Menopause Reimagined with Andrea Donsky

Can You Start Over in Midlife? Kaurie DiBerardino Rebuilt Her Entire Life at 50 After a Career-Ending Injury
"I used to be a hottie. Now I'm only hot in flashes." If that made you laugh and wince at once, this one's for you.

Kaurie DiBerardino spent years as a pediatric physical therapist, a biologist, and a holistic nutritionist. Then, at 44, a back injury ended her career overnight. What followed was a decade she describes as heavy, dark, and more life than she knew how to carry. Her kids grew up and stopped needing her the way they used to. Her body stopped cooperating. And somewhere in there, menopause arrived.

So she opened an Instagram account and started posting jokes. Her kids mocked her relentlessly. She had ten followers, one of whom was her cat.

On Mother's Day 2025, a reel went viral, and the Former Hotties Club was born. Today, it is a community of thousands of women who show up in black leggings and messy buns to laugh together about the absurdity of getting older.

This one is for you if you have ever thought it's too late, or that starting something new at 50 is embarrassing, or that everybody else has friends and you're the only one who feels this alone.

What you'll learn:

Why so many women feel invisible in midlife, and what actually shifts that feeling
How to start something new after 50 when you're terrified and have no followers yet
Why menopause loneliness hits hardest once the kids are out of the house
What actually changes mentally in menopause, and why so many women say they like themselves more afterward
How to find your people again when school pickup is no longer your social life
Chapters:
2:00 Hot in Flashes: The Menopause Design Flaw Nobody Warned Us About
3:20 Meet Kaurie DiBerardino, the 54-Year-Old Accidental Midlife Influencer
5:10 The Career-Ending Back Injury That Forced a Total Reinvention
9:20 How the Former Hotties Club Got Its Name
13:00 Gen X vs the Golden Girls: Why We Don't Look Like Our Mothers Did
16:30 The Zero Fs Era: Losing Estrogen and Gaining Confidence
20:00 How to Start Something New in Midlife When You're Scared
24:10 Midlife Loneliness After the Kids Leave, and Why Community Helps
27:10 Where to Find Kaurie and Join the Former Hotties Club
Find Kaurie: 
Former Hotties Club: https://formerhottiesclub.com 
Instagram: @theaccidentalmidlifeinfluencer 
TikTok: @theformerhottiesclub
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Morphus: Menopause Reimagined

💊 Shop Morphus Supplements: https://wearemorphus.com/collections/all
📖 Order "Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition & Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best." (Simon & Schuster, May 5, 2026)
Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4xaREJK 
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/4rFj7jk 
📰 As seen in USA Today: https://bit.ly/43nrMwO 
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DISCLAIMER: This is not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider. This podcast contains affiliate links; Morphus may earn a commission. Thank you for your support.

You're eating the same. Moving the same. But the scale is climbing and your belly  is suddenly hard as a rock!

Andrea Donsky, nutritionist, author of the bestseller Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition & Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best, 7x published menopause researcher, and co-founder of wearemorphus.com, has been there. At 46, she was 20 pounds heavier than she'd been before perimenopause, and she was a nutritionist who had been teaching healthy living for decades. She still couldn't figure it out, and she blamed herself.

In this solo episode, she has the conversation she wishes someone had had with her back in 2016. This episode isn't another lecture about calories but rather an honest explanation of what actually shifts in your body during perimenopause and menopause, and what you can do about it.

What you'll learn:
Why you're gaining weight in perimenopause when you haven't changed a thing about how you eat.
What changing estrogen has to do with where your body stores fat, and why it lands on your midsection.
Why "eat less, exercise more" is the wrong advice for women in this stage of life.
How sleep, muscle loss, stress, insulin resistance, inflammation, and gut health all quietly feed into weight gain.
What Andrea's B.A.L.A.N.C.E. Blueprint approach to eating actually covers and how it works.
And why "not recognizing yourself" in the mirror is grief, not vanity.
Chapters:
0:00 Eating the Same, Exercising the Same, Still Gaining Weight
1:50 20 Pounds Heavier at 46: Andrea's Own Weight Gain Story
2:35 The 17 Reasons We Gain Weight in Perimenopause and Menopause
3:49 Estrogen, Belly Fat, and Why Your Jeans Don't Fit Anymore
4:34 It's Not Vanity, It's Grief: Not Recognizing Your Own Body
5:16 Gen X, Diet Culture, and the 2016 Video That Made Her Face It
7:28 Sleep, Muscle Loss, Insulin Resistance, and Menopause Belly
8:14 Why "Eat Less, Exercise More" Fails Women in Midlife
8:57 The B.A.L.A.N.C.E. Blueprint: What You Can Actually Do About It
9:50 You're Allowed to Want to Lose Weight and Still Have Compassion For Yourself
Get Andrea's book here: "Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition & Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best." (Simon & Schuster, May 5, 2026)
U.S. & Europe: https://amzn.to/4rFj7jk
Canada: https://amzn.to/4r2IDz3
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======
Morphus: Menopause Reimagined

💊 Shop Morphus Supplements: https://wearemorphus.com/collections/all
📖 Order "Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition & Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best." (Simon & Schuster, May 5, 2026)
Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4xaREJK 
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/4rFj7jk 
📰 As seen in USA Today: https://bit.ly/43nrMwO 
✅ Fill out our surveys: https://bit.ly/4jcVuLh
🦋 SUBSCRIBE to our list: https://bit.ly/3VdDA0V

FOLLOW US: 
TikTok @andreadonsky & @wearemorphus
Instagram: @wearemorphus | @andreadonsky
Facebook: /wearemorphus

DISCLAIMER: This is not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider. This podcast contains affiliate links; Morphus may earn a commission. Thank you for your support.

"I'm doing everything right, and the scale still won't move." If that's you, the scale might be the wrong thing to watch.
Andrea Donsky, nutritionist, bestselling author of Nourishing Menopause, 7x published researcher, and co-founder of wearemorphus.com, sits down with Daphne Bascom, MD, PhD, a former head and neck surgeon who left the operating room for lifestyle medicine and is now Chief Operations Officer of The Vegan Gym. Daphne is 59, competes as an IFBB Bikini Pro, and has been putting on muscle for a decade on a fully plant-based diet. She is also blunt about the parts that are hard.
This one is for you whether you're vegan, plant-curious, or a total carnivore. Nobody is asking you to give up meat. The question is whether you're getting enough protein and enough different plants, and whether you're measuring the right thing.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
- Can you get enough protein on a plant-based diet in menopause, and what the newest muscle research actually found
- Why the scale lies, and what body composition means in plain English
- What body fat percentage is healthy for women in midlife (the published ranges may surprise you)
- Why you can't out-exercise a bad diet, and the minimum strength training that still moves the needle
- What a full day of plant-based eating looks like when you're aiming for 100+ grams of protein
- Why 30 different plants a week matters more for your gut than any single "superfood"
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Why Plants Have Power in Perimenopause
3:03 Meet Dr. Daphne Bascom: Surgeon Turned Plant-Based MD
6:07 Why Doctors Get Almost No Menopause Training
7:36 Going Plant-Forward: What Changed for Her at Nearly 60
10:27 Can You Get Enough Protein Without Meat in Menopause?
13:29 Why the Scale Lies: Body Composition vs Weight
14:37 What Body Fat Percentage Is Healthy in Menopause?
16:59 You Can't Out-Exercise a Bad Diet
22:15 A Full Day of Plant-Based Eating With 100+ Grams of Protein
27:34 30 Plants a Week, Your Gut, and Your 90-Year-Old Self
CONNECT WITH DAPHNE BASCOM, MD, PhD
Instagram: @wingmandaphne
Website: wingmanwellness.com
The Vegan Gym: thevegangym.com
The Vegan Gym on YouTube (free full days of eating, recipes, shopping lists): youtube.com/@thevegangym
Thrive on Plants podcast: thriveonplants.buzzsprout.com
Rate and review the podcast if this helped. It's how other women find us.
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Morphus: Menopause Reimagined

💊 Shop Morphus Supplements: https://wearemorphus.com/collections/all
📖 Order "Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition & Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best." (Simon & Schuster, May 5, 2026)
Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4xaREJK 
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/4rFj7jk 
📰 As seen in USA Today: https://bit.ly/43nrMwO 
✅ Fill out our surveys: https://bit.ly/4jcVuLh
🦋 SUBSCRIBE to our list: https://bit.ly/3VdDA0V

FOLLOW US: 
TikTok @andreadonsky & @wearemorphus
Instagram: @wearemorphus | @andreadonsky
Facebook: /wearemorphus

DISCLAIMER: This is not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider. This podcast contains affiliate links; Morphus may earn a commission. Thank you for your support.

Keto worked like magic in your 20s and 30s, but then perimenopause hit, and it stopped. Ben Azadi joins Andrea Donsky, author of Nourishing Menopause and 7x published menopause researcher, to explain why strict keto and fasting can backfire on shifting hormones, and how "flexing" instead of white-knuckling gets you back to results.

Ben Azadi is back, and this time he's telling us why strict keto is the wrong move once you hit perimenopause.

We talk through his revised book Keto Flex and why "flexing" in and out of ketosis, instead of staying in it forever, is the piece most women in this life stage are missing.
What you'll learn:

➡ Why doing keto and fasting too aggressively in perimenopause can backfire on your cortisol and adrenals
➡ What cyclical ketosis (keto flex) actually looks like week to week
➡ How ketosis may affect leptin, thyroid (T3), and testosterone, and why your labs can look "normal" while you still feel off
➡ Why brain fog and memory issues might improve with a fat-adapted metabolism
➡ Which fats to build meals around, and which seed oils to quietly drop

Buy Keto Flex Revised: The Advanced Guide to Metabolic Flexibility, Fat Burning, and Hormone Health for Every Body at Every Stage https://amzn.to/44I6BWI

Chapters:
0:00 Welcome Back: Ben Azadi Returns to Talk Keto Flex 
3:08 What's New in the Keto Flex Revised Edition 
6:00 The 4 Pillars of KetoFlex: Adapt, Fast, Phase, Flex 
11:34 Why Strict Keto Backfires in Perimenopause 
14:54 How Keto Flex Affects Leptin, Thyroid (T3), and Testosterone 
21:00 Brain Fog, Memory, and Mitochondria After 40 
24:40 Keto Flex vs. Fasting Mimicking Diet, Plus Protein and Whole Foods 
31:20 The Truth About Seed Oils (and a Joint Pain Story)
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Morphus: Menopause Reimagined

💊 Shop Morphus Supplements: https://wearemorphus.com/collections/all
📖 Order "Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition & Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best." (Simon & Schuster, May 5, 2026)
Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4xaREJK 
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/4rFj7jk 
📰 As seen in USA Today: https://bit.ly/43nrMwO 
✅ Fill out our surveys: https://bit.ly/4jcVuLh
🦋 SUBSCRIBE to our list: https://bit.ly/3VdDA0V

FOLLOW US: 
TikTok @andreadonsky & @wearemorphus
Instagram: @wearemorphus | @andreadonsky
Facebook: /wearemorphus

DISCLAIMER: This is not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider. This podcast contains affiliate links; Morphus may earn a commission. Thank you for your support.

You didn't change a thing, but the scale keeps climbing, and it's all landing on your belly. In this episode, we discuss what's going on now that you're in perimenopause and menopause.
Andrea Donsky, 7x published menopause researcher, author, menopause educator, and co-founder of wearemorpus.com, sits down with online health coach Aram Grigorian, who has spent 17 years helping women 35 and older change their body composition without the shame, the crash diets, or the thousand-dollar programs. This one is candid (heads up, there's some swearing), and it cuts through the noise you've been drowning in since your symptoms started.
Aram and Andrea get into why fat starts settling around your middle in perimenopause, why "eat less, move more" is technically true but nearly useless without a system, and the uncomfortable truth that a lot of women are actually eating too little to lose weight. They also talk honestly about alcohol, sleep, muscle, and why the number of calories you can eat has more to do with muscle than motivation.
What you'll learn:
Why perimenopause belly fat happens (and why it shows up now when it didn't in your 20s)
The difference between weight gain and fat gain, and how you can drop or add 15 pounds in 72 hours without gaining an ounce of fat
Why your doctor's "just eat less and exercise more" advice keeps failing you
How much alcohol is really costing you in sleep, recovery, and calories
Why eating too little can stall your weight loss, and how to figure out how many calories you actually need
Chapters:
0:00   Intro: Meet Andrea and Guest Aram Grigorian
2:25   Why Women Aren't Broken: Aram's Story
6:30   Why Perimenopause Weight Goes to Your Belly
12:00  Weight Gain vs Fat Gain: The 15-Pound Water Weight Swing
17:30  "Eat Less, Move More" and Being Dismissed by Your Doctor
24:30  Alcohol, Sleep, and Your Menopause Weight
32:00  Why Eating Too Little Stalls Your Weight Loss
39:00  Muscle, Body Fat, and How Many Calories You Really Need
45:30  Body Image, Mindset, and Getting Your Partner On Board
51:30  What You Can Actually Control (Plus Where to Find Aram)
Learn more about Aram: https://www.instagram.com/4weeks2thebeach

Listen to Andrea's interview on Aram's Podcast 211. Nourishing Menopause w/ Andrea Donsky: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/211-nourishing-menopause-w-andrea-donsky
Send us Fan Mail
======
Morphus: Menopause Reimagined

💊 Shop Morphus Supplements: https://wearemorphus.com/collections/all
📖 Order "Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition & Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best." (Simon & Schuster, May 5, 2026)
Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/4xaREJK 
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/4rFj7jk 
📰 As seen in USA Today: https://bit.ly/43nrMwO 
✅ Fill out our surveys: https://bit.ly/4jcVuLh
🦋 SUBSCRIBE to our list: https://bit.ly/3VdDA0V

FOLLOW US: 
TikTok @andreadonsky & @wearemorphus
Instagram: @wearemorphus | @andreadonsky
Facebook: /wearemorphus

DISCLAIMER: This is not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider. This podcast contains affiliate links; Morphus may earn a commission. Thank you for your support.