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Welcome to "No F**ks Given," where we redefine menopause as a superpower. Hosted by Holly Lamb, a women's health coach, who is navigating early menopause. This podcast offers empowering guidance on women's health and navigating perimenopause with confidence. From nutrition tips to fitness advice and mindfulness practices, we cover it all. But here's the twist: it's all about embracing your most authentic, unapologetic self. We're here to help you reclaim your power, say goodbye to societal norms, and live life on your own terms—no f**ks given. Welcome to the revolution!
Holly Lamb (00:07)
Welcome to the No F**ks Given podcast with me, your host Holly Lamb. This podcast is dedicated to empowering women just like you to embrace menopause as their superpower. Say goodbye to hiding in the shadows. It's time to reclaim your personal strength and shine brightly.
Participant (00:35)
Hello and welcome to my new podcast, No F**ks Given, How to Make Menopause Your Superpower. I'm your host Holly Lamb and I'm on a mission to show women that menopause isn't just a phase of life that has to be endured. It's an initiation into a whole new world where you no longer give a fuck. And I want to show you how to embrace that.
I'm so excited to have you here. This is episode one. Welcome.
I am a personal trainer and women's health coach. I help women mainly in the menopause and...
And the reason that I do this is because at the end of 2022, I was diagnosed with early menopause. And up until that point, I didn't really understand what was going on in my body. I was already involved in the space. So I had a kind of idea of what was happening because I was already training women.
But when it's happening to you, it's not always obvious that you're going through early menopause.
As so many doctors like to tell us, you're too young to be going through menopause, when actually menopause can happen at any age.
age. So when I was diagnosed, it was kind of...
A switch went off and I started to understand what was actually happening to me. And yes, there are all the physical symptoms that come with it. I had skin issues, I had itchy skin, vaginal dryness,
irregular periods.
But for me, it was more the mental side of things. Starting to experience anxiety, overwhelm, not wanting to leave the house. It was a very, very strange feeling that I didn't know what was happening in my own body. So when I got the diagnosis, it was a massive help and I did start HRT, which absolutely did help my symptoms. However, it felt like for me,
I was feeling numb.
It was like when I was back on the pill, I was on the pill for many, many years. So when I went on HRT, yes, it did help. However, I didn't like that feeling anymore. So within the past few weeks, actually, I've decided to come off HRT and try a more natural, holistic approach. Because for me at this stage of life, I feel like that's...
what I need.
I'm in a much better place mentally and physically. So it was time for me to come off HRT and really embrace those feelings and really lean into those. I do that by exercise, diet, sleep, and journaling, meditation, cold water therapy, breath work, all those things that help me to get through.
any emotions that come up. So there will be weeks where I'm absolutely fine and then one week it'll just hit me like a ton of bricks. But now I'm more mentally grounded and physically grounded in the here and now I'm finding when these emotions come up, it's a lot easier to deal with.
Now HRT does work for many, many women and some women are on it
to being on it.
But for me personally, it's not the route that I wish to take at the moment. I feel like my, something in my gut, my intuition is telling me that I need a break and I need to hone in more on these intuitive gifts. So at the moment, this is the path that I am taking.
Now being off HRT, I'm going to go back into MCA, which is menstrual cycle awareness. So tracking my cycle so that I can understand what's happening in my body and how I can lean into those feelings, depending at what point of my cycle I'm in. That's something I will dive more into in further episodes, the different phases. We obviously know as follicular, ovulation, luteal.
However, there is another way of looking at it, which is you're in a winter, you're in a spring, you're in a summer, and you're in a autumn, which I will dive into in another episode.
But if you are someone who has irregular periods, then it can be more difficult to conduct menstrual cycle awareness and track your cycle. However, you can use the phases of the moon to do that.
So when it's waning, when it's waxing, when it's full moon, when it's new moon, you can track your cycle and you can do it using the phases of the moon, which is something else I will dive into as well.
So getting back to a little bit of my background, I have only been a personal trainer for about three years. I wanted to kind of change career. I'd done a lot of office jobs. I'd done a lot of hospitality and I kind of didn't know where to go. I was mid thirties, kind of needing a bit of new direction.
So I signed up to be a personal trainer and then I started training menopausal women. And that's when I really found my calling. And I think going through early menopause has helped me find my inner calling as well.
So a lot of people may call it midlife crisis, but I think what happens is when women start to go through this transformative phase of their lives, something awakens inside of them. And this is where the no fucks given approach comes from, because you reach a point in your life where you don't care anymore. You don't care what people think. You start to put yourself,
first, which is super, super difficult for so many women. The women that I train, they find it so difficult to put themselves first because they're so used to putting themselves last behind jobs, behind looking after parents, looking after kids, looking after partners, running a household, that this is so alien to them. They don't quite know how to do self care properly.
So this is why really tapping into your intuition and listening to your body and what your body needs is so, so important at this time. Journaling is such a big part of it. Sometimes we don't quite know how to articulate things. So the best way to do it is to write it down. There's a really great task if you struggle with journaling.
You can get out a notepad if you don't have a journal and just set a timer for 15 minutes and just write for 15 minutes. Now that's a long time, but what it can help to do is you'll just start writing about what happened that day. And then sometimes feelings can then start to come up and you can really start to deep dive into how you're really, really feeling. Cause a lot of us don't know how to express it to our partners, even to ourselves.
that inner critic is always going to come up and say, you're not good enough. You're not good at that. But if we can look to face that inner critic and write down how we're feeling and then maybe come back to it a few days later, you can rationalise that.
I find journaling such a helpful part for me and my clients. So if it's something that you haven't done before, I would highly, highly recommend it, especially if you're in the perimenopause phase,
which is the eight to 10 years leading up to, to menopause. This typically happens around age 45, but as for me, it happened a lot earlier. So,
I've looked at this as a blessing in disguise, that I have had this realisation earlier in life. I've found my true passion, I've found my true calling, and that's because I went into early menopause.
So this is why I believe that menopause can be your superpower as well. There's so much negativity within the media
at it as a negative and a time when women kind of are like dried up and on the heap, which is totally not the case. It's a time where we step into a completely new version of ourselves, a new version that's...
bolder, that's brighter, that's more unapologetic. Like what is better than that? We all think in our twenties that we're amazing, we're on top of the world, but actually, when you start getting into your forties, or with me, late thirties, your life can change for the better, and you just step into this new version of yourself, which is even better than you imagined.
And this is why I believe it's a time to not give a fuck.
wear that outfit, put on that makeup, dye your hair that colour. My hair's blue. Like, I don't care. I don't care anymore. I will wear that outfit. I will go out dressed however I wish. I will walk into that place with confidence because I know who I truly am. And if that's something that you're struggling with, journal on it. Get to the root of it. Get deep. And if you want to start to embrace this,
philosophy of making menopause your superpower, start with journaling, start with going inwards, start with tracking your cycle if you're not already, or doing it with the phases of the moon, just so you can get into the rhythm of your body. When we are entering menstruation, this is a time where we should be slowing down and taking stock. If you find that...
in menstruation you are go go go
like society expects us to be all the time you will pay for it later down the line you will be tired because you haven't honoured your body in that time
So this is my invitation to you
to sit and notice how you feel. Try and do this daily for the next seven days and see how you feel. Journal either in the morning or in the evening and just see what comes up and see how you can lean into those feelings. Cause we're so quick to take medication
to get rid of any pain that we are.
feeling when really sometimes all we need to do is sit with the emotions, sit with the feeling, journal on it and just be present in that moment. And this is when you become really, really in tune with yourself and your body.
This has been episode one of the No Fucks Given, How to Make Menopause Your Superpower Podcast with me, Holly Lamb. If you've enjoyed it, then please hit that subscribe button and join me next week for episode two.