623: Burnout, Hormones & the Hidden Mental Load w/ Jenn Pike

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:00
In 2026, I completely pivoted my podcast away from interviews and biweekly episodes, and really pivoted towards this daily drop, which I’m loving. I actually love the way that I have to organize myself to create this every month. But I’m telling you this because I did do a few interviews late in 2025, and even a couple in the early part of this year that I have yet to air, and so I’m just going to start pollinating the episode with those remaining interviews for the remainder of this year. So you’re still getting the daily drops, but every once in a while, you’re also going to get an interview, and today is one of those days.

Courtney Townley 0:44
Welcome to your Daily Hit of Grace and Grit, your quick dose of inspiration to kickstart your day. I’m Courtney Townley, and here is today’s hit.

Courtney Townley 0:58
I’m really excited about this interview. I loved this conversation and this guest, and I will introduce her by saying: If you have been telling yourself that this is just what midlife feels like-the exhaustion, the mood swings, the sleep that is suddenly fragile, the PMS that seems louder than it used to be, the weight that feels like it’s following rules that you never agreed to. This episode is for you, because here’s what so many women don’t realize until they’re deep into it: what looks like a body problem is often a life load problem. It’s the invisible weight of over functioning, people pleasing, carrying it all, pushing through, and trying to out supplement or out discipline a nervous system that’s been running on high for years. And when that’s the backdrop, hormones don’t operate in a vacuum; they respond to the environment that you’re living in, that you’ve essentially created.

Courtney Townley 2:04
So, in today’s conversation, we’re going to pull back the curtain on what’s really happening for women in perimenopause and beyond, physically, emotionally, and energetically, and why just trying harder is not a strategy. We’ll talk about what sustainable healing actually looks like in real life, and how to build consistency without triggering perfectionism, and what it means to come back into partnership with your body, especially when you’ve been feeling disconnected from it for a really long time. And I could not think of a better person to guide us through this than Jen Pike.

Courtney Townley 2:41
Jen is a medical exercise specialist and functionally integrative diagnostic nutritionist who specializes in women’s health and hormones. She is the best-selling author of the Simplicity Project, the Simplicity Kitchen, and the Simplicity Body, and she is the founder of multiple powerful programs devoted to helping women understand what they should have been taught about their bodies all along, how much wisdom, healing capacity, and power is already there, and how to actually access it. Jen also sits on the advisory board for Strong Fitness magazine and hosts the Simplicity Sessions, a top 1% podcast in the world, where she serves up weekly education and truth telling for women who are ready to cut through the noise and get real results.

Courtney Townley 3:34
And if you’ve ever wished someone would just cut through the BS and give you a clear, grounded path forward, well, Jen’s pretty awesome at that. So she’s a wife, a mom of two, and truly understands that wellness isn’t meant to be another arena where we strive and self-criticize. It’s a journey where we get to live with more ease, simplicity, and a whole lot more self-trust. So if you’re ready to stop feeling like your body is betraying you, and start understanding what it’s asking. Let’s get into it. Here is my conversation with Jen Pike. Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast, Jen. Thanks so much for making the time.

Jenn Pike 4:15
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to see you again.

Courtney Townley 4:17
Yes, so good to see you again. I just saw you what right before Christmas, I think. So you have been in the wellness industry a hot minute. This is not a new thing for you. You’ve been around a long time, and so I’m really curious, just for the listener to sort of understand what you do now, but also your evolution to how you got there. What did you think your job was when you came into the industry initially, and then how did it evolve into where you are now? So, how would you describe the work that you do now? Because I’m assuming it’s radically different.

Jenn Pike 4:51
Yeah, when I first came out in the industry, I was working with a lot of professional athletes. I was working with you know teens who were. Being drafted into the OHL, the Ontario Hockey League, and into the NHL, I was working with farm team athletes for the NHL teams, and I loved it. And so I was like, I’m going to be like the Jillian Michaels of the you know sport industry, and it was so fun at the time because what I realized about the funness is number one.

Jenn Pike 5:20
They had a lot on the line, and they were willing to do whatever it took. And they listened, and they got the job done. And they also had a team. They had not just a team of playmaker, you know, like players they were with, but they had the chiral, the nutritionist, the sport medicine doctor. Like if anything went wrong, it was like we got you, we got you. But while I was doing that, I was also part time personal training at a gym where I grew up, and I was mainly working with women there, and I didn’t have kids yet. But there were massive differences between working with the everyday woman versus working with these athletes, and so I had to do a lot of transitioning. That I was not the same trainer for these different, you know, demographics of people I was working with, and what happened fairly quickly was me realizing that the women that I was working with, and a lot of them were mothers, they were the everyday athletes of life, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much more here! And I became far more interested in supporting them because they did not have the village, they didn’t have the community, they didn’t have the oh something’s gone wrong, don’t worry, we got you. She had herself-

Courtney Townley 6:20
yes,

Jenn Pike 6:21
And you know she was a team of of many in one woman, and I just started to lean in a little deeper into that, and eventually left the athletic world. And in that, there was such a gift because what I was recognizing was that the the fitness, the exercise, the nutrition, it was going to carry her pretty far, but that there were other things going on that that was not going to touch without having a little bit more understanding, and those were things like when she would come to me and say, “I do not feel okay, but I went to my doctor, I had my blood work done, and I’m told everything’s fine, and I would always say, like, “But do you feel fine? Because you don’t sound fine. And they’re like, “I really do not feel fine, and I didn’t have the training at that time, to understand enough to say, you know, bring me your blood work in, let me take a look in that. So I went back to school.

Jenn Pike 7:06
I was like, if I’m going to continue to work with these women in these stages of life, and I’m going to grow in this industry, I have to understand more. So I went back to school, and I continued to do that. Go back to school, learn more, need to know more, go back and do that. And so what ended up happening is that I spent a lot of time working with those women over those years, and I really listened. I feel like I got an entire, you know, MBA in the psychology of women when it comes to their health, their body, and fitness. I was able to start to really hear what they weren’t saying. I was like picking up on different cues, and then I became a mother myself, and I was like, “Oh, oh, okay. So I had been hearing you, but I was not actually listening to you because how could I? I had not been in this situation yet.

Courtney Townley 7:57
Yeah,

Jenn Pike 7:57
And that was a new reframe and got me even more committed, and then I had another child, and then so it was just all of these things. You know, my business was growing as my life was growing, and that was really shaping my interest and my area of expertise. And that was really the beginning of the time when I realized that it was women’s hormonal health, and this is before hormones were like the the fad, catchy thing. There wasn’t even a perimenopause did not exist. There was not a word for that when I was starting to do this in like 2006 to 2010 is where I really started to recognize how little we knew, and you know my mission had always been about teaching women everything that we should have known about our bodies from the beginning, because and I still believe this to this day. If women were more connected from day one, we would not have the epidemics of the the health issues we have, but the mental struggle that so many women have. Like, how do I live in this body and not understand this body? Like, it doesn’t make sense.

Jenn Pike 8:55
We know more about our cell phones and how to operate our Vitamix and our frigging washing machine than we do this body that we live in every single day, so it became a massive passion project for me to not just learn how to teach women, but to talk to them. And I made it very clear, you know, in my industry early on, I was like, I am not going to be the trainer, the nutritionist, the coach, the educator who’s going to tell you what to do. I’m going to teach you the why behind the what, and so that’s what I’ve continued to do now. And at this point in my career, you know, I’m 29 years into doing this, and I teach global programs around the world that focus on fitness and health, hormones, nutrition, and teaching all women what they should have known about their bodies all along.

Courtney Townley 9:42
Yeah, it’s like giving them that core, that core education that hopefully their daughters and granddaughters will glean from much quicker than they had the opportunity to. I have so much respect for that because I think that the trajectory is it’s learning. And then it’s also a little bit of unlearning. Sometimes a lot of unlearning of okay, hang on a second. It’s something very different to work with the midlife woman versus becoming the midlife woman.

Jenn Pike 10:12
Yeah,

Courtney Townley 10:12
and then really understanding sort of the the challenges, like you said, they weren’t able to verbalize. It is something so radically different. So on that note, I’m curious because we all have seasons of unlearning.

Jenn Pike 10:24
Yeah.

Courtney Townley 10:24
And so, what were those seasons for you where just kind of helped to maybe improve the depth of your work or your understanding of hormonal health or approaching health very differently than you did initially?

Jenn Pike 10:36
Well, the thing that comes to me right away is the 3p’s. It was pregnancy, it was postpartum and it was perimenopause. You you can’t know like I don’t I don’t care how many textbooks you’ve read, how many activity labs you’ve done in school, case studies, until you have actually had those like lived experiences or been intimately connected with women who are having those lived experiences. It’s a completely different paradigm, and I had very visceral responses and reactions at each times of my life. So I said, like, getting pregnant and having my children was those were woe moments. And having multiple children and every child bringing up something new, those were woe moments. And then you know that postpartum period of time, like it’s not six weeks. It’s like I don’t know. Mine are 17 and 19. I think I’m still in it.

Jenn Pike 11:26
So, it’s like it. You know, you you never really go back to who you were, and that is by design and it’s on purpose. But we’re not taught that. We’re taught snap back. We’re taught bounce back. We’re taught just like you know you have these babies, and then you just get your body back, and it’s like that’s not actually how this works, and so the things for me in my life is I’ve really witnessed what I’ve gone through, but then what all my clients have gone through. I have worked with like probably hundreds of 1000s of women at this point, based on just the reach of our global programs. Definitely 10s of 1000 in like a very intimate connection, and everyone’s journey is different, but everyone’s experience is all very common in the way that they describe it. The way it shows up in their body is individualized, but a lot of the disempowered frustration.

Jenn Pike 12:12
Again, like I said, how do I not know what it is that’s going on in my body? And for me, sitting back, being in three areas of the industry, so I came out as a medical exercise specialist, so fitness was my industry. Nutrition I came to after that because realizing I need to know more, and then the functional health and functional medicine space I came to because I realized allopathically we were only hitting so far, and so being at these different points and these trajectories in my career, you know, I am not an early adopter for most things. I am a sit back, wait, watch, and see. I am very cautious when we have things where it’s like everyone needs to do this.

Jenn Pike 12:52
Everyone should be on this plan. Everyone should be taking this thing. Everyone should be doing that. And I’m like, well, it’s interesting because I haven’t worked with everyone, but I’ve worked with a lot, and I’ve yet to find two women who need the exact same system. So, how is it that we are telling everyone they need the same thing? And I think it is a very disempowering place to come at to women, being like, “Here’s a manual. This is like the only information that you need, and you know, here’s the meal plan, and here’s that where it can be a struggle because you’re up against an entire industry where we as women were the target market. How dare you think you know anything about your body? This product, this program, this company-they know more.

Courtney Townley 13:35
Oh, sure, we have outsourced. Yes, we’re just conditioned to outsource.

Jenn Pike 13:38
Yeah, right. The research, the data-you know, all of that in the literature. The literature knows, and I’m like, that’s cool. Appreciate the research and the data in the literature. I wasn’t part of that study, so my voice wasn’t represented in there. None of my clients been part of the study. Their voices weren’t represented in there. So you know, it’s like I have I have definitely spent my career sitting back, really watching and witnessing. And the thing I’ll tell you, Courtney, is like when you’ve been doing this for three decades, you recognize it’s like fashion. Everything’s going to come back, and you know we try and complicate things by bringing in all these new ways and new systems, and then we realize, right? Like let’s just major in the majors. How about we just focus on the boring fundamentals? But our brain has been taught if it’s not sexy, it’s not a fad. It’s not like that’s not going to work. Yeah, and so we are very distracted. Yeah, and that distraction is for so many you know reasons what keeps women stuck in this perpetual loop of I’m doing everything right and nothing is working.

Courtney Townley 14:43
Exactly. I was just going to say it’s such a spin cycle. So much I love so much about what you just said. I mean, I think that that the cookie cutter protocols, the one size fits all approach, it is very marketable, right? Which is why the industry loves it. It’s just easy to produce. It’s easy to sell. The unfortunate. Part of course is it doesn’t create any kind of sustainable change because it isn’t nuanced. It’s not meeting that particular woman where she’s at, or considering the wholeness of her humanity, which of course becomes hugely problematic. The other thing I love about what you said is that we’re so conditioned to go back, like the bounce back after the baby, bounce back to the pre-pregnancy body. As you get into perimenopause, can you get back to where you were in your 20s or 30s with your physicality? It’s like we’re always trying to return to a past self.

Courtney Townley 15:28
Yeah. And it’s like, oh my gosh, no! The invitation of midlife, yes, is to move forward, yeah, right, and to move forward into a new possibility. And we can’t do that when we’re always chasing the past. Not a percent. And the third thing that I just want to highlight, because I think it’s so important, is the other piece of the wellness industry that I that drives me crazy, and I hear it from you too, is that we are sold these once in a lifetime transformations, right? That it is about just losing the the 50 pounds or getting rock hard abs or whatever that once in a lifetime transformation is, and yet your 3p’s so beautifully illustrate that life is transformation. Right? It’s just a continuous journey of evolving into the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. So, where are the skill sets that help us to manage that, and where is the information, the data, the information about hormones that help to support us through that, and that’s what I appreciate so much about the work that you do. Is I think you’re just meeting women right where they are.

Jenn Pike 16:29
Yeah, thank you. And because it, you know, it’s such a there’s such a dichotomy in being a woman and living in today’s day and age because it’s like you know, embrace your leadership, embrace your wisdom, all that, but don’t look like you’re any older, and you know, stay in that same body, stay in that same face, stay in that same skin, that same hair.

Jenn Pike 16:47
And it’s like you cannot have it both ways. Like to me, that that midlife transition. Like I’m 46, and it just occurred to me literally a couple of months ago that I am midlife because I said to my husband one day, “Why do I keep getting invited to speak on all these midlife panels and all these midlife shows? And he was like, “Because you’re more than halfway to 90, Jen. New Year’s, Dave. Yeah, what? Hold on. Oh my gosh! And that’s when it really hit me. And I thought, well, you know, like I, I mean, I’ve embraced going gray. I’ve embraced wrinkles. I’ve not like I’m very invested in my health and my vitality, but I am also so aware in working with women every day, raising a daughter and a son that to me, you know, like oh my god, what a gift that I get to age.

Jenn Pike 17:38
What a gift that I get to still show up and do the work that I do. What a gift that I get to, you know, raise kids and a daughter who’s not afraid of you know having expression in her forehead and having lines around her eyes. And it is, I think, a slippery slope that when we do start to do some of those things, like I know for me, one of the reasons I said no is because I was like, where would I stop? Like, if I if I were to do this thing and to do that, and also because I really do feel like perimenopause to me is an initiation. You know, like it is. You think of in all the other areas of the world how celebrated women are as they age and they move into that crone wisdom, all the perspective to be able to like turn to your left and look back at all the decades of life and experience.

Courtney Townley 18:30
The wise woman, yeah.

Jenn Pike 18:32
Oh my gosh, right? And so, like, I I take that so you know seriously and with so much honor that I want to meet her at every step of the way, and and it is challenging, especially being in the industry, especially teaching fitness, especially being in wellness. There is this expectation for those of us inside of the industry that we will not age. You know, we’ll always look good. Body will always be the same, and you have to really like. There is a there’s a certain audacity as a woman that you have to show up with in order to create a little bit of loving armor. You know, that’s not like made out of steel. It’s got flex, but where you don’t allow yourself to get sucked into that.

Courtney Townley 19:15
Yeah, it’s knowing your own standards for life. I think in a little in a in a big way. Otherwise, the world will gladly set standards for us.

Jenn Pike 19:23
Oh my gosh! And it’s very easy to get, you know, to I don’t even know what the word is-distracted, pressured, persuaded. Like it’s a very romantic way that it’s done for women a lot of the time, right?

Courtney Townley 19:37
Like there’s analyzed. I mean, that’s the

Jenn Pike 19:39
yeah

Courtney Townley 19:39
part of the problem is that it just where we have that herd mentality too, and it’s it it’s normalized, and so we kind of go with the flow without really questioning.

Jenn Pike 19:49
Yeah, is

Courtney Townley 19:49
this really what I want?

Jenn Pike 19:50
Everything that happens, though, you know, it’s like I’ve been interviewing so many experts in the perimenopause and menopause space lately, and at some point, every single conversation. When I ask, like, what do you think of all the things that are presented to women as an option right now, like the massive, like there’s a buffet of things that you can do. What would you say is the most important? Not a single one of them have said HRT or longevity hats. Every single one, sleep, whole basics,

Courtney Townley 20:20
yeah, freaking basics.

Jenn Pike 20:22
So I’m like, if we know this to be true, what would happen if collectively everyone was shouting that message from the rooftop? Like, how much easier could we make it for the everyday woman who is feeling overwhelmed right now?

Courtney Townley 20:36
Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. On that note, with all that you’ve learned, with all that you’ve experienced, with where you are now in your own journey, how do you define health and wellness at midlife? Like at this stage of your life, how do you defineit?

Jenn Pike 20:51
Feeling rested, moving through life with a level of ease and flow, not living in a constant state of overwhelm, knowing who you are, having quality relationships in your life, having sustainable energy throughout the day, being able to trust your body when she talks to you the first time, having beautiful digestion, eliminating everyday sweating, moving your body-like it’s all to me. It’s a feeling. It’s not like it’s not a look; it is a feeling, right?

Jenn Pike 21:24
You wake up, you open your eyes in the morning, and you are happy, or at the very least, you are neutral. You’re not like, oh my god, I can’t get up. I got to get up. There’s a coffee. Yeah, doing that, and you know, I think a lot of it too. As I’ve gotten older, what I’ve recognized is that paying attention to when you know you are actually out of balance? Like something needs to be calibrated. Where I’ll notice that in the days that I’ve not taken care of myself well, I’m I’m not as nice to the people I love. I have less patience. I’m more snappy, and that has been really interesting to witness because I do think that when we are feeling energized and vital and vibrant, we treat others better, we treat ourselves better, and so it’s like the little things I don’t think we realize are connected to that. I work with women all the time who will say, “Well, I don’t, I don’t think I have any information going on. I think my hormones are fine. Like I don’t have night sweats, I don’t have gas. I don’t have bloating. Any of that, and I’m like, “Tell me about your mood. And they’re like, “Oh, where do you want to start?

Courtney Townley 22:28
Yeah,

Jenn Pike 22:29
yeah. So yeah, for me, that that’s what it is. You know, my whole thing is like, how do I get to show up and live in this body every day with more simplicity and ease?

Courtney Townley 22:38
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So, back to this wellness industry piece because there is a lot of BS. There’s a lot of noise. There’s a lot of distraction, and so taking all of that in, what do you think is most concerning in terms of maybe what’s being sold to women at this age and stage of life that you just know in your heart of hearts is going to land them in a hot, frustrated mess. It’s not really solving the problem; it’s just contributing to the problem.

Jenn Pike 23:11
I mean, there’s a couple things.

Courtney Townley 23:12
There’s a lot of things. We could have a whole podcast about this question. There

Jenn Pike 23:15
were a couple of things. I really do have a concern with how many things women are being encouraged to inject into their body right now.

Courtney Townley 23:22
Yes, good.

Jenn Pike 23:23
Whether we’re talking about filler or whatever else it is into their face, or you know, I mean, peptide therapy can be extremely beneficial for many. So can GLP one support. But I think right now we are in where we see this in the industry all the time. Whether it’s a diet, it’s a trend, it’s something where not enough questions are being asked, not enough time is happening in between, and we’re just seeing a lot of people inject and put a lot of things in their bodies without asking question. And I have trepidation around that because we don’t have long enough period of time in human trials and studies and some of these things to understand, and when you take a woman’s body that is already pro-inflammatory, there’s already certain areas of vulnerability that are happening. You know, when we change anything in the beginning, we can feel good and see positive difference. But what is the cumulative effect?

Jenn Pike 24:17
And that’s where I’m just seeing right now. When you’ve been doing this this long, I’m like. There’s going to be a five to seven year pause. We’re in about five to seven years. Someone’s going to press pause on this and go. Remember how we thought? Turns out, and we see it all the time. Whether we’re talking about a diet plan, you know, when like keto was going to save everyone, when us, and then you’re like, oh, how many people have had their gallbladder removed and had liver issues and all of this since at that point. So there, that right now I do find that concerning, and it’s not to say that I don’t think they’re beneficial. That’s not what I’m saying.

Jenn Pike 24:52
What I’m saying is the cadence to which they are being handed out. I think is concerning. I think that. Message of saying to women because you’re in perimenopause or menopause, we just we just don’t test. We don’t test hormones. We don’t really look at things like we just go based on symptoms. I think we’re missing a massive opportunity to run complete blood paneling and some other functional tests to look beyond simply the hormones. We know hormones are fluctuating in perimenopause and they’re not static. That’s not the argument. The argument is we can’t sweep everything under a perimenopause rug without going and looking at that woman’s thyroid, looking at her gut health and function, looking at her glucose and insulin management. You know, like all of these different things. So I find that concerning. I also I love the message about strength right now, but I think you know we we do what we always do, which is we’re like, there’s one way: lift heavy, go hard. And I’m like, oh my god,

Courtney Townley 25:49
do we ever learn, Jen?

Jenn Pike 25:51
Yes, yeah. So yeah, I would say right now those those are the those are the three, and I am a bit concerned with the increased prevalence of how many women in their late 40s and in their 50s are once again being put back on the birth control pill as a way to manage their perimenopause and early menopausal symptoms, and simply being told just stay on this till you’re around 51, 52, which is the average age of menopause, and we’ll just manage it. You’ll you’ll just slide in as opposed to slam into that transition. Those would be my things right now. Where, yeah, I’m just like, oh goodness,

Courtney Townley 26:35
yeah, all such valid points. So obviously, you work a lot with women on the whole enchilada of health, but you also do a lot of leaning into the chemical side of things, right? Helping them to get their chemistry up and running in a way that’s truly supporting them. So, when a woman comes to you, my suspicion is that she’s coming with what she thinks is her body being the problem. Yep. And how much of it do you think is a life load problem versus the chemist that her body actually being broken? Because I I know that you probably don’t think that.

Jenn Pike 27:09
Oh, I don’t I don’t believe it. I’ve never met a woman that I believe is broken. I’m like, if you if you can still move your big toe, like we’re doing good. We’re good. I so I don’t I don’t see that. You know, here’s what it is: is that again, because we haven’t been taught about our bodies. When-

Courtney Townley 27:26
something

Jenn Pike 27:26
goes awry, when anything goes awry, it’s very easy to just like blame it on one thing or say we’re broken and the body’s not working as a whole. That that’s actually not how our bodies are designed. And I think that when we can take a step back and we can really start to understand what it is that’s going on in our chemistry in our body. Because by the time you’ve gotten into your late 30s and in your 40s, you’ve actually lived a lot of life. It may not sound like a lot 30-40, years, but you think about what each of those decades brought in your life. Like, you know, we we know that women who have gone through more trauma and have a higher A score, an advanced childhood exposure score, that they tend to have higher inflammatory responses to their hormones.

Jenn Pike 28:09
So they tend to have stronger PMS or PMDD symptoms. They tend to have a harder time coming out of pregnancy. They tend to have a harder time moving through perimenopause into menopause, and that usually has happened within the first seven to 10 years of life, sometimes even less in utero by the age of two. So that’s like the first big thing, and then you think of what it feels like to be a young girl in your tween and teen years when there is massive hormonal changes and shifts happening inside of social changes, family dynamic and changes, everything. It’s a huge upheaval in that period of time, from like eight to 18.

Jenn Pike 28:45
And then you think about getting into your 20s; you have to decide what you want to go to school for, what you want to do now. As you’re still a kid, and it’s like, no, you’re a grown-up. You have to like live in the real world, and there’s a lot more pressure. There’s a lot more of that like hustle energy, and for a lot of young girls, like I was like, girl, it was so exciting, and I wanted to say it’s your yes years. You just like want to say yes to everything, and and not that’s not a bad thing. I’m grateful for the yes years, but you don’t understand the totality of what that’s doing. Late nights, not eating well. Who knows what else?

Jenn Pike 29:16
And then you come into your 30s, and now maybe you’re also married. You’re a home owner. You are maybe bringing children into the world. In your 30s, there’s probably at some point been someone in your life in your family where there’s been a health concern or struggle, and now you get into your 40s, and now this is not just the midlife generation. This is the sandwich generation. Oh yeah, and so you have all these things happening and coming together. In your 40s is also maybe now when your children are going to school. Your parents need you more. Maybe your marriage is shifting. Finances have changed. Like there is a lot. Like our ecosystem as a woman, of everything in the soil that is contributing to who we are. This is not just about your gut microbiome. This is every. This is

Courtney Townley 30:02
so nice if it was.

Jenn Pike 30:04
Be so nice. Was be so great if some pre and probiotics could just go in there

Courtney Townley 30:07
and

Jenn Pike 30:07
that situation.

Courtney Townley 30:09
Agreed.

Jenn Pike 30:10
But it is. This is the totality, right? Like it is. I believe in perimenopause. We’re building. It’s the final culmination, like the final period of just like everything that has had to come together to create that, and for a lot of women, if you’re just trucking forward, moving, you know, you’re you’re moving through life like this, and you didn’t ever live life with elbows out, you don’t realize that this is what has been happening and is happening until one day you’re like, I’m sorry. Like, who is that woman looking at me in the mirror? Whose life is this? How did this happen? If I’m not mum, if I’m not wife, if I’m not, who am I? Like, it’s like, have you ever seen a woman’s face when you ask her, like, what are your hobbies?

Courtney Townley 30:58
What do you enjoy doing? Thank you.

Jenn Pike 31:00
Yeah. What if you if you weren’t a mother and you didn’t do this for business, who would you be? And they’re like,

Courtney Townley 31:06
you’re in the headlights, right?

Jenn Pike 31:08
Part of the question of life.

Courtney Townley 31:09
Yeah.

Jenn Pike 31:10
So yeah, all all of that. There’s so much. So I really believe that our body is responding to our life, not our life responding to our body, and I think if we can shift that and understand, like that-that to me is like what a relief then, because I actually do have more control. Because I’m an adult, I can choose my yeses and my noes. And it’s interesting because when you work with women in the beginning, we really defend what we want to hold to be true for us, even if it’s very uncomfortable. So we are overburdened with the calendar and the schedule, and we’re like, “Oh my god, I’m so tired and resenting everything I used to love. Most women in the beginning will still fight to hold control over that busy calendar because it’s uncomfortable to not do that.

Courtney Townley 31:57
Yeah, I’m so curious in your life, like what that moment maybe was for you, because I definitely remember I was all you know for so much of my life I was so controlled. I was such a you know proving my worth all the time. I worked so hard, always had such a work ethic, and kind of prided myself on that. And then there was almost like this this willingness to start experimenting with not being the straight A student anymore, and I noticed I got away with it.

Jenn Pike 32:26
Yeah,

Courtney Townley 32:27
right. Like no, that there were no police showing up at my door scolding me. Yeah, and and it felt better. Yeah, and it was almost like this freedom that I was invited into. Like, oh my gosh, how come no one ever told me that I didn’t have to work so hard,

Jenn Pike 32:41
yeah. I I would say again, 3p’s of my life. Like when I had my daughter my first, I was like, I’m just gonna have this baby and wearing a sling, and she’s just gonna be immersed in my world. Right. And then she was born, and she was like, actually, mother, I’m gonna scream for nine hours a day for nine months, and I’m gonna be a contact napper, so you can’t do shit. And I

Courtney Townley 33:00
was so yeah

Jenn Pike 33:01
okay. So I had to surrender. I’d never done that before. I’d always been like I was a workaholic, and I loved what I did. But when I had my daughter, she was like, “And now we’re going to be different. And I was like, “Okay. And then my mid 30s, when I was running my in person studio, Wow, that brought me to my knees. It was like the most beautiful gift ever, and also the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I hit full blown burnout about 12 years ago. I was like 34, and my kids were still young. And I just remember I was like, I have two choices. I’m either going to become this couch, and I’m just going to sink deeper into it and and stay depressed, or I am going to you know go wash my hair and brush my teeth, and I’m gonna act like an adult and and step into changing everything because this is not sustainable, and that really taught me like I’m gonna have to disappoint some people. I’m actually I’ve taught people what to expect of me, and that I’ve got it, and I don’t need help, and I’m good, and that is a lie, and I do need help, and I don’t got it, and I also don’t want to do this thing that I’ve created, and I need to give myself permission to

Courtney Townley 34:12
pivot to

Jenn Pike 34:13
100% pivot.

Courtney Townley 34:14
Yes,

Jenn Pike 34:15
and hard, but oh my god, so great! We wouldn’t be having this conversation today had I not had that moment, and then coming into my 40s, you know, 2021, our company hit a massive milestone, and it’s one of those things when people say to you, like, you know, you you work to hit the goal, and then you hit the goal, and you go, oh, like I thought it was going to feel different. Yeah, that happened to me in 2021, and I just remember everybody around me going amazing. And now next year you’re going to double it, and then you’re going to. And I thought, but what

Courtney Townley 34:48
if

Jenn Pike 34:48
I like? Yeah, I was like, you know, it was really fun to hit that. But how about like, what would be wrong if I just stayed here? What if I could just earn this and keep doing this, but I worked less? What if like that’s the secret sauce? What if the secret sauce is you stay earning this, but you actually get to work less? Yeah. Because what I was hearing from everyone else is now it’s the double downtime, and I was like, oh my god, you mean harder, more, again and again? And I was like, I’m out. So in 2021, I really reconfigured the way that I did business, and I chose my body first, and my family first, and my business second. And lo and behold, that business has just continued to grow and grow. And now I have all the evidence in the world that I need to see that you can actually do less better, and it can be amplified more. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 35:40
and it’s almost like I think too. It makes you your energy resonate better with other people because it isn’t coming from this place of urgency and hustle and desperation. It’s coming from alignment and groundedness, and that is just such a wildly different energy. Yeah, but you have to be willing to take the risk to see it, and that’s the scariest part. Is oh my gosh, like everything’s going to implode if I don’t keep showing up the way I’ve been showing up. Yeah, but then you test those waters and you get evidence where oh, I can do this. That’s amazing.

Jenn Pike 36:12
Yeah, and I do a lot of speaking now with women about this because I’m trying to help women recognize it before it’s not an option. Like when I was 34, I I literally like I had to collapse in order to recognize it because I was feeling it for a year or two before. But I was like, oh no, that I can’t fail. I can’t fail. I can’t like I had so much shame around it if it wasn’t working out, and you know now all these years later, I’m like, who freaking cares? Like, let’s just like we’ll just try something else. We’ll try it a different way. That’s just not for me. But it takes, you know, for when I talk to these women, I’m like, it’s going to take a level of courage and bravery that you may not have yet. You might have to borrow it from someone else, you know, until you fix that muscle for yourself, but for the love of God, do not let yourself get to that point of being sick or losing relationships in your life, losing yourself, and and this is too often what happens is we ignore the signs, ignore the signs, and then life goes. You asked for a signier sign, so now I’m just going to you’re going to hit the brick wall, and now it’s not going to be an option. I really wish for more women that we could recognize it when it’s a warning instead of like an ultimatum.

Courtney Townley 37:30
Oh yeah, it’s so true. I had a mentor once who used the analogy of like you know the pebble, the stone, and the boulder. Like that, we get the pebbles initially, just the headaches, the weird PMS. Like we’re getting signs that something’s off kilter, but of course we pop an Advil. Life’s too busy to slow down. We say we’ll get to it later, and then of course we start getting the rocks thrown at the window, and those are things where like maybe you’re laid up for a few days with your PMS now. You get a migraine instead of just a minor headache, and eventually you ignore those things long enough, and you get the boulders coming through the window, the the big diagnoses, the things that are not so easy to bounce back from, yeah. And Jen, why is it? I know why it is, but it’s. I mean, it is kind of a rhetorical question, but some women have to hit that brick wall repeatedly so damn hard before they’re willing to change. And I I too wish that we could just soften that for them, like somehow get them to pivot more quickly. And I think that some people do have a much higher threshold of tolerance to pain, unfortunately, which kind of keeps them banging their head. I think if you remember the movie Parenthood,

Jenn Pike 38:34
yes, yes,

Courtney Townley 38:35
Steve Martin, and the little kid had the bucket on his head, and he’s kept running into the wall. Like that’s the image that I have of like I feel like sometimes that’s how we are in our lives. We’re just we keep focusing on the cost of doing the thing, and we’re not focusing enough on the cost of not doing the thing.

Jenn Pike 38:51
I think for so many women, that has never been an option for them. Yeah, like they, you know, and some of that can be ancestral. Some of that is definitely how they were brought up. Like you, this these are not things you question. You don’t have options around this. This is just what you do. And if you were, you know, if you had to be the parent from a very young age, if you were always like the leader, you are always the one. It we we just don’t realize and understand how much we’re training ourselves from such a young age in our environment, just training us that for some women, no matter how exhausted and how broken down they are, they the fear of what would happen if they let go of the wheel and took their foot off the gas is 100 times more terrifying than them getting sick and getting the diagnosis. Yeah, you know, it’s like I have clients I work with all the time, and we’ll have these incredible chats. and And she knows it up here. Like this is not logically; she understands it. It all makes sense. Her nervous system not caught up to the same level of emotional intelligence, and the nervous system is running the show. So if that six and seven year. Is still running the show, or the 20-year-old who was, you know, put in position of having to take care of the family when mom and dad split or somebody died. That is who is running the show. So it’s like trying to to bridge this gap between what we know and what we feel. At the end of the day, what you feel and how you feel is always going to run the show.

Courtney Townley 40:20
It’s always going to dictate behavior. It’s so true. Yeah, it’s so true. And you know, as much as we understand, you know, the power of mindset and the power of all these other tools, we can’t even access those tools when we can’t get that prefrontal cortex online, right? Because we’re living in a state of fight or flight.

Jenn Pike 40:36
Yeah, and fight or flight and dopamine chasing.

Courtney Townley 40:39
Yeah. Oh my god. Like,

Jenn Pike 40:40
ugh. And that to me has been. I mean, I am so grateful that we have you know wireless devices and things like that. You and I can connect to that, but at the same time, I’m like, we are addicted, addicted to the stimulation, to the scroll. I mean, it’s wild in business. You know, we have meetings with like our marketing team, and they’re like, so we have about you know point nine seconds to grab someone’s attention now before they’ve already lost interest. Like with that

Courtney Townley 41:09
sound bite world, and they will just yeah, they just keep scrolling, scroll. And what’s that’s doing to our brain? And yeah, and also just the there’s a term infobesity, right? We’re just consuming so much information all the time, and we’re not really doing anything with that information, so it’s really just suffocating us because it is so overwhelming to carry that.

Jenn Pike 41:28
And I think too, you know, as well, Courtney, is that how we get so lost on the path of not being able to listen and trust our own voices. We are hearing a million other voices, like the voice we’re not hearing is ours, which I also think why talking and conversation and the story sharing and all of that is just like to me that is part of medicine. Yes,

Courtney Townley 41:49
I love that you brought that up because I don’t know if you had something similar happen in your career, but I I was very used to doing one to one work for literally the first 20 years of my career to the point that I bought into the belief. I mean, I was convicted to the belief that there is no way that this one-to-one work would ever work in a one-to-many environment. I and I just I was so held onto that. So anyway, of course, my you know I suffered and I couldn’t scale because of it and all the things. And what I ultimately learned by leaning into community work was oh my gosh, there is a power here I never could have created in a one to one relationship. Now, of course, I still do one to one work, but what a community affords people is that normalizing of hardship, right? That yes, we might all have different challenges, but we are all facing challenges.

Jenn Pike 42:40
Yes, yeah,

Courtney Townley 42:41
and listening to women’s stories, you’re so spot on. There is such a healing. There’s a medicine in that.

Jenn Pike 42:47
Oh my god! It is like I have a group coaching call I’m teaching tonight, and I teach all group coaching calls now. And it you see the room completely soften, like a like a collective sigh of relief when somebody either asks a question that others are thinking and they don’t know how to articulate, or they they feel like it’s going to be a dumb question, so they won’t even allow themselves to ask it, or when somebody shares a story and then another woman in the chat is like, “Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one who thought that way, felt that way. I didn’t realize so many people were going through this, and it’s like we have unintentionally put ourselves on an island of suffering.

Jenn Pike 43:29
We are doing things nowadays that are punitive. We punish ourselves and we call it health, and we have lost the fact that as women, we are actually meant to have sisterhood as part of how we heal and grow, and move through the world together, and that is what so many women are lacking. And so, when you can be somebody who facilitates or who provides that energy, you are not impacting one person. You become that pebble that has the ripple when you shoot it out in the water-

Courtney Townley 44:00
and you watch it skip along. That’s what happens in group environment. It’s so true. It’s so true. And I again, I I think I missed out. You know, I don’t regret it. I mean, it was a big thing that I had to unlearn was that okay, there there is something here that is providing so much goodness that I could never possibly cultivate any other way. So here we are. I want to circle back really quickly because I think this is such an important point for my audience.

Courtney Townley 44:28
Because a lot of women, based on their nervous systems, based on a history of being in hustle culture, always proving their worth, moving on to the next thing, being slowing down, finding moments like pollinating their day with moments of reprieve, giving themselves permission to rest-that is a tall order. I mean, honestly, a lot of them would rather you give them eight hours of exercise rather than sitting on a cushion or walking outside for 20 minutes. And so, I’m curious. Like how, how like what have you found helps to invite a woman into that work, especially when she’s very resistant to it or convinced that the world is going to implode if she extends herself that grace?

Jenn Pike 45:13
I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is being an example of that. So I think like mentoring the communication. So for me, like I’m a huge fan of slow mornings, and that never used to be my reality. So I share my slow mornings all the time on social, and you know, people will say like, “Oh, that must be nice, and I’m like, “It’s actually so lovely. It feels like a luxury every day. And I’ve worked hard to actually create that. Like that time doesn’t just find you. You have to say no to something else in order for that to be there.

Jenn Pike 45:45
And so, when I’m talking to women who have a lot of resistance, it’s not about trying to convince them. It is helping her to hear her own voice and say things like, “I completely understand where you’re coming from, but I also want you to go back and hear when you said to me that you don’t know how much longer you can keep going like this, and you’re not sleeping, and you’re you know feel inflamed all the time, and you constantly feel angry, and you’re clenching your teeth and all that, like what path do you think you need to take in order for those things to soften?

Jenn Pike 46:16
Because I don’t know of a supplement company yet who actually can go and give you those things. So, and and it’s when you start to just instead of telling you need to do this and you have to meditate and you have to do black therapy. I did. That’s how I used to coach. Like when I think of me so many years ago, I’m like, oh my god, I want to call up every client and

Courtney Townley 46:33
say you’re sorry

Jenn Pike 46:34
about that, about that. I story that I gave you like another job,

Courtney Townley 46:40
right? I know.

Jenn Pike 46:42
So I have found that it is that it’s having the conversation and even saying things like, “Okay, if that feels too much, what does feel possible? Like when you have those moments when you’re like, “Oh my god! Like, what is it in that moment? Is it that you’re taking a deep breath? Is it that you walked out the front door? You changed the scenery? Is it that you lied on the ground? Is it that you spent like 30 extra seconds massaging your oil into your face before bed? Like, what is that thing?

Jenn Pike 47:09
When you can start to recognize that thing, where you feel like you have found a moment of bliss, can you do that more often? We we make it so much harder. We think it has to be arduous. It has to be like a 10 point plan. It’s like it could be one thing. Like, could you actually drink the whole glass of water that you pour in the morning? Yeah, it sounds so futile.

Courtney Townley 47:30
And I’m like, but do you understand that your hydration is what’s going to reduce your headaches, your cravings? It’s going to get your poop moving. It’s going to give you energy. It’s actually going to help to support a healthy appetite versus wanting to reach for the sweets and all those types of things. That one thing, the one thing of drinking more water is going to have a ripple effect of the many things. We do it in the opposite way, where we go, I have to do everything to change one thing. I’m like that. You’re doing the ass backwards approach. Let’s flip it around. It’s one thing that impacts many.

Courtney Townley 48:05
Yeah, and it’s it’s one of the things that I appreciate so much about your work is just that again the the consistent messaging of simplicity that we love to overcomplicate, we love to overwhelm, even though we know it doesn’t work, and just consistently bringing people back to that one thing, what is that one thing that is going to pivot you back in the direction you intended to go, and help just relieve a little bit of unnecessary tension in your day?

Jenn Pike 48:31
I think when you’re saying in this as well, too, what’s really coming to my mind is that for a lot of us, we don’t even realize that we’re doing this to ourselves, and so having a sounding board. And when someone says, “Do you notice that? Like I was with a girlfriend recently, and we were working out together, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, you’re like a hummingbird in the gym. I was like, “You are everywhere, all over. I was like, “What exactly are you training? She was like, “Oh, like a little bit of this, little bit of that.

Jenn Pike 48:58
And I just got it, and I’m like, “I think you need to like just slow down for a second. I was like, “Why don’t you just pick like maybe two muscle groups? And she’s like, “Am I really moving that fast? I was like, “I’m dizzy. Yeah, you know. And so we don’t we don’t realize it. There’s things I do I do not realize. You know, my husband will oftentimes say to me, “You’re doing it again, and I’m like, “What? And he’s like, “You’re walking around sighing like nonstop, and for me, when I’m doing that, I am actually moving too fast. I need to slow down. I’m probably a little disorganized in that moment, and I need to like gather it back in. But if we don’t have people in our life that are like lovingly reflecting the mirror back, we’re just like, no, this is just me. This is working when it’s clearly not.

Courtney Townley 49:48
It’s so true. I always share that my husband will, when I’m really misaligned and I have been misaligned for days or weeks, he will lovingly put his hand on my shoulder and just say, “It’s time. Like, and what he. Says it’s time for you to take a beat.

Jenn Pike 50:02
Yeah.

Courtney Townley 50:02
Right now you may have to go away for the weekend. You may have to like take an afternoon off. I don’t know what you need. All I know is that you need to take a beat.

Jenn Pike 50:10
Yeah.

Courtney Townley 50:11
And it’s you know he says it in such a kind way, and he will often see the misalignment before I do, and that is that is a lovely thing. And I can be really pissed at him about it, but I have learned that it’s such a gift to have someone outside of you identifying

Jenn Pike 50:25
it, yeah,

Courtney Townley 50:25
and just calling it out. Okay, so if a woman is listening to this and she is feeling overwhelmed and she is feeling just like she is suffocating from all the information and feeling very disconnected from her body, what is something you could offer her today that would just help her to feel a little bit of relief about maybe a starting point or something that you could invite her into?

Jenn Pike 50:49
I think the first thing actually is I would say to her, you you actually know more about what you need than you realize, but we might have to just quiet some of the outside noise in order for you to hear that and get a little bit more clarity on it, and then I would ask her to ask herself a question, like if you’re really honest, hand to heart, close your eyes. What is it you feel like you need right now? Like if I could wave a magic wand and get you to sleep more, would you be like, oh my god, if you could help me with sleep, that would change my life? You know, is it feeling a little bit more organized in the kitchen, like you actually have food that is available for you when you need to go and eat something and are hungry. Like, what is the area?

Jenn Pike 51:29
If I say to you, if there’s one spot I could help you with, what would it be? Ask yourself that question so that when you are looking for support, whether it’s working with someone or it’s a resource. It’s actually very specific to the thing that you know to be true that you need the help with right now. Yeah. Right. So, I think that’s the most important place to start with, and then you need to create the power of pause for yourself. So, something comes up on Instagram, and you’re quickly going to add it to cart. I’m going to encourage you press pause for a second. Do you need that thing? Yeah. Are you going to use it? Do you even understand why you would buy that thing, or is this just another distraction? And instead, could you get up and distract yourself with a walk? Could you distract yourself with you know going to make a nourishing meal? Like really pay attention to where you are feeling pulled in a lot of different directions, because I do believe how we do one thing is how we do everything. So if we have that pulled frenetic energy in one area, we probably have it in most areas of our life. Yeah, yeah,

Courtney Townley 52:37
it’s so true, and I I see that so much in my own household that when I am frenetic, of course my whole household is also absorbing my energy. My dog gets crazy. My kid is like you know talking back to me. It’s like the whole everyone starts to implode.

Jenn Pike 52:52
Women, women and mothers are the pulse of the home.

Courtney Townley 52:57
Yes,

Jenn Pike 52:57
it’s no different. Like my oldest is our daughter, and her mood can become the pulse of the home. Yeah, women and mothers are like we are who are setting the tone, and so it’s so easy. There’s been so many times and years in life where I’ve been like they’re doing this and they’re doing that, and that’s why I’m feeling this way. And then it’s like, hold up, I am responsible for my own people.

Courtney Townley 53:22
Might have something to do with this. Yeah,

Jenn Pike 53:24
like I might be the common denominator in these situations, right? And so that’s the other thing. If you recognize, you’re saying the same thing about the people you work with, the people you live with, the people down the street. It’s like you are actually the common denominator in every single one of those scenarios. Those are all different people. You are the consistent, and that is a hard one to swallow sometimes. And when I was making a lot of big changes for myself, when I said like I had to start to disappoint a lot of people because I was a people pleaser, I was always a yes, and I started to become no all the time. I was that meme that’s like I want to be invited, but I’m not coming.

Courtney Townley 54:01
Yeah, yeah,

Jenn Pike 54:02
yeah. And

Courtney Townley 54:02
I think there is a phase for all of us in our own healing where it’s almost like we have to swing from one end of the spectrum to the other to find center again. Yeah, you know, it’s it’s it is sometimes that radical shift of like I was the yes girl and now I’m definitely the no girl. But as I heal, I might find I have capacity to say yes on occasion, and that’s a lovely thing.

Jenn Pike 54:23
I just spent eight days with myself and 11 of my girlfriends, and we were all saying this that we all used to be the yes women, and that we’ve become the no women. But that’s also we’re at a point where we can realize that’s hindered us a little bit. Where it’s like you you can start to kind of become antisocial, and you know, sort of looking for what’s that thing when you like pull back, not to be an introvert, but you isolate yourself

Courtney Townley 54:47
for sure. Yes,

Jenn Pike 54:48
you isolate yourself, and a lot of it is like because you’re afraid you’re going to go back to burning yourself out, and it’s like no, no, no. We we’re different now. We can be mature, and we can say yes to one thing and. 10 things, and so it’s just you know, I don’t know. I think this is just this is life, and don’t be so attached to it. Like you’re, we’re not here to get this perfect. Yeah, yeah.

Courtney Townley 55:10
Even though we’ve worked really hard at it.

Jenn Pike 55:12
Yeah, yeah. You know. Oh,

Courtney Townley 55:14
this was amazing. I’m sure a lot of this is going to land. All of it will land. I’m sure with listeners. So for people to find out more about you, your programs, all that you offer, because you have obviously an amazing ecosystem of of things that can help women, especially in midlife. Where do people find you?

Jenn Pike 55:31
I mean, the best place is jennpike.com, my website. I have a podcast, the Simplicity Sessions, which our episode with you is share is airing in the next couple. It

Courtney Townley 55:40
already aired. It just aired. It

Jenn Pike 55:41
already aired. Okay, it already aired. It’s not just last week or 10 days ago. Something

Courtney Townley 55:45
like yeah,

Jenn Pike 55:46
and so yeah, we’re almost 600 episodes in on the Simplicity sessions, and then Instagram is where I spend time. So it’s at jennpike.com. My name is spelled with 2n’s, and those the best places.

Courtney Townley 55:57
Oh, so great. Well, I am so grateful you do the work that you do in the world because we certainly need more people like you. And yeah, I’m always telling my clients that you know becoming a leader in your own health journey, it it helps lead other women into their own leadership. And I, it’s just it’s so great to have conversations like this and know that yeah, the work is expanding and women are being helped on a level that is real, and really helps them to create like meaningful change-not just the superficial level, but like deep meaningful change. So, thanks for what you do.

Jenn Pike 56:33
Yeah, well, thank you. Thanks for having me here. I’ve loved our chat.

Courtney Townley 56:36
Absolutely.

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