How to Lose the Wait

Wellness coach Karli Blackwell explains how gut health, inflammation, and blood sugar affect energy, bloating, and sleep for women over 40 and in menopause.

Fatigue, bloating, brain fog, and the 3 p.m. crash often get brushed off as part of getting older. In this episode of How to Lose the 'WAIT,' life coach Holly Toscanini talks with wellness coach Karli Blackwell about gut health after 40 and what those everyday symptoms may be telling you.

Karli spent nearly twenty years with digestive issues, saw five GI doctors, and tried every diet from SlimFast to Weight Watchers before she started asking why her body felt the way it did. She now works with clients on three areas she calls the pillars of health: gut health, inflammation, and blood sugar balance. She and Holly talk about why so many women push through symptoms for years, how these three areas show up in perimenopause and menopause, and how to start listening to your body again after decades of following someone else's food rules.

In this episode:

• Why Karli started asking "why" after her fifth GI doctor diagnosed IBS
• The difference between symptoms that are common and symptoms you have to live with
• Everyday signs your gut could use more support, including sugar cravings and mood
• What inflammation has to do with how you feel day to day
• Why blood sugar matters for energy, cravings, and sleep even if you aren't diabetic
• How gut health, inflammation, and blood sugar show up in midlife and menopause
• How to start trusting your body's signals after years of dieting
• Why a human coach can see things a midnight Google search can't
• One micro move for this week: track your energy for a few days

Connect with Karli Blackwell:

Instagram: @loving.my.gut https://www.instagram.com/loving.my.gut

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/p/Loving-My-Gut-100077920909689/

WEBSITE: https://karlibguthealthcoach.wixsite.com/mysite

Resources from Holly:

The "What's Next?" Self-Coaching Session (free): https://withme.so/hollytoscanini/lead_542

When You Can't Stop Second-Guessing Yourself, a 5-day private podcast ($37): https://withme.so/hollytoscanini/dm_7519

This episode is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Talk with your doctor before making changes to your health care, medications, or supplements.

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gut health, gut health after 40, bloating, fatigue, brain fog, inflammation, blood sugar, menopause, perimenopause, women over 40, IBS, energy, sleep, non-diet, listening to your body, wellness coach, midlife health

Why body insecurity and ageism keep women waiting to live, and three practices to rebuild self-trust and body confidence after 40 and 50.

If you've been putting something off until your body looks right or you feel young enough, this episode is for you.

Holly Toscanini looks at where body insecurity really comes from, why ageism makes it louder in midlife, and how self-trust helps you stop waiting. You'll get three practices to start this week and one honest question to sit with.

Try "What's Next?”, Holly's free self-coaching tool: https://whats-next.hollytoscanini.workers.dev/

body image after 50, body confidence, midlife, aging, ageism, menopause, self-trust, intuition, diet culture, How to Lose the WAIT

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Most women have had this experience at least once. They’re in a conversation — a meeting, a relationship, a family situation — and they know exactly what they want to say. And then something happens in the space between knowing and speaking. What comes out is smaller, softer, more careful. Or nothing comes out at all.

It’s not a confidence problem. It’s not a mindset problem. According to today’s guest, it’s something more specific — and something that most healing and growth approaches never reach.

In this episode, Holly is in conversation with Christine Agro, founder of the Intrinsic Energy® Institute and the woman who identified and named Patriarchal Encodement™ — an energetic conditioning so embedded in women’s experience that it shapes how they think, feel, speak, and relate to themselves, often without any awareness that it’s happening.

In this conversation, Holly and Christine cover:

• What Christine was observing in her clients that led her to identify Patriarchal Encodement™ — and the moment she realized it was systemic, not individual
• What Patriarchal Encodement™ is — and what makes it different from how we usually talk about patriarchal conditioning
• Why women continue to struggle with the same patterns despite years of therapy, personal growth, and healing work — and what most approaches miss
• The specific experiences women have learned to tolerate: self-doubt, over-giving, difficulty setting limits, guilt, staying silent to keep the peace
• What is actually happening when a woman knows what she wants to say and still can’t say it
• How this conditioning shapes a woman’s relationship with her body
• What it means to clear something at its energetic roots — and why that produces a different result

Free resource from Christine:

Patriarchal Encodement™ Workbook — download free at:

https://www.christineagro.com/peworkbook

Christine Agro — Intrinsic Energy® Institute:

https://christineagro.com/

Instagram: @christineagro

https://www.instagram.com/christineagro

Facebook: @christineagro

https://www.facebook.com/christineagro

YouTube: youtube.com/christineagro

https://www.youtube.com/christineagro

why women stay silent, women silencing themselves, patriarchal conditioning, internalized patriarchy, how patriarchy affects women, women finding their voice, women’s self-worth, women’s boundaries, women’s empowerment, trusting your intuition, Christine Agro, Patriarchal Encodement, Patriarchal De-Encodement, Intrinsic Energy Institute, energetic healing women, clearing energetic patterns, women in midlife, why women hold back, women’s voice and power

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What is menorexia? You've got a changing body, a culture that expects you to hide the change, & the old promise that life gets better once you get your younger body back.

I draw on decades of dieting history and my years working in intuitive eating and body acceptance to explore why health-promoting habits & restrictive thinking can look so alike from the outside, & why the better question is what's driving a habit & what it's costing you. 

The Honest Answer Coach

If you'd like help finding your one honest next step, try The Honest Answer Coach, my free self-coaching tool. You tell it what you've been feeling, and it asks a few thoughtful questions to help you get to what's underneath and leave with a next step that fits your actual life.

https://holly-toscanini-f50a.mykajabi.com/the-honest-answer-coach

If You Need Support

If food, exercise, or your body are taking up more space in your life than you'd like, you deserve support from someone who specializes in this. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders offers a free helpline staffed by licensed therapists at 866-662-1235 (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern), and a treatment directory at findEDhelp.com. The helpline isn't a crisis line. If you're in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Related Episodes

Episode 134: Hormone therapy and sexual health with Dr. Jennifer Roelands

Episode 133: You're Not Becoming Invisible. You're Becoming Harder to Ignore.

Research Mentioned

National Alliance for Eating Disorders, "Eating Disorders in Midlife and Beyond" (about 13 percent of women 50 and older report at least one current eating disorder symptom)

2023 analysis in Menopause estimating midlife eating disorder prevalence at roughly 3.5 percent, with individual symptoms more common (summarized by LifeStance Health)

#menopause #perimenopause #menorexia #bodyimage #womenover50 #bodyacceptance #intuitiveeating #midlifewomen #howtolosethewait

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OB-GYN Dr. Jennifer Roelands on why women normalize symptoms for years, how to advocate in the exam room, and what to know about hormones and sexual health.

You’ve noticed changes in your sleep, your energy, your mood, your body, or your sex drive — and you’ve been wondering whether you simply need to push through them — today’s conversation may help you ask a better question- What if you don’t have to keep waiting to feel like yourself again?

Holly’s guest is Dr. Jennifer Roelands, a board-certified OB-GYN and Integrative Medicine specialist with 17 years of active clinical practice at Precision Health MD in Orange County, California. She has spent nearly two decades watching women be dismissed, misdiagnosed, and undertreated — and built her practice around the conviction that women over 35 deserve the clinical explanation their 15-minute appointment never has time for.

Her book PIVOT | You Are Not Crazy: Perimenopause Edition releases October 15, 2026.

• What it means to become the SHE-EO of your health when you feel overwhelmed or talked over in the exam room
• The PIVOT framework from Dr. Roelands’ new book — and the step women most often skip
• The most persistent myths about hormone therapy that still keep women from having an informed conversation
• Why sexual health is still treated as optional rather than a core part of women’s healthcare
• How to talk with a partner about changes in desire, discomfort, or how you feel in your body
• How to think about long-term health without making aging another exhausting standard to meet

Resources from Dr. Roelands:

Free guide — How to Talk to Your Doctor:

https://drjenniferroelands.com/perimenopauseguide/

PIVOT | You Are Not Crazy: Perimenopause Edition (releases October 15, 2026):

https://drjenniferroelands.com/pivotbook/

Precision Health MD:

https://drjenniferroelands.com/

YouTube — Dr. Jen MD:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC16IWACsU9FPpkYlLENEjg

Instagram: @dr.jenniferroelands

https://www.instagram.com/dr.jenniferroelands/

#perimenopause #womenshealth #womenover40 #drjenniferroelands #selftrust #PIVOTbook #womenover50 #menopause

Additional Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Kelly Caspern- You Are Not Broken
https://www.youtube.com/@kellycaspersonmd

Emily Morse- Sex with Emily

https://sexwithemily.com/

Dr. Emily Nagoski- Come As You Are

https://www.emilynagoski.com/

Subscribe for weekly episodes on self-trust, honest communication, and what it actually looks like to stop waiting and start living.

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There’s a conversation happening about midlife invisibility. About the moment women realize they’re no longer turning heads, no longer registering the way they once did. And most of the responses are about how to fix it.

I think the framing is off.

Not because the experience isn’t real — it is. But because there’s a question nobody is asking before the style tips arrive: what kind of visible were you? And is that what you actually want back?

In this episode of How to Lose the ‘WAIT’, I'll draw a distinction most conversations about midlife invisibility miss: the difference between the genuine experience of being dismissed or overlooked, and the loss of a conditional visibility that required women to perform, accommodate, and make themselves useful in order to be seen.

Those aren’t the same thing. And treating them the same leads to the wrong solution.

What you’ll learn:

• Why the experience of feeling invisible in midlife is real and worth taking seriously — without a list of style tips
• The two very different experiences women conflate when they say they feel invisible
• The question that changes everything: what were you visible as?
• What conditional visibility actually cost — and why its fading might not be entirely a loss
• What the most compelling, clear-eyed women in midlife have in common
• The specific waiting pattern the invisibility experience activates
• Why the visibility that actually sustains you doesn’t come from being confirmed by the right people

Subscribe for weekly episodes on self-trust, honest communication, and what it actually looks like to stop waiting and start living.

Newsletter- Subscribe

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feeling invisible in midlife, midlife women visibility, women over 40 confidence, midlife identity, women feeling invisible at 50, midlife women empowerment, how to feel visible again, midlife invisibility, aging and self-worth, self-trust women over 40, women and aging, midlife confidence, women becoming invisible, showing up

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There’s a particular kind of stuck that happens when you’ve already thought about the problem from every angle.

You know something needs to change. You may even know what the change is. But taking action still feels strangely difficult.

Holly’s guest today, Embodied Integration Coach Natasha Ramlall, has a phrase that explains why: “You can’t think your way out of an overthinking problem.”

Change isn’t only happening in your thoughts. Your body is part of the conversation too.

After making her own pivot following a 25-year career, Natasha became deeply interested in the disorienting in-between — the space between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming. Her work now centers on Identity Rupture and Grounded Expansion: creating enough internal stability to experience the grief, uncertainty, possibility, and growth that come with real change.

What you’ll learn in this conversation:

What Identity Rupture means — and why it’s more precise than saying you’re “going through a transition”

What it looks like for a woman who appears completely functional from the outside

Why being highly capable can make major transitions harder, not easier

What women do during this period that unintentionally makes the disorientation worse

Why more thinking, planning, and self-improvement often keeps you stuck

What somatic safety means in plain language — and how to recognize it

How Grounded Expansion helps women move forward without rushing into a new identity

Why grief and possibility need to coexist during a real identity shift

How to tell the difference between a grounding pause and avoidance

What aligned action feels like compared to action driven by pressure or panic

Free Guided Resourcing Audio:

https://humanistcoaching.eo.page/free-resourcing-audio

Learn more about Natasha’s work:

https://www.humanistcoaching.ca/

Subscribe for weekly episodes on self-trust, honest communication, and what it actually looks like to stop waiting and start moving.

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What decision did you expect to have made by now? Here’s how to use September to name the overdue thing — and take one real move before the year ends.

What decision did you expect to have made by now?

Not this year specifically — just by now. There’s something you’ve been circling. A direction you thought you’d have committed to. A conversation you’d have had. A change you’d have made. And every time September rolls around, the gap between where you thought you’d be and where you actually are becomes a little harder to ignore.

In this episode, Holly Toscanini uses September’s natural transition energy to help you name one overdue decision — not to reinvent your life or start over, but to stop postponing one specific thing that already matters.

Register for the free live class — Stop Waiting to Feel Ready — on September 12, 2026 at 10 AM PDT.

https://holly-toscanini-f50a.mykajabi.com/stop-waiting-to-feel-ready-workshop

overdue decision, September reset, stop postponing, how to stop waiting, making a decision you keep putting off, women over 40 decisions, September new year, preparation vs avoidance, readiness vs willingness, how to stop procrastinating a decision, decision making women, self-trust women, how to take action, stop waiting for the right time, overdue choice

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Ama K. Karikari spent 15 years in a marriage defined by chronic silent treatment before recognizing it as abuse. Here’s what she learned.

Sometimes the hardest relationships to leave are the ones that don’t look obviously harmful from the outside. There may not be a single incident you can point to or a piece of evidence that makes everyone around you immediately understand what you’re feeling. Instead, there’s withdrawal, punishment, confusion, and a growing sense that you can’t trust your own interpretation of what’s happening anymore.

My guest today, Ama K. Karikari, spent fifteen years experiencing chronic silent treatment in marriage before recognizing it as a form of emotional harm. Today she helps other women and mothers find language for experiences they may have struggled to explain even to themselves.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• What the silent treatment actually is — and the critical distinctions between it, a cooling off period, and involuntary stonewalling
• Why the silent treatment triggers the same neurological pain centers as physical violence
• Why it’s so hard for others — friends, family, even clinicians — to recognize it as abuse when there’s no visible evidence
• How chronic silent treatment erodes self-trust over time and causes women to doubt their own perception
• The four potential outcomes of staying in a narcissistic relationship, according to research
• The one safest first step for a woman who still feels confused or afraid to trust her own experience
  

Ama’s free resources

Find both in the links below.

Website: https://www.amakkarikari.com/

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/amakkarikari/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amakarikariyawson/

eBook — Silenced to Soaring: Heal from Chronic Silent Treatments, Toxic Relationships and Abuse: https://www.amakkarikari.com/

Soaring Sisters Community — guided lessons, practical exercises, community webinars, and optional weekly peer support circles: https://www.skool.com/silenced-to-soaringmoms/about

the silent treatment, chronic silent treatment, emotional abuse in marriage, narcissistic abuse recovery, silent treatment in relationships, emotional harm women, how to recognize emotional abuse, self-trust after abuse, toxic relationship recovery, mothers in abusive relationships, Ama K. Karikari, Silenced to Soaring, gaslighting and silence, narcissistic tendencies, rebuilding self-trust after toxic relationship

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You finally said it. Then they got defensive and suddenly you’re explaining yourself instead of addressing the problem. Here’s how to stay connected to what you need.

You said the thing you’d been avoiding. Before you finished explaining what’s been bothering you, the other person said, “That’s not fair,” or “I didn’t mean it that way,” or “Why are you bringing this up now?”

And suddenly you’re no longer talking about the problem. You’re reassuring them that you don’t think they’re a bad person. By the end of the conversation, the concern you worked so hard to raise has almost disappeared.

Starting an honest conversation requires courage.

Staying connected to what you need after the other person becomes defensive requires self-trust.

Those are not always the same skill.

In this episode — part three of the honest conversation arc — I'll name what actually happens when defensiveness takes over a conversation and how to remain present and clear without either shutting down or losing the point.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why defensiveness changes the conversation so quickly — and why understanding someone’s reaction doesn’t require you to let it replace your concern
• When the conversation shifts to your delivery: how to acknowledge what’s true without letting your communication style become the entire subject
• The urge to prove you’re reasonable — and why you don’t need identical interpretations before a problem can be addressed
• A simple structure for staying grounded: acknowledge their response, then return to the issue
• The difference between intent and impact — and why one doesn’t cancel the other
• What to do when someone brings up your grievances to redirect the conversation
• How to handle withdrawal and silence without chasing the conversation or giving up the issue
• When to pause a conversation — and what a pause looks like versus avoidance

Practice for this week: Think about a conversation you need to have and the defensive response you’re already expecting. Notice what you usually do when that happens. Choose one different response. Write down the central issue in one sentence and the line you’ll use to return to it.

Book an Honest Conversation Session — a focused 60-minute session to clarify what you need to say, prepare for the places where you’re most likely to lose your footing, and identify your next step.

The Honest Conversation Session

Book your session (five spots available):

https://calendly.com/hollytoscanini/honest-conversation?month=2026-07

Or send me a message on Instagram @hollytoscanini with the words “honest conversation.”

what to do when someone gets defensive, staying grounded in difficult conversations, how to hold your ground in an argument, difficult conversations women, how to stop over-explaining, staying connected to yourself, intent vs impact, how to address a pattern in a relationship, conflict avoidance women, people pleasing in arguments, how to return to the point, defensive partner, honest communication women, self-trust in relationships

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