She did it. At 10:06 a.m. on May 24th, two-time guest Jeannette McGill stood on top of the world. Jeannette, 52, summited Mount Everest after three years of navigating hot flashes, heavy, erratic periods, joint pain, stubborn injuries, brain fog, and maybe most difficult of all for a high altitude mountaineer–newfound fear that made tasks that once came easily feel overwhelming. Along the way, including two abandoned summit attempts, Jeannette learned that through the power and support of commun...
Aug 20, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 238
How many times have we heard that weight loss and maintenance is simply “calories in, calories out?” Well, the equation may be rooted in thermodynamics, but the reality is biology, history, hormones, and a whole lot more. This week, endocrinologist and Harvard obesity researcher Dr. Jody Dushay breaks down why this concept is far more complex than the numbers on a food label or how many calories our devices tell us we’ve burned. From how your body actually absorbs calories to how (or not) it exp...
Aug 13, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 237
For the longest time, endurance athletes avoided the weight room, afraid unwanted muscles would weigh them down, while strength athletes all but kicked cardio to the curb. Now we know that no matter if you’re running an ultra or competing in a CrossFit competition, the right blend of cardio and strength is the secret sauce for success–especially once you hit midlife and menopause. This week, renowned exercise physiologist Dr. Alyssa Olenick dives in on how our hormones impact our muscles, metabo...
Aug 06, 2025•1 hr 18 min
This episode originally dropped on February 12, 2025. Bill Campbell, PhD, has spent his entire career as a fat loss researcher. So when his wife hit menopause and wanted help with body composition changes, he thought it would be easy. Spoiler alert: It was not. Which made him realize his field had a lot to learn, especially about active women whose bodies change even when their training and nutrition has not. Now he’s on a mission, diving into the literature and conducting research of his own to...
Jul 30, 2025•1 hr 11 min
We're sharing this episode of Feisty's weekly women's sports show, called The Feist, because we thought you’d enjoy this preview of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Even if you already know everything about cycling, we're sure you’ll find something you don’t know in today’s episode. And be sure to subscribe and follow The Feist wherever you listen, so you don't miss any future episodes of the only showing covering *ALL* women's sports: Apple Podcasts : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/...
Jul 24, 2025•1 hr 23 min
When things start to feel “off” in midlife, it’s easy to blame perimenopause. It’s easy to accept the advice to slow down—or to internalize the idea that age automatically means decline. But this week’s guest, Jen Temperley, isn’t buying it. A lifelong triathlete, Jen has faced her share of challenges: unexplained fatigue, weight gain, gut issues, injuries, and symptoms that looked like menopause—but weren’t. Through it all, she leaned into curiosity, self-advocacy, and a relentless drive to und...
Jul 23, 2025•54 min•Ep. 236
Former track and field Olympic champion Marion Jones, who lost her record-breaking 5 medals and served prison time in a high profile doping scandal, thought that her hardest days were behind her. And in that realm, they certainly are. But now she’s facing a challenge she never saw coming: perimenopause. This week, Marion opens up about all of it–navigating her past, moving forward from her mistakes, trying triathlon as she approaches her 50th birthday, and the wrecking ball that is perimenopause...
Jul 16, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 235
Feisty favorite Peloton Instructor Christine D’Ercole is back on the show this week for a candid conversation about how she’s managing a high profile athletic career while also in the throes of perimenopause. Through her ups–winning three more National titles since we last spoke–and her downs–peeing herself in the gym as she struggles with pelvic floor dysfunction–Christine is simply open, honest, and real about navigating the emotional terrain of being a midlife, menopausal athlete. We dive int...
Jul 09, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 234
Like many women, Dena Lewis planned on “fighting through” menopause. She thought she could outrun, out-nutrition, and out-supplement menopause. Menopause–which came swiftly through surgery–had other ideas. Through mood swings, soaking night sweats, hair loss, and a relentless barrage of symptoms, Dena did keep running–10+ miles a day–but she also sought hormone therapy that made the rest better. A lifelong runner and breast cancer survivor, Dena shares how she’s navigated her health and menopaus...
Jul 02, 2025•57 min•Ep. 233
Welcome to The Feist — your favorite sports, with your feistiest friends. Hosted by Sara Gross and Kelly O’Mara, Feisty's newest podcast is here to celebrate the unstoppable rise of women’s sports. Every week they'll cover what you need to know in women's sports: from running to basketball to everything in between. The Feist will bring you the untold stories of female athletes, interviews with those athletes and behind-the-scenes experts, and the feisty analysis you need to be a fan. This is the...
Jun 26, 2025•57 min
Pelvic floor disorders can wreak havoc on your well-being, especially as a woman who wants to run, jump, hike, bike, and otherwise enjoy an active life. Unfortunately, pelvic floor dysfunction is extremely common, with about half of us experiencing urinary incontinence alone (let alone painful sex, constipation, prolapse, and so forth). But we don’t have to live with all these pelvic floor problems that are sometimes painted as just “normal aging.” This week we take an illuminating deep dive int...
Jun 25, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 232
Edie Perkins was a 46-year-old elite runner and cyclist when a catastrophic accident left her paralyzed from the chest down—just as she was entering menopause. In this candid conversation, Edie reveals how her hormonal changes intersected with her spinal cord injury recovery, leaving her with misdiagnosed UTIs, sheet-soaking night sweats she blamed on her injury, declining bone density, and a huge struggle to sort through her challenges and get quality care. Yet, through all of it, Edie continue...
Jun 18, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 231
“The person who wins is often the one who is fending off the menopause the best!” Those were words of advice a fellow competitor once gave this week’s guest, physiotherapist and competitive cyclist Nicole Oh. That would be something Nicole would come to learn firsthand just a few short years later, as she found herself navigating mysterious joint pain, hot spells, and concerning bone loss. This week Nicole talks candidly about how she preserved performance during the transition, why she now cham...
Jun 11, 2025•49 min•Ep. 230
Over the past eight years, Feisty Media has grown into a go-to resource for women’s health and performance education. In this special episode, Feisty CEO Sara Gross and Hit Play Not Pause host Selene Yeager reflect on how Feisty’s content has evolved to meet the real-life needs of active women. From menopause and nutrition to strength training and brain health, Feisty is offering more than ever—including a new suite of comprehensive, on-demand courses. In a world overflowing with wellness advice...
Jun 09, 2025•37 min
When some of the biggest names in menopause medicine want to learn to lift heavy, they turn to this week’s guest, Nike Master Trainer and midlife fitness advocate Holly Rilinger, founder of the LIFTED Method. Because Holly gets it. She’s been through her own journey with damaging diet culture, body image issues, and a challenging perimenopause that has left her navigating sheet soaking night sweats, brain fog, and fatigue. Through a midlife-specific training plan and tailored hormone therapy reg...
Jun 04, 2025•50 min•Ep. 229
At the start of 2024, 55-year-old ultrarunner Hilde Dosogne set out to achieve the female World Record for the most consecutive days to run a marathon distance run by completing a marathon every day for a year. On December 31st of last year, she clocked her 366th 26.2 mile run (it was a leap year, which means she had one extra day to run) and her record was verified by Guinness in March. And we had questions, mostly how? How did she stay healthy? (Spoiler, she didn’t, but kept going.) Is she man...
May 28, 2025•52 min•Ep. 228
As estrogen drops, our midlife brains go through a lot of changes. The activity in our dopamine network declines, which can leave us going from highly motivated to “meh.” We can experience bigger cortisol spikes and have elevated levels of the stress hormone longer. We can end up feeling constantly stressed out and in a doom spiral we can’t quite escape. And it doesn’t exactly help that many of us are also firmly entrenched in the most demanding period of our lives. This week’s guest, cognitive ...
May 21, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 227
Muscle and bone loss. Inflammation. Bloating, diarrhea, and other GI issues. Peri and postmenopausal active women can face myriad training and performance challenges. But the good news is that a lot of them can be helped with proper nutrition practices. This week we dive into the basics on how to fuel your active midlife body, including what to know about carbohydrates, ultraprocessed foods, energy availability, protein, anti-inflammatory foods, supplements, and more with sports dietitian Kriste...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 226
This week’s guest ultrarunner Megan Eastwood is a portrait of perseverance. She’s lived through trauma, battled eating disorders, and been flattened by perimenopause. Through it all, she’s learned, grown, evolved, and ultimately thrived. Now 55 and postmenopausal, Megan is out in nature every week, running, climbing, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, basically anything she can do outdoors. She’s completed numerous multi-day running events, where she generally posts top five in her age group, and c...
May 07, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 225
Active and athletic women can be hit hard by the menopause transition. Many of us have become accustomed to our bodies responding in a predictable way to our training and nutrition, only to have that sense of control slip away during the menopause transition. That can leave us feeling desperate for solutions–and vulnerable to predatory marketing. That’s where mindset, especially acceptance, becomes an essential tool in our midlife toolbox. While there are steps we can take to feel and perform ou...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 224
Perimenopause can blindside us in unexpected ways. Fatigue hit this week’s guest, elite cyclist and coach Marissa Axell, so hard she thought she had cancer. Now the creator of the Cycling Success System wants everyone to know what can happen during this phase of life, and importantly what active women can do to counteract it. We talk all about how Marissa tailors her coaching for 40+ women, focusing on proper fueling, strength development, and smart exercise programming so they can keep crushing...
Apr 23, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 223
We’ve got a grab-bag of gynecological goodness for you this week, as we sat down with elite ultrarunner, gynecologist, and Paradis pro ambassador Dr. Lauren Puretz. We dive into her running life, including how she navigates elite ultra training with two kids and a medical practice; the common gynecological issues she helps peri and menopausal women navigate, how to find quality care, and of course, what makes a good pair of performance underwear. Lauren Puretz, DO, is a gynecologist dedicated to...
Apr 16, 2025•56 min•Ep. 222
If you’ve ever felt like your mood has a mind of its own during PMS, pregnancy, or perimenopause, you already know that hormones like estrogen and progesterone don’t just affect your body — they shape your entire sense of well-being. And if you’ve lived with trauma or neurodivergence, like ADHD, you also know how reactive the nervous system can be. What happens when all of that collides during midlife and menopause…and hormone therapy gets added to the mix? For some women, the results are anythi...
Apr 09, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 221
Many women, like this week’s guest Olympian runner and broadcaster Carrie Tollefson, suffer through perimenopause for far too long because they know they’re tough and they can handle things. But you don’t need to suffer, and you shouldn’t just tough it out. You can get back to feeling better and living more fully by getting the help and care you need as soon as you need it. This week we talk all about Carrie’s challenging seven-year journey through perimenopause, her new running goals now that s...
Apr 02, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 220
Women go on hormone therapy to manage peri/menopause symptoms and feel better. But sometimes to their surprise, they feel worse. Or some symptoms go away while others pop up. That’s because of the hormones! We have hormone receptors all over our body and whenever we switch up the signals they’re receiving, whether through the menopause transition itself or through the hormones we use, they’re going to respond to those changes, and sometimes not in the way we want. Most side effects are manageabl...
Mar 26, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 219
Many of us have spent a lifetime trying to shrink ourselves. We grew up being told you could never be too thin. As athletes, especially in endurance sports, smaller, lighter, faster was the ethos of the day. That is changing as we see athletes, especially women, discover that being fueled and strong yields even better performance–and longevity. This week’s guest, trainer and nutrition coach Steph Gaudreau embodies that journey through both her personal and professional life. She shares how, for ...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 218
Women have been left on the sidelines when it comes to sport and exercise research. Research finds a measly 6% of studies in the field have exclusively focused on women. That’s bad. But for menopausal women, it’s worse. Of that 6%, menopausal women account for only 9% of total study participants, with only 16% of female-only studies focusing exclusively on older women. This despite the fact that 40+ women have been lining up in greater numbers in sports of all kinds. We deserve better and this w...
Mar 12, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 217
Lots of experts have training and nutrition advice for midlife and menopausal women that is grounded in scientific evidence. Yet, the advice doesn’t always agree…and doesn’t necessarily work the same for everyone. That’s because, while there are general guidelines that are helpful for many women, in the end, we are all scientific studies of one, and no one approach will work exactly the same way for every single woman. So, you need to be willing to experiment and trust yourself, which no one kno...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 216
Phantom smells. Lack of focus. Dizziness. While everyone is talking about hot flashes and night sweats, women know that the transition to menopause brings on tons of signs and symptoms that no one ever talks about. This week’s guest, menopause educator and researcher Andrea Donsky is on a mission to change that. As the co-founder of Morphus, Inc., Donsky has become a data collecting machine and has recently published four abstracts in the journal Menopause, including The Wide Range of Symptoms o...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 215
Veterinary surgeon Debbie Tacium, 55, wanted to flip the script of my menopause. After suffering pain, loss of coordination, weakness, and changes in body composition during perimenopause, she went back to the sport she loved most in life–gymnastics. She wanted to use it to bring herself back to herself and remember what it was like to be a child who could fly. This week she shares her journey, what it’s brought her, and what we can all learn from challenging our beliefs about what’s possible du...
Feb 19, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 214
