Kathy Fritz is a board-certified master hormone coach who helps women in perimenopause and menopause experience relief from hormonal symptoms like fatigue, hot flashes, moodiness, and insomnia. Her clients lose weight, rediscover their energy, feel sexy, and stop thinking they're losing their minds.

You will learn how insulin and cortisol are two hormones to target hormonal balance, why eating in moderation is not helpful for midlife women, and how to train your body to burn fat and keep your brain and midsection healthy. 

This podcast episode provides tips and advice on how to support yourself in midlife, along with a free guide to four surprising ways to reduce hot flashes, insomnia, and the waistline. Whether you are looking for help or just need support, Kathy has the tools to help you make the transition into midlife with ease.

In this episode we cover:

• Perimenopause: Why does it matter?

• How to relieve hot flashes, improve sleep, and reduce waistline without fad diets

• Learn how to manage menopause and perimenopause symptoms

Summary:

Kathy Fritz, a board certified Master Hormone Coach, is working to help women in midlife experience relief from the hormonal symptoms associated with menopause and perimenopause. She works to do this through three pillars: food, movement, and lifestyle.

Kathy believes that the idea that all of the symptoms associated with menopause are normal is false. She believes that insulin and cortisol are the two hormones that should be addressed first when dealing with hormonal imbalances in midlife. Kathy also encourages her clients to train their bodies to burn fat, not just glucose, for fuel, which is important for both the midsection and the brain.

One of the main takeaways from Kathy’s podcast is that eating in moderation is not helpful for women in midlife. She encourages her clients to focus on eating smaller, nutrient-rich meals more often. Additionally, she and Dr. Destini Copp discussed perimenopause during their conversation.

Kathy believes that the most important thing is to understand that women in midlife are not alone. She encourages those experiencing difficulty in this life stage to reach out for the help they need.

Mentioned In This Episode

• Where you can find Kathy: Website

• Kathy's gift: 4 Surprising Ways to Reduce your Hot Flashes, Insomnia, and Waistline 

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Transcript:

[0:00:02] Dr. Destini Copp: And my special guest today is Cathy Fritz. Kathy is a board certified Master hormone coach who helps women impairimenopause and menopause experience relief from hormonal symptoms like fatigue, hot flashes, moodiness, and insomnia. Her clients lose weight, rediscover their energy, feel sexy, and stop thinking that they're losing their minds. And Kathy, thank you so much for joining me. I am very excited to jump into this topic with you and I am definitely in this market here, or in this target market, if you would. And today we're going to be talking about how to prepare your body for menopause. And before we get into all the good questions that I have for you, and I'm sure the audience definitely wants to hear about, can you tell the audience a little bit more about you and

how you help people?

[0:00:57] Kathy Fritz: Sure, Destini, and thanks so much for having me. Hello, all you hobby school fans out there. So I help women who are usually having active hormonal symptoms. So things like weight gain, insomnia, hot flashes, the things that were listed in the bile, but other things that aren't as well known, like hair loss and acne and dry vagina, lil, libido, things that we don't really talk about as a society. So the way that I help women is through three pillars, through food, movement and lifestyle. And there are other ways to manage our hormones in midlife and like bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, but I don't do that. I like to say I'm like the first stop. And for all of my clients, actually, what we do moves the needle and then if at the end of our work they think they would benefit from bioidentical hormone therapy, I can kind of send them to the right person to help with that. Go ahead.

[0:02:07] Dr. Destini Copp: No, I was just going to say we'll have to talk a little bit more about that because I've never heard that term before in my life.

[0:02:14] Kathy Fritz: Okay, yeah, again, that's not my area of expertise, but I know what it is so that I can educate my clients about it. So we can totally get to that. What I was going to say is I love working one on one with women. That's really where you move the needle the fastest. But I know for some women that doesn't work and so I also have a membership.

[0:02:36] Dr. Destini Copp: Oh, fun. So we'll definitely dig in and talk a little bit more about that. I'm a huge fan of memberships and digital products in general. So let me ask you this. A lot of us are going through this. We're in midlife, right? That's where we are. What misinformation out there? Do you hear most about midlife and kind of midlife health, I should say?

[0:03:01] Kathy Fritz: Yeah, I think there are just some societal, quote unquote norms that are really misleading. One is, well, because you're a woman, this time of life is going to be really difficult and you just have to suffer through it. That's not true. And it's obviously harmful to women to believe that. So one of my kind of big movements in my own work is getting women to understand that there are actions, small actions, they can take on a daily basis that can really help them to feel much better, feel much more like themselves. So I do hate that whole it's because you're a woman or it's because you're of your age and you're a woman. We never should blame anything on our gender or our age.

[0:03:52] Dr. Destini Copp: I think that's true. Right? We grow up thinking or just kind of dread menopause and think, oh, we're definitely going to experience all those symptoms that we've been talking about, like the hot flashes, like the fatigue, like the moodiness. And it's just, no matter what, we're just going to have to live through it. But you're saying that we don't have to do that.

[0:04:15] Kathy Fritz: No, in fact, I'm saying that the idea that all of those symptoms we've been chatting about, that those are quote unquote, normal is false. They are very common, but they're not normal. In fact, there are some cultures where there isn't even a word equivalent for menopause because it is a time of life that's not symptomatic for those women.

[0:04:41] Dr. Destini Copp: Oh, really? So we're here in the US. And you and I are both in the US. And I know there's other people who might be listening outside of the United States. What cultures would that be? Why are they so much different from ours?

[0:05:00] Kathy Fritz: So two pop into mind. I want to say it's in Japanese culture, though they do have a word, but it actually means second spring. I mean, who doesn't want a second spring in their life, right? Doesn't that sound so lovely?

[0:05:16] Dr. Destini Copp: It does. That sounds like something mom would, right?

[0:05:19] Kathy Fritz: Menopause has such negative connotations in the US. And I think in a lot of other kind of more typical Western civilizations. So there's that. And then in communities that are still, how to say they are living as their ancestors lived thousands of years ago. They don't have the technology, they don't have some of the conveniences. They still live as their ancestors did. They don't have any sort of symptoms in midlife that would equate to what a lot of women experience today.

[0:05:56] Dr. Destini Copp: Do you think it has a lot to do with our food or is it other things or just combination?

[0:06:02] Kathy Fritz: And you're right to land on food as one of them, for sure. Movement or exercise is another one. Right. We're a lot more sedentary than we used to be, and then we're exposed to so much more now than we were, and that people who are still living as their ancestors did are really not exposed to everything from WiFi to toxins in the air, in products that we use, all that kind of stuff.

[0:06:32] Dr. Destini Copp: So let me switch gears a little bit and let's talk about hormones or hormones. What hormone imbalances do you see most often in midlife with women?

[0:06:46] Kathy Fritz: So everybody thinks about progesterone and estrogen when they think of their hormones, because those are your sex hormones. And those are really important in our transition from our fertility years to our menopausal years. But the two hormones that we actually begin with addressing are insulin and cortisol. Now, a lot of people don't know that insulin is in fact a hormone, and a lot of people think, well, if I'm not diabetic, I really don't have to think about insulin. But truly, insulin and cortisol are what drive most hormonal symptoms because either they're directly involved, like with weight gain, especially around the middle, or they are impacting the downstream hormones, like thyroid hormone, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, other, androgens I could keep going, or they're impacting those downstream hormones, which are then causing the symptoms.

[0:07:49] Dr. Destini Copp: So how would we know if we had issues with like, insulin or cortisol? I believe that's what you said.

[0:07:56] Kathy Fritz: Yes, you got it. So the way that you would know is that you have these symptoms that you've gone to your doctor about, and your doctor has either said, I'm not sure what the root cause is or is probably hormonal or why. Don't we do a blood test and see how your FSH and LH to other hormones that have to do with Ovulation, how those levels are? That's the beginning of understanding, like, okay, something's going on here. Now, I mentioned those, not because I think those are great diagnostic tools, but because I think that's just what a lot of women hear. I do have a little quiz, and we can link that in the show notes for if you're basically having certain symptoms, you're likely having a hormonal imbalance. And again, it's so important to understand how best to support normal cortisol and insulin levels, because if we don't do that, then we really can't take that next step and support normal progesterone, estrogen, all that kind of stuff.

[0:09:06] Dr. Destini Copp: Well, we definitely want to link that quiz in the show notes, and I want to actually go in and take it right away because I want to know if I have issues there. But what would you like midlife women to know about their bodies? How do they kind of think? I guess kind of look at what they're experiencing and figure out what the next steps may be? I should say so.

[0:09:29] Kathy Fritz: The first thing I like to tell women is that your body in your mid to late thirty s, forty s. Fifty s is very different from your body from your teenage years and your 20 something years. And a lot of times we approach our bodies from a calories in, calories out, eat less, exercise more, approach, especially around managing our weight. And that really undermines weight management and midlife that approach. So your body is very different. We don't want to look so much at how many calories you're having or how much you're exercising. And is that more are you burning more calories? We actually want to look at how you're storing those calories and how we can get your body to burn not only glucose for fuel, but also fat for fuel, the standard American diet, which a lot of us eat because it's convenient and easy and quick, that is all about sugar burning and all about fat storage. So my clients are educated about how the midlife body best burns fuel, and then they have to commit to resetting their bodies so that they are able to burn fat. And that's not just important for our midsections, it's actually really important for our brains.

[0:11:01] Dr. Destini Copp: That's interesting that you're bringing up the mental aspect of this, because I wouldn't have thought that that would be a part of it. Tell us a little bit more.

[0:11:10] Kathy Fritz: So our brain loves to burn ketones and really wants to, but when we don't haven't trained our bodies how to do that, it just burns glucose. And that's great for fast fuel, but it also means you have to kind of eat more regularly in order to replenish those glucose stores. Our brains really want to burn ketones so much, and I just learned this from a course I took, that if we don't have enough ketones to burn, the brain will actually start to eat its own material in order to access those ketones. That's the kind of basic way of saying it.

[0:11:55] Dr. Destini Copp: That sounds on ominous.

[0:11:57] Kathy Fritz: Yeah. So when we talk about things like brain fog but even more severe dimension, Alzheimer's, there's a connection there between having our brains being able and having accessible ketones to use versus not having the ketones to burn.

[0:12:18] Dr. Destini Copp: So, Kathy, before we wrap it up here, do you have any last minute tips or guidance for the audience?

[0:12:26] Kathy Fritz: I think the most important thing is to understand that you are not alone. So many women are going through a difficult experience in midlife, and it can feel really isolating because, again, as a society, we really don't talk about it. And you might whisper about it with a couple of your girlfriends if you feel super comfortable, but otherwise we just kind of put on this like, all right, I got to just move through this and suffer, and I'll come out the other side. Okay, that's not the best approach, and it's not even helpful for longevity. So the first thing is you're not alone. And the second thing is there are people who can help. There are people like me, but there are also a variety of medical professionals, therapists that focus specifically on midlife women and on helping them.

[0:13:16] Dr. Destini Copp: And Kathy, can you let people know where they can find you? And I also believe you have a free gift for the audience.

[0:13:24] Kathy Fritz: Absolutely. You can find me on my website, Cathy, with Akfritzcoaching.com. You can find me at the same place on Instagram. And I do have this freebie. That is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. It is the four surprising ways to reduce your hot flashes, insomnia, and waistline. And even if you don't have any of those three symptoms, what I go over in the guide will help with any symptoms you're having, and it's a guide where there are some surprises. For example, one of the four ways is not to eat in moderation. How often do we hear eat in moderation? Eat in moderation. That is guidance. That is antiquated. It's not helping us in this stage of life. So if you're intrigued by that, grab that free gift, and that will get us connected.

[0:14:24] Dr. Destini Copp: Well, I'm definitely intrigued by that, and I also want to make sure we'll get the link to that quiz, too, so folks can have it there. Cathy, thank you so much for joining me. I love chatting with you and learning more about period menopause.

[0:14:38] Kathy Fritz: Oh, I'm so glad. Destini, thanks so much for having me.