This conversation is one I've been wanting to have for a long time.

I invited Robyn Kievit onto the podcast because she is doing something genuinely rare. She is the first dietician to become a nurse practitioner, she specialises in eating disorders, disordered eating and body image, and over the past several years she has become deeply educated in hormone therapy and perimenopause. She is one of very few clinicians in the world looking at all of this together, as one whole picture. And that matters enormously for the women I work with.

We talk about what perimenopause actually feels like, why the hormonal shifts of this life phase can cause eating disorder symptoms to surge, what hormone therapy is and who it might help, and why so many women are being dismissed by their doctors when they deserve so much better. We also talk about body image, aging, grief, and what it means to enter this next season of life with compassion rather than resistance.

This episode is for you if:

• You're in perimenopause or approaching it and want to understand what's actually happening in your body
• Your anxiety, depression or eating disorder symptoms have surged and you don't know why
• You've been dismissed by a doctor and told it's too early to seek support
• You have a history of an eating disorder and want to understand how that intersects with hormonal changes
• You're struggling with body image as your body changes with age
• You want to know your options, natural, hormonal, and otherwise, for supporting yourself through this transition
• You believe, like I do, that you don't have to just white-knuckle your way through this

In this episode, we cover:

✨ The signs of perimenopause that often get missed or dismissed, and why they matter

✨ How hormonal changes affect mood, sleep, cognition and anxiety in ways that are genuinely physiological, not just in your head

✨ Why anxiety and depression can surge during perimenopause, especially if you have a history of either

✨ The HPA and HPO axes explained in plain English, and why they're so central to how you feel during this transition

✨ What hormone therapy actually is, who it can help, and what the current guidance really says

✨ Why birth control pills and IUDs are considered hormone therapy, and what that means for you

✨ The enormous gap in clinical education around eating disorders and menopause, and why Robyn created her course to address it

✨ How to advocate for yourself if you're being dismissed by a doctor

✨ Why bone health and cardiovascular health make hormonal support even more important for women with eating disorder histories

✨ The body image and grief piece of aging, and why our bodies changing is not something to be corrected

✨ What it means to enter the archetype of the crone, the wise woman, with self-compassion rather than fear

✨ Why you are allowed to ask not to be weighed at a medical appointment

✨ Robyn's course for clinicians and why it exists

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "I just wasn't feeling like myself. That is the number one thing women say when perimenopause begins, and it deserves to be taken seriously, not dismissed."

💬 "We are at the mercy of our hormones in some ways, and that is not a weakness. It's physiology. The question is what tools do we have to support ourselves through it."

💬 "Growing old is a gift. Every line on your face is a line of a life lived, smiled in, cried in. A body well lived in."

💬 "Our bodies change purposefully. The goal isn't to fight that. It's to find solutions that help us feel well within it."

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