197: Menopause 101 (For All Ages)

Do you feel like menopause? Whether you’re in it or anticipating it freaks you out. This is the perfect episode for you to listen to. My name is Dara Tomasson, and this is the Quilters Coach Podcast, episode 197, “Menopause 1 0 1 For All Ages.” 

Okay. I did not understand menopause, and we have some experts that say that menopause is puberty in reverse. And this episode’s gonna dispel all sorts of myths and rumors. 

And I honestly thought that a period was just a big, bloody piece of poop. I think there’s a lot of really crazy ideas and concepts and misunderstanding of menopause even for the women that are in menopause.

So make sure that you come and keep listening to this episode because we are gonna really dive into. All things’ menopause and open up this conversation so that you don’t feel so scared. All right, so who’s in? 

But before we dive into it, I wanted to share, I always love to share wins inside my membership because I love how the members are just living their life. They’re actually living and they’re doing the things, and it’s really fun to see what happens in their life when they do that. 

So this one is so fascinating. So it was one of my, one of the members, of course, in the membership and she’s at a retreat. And in the retreat, she hasn’t really gone to any retreats since before Covid, she went to one or two, but it just feels.

So different than how her other retreats were in the past, and she’s been working with me since 2020 and now it’s like March of 2025. So she’s been in my world and learning about all the life coaching tools and slowing down and thinking about your thinking and all of that for a while, and she’s lost over 70 pounds really improved her relationship with her spouse, her kids.

And so it was, it’s been really interesting for her to go to this retreat and this, it’s a very familiar experience of being in a retreat with these different ladies. But the experience of being the new version of her like it’s almost like she’s unrecognizable. And one of the things that she realized is how much, and how surprised she was by how much the women were doing online shopping. So a consumption, how they were really obsessing about food and also complaining about spouses. 

When we talk about, I talk about being a weight loss coach, but really it’s just we’re over consuming things. We’re having more than what our body needs and we’re spending more time, it can be with food, it can be with thinking, it could be with shopping, it could be with scrolling. Also just the way they’re using their time. And it’s not that she was judging these ladies, she was just really surprised. And one of the things that was surprising was that she used to be like that.

Because she has these new tools and it slows things down, she realizes how far she’s come and it’s very exciting for her. So I wanted to share that win because at 61, 62. It’s just cool to watch how much she’s changed and evolved and it’s possible for anyone with these tools.

 Let’s go into menopause and just like I gave that kind of gross example, a lot of people have a lot of really miss the gross example of when I was a little girl, what I thought that periods were. We have that same misunderstanding about menopause. Now, the very first thing is that our body is going through changes.

I used to teach sex ed, which was very interesting. Talked about how our bodies change and what to expect.

And the funniest part was that I would tell the students, they could write me any question and it was completely anonymous. What’s funny? I knew all of their writing, so I would take the questions and I didn’t know all, I didn’t know a lot of the answers. So I would take those questions into the staff room and we would, they would help me. They would educate me. 

Just like with puberty, how the switch was turning on and how we were creating our breasts and hair under our armpits and on different body parts and all of those changes, we’re also changing. Now. We don’t have that same regular flow of estrogen and progesterone, and we don’t have that regularity.

And so our bodies are changing. It can affect our moods. are we losing muscle mass? It is switching and there is definitely a change. the thing that’s interesting about menopause is actually only one day in our life. It’s 365 days after the last day of our period.

And the average age is now 51. Depending on your weight, depending if you’re a smoker, depending on how like our genes can influence it, the kind of food that we’re eating, the habits of our food. Will determine our age of when we will stop. 

We also have perimenopause, so that’s the beginning parts of menopause. I remember when my daughter got her period, that’s when my period started going a little crazy and I was like, oh, I guess this is the start of my perimenopause. 

One thing I heard recently that was interesting was there’s only, there’s not very many mammals that actually have menopause. Most of them are, I think there’s only five mammals that have menopause and four of them are in the ocean.

So we, there’s some giraffes that have menopause. So we’ve actually outsmarted outlived our life expectancy, which is really interesting. And then we’ve adjusted by creating more value so that, if the tribe has to split the food by 50 or 40, and there’s, because there’s 10 of us post-menopausal women we’re of value.

So my daughter, she is a younger more viable carrier for making babies than me. And oh, what’s the stat? According to Yale medicine a typical fetus has about 20 million eggs. A newborn has about 2 million and 11,000 die every month prior to puberty. At puberty, she probably has a couple hundred thousand eggs. And then we have an accelerated decline around 37 to 38 with roughly a thousand left by menopause, which is interesting.

And then we actually run out of eggs, and that’s when we officially hit menopause because we’re no longer releasing eggs. We’re no longer, bleeding or menstruating. And that’s why women, the older they get, they have a little bit more difficulty with babies 

So I like this quote about menopause isn’t just about stopping your period, it’s about your body adjusting to lower levels of estrogen and progesterone. Two hormones that have been running the show since your teenage years. 

So that’s what’s starting to happen. Okay. So we’re not getting that nice calming effect of the estrogen. And then having the testosterone the progesterone coming in. Now the next phase. So think of menopause like a three act play. Each phase is important and they all serve a purpose. So again, perimenopause is the preview phase. So it starts in our forties, sometimes earlier. We can also get menopause like surgically, right?

So if we’re having ovarian cancer or some sort of cancer. The hormones start to fluctuate. Sometimes a lot. Symptoms can include hot flashes, mood swings, sleep issues, irregular periods, and then the main event. So act two is menopause. That’s when your period stops completely.

Symptoms might peak, so maybe the night sweats, the brain fog shifts in metabolism. Many women feel a sense of freedom. No more periods, no more birth control worries or whatever that means for you. 

And then phase three is now the new normal where we don’t have a period anymore and our symptoms can ease up. The hormone levels will stay low, and this is our time to really focus on bone health, heart health, and embracing the next chapter of life. 

So ever wonder why menopause feels like a rollercoaster? Here’s what’s going on inside your body. 

So a hot flushes and night sweats your body’s thermostat, so that’s the hypothalamus. It’s getting confused. It’s not sure what to do. 

We have some sleep issues because we have less estrogen, which means less melatonin, which makes sleep a little bit harder. And I also really like to think about, I have a, an amazing coach called Monica Parker, who talks, she’s a habits coach, and she talks about the invisible load of a woman.

And like even the other day I was having a shower and I thought, okay, I washed the bath mat, but did anyone, I don’t remember it going in the dryer. And that was like three days ago. Is it in the dryer still? Is it still wet? Also, we have new changing responsibilities like, the sandwich parenting. 

So now we’re taking care of our older parents. some of our kids are moving out or transitioning. Some of them have all moved out, but then we become grandparents and then we have those kind of responsibilities. So there’s that sandwich generation and we’re trying to bridge the gap for everyone.

So there’s a lot of new responsibilities and we don’t have that same regular flow of estrogen and progesterone that we used to have to help us with the highs and the lows. 

Same thing with the mood swing. So estrogen affects our serotonin, so you might feel irritable and emotional. Brain fog, your brain is adjusting to lower estrogen, which affects memory and focus, bone and joint health.

So estrogen helps bone stay strong, so lower levels can cause aches. 

But the good news is not every woman experiences every symptom, and there are ways to manage them. And I’m gonna be talking about that.

So as you can see here, if you’re watching the podcast you can see that I have this really handy guide that chat GPT and I made together. So hopefully this can really help you. Also, if you’re listening to this for the month of May, 2025, it’s menopause month. So if you want more coaching, more support, more help we are gonna be focusing on menopause in the month of May.

I also have an amazing masterclass and I have a very, helpful guide. Actually, there’s three guides. The first guide is free, and then the other two guides are within my membership. 

So the best way to handle menopause without losing your mind is number one, to reframe your mindset. So menopause isn’t an end, it’s a transition. And in many cultures it’s seen as a time of wisdom, power and self-assurance. And I had talked about how in the past when we as women, we’ve evolved. 

Older than our childbearing years, but so we, We’ve brought in that wisdom, that power, that assurance, that way to give value to our young and to our, our very busy moms that are producing babies and doing all the things. 

So instead of thinking my body is falling apart, try, my body is changing and I can support it. We have a, they talk about old men’s strength and I like to think about like old women’s strength, like that, that the strength that comes from like knowing who we are.

When I worked at a quilt shop, I was the long arm quilter and I worked every Wednesday and I taught a lot of classes on Saturdays and I saw a lot of women coming in. And this is when I was in my early forties and I saw these women coming in, they’d wear these really cool glasses and they just started to.

To show like a level of confidence. Like they didn’t really care what other people thought. And so I made a commitment to myself at my 50th birthday. I was gonna find, I was gonna buy myself some really fun glasses, and I did, I bought myself four pairs of really funky glasses online. And because I wanted to celebrate I don’t need other people’s approval, it’s not as important. And I saw this. This like a freedom that came. 

And so we, we do have that power and I, and if you’re not feeling it, and one of the challenges that I see as a coach and I work, my average age of women I work with, it happens to be 62, is that sometimes that can be, those women can actually have an edge of, bitter resentful, and that’s not helpful. So I would definitely recommend if you are like, yeah, I can say however, I can be however I want. But if there’s a resentment or like in your face and if that’s not who you really wanna be, that’s where coaching is super, super helpful because that’s not gonna, that’s really not freedom if we’re always feeling resentment and discouragement and frustration.

Okay. The second thing that we need to do is to fuel our body. 

Last year when I brought in some amazing menopause specialists, which you can hear all those trainings in my membership, but they really did focus on protein and fiber. And movement. Movement is medicine, growing muscle, really important, lift heavy.

Learn how to process, like allow, all the feelings and not fight them or try to work them away. 

Staying hydrated, so hot flashes get worse when you’re dehydrated. And so really looking at what are the ways that we’re going to fuel our body in a way that’s gonna be really helpful.

And I know for me, as I focused on. Creating strategies to improve my protein and my fiber. I’ve actually, it’s been, it’s actually been life changing for me and I have a whole basket full of different protein powders. 

I love “Just Ingredients.” I think that’s an amazing company and I feel really good about promoting them and, yeah, so that’s and I really love the idea of thinking about my body taking, fuelling my body with the best fuels. 

And so it’s like, why wouldn’t we do that for ourselves? 

Okay, the next thing is moving your body. And Dr. Vonda Wright talks about movement is medicine. And she said, we’re not built like mushrooms, like our strongest muscles are below our belly button. And so keeping those muscles really strong is important.

And so yeah, the strength training helps prevent muscle loss, the sarcopenia, and then walking, yoga, stretching, helps, keeps the joints happy. She talked about the difference between health span and lifespan and medicine is mobility.

Yes. Movement is medicine. And she’s don’t actually need to become frail as we get older. She’s we can actually become really strong and that’s good. Even one of my coaches last year was telling me not to run so much. And I don’t know if that was such good advice. 

You know what, this is your body. You can start learning how to take care of it. But I think one of the things that’s really helpful when we talk about menopause is stop believing those myths. Stop getting this information and start.

Start trying. Let’s like, let’s create some really good habits. Let’s create some, take this good science and apply it and figure out how it’s gonna work for you. 

The next one is managing stress and sleep. So meditation, deep breathing, mindfulness, creating a sleep friendly routine, like a cool dark room, no screens before bed.

We wanna have that created in our body naturally. But really looking at the foods that we’re eating and how that affects us, So not only. We also need to manage our thinking about it. And so when I am, like, my daughter’s actually coming home tonight after 18 months of being a missionary, and I am struggling having a good sleep last night because I’m just so excited to see her.

So when I am, when I’m having moments like that in my sleep, I just say, oh, it’s okay, Dara, it’s normal that you would be so excited that she’s coming home. Don’t stress it, it’s fine. It’s okay. So just like a baby, when you’re putting a baby to bed and they’re fighting against sleep.

What do you do? You hold them tight and you bounce them and you reassure them and say, it’s okay, sweetheart. It’s all right. And you just give them that reassurance and we need to do the same thing for ourselves. 

Number five is know your options. So hormone replacement therapy is one option, but not the only one.

There’s natural supplements, lifestyle changes, support groups. I have a interesting experience with this. Historically the hormone replacement therapy has been a bit of a gong show. They a lot of the, when you read the history of it, a lot of it was done on men, like smaller men thinking, oh, it’ll be fine.

No. I, whenever I do research on these things, it always does feel like a bit of a wild west. I know that Dr. Mary Claire Haver, she is becoming a huge proponent for Hrt’s. She also talks about wearing a weighted vest, and there’s all sorts of different ways of thinking about it. 

I, myself went to the doctor. And said, Hey, I wanna make sure that I’m taking care of myself. And I did a bunch of tests and I haven’t heard back, so I don’t know if I need it. And for now, I’m doing okay. 

I just started menopause about actually it’s interesting. My I had my very last period the day I said goodbye to my daughter, she’s been gone for 18 months, and so it’s been six months officially since I’ve been in menopause. 

So now why this matters for women of all ages. If you’re 25 and think this doesn’t apply to you, think again, here’s why. Understanding menopause is important at every age. So in your twenties and thirties, you build healthy habits.

What you do today affects how you feel later. I’m hoping that in your twenties and thirties you are building muscle and that you are creating healthy eating habits in your forties. Recognize their early signs so you’re prepared, not blindsided. 

And then that happened to me. I was like, oh gosh, is my life over? And then they talked so much about and look at this weight on my belly and like it’s over. And I just think I’m so glad that I didn’t just take their word for granted and I didn’t believe that wasn’t true because I’ve actually lost all this weight, this 50 pounds all during perimenopause and I’ve kept it off since 2019 and I’m so glad, I did not believe the lies of once you’re, once, once you’re menopause, you’re gonna have that inevitable belly fat. No, and we can, you can Google that. It talks about the adipose, adipose tissue and like the fat around those areas. And I actually go more into detail on that in my menopause class in, in my membership.

I want, I love this idea. You’re in your fifties and beyond. This is your time to thrive. It’s not just your time to survive. We have adapted ourselves to make ourselves inevitable in our culture, in our society. They need us. They need the wisdom. They need our strength, they need our insights, they need our perspective.

When emotions are high, intelligence is low. So if we’re always reacting and that’s causing a lot of problems. But having that ability to take a pause and to rely on that wisdom makes such a difference. 

I love this quote. Menopause isn’t the end. It’s a powerful new beginning. The more we talk about it, the less scary it becomes. Let’s keep this conversation going. 

I’m going to leave some references in the podcast notes from Dr. Vonda Wright and also from Dr. Jen Gunter, she has a variety of reactions, so she’s pretty controversial. She’s the one who says that menopause is puberty in reverse. Lots of different people… So you can just take it for what it is. 

Dr. Mary Claire Haber, she has really she’s seen such a huge lack in education and understanding of menopause, that she’s really dedicating herself to that.

Because the other thing that I should mention about our. So when we don’t have estrogen, estrogen is actually it’s an anti-inflammatory. And so when we’re not producing that, and there’s very little our ovaries, when our ovaries stop creating that, there is some topic, there’s a couple of different types of, there’s like estro, there’s estro, there’s es, there’s four different kinds. Now the estrogen is like made in fat cells. So there is there, but it’s less than 1%. 

So we have to like it our body. So if we’re having a lot of flour and refined flour and sugar, those are inflammatory for us. when we don’t have to eat that as much and put that in our body, we’re actually giving our body like a good break because we don’t have that estrogen that comes in and has that influx for the first two weeks of our former time where we had our periods. 

And the other thing that we can talk about with menopause is and I wanna tell this story quickly. I know this is a little bit longer of a podcast, but so in the podcast that I’ve listed was the interview between Dr. Vonda Wright and Mel Robbins.

And she talks about how she was a nurse, a cancer nurse for six years and how she would be up at night with these women and men with their chemo and fighting that. And then she, after doing that for six years, she was like, I wanna become an orthopedic surgeon. 

She saw these women at these older ages who. And this was it was really sad to hear how she was describing it, but she said, you see these amazing women who are now crumpled at the bottom of the hospital bed in this not so attractive blue gown. And they’re covered in their own urine because of their urinary tract infections, incontinence.

They have a broken hip. They aren’t able to have the surgery because their hearts are not strong enough to resist or to withstand the anesthesia. So 30% of women after 65 who fall, will die in that first year. And a lot of it is because they can’t handle the surgery and then they have all the complications.

And that’s a common problem of women is we don’t have that pelvic floor strengthening. And so we have a lot of like UTIs, the atrophic vagina. Because we don’t have that nice estrogen that softens everything up. 

If we’re not taking care of ourselves, we’re not eating really healthy foods and we’re not lifting weights and we’re not giving ourselves good fibre and we’re not having good gut health and we’re not taking care of our bones, we’re not having that good osteo, strengthening of the bones and the reproduction of them, our bone density. We’re gonna fall. we’re not gonna have the healthiest bodies. 

And she said, our. We’re not built like a mushroom. Our strongest muscles are below our belly button. We need to strengthen our bodies. 

So she talks about having less, stop the sugars ’cause it’s an anti-inflammatory. Increase the fiber, increase our protein, lift. Build muscle, go for walks take care of ourselves. And manage our brains, don’t smoke like all of these things. 

And the thing that I see so often inside my membership and I’m gonna be doing a podcast coming up, is the importance of dreaming, the importance of having a purpose, the importance of the third act. When you think about a play. For Act one and Act two, what are they doing? They’re creating the tension, they’re building up the excitement. And then Act three is like that resolution that like everything works out. It’s happily ever after, but we have to go through that tension and all those struggles.

And so the work that I do with these women inside the membership is they’re finally learning. How to resolve all those conflicts and how to truly come to peace and to tie up all those loose ends because they have so much amazing wisdom. 

And I can’t believe it’s episode 197. I have been doing this every week for 197 weeks. There’s so much. Life is so wonderful and it’s so hard, but when you have these amazing tools and when you can support yourself this way, listening to things in different ways, you learn how to be unstuck, and if you want to really be unstuck and you want to live a life that feels like it’s in your power and in your control, you better go and book a free call with me where I can help you.

Before they all run out, because I’m telling you, this is the solution. You are your own solution, but if you don’t have the strategies and techniques and the ability to resolve things, you’re just gonna keep doing what you’ve always done and you’re not gonna have the results. You’re not gonna live the life that you really want.

And I don’t want that for you. So go book a free call and let me give you some free coaching. Let me help you see what’s actually stopping you and there’s no hold back here. Straight shooter. But the only reason I can be a straight shooter is because I actually can see for real what your brain, what’s happening with your brain. And I can show it to you. And I have the tools and support to help you with that if you want. All right look forward to more podcasts and go and hit that button, make an appointment. Let’s do it. there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be living the life.That feels amazing. Take care. Bye.