Why Kegels Aren’t the Answer & What Works Instead
The Midlife Feast Podcast – Episode 184 Transcript
Pelvic Floor Freedom: Why Kegels Aren't the Answer & What Works Instead
Introduction
Dr. Jen: You know that moment when you catch your reflection in a window and by the time you get home, you’re Googling meal plans even though you know better? I call those trap door moments. And if you’ve done the food work, you’ve made peace with eating the cookie. You reject diet culture, but your reflection can still send you spiraling. It’sD because body image work isn’t the same as food work, and you can’t skip it.
That’s exactly why I created the Midlife Body Image Lab. This is a six-week guided experiment. It’s not a course with modules that you’ll feel guilty about not finishing. Each week you’ll test an idea, gather your own evidence, and figure out what’s keeping body dissatisfaction in the driver’s seat. Because if you skip the body work, the food work will always feel harder than it needs to be. Head to the show notes for the link, and let’s start closing some trap doors.
Lauren Ohayon: If you’ve been gripping in your abdominals – which a lot of us are taught to do anyway because it’s what looks good in a pair of jeans – and if a lot of us are anyway gripping in our abdominals, that does send tension down into your pelvic floor. You can’t do anything in your abdominals without there being a referring thing happening in your pelvic floor. You simply can’t.
Dr. Jen: Welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast that helps you make sense of your body, your health, and menopause in the messy middle of midlife. I’m Dr. Jen, sleep expert, intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor, and author of Eat to Thrive During Menopause. Around here, we don’t see midlife and menopause as problems to solve, but as invitations to live with more freedom, trust, and joy.
Each week, you’ll hear real conversations and practical strategies to help you feel like yourself again, eat without guilt, and turn midlife from a season of survival into a season of thriving. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s dig in.
Okay, feast or famine, let’s be honest – who here hasn’t thought about their pelvic floor since turning 40, or being in perimenopause or menopause? I know that I think about it a lot more these days, and I know I get a lot more questions about it because we’re learning more about the genital urinary syndrome of menopause. We’re learning more about how that actually impacts more than just leakage and dribbling, but also how it impacts how we feel in our body, our confidence, our state of being.
And I wanted to bring someone on to talk about it because, you know, we’re talking about it a little bit, but I still don’t think we’re talking about it as much as we should. So my guest today is Lauren Ohayon. And as you will hear, she has some wonderful stories. The storytelling around the pelvic floor is just a beautiful thing.
So if you learn anything from today, I hope that it’s this: midlife is also a great opportunity to get to know your pelvic floor. So I often say that midlife is a great opportunity to redefine your relationship with food and your body image and movement. But let’s add pelvic floor to that too, because it really is a big part of what’s holding things up and together.
So listen up and let me know if you have any questions. Hi Lauren, welcome to the Midlife Feast.
Lauren Ohayon: Hi. I’m so happy to be here.
Dr. Jen: I’m so happy that you’re here too, because we’re talking about a topic that gets a lot of attention – probably not enough – but certainly for anybody in midlife, the topic of pelvic floor often comes up. Whether it is laughing with girlfriends and then laughing about what happens when we laugh sometimes, or whether it’s talking about some of the challenges with intimacy or pelvic pain. But I’m really happy that you’re here and that we’re going to talk about all things pelvic floor. I’d love for you to introduce yourself to my audience.
Lauren Ohayon: I love that, thank you. So I’m Lauren Ohayon. I am a longtime movement teacher. I’m 49 years old in a few weeks, and I’ve been teaching movement since I went to NYU and I was studying to be a journalist. So I always tell people that my early years in movement were all about storytelling, which is true. Like, I’m a longtime storyteller and journalist, and my transition into movement was very much kind of hand in hand with that.
So I was at NYU. I started doing yoga and I loved it, and I started training in yoga. I was teaching a lot of yoga on the side while I was getting my journalism career going, and it just brought me more and more and more joy. And I did it more and more and more. Then in my early 20s, I had like a really bad back injury, and that brought me deep into the world of biomechanics and anatomy and just understanding the body really well.
And then I’ve had three kids, one after the other. So for the last – I mean, I had an online program way before COVID. 2015, right? So I started my online program Restore Your Core® in 2015. And it’s a core and pelvic floor functional strength program – rehab strength, deep core, kind of body weight program. But my background was as a longtime yoga and Pilates teacher. I no longer teach either; I’m more of a somatic movement teacher now. I mix it all together and create my own thing.
Why Pelvic Floor Issues Are So Common in Perimenopause and Menopause
Dr. Jen: That is definitely an interesting story of how you got to where you are today. And I’m assuming that as an almost 49-year-old – which I am also almost 49, also have three kids – despite feeling like my pelvic floor was well cared for before, during, and after pregnancies, it still took me by surprise when I kind of hit perimenopause and especially post-menopause, despite doing all the right things. You know, I’ve done pelvic floor physio, I do vaginal estrogen, I don’t strain, I make sure I don’t get constipated, I don’t squat when I pee. All of the things you’re supposed to do and not supposed to do. There were still some surprises. So yeah, and I know I’m not alone. So what is happening with this time of life that makes these pelvic floor challenges so common?
Lauren Ohayon: It’s so interesting. I mean, yeah, so people feel it so much in their perimenopause and menopause, especially. I think that a lot of people really feel it in the two years after menopause. That’s when I’m seeing a lot of people come to me – in that first year, all these other symptoms like hot flashes and stuff like that, but then suddenly it creeps. It takes a while for it to catch up into the pelvic floor, from my experience.
But I do think that what’s often not well talked about is that a lot of times, pelvic floor issues are also happening for people in their 20s. I mean, I’m the mom of three teenagers. And because I’m the mom that talks about sex all day long, all my teenage daughters and their friends talk to me about sex constantly and about what’s happening in their body. My daughter will call me from her sorority and she’s got like ten sorority girls behind her. I love it. So, you know, I just think that a lot of the people I’m talking to who are in their late teens and early 20s are also having pelvic floor issues.
I was driving these two women home the other night after a concert, and one of them was quite young, and she was like, ‘oh my God, you work with the pelvic floor – this is what I get all the time – I sneeze all the time. Is that normal?’ And she was young. She hadn’t had a baby. And I was like, well, it’s not that weird. Actually, it’s not that weird.
So yes, menopause and perimenopause are definitely a time of huge, big change where a lot of people who’ve never had it are coming out with it. And sometimes I feel like it’s people who’ve had it for a long time and are sick of not talking about it, suddenly talking about it. Because when you start asking them, like, did it really just start now? They’ll be like, well, I mean, I’ve always kind of leaked a little bit, but it’s no big deal. Well, they can kind of is not no big deal. Let’s not brush that under the rug. It’s common, but it’s not no big deal.
Or I start asking about what orgasm is like for them and how penetration is. And they’ll be like, it’s never been that great. And I’m like, oh. So now what are you feeling in perimenopause and menopause? Well, now it’s just like– and it’s like things are awful now, right? So it can definitely start in perimenopause and menopause. But I tend to see, when you start digging, that yeah, things were there, things were happening before.
So the hormonal landscape changes quite dramatically. In perimenopause it’s a lot of ups and downs. And then in post-menopause, it’s not ups and downs – it’s one steady deficit of estrogen. I don’t think people realize that estrogen really supports blood flow, lubrication, and muscular tension.
So people will get prolapse. I see a lot of people with sudden-onset prolapse. And there are a lot of people who don’t know what that means, so I’ll just describe it. I like to imagine the pelvis is like a bowl, and I like to imagine that bowl is actually a container, because there’s a difference between a bowl and a container. I like to imagine how that container contains many things – containers of stories and history and biology and physiology and life and turnover.
The pelvic bowl is a real container. Inside that container, you have organs, and those organs are all connected to each other via fascia, tendons, and ligaments. There’s this whole interplay, and they’re all kind of in a dance with each other. As you’re moving throughout your day and breathing and utilizing your core – because every breath is a core moment, and every breath is a pelvic floor moment – those organs are in this dancing movement. They’re also subjected to fluids right there, they change depending on the fluid interchange, and they’re really affected by muscle and muscle compression and what’s happening in the muscles.
And so if there are patterns of tension that are sustained, the organs are no longer in that dance – they’re more being pushed downward towards the vagina. And while they don’t end up inside the vagina, they push against the walls of the vagina. The vaginal walls are phenomenal and fascinating – they’ve got so much movement to them, they can stretch a lot for babies and penises, whatever else you want to be putting inside your vagina. They’ve got this ability. They’ve got these wrinkles called rugae. And one of the things that happens in menopause is these wrinkles that are designed to give us that stretch stop being so rugae-ish.
And when people experience pain or discomfort with penetration, it can be that those rugae are not as elastic as they once were. There’s less lubrication. And again, because estrogen affects the tendons and ligaments, the organs can end up pushing more into the pelvic floor. That’s a very long-winded way of saying that many pelvic floor–
Dr. Jen: I love the visuals of that, because I think that for people who maybe don’t have an in-depth knowledge of anatomy and physiology and don’t need to – they just need to understand how it works – that was a beautiful analogy and visual for it. So thank you for that.
And I think we tend to blame estrogen for everything. But estrogen is a wonderful hormone. We are designed to have less of it in the second season of life. And that is not a pro or anti HRT statement at all. It’s just that even if you’re taking HRT, you’re still getting less than you would have had in your premenopausal years. It’s a wonderful hormone and it can do wonderful things, but it’s not the only thing that’s happening with the pelvic floor.
A lot of people I talk to are like, oh, I just need to get my HRT sorted and then everything will magically reappear. And that’s not the case because it’s a multifactorial situation. We have some aging happening, some gravity happening. But you also talk about the nervous system connection, and I would love to talk about that, because certainly that nervous system dysregulation affects everything. So why wouldn’t it affect our pelvic floor?
The Nervous System, Stress, and the Pelvic Floor Connection
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah. And I think absolutely, 100% – the nervous system is one of the very first places where your body protects you from the outside world and adapts to what’s happening in it. A really good example that I use all the time, because I think we can all appreciate it, is if you walk into a porta-potty. It smells like sh*t. And your body doesn’t have this deep philosophical conversation with itself about how to manage it. It just goes through these very quick coping skills to get you through it. Which generally means you’re not going to be breathing deeply. You’re going to be holding your breath to some degree. But you’re still able to urinate, which is fascinating. You’re able to manage multiple tasks at once while also making sure that you are less assaulted by the reality of a porta-potty.
So that is the role of the nervous system. And it does all these things. And why are we able to go through our life? There’s so much happening around both you and I right now – I’m looking at the trees, my daughter is back there, there’s a lot. But we’re able to tunnel vision because our nervous system is this fascinating beast.
That being said, the coping strategies it uses are very tangible in the body. It’s one thing to hold your breath in a porta-potty for 10 seconds, a minute, three minutes. It’s another thing to spend most of your life in porta-potty mode. And a lot of people without realizing it – because if you walk into a room and it smells like banana bread, you’re like, oh, that’s nice. But in five minutes you don’t smell it anymore. The smell hasn’t gone away. You’ve adapted. So your body now has adapted to being in whatever mode it’s in to cope with whatever it’s coping with.
And oftentimes because we’re such predictive models – like our bodies are so predictive, and how we act is based on prediction – our bodies can be running on a model that’s not updated. Its threat model can be very, very high. Like, I’m constantly scanning for threat. I’m constantly in threat mode when there’s no threat. And so the nervous system is really designed to help us cope, and it does that very much in the body. And you won’t be feeling it. It’s not going to be like, hey Jen, you’re gripping your belly. Because Jen is used to feeling it. And Jen has survived it for 49 years.
So for 49 years, Jen has been able to grip her abdomen as a coping strategy to deal with whatever’s happening around her, even if there’s no bear chasing her. Maybe Jen is just constantly in grip mode. A lot of people are. We’re trained for production – to produce, produce, produce – because we have to carry so many hats and we have such an uphill battle. Why do so many of us have autoimmune diseases? It’s because the stress load on a woman is a lot higher than on anything else. So we’re walking around coping as best as we can. We are doing our best.
But yeah, if you’ve been gripping in your abdominals – which a lot of us are taught to do anyway because it’s what looks good in a pair of jeans – that does send tension down into your pelvic floor. You can’t do anything in your abdominals without there being a referring thing happening in your pelvic floor. You simply can’t. That’s why also when you have an orgasm, you feel that all the way up in your belly. They work together – your core and your pelvic floor and your breath. Your pelvic floor and your breath, your diaphragm, your breathing are co-conspirators. They’re collaborators. So when we’re gripped in one, we’re gripped in another.
But I can tell you that because of the nature of the pelvic floor and its design and its architecture and the fact that it’s the bearer or the holder of all these organs – where we’re going to feel the compromise later in life will be down in the pelvic floor, because it’s like a domino effect. It’s like physics 101. Just send all that pressure from all the holding down into the pelvic floor.
Dr. Jen: Yeah. And it’s so interesting that you bring up about how we’re taught to tense our belly. I’ve had this conversation a thousand times with people where I’ve said, okay, just relax your belly. And it’s actually like a no, okay, relax some more, now keep going – because they have never been at rest without sitting up, shoulders back, belly tucked in. Like all of it. Right. And so when you tell them, like, just slouch, just let it go – they’re like, I don’t even know how to do that.
So one of the things you talk about, which I love, is learning how to feel at home in your body again. And at home needs to be comfortable – not this pressure pose of trying to put my belly and my body in a place that looks good, because that creates tension, creates an unnatural state of being where things are not going to be working the way they’re meant to work.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah.
Dr. Jen: Yeah.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah. It’s a lot of performing. I mean, yeah. Stuffing your belly in is – yeah, it brings the energy into performance.
Dr. Jen: Performative pelvic flooring.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it’s really – you make a good point. I mean, it is really hard to feel safe in our bodies. We are told how to feel and how to be and how to like – we are literally told how to do everything. What we should be. Should, should, should, should, should. It’s so hard to just be in your body without all these messages of what you should be.
I mean, I was looking for a Reel for a client this morning, and I had to go into like the Reels tab. And it was like, oh – everything was like, if you’re this, then this. Like literally, if you’re looking at the sun and you see a bird, it means you’re going to die tomorrow. I mean, literally everything on Instagram is a formula for disaster. And here’s my link, but I can help you. Yeah. So it’s like, no wonder we don’t feel safe in our bodies.
Dr. Jen: One of my favorite things is: your body is your forever home. Make it a comfortable and safe place to live. And so if we’re constantly trying to make our body perform for someone else, then we’re never going to feel at home in it.
Lauren Ohayon: And I think a lot of the people who come to me for pelvic floor work – one of the things they love about the work I do is it’s not about how do you look, how pleasing are you going to look at the end of these 12 weeks? In 12 weeks, you will absolutely recognize yourself, and hopefully you’ll feel yourself more.
I mean, so many of us – if you close your eyes and I’m like, find your hands, you’ll be like – you don’t even need to move your hands. If I were to walk you through an entire hand thing and say, I grabbed my glass and I wrapped my fingers around it, and the glass was cold and my fingers were spreading apart – like, you don’t need to see me do that to know exactly what I’m talking about. Now I start talking about the pelvic floor. Same thing. Eyes glazing. People are like, okay, I don’t really – I don’t know how do I feel my pelvic floor, how do I find it?
We are so distanced from feeling our inner body. We’re so amazing at the external, but we’re so not tapped in to the nervous system, to the pelvic floor, to the core. And that’s my mission – to try to help people get more connected to that.
Why Kegels Are Not the Answer: The Case for a Whole-System Approach
Dr. Jen: So I would love to talk a little bit about what I think might be a myth, but maybe you have a different perspective, or maybe you agree – the idea that kegels solve everything. You know, true story: when I first went to my pelvic floor physio, probably like 8 or 9 years ago now, I was starting to have some stress incontinence, leaking a little bit if I waited too long. And I was like, I’ve been doing kegels and they don’t seem to be doing anything. And she’s like, that’s because you’re too tight. Like you have pelvic floor tension. You don’t need more kegels. You need to learn to relax. And that blew my mind. But I still see kegels recommended all the time as like the default. So – I can see Lauren rolling her eyes. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Lauren Ohayon: So the thing about kegels is that it is literally like the definition of the most ridiculous patriarchal example in the body. Like, oh, if something’s not working, let’s just tighten it up, right? Because most men, when they want to put their P in the V, would think it better be tight for their penis. Like, tight vaginas are good vaginas, and a great way to get there is to tighten your vagina up. Do some kegels. And so that is woven into our sexual consciousness. Women’s vaginas are tight vaginas.
And so the thing about the pelvic floor is that squeeze is not one of its functions. Like, when we’re going to talk about all the functions of the pelvic floor – squeeze is not one of them. It’s in coordination with everything. It’s constantly moving. Do you say that your respiratory diaphragm squeezes? No, no. People talk about the respiratory diaphragm as – when you inhale, it moves down in contraction, when you exhale it recoils. Well, that’s what the pelvic floor does too. It’s a mirror of the respiratory diaphragm. Why are we using the word squeeze to define that?
And once upon a time someone allocated the word squeeze for that and everyone co-opted it. And then everyone’s experience of it was like, yeah, I’m squeezing. You’re feeling like you’re squeezing because someone told you that’s a squeeze. Like I can make it a squeeze. But try to do anything in your life and feel your pelvic floor – it’s not doing that.
Dr. Jen: Yeah, it’s not right.
Lauren Ohayon: It actually moves. It lengthens and recoils. So if you want to create function in the pelvic floor, get your pelvic floor in response. Dial up the relationship between your breath. At the top of the canister – and let’s imagine a canister – your breathing diaphragm is at the top and it’s doing this descent and lift. It’s descending, ascending, descending, ascending with every breath you take.
And then your core – this is physics 101. It’s a container. If you take a water balloon and you squeeze the top of it, the sides of the balloon are going to pop forward. So your core is also moving, squeezing and releasing. What creates peristalsis? The muscular system. If you had no muscles in your core, you would not be digesting food. It needs this compression.
What are we constantly in relationship to? Gravity. What is gravity? Compression and tension. What is birth? Compression and tension. What is conception? Tension and all of it. How does semen travel up? Movement. Movement is the building block of life. What is movement? Compression and tension. What is the core? Compression and tension. What is the pelvic floor? Compression and tension. And so it’s this relationship between the diaphragm at the top, the core in the front and the sides, and the pelvic floor at the bottom. And they’re all just doing this swimmy thing – reacting to gravity, physics, compression, tension, shock absorption, and propulsion. Those are the building blocks of human movement and life.
And I don’t know where someone one day decided that the pelvic floor squeezes – no, stop. Because actually that doesn’t help people. And I have been lucky enough to work with thousands of women, and my online program Restore Your Core® has not one kegel in it. And yet it has managed to help thousands of women heal their bodies. Like, you don’t need to squeeze your pelvic floor to create healing. You need to restore the functional relationship it has to the system that it lives within.
Breathing, Rib Movement, and Pelvic Floor Health: A Practical Exercise
Dr. Jen: I love that. Can we connect it to the breath for a minute? Because I feel like people have a sense that the breath is connected, but we’re given a lot of different advice on how to breathe, how not to breathe. And some patterns of breathing are more supportive than others. So how can we connect it to the breath? And maybe like a practical way that people might be able to, like, press pause and do this at home while they’re listening? What are your thoughts?
Lauren Ohayon: And do this – but like, if you’re sitting, great. If you’re not sitting, fine. But go ahead and place both of your hands on your belly. I like to invite people to place one hand under their perineum. If they’re comfortable, you can keep your pants on. You don’t have to do anything – whatever you want with your body. But it’s nice. Yeah, it’s nice to just feel. Because the thing is, when you’re breathing, your perineum is moving. Your pelvic floor – the floor. So the perineum is the most superficial part of the pelvic floor. It’s the part that you can actually touch. And it moves. Also like your clitoris – the clitoris nods. The labia move. People think of their body as a rigid structure, but it’s not. It’s actually very moving. So feeling it move is good. So one hand on there.
Dr. Jen: I don’t want to insert here, because I hope you’ll agree with me that if somebody cannot reach – like hands and arms come in different sizes, you might have restrictions – don’t feel like you can’t do this exercise if you can’t reach.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah, lie on your side is a great way to feel it. Most people lying on their side can reach, but not everybody. But if you can reach – you’re sitting on your perineum, and your other hand is on your low belly, like belly button and below area. And then I want you to just exhale. And as you exhale, I want you to push a pretend baby out of your belly. So imagine you’re pushing a baby forward out of your belly. So go ahead, just kind of push your belly out as you exhale. And do you feel your perineum descend?
Yeah. So there will be a million people who will be like no. And it’s like, that’s fine, because literally this is our first date. Give it 20 dates because people are just not patterned. Our brain is not mapped down here. So push, push, push. And I always tell people – bearing forward is better. So just exhale and push your belly out.
Now I want you to think about how many times a day you might push your belly out. Well, if you’re a belly breather – because you can feel how you’re bearing down – and what does that mean? It means that you’re actually pushing your pelvic floor organs downward. Just humbly not where you want your uterus and your other pelvic floor organs. So ideally, those organs are designed to kind of dance around and move around and shift around. They’re not designed to be plunged downward.
Now, the other thing that happens if you live in a plunging-downward state is that your pelvic floor is going to be like, whoa. And it tightens up in response because our bodies are smart. It’s not going to knock on the door of your general consciousness and be like, hey Jen, what do you want me to do about that? It’s going to be like, I got an idea – we’re just going to grip and tighten. So now people are gripping and tightening in their pelvic floor. They’re doing all this belly motion with breath. And what’s really not happening is that their ribs at the top are very immobile. Their upper spine is immobile, and they’re not getting an expansive breath into their ribs.
So let’s try this. Sit on your perineum and put one hand just like anywhere on your upper ribs. And imagine that this is like a parachute. And as you inhale, parachute your ribs. Exaggerate. Like really expand your ribs. Let them float up to the sky. And can you feel the difference in your pelvic floor now? Was it lighter? Did it feel like you were bearing down? Yeah, no more bearing down.
And I tell people – do it now. Bear down now. Parachute. And it’s like, oh, okay. I feel the difference – when my ribs are mobile, there’s not that pressure on the pelvic floor. So one of the things I train in my programs is that the ribs are meant to widen, lift, and expand with breath. Should you be walking around like that all the time? No, that was exaggerated. Please don’t do what we just did as a normal breathing pattern.
But when I assess many clients with pelvic floor issues – whether it’s leaking, incontinence, pain with sex, difficulty to orgasm – I get them on the floor and I’m like, just take some breaths for me. There is no rib movement. And literally everybody can try that. You just lay on the floor and see – put one hand at the top on your ribs, put one hand on your belly. And the majority of what’s moving for most people is their belly.
And we have been taught in many systems that belly breathing is the best way to breathe. Belly breathing is a great way to breathe when you’re on your back and you’re not having a conversation with gravity. It is not an ideal way to breathe when you’re moving around dealing with gravity. You need your ribs to actually expand.
Again, physics 101. The more your ribs expand and open volume, the less pressure below. Pressure volume – pressure goes down, volume goes up. We don’t want the pelvic floor full of pressure. When it’s full of pressure, it will squeeze and tighten, which we don’t want. And it will grip, or you’ll get the organs pushing down. We don’t want that. So how do we offset that? We increase volume.
And actually, if you think about it – where is our diaphragm? Last I checked, it’s not in our belly. It’s up in our ribs. And last I checked, your heart sits on your diaphragm. So it’s that high up. And every time you breathe and you allow your ribs to actually move, your heart gets a really nice dance up and down too. But when you keep all of this tight and constricted, you’re creating high pressure in your core and pelvic floor.
Midlife, Safety, Discernment, and What the Pelvic Floor Is Really Telling You
Dr. Jen: So what I love about this is, you know, this is very much how I talk about midlife being such a great opportunity to redefine your relationship with food and redefine your relationship with your body image. It’s also a great time to maybe get to know parts of your body that you haven’t really gotten to know before. And in practical ways, but also in ways that will make this transition more comfortable. Because, you know, the genital urinary syndrome of menopause is a very real thing. There’s more than 80% of people who will experience symptoms related to it at some point.
Lauren Ohayon: I think. Or by the way.
Dr. Jen: Absolutely. I think that’s like the floor of where the numbers are. And you’re right, I also see that it’s often around that two-year mark, when things are settling into the new normal in terms of hormone levels, and people ignore it for a long time. You know, they buy the pads, the light leakage pads. They’re like, well, it’s just normal for this stage. Not realizing that yeah, it’s super common, but it’s super common doesn’t mean you have to live with it. Like there are things that you can do.
And I have really found over the years that when things are going well, I don’t think about my pelvic floor exercises, and then I’ll get a cold and I’ll cough for two weeks, and then all of a sudden I’m like, oh yeah, I’ve got to go back to those. Or even if I’m driving for a long time – any time that I’m out of my usual routine and there’s more pressure on my pelvic floor, I have to come back to my exercises. So it’s like this lifelong relationship that I’m nourishing. I don’t have to think about it every single moment of the day. But midlife is such a great time to be like, hey, this is a new skill I need in my toolbox.
Lauren Ohayon: Yeah. And I think that, yes, all of that – agree. And I think that a lot of people will say, but I’m so fit. I get this a lot – I’m in my 50s and I’m so fit and I take such good care of myself. I walk so much, I do Pilates a few times a week, I strength train. Like literally, they are the carbon copy of what all the health influencers say you should be doing. And yet they have pelvic floor stuff. And they feel so let down, as if the equivalency should be: if I’m taking good care of my body, why is my pelvic floor giving me a hard time?
And there’s really no correlation between the two, I have to say. Because pelvic floor stuff is what we just talked about. It’s like, how are you using your pressure? How is that pressure system being optimized? And if you’re just squeezing the bottom of that pressure system, thinking that it’s going to reorganize the entire system, that’s not how it works.
Dr. Jen: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom and your little nuggets of information. I think the way that you storytell the pelvic floor is really helpful. And I appreciate that.
Lauren Ohayon: You said the journalist in me.
Dr. Jen: Yes, definitely. So what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife, Lauren?
Lauren Ohayon: Safety.
Dr. Jen: Oh, that’s a big one.
Lauren Ohayon: I think when you feel safe, you’re no longer vulnerable to all the online predators right now trying to literally hijack our vulnerability. There’s just a lot of, like, ‘I’m 56, and here are four things I do every day to continue looking like a fitness model.’
Dr. Jen: You had a great feeling about that. I laughed.
Lauren Ohayon: I love spoofing all of that because I’m like, how happy are you really? So I just think – when you feel safe in your body, you can be more discerning. I think the missing ingredient is discernment. It’s really hard to be discerning because we’re all just trying to be like, well-informed consumers or well-informed body owners. It’s kind of hard in this landscape. So we need a heavy dose of discernment. And safety, I believe, is a big ingredient. I don’t know if it’s missing, but I think it’s important.
What about you? What do you think is a missing ingredient? I’d like to know.
Dr. Jen: I really feel like community is missing. That’s why my mission is community. You know, we’re not meant to go through menopause in isolation. And that sisterhood is what we need. We all need different things from our communities. But we need more communities and more community – 100%.
Lauren Ohayon: I want to change my answer and say that too. That’s why I’m going back into my in-person stuff. I had taken a break, and I’m everywhere now in person because I just want to like–
Dr. Jen: We just need to be with people. Yeah, literally. Thank you so much. We’re going to have links in the show notes to you and where people can find you and your program, but I really appreciate you taking the time today, and it has been lovely to have you on the Midlife Feast.
Lauren Ohayon: It’s been lovely to be here. Thank you.
Dr. Jen: Thanks for joining me for this episode of The Midlife Feast. If you’re ready to take the next step towards thriving in midlife, head to MenopauseNutritionist.ca to learn more about my 1-to-1 and group coaching programs, free resources, and where to get your copy of Eat to Thrive During Menopause. And if you’ve loved today’s conversation and found it helpful, please share it with a friend who needs to hear this and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps so many more people just like you find their way to food freedom and midlife confidence.
Until next time. Remember, midlife is not the end of the story – it’s the feast. Let’s savor it together.
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