What Every Woman Needs to Know About Midlife

#LeadandLift | Episode 148 | Bria Gadd

You are working hard. You are eating reasonably well. You are trying to get enough sleep. And still the weight is creeping up, the energy is crashing by 2pm, the brain fog is real, and your mood is doing things you cannot explain.

And then you go to the doctor for bloodwork and they look at you and say: "Everything looks fine."

But you know it is not fine. You feel it in your body every single day.

Here is what I want you to know: you are not imagining it. You are not lazy. You are not failing at health. Your body is going through one of the most significant transitions of your life, and almost nobody told you it was coming, what it would feel like, or what to actually do about it.

I recently sat down with Bria Gadd, health coach, certified personal trainer and host of the top 1% wellness podcast The Period Whisperer and this conversation changed how I think about my own body. Bria works with women to release weight, reclaim their energy and finally make sense of their hormones in pre and post menopause. What she shared in this episode is the kind of truth every woman over 35 deserves to hear.

Perimenopause Starts in Your Mid-30s, Not in Your 50s

Here is the first thing that will probably surprise you. Menopause is actually just one day. It is the milestone that occurs 365 days after your last period, that's the moment your ovaries officially retire. That is it. One day.

Everything leading up to that day, starting around age 35, is called perimenopause. And that is where most of the experience happens. Bria describes it beautifully as your body's reverse puberty.  The ovaries beginning their retirement process, which means your progesterone starts to decline, your estrogen becomes erratic, and eventually the adrenal glands and lean muscle tissue take over some of the hormone production.

This transition is not a malfunction. It is biology. But here is where it gets complicated.

Transitions require more energy. Think about any major life change such as moving, starting a business, having a baby. Those seasons demand more of you. Perimenopause is the same. The problem is that most women are entering this transition already running on empty.

Takeaway: Perimenopause is not a disease. It is a transition and how you experience it depends enormously on how much energy you have available going into it. 

Action: If you are over 35 and still have a cycle, you are likely already in perimenopause. Start paying attention to shifts in your sleep, your mood, your cycle and your weight. Awareness is the first step.

What Is Health Debt and Why It Is Making Your Symptoms Worse

This is the concept from this conversation that I cannot stop thinking about.

Bria uses a financial analogy that makes everything click. Imagine you were born with a massive trust fund of energy in your body. Every day, energy goes out through stress, illness, emotional labor, poor nutrition, disrupted sleep. And energy comes in through food, rest, joy, purpose and connection.

Health debt happens when your energy output consistently exceeds your energy input. Over years of over-giving, under-resting, skipping meals and carrying chronic stress, your account gets depleted. And then perimenopause arrives demanding a significant withdrawal and there is nothing left to draw from.

This is why your symptoms can feel so extreme. Bria explains that in her practice, most of the women who come to her struggling with weight gain, brain fog, exhaustion and mood shifts are not suffering primarily because of low sex hormones. They are suffering because of health debt. Their adrenals are overworked, their gut is compromised, their liver is congested, their thyroid has put the brakes on their metabolism.

The body, in it's extraordinary wisdom, then shifts into survival mode. It shuts down what it considers non-essential (disappearing libido and irregular periods). And it starts to conserve energy, for example the unexplained weight gain that will not budge no matter what you try.

Here is the part that breaks my heart a little. When the weight shows up, most of us do what we have always been taught: eat less and exercise more. But if your body is in survival mode, pushing harder is like pulling out a credit card you cannot pay off. You are spending energy you do not have, and the health debt gets worse. 

Takeaway: Working out when your body is in health debt is not helping. It is working against you. The body needs to be brought out of survival mode first. 

Action: Before you add more intensity to your workouts or restrict your eating further, ask yourself honestly: am I sleeping enough? Am I eating three balanced meals a day? Am I managing my stress? Start there first.

The Four Foundations That Rebuild Your Energy From the Ground Up

Bria calls these the kindergarten basics.  These are the fundamentals that must be in place before anything else can work. And I guarantee that as you read through these, at least one of them will make you go: "I know I need to work on that."

Sleep comes first. Not just getting into bed, but creating the conditions for real rest. A wind-down routine, a consistent sleep window, protecting those eight hours like they are your most important meeting of the day. Because they are.

Movement before fitness. There is a difference between functional movement, such as walking, stretching, yoga, rotating your spine, getting up from your desk and athletic training. Functional movement maintains your baseline health and keeps your body working well. Athletic training is a demand on your body that requires a reserve of energy. If you are in health debt, functional movement is where you need to be right now.

Three balanced meals every single day. I know the corporate women reading this right now just winced. You know who you are: breakfast at 7am, nothing until dinner at 7pm, and a lot of caffeine in between. Bria is direct about this: skipping meals disrupts your blood sugar, creates more cortisol, and signals to your brain that food is scarce. Your metabolism responds by slowing down. Eat breakfast within two hours of waking. Eat enough that it sustains you for four to five hours. Repeat.

And here is a personal note on this one.  I teach my kids that if they need to ask for something, they should wait until everyone has eaten. When blood sugar is low, the answer is always no. 

Stress management and joy are not luxuries. Cortisol is the biggest energy drain in the body. Chronic stress suppresses your sex hormone production, contributes to weight gain, and deepens health debt faster than almost anything else. You cannot out-supplement or out-exercise chronic stress. You need to actually move it through your body.  For example breath work, walking, journaling, whatever works for you. And you need to actively cultivate joy, because joy and purpose are what Bria calls 10x energy multipliers. They fill the account in a way nothing else can.

Takeaway: You cannot out-train or out-supplement a depleted body. The foundations of sleep, movement, nutrition, and stress management are where the healing happens. 

Action: Pick one of the four foundations above that you know needs attention. Just one. Commit to improving it this week. Small consistent shifts rebuild the account faster than dramatic overhauls you cannot sustain.

When the Basics Are Not Enough: Functional Lab Work Worth Knowing About

If you have addressed the foundations and you still do not feel like yourself, Bria recommends going deeper with functional lab work. This is different from the standard bloodwork your doctor runs at your annual checkup and it provides a much more complete picture of what is actually happening inside your body.

The three tests Bria recommends most often are the Dutch Test, which is a comprehensive dried urine test that shows your full hormonal profile including adrenal hormones and how your liver is processing those hormones. The GI Map, which is a stool test that reveals whether you are actually breaking down and absorbing your nutrients because you can eat 100 grams of protein a day and get none of it if your gut is not functioning well. And a full thyroid panel, which shows whether your metabolism has been intentionally slowed down by a body in survival mode.

These tests can reveal the real root causes behind symptoms that your doctor has told you are "normal" and give you a roadmap for actually addressing them.

Takeaway: "Everything looks fine" on standard bloodwork does not mean everything is fine. Functional lab work shows you what is actually happening at the root. 

Action: Search for a functional medicine practitioner or health coach who runs Dutch Testing or GI Map analysis. Start by asking your current doctor about a full thyroid panel including T3 and reverse T3.

Perimenopause Is Not the Enemy, It's the Wake-Up Call

Here is the reframe that Bria left us with and it is the one I want you to carry with you.

Perimenopause is the gift you did not want but desperately need.

This transition shines a light on everything in your body that has been quietly struggling. The gut issues you have been managing. The stress you have been white-knuckling through. The sleep you have been sacrificing for years. The meals you have been skipping. It surfaces all of it, not to punish you, but to give you the opportunity to address it while you still have the decades ahead of you to benefit from doing so.

Your great grandmother lived with full energy well into her 90s. That is available to you too. But it requires becoming the CEO of your body. Learning to read the messages it sends. Giving it what it actually needs instead of what productivity culture told you it could survive on.

You are not falling apart. You are being called to lead differently, starting with yourself.

Links mentioned in this episode: 

• Bria Gadd Facebook
• Bria Gadd Instagram
•  Bria Gadd Website
• Bria Gadd TikTok
• Bria Gadd YouTube
• Bria Gadd Podcast

Links mentioned in this episode: 

• Chabidaye Facebook
• Chabidaye Instagram
• Chabidaye LinkedIn
• Chabidaye Website