Hit Play Not Pause

Pelvic floor disorders can wreak havoc on your well-being, especially as a woman who wants to run, jump, hike, bike, and otherwise enjoy an active life. Unfortunately, pelvic floor dysfunction is extremely common, with about half of us experiencing urinary incontinence alone (let alone painful sex, constipation, prolapse, and so forth). But we don’t have to live with all these pelvic floor problem...

Edie Perkins was a 46-year-old elite runner and cyclist when a catastrophic accident left her paralyzed from the chest down—just as she was entering menopause. In this candid conversation, Edie reveals how her hormonal changes intersected with her spinal cord injury recovery, leaving her with misdiagnosed UTIs, sheet-soaking night sweats she blamed on her injury, declining bone density, and a huge...

“The person who wins is often the one who is fending off the menopause the best!” Those were words of advice a fellow competitor once gave this week’s guest, physiotherapist and competitive cyclist Nicole Oh. That would be something Nicole would come to learn firsthand just a few short years later, as she found herself navigating mysterious joint pain, hot spells, and concerning bone loss. This we...

Over the past eight years, Feisty Media has grown into a go-to resource for women’s health and performance education. In this special episode, Feisty CEO Sara Gross and Hit Play Not Pause host Selene Yeager reflect on how Feisty’s content has evolved to meet the real-life needs of active women. From menopause and nutrition to strength training and brain health, Feisty is offering more than ever—in...

When some of the biggest names in menopause medicine want to learn to lift heavy, they turn to this week’s guest, Nike Master Trainer and midlife fitness advocate Holly Rilinger, founder of the LIFTED Method. Because Holly gets it. She’s been through her own journey with damaging diet culture, body image issues, and a challenging perimenopause that has left her navigating sheet soaking night sweat...

At the start of 2024, 55-year-old ultrarunner Hilde Dosogne set out to achieve the female World Record for the most consecutive days to run a marathon distance run by completing a marathon every day for a year. On December 31st of last year, she clocked her 366th 26.2 mile run (it was a leap year, which means she had one extra day to run) and her record was verified by Guinness in March. And we ha...

As estrogen drops, our midlife brains go through a lot of changes. The activity in our dopamine network declines, which can leave us going from highly motivated to “meh.” We can experience bigger cortisol spikes and have elevated levels of the stress hormone longer. We can end up feeling constantly stressed out and in a doom spiral we can’t quite escape. And it doesn’t exactly help that many of us...

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 ultrarunner Megan Eastwood is a portrait of perseverance. She’s lived through trauma, battled eating disorders, and been flattened by perimenopause. Through it all, she’s learned, grown, evolved, and ultimately thrived. Now 55 and postmenopausal, Megan is out in nature every week, running, climbing, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, basically anything she can do outdoors. She’s com...

Active and athletic women can be hit hard by the menopause transition. Many of us have become accustomed to our bodies responding in a predictable way to our training and nutrition, only to have that sense of control slip away during the menopause transition. That can leave us feeling desperate for solutions–and vulnerable to predatory marketing. That’s where mindset, especially acceptance, become...

Perimenopause can blindside us in unexpected ways. Fatigue hit this week’s guest, elite cyclist and coach Marissa Axell, so hard she thought she had cancer. Now the creator of the Cycling Success System wants everyone to know what can happen during this phase of life, and importantly what active women can do to counteract it. We talk all about how Marissa tailors her coaching for 40+ women, focusi...

We’ve got a grab-bag of gynecological goodness for you this week, as we sat down with elite ultrarunner, gynecologist, and Paradis pro ambassador Dr. Lauren Puretz. We dive into her running life, including how she navigates elite ultra training with two kids and a medical practice; the common gynecological issues she helps peri and menopausal women navigate, how to find quality care, and of course...

If you’ve ever felt like your mood has a mind of its own during PMS, pregnancy, or perimenopause, you already know that hormones like estrogen and progesterone don’t just affect your body — they shape your entire sense of well-being. And if you’ve lived with trauma or neurodivergence, like ADHD, you also know how reactive the nervous system can be. What happens when all of that collides during mid...

Many women, like this week’s guest Olympian runner and broadcaster Carrie Tollefson, suffer through perimenopause for far too long because they know they’re tough and they can handle things. But you don’t need to suffer, and you shouldn’t just tough it out. You can get back to feeling better and living more fully by getting the help and care you need as soon as you need it. This week we talk all a...

Women go on hormone therapy to manage peri/menopause symptoms and feel better. But sometimes to their surprise, they feel worse. Or some symptoms go away while others pop up. That’s because of the hormones! We have hormone receptors all over our body and whenever we switch up the signals they’re receiving, whether through the menopause transition itself or through the hormones we use, they’re goin...

Many of us have spent a lifetime trying to shrink ourselves. We grew up being told you could never be too thin. As athletes, especially in endurance sports, smaller, lighter, faster was the ethos of the day. That is changing as we see athletes, especially women, discover that being fueled and strong yields even better performance–and longevity. This week’s guest, trainer and nutrition coach Steph...

Women have been left on the sidelines when it comes to sport and exercise research. Research finds a measly 6% of studies in the field have exclusively focused on women. That’s bad. But for menopausal women, it’s worse. Of that 6%, menopausal women account for only 9% of total study participants, with only 16% of female-only studies focusing exclusively on older women. This despite the fact that 4...

Lots of experts have training and nutrition advice for midlife and menopausal women that is grounded in scientific evidence. Yet, the advice doesn’t always agree…and doesn’t necessarily work the same for everyone. That’s because, while there are general guidelines that are helpful for many women, in the end, we are all scientific studies of one, and no one approach will work exactly the same way f...

Phantom smells. Lack of focus. Dizziness. While everyone is talking about hot flashes and night sweats, women know that the transition to menopause brings on tons of signs and symptoms that no one ever talks about. This week’s guest, menopause educator and researcher Andrea Donsky is on a mission to change that. As the co-founder of Morphus, Inc., Donsky has become a data collecting machine and ha...

Veterinary surgeon Debbie Tacium, 55, wanted to flip the script of my menopause. After suffering pain, loss of coordination, weakness, and changes in body composition during perimenopause, she went back to the sport she loved most in life–gymnastics. She wanted to use it to bring herself back to herself and remember what it was like to be a child who could fly. This week she shares her journey, wh...

Bill Campbell, PhD, has spent his entire career as a fat loss researcher. So when his wife hit menopause and wanted help with body composition changes, he thought it would be easy. Spoiler alert: It was not. Which made him realize his field had a lot to learn, especially about active women whose bodies change even when their training and nutrition has not. Now he’s on a mission, diving into the li...

Running through the menopause transition can be challenging. If you feel like throwing in the towel sometimes, you’re not alone. This week’s guest, distance runner and blogger at runandbebrave.com has faced it all: injuries, setbacks, poor sleep, fatigue, vanishing motivation, hot flashes, and all the joint pain that accompanies the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause. Through it all, she found...

Welcome to Menopause Research Review! Now that menopause has hit the mainstream, we’re swimming in a steady stream of studies, which is great and can also be overwhelming. So for 2025, we’re introducing a regular segment called Menopause Research Review where we break down key research as it comes out with resident reproductive endocrinologist and menopause performance specialist Dr. Carla DiGirol...

Spikes, crashes, excursions, and elevated numbers. Blood sugar is on a lot of active midlife women’s minds. But what do we really know about what this all means…and what it doesn’t, especially when it comes to long term health? This week’s guest Oxford nutrition scientist and globally recognized type 2 diabetes expert Dr. Nicola Guess helps sort through all things elevated glucose and helps separa...

Women are often accused of being “too emotional”, whether it’s PMS, perimenopause, or just plain life. Worse, we’re made to believe those emotions make us weak. What if the opposite were true? What if our emotions were our super power, a force we could channel to give us strength in and out of the gym? This week’s guest Aimee Anaya Everett is living proof we can do just that, as she has channeled...