#151: Having the Best Perimenopause and Menopause Experience

  Do you feel like menopause or perimenopause or just even the reality of it is like a death sentence? I know what you’re talking about because I actually thought that too, and I’m so glad that I didn’t listen to all of those things because I have lost 50 pounds and kept that off all during perimenopause.

And I don’t include any of those crazy things like counting calories and tracking steps, which we know doesn’t really work long term. If you can relate to all of this, welcome to the club. I’m so glad you’re here at this podcast and let’s dive into what to expect perimenopause and postmenopausal life.

By listening to this episode, you’re going to be able to take away how you can truly be the master of this experience. All right, are you ready? My name is Dara Tomasson and this is the Love Yourself Thin Podcast, episode 151, weight loss and perimenopause and postmenopause. I’m focusing on sharing the wins of what happens in the lives of those members who are in the program. We’re going to be talking about Ruth, who is a member, I actually started working with her one on one when I had my one on one practice and it was so life changing for her and her relationships with her family. She is 73 years old and she’s babysitting her two month and four month old great grandkids.

Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that what we’ve all wanted? We all want to have that health. She’s able to contribute to the lives of these sweet grandchildren, great grandchildren, but she’s also able to have such a connection with her kids, her grandkids.

She’s waking up every morning knowing that she’s not out to pasture, that she has so much wisdom. She has so much that she can contribute and she’s truly living a life. I’m so happy for all of her family members. They have this amazing matriarch and she’s able to show up in such a way.

So thrilled for her and for all those family members that are benefiting from her health and her strength and her wisdom. Worksheet we will see. It gives you some clarity and these are some misunderstandings and misconceptions about menopause that I didn’t understand and I’m so glad that I’ve been able to figure it out.

But the one thing I really want to emphasize, and this is so important, I am not an expert on menopause. I am not an expert on fertility, even though I’ve had five children. I can tell you I can answer any problem. I can solve anything, not because I have to be the expert, because none of us can be experts.

My son right now is going through some challenges. We’re not sure if he had a concussion. We’re pretty sure he didn’t, but he’s been playing at these basketball tournaments and two basketball tournaments in a row he ended up throwing up afterwards after playing, like severely throwing up and it’s pretty scary.

He’s only 12. We’ve been going to a specialist today. He’s getting a CT scan and we’re just working through all the different possibilities.

It is impossible for us to be everything and to do everything. And it’s really challenging nowadays because We think we can just Google it. We have so much information at our fingertips, and so it makes it really hard for us to not be the expert thinking I can just Google that and I can just be better at that.

We bring in this perfectionism that we learned as little girls and think I can just work harder. I’ve heard that a lot lately in my program. I should just do more of that thing. Like one of my clients yesterday was saying how she has six times a day that she touches base.

Maybe I should do it at 10. And I was like no. Instead of doing it more, how about when we are doing it more meaningfully, so purposely, so taking the deep breaths and doing those things. When we talk about a new phase of our life. This could be retirement. This could be if we wanted to start being a quilt teacher or when I was a school teacher thinking, do I even know what I’m doing?

Being a parent, same thing. I thought, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m just going to figure it out. And this is what we have to give ourselves that same grace of being willing just to figure it out and giving ourselves some time just to see what it’s going to look like.

But this is the most comforting, most amazing news of all. I know, dramatic pause. I love it. But you can Google. details. In fact, I did that. I Googled a lot of really great details for those watching the pod, listening to the podcast, there’s the menopause and weight loss nitty gritty book, number one, two, and three.

I have an amazing menopause class and you can get it for free. I have the subscription sorry, I’ll have the link below. It was a three week menopause class that I did. It was so good. Then in between the three weeks I had these great worksheets. You can go get that class. And since you’re a podcast listener, you can get it for free.

That’s one of the benefits of being here. You can learn a lot about that. It’s awesome. Now we have chat GPT, we have YouTube, we have all these things. What I did is I did all the research and then I condensed it. It makes it more manageable and understandable. I have my way of describing things and understanding things.

This is the part where you can’t Google. You can’t Google how to get. The top four essentials that we all need to do to have a healthy, balanced life. We all need to get between seven and nine hours of sleep. We all need to eat healthy and balanced food. We all need to get regular exercise. We all need to reduce and mitigate stress.

Whether you’re five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, or you’re 15, you’re 50 or 65, 95. We all have to have those four top essentials. As a life coach I have tools that go into your brain and say, Why am I not getting those seven to nine hours of sleep? Why am I staying up late scrolling? Why am I binge watching Netflix and staying up so late?

Why am I thinking it’s more important in the moment to get that extra dopamine hit or to get the numbing out effect to literally numb ourselves. so that we don’t sleep. What is that? Those tools go and they explore and they find out the reasons. Eating healthy and balanced food, we all know for the most part, what’s healthy and what’s not.

I have been following this one person on Instagram. It’s shocking and amazing to me.

So there’s this woman on Instagram and she blows my mind. I feel like she’s on her own reality TV show and she talks about how important the carnivore diet is and how that is the most amazing thing. That’s going to save you. Then today she was talking about how if a weight loss exercise guru tells you have to have carbs, that person is a liar and they’re terrible.

Then 20 minutes later, I’m scrolling and there is this woman who is a fitness expert. She runs marathons. She’s so strong and muscular. She’s telling everyone else who wants to listen to her, that the doctor who started the carnivore diet is now retracting all the things that he said about it.

No wonder it’s so confusing. Even when we Google Certain aspects of menopause or weight loss or relationships or how to organize your quilting studio, right? We can Google all of those things and we’re going to have 500, 1000, 2000, 50, 000 different answers and everyone is claiming that their solution is the best.

This is where the best news comes in. You are your own unique person. You come from different, we all have different families. Even with my three brothers and my two sisters, we all lived in the same house, have the same parents, but we all have very different memories and takeaways from living with those people.

Isn’t that wild? My sister, I’m so excited she’s coming finally. I’ve lived here for seven years and she’s coming today. We even slept in the same room for most of our lives and we are such different people and we have very different perspectives and ways of describing the way we grew up.

Isn’t that so it’s so think about it. So if we’re Googling these answers about menopause and perimenopause or trying to get pregnant or, trying to launch a quilting business or whatever that is, we’re going to have all these experts, but they didn’t have your mom. They didn’t have your economic situation.

They didn’t have your brain. the lens in which you looked at your life. They can give you suggestions, but when it comes down to it from really truly getting your own results, it has to come from you. I’m in this Instagram class. It’s really challenging for me because.

I don’t really know how to do it very well right now. Been trying lots of different things and I’m feeling frustrated. But my goal is to keep finding people and keep getting the message out.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that we have to figure out tools and strategies and ways that work for us, our own uniqueness. If we keep Googling all these answers and trying to fit ourselves like a round peg into a square hole, it’s never going to jive. It’s never going to And so when you think that for example, perimenopause and menopause is going to be a terrible thing.

Then your brain is going to go towards it and find it. Getting regular exercise, what’s keeping you from regular exercise? Then reducing and mitigating stress. What is keeping you? When you go and register and take my class, honestly, it’s amazing. What I, one of the things that I love the most is there are 12 main setbacks for having a positive, healthy menopause relationship.

One of them is we actually do lose muscle mass as we get older. Even if you did the science of that. If I don’t have the same level of muscle mass, my body doesn’t burn the same amount of fat when I’m sitting. I have it, I do have a little formula over on my, in the class, but let’s say you know basically how it works if you gain like 1.

8 pounds a month if you don’t change the way you’re eating or build up the muscle. That’s why they talk a lot about protein because we actually need to have more protein to help build our muscle because we’re losing it. That’s why they talk about weightlifting, how important that is because we are losing that.

Our sitting resting rate, we’re not using up as many calories. We actually do gain like it’s a, it’s legitimate. It’s not just one of those wives tales on the internet. Another one that we, I, and so in this course that I have, you can then I describe the problem and then I talk about the obstacles and then I offer you strategies on how to overcome them.

One of the other strategy obstacles we have is we are in a sandwich generation. So we’ve got kids that we’re still raising. Some of us are being grandmas now. Raising some kids at home and taking care of our older parents. We’ve never been in a situation like that before. We’re learning all these new things and we’re having different roles put on us and we need to navigate all of that.

I would, if you are feeling concerned and if you’re feeling fearful and scared of this, I’d highly recommend it. There’s no way I could do any of that in a. It’s a 20 minute podcast episode. The other thing that’s going to be really helpful is when you get the first book when you take the class for free, the second and third are in my program.

In the, in this month of June that I’m creating this podcast, we are taking a deep dive into menopause and into our relationship and really looking at how do we build self confidence and trust that we will show up and go to sleep and have seven to nine hours and eat a healthy and more balanced diet and getting more exercise and reducing and mitigating stress.

Thanks. Because those are the top four essentials, no matter what age you are, no matter what you’re doing in life. I just wanted to share some of these thoughts with you because as I’ve been doing this Instagram class and as I’ve been really focusing on what my message is, what do I really want to share with people?

It’s really helped solidify that. We all have a human brain and we all have different life experiences and it’s hard to navigate these roads. But when you have, just like with Luke Skywalker, he, or with Harry Potter or with Bilbo Baggins, they had this desire to change and to fulfill their destiny, but they didn’t know how to do it.

They needed Dumbledore, and they needed Yoda, and they needed Gandalf. They needed this wise, experienced person to help them. And that is my role. I am the guide. I’ve lost weight. I keep it off. I do the mental work. I create my own systems and my own ability to solve that. I’m an expert at those tools.

I help women learn how to access their own wisdom and their own power because we all have it within us. That is my goal. That is what happens. So that’s what you can expect to happen when you join my membership. You will get, it’s very disappointing for some women because they think, no, just give me the formula and I’ll just plug and play.

That doesn’t work because the only way to get your own perfect formula is from you. Because you have to become your own expert. I love this so much and I am so happy that you’re here. I am, I will never forget when I found my first life coaching podcast I just couldn’t get enough of it. It was like I had been trying to figure out this journey without a light, a flashlight.

The podcast was like the flashlight. And then when I actually joined, this was Jodi Moore’s program. So I joined and so I was able to get some help with her. I was able to see more coaching. I was able to see her coaching other people. I was able to see how much it changed. Like listening to it was amazing, but then actually seeing the transformation in people and in myself applying it was like the next level.

That’s what I’m offering. It’s just next level. If you want that, and if you are ready to let yourself be your own, find your own inner wisdom, because that’s going to be that’s the only way you get permanent change is when you create those patterns for yourself.

Take care, everyone. It’s been so much fun. I cannot wait for you to keep listening and keep learning and keep growing. This is the greatest gift you’re giving yourself because your brain is your best investment always. All right. I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye bye.

If you want more help with learning about your body and how it’s changing, Through menopause, perimenopause, through whatever it is, my program is focused on helping you truly become your own best expert. So as we go through June, uh, working on our menopause, perimenopause experiences, July, we’re focusing on becoming our own bestie, July and August, actually, with our summertime Um, challenge and then in August, we’re really diving into how to lose the physical weight when you focus so much on the mental.

I have an incredible program for that coming in August. So there’s so much to look forward to. You truly can make your own transformation and I love helping you find that inner knowledge and wisdom that’s just waiting for you to unlock. So that you can create permanent change for yourself.