Frozen shoulder. Brain fog. Joint pain that arrived in your early 40s and quietly settled in. For millions of women, these are the opening chapters of a menopause experience that nobody prepared them for: not their mothers, not their doctors, not even the lifespan education curriculum that some of them taught in school. What makes this so frustrating is not just the physical discomfort. It is the years that can pass before anyone connects the dots. If you have ever sat in a doctor’s office and been told “you’re fine” while knowing, deep down, that something is off, this is for you.
Amy Benjamin spent approximately 20 years navigating a trail of symptoms that were never once linked to perimenopause by any of the nine doctors she saw along the way. A middle school teacher, district leader, and mother of three teenagers, she was in her early 40s when the joint stiffness started. She chalked it up to aging. So did everyone around her. It was only after a dramatic escalation, including a frozen shoulder, extreme bleeding, and brief flashes of suicidal ideation during an otherwise pleasant dinner, that she finally found her way to a women’s health clinic, where a hormone test confirmed what nobody had told her: she was in menopause.
Now retired from education and certified as a menopause coach through Girls Gone Strong and the UK’s Menopause Experts Group, Benjamin has made it her mission to help women skip the detour she had to take. Her story is less a biography and more a case study in what happens when an entire medical and cultural system simply does not prepare women for half of their lives.
When the Symptoms Feel Like Just Getting Older
One of the cruelest things about perimenopause is how ordinary the early symptoms can feel. Joint pain, memory slips, difficulty managing the mental load: these are the kinds of things that a busy woman in her early 40s is almost certain to attribute to stress, fatigue, or simply the passage of time.
“I guess I’m just getting old,” Benjamin said, reflecting on how she interpreted her early symptoms. At the time, she was managing district leadership committees, building-level responsibilities, and three teenagers at home. “I just must be just a little overwhelmed. There’s a lot going on in my life. That’s normal, right?”
The memory piece was particularly disarming. Benjamin had always prided herself on knowing all 275 of her students by name, including past students she would recognize in the hallways. When that began to slip, she found herself second-guessing abilities she had never had to question before.
“When you start second-guessing yourself, that’s a shame,” she said. “And when it’s perimenopause symptoms that’s really causing it, you haven’t lost your ability to do these things. Your brain is just restructuring during this time. And knowing that now, I wish I’d known that then.”
The joint pain eventually escalated into a frozen shoulder, a condition that is documented as a perimenopause symptom, that left her with only 18% mobility in the affected shoulder at its worst. When she finally saw an orthopedic doctor, he noted that it generally happens to women between the ages of 45 and 55. He did not mention hormones. She received physical therapy and injections.
“I want to go back to that orthopedic doctor and go, here’s your reason, and here’s what you need to do to help your patients,” Benjamin said.
The Doctors Who Said “You’re Fine” and Why
One of the most important and uncomfortable threads in Benjamin’s story is not a villainous medical professional. It is something more systemic. The physicians she encountered, including primary care, OB/GYN, orthopedic, and others, were not dismissing her out of carelessness. Many of them, she believes, simply did not have the training to recognize what they were seeing.
“Because they don’t know. They don’t know what to say because they don’t know what is wrong,” Benjamin said when asked why doctors tell patients they’re fine.
Amy Stone asked directly: “Why do you think that doctors ever say this to people?” Benjamin’s answer pointed not to bad intentions but to a fundamental gap in medical education.
“Menopause training: you can have an hour to two hours maybe of menopause training for an OB/GYN,” she said. Cardiologists, endocrinologists, orthopedic doctors; she named them all as specialists who should be connecting the dots when a woman in the 45-to-55 range presents with symptoms that have no clear structural or biochemical cause. “When you have someone come in and here’s what they’re complaining of and you don’t see any other causation for it, then you should consider this.”
The cumulative effect of these missed connections added up. By her own count, Benjamin was on her ninth doctor through the process of finding menopause care that actually worked. She noted that the most common number of providers women see before finding appropriate care is 11.
A male OB/GYN who she saw for pain during intercourse, another documented menopause symptom, recommended coconut oil. Extreme bleeding that required an ablation procedure came with no mention from the performing OB/GYN that it could be hormone-related. A primary care physician who heard her describe unexplained weight gain despite eating very little and exercising regularly told her to eat less and work out more.
“I am already around a thousand calories,” she said. “I am not going. This is called starvation.”
The Breaking Point That Changed Everything
The clearest turning point in Benjamin’s story came during a dinner with the man who is now her husband. In the middle of an otherwise unremarkable meal, she experienced what she described as microsecond flashes of not wanting to be alive, brief but jarring, appearing several times during a single dinner.
“I’m like, I’m either going crazy, which a lot of women feel, or, I don’t know, maybe it’s menopause,” she said. “So at that moment, I made a decision.”
She went to a women’s health clinic, had her hormone levels tested, and was told definitively that she was in menopause. After years of fragmented, symptom-by-symptom treatment from providers who never connected the picture, a single hormone test finally provided an answer.
She also reflected on how the irritability she had been experiencing had likely contributed to the unraveling of her marriage during that same period. “You become so hypersensitive to things,” she said. “And just that irritability is huge. And so again, looking back, I could have, if I had been able to have some assistance with that, who knows?”
She did not say this with bitterness. It was more matter-of-fact. She and her former husband now get along well, and she has spoken honestly with him about what she believes was happening. But the possibility that appropriate care earlier in the process might have changed her personal history sits in the story without needing to be dramatized.
What It Actually Looks Like to Advocate for Yourself
The section of this conversation with the most immediate practical value is the one where Benjamin describes how her relationship with the medical system changed once she started treating it as something she had the right to direct.
“I am coming here for a reason. I am no longer going to be just listening to the doctor,” she said. “At first I’m going to say, here’s the reason for my visit. I mean, you have to be so strong in advocating for yourself.”
Before her most recent appointment, she called ahead. She wanted testosterone prescribed. She asked upfront whether the provider would prescribe it. If they said no, she was prepared to move on before wasting anyone’s time. “I’m not going to sit through appointments and get shut down and feel bad about myself and then go, oh, but it’s really hard to find somebody else,” she said. “A lot of women will do that.”
She also flagged telehealth as a development that has meaningfully expanded access. “Telehealth is a godsend,” she said, pointing to the emergence of menopause-specific telehealth platforms in the last few years as a resource for women who cannot find adequate local care.
Her free resource, the Menopause Survival Guide, is built around exactly this: preparing women to walk into a doctor’s appointment with a symptom tracker, conversation prompts, a clear sense of what to say and what not to accept at the end of an appointment, and clarity on when it is time to find a different provider.
She was also careful about the social media landscape, where she noted a surge of menopause content alongside a surge of product-driven motives. “I would just caution people to see what the purpose of them being on social media is,” she said, recommending instead the doctors and clinicians who are building educational content in the space.
Women Were Never Told Menopause Was Coming
One of the most quietly striking moments in this conversation came when Benjamin mentioned that she taught a middle school class called Lifespan, a course specifically designed to walk students through the stages of human development. Infancy. Toddlerhood. Middle age. Older adulthood.
No mention of menopause.
“I feel like they don’t even know that that’s a life stage that women go through,” she said.
Her own mother never spoke of it. Her grandmother and aunts never spoke of it. In a work environment that was more than 80% women, with over half of those women in the 45-to-55 age range, the conversation did not begin until Benjamin herself brought it in, toward the end of her career.
“There were conversations about what was happening instead of just feeling sorry for my poor colleague who had extreme hot flashes,” she said. “But gosh, do I wish we had had those conversations.”
The silence that surrounded her own menopause experience was not unusual. It was inherited. The cultural script offered hot flash jokes and the occasional movie punchline. What it did not offer was the kind of honest, specific, practical information that might have helped a woman in her early 40s understand that her joints, her memory, and her mood were not signs that she was falling apart. They were signs that her body was changing, and that help was available.
That is the gap that Benjamin is now working to close. One conversation at a time, one teacher at a time, one woman who is done Googling symptoms at 3 a.m. at a time.
“We want to talk about it,” she said. “But we weren’t allowed to talk about it.”
This article was inspired by an interview with Amy Benjamin and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Menopause: Interview Transcript Amy Benjamin with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | March 2026
Amy Stone [00:00:08]:
Adulting. Lori Ballou. I’m happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat today?
Lori Balue [00:00:13]:
Yeah, I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for the invite. And I just, you know, I love chatting on these interview calls and I think it’s just great to be able to share information with other women who cannot. Let’s, let’s get unstuck and figure out solutions. That’s how I’ve always looked at what I do.
Amy Stone [00:00:31]:
Very nice. I start all my conversations with the same question. Lori, what part of the world do you call home?
Lori Balue [00:00:39]:
I’m in the Los Angeles area. I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. I’m currently in the high desert. I’ve been up here for about 30 years. You know, real estate was cheaper when we were looking, so this is where we ended up. And I love the blue skies. We’re having like 70 degrees in December. Blue skies, no wind. It just feels amazing. And that is something I just truly adore about this area.
Amy Stone [00:01:06]:
That’s beautiful. I just learned what high desert was this year. So now I know exactly what people are talking about. But I just learned that before that people would say that and I was like, I don’t know what that means. But now I do. I have one more get to know you question, which is what is one way that you incorporate art or beauty into your day to day life?
Lori Balue [00:01:29]:
Art and beauty into my daily day life. You know, I, it has to do with. Nature and I go outside and I ground every day and I have these little bird statues on my fence. They’re little bird wire bird cages and my brother just painted them white for me, was looking at them today and that’s kind of like my art, whatever I can incorporate into my garden and give me that peace and just make me feel grateful. And you know, I love that. I don’t know if that’s really kind of the art that I look at, but that’s what really lights me up is being able to get outside and enjoy the garden. It’s my act, it’s my victory garden and it’s where I celebrate life. And to me that’s a portrait. That’s, that’s my beauty. That’s my art I’m creating.
Amy Stone [00:02:24]:
I love that answer. And actually you would have no way of knowing this, but I’ve been asking that question for a couple of interviews and that’s the trend. I asked people about art and beauty. Many people are saying nature and being in nature. So I think that says common thread with the people. I’M talking to. Nobody is saying museum. Not yet, anyway. Okay.
Lori Balue [00:02:48]:
No, I mean, I went out for a hike yesterday. It was the blue sky blue. And to me, that is the best palette of, you know, to build life around that blue color.
Amy Stone [00:02:58]:
Beautiful. Beautiful. So today we’re going to talk about weight loss. Are you ready to talk about that with me?
Lori Balue [00:03:05]:
Let’s do it.
Amy Stone [00:03:06]:
All right. You shared in your introduction pitch that you began this in your early 50s. How long ago was that? So that we have a sense of the timeframe.
Lori Balue [00:03:17]:
It’s all. It’s nearly a decade ago. I’m going to be 63 at the end of the month. And so I started this pretty much 10 years ago. And, I mean, I’ve been looking for my health solution since my mid-30s, and it took me 20 years to find it. And once I found it, I didn’t let it go. I just went with it. So I have been pivoting and correcting and adjusting, but basically living my life, aging adventurously and figuring out what the next step is.
Amy Stone [00:03:46]:
All right, we’re going to talk a little bit more about that and get some details in there. At the time, you say that you were 185 pounds overweight. And so I wanted to share that with the audience. I want to get a little bit of a picture of how size and weight were showing up in your life in the first 50 years of your life. So we know what your mind frame was and your mindset was the backstory or the story before the story, if you will. Had size and weight been something that concerned you, occupied you for a long time, or was it something that shifted in your life that was a sudden new event?
Lori Balue [00:04:24]:
No, I had to live with it my whole life. I used £200 as an adolescent before in junior high. I remember coming out of City Chubby. And then I just. I ballooned up to 200 pounds with massive depression, wouldn’t talk. My mom tried to take me to a psychologist, and they couldn’t do anything with me. So what she ended up doing was just hit the books, L.D. davis Reader, and she put me on the Atkins diet. So I dropped 50 pounds. Reset my metabolism then. And I started learning that if we need solutions, we could read about it and find out what it is we need to do. And I didn’t know I was learning that, but that’s what she taught me. And so back then, how.
Amy Stone [00:05:02]:
Say again how old you were when you did that? The first round of Atkins Junior High.
Lori Balue [00:05:06]:
You know, it had to have been about 11 or 12.
Amy Stone [00:05:11]:
Okay. All right. The reason I ask is because there was a statistic that bounced around from the 1990s that many young girls would try their first diet as young as 9 years old. That’s something I’ve heard a lot, and I looked it up to find the source before I did that, to make sure I wasn’t right inventing it. It’s just a general pediatrician statement. I found a newer statistic from the National Eating Disorders association, which is actually a Columbia University study survey from 2003, where 62% of the teenage girls that they, at the time of the survey, reported that they were actively trying to lose weight. And so the question with all of that is, were you throughout your life, was it just that one time with Atkins, or were you trying different methods periodically different diets and different solutions throughout your life?
Lori Balue [00:06:07]:
Different solutions, My life, because I was on that merry round of weight gain. I would starve myself with, you know, either I think it was nutrisystem, Jenny Craig and Eat Less situation. I don’t. I wasn’t much of a. An exerciser. I had low energy for the most times. I was always tired. So the movement didn’t really come in until later. But it was basically just trying to not eat too much of the foods that I was addicted to, craved. But I always gave in. And then it was trying to starve myself, you know, just eating less. I didn’t know that I was doing that, but that was what is put out there, the Susan powder. You know, we were supposed to eat. Don’t eat any fat, but you could still have sugar. As long as you didn’t eat fat, you would lose the weight. And so I would do that most of my life. And most of the women in my age, you know, that’s what we did. That it is never. I would lose some weight, but I never lost. I was never successful to keep it off. That was always the problem that many people have because I would diet. I dieted my whole life. But I didn’t just diet per se to look thin. I didn’t unders. I don’t think when I was in high school, I had actually maintained my weight at about 150. So I was grateful that I was at 150 and not any higher. But I didn’t know how to lose weight at that point. And I was always hungry and I always had food cravings. So I really didn’t diet during that time period. I just remain. And it wasn’t until I reached young adulthood that I managed to get My weight down again and it was, I think just restricting, you know, just eating less overall. But then it would boomerang. And then I got up to £225 in my late 30s or my mid-30s. And that’s when my husband at the time I came in from an event with my son and he asked me, without even looking at me, he says, when are you going to lose the weight? Oh. And so at that point, you know, I went, got an exercise bike. I started raising Susan, reading Susan Powder, I started cutting out all the fat. I did lose weight. I got pregnant again because I did have pcos. So it did support me at that moment. But every time I would go back to eating and eat the foods that I was addicted to. And that caused me to have problems because I had sinusitis, bronchitis and always coughing and hacking because I had food sensitivities which I didn’t understand at them. But it was never able to keep the weight off. So I would lose it. And if I wasn’t dieting, I was gaining weight. And that’s the way I lived for over my whole adult life until I got to 53.
Amy Stone [00:08:51]:
So totally off topic. But I think that Susan Powders is back in the news. Is she really?
Lori Balue [00:08:58]:
I haven’t heard.
Amy Stone [00:08:59]:
So, so she, she did, she had a, you know, she had a very popular run in the 90s. And I think that she has a new. And if I get this wrong, people can correct it. I think she’s got a new show, infomercial, interesting documentary with Jamie Lee Curtis.
Lori Balue [00:09:20]:
Wow.
Amy Stone [00:09:21]:
Yeah. So you might. So Google it after we are done because you might enjoy. If I have it right. I think that she had a bad, bad contract and had some rough couple years after that. Like so she with. With, you know, which is. Happens to anybody. Not a statement on her. But since it came up, I was like, just came into my mind. Okay, so the way you did this, you told me in the, in the description that you lost this weight in your 50s and 50 year old. Weight loss is a whole topic on its own. And it is a thing that people talk about and there’s a million different theories and methods and a whole diet culture thing, but you shared that what you did is you changed a bunch of things in your life slowly over time. Take us through some or I mean, if it’s all you talk about it, I think more often than I do, but take us through some of the things and habits that you did change to make this happen for yourself.
Lori Balue [00:10:18]:
Yeah, so what I noticed When I had done, I had done HCG at one point and I was studying ancestral health and nutrition in the low carb diet and I was reading the books, Dr. William Davis on the wheat belly book. And I just learned more and more about what food does to the body and the brain. And then I was reading Gary Taubes and then insulin resistance and it was still just percolating in my brain because I had so many food sensitivities and I had so many cravings that to really understand what I was doing, I needed a tool. I needed something that was going to support me to get me off those food cravings and make that transition. The only thing in my whole life that worked was getting excited about the keto diet, the bulletproof program, roadmap that would work for my brain and my body. That gave me my life back. And so when I was able to find that fat, could give me the energy that the carbs were destroying, then I was able to actually get my brain health back, start losing the weight, feel in control of my body for the very first time in my life. That was very empowering. It gave me confidence back, it made me feel better. My eyes started working better, my hair started growing in. I just felt like I had my life back all right, only from read all the paleo books, I picked up all the paleo cookbooks, I tried all the diet, I did hcg, I lost weight and then it all boomeranged back and anytime I would eat wheat or have honey, it would, I could just see the, feel the brain fog coming in and it would just, just roll me over. And so I was so grateful to find the ketogenic diet because for an obesity body like mine, that was the only thing that was going to work in none of the other direct. I mean I worked in a health food store, I tried all the diets, I tried vegetarian. It just made me brain fogged. I couldn’t live that way and I didn’t like myself. I had so much anxiety and depression, I didn’t even know who I was. I never had joy. It’s really crazy because, yeah, I never had joy.
Amy Stone [00:12:28]:
What is hcg? You said that a couple times.
Lori Balue [00:12:30]:
So the hcg, I don’t know if I could say it correctly, but I’m going to give you a description. But it is the growth hormone for pregnancy, right?
Amy Stone [00:12:40]:
Yes, that’s the test. That’s the one. Okay.
Lori Balue [00:12:43]:
Yeah. And people still to this day, and it works great. You will lose weight, but it’s a five calorie fat free Diet and you cannot sustain that long term.
Amy Stone [00:12:52]:
Oh, so there’s a diet that goes with taking that?
Lori Balue [00:12:55]:
Yes, yes.
Amy Stone [00:12:56]:
My exposure to that is when you are newly pregnant and they test your blood or whatever they’re testing. Maybe it’s a pee in a cup test. And they’re looking for that to multiply, to say, oh yes, you are growing a new human being.
Lori Balue [00:13:11]:
Yeah. So they put it in drops, homeopathic drops. And it is to mimic the pregnancy to kind of make that switch where you will actually burn your body fat for energy because of the way they designed it. But it is, it’s a fat free. And I loved it at the time. It worked great and it worked great for a lot of people. But everybody gains the weight back and it’s. So it’s not sustainable. It’s just another diet that is starvation.
Amy Stone [00:13:37]:
I had never heard of that. That’s a new diet. The others that you had talked about, slim, fast, you know, low fat, high carb, freezing.
Lori Balue [00:13:46]:
Freezing. The seagull shakes. My aunt taught me that.
Amy Stone [00:13:48]:
Yeah, yeah.
Lori Balue [00:13:50]:
Frozen. Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:13:51]:
A hundred percent. Those I had heard of, I’ve done. And paleo is definitely something that I’ve gone on. Keto. Those are things Atkins. Those I have.
Lori Balue [00:14:02]:
Yeah. And even with the Paleo diet, it was still too much sugar for my body. I could not tolerate even fruit. I. Insulin resistance and pre diabetes before I could tolerate fruit again. So I am insulin sensitive now. But when I first started, I had to give up the fruit because of the prediabetes and insulin resistance that I’ve had had most of my life.
Amy Stone [00:14:23]:
Very interesting. And I’m going to ask you this. You mentioned that your mom, you learned from watching your mom and doing those things. Did you? I mean, was this. You were voraciously reading the books and applying and trying these things for yourself as opposed to signing up for a retreat or.
Lori Balue [00:14:39]:
No, I was a reader. My mom taught me how to read. I read. I was a voracious reader. And I was, you know, I was a loner growing up. And so books were my friend. And so I didn’t read any health books when I was younger. I didn’t read them until I was older.
Amy Stone [00:14:56]:
Yeah.
Lori Balue [00:14:56]:
And needed a solution. I didn’t understand what was happening to me until after mid 35 when my husband asked me when I was going to lose the weight. That’s when I hit the books. That’s when I started learning. Then I had too much brain fog. I didn’t understand what was happening to my body. I was depressed.
Amy Stone [00:15:14]:
And so you Mentioned the book Wheat Belly, which is. I mean, it’s old now, it’s an older book, but the takes you through the sort of. His theory of the wheat we eat today is not at all the wheat that our bodies were cultured to eat. And so that lends itself into that discussion. You mentioned that you had food sensitivities that you were unaware of. And so part of this. How did you figure out what you were sensitive to other than sugar? Was it through like sort of dropping the foods and noticing that you felt better?
Lori Balue [00:15:51]:
Right. So I took a food sensitivity test. I.
Amy Stone [00:15:54]:
Okay, you did.
Lori Balue [00:15:55]:
Once I re. Once I got my brain back and started keto, I actually signed up for the ADAPT Functional health coaching program because I got excited about learning more and I wanted to learn more. I didn’t even know what I was getting into. I’m just like, this is exciting and I want to do this. But after I graduated and certified from that, I was like, I discovered diagnostic nutrition. And I’m like, oh my God, I really need that. So I did that and knocked it out in five months. But I ended up taking my own food sensitivity test and I still had of asthma, what I was red sensitive to not only dairy and the corn, and those are very inflammatory and they kept me sick. And so once I took all of those out, I had taken out the wheat. I didn’t know I was dairy sensitive, but I would have phlegm all the time still. I would have whey protein shakes and I would have congestion. And then I, you know, but I reversed. Once I took the dairy out, I was able to completely reverse asthma and all the inflammation from asthma. And I don’t hardly react to allergies anymore because I have turned off my food sensitivity issues with that IGG response that I was having.
Amy Stone [00:17:04]:
Okay, so when you. All right, so yeah, IgG and IgE, those are the two allergy tests.
Lori Balue [00:17:11]:
Yeah. So, yeah, so you’re having. Yeah, so it’s ige. There’s several of them. Igg, ig, ig. It’s so many of them. I don’t think I have them completely studied. And I’m not going to be able to give you a description. It’s just that if you’re having an antigen response in your body and it’s creating inflammatory response and you continue to eat these foods, leaky gut permeability will stay on and you will not be able to have the immune system you want and you will just have inflammation. And it’s just a circle. It’s like a. It’s just a perpetual problem. And that’s what. Why. One of the reasons why I believe that sinusitis, bronchitis. All those years my body was inflamed and my ass. My allergist had told me that I would always be on an inhaler. When I asked him, I said I wanted to get off the inhaler, what can I do? And he said, I will always be on it. Because that’s his understanding of people who come into his office. They were heal. So but from my body, I fixed my body. So for me, that what he said to me was wrong. Or maybe I took it as a challenge. But I’m like, I was going to figure this out. That was one of my things that really spurred me is like, I don’t want to take, you know, I don’t want to have asthma. Sick and tired of asthma. So. And then when I took the dairy out, it went away.
Amy Stone [00:18:30]:
Yeah, it is. And it is a. It is a growth field within the health industry, to be sure, food sensitivities and food allergies. But when my kids, who are young adults now, when they were young, our pediatrician allergy team, they were on the lookout for, hey, if you’ve got eczema, you are going to want to. You’re going to want to watch carefully for if there’s hives and a reaction from dairy, because it can be related. And like you were saying, when you get. And this is true in so many things, a lot of people do believe that when you’ve got inflammation, chronic inflammation showing up in a variety of ways, the first thing you have to do is deal with the inflammation before you can even try and figure out what’s going on. And people really struggle with it. But the reason I’m talking about is not because I’m an expert, right? But because sometimes when you start to hear about these things, it sounds like it’s crazy wackadoodle science that’s not real. Like, you know, it’s like. It’s like, take, you know, take dairy. If you’ve spent your whole life eating a certain way and somebody’s like, hey, would you like to remove dairy and wheat and soy from your diet and see if you feel better? And you’re like, well, that’s everything I eat. You know, that’s everything I eat. How could. That can’t be real. That’s gotta be fake science. But for some people, it really does work. And for other people, it’s really interesting because you can have one person who really responds really well, to one protocol and another person who has an absolutely different experience with food in their own body. And so it’s like a really, really complicated, personal thing. So this is. This sounds to me like it was a hard process for you to figure out and that then you finally started reading some things and trying some things, and it showed up and it worked in a really powerful way, and that became the work. Then the fact that it was working became the motivation to keep going is what it sounded like.
Lori Balue [00:20:38]:
Yeah, I mean, I. I look at it as just pivoting and looking for a solution to all of the. You. Why my body wouldn’t lose weight faster. Like, I only lost 20 pounds in the first three years, but I felt better than I’d ever felt before. So there was still something blocking me. So I did have to figure out the food sensitivities to get some more support to calm down the inflammatory response. And I was also working retail at a natural food store under the lights and a lot of stress and pressure there. And until I started work using digestive enzymes and probiotics, that I actually got some more weight loss because that. That started support. And then the biggest thing was really reducing and leaving the bright lights in the retail environment and working from home. I could get outside ground, I could get sunlight, and I could relax my body. I dropped 20 pounds.
Amy Stone [00:21:33]:
Okay, that. Yeah, yeah.
Lori Balue [00:21:34]:
So that was huge.
Amy Stone [00:21:36]:
Yeah. The gut health. The gut health and the probiotics is something that I think that if. That I really think has shifted in my lifetime. I think that if somebody had told me when I was 15 or 18 years old about probiotics and gut health, I would have thought that they. I would have thought that they were trying to sell me a supplement, honestly. And now that has sort of crossed over and we really do understand that. I think that what we understand in terms of, like, the people who do the research is that there’s a lot to be learned about the relationship between how we digest food and how our bodies live and thrive. So what would tell me more about this a little tiny bit, like, about what you think was the difference in, like, looking back and why what you did when you were 50 really, really made those changes sticky compared to the other things you tried before.
Lori Balue [00:22:33]:
So the lifestyle that I’ve created since I started losing the weight versus before.
Amy Stone [00:22:38]:
Yeah. Like, what made these changes stick?
Lori Balue [00:22:40]:
Yeah, well, one of them was I finally had fuel for my brain. I had fat to fuel my brain and ketones to run my energy. So I was excited. I had more energy and I had more excitement and I had discovered joy and I felt good in my body. Prior to that, I was living with brain fog, depression, anxiety, and I never felt comfortable. And all I would do would just go and run to the store to buy yogurt ice cream to, you know, get my fix. That’s how I live always. Donuts. You know, back in the day that I had to have the sugar. So once I gave it up and I was able to get ketones from my brain, that’s what made the shift. That’s what made it easier for me to make the changes I needed to make. Because I felt good. I felt better than I’d ever felt before in my life. And that’s the probably why I never tried to cheat. I’m like, why would I? You know what? Because I also researched it. I read what wheat did can do to the body and want it in my body. It caused me to have want that in my body. So it was easy for me to say no to it. Once I found a fuel that gave me energy. That’s what kept me going.
Amy Stone [00:23:49]:
Beautiful. Beautiful. Sometimes for some people, turning 50 all by itself is a huge shift. And it really changes how some women show up in the world. It’s like, I mean, they put this in movies. This is like a, this is like a stereotype. This is like the midlife shift, right? People make big shifts at that time unrelated to food, unrelated to anything. Was there anything else going on in your life in your mid-40s, your 40s that might have swung your mindset and prepped you to make this change?
Lori Balue [00:24:28]:
Well, it may go back to when my husband lose the weight because I was still looking for my solution. I would gain the weight back and I hadn’t succeeded. And I kept trying and I kept studying and I was looking to figure out how to keep the weight off, but it just kept rebounding. So I was looking throughout my whole 40s. I feel like I lost my 30s and 40s to obesity. And I wish I had, you know, I wish somebody like at this age now, I wish somebody had told me at 35 what I know now so that I would have lost my 30s and 40s to obesity and depression.
Amy Stone [00:25:06]:
Do you think you would have listened knowledge? Do you think in your 30s, do you think that if somebody had presented you with this protocol, do you think you would have been ready to listen?
Lori Balue [00:25:16]:
Yeah, I mean, I jumped on the Susan powder bandwagon full on. I read all the fat free doctors and I was like convinced that that would be the way they all said, this is going to help you lose the weight. So I tried it, but I couldn’t keep the weight off because it never took away my cravings. I always had things, hunger. And it’s, you know, as long as you have cravings and hunger that don’t get satisfied, you will. You will just. You can’t use willpower forever. You’re just gonna go. And, you know, it’s not that we’re weak, it’s just that willpower doesn’t work. When you have food sensitivities and your insulin levels are turned on. Your body is designed to seek out food. And if. If you’re insulin resistant and your insulin levels are elevated, you will go yourself. That’s just how we’re designed. It’s not about willpower.
Amy Stone [00:26:02]:
So I’m gonna ask you. Yeah, so that is a really interesting thing because the very modern conversation, like the 2025 conversation about weight loss has been really interesting because one of the things that the very popular weight loss drugs do is they. They. They tap down with people, they reduce the cravings and what they call the food noise. And so there’s been a public conversation about the willpower discussion that for forever, everybody was saying, it’s willpower, it’s willpower, it’s willpower. And people who were struggling were like, it doesn’t feel like willpower. It feels like a craving I can’t handle on my own. Anyway, no conversation about weight loss right now would be complete without mentioning the semaglutides and the other medicines. I know you’re not a doctor. I know it’s not even what we’re talking about today, but do you have any general thoughts about these medications that have become wildly popular?
Lori Balue [00:27:05]:
Yeah, I mean, they’re there because people are stuck, and they’re not given the information and the tools to understand what’s going on in their body. If. If somebody had given to me that in my mid-30s, I probably would have jumped right on it, just like I did with HCG in my 40s, because I didn’t know that there were another way. But we could. We actually have a GLP1 process in our body that we can activate with more protein. But most people are not eating enough protein to activate the GLP1 process. So you’re hungry, and when you’re hungry, you have cravings and food noise, and you cannot turn it off unless you get the right amount of protein in the body. But the medical system and the government doesn’t tell you to go eat protein. That’s One of the missing things.
Amy Stone [00:27:44]:
Yeah. I feel like. I mean, I’m so. I’m 52. I feel like everybody is telling me to eat protein. I feel like. I feel like. I feel like people are like, hi, how you doing? Protein, protein, protein. I’m like, I know, I know. I get it.
Lori Balue [00:27:56]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:27:56]:
So as part of the journey that you went on, so you lost £185. You did a lot of research. This is a lifetime.
Lori Balue [00:28:04]:
It’s just a hundred pounds.
Amy Stone [00:28:05]:
I lost 100 pounds.
Lori Balue [00:28:07]:
Lost one. I started at 225 in my mid-30s, and then by the time I started keto, I was 185, and then I lost the rest throughout the last decade.
Amy Stone [00:28:17]:
Okay, so I’m keeping it off. All right, that’s okay.
Lori Balue [00:28:21]:
Keeping 100 pounds off.
Amy Stone [00:28:23]:
That’s still. That is a very impressive thing. In all of the habit change. If you study habit change and behavior conditioning, it’s really interesting because they. Two of the groups that they use as examples for trying to research are people who have lost 50 pounds or 100 pounds and kept the weight off for two, three, four, five years. And they look to see what the differences are of how people did that. But that’s not the question. The question is, as part of this, you say you discovered a version of you that you didn’t know existed. And I think this new version. Tell me if I’ve got this right. This new version of you loves adventure. Is that right?
Lori Balue [00:29:04]:
You asked the question. We’re trying to. You just cut out.
Amy Stone [00:29:07]:
Yeah, I find. Okay, so that you discovered a version of you that you didn’t know existed as a part of this journey. And I think this new version of you loves adventure. Is that right?
Lori Balue [00:29:18]:
So I love getting out in nature. That has been my spur. It makes me feel calm and relaxed. And so I started walking, you know, and I started walking as my exercise to try to lose weight. But I never lost the weight until I. Until I reversed the insulin resistance. That was when the weight would come off. But I was able to get out in nature and reduce my stress, and I felt better. And so I just kept walking and walking until I just felt more invigorated. And then I started going to more national parks and walking more and more. I got stronger and stronger. And then all of a sudden, one day, my friend’s like, oh, let’s go to Zion. You know, she was planning a half marathon, and I’m like, oh, I want to go. I love national parks. I had no idea. I’ve done it. Before. So I started training for a half marathon, and I did great. I felt good. I didn’t have any pain. I was completely dialed in. I was a practitioner already at that point. And I just like. I mean, I actually. Not literally, but I was, like, taking my supplements. I was dialing in what it is that I needed to do, and I felt great, and that spurred me on. After that, I’m like, this is the most fun I’d ever had in my life. And so to me, a half marathon is not a chore. It’s something I look forward to because I do them at half half at national parks. And so therefore, I even started. Back when I started my weight loss journey, my husband and I walked down into Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and I had excruciating knee pain. I didn’t know I had degenerating knees. It was just. I just assumed it was aging and getting older. But it was right after that trip that I started the keto diet. And then I would go back to the Grand Canyon every year, every other year, and my. My knees would feel better. I’d feel stronger every time. So it became kind of like a journey. I would see the. I would feel the atmosphere. I would feel like I could see my progress, and it became my soul place. And so when I. I can walk the Grand Canyon, I did Rim to rim the Grand Canyon two years ago. I just did South Rim to the river and back this past year. There’s no pain in my knees. None. And so with the keto diet, not only did I lose the weight, I turned off my inflammation and repaired my body. And I’m building more muscle in my 60s. And so for me, that’s. That’s made me feel confident. You know, I. I look in my mirror, see, you know, I’ve still got, like, a flabby abdomen, and I’m 63, and I was 225 pounds, but I look and I feel slender. I feel slender and confident in my body, and I think that’s great. I feel good with myself. That has become my adventure. Just really getting outside and getting that movement, getting the sunlight and getting walking. And that keeps me. Takes my weight off. And because that’s. I’ve been studying this and I’ve been listening to podcasts where they say the people who keep the weight off are the ones who move into movement and keep increasing their movement and get their muscles stronger. Then you will keep the weight off. But if you just look at losing weight as a diet, you will gain the weight back because you didn’t create the lifestyle around it and create an aging, adventurously lifestyle process that helps you keep the weight off. And so this has become my passion because I love it. I just. I’ve just started planning another half marathon and I have. And I’m going back to the Grand Canyon next September because this is what I love. And it keeps me activated and excited and joyful and happy. And I look forward to it.
Amy Stone [00:32:44]:
I am very inspired by the Grand Canyon trip. It’s on my to do list. I live on the east coast, so, like, the travel out there is a little bit of, you know, I have to organize it. And I was hoping I was going to be able. And specifically, I know many people who’ve done rim to rim, which sounds great, but for the first time, I do want to be able to be in the bottom of the canyon. I want to stay either in a tent or at Phantom Ranch. And I was going to try and do it this past fall, but then there was the big fire all over, I think the north rim. So I changed my schedule. The lodge burned down. It is. It is still on my to do list. But I’m very inspired by that story and I’m very inspired by the half marathons. I really, really enjoy that.
Lori Balue [00:33:35]:
The.
Amy Stone [00:33:35]:
I mentioned that in some of the behavior change stuff that I’ve studied. Charles Duhigg wrote a book about habit change and he does a whole section about, you know, the. It’s research. It’s a research group they use because it is such a hard behavior change. And it’s. They interview people and it does confirm what they said. Two of the consistent things are when people move into movement. And one of the things that’s really surprising about it is that the movement that works for most people is walking. People want it to be something very complicated or something very intense. But when you look at a large group of people having success for a long time, walking is underrated. And it’s funny to say that because hiking the Grand Canyon is very intense.
Lori Balue [00:34:21]:
Intense.
Amy Stone [00:34:21]:
Like that’s a. Walking up out of the canyon is intense. So that’s. That’s hard walking. That’s not leisurely rambling.
Lori Balue [00:34:28]:
No, but you build up to it. That’s something you build up. I built up to that. And, and this last one, I was stronger. And it, you know, I don’t. I’m not saying this to brag or anything, but I. It was easy body up. I built my body up and it was working the way I wanted it to because I Fueled correctly.
Amy Stone [00:34:50]:
So this question is not about anything other than hiking the Grand Canyon. Were you carrying a heavy pack or did you just.
Lori Balue [00:34:57]:
I have my standard hiking backpack on.
Amy Stone [00:34:59]:
Okay.
Lori Balue [00:35:00]:
So it might weigh, I don’t know, 10, 15 pounds.
Amy Stone [00:35:05]:
One of the, one of the outfitters I looked at was like, you have to be ready to carry a 35 pound pack. And I was like, that sounds like a lot. That sounds like it’s very.
Lori Balue [00:35:14]:
Only if you’re backpacking.
Amy Stone [00:35:16]:
Yeah.
Lori Balue [00:35:16]:
So that if you’re just walking into the canyon. No, you just need a day pack. Okay. Some good food.
Amy Stone [00:35:22]:
That’s helpful for my planning.
Lori Balue [00:35:23]:
Yeah. So that’s the thing is when you want to do the Grand Canyon, the first thing you do is you just go down to the garden and try it out. How does your body feel? What’s going on? Just get down there. Five miles down, five miles up. That’s going to show you what your body is doing, where the inflammation is. And then working to maybe correct your health into more of a lower insulin diet. So if you have issues with your knees, how can you build them up, up? Can you get more collagen, more creatine? And you start taking perfect aminos. I have, I was stronger this year than I was two years ago because of the process that I do to build my body up. And I don’t go to the gym, I just use arm weights at home, try to do it up. I walk and I keep activated. But I’m standing a lot. I fidget, I move around. I don’t, I don’t sit a lot unless I’m working. I rather be up and moving. And I think that once you get your mitochondria functioning and your brain on board with it as an aging, adventurously lifestyle, then you don’t lose. Then you just keep going. You keep building your carb code, you keep building the life that you want to live and you just go out there and do it. So that’s why I do the half marathons. They’re not hard to me anymore. The last one I did, it was uphill at the Glacier national park. And it was, you know, it sounds scary. Oh, it’s five miles uphill. And the last, the one before that was flat in. At Townsend. Townsend in Kentucky? Kentucky. No, Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee area. And so it was a flat course. And I did the same time with the uphill course that I did with the flat course. The only thing I did different was how I fueled. I learned that I bonked at a certain time and I’m like Okay. So I was researching what do I need to do with my muscles and my mitochondria to make them stress. And so I figured it out and so I did it and I was stronger. And by the time I got to the Grand Canyon in September, I knew how to fuel my mitochondria. So they were working for me. So my muscles had energy and I was passed. Well, that were young, that were younger than me.
Amy Stone [00:37:24]:
That does not surprise me. That does not. I get passed by people.
Lori Balue [00:37:26]:
That’s so cool.
Amy Stone [00:37:27]:
I get passed by people who are older and younger than me in every race. I do. And I enjoy it. All right, all right, very good. In a second, we’re going to do the final questions, but I want to give you a chance, chance to tell people about what you do and how you want them to connect with you after they watch this. Great interview.
Lori Balue [00:37:45]:
Yeah. So what I do as a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner is kind of a two for one process. It’s not just weight loss. Weight loss is actually the side effect of supporting the metabolism and getting metabolic recovery. And so when you lower your insulin response in the body, you start to burn more body fat. But there’s often blocks, so there’s hidden healing opportunities. And what I do is I run six diagnostic labs to find out what’s causing the weight loss blocks, what’s causing the healing to not work. So taking away the those blocks by finding like, was there candida, is there parasites, is there H. Pylori? What’s your digestive system doing? Is it need fixing? If your digestive system isn’t functioning, the whole downstream area is going to not, not function. And it’s going to cause you to have more weight gain and more insulin resistance. And one of the things that was really cool is I just brought on two new clients, their sisters in their 70s, and they’ve had asthma their whole life. They’ve had thyroid issues their whole life. And the first thing I’m looking at is, you know, optimizing what they’re eating and when they’re eating and how they’re eating their food. And as they’ve been very clean, their triglycerides are low, their insulin levels are low, their A1C is good, their HDL is elevated, their D3 levels are good. Good. Blood sugar levels actually look good. But why are. Is their metabolism not working? So we find the hidden weight loss box by using the labs. And then I take all my lived experience, all of my clinical experience, and I just find what’s in the way, help you remove it. Keep you strong and accountable. And that’s how this program works. It’s just really exciting. And you know, one of the things that one of the client is sensitive to is a red wheat and they’ve been eating gluten and they’re doing kefir and they’re dairy sensitive. So, I mean, this is your whole life at 70 and you’ve been eating these foods for your whole life. Like if you’re, if you’re taking those and you’re sick and you don’t feel good and you’re sick and tired and you can’t move and your knees are falling apart, your eyes aren’t functioning, it’s something that we get to choose to do which corrects your health fast because we take away those things that are causing it. If you bring them back in later and your body can accept it, you take things out for three, three to six months, get the inflammation under control, correct what’s going on in the body. I help find this, help support you to get you there. It’s really fast. Six months. I can help you fill in the cracks and put your body back together again like Humpty Dumpty. As your body can get to healing, you know, there’s, you know, there’s. You don’t know what your miracles are, but if you take away the things that are making you sick and tired and you support your body, you can, many things can happen. I don’t have asthma, I don’t have pre diabetes. I don’t have depression anymore. I’m not on any medications and I don’t have any overt disease. I had melanoma pop out on my neck a year after I started keto. That was my, that was my bullet. And it’s, it’s never reappeared. Wow. But that was my bullet. I, you know, you don’t know what’s happening inside your body until you take it in for that tuna up. Discover what’s happening like we take in our car, you got to look up under the hood and the gut is where you need to look and you have to look at the digestion. If you’re not eating the right amount of protein, even if you’re on DL1, if you’re still eating the snacks and you’re in a starvation mode and you’re not getting the protein, you’re going to lose your muscle. That was something that we have to pay attention to. So my process helps you maintain muscle while you lose it and visceral fat and inflammation as you repair what’s going on in Your body, the way your body is meant to heal, it just needs to take away what’s wrong. And so the labs, so running the diagnostic labs helps us find those hidden healing opportunities. Just exciting how it happened, how it works. So exciting.
Amy Stone [00:41:41]:
The labs are a wonderful thing to have because the alternative, before there were labs or before people could give you the labs, there was the elimination diet. And so they would take you down to if you’re having. Really. And I did the.
Lori Balue [00:41:55]:
This.
Amy Stone [00:41:55]:
We had food allergies while, while I was nursing. I have a kid who has food allergies. And so I did a supervised elimination diet. It’s rough, you guys. It’s rough. Yeah, yeah.
Lori Balue [00:42:07]:
This way, if you’re reacting to any of the proteins, you know which ones to avoid. Right. If you’re reacting to dairy, you know that you need to minimize it, take it out for three months, get your body to heal. Then can you, what can you tolerate? How, you know, if you’ve got asthma and you’re eating dairy and wheat and you’re reacting to that, you’re never going to get rid of the asthma. Yeah, it’s just as simple as that.
Amy Stone [00:42:28]:
Very cool. All right, you have a special offer for the listeners, the audience. I’m going to share it with them. It is a holistic, low carb method, recipes for aging beautifully and adventurously. So this is your collection of things here. And so it’s recipes. It’s got a value of $27, but there’s a link in the show notes or the show description on YouTube or the email newsletter for the those who are subscribers so that you can get that for free. And so that is in there. The best way, the easiest way for anybody to get the links, I think is always to be the subscriber to the email community because then you can just click on it. It shows up in your email box and you click on it. All right, Lori, are you ready for the final three questions?
Lori Balue [00:43:14]:
Let’s have it.
Amy Stone [00:43:15]:
All right. Do you like fresh flowers? And if so, what would you say is your. Your favorite flower?
Lori Balue [00:43:24]:
Oh, my gosh. I like the amaryllis, especially in December. It’s my birthday month and I love amaryllis. So Costco had a three pack and so I. Every Christmas I, I will. I don’t go out of my way to buy fresh flowers for the house, per se, except for a special occasion, but I cannot resist an amaryllis. So that’s my favorite. I just. And I. And then I can put them out in the yard and let them bloom as well, because I just plant them. Nice.
Amy Stone [00:43:50]:
I love that. Okay, very good. Now we are recording this right before the winter holidays. Are you a person who enjoys decorating your home for holidays throughout the year? And if so, what is your favorite holiday to decorate for?
Lori Balue [00:44:05]:
I am not a decorator. I really can’t keep my house even straight. I don’t know how people do it. All right? I mean, I have piles of stuff here and there, and I’m just like, if I make my bed, I feel successful. So I don’t know if you were expecting that answer, but I’m trying to think, what. Do you know what I like to decorate? I love to celebrate meals. And in my book, I have a carrot cake recipe. And I have. I like to celebrate ir. I’m. I’m Irish. I like to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
Amy Stone [00:44:37]:
Okay.
Lori Balue [00:44:37]:
And I like to celebrate and put out fine china and put a meal together. So what I like to do is decorate my table at the holidays. That is what I love to do. I pull out green. Green dishes, you know, green glassware for St. Patrick’s Day. And I’ll celebrate that way with my family. And then for. I just made myself my own birthday keto carrot cake. It’s in the freezer for the holidays. And I love just decorating the table and celebrating life with a. With a meal to share with somebody. That’s what I like to do.
Amy Stone [00:45:08]:
I love it.
Lori Balue [00:45:09]:
The house is disabled. I mean, if I mop and sweep the floors, I’m in a good shape.
Amy Stone [00:45:13]:
That’s all. That was a great answer. I have no expectation of the answers. All right, here we go. I am a person. I like gadgets and tools for a variety of things. What is something that you have in your home gym or your movement routine that you use all the time and you think everyone should have one for themselves?
Lori Balue [00:45:33]:
I have a red light panel. I’m sitting on one right now. And then I have a panel that I use for the red light to get into my body and to help with collagen production. So I think everybody needs one of those. I have had an ring, but it just. The battery just died. So I’m like. Feel really like. Like I feel lost a little bit without my ring. I loved tracking my deep sleep. That was something. I noticed that when my. When I went to the Cook Islands, I. My deep sleep had tanked prior to that. And when I went to the Cook Islands, I had two weeks to myself to just really decompress and to support my circadian rhythm. It took about A week. But I noticed my, my stress levels went down and my, my, when I got back, my deep sleep was a higher, my heart rate was lower, my HRV was higher and it was really incredible. So I love having an ring. I think people don’t understand that just going to bed isn’t going to show you that you’re recovering. You need to know if you’re getting sleep, deep sleep or REM sleep. I think that’s critical. And then the other thing is I have a vibration plate and I got on, I get on that every day. And I think that’s important to support the lymphatic system. But it also, you can exercise on a vibration plate and build more muscle. So the whole idea is, as if we’re in our 50s, is we need to build more muscle, we need to have the right nutrition and we need to just look at life as something that we could create and live better, longer and stay out of a nursing home. And what can we use that’s going to help us do that? And to track your heart rate, you need to build your muscle and you need to have circadian balance and light. I think those are all critical. So it’s not just diet. Diet is not going to help you lose the weight and keep the weight off. You want to look at this as a holistic lifestyle. That’s why my program is called the holistic low carb method. But it’s now my eight aging adventurous process because I have made it stronger, more comprehensive and I’m understanding exactly, you know, and I can’t give you a cookie cutter process or diet or even. I don’t do a cookie cutter thing. Everything is 100% customizable, depending on the person in front of me and their health intake. And then I can actually see what’s going on in their body and know how to support them.
Amy Stone [00:47:42]:
I love that. But there is. Last week I saw a video like as I was, I’m on social media a lot because I put stuff out there and then I’m in there and I get trapped in with cute videos and frequently cats. But this was a video of a woman who had a vibration plate that she bought for her but her toddler was like requesting it all the time. So there’s this adorable video because the toddler thing is gray fun of the toddler who gets put on the vibration plate and it’s just like. And it’s so, so cute.
Lori Balue [00:48:14]:
It’s so funny. My puppy was sitting on it today trying to get on while I was doing it. I just got a new puppy. He’s 10 weeks old. I’ve had him for two weeks. And he’s. And I’m. He’s trying to put his paws on it, and we’re sitting on it. So I’m like, he might get up there and do it with me.
Amy Stone [00:48:26]:
I don’t know. I love it. I love it. That’s it. Thank you so much, Lori Blue, for being a wonderful guest today on the show.
Lori Balue [00:48:34]:
Welcome. Thank you for having me here.