Hit Play Not Pause

Recorded live at FeistyFest, the week Hit Play Not Pause turned six, this bonus episode hands the mic to you. Selene starts with how the show began, including her own experiences with 2 a.m. wake-ups and sleepless nights, performance decline, anxiety, the urge to pull back from people, and the changes she didn't see coming. She and longtime producer Carrie walk through their hormone therapy journe...

Iron is one of the most-requested topics in the Hit Play Not Pause community, and it's one of the most confusing. Sports dietitian Kristen Arnold, who works with pro teams and everyday athletes, returns to explain what iron does and why you can have symptoms from low iron long before you're anemic. She also covers how our needs change after menopause and how new ferritin thresholds from the Americ...

As an Olympic cyclist and speed skater with scores of medals, Clara Hughes thought she knew how to breathe. Then came menopause, along with a catastrophic knee injury, COVID, and months stuck in stillness. All of it broke open what she'd spent a lifetime outrunning. In this conversation about her new memoir, Learning to Breathe, Clara opens up about her dark journey through the menopause transitio...

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. So, this week breast oncologist and lifestyle medicine physician Dr. Amy Comander returns to explain what comes after a diagnosis: why breast cancer isn't one disease, how treatment decisions get made, and why cancer guidelines tell oncologists to talk about exercise. We cover training through treatment (including when to postpone the race), how chemo and...

It's been three years since Leka Fineman last joined the show — and in that time she won the CrossFit Games at 56, retired from competition, took up surfing for the first time in her 50s, started menopause hormone therapy (including testosterone), and lost her partner to cancer just seven months ago. Leka pulls back the curtain on the “identity grief” she experienced after working so hard to meet...

When people go on GLP-1 medications, part of the treatment plan is to encourage them to exercise. But what about all the already active–even athletic–women who are layering them onto serious training? That’s less clear…and far less researched. Performance nutritionist Heidi Skolnik, author of the new book Your GLP-1 Game Plan, returns to break down how these medications really work, the side effec...

Today's menopause conversation is dominated by hormone therapy, which leaves many women who can't use it feeling left out and worried about their current and future health and well-being. This week's guests, Drs. Rebecca Dunsmoor-Su and Amy Voedisch — co-authors of Estrogen, Interrupted and hosts of the OvaryActive podcast — are here to bring some evidence-backed hope. Because no HT doesn't mean "...

Anxiety, rage, depression, 3am wake-ups, fear that freezes you in your tracks — psychiatrist Dr. Allie Sharma joins us this week to explain why perimenopause is a real window of mental health risk. We unpack how shifting and declining estrogen and progesterone levels drive mood, sleep, and anxiety changes (and why anxiety is often the first symptom, even before hot flashes), plus how hormone thera...

Anyone who's played a full 18 holes of golf knows you need to reset, refuel, and refocus before heading into the back nine. Well, midlife works the same way, says this week's guest, OG Peloton instructor Jenn Sherman, who calls this stage of life her "Back Nine Era." Jenn opens up about her perimenopause-to-menopause journey and what it was like navigating it on camera, in front of a Peloton commu...

Recent research shows that between 40 and 60% of women either change or quit their sport due to bladder leaks. That’s 100% too many in our book. So this week we sat down with Dr. Lauren Siff, a double board-certified urogynecologist to demystify one of women's health's most under-discussed issues: urinary leakage. We break down the differences between stress and urge incontinence, why athletes and...

People often think of weight loss drugs like GLP-1 and related agonists (e.g., Wegovy and Mounjaro) as “medications”--which they are, but they work because they mimic our own natural gut hormones to lower blood sugar, slow digestion, blunt appetite, and ultimately reduce weight. In that way, they’re weight health hormone replacement therapies much like estrogen and progesterone are sex hormone rep...

Can’t lift heavy loads but still want the benefits of heavy lifting? Blood flow restriction (BFR) training—using cuffs to partially restrict venous blood flow so you can get heavy‑lifting‑like gains with much lighter loads—could be just what you need, says this week’s guest, veteran strength coach Ashley Selman, CSCS. In this episode, we dig into what BFR training is, how it’s done in real‑world w...

We’ve all heard jumping can help build our bones. But here’s the catch: the gains don’t come from the jumps; they come from how you land . This week we break down the mechanics of bone-building and how to make your skeleton stronger no matter what your age with bone health researcher Tracey Clissold, PhD. Tracey explains what it really takes to turn bone “on” with impact—and why just walking, runn...

Trail runner, writer, and BRCA1 gene carrier Sara Aranda grew up watching breast and ovarian cancer devastate the women in her family and ultimately lost her mom while she was in college. This week, she brings us her story–what it was like choosing prophylactic mastectomy and bilateral salpingo‑oophorectomy in her mid‑30s, going from FKT‑strong to surgical menopause overnight, and the collision of...

In this episode, we welcome back exercise scientist Maria Luque, PhD, to talk about her new book New Moves in Menopause: A Fearless Guide to a Stronger, Healthier, Saner Midlife and the mindset shift it asks of midlife women. Maria explains why she moved beyond traditional “fix your body” fitness narratives to focus on helping women feel better in their bodies through movement and create their own...

Could you have PCOS and not know it? You sure can, says reproductive endocrinologist and menopause specialist Dr. Carla DiGirolamo, who is hopeful that the recent renaming of the condition from “polycystic ovary syndrome” (PCOS) to “polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome” (PMOS) will help raise awareness—and improve care. This episode breaks down what PMOS actually is, why the new name matters,...

Registered massage therapist and athlete Tara Findlay nearly lost her life to fibroids, was thrown into chemical menopause, developed a “cranky” shoulder that threatened her career, and watched a long-quiet autoimmune condition roar back to life. This week, she shares how hormones, inflammation, and tissue capacity collide in midlife—and how massage, eccentric loading, “movement snacks,” and bette...

Muscle and bone loss. Inflammation. Bloating, diarrhea, and other GI issues. Peri and postmenopausal active women can face myriad training and performance challenges. But the good news is that a lot of them can be helped with proper nutrition practices. This week we dive into the basics on how to fuel your active midlife body, including what to know about carbohydrates, ultraprocessed foods, energ...

This week’s guest, renowned midlife trainer Hailey Babcock, wants you to know one thing: No one is crushing it 100%. Not the celebrities or big names she trains; not the tens of thousands of women she works with, and certainly not herself. Hailey is currently going through it with brain fog, joint pain, 2 a.m. wake ups, migraines, MIA libido, raw emotions, and low motivation and mojo. That’s befor...

When you’re in pain, the first question someone asks is “Where does it hurt?” The answer—as anyone with phantom limb pain can tell you—is not always as straightforward as it seems. This week, pain psychologist and author Dr. Rachel Zoffness breaks down the “big fat lie” we’ve been sold about pain: it’s not just a signal from damaged tissue, it’s a brain-driven experience built from a mix of ingred...

Most of us have had that moment where we get our bloodwork back and shake our heads. We’re still our active, health‑minded selves and out of nowhere—rising LDL, ApoB, A1C, and maybe blood pressure and Lp(a), too. This week, preventive cardiology dietitian Michelle Routhenstein joins us to unpack the cardiometabolic chaos and what’s really driving it. She explains estrogen’s protective role in lipi...

In this bonus episode, Selene welcomes longtime friend, cyclist, and women’s sports powerhouse Kate Veronneau to the show for a preview of the first-ever FeistyFest in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. For Kate, the location is personal. The Valley Preferred Cycling Center is where she first fell in love with bike racing, found her cycling community, and eventually launched a career in the sport. S...

There’s a lot of advice out there on how to fix, cure, hack, medicate, and manage menopause. Often, what we really need is nourishment, says this week’s guest Andrea Donsky, RHN, author of Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition and Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best . Andrea’s 14‑year journey through perimenopause led her to blend naturopathic and conventional medicine into a complementary a...

This week we sat down with menopause and mental fitness coach Sara Larson to cut through the noise around midlife, from quick‑fix promises and supplement stacks to rigid “shoulds” about how we’re supposed to look, feel, and age, and offer better solutions for navigating this challenging transition. Drawing on her own brutal perimenopause—crushing joint pain, brain fog so bad she joined an Alzheime...

What happens when a world class athlete and mindset coach meets the menopause transition? We find out this week with champion mountain bike racer and mental performance coach Sonya Looney, who dug deep into her positive psychology toolkit to navigate her compressed midlife journey through pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, miscarriage, perimenopause, and the performance/identity challenges they br...