what a difference it makes. Making healthier food choices is really essential, repairing those imbalances that lead to that chronic stress and anxiety.

Kylie: It can feel hard, but get organised, cook your meals at home, [00:16:00] bring leftovers for lunch, and then this just cuts down your takeaway foods and eating out, avoiding alcohol. So there’s a lot of women out there. And, you know, I have also been guilty at times of self medicating with a glass of wine.

Kylie: It’s going to disrupt our sleep. It’s not going to help our cortisol levels. Likewise, sugar. It’s going to cause our energy and our mood to go up and down like a roller coaster. We really need to look at how we can best take care of that cortisol response. So I hope today was sort of helpful. You know, with sort of anger, if you’re feeling irritable, if you’re feeling snappy, it’s linked back to stress and, we really want to support that cortisol response, support that stress response. So we feel calmer and, much more in control. So if you would like some help and you would like to work [00:17:00] with me this is what I do.

Kylie: It’s a total holistic approach. We look at, of course, nutrition, but we also look at how we can better manage that stress response as well. All right, my loves be kind to yourself, take care, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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Thank you for taking the time to listen today. You can head on over to the show notes at kyliepinwill.com/podcast where you’ll find all the links. Now, before we go, it would mean the world to me if you’d head on over to your favorite podcast channel, subscribe and leave a review. Don’t forget to share it with your friends.

Then stay tuned for next week’s episode and I can’t wait to see you then.