Episode 16 - The Things You Need to Know About Perimenopausal Belly Fat | Pamela Windle
Jul 28, 2021
We often complain that women have it harder than men.
Unlike the opposite sex, we have to face periods, childbirth (if we choose to have children) and menopause. That’s not even mentioning the burden of our daily responsibilities, lower wages, matters of personal safety, discrimination and our emotional ups and downs.
However, it’s these very struggles that make us strong. They force us to stand up for what we believe in, develop coping strategies to help us manage our lives, and tune in to the incredible changes that happen within our bodies every month.
The perimenopause - the years of hormonal transition before menopause- brings us back to our physical selves and reminds us of the cycle of life and what it means to be a woman.
During this natural stage in a woman’s life, you may start to notice that you feel more anxious than usual, that your energy levels are low, that your periods are heavier than normal, that you are gaining weight in all the ‘wrong’ places and that sex isn’t as enjoyable as it was before.
But it doesn’t need to be like this. By equipping yourself with the necessary information and learning to love and accept this transitional stage, you can continue to live your life to the fullest, look and feel fantastic, and still reach your personal and business goals.
In this episode of the podcast, host Eleshia is joined by expert women’s health coach and hypnotherapist, Pamela Windle to discuss how you can stay healthy at different stages of perimenopause and menopause. They explore topics such as oestrogen, detoxification, hormonal shifts, weight gain, stress, diet and everything you need to know to feel empowered at this often challenging time.
Get ready to listen and hit play!
Eleshia’s Essentials:
- My body is changing, and I want to equip myself with as much information I can as to why that is happening.
- You can do things about the pollutants in your house. You can add more plants to make sure that you're getting more oxygen within your house.
We also learned so many lessons from Pamela:
- We need to educate ourselves so we can avoid becoming victims of our bodies and let our hormones thrive and flourish as they should.
- Having bowel movements every day is so important in making sure that you're not constipated or loose because that also tells us that you're not absorbing nutrients in your diet.
- It’s best to chew in a calm environment because stress can stop you from absorbing nutrients from your food.
- Sleep quality is super important to help you to maintain a healthy weight.
About Pamela:
Pamela Windle is an internationally recognised certified integrated women's health coach and hypnotherapist who specialises in perimenopause and menopause.
She brings a suite of evidence-based tools and techniques to support women in this phase of life using functional nutrition, diagnostic testing, lifestyle medicine, and therapeutic techniques that can help women feel their best version of themselves.
Pamela is passionate about inspiring women of all ages to understand the wonders of our hormones and how they can work for us instead of working against us. She understands that we don’t have to experience symptoms such as anxiety, low energy, heavy bleeding, migraines, stubborn weight loss and all of the other ‘typical’ symptoms of menopause.
She believes that by educating ourselves, we can perhaps avoid becoming victims of our bodies and hormones but instead thrive and flourish, as indeed we should.
Connect with Pamela:
About the Show:
The Eleshia Show is an exciting new podcast that helps empower female business owners to put their well-being first whilst building their businesses. Tune in every Wednesday as my inspiring guests and I discuss strategies, share stories and experiences and dive into how you can build your business whilst trying to navigate real life. The host, Eleshia Harris is here and ready to share her decades of project management and wellness experience to help you start saying ‘Yes!’ to your business and life.
Show Transcript:
Intro: That's called cortisol, our stress hormone, and then seven days, just literally seven days before sleep means that your cortisol levels are high and then cortisol goes up. So does insulin, you got that fat in the middle.
Hi, I'm Eleshia Harris and I am your host of The Eleshia Show. I am also the founder of eleshialifestyle.com, and I'm so excited that you're here with me and I am here with you. I'm also really appreciative. Each week, I'll be sharing strategies and stories, and insights to help you enhance your wellbeing and to build your business while still navigating life.
Because sometimes we often try and separate the two, and let's face it, if you are not well, you have no business. So let's try and work with these two things combined because we can, enhance your lifestyle. Again, I'm really excited to have you here. I have wanted to put together a podcast for over two years, and so here I am ready to share. Let's get into this week's episode.
Eleshia: I hope you realize the importance of that sentence that Pamela just said, We have to take care of ourselves now. I am so excited to be back for another episode this week. I am bringing in another specialist. I'm glad that I get to call her my friend. Let me tell you a little bit about Pamela Windle. Pamela is a national and international certified integrated women's health coach. She's also a hypnotherapist and specializes in perimenopause and menopause, and she brings a suite of evidence-based tools and techniques to support women in this phase of their life using functional nutrition, diagnostic testing, lifestyle medicine, therapeutic techniques to help women feel their best versions of themselves.
She is really passionate about inspiring women of all ages to understand the wonders of our hormones and how they can really work for us once we know-how instead of working against us.
So again, these episodes that I am bringing to you are intentional. You have just had a wealth of information, with regards to working with your female cycle. So go back and listen to those if you haven't already. And when Pamela works with her clients, she's helping them realize what's causing symptoms, such as anxiety, low energy, heavy bleeding, migraine, stubborn weight loss, and so, so much more. He also believes that we need to educate ourselves, so we can avoid becoming victims of our bodies and our hormones so that we can thrive and flourish as we should, as it's intended that we do. I really hope you enjoy this episode. I'll see you on the other side.
Hello, Pamela. I'm so excited that we're going to be having this conversation. It is so key right now, well always. The fact that we are women, we go through different life cycles of our being, and we don't always discuss what's happening in our bodies.
For me, being the age that I am, it's imperative that I learn as much as I can about perimenopause and menopause to help myself, to help my husband know what kinds of changes I'm going through and when they might happen. I thought it was fitting because I'm experiencing some of these changes now that I have you on the podcast just to discuss what I can do to stabilize some of these weight gains that I'm having.
My body is changing, and I want to equip myself with as much as possible as to why that is happening. We've had lots of conversations in the background. You're one of my favorite people to talk to about all of this stuff because you're so knowledgeable and because we have a background. We've known each other for... I can't even remember how long. I think I met you in 2016, I think it was just after my mom had passed away, which was 2015.
I remember going to a conference, and we were the only people of color there.
Pamela: We merged together.
Eleshia: We gravitate. We looked at each other, didn't we? We just looked, we locked eyes and that was it. We were like, oh my goodness. And then, when we broke for lunch, we ended up having a conversation. After lunch, we ended up sitting next to each other and exchanging numbers.
It's just been so since. We're both business owners. I'm lucky that I have you, who has so much knowledge on this particular subject to be able to say, what's going on? Please school me because these things are happening. The conversation that we're going to be having for days is about weight gain. When we're perimenopausal and going into menopause quite possibly, and why? I literally want to know why. Why does this happen?
Pamela: Why indeed? Why did mother nature design this to happen to us, in our mid-forties and fifties and beyond?
Eleshia: Yes, good question, why?
Pamela: But there are a number of reasons why this happens to us. Funny enough, and I was unwell, housebound for five years. I do remember complaining to Michael, my partner, that my waist is thickening and I could feel that extra fat.
I want to say it's extra fat because I've always been a really good weight. I wouldn't say weight but body shape, should I say. I really didn't weigh myself. I still don't today. My background as a personal trainer, so I was very toned, very slim, very strong, and then five years of literally lying down for most of that time, but I could see these changes happen. I was unhappy about it, and I remember talking to Michael and saying to him, it doesn't make sense from what I had been taught as a personal trainer.
It's about calories in versus calories out. So in order to lose weight, I need to eat less and move more. So I, obviously, wasn't moving that much but I was eating reasonably well. But I was still gaining weight, not loads, but just getting a bit chunkier around the waist. I absolutely hated it, I really did.
So I know how you might be feeling or whether the women might be feeling when you feel that everything that you've done in the past. It would help you to shift that way.
Right.
And now, all of a sudden, it's not working. What I will say to you is that there's always a solution. Our hormones play a huge role and our body's way of balancing those hormones and how we look as women, so the main players, oestrogen and progesterone, and testosterone, help us to maintain that nice figure. Smaller waist, nice perk breast, nice hips and bum, and all those things. As those hormones started to decline or withdraw, roundabout our early forties, mid-forties, and then beyond, they just clustered the perimenopausal years. That hormonal shift has an impact on other hormones. Our ovaries produce oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, and they are part of a network of other systems in the body, glands, and also organs. It's called the HPA axis.
H stands for hypothalamic which is in the brain. The pituitary gland is in the brain also, and then the A is your adrenal glands. The axis is the endocrine system which includes your thyroid and also the pancreas that secrete insulin, and also your ovaries are part of that as well.
Because of the changes between oestrogen and progesterone, because those two hormones need to be balanced. The light shifted basically. If they are out of balance, they have problems like weight gain. As we're transitioning, the progesterone is dropping off first, and then the closer we get to menopause, the progesterone goes even lower and so does oestrogen as well.
That causes a little bit of inflammation in the body or weight gain, which could be the result of not having enough oestrogen particularly in the lower end or having too much oestrogen. You can have too much and too little oestrogen all at the same time.
Eleshia: Please, can you explain that? Because I did not know that. I was like, okay you have to make sure that you've got enough oestrogen in the body so that it doesn't happen, that you decline really quickly. So now that you've literally just said that you can have enough and not have enough at the same time, that's mind-blowing.
Pamela: Yes, so you might have too much. There are three types of oestrogen dominance, that is because your oestrogen and your progesterone are out of balance that means you have too much oestrogen or too little. It is confusing, but I'll try to explain it to you.
There's something called relative oestrogen dominance, and that is your progesterone and your oestrogen of relatively imbalanced. That means you have too much oestrogen compared to your progesterone, and this happens in perimenopause. This is natural because your progesterone is dropping sooner before your oestrogen catches up when you get to menopause.
Women have dryness where the hair, skin is dry, and other parts of the body are dry.
Eleshia: I went straight to my vagina. I was just like, okay.
Pamela: Yes, vaginal dryness. They're women who have low levels of oestrogen, and this is like the ovaries type of oestrogen. Oestrogen is a powerful hormone and it's over 400 functions in the female body.
Eleshia: This is the thing that we don't know because we just use oestrogen as we need to have enough oestrogen in the body but it plays a big...
Pamela: Yes, it's huge. It plays a massive role.
Eleshia: Let me say it again. So it plays a big role.
Pamela: As it’s withdrawing, your brain function can be affected as oestrogen starts to withdraw. Your skin might feel a bit different. Your libido might not be as high as it was because that needs to be high. So it sends a signal to the pituitary gland to release hormones so that you do feel that urge to be intimate with your partner.
Once it's done, it stops for us. All those 400 things to get rid of the unwanted oestrogen, and that's what we call Frank oestrogen dominance. So the liver has two phases of detoxification. Now, this is really important for hormone imbalance, and this is what causes inflammation in people's bodies. Because the liver gets a bit sluggish and stops doing its job as well. So we can find women that will struggle with heavy bleeding as a result of this, probably migraines as well, irritation, weight gain around that belly for sure because the liver is not clearing that oestrogen.
And also oestrogen-driven cancers at their worst. The liver does two jobs, so it does two phases of detoxification and we need to help the body to do that. The third detoxification of oestrogen in the colon. So my gut health is also part of... Yes, we need to clear, we need to have a healthy bowel movement every day. We also need to populate our gut with beneficial bacteria as well so that we don't then reabsorb that unwanted oestrogen into our bodies creating more imbalances.
So that's frank oestrogen dominance, and that is not a good sign. Women can have relative oestrogen dominance and also frank oestrogen dominance. And also the third one, the gut.
Yes, that woman is not feeling great. She's going to be struggling to lose weight. She's going to be struggling with night sweats, hot flushes, maybe some migraines, painful breasts, irritation, and all the ugly things that we know about perimenopause that woman's going to be experienced in that.
Eleshia: And then she doesn't know what to do because we're not talking about it.
Pamela: Yes.
Eleshia: She's struggling on her own because she goes to the doctor, and the doctor says, okay you need to just do this. And then we're suppressing what actually needs to happen, which is we need to look out what's going on within and try and fix that before we suppress it.
Wow. Whenever we have these conversations, you always say something to me that blows my mind. I was thinking about the first two things you were talking about, but then gut health is a huge thing that we need to look at as well.
So let's talk about that a little bit more because we have to remember that the gut is your second brain. If something's not right, the gut is going to tell you but often we just ignore what's happening.
Pamela: Yes, and your gut is your first line of defense for your immune system. Your gut health is so important, and the medical model doesn't really recognize that. So having a bowel movement every day is so important and making sure that you're not constipated or it's not the extreme where it's loose because that also tells us that you're not absorbing nutrients in your diet. So it's really important to have a healthy bowel movement. There's a lot to talk about probiotics. While probiotics are great, we also need prebiotics to enable the probiotics to work.
If you cook it from scratch, it's highly likely that you're adding some prebiotics into your diet. So if you're cooking from scratch, add in onion and garlic, those two are already prebiotics that you can just add-in.
Eleshia: And they're pretty delicious as well.
Pamela: Exactly, and so that is really important. Things like bananas, green tea, and then you've got your fermented foods like sauerkraut, kombucha which are probiotics. They're adding lots of those into your diet which really helps. And then we want to increase our fiber. Now, the government guidelines, I think they're now saying, is it seven a day now? They're saying it used to be five a day.
Eleshia: Yes, so I think they've brought it up to seven, but we know that you still need a little bit more than that.
Pamela: We want to aim for about 10 a day and I know it's hard, but there are ways of doing it so that it doesn't feel hard. A lot of times when we talk about fiber or fiber day and a lot of people have lots of fruit. We don't want to have lots of fruit. One to two portions of fruit a day, this enough. I only have one a day.
Eleshia: I usually try and make a banana. I wasn't keen on bananas for a long time because I ate too many when I was younger, but I know the benefits for me so I try and make it a banana or some berries for the antioxidants as well.
Pamela:: Yes, so one to two portions of fruit a day and the rest should come from your vegetables, but then you've got your nuts. They're also the type of fiber. And then, things like your lentils and pulses which have lots of fibers as well, which is great. To populate your gut with all of that would help to create that internal environment so that you are eliminating that waste from your body, so that's what we need to do. And chewing your food, breaking down your food, not eating in front of your TV or in front of your laptop, best you don't watch the news while chewing because stress will stop you from absorbing nutrients. So ideally you want to chew in a calm environment, and chewing for about 35 to 40 times before you swallow.
Food should be mushy. When you chew food, you break down the food particles so your body will absorb it much better.
Eleshia: It's so important, and especially what you said about not watching stressful things at the time that you're eating. Often people don't even realize that because they'll sit down, have their meal but have the news in the background.
Pamela: Yes, and right now we don't really want to be paying attention too much. Well, a little bit but not full-on.
Eleshia: Yes, exactly because that's part of the whole reason why a lot of us are stressed is because of the amount of information that was taken in and actually not giving ourselves some time to just be still and not take it all in every day. I read the headlines, I don't always tap into the news because for me, I know, it stresses me out. And I also know that I take all of that in, so if I know that it's happening for me, it's probably happening to a lot of women also. We have to be very mindful of what we're letting in, especially at this time.
Pamela: Yes, for so many reasons as well.
Eleshia: So many reasons.
So give us some tips, give us some tips, please.
Pamela: I've talked about oestrogen dominance and your gut health, but there's also moving your body. Making sure that you maintain your muscle tone or density because so many women in this life phase, midlife, stops moving, stops exercising.
Eleshia: Or they go the other way.
Pamela: Yes, and then exercise too much.
Eleshia: Exercise too much, or actually do things that they didn't do before. And then, that raises stress in the body as well. So you have to be really mindful about what kind of exercises that you're doing.
Pamela: Yes, totally. You need to exercise smartly because if you're over-exercising, then that causes a stress response in your body, which will impact your sleep, which will then cause you to increase your insulin levels, which then causes you to fix fat around your middle. Insulin and cortisol are our stress hormones. Fat around the tummy, that's it basically.
So being smart about how you move your body in a way that's supportive, not a way that's going to be harmful to you. Building muscle is good, so we need to maintain that muscle mass. The more muscle you have, it's better your blood sugar levels and also your bone health and heart health, as you age as well. But also to help you to maintain a healthy weight.
And so moving, we need to do it right. Do it in a way that's supportive, and then the other thing we need to look at is we call it persistent organic pollutants. They are pollutants that we are exposed to all the time. It could be things that we put on our skin, on our hair could be where you live. If you live in an in-city in you're exposed to harmful chemicals, like heavy traffic as well. It could be the foods that you're eating, the quality of the food. If you having takeouts a lot if you having processed foods, full of pesticides and chemicals so there's a lot about persistent organic pollutants coming forward in terms of diabetes. They think that that's one of the reasons why women of the African diaspora and Asian when people or women have higher levels of diabetes compared to white European people.
Eleshia: That's really interesting because you do find that in our communities, and I never thought about that link of where you live may be having an impact from a diabetes perspective. You know that I'm going to have to go and research that now, too.
Pamela: If anyone that's listening, obviously just control the controllable that if you live in an inner-city, then we can't do anything about that particularly right now.
Eleshia: As you said, you can do things about the pollutions in your house. You can add more plants to make sure that you're getting more oxygen within your house. There are things that you can do. Now, as I said, my mind is like...
Pamela: Yes, or any of those will cause stress in your body. Remember stress and insulin that means fat in the middle. So there are many reasons, we then have poor sleep. Women in perimenopause may be struggling with a few night sweats or maybe just not sleeping as well. Some women are sandwiched between having elderly parents and a young family, or even teenagers going through, their own challenges.
Now we've got the pandemic, so sleep quality is super important to help you to maintain a healthy weight as well because if you're sleeping less than six hours a night, and that causes a spike in your hormone that's called cortisol, our stress hormone. And then, seven days, just literally seven days of poor sleep means that your cortisol levels are high. And then cortisol goes up, so does insulin so you got fat around the middle.
Eleshia: Wow. What I'm hearing from my perspective is that obviously, I've got Elessandra, and she's a great sleeper which I'm really lucky. But there are times when she was teething or when she is sick, sometimes those would be sleepless nights. But even just switching myself off, I need to be a little bit better at doing that because I don't want to be tired of myself. I don't want to be tied for her, but I've also got Jordan to think about. Having a brother with autism, who you are a carer for is hard work. Sometimes they do have sleepless nights, but you said six hours is the minimum, I get that. I get that which I'm lucky that I do, but there are lots of people that are not getting that right now. Burning the candle or where stress, absolutely stress.
Pamela: Or the other thing that I find that a lot of women say is I'll wake up to go to the bathroom once, twice, three times a night, that's broken sleep. Waking up to go to the bathroom isn't normal, and a lot of women expect to get used to the abnormal and think that they're normal.
Eleshia: When you say it's not normal, can we dive into that a little bit more, on why it's not normal?
Pamela: So if a woman's waking up one, two, three, four, I've heard from my clients that come to me, and literally waking up hours after falling asleep, and read it over time. Yes, that's broken sleep. When we talk about sleep, it needs to be six hours solid without any interruptions. Again, to the bathroom, in between that is interrupted sleep. So women get used to that normal or that way of it looks like normal, because when we wake up, the body naturally wants to empty our bladder. That's a natural thing that happens. So what I would say to any woman that is waking up once a night and if it's every night, but then she's waking up more, have a lookout or how much water or liquids you're drinking throughout the day. Keep a diary, measure it, and also what are you drinking towards the end of the day as well?
I would look at that. If that all looks good, the next thing I'd be looking at while you're waking, if there is something waking you up? If your cortisol levels are high, and if that is what's going on, which is waking you up, then you need the wee. That's like a natural thing that happens, but that is secondary. So that's what I'd be looking at next, what's your melatonin levels like? What are your cortisol levels like? So we'd then look at what did you have for breakfast? What stresses that you got on right now? What are your blood sugar levels like? Because remember at the beginning, when I told you about the HPA axis that relationship where the pancreas, the pancreas produces insulin. But when we are in perimenopause, that drop in oestrogen because I stuck in that natural phase or imbalance of progesterone and oestrogen causes our body to be more sensitive to insulin, which means the things that we could get away with in the past like these glass of Prosecco or that chocolate.
Eleshia: My two favorite things.
Pamela: Or that bag of Doritos or stress. We don't manage it as well. It shows up with your blood sugar levels spike in when you have a blood sugar spike, you also have an insulin spike. And then you have stress that causes stress to the female body, and then you have weight gain around that midsection.
Eleshia: So we have to think about all of those things that are causing us stress. We need to think about our sleep health. We need to think about what we're actually putting into our bodies, and we need to think about moving our bodies.
Pamela: Yes, and also what we put on our bodies.
Eleshia: And what we put on our bodies, that's key as well, because those can be causing hormone imbalances that you don't even realize.
Pamela: Yes, 100%. What causes that Frank oestrogen dominance that we talked about.
Eleshia: It sounds like a lot, but I always say to people, just choose one thing. Decide on that, make that 1% change, because if you're just relaying everything that I've just taught about. That'll sounds overwhelming. The information is overwhelming because women don't know where to start. So if you're listening to this now, I would say, start with just one thing. You know yourself that 1% change sticks to it. And then, when you've mastered that, go onto the next thing to make that change.
That's such a great way of putting it because as you said, we've given you guys a lot of information here, but I love just making that 1% chance that, you can do that. You can do that quite easily.
Pamela: It could be that you go and source some natural products for your skin and hair. It could be that you make sure that you're switching your blue light, or so you're not scrolling through social media. You were choosing that stressor. It could be that you start exercising, maybe find a buddy to go walking with if you don't exercise already. Obviously, to be safe.
It could be that you're going to start having seven a day because you've already had five a day, and you aim to get 10 a day. It could be just one thing, make it simple. It does not need to be hard. It doesn't need to be an all-in-one go, just one thing at a time.
Eleshia: As you said, make it simple for yourself. Make it simple for yourself, but you're going to reap the benefits from doing it. These are the things that we have to really, really think about because we're so good as a society at making sure that we look great on the outside. When we get older, we're like, oh my gosh, it's time to have Botox. It's time to buy those anti-aging creams with ingredients that we don't know about.
But then, when our bodies are telling us something, we're like, oh no. We just ignore that. As long as we look good on the outside, but on the inside, the body is screaming at you, help me!
Pamela: Yes. And weight gain actually, it's a source of inflammation. If you are gaining weight in that middle, so obesity changes your gut mycobiome. It changes it, which means it's unhealthy. Being overweight, that love handles, or the belly fat in midlife is a risk factor, causing diseases such as cardiovascular disease and dementia. It just goes on but it's not impossible. You can maintain a healthy weight. You can get your waist back. You don't have to go on crazy diets, cut out fats, or cut out any food sources. Maybe reduce your carbohydrates for sure.
Not maybe, but definitely reduce your carbohydrates for sure, and move. You have to exercise, but it doesn't have to be crazy.
Eleshia: No. And that's the thing, well you know, I love Pilates. That's why I'm a teacher. But just doing exercises, and movement that helps you, you don't have to think about what's helped somebody else because you are not somebody else. You may have to play around with trying different exercises, but we're not saying that you have to go fully high-impact to ensure that your belly fat is reducing. A lot of people I know will start running and start crazy exercise formats, just to get down to a smaller weight because that's what they've gone to previously.
Pamela: We've been sold that story. In this fitness industry, I've been in that for years. The slimming industry, they have brainwashed women. Heavyweight to little weight is to restrict what you're eating and avoid healthy high-fats like avocado and to beast your body. Now, when we look at the research when it comes to weight loss, all the research was done on the male body.
Eleshia: I know. I know. That is another conversation, Pamela, but this is what I have been researching. I have been telling anybody that will listen, like a lot of the research that happens is not on a female body. Men reset every 24 hours, women take 28 days and more.
Pamela: To everything that we do, how much calories that women should eat, how we exercise our bodies, how women maintain a healthy weight. It's nothing to do with our bodies.
Eleshia: Crazy.
Pamela: No wonder women are struggling with dementia. No wonder women are struggling with weight gain because they're training exercise like how a man does.
Eleshia: I can't wait, and this is one of the reasons why I'm doing this podcast is just to touch upon a lot of the subjects and a lot of these topics because we need to demystify?
Pamela: Or is it more about shining a light on it?
Eleshia: Yes.
Pamela: This is what's going on, ladies.
Eleshia: Yes, exactly. And just making people know it's okay. It is happening to the best of us, but let's get into a place where we're actually able to speak about it and share, and just really get a handle on how we're feeling rather than hiding and shying away from that because we're amazing.
Pamela: We are.
Eleshia: And we need to continue to shine on our amazingness because the female body does so much that we don't get to talk about it. Because as you said, all of this research is done on a man.
Pamela: Yes, when we go to Freud, he's a psychologist, talking about over a hundred years ago, and he said that women were just all about their hormones. So there was stigma, stigma attached to women and their hormones and over that hundred years, our hormones have been demonized as being bad.
Eleshia: When actually they're good. Amazing.
Pamela: Yes, and that's what makes us women. And so if we've managed our hormones, we lose weight naturally. We don't struggle supposedly, we don't struggle with anxiety when we understand the importance of understanding our hormones.
Eleshia: Yes, thank you so much for coming on and having this conversation with me, because I think it's going to benefit so many women. I'm just very thankful that we were able to do this. So tell us where else we can find you, and how we can work with you in the future?
Pamela: I hang out on Instagram, so my handle name is @pamelawindlehormonecoach. I'm also on Facebook on Pamela Windle Hormones and Vitality. I work with clients on a one-to-one basis, and I have different packages depending on your needs. But all of them involve me and my expertise in terms of functional nutrition. I take an integrative approach for your health, whereas if you were going to the doctor and you were struggling with anxiety, they'd give them Prozac. If you were struggling with perhaps the weight gain, the bike they prescribe. Thyroid medication gets the jest, but I work integrated. I'm looking at your whole body system making sure that they're optimal. I use some diagnostic testings or a woman's tasks as well.
We'll work and support you with your mindset as well and targeted supplements for the three ways that we can work together. But I also have a membership called the flourish and thrive. I love the membership as well. The ladies in there were amazing. We meet on a weekly basis and there's a membership site that's got a host of information in there.
Eleshia: Great stuff. As I said, thank you so so much, and I'm sure this won't be our only conversation throughout the podcast duration because I've got so many questions. As I said, I just want to be able to equip myself, but also share with others as well, to make sure that their journey is a little bit easier for them as well, so thank you so much.
Pamela: Thank you, Eleshia.
Eleshia: I really hope that this episode served you and answered some of your questions with regards to weight gains around our perimenopausal and menopausal phases.
And as always, if there are any questions, please reach out to any of us with your questions. I've linked in Pamela Windle's information in the show notes, and she is more than happy to answer any questions as am I. We are just here to help, so if there's anything that you didn't understand or you need more information on, please get in contact with us. Until next time, speak to you soon. Bye-bye.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Aleisha show. If you know somebody who needs to hear the conversations that we are having, please share it, take a screenshot and send it to them. Also, I would really love for you to rate and review the podcast as this reading helps. And I'd love to read your comments last.
Remember, you need to invest in yourself first because you aren't important and amazing take care until the next time bye-bye.
