Strong + Unfiltered: Perimenopause, Hormones, Gut Health + Metabolic Optimization

Meet Caitlin Birnie! She was born and raised in Massachusetts, where she currently lives with her husband and 2 daughters (5 & 3) . She's a former athlete and marathon runner who fell in love with strength training. Now she's just trying to find the easiest way to balance training, running, nutrition and life. Caitlin has been in the fitness industry as a personal trainer & nutrition coach for 10+ years. And in 2020 her own business Footloose Fitness was born.

Caitlin coaches women to build simple sustainable habits that improve their relationship with food & exercise through macros and lifting so they can simplify fitness.

In this episode we chat about:

• When tube tops (and titty tube tops) came back in style and why gym fashion got weird
• Modest Mouse trauma and how nostalgia sneaks into millennial fitness culture
• Gym culture shifts: matching workout sets, wedgies, and the aesthetics-over-results era
• How to choose the right gym for your goals (and avoid fitness cults)
• What strength training is NOT (F45 and Orangetheory girlies, please listen)
• Have you tried actually nourishing yourself? Under-eating and its impact on workouts
• Is it food noise or are you under-fueled? How to tell the difference
• Macro tracking myths: why you don't need to track macros to get strong
• Why I told a client to eat a donut every morning (yes, this is nutrition advice)
• How to tell if you actually had a good workout (not just a hard one)
• Signs you had an effective workout without wrecking your body

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Whitney Stuart MS RDN CDCES is a Certified Diabetes Educator and Dietitian focused on improving women's health through simple and sustainable inventions using blood sugar balance and food as medicine. Whitney has been voted best Dallas Dietitian since 2019 and has helped thousands of busy individuals find joyful health through her virtual practice, Whitness Nutrition. She has been featured on ABC, Business Insider, NBC, Real Simple & D Magazine

In this episode, we chat about:

• Why are so many women anemic?
• What are co-factors and why you need to know about them
• We normalize all types of pathology in women
• Why rushed eating is hurting your vitamins and nutrients
• Your limit for exercise needs to be dependent on your capacity for recovery (ouch)
• Symptoms are signals. We need to start listening
• Cold plunging is DIRT for women (we said it)
• Gym bro grifter bullshit
• We have no general metrics for health
• Do you have an off season (or understand what it is)

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Briana Sidwell is a women's health and strength coach who helps women 30+ build real strength, confidence, and trust in their bodies — particularly as they navigate perimenopause, menopause, and the often-overlooked in-between years.

Before entering the fitness industry, Briana spent years in corporate America, where she saw firsthand how chronic stress, long hours, and "pushing through" quietly erode health. She didn't grow up athletic and didn't begin structured strength training until her late 20s — a perspective that deeply informs her coaching and allows her to meet women where they actually are, not where the industry assumes they should be.

While she spent 14 years involved in equestrian show jumping, it wasn't until later in life that Briana discovered the power of intentional, evidence-based strength training. That experience reshaped her understanding of what it truly means to be strong — not just active — and sparked her passion for helping women build resilience, capability, and longevity through thoughtful training and education.

Briana is known for questioning outdated fitness narratives, leading with education over hype, and creating spaces — both physical and conversational — where women feel informed, empowered, and capable. She believes strength is more than muscle; it's autonomy, confidence, and the ability to move through life on your own terms.

In this episode, we chat about:

• What you're doing in your workouts thats keeping you stuck
• Why women keep running on the hamster wheel of group fitness
• Why staying busy is keeping you stuck
• The bare minimum ppl need to see progress
• Where to start with your health if you don't know where to start
• GLP1's are making it easier for ppl to have an eating disorder and body dysmorphia
• The problems with GLP-1 medications (yes we went there)
• The basics are not a crazy fitness journey (listen up)
• How to adapt exercise for phases of your life
• How to know if you're doing too much in the gym
• Why lack of hunger signals is a sign you're DTM (doing too much)
• What to do in perimenopause for exercise

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Jess Wallace - adventure host, travel lover, online business manager, teacher turned entrepreneur and promoter of living a big, authentic + full life is back on the pod! She specializes in helping female entrepreneurs thrive in their businesses.

Jess and Danielle host all women adventure trips to create a space for women to connect, see the world together, make lifelong friends, and unlock core memories. We love getting women outside, connecting, adventuring, betting on themselves, taking up space, doing it scared, building confidence, living big + chasing magic.

In this episode, we chat about:

• Clueless and pogs
• Dungeons and dragons
• Who is our game master
• Palate expansion updates
• Pillow pillow and gold gold
• Do you hear what I hear
• Washer jail
• Big light hell

Get more info about Mindset. Movement. Metabolism Group Coaching!

Join the adventure party in Patagonia with Jess + Danielle

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Emily is a mission-driven registered dietitian who specializes in individualized longevity strategy. She combines expert guidance with consistent accountability to help clients transform healthy choices into sustainable habits - all while having fun along the way. Her holistic approach addresses nutrition, sleep, stress, lifestyle, exercise, hormone balance, and gut health. Emily infuses empowerment, empathy, and a commitment to enhanced quality of life into everything she does, both with clients and throughout her community.

In this episode we talked about:

• Unrealistic expectations in healthcare
• What makes a good health care provider?
• Whose responsibility is it to teach ppl to be healthy?
• Health as the highest form of self respect
• Building longevity with health habits
• Low rise jeans coming back started a new downfall
• Social media, smart phones + addiction
• Society isn't set up to make you healthy
• Critical thinking > your political affiliation (re: health)

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Jess Wallace - adventure host, travel lover, online business manager, teacher turned entrepreneur and promoter of living a big, authentic + full life is back on the pod! She specializes in helping female entrepreneurs thrive in their businesses.

Jess and Danielle host all women adventure trips to create a space for women to connect, see the world together, make lifelong friends, and unlock core memories. We love getting women outside, connecting, adventuring, betting on themselves, taking up space, doing it scared, building confidence, living big + chasing magic.

In this episode, we chat about:

• We would like a refund on the female hormones
• Why do you wanna pound your body in the ground
• Whats worse for you smoking or being vegan
• Lifting weights is fuckin under rated… STILL
• Vagina butt
• Macros are not food freedom. Period.
• Allocating spoons to life not my fitness pal
• The ways we want more for women
• Come to Patagonia with us

Get more info about Mindset. Movement. Metabolism Group Coaching!

Join the adventure party in Patagonia with Jess + Danielle

Learn more about working with me

Shop my masterclasses (learn more in 60-90 minutes than years of dr appointments)

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Dr. Gominak grew up and attended college in California, moved to Houston for medical school at Baylor College of Medicine, where she received an MD degree in 1983. Her Neurology residency was done at the Harvard affiliated, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She practiced Neurology in the San Francisco Bay area from 1991-2004 then moved with her husband to Tyler, Texas.

Starting in 2004 she began to dedicate more of her practice to the treatment of sleep and sleep disorders. In 2012 and 2016 she published two pivotal articles about the global struggle with worsening sleep, the possible causes and solutions, related to vitamin D deficiency and the intestinal microbiome.

In 2016 she retired from her office practice to have more time to teach. She currently divides her time between RightSleep® coaching sessions for private individuals, teaching about sleep and sleep disorders on her channel, youtube.com/@DrStashaGominak and teaching other clinicians the RightSleep® method of sleep repair.

In this episode, we chat about:

• The cause of your headaches you're not looking into
• What does fat bear week have to do with hormones
• Is vitamin D at the root of endometriosis and PCOS
• Thoughts and feelings about sunscreen
• How medicine has lost critical thinking ability
• Covid and vitamin D
• Why your doctor is saying no to vitamin D testing

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Dr. Samantha Turetsky is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 10 years of experience. She specializes in treating eating disorders, perfectionism, and overcontrol. She loves helping high achievers who have it all together on paper but feel unfulfilled and disconnected move from rigidity to flexibility, get out of "grind" culture, and find more joy and play in their lives. She's also passionate about helping women challenge societal norms and expectations to find out what they really want, not what they think they should want.

Sami left group practice to start her own private practice in 2024 and has recently relocated from Florida to Seattle. Her greatest asset as a therapist is that she is authentically herself in sessions, with therapeutic doses of sass, sarcasm, humor, cursing, and all. She's part of PSYPACT and can practice virtually in 43 states and is currently accepting new clients. In her spare time, you can find her in nature, supporting the local art and theatre scene, with her partner, or with her rescue dog Lala.

In this episode we chat about:

• Delete my fitness pal MY GOD
• Is how much you think about food healthy?
• "Clean eating" is a dirty phrase
• How do you determine your worth
• Permission to not keep striving
• Burnout in women and society
• Pregnancy and postpartum culture
• Oh following words not my actions
• Psychological flexibility
• Pp/pregnancy culture exercise

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Alliance for Eating Disorders

Jess Wallace - adventure host, travel lover, online business manager, teacher turned entrepreneur and promoter of living a big, authentic + full life is back on the pod! She specializes in helping female entrepreneurs thrive in their businesses.

Jess and Danielle host all women adventure trips to create a space for women to connect, see the world together, make lifelong friends, and unlock core memories. We love getting women outside, connecting, adventuring, betting on themselves, taking up space, doing it scared, building confidence, living big + chasing magic.

Join Jess and Danielle on this episode as they chat about:

• Fingers into peoples mouth
• Amazon web services outage
• Yeeting fluoride off the mountain
• Why I'm getting a palate expander
• Vivid dreams?!
• Why everyone should have a sleep test
• What actually IS health?
• Wtf are palmetto bugs
• Weird poop stories
• Come to Patagonia with us!!!
• WE better see Fitz roy
• Carrie or Kerry??

Join the adventure party in Patagonia with Jess + Danielle

Learn more about working with me

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Allie brings over a decade of experience in the health and fitness industry, blending high-level coaching with a deeply personal, client-centered approach. Before founding Mainstay Performance, she worked across a wide range of fitness settings—including commercial gyms, collegiate facilities, and government recreation centers. Over the years, she's coached everyone from executives and athletes to stay-at-home parents and people returning to exercise after time away. What unites her clients isn't just their goals, it's their drive to feel stronger, more confident, and more in control of their health. Allie is passionate about meeting people where they are, whether that means designing a plan for a busy professional balancing long hours, guiding someone new to strength training, or helping a former athlete rediscover their rhythm. Her mission is to make fitness sustainable, empowering, and aligned with the season of life you're in, so you can thrive both in and out of the gym. In this episode we chat about:

• Why your lack of programming sucks
• WTAF is progresive overload
• Why classes suck for your body comp goals
• Two things that indicate you're lifting heavy enough
• How to tell if you'r going hard enough or too hard in your workouts
• Tell tale signs of over training
• What ACTUALLY is exercise?
• Exercise as a stressor… y'all NEED to understand this
• A message for the 20 something influencers
• What I was doing worked… until perimenopause
• What NOT to do in your 30's and 40's
• WTF is exercise induced compartment syndrome
• Being healthy is boring

Learn more about working with me

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Learn more about working with Allie

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