The Ageless and Awesome Podcast

Rage, Fog, and Yolk Separation: My Messy Perimenopause Truth

• Susie Garden • Episode 297

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In this personal and powerful episode of The Ageless and Awesome Podcast, I pull back the curtain on what navigating menopause in my 40s was really like—and what no one warned me about.

From the hormonal chaos of perimenopause to the myths around weight gain, mood swings, and metabolism, I share what I had to learn the hard way—and what I now teach my clients every day.

You’ll discover:
 ✨ Why “eat less, move more” doesn’t work in perimenopause
 ✨ What your doctors probably didn’t tell you about progesterone and oestrogen
 ✨ How sleep, stress, and blood sugar shape your experience
 ✨ What real healing looks like beyond calorie counting and quick fixes

If you’ve ever felt like your body is betraying you in your 40s, this episode will validate your experience—and give you hope.

If you loved this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with another woman who deserves to feel empowered in midlife.

Send me a text!

Are you a woman feeling stressed, flat and experiencing the challenges of perimenopause or menopause?

It’s time to reclaim your youthful energy, radiance and self-assurance (and your ideal weight).

I’m here to help with my proven method.

Here's how I can support you -


1. Hit your health and wellbeing goals this year, balance your hormones and lose weight with your own personalised protocol, based on your body's biochemistry. Sounds awesome right!! Book a free 30 minute Peri Weight Loss Assessment with me so we can discuss your health and wellbeing goals and also see how I might be able to support you. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book your call here. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

2. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@the.perimenopause.path

3. Join the waitlist for my innovative NEW 8 week group program, In Your Skin™️, for women in perimenopause and post-menopause who want effective solutions to manage skin changes at this time of life.

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Susie Garden and this is the Ageless and Awesome podcast. I'm an age-defying naturopath and clinical nutritionist and I'm here to bust myths around women's health and aging so that you can be ageless and awesome in your 40s, 50s and beyond. The Ageless and Awesome podcast is dedicated to helping women through perimenopause and menopause with great health, a positive mindset and outrageous confidence. Hit, subscribe or follow now and let's get started. Hello, gorgeous one, and welcome to this week's episode of the Ageless and Awesome podcast. I'm Susie Garden, your host. I'm a clinical nutritionist, perimenopause naturopath and unapologetic advocate for women in their 40s, 50s and beyond who are finally ready to take control of their health, their hormones and their vitality. And today's episode is a bit of a personal one. It's a little raw, it's real and it's probably going to feel like I'm speaking straight to your soul, because we're talking about what I learned about menopause in my 40s, or, more accurately, what I didn't learn, what no one told me, what no one teaches any of us and you may have seen a reel I did about this on Instagram this week, because you know, this is not just about hot flushes and night sweats. This is about everything that changed my body, my brain, my energy, my moods and how I really needed to dig deep to uncover what was going on with me, the truth of what our hormonal shifts really are all about, to heal myself and now to help other women to do the same. So grab a cup of your favorite beverage or get comfy on your walk or your drive and let's get into it. Firstly, I wanted to talk about the silence around perimenopause. So you know, this is the most glaring kind of issue is that no one talks about this stuff.

Speaker 1:

When I hit my 40s, I expected, well, you know, I might feel a bit different. I kind of expected that my metabolism would slow down, um, maybe put on a bit of weight. That's kind of what I was expecting. That's about all I was expecting. What I didn't expect was to feel like I was slowly unraveling. Uh, I was, was gaining a little bit of weight despite eating. Well, that didn't bother me too much, because I was always been kind of on the lighter side.

Speaker 1:

Um, but waking up at anywhere between one and 3am, feeling anxious in an absolute pool of sweat, even though I wasn't hot, snapping, becoming enraged at times at people that I love over really not much. Feeling like my brain was just like glitching. I was feeling really unmotivated, crying over just silly things. Brain fog well, plus plus plus I would say with the brain fog. Well, plus plus plus I would say with the brain fog. And just so tired tired to my bones even after eight hours of sleep, if I was lucky enough to get that.

Speaker 1:

And the worst part is I just thought it was something wrong with me. I did not think I had perimenopause. I didn't even know. I mean, perimenopause wasn't even a word back then, like 10, 15 years ago. It was not a word that was sort of known in in. I mean, I don't know about medical circles, but I've worked in healthcare and taught anything about it, never really heard that word.

Speaker 1:

I just thought this is just something going wrong with me. I was, maybe it was because I was stressed, maybe I just wasn't coping very well with life anymore. I didn't know. And it was really really distressing actually, because I've always been a very independent, strong kind of woman and I didn't know that these were actually really common symptoms of perimenopause. You know, we're taught to expect menopause in our fifties, not the hormonal chaos that goes on in our 40s and this lack of knowledge and education, even in medical circles, because you know, I'd been a nurse, I've done nursing training, I've done a master's in health science, I've done my bachelor of naturopathy. I hadn't at this point, but even so, perimenopause even I remember, I think probably four years ago, I was talking with a business coach about this and she said don't use the word perimenopause in your marketing, nobody will know what it is.

Speaker 1:

So you know, this is only really, I think, in probably the past two years, that perimenopause is actually getting any sort of coverage, and it's because high profile women in their forties are talking about it, which I love, that we're suddenly seeing this in the lay press, in social media, from women that have influence, and that is why we're starting to see a huge improvement in the level of care. There is still a long way to go, mind you, but a huge improvement in terms of the information that women are able to access and get educated on and the level of care that they're starting to receive. But believe me, based on all of the women I speak to on a weekly basis that are looking for answers, there's still a long way to go when it comes to perimenopause care. A long way to go when it comes to perimenopause care. So yeah, I do get shocked. Many GPs don't really get much in the way of actual training or education in menopause care, unless they are actively seeking it. So you know, women are left Googling symptoms and wondering if we're losing it.

Speaker 1:

I literally spoke to a potential client today on a peri weight loss assessment and she said she'd been offered antidepressants and what was the other thing. I can't remember now, but she was offered antidepressants and something else for her perimenopause symptoms and it's just like that's just not good enough. It really is not good enough. So if I look at what in my mind what I thought peri or I didn't know what peri was so say menopause would look like versus reality, I thought menopause would be periods would just pretty much stop, maybe a few hot flushes. I didn't think that was going to be any drama and then it'd be done. That's honestly what I thought it would be, and no one had told me that it can last for eight to 10 years eight to 10 years minimum of symptoms.

Speaker 1:

No one told me that progesterone drops first, which causes anxiety and insomnia. No one told me that estrogen doesn't just drop. I thought it just dropped. It actually fluctuates wildly. So you're getting these surges of estrogen way beyond what you've ever experienced in your life before, and then it drops suddenly and that just makes you feel horrific. And nobody told me it affects not only things like you'd expect, I guess your libido and your periods and that kind of thing but affects your mood, your weight, your skin, your gut, health so many things in your body. Perimenopause is like puberty in reverse. It's like a whole body recalibration and without support it can feel devastating.

Speaker 1:

And what I learned is, if you don't know what's happening in your body, it's really easy to blame yourself, particularly for someone like myself who has been a healthcare professional for a very long time, many decades. Yeah, you just think I should be all over this, I should know what's going on. And I thought I didn't make the connection that this was perimenopause. I thought there was something else going on and I thought I didn't make the connection that this was perimenopause. I thought there was something else going on. And then I just kind of think am I just lazy? Am I just, you know, moody, unmotivated? I just need to just keep myself going? But I was none of those things. I was in a transitional state. I deserve support. You deserve support and it still can be quite difficult to get that.

Speaker 1:

What I found was the real game changer for me was understanding my hormones. So once I really started digging into it and started doing some retraining in women's hormonal health, specifically perimenopause and menopause everything made sense. Everything clicked. I realized you know why eating less and exercising more, which is like your standard weight management advice I understood why that was backfiring, why skipping meals makes people gain weight. I remember doing a challenge I probably talked about this before a challenge at our local gym where for a week I had to eat 1200 calories a day and track it in my fitness pal, and I've talked about this before, you know. I sat there and I planned out you know, okay, if I want to have two glasses of wine tonight, that's going to be 300 calories, so I've got 900 left for my three meals and planning all of that out and I have told this story before. I remember sitting at.

Speaker 1:

I was at lunch with a couple of the people in my team down in Melbourne at a cafe and I had ordered poached eggs with this salad-y thing and I worked out that I did not have enough calories to eat both yolks, so I had one whole egg and then I sat there at this table with work colleagues and I perfectly peeled off the white from this yolk I just cringe thinking about it. And these girls were just watching me, just you could just see they're going. What the hell is she doing? And yeah, I peeled off the white from this yolk, left this perfect little yolk on my plate. So I'm sure when the waitress came over and took my plate she's like what the hell is going on here? So I ate one egg, one white and the veggies and salad that was on my plate and I thought I was just, I had it all sorted. I was yep, this was going to be great.

Speaker 1:

And after just one week of tracking calories like that, I found it so addictive. I really struggled to break that habit of putting everything into my fitness pal and actually obsessed over it and I thought to myself my gosh, I have never had disordered eating before. This felt like that was getting set up to happen. So I had to delete that app from my phone. And that was just one week. So I'm a massive what's the opposite of advocate. I'm massively against counting calories and tracking it like that. It's just not the right thing to do, particularly for women over 40, because the quality of your food matters. Nutrient density matters, not calories. Not working out how many glasses of wine you can have so that you can have that and then know what you're having for the rest of the day that just doesn't make any sense at all. So let's get back on track. Sorry, I went off on a tangent then. So yeah.

Speaker 1:

So once I started researching and learning more about women's health and perimenopause and menopause, I realized that stress was a major problem. Stress was wrecking my sleep, it was interfering with my gut health. It was a massive issue that was causing me. I even had a panic attack one day when I was at a local shopping center. And, yeah, I didn't have, even though I've been doing yoga for a long time. I was in a corporate job and it wasn't. I mean, I was doing yoga but I wasn't implementing daily practices and I didn't really truly believe that things like simple things like breathing was going to actually help. And I certainly didn't make the connection between stress and gut health.

Speaker 1:

And I also realized there was some fantastic nutrients you can have. Once I learned this, I'm still on some of these today, like magnesium, super important for many people. About a third to a half of the population is magnesium deficient. So having some magnesium, particularly when you're going through periods of stress, can be a game changer for energy, for sleep, for gut health so many things. Also, there are some fantastic herbal medicines that can really help support your nervous system, particularly ashwagandha or withania is fantastic, passionflower is fantastic, melissa valerian for sleep. So there's quite a lot you can do with herbal medicines that aren't going to have side effects, not going to make you feel sluggish the next day, and will help with stress. And how important protein is, particularly for women 40 plus, for wanting to maintain muscle mass as much as you can, protein becomes really important. And also it's important to build your neurotransmitters, which are your brain chemicals, so important for so many different functions in the body.

Speaker 1:

So you know, at this point I started tracking my cycle, noticing patterns, supporting my adrenals and liver, nourishing myself instead of punishing myself once I had this knowledge and I discovered how to balance my blood sugar and how much of a driver blood sugar was for me personally, with how I felt, how my energy was, my moods, et cetera. For me, I seem to be particularly sensitive to sugar, even though I do love it, I will admit that but I can feel really bad after eating it and I think it's because my blood sugar does spike easily and then my insulin drops it rapidly. I also learned how, to, how important inflammation and reducing inflammation in my body was, and using food to do that. Using targeted supplements to help with some of the symptoms, such as hot flushes, can be. Symptoms such as hot flushes can be actually quite effective and reclaiming sleep. If you are a long time listener, you know I have a bit of a battle with sleep from time to time, but it is such an important element to prioritize and your hormones have a huge influence over this.

Speaker 1:

And I think, most importantly, what I learned is to stop trying to be the woman I was in my 20s, the woman I was becoming. You know it's cause it really is. I mean, people say it's a bit of a revolution and it really is. When you get over to the other side, which I am now like, it just really is awesome. Um, so there's something to look forward to, uh.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, let's talk a little bit about emotions. So you may have experienced this that perimenopause can bring up so many emotions rage that I couldn't explain. I'm a pretty calm person. It takes a lot to get me angry and fired up, but this rage that just flew out of nowhere, fear, fear of actually using the word perimenopause I've got I'm just so lucky, I've got some really good friends in my life that really helped me embrace it.

Speaker 1:

Because to me, I associated perimenopause or menopause with getting old, with feeling invisible, like I didn't matter, because you know, really, when you look and it was the same when I was younger as well it's all about young people, isn't it really Like when you're looking at where the attention goes, it's all in the youth. And to go from being in that to being in a place where you feel invisible, it's not a nice feeling. But on the on the bright side, going through this process brings wisdom, my gosh. It brings boundaries. It really brings boundaries into play clarity of what you want and what you will not accept in life, and power. And once I stopped resisting and started listening, I realized that perimenopause isn't a decline, it's a portal. It's your body asking you to slow down, to tune in, to honor your needs. It's not the end, it's actually a beginning, and what I wish every woman knew. And so I'm going to share what I wish I'd known earlier, and what I now teach my clients is you're not crazy, you are not. These mood swings. If you get anxiety, this exhaustion, they're hormonal. It's not you, it's your hormones. Actually is a true statement. You can't treat perimenopause like a willpower problem. You are getting ruled by your hormones, so the sooner you can get them within your control, the better.

Speaker 1:

Calorie counting and bootcamp workouts are not the answer for weight loss at this stage of life. Sleep is sacred. Magnesium is magic. Stress is sabotage. So stress management is key, and it's why it's one of the six pillars of my GLOW protocol. You need personalized solutions, not one size fits all plans. The vast majority of women I would say 99% of the women that book in for a peri-weight loss assessment have tried at least three or four other things to help themselves, and most of these are one size fits all kind of approaches, whether they're supplements you buy off the internet, whether it's doing some of the. I'm noticing quite a few perimenopause focused workout apps and things popping up, which it's not really the point. If, uh, yeah, that's enough said, I'm not going to get too much into that. The personalized approach over one size fits all is key at this time of life.

Speaker 1:

Also, what I wish I'd known earlier is you're allowed to rest. You are you're allowed to rest. You're allowed to say no. I, if I committed to something, I used to just like, yep, I will be there. But even in the last couple of weeks, it was something I'd committed to and I just thought this is causing me so much stress to get there in time because I had so much to do that I pulled out and I felt terrible. But at the same time, I just knew I had to say no, and it's okay to say no. People will understand and you can ask for help as well. And finally, what I wish every woman knew is that you deserve better than what you're getting.

Speaker 1:

And if this is resonating with you, know that it's not too late. There is so much that you can do. No matter where you're at in this part of your journey, there is still things you can do. So I'm going to offer an invitation, I guess If you're nodding along yes, this is me, yes, this is me, I see you, I've been you. And if you're tired of piecing it together on the internet, taking some random supplements, feeling alone, I want to invite you to book a free peri-weight loss assessment with me. We will get on the video call. Spend 30, 40 minutes together. I'll learn more about you and what your needs might be. You can learn more about what I offer and map out a holistic strategy to support your hormones, your metabolism, your sanity, because you don't have to just survive. You can absolutely thrive through this. So there's a link in the show notes. You can book through there or you can DM me on Instagram at the perimenopause path.

Speaker 1:

So thanks so much for joining me for this little bit of a raw episode of the ageless and Awesome podcast. If this spoke to you, please, please, share it with a friend. You can take a screenshot of the podcast and pop it in your stories and tag me, or, if you could leave a review, that would be awesome. Help spread the word so more women can feel informed, supported and empowered. So enjoy the rest of your week and empowered.

Speaker 1:

So enjoy the rest of your week. I'm so glad you've joined me for this episode and I'll see you next week with some more fresh new content. Thanks so much for joining me on the Ageless and Awesome podcast. If you liked this episode, please make sure you click the little plus button if you're on Apple podcasts, or the follow button if you're on Spotify, so that you get each new episode delivered to you every single week. If you feel like writing me a five-star review, you would absolutely make my day. If you found this episode resonated with you, head over to my Instagram and DM me at theperimenopausepar. I would love to connect with you.

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Susie Garden

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