Is Perimenopause a Diet Now? Talking Soft Pants and Midlife Wellness Traps with Cole Kazdin

Perimenopause often starts quietly. Maybe your sleep gets weird, maybe your cycles change, maybe you just don’t feel like yourself. And when that happens, most of us do the obvious thing: we start looking for information. We want reassurance. We want a roadmap.

And that’s where the trap springs.

Because the loudest voices don’t talk to you like a human moving through a profound hormonal transition. No—they talk to you like a problem, a project, and a body in need of tightening, shrinking, purifying, or fixing.

Cole Kazdin returns (her second time on the pod!) to talk to me about this whole mess.

We get into so much in the episode, including:

• the sneaky ways diet culture slips into menopause advice

• the reactivation of old eating disorder behaviors

• orthorexia, “eating clean,” and restriction as coping mechanisms

• the research on midlife vulnerability to dieting

• longevity and nutrition misinformation

• reclaiming exercise from wellness culture

• how we can experience more joy, autonomy, and nourishment during this transition

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About Cole:Cole Kazdin is a four-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, writer, and performer. She is the author of What’s Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety and has contributed to The Moth Presents All These Wonders. Cole has written for outlets including VICE, TIME, The New York Times, and Cosmopolitan, and produced for Good Morning America, Nightline, and Netflix. A celebrated storyteller, she’s performed on The Moth Mainstage nationwide and NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour, and currently teaches writing at UCLA Extension. She lives in Los Angeles. 

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 Podcast Cover Photography by Anya McInroy

Podcast Editing by Brian Walters

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