My story started with feeling completely disconnected from my body — and from myself.

I was exhausted all the time. Gaining weight, Waking up drenched in night sweats. Dealing with heavy, painful periods, anxiety, low moods, and a quiet sense of depression I couldn’t quite explain. I didn’t feel like me anymore, and I didn’t know where to start — I just knew something had to change.

I was coping the only way I knew how: pushing through, saying yes to after-work happy hours, telling myself I was “fine,” and ignoring the signals my body was sending.

Meanwhile, I was juggling high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Hashimoto’s, and a level of fatigue that made everything feel harder than it should.

Eventually, I hit a wall.
I remember thinking, “I can’t keep living like this.”

I joined a New Year’s fitness challenge at a local gym — not because I had a perfect plan, but because I needed a starting point. And for the first time in a long time, I stayed consistent.

As I trained, I noticed something that stopped me in my tracks: the men were hitting their goals faster, while the women — myself included — were working just as hard and feeling frustrated by slower progress.

That question — why is this so much harder for women? — changed everything.

As I dug deeper, I learned that women’s hormones, metabolism, and stress response work differently, especially in midlife and perimenopause. Once I stopped fighting my body and started aligning my training, habits, and recovery with my biology, things finally began to make sense.

That journey is what led me to become: