The Next Phase

After watching K-Pop Demon Hunters , my daughters asked me if they “should want abs”… and that moment changed the entire direction of this episode. Today we’re talking about meno belly — why your belly is changing in perimenopause, what’s actually happening biologically, and the stories we’ve carried since growing up as millennial girls raised on Friends, Ally McBeal, The O.C., and the Victoria’s...

You know that low-key identity crisis that hits somewhere around 38–42? The mood swings, the random rage, the 3 AM wakeups, the nostalgia for your 90s life and the feeling that you’re somehow running out of time? It might not just be burnout. It might be perimenopause. In this episode, I’m talking with Lauren Tetenbaum — therapist, former lawyer, certified menopause practitioner, and author of Mil...

Between kids, work, and mom-life chaos, no one has the bandwidth to reinvent a grocery list every week based on their hormones. Today I’m teaching you how to make cycle syncing automatic with four reusable grocery lists—one for each phase. Instacart or in-store, it works either way. Just tap → add to cart → done. By the end, cycle syncing won’t be something you try —it’ll be something you actually...

You know that low-grade shame storm that hits every time you look at the piles, the laundry baskets, the boxes you never unpacked? In this episode, I sit down with certified professional organizer and “clutter whisperer” Star Hansen to completely flip the script on what your mess actually means. Instead of treating clutter as proof you’re lazy, scattered, or “bad at adulting,” Star shows us how it...

What if you hit 40 and realized you still hadn’t really grown up? In this week’s episode, Stacey gets brutally honest about the behind-the-scenes chaos of adulthood — from forgotten bills and overflowing inboxes to that constant hum of anxiety that comes from not having systems in place. This isn’t a how-to or a list of tips. It’s a confession. If you’ve ever: Let a medical bill go to collections...

Have you felt it lately? That pull to rearrange, clean, and reimagine your space — not for your kids this time, but for you ? In this episode of The Next Phase Podcast , Stacey explores the nesting energy that comes back during perimenopause — the intuitive urge to clear out the old and create space for the woman you’re becoming. This isn’t just about cleaning. It’s about energy work. Because ever...

This episode is my love letter to turning 40 — and to the woman who helped me do it with less fear and more fire. As I step into this next phase, I’ve been thinking a lot about how our culture taught us to see women in their 40s and 50s: tired, stressed, and quietly disappearing. But then Diane Keaton came along and flipped the script. In this episode, I talk about: The fear of losing relevance as...

What if the “woo” you’ve been side-eyeing all these years is actually the missing piece in your perimenopause puzzle? In this episode, Stacey peels back the layers on energy work — not as a mystical concept, but as a real, biological, and emotional process that every woman experiences as her hormones shift. She breaks down how changing estrogen and progesterone levels make your nervous system more...

You know that feeling when you’ve been eating the same breakfast for years — same coffee, same smoothie, same handful of nuts — and one day your body just says nope ? Yeah… same. In this episode, we’re talking about what it actually means to eat with your cycle — and why your body doesn’t want the same foods every day. I’ll walk you through how your hormones shift each week, what your body is crav...

We live in a world that tells us to “optimize every moment” — even the ones when we’re brushing our teeth. As overachieving, multitasking moms, we’ve replaced boredom with productivity and filled every quiet space with someone else’s voice. In this episode, Stacey explores what happens when we never stop consuming and how the Default Mode Network in our brains literally needs silence to process, h...

Remember 5th grade health class? Pads, tampons, cramps, done. But what if your gym teacher had told you this: your period isn’t just five days of bleeding. It’s a map of your body’s hormonal changes. And if you learn to listen, you’ll discover a different set of superpowers every single week of your cycle. That’s the foundation of cycle syncing — and it’s what we’re diving into today. In this epis...

Welcome to The Next Phase Podcast ! I’m Stacey Hutson—wellness chef, health coach, mom of two, and former co-host of the Mother Plus Podcast. This show is for millennial moms who are staring down a season of life we never thought would actually come: perimenopause. If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking things like: Why don’t I have any energy anymore? Is it just me, or did my body change overnig...

Remember TRL after school, low-rise jeans that never passed the squat check, and crying through Titanic in theaters (every single time)? We were unstoppable in our 20s—CrossFit at dawn, cocktails at midnight, living on four hours of sleep and audacity. Then we became moms… and suddenly our gold-star perfectionism turned into exhaustion, anxiety, and maybe even a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis. Now? O...