Ever feel like life throws you a curveball (or three) that changes everything? Tune in as we chat with Sarah Dosanjh, who went from being a police officer to a psychotherapist and binge-eating coach after facing early menopause in her 20s. That experience shook up her relationship with food and eventually led her to a dramatically new way of serving others.

Together, we dig into the rollercoaster of emotions that come with menopause, the ups and downs of hormone therapy, and how intuitive eating can break the “last supper” cycle so many of us know too well. Sarah’s story is all about finding acceptance, resilience, and purpose when life doesn’t go as planned. Don’t miss this honest, hope-filled conversation about finding your way through big and overwhelming changes.

To learn more about Sarah Dosanjh and the work she does, be sure to check out her website at and follow her on YouTube @TheBingeEatingTherapist and on IG @the_binge_eating_therapist

TRANSCRIPT

Jenn Salib Huber: 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, Dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you.

Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the midlife feast community, my monthly membership that combines my no nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife.

Jenn Salib Huber: 0:48

Have you ever noticed that your appetite changes with your period or with your hormones, and have you ever wondered what's going on there? So it was an appetite change that clued this week's guest into that. Maybe something wasn't quite right. My guest this week is Sarah Dosange, who is a binge eating coach, but relevantly to this podcast, it's also a story session about going into menopause very early in her late 20s and kind of grappling with all of these changes that were happening that really led into a challenging period in her life with her relationship with food, which led to a big career change, and we're going to hear all about it.

So thanks so much to Sarah for joining me. I would love to hear from people you know have you noticed that your appetite changes with your period? Have you noticed that if you're still having a cycle, that there are times when you feel really hungry or not hungry at all, Does that impact how you notice and feel satisfaction? I think that these are important questions and I'd love to hear from you. Hi, Sarah, Welcome to the Midlife Feast.

Sarah Dosanjh: 1:53

Hi, jen, thanks for having me.

Sarah Dosanjh’s Journey with Early Menopause 

Jenn Salib Huber: 1:55

So we're going to be digging into your story of going into premature ovarian insufficiency, or otherwise known as very early menopause, and how that kind of experience and the symptoms that you were having led you to work, experience kind of binge eating and led to this work that you're doing. But I'd love to invite you just to kind of introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Sarah Dosanjh: 2:20

Of course, so I'm Sarah. I'm currently 42. I've been a psychotherapist for about six years now, and prior to that I was a police officer for 16 years, and so I made the career change, started studying gosh 11, 12 years ago, and we'll probably get to it today, but what I went through with my hormones and all of this, I think, was catalyst for me doing what I do now, so I now specialize in working with people who struggle with binge eating.

Jenn Salib Huber: 2:49

Okay, and I love the catalyst part because I think a lot of our lived experiences do really kind of inform what we do with our time and our work and how we you know if we choose to help others, how we do that. But just for anybody who's listening, I wanted to introduce a little bit before we get started this idea of what we mean by early menopause. So the average age of menopause is 51 or 52. And anybody who goes into menopause, meaning they go 12 months without a period after the age of 45, is kind of considered average. That's considered normal.

Understanding Premature Ovarian Insufficiency and Early Menopause 

Jenn Salib Huber: 3:25

If you experience menopause or for any reason you have, you know, chemotherapy for example, or you have surgery and removes your ovaries, anything that causes menopause to enter your world between the ages of 40 and 45 is early. But anything before the age of 40 is considered premature or very early and not what we would expect. And I think the stats are around 1% of people go through that spontaneously or, you know, kind of without cause, and it can be very life disrupting because it's very unexpected. So what was your experience?

Sarah Dosanjh: 4:05

So what was your experience? So my first symptom when I first started feeling not quite right and it's hard with hormones because I think it can be so nonspecific that many people can be feeling terrible because of what's going on hormonally and we don't even have the language right, we don't really can't really measure what's going on. So at the time I didn't, I think I approached it as psychological. I was thinking am I depressed? Do I thought I had an eating disorder? I kind of did develop an eating disorder.

Hormones and Appetite: How Early Menopause Impacted Sarah’s Relationship with Food 

Sarah Dosanjh: 4:31

So when I was 26 was when I noticed that my eating started going awry. So for the first time in my life I decided to try and lose a bit of weight, a small amount of weight. I was already slim, I wasn't particularly stressed about it. I'd noticed I'd gained a couple of pounds. So for a couple of weeks I did that whole cliche thing of like I just tried to eat a little bit less and I lost a couple of pounds, didn't think anything of it.

Sarah Dosanjh: 4:57

And then, a few days after that I remember I went on a holiday and it was an all-inclusive holiday and I could not stop eating. And I mean I would get up in the morning for breakfast and I would eat like a full hot cooked breakfast followed by about seven or eight croissants, and I would feel so full. And yet, at the same time as I was feeling so full, I was thinking about lunch. And I remember thinking how strange it was. I wasn't even distressed by it to begin with. I just thought, oh, I'm on holiday and this is just an all-inclusive thing.

Sarah Dosanjh: 5:27

But when I came back it continued and I would say for the next nine months after that my binging was at its worst. I was up at three o'clock in the morning um eating. I would have gone to bed at 11 pm full, and I all I can say is I just never felt satisfied, no matter what I ate. And I thought I was losing my mind. And I remember at the time a couple of people in my life said do you think this might be physical? But having never experienced anything like this, I remember thinking that that was just bizarre. I'm the only one who controls what food goes in my mouth and I was talking to everybody about it at the time, everybody. I was saying I don't know what's going on with my appetite and about a year into it, this woman at work said to me have you tried coming off the contraceptive pill, because that can affect your appetite. So I thought well.

Sarah Dosanjh: 6:14

I've got nothing to lose. I stopped taking the contraceptive pill and then six months went by and my menstruation didn't start. So that was when I took myself to the GP to see if I could find out what was going on, and at this point my binge eating had tipped over into bulimia because I was trying to halt this weight gain. That was happening very rapidly. And they did a blood test and I remember when I went back to the GP for the blood results she opened them up on the computer and I remember she did a bit of a double take, a surprise, said to me, your prolactin is low, and I'd never even heard of the word prolactin.

Jenn Salib Huber: 6:51

Um, I don't know if you want to say for listeners like what prolactin?

Sarah Dosanjh: 6:53

is, but it's, it's, um, my understanding of it is there's a hormone that tends to be higher in females and its main function, as we know it, is for breastfeeding. So if you have a child, your prolactin would go up and then you would produce milk. But men have it too. So we I'm not convinced that there's no other functions around it or interact with other hormones which could make it, you know, relevant. So they did a few more blood tests and they sent me to an endocrinologist, which was when the investigation started.

Sarah Dosanjh: 7:27

So they started off by doing a scan of my womb and everything looked fine there. So then they did the brain scan and the reason why, when everything looked fine, sort of endo well, um, gynecologically, they did the brain scan because they wanted to look at my pituitary gland, which is where yeah, the gland, if you like, that controls all the hormone levels in the body. And it was in the MRI brain scan that they saw I had a tumor.

They call it an adenoma because we now know it's benign. At the time we didn't know if it was going to be benign, so they found a tumor on my pituitary gland. That's about nearly two centimeters across above my pituitary gland, also pushing up into my hypothalamus. So my endocrinologist theorized that this could be a hypothalamic symptom, my excessive appetite, because our appetite is regulated in the hypothalamus. But also in doing my own research I then find out how estrogen low estrogen makes appetite go higher.

Sarah Dosanjh: 8:25

My thyroid levels were low, so my energy was terrible. That was increasing my appetite. So it felt like this perfect storm which the biggest symptom I noticed was around appetite. But I was feeling terrible as well. But I thought I was feeling terrible because of how much I was eating. But actually I think maybe I was eating as much as I was because I was feeling terrible of how much I was eating.

Jenn Salib Huber: 8:45

But actually, I think maybe I was eating as much as I was because I was feeling terrible. Yeah, it is a two way street, right, I mean, it's like chicken and the egg which comes first, but when you're in you know when symptoms are caused by hormones. I think one of the I think one of the things that we it's very easy to get caught up in the idea that, like estrogen, is an ovarian hormone and only impacts your ovaries Thyroid is a thyroid hormone and to really have this like reductionistic view of hormones. But especially when we're talking about estrogen in particular, it is also a brain hormone and, of course, it is going to have an impact on everything from mood to sleep and reproduction and appetite, and we can't take that, you know, reductionistic view of anything but especially hormones.

Sarah Dosanjh: 9:29

Yeah, and this was the weird thing that I still don't really understand to this day, but it's just what happened.

Sarah Dosanjh: 9:36

They started me off with giving me oral progesterone, and when I started taking the oral progesterone for three, three and a half weeks, for the first time in about a year I didn't feel the urge to compulsively eat. My appetite felt normal for the first time in a year. So I was over the moon because I thought here's my answer everything's going to be fine now. And then, for whatever reason, after about three and a half weeks I had a massive binge and then felt like I tumbled back into it. And then, maybe a couple of months after that, they started me on thyroid medication and a similar thing happened. For about three weeks, my appetite felt normal and then the binging came back. So I don't know if it was like a placebo thing. I don't know if it was just like the body's biochemistry is changing, so something sort of resetting itself. I have absolutely no idea, even to this day, really, how to understand that it had that much impact when they started replacing my hormones Wow.

Jenn Salib Huber: 10:40

So you're diagnosed and, um, you know, they start to treat things. How did that change? How did that? What happened next?\

Hormonal Changes and Mental Health: Coping with Mood Shifts in Early Menopause 

Sarah Dosanjh: 10:51

Well, one thing I just want to comment on as well around the hormones is I think that my hormones, changing as much as they did in such a short space of time, really changed my personality really changed my personality.

Sarah Dosanjh: 11:06

I remember people started talking about me as they called me nice. I know this sounds crazy, it wasn't. I wasn't nice before. I remember people telling me how calm I seemed and I was always someone who had a lot of energy. I was the one that you know. Everyone wants to go to bed at 3am and I'm like, no, we don't need sleep, and I'd be up at nine o'clock no-transcript. But at the same time it was almost like I sometimes joke it's a little bit like when you have an animal and you get the animal neutered and it kind of like it's like curbs something in their hyperactivity.

So there was that. I don't. I look back at who I was before my hormones changed and I can't imagine being a therapist. That version of myself I think it made me more empathic. Just to suffering in general. Going through something like that, I think, changes you anyway.

Jenn Salib Huber: 12:01

For sure, and I think that that's actually really interesting because when we talk about you know, if you Google or if you're on social media, all you'll see is a long list of terrible, awful things that happen in menopause and all the things that you should dread, and you know life is going to be terrible and all that kind of stuff.

Jenn Salib Huber: 12:20

But I have said and will continue to say that I love being postmenopausal and one of the reasons is that I also feel like there have been many benefits to my mental and emotional health by not having this cyclical roller coaster of hormones and the subsequent changes and likely neurotransmitter levels and all that kind of stuff. So in terms of like my mental and emotional health, post-menopause has been the best three years of my life and I think we need to talk about that more because hormones can have lots of positive benefits. And you know the saying you know you'll miss estrogen when she's gone. I don't really miss her that much because she wasn't always great for me all the time, so that's really interesting that you noticed that too.

Sarah Dosanjh: 13:13

Yeah, I think not that I don't like who I was before, but I think as I've grown and changed and my priorities in life have changed because of this, because I was all about up until this happened, you know, for me life was about working hard and partying hard and I was having a great time, but I wasn't really thinking about anybody else and I don't know how meaningful my connections were, were. I had great friends and people I'm still friends with today, but I would say a lot of the friendships that I have now that I've made kind of post, this experience have been some of the most satisfying friendships in my life. 

But, um, so they replaced the HRT, originally orally, and then the thyroxine, and then I was noticing I was still really struggling with my mood. They wouldn't give me my growth hormone replacement until after they'd done surgery. They wanted to do a biopsy to make sure that the tumor was benign and if you take growth hormone and you've got a cancerous tumor, then it's not likely to have that much impact. It could. It could speed up the the malignancy.

Finding Balance with Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) 

Sarah Dosanjh: 14:19

So after the surgery they put me on growth hormone and I would say growth hormone actually was the hormone that really it took away the very, very intense primal hunger, but I was still binging. And I was still binging because I'd gained so much weight and I was constantly trying to get back to how I was before. I kept thinking I needed to get back to. So my binging continued. But I think that was then became I think the hormones influenced it a bit but a little bit more psychological, a little bit more emotional and a little bit more because I'm trying to restrict my food intake, which was triggering binges, so it had a slightly different flavor.

Sarah Dosanjh: 14:56

I would say I have. I did actually go on testosterone once. I don't know if you work with many women who take testosterone, I mean testosterone is, like you know, it's growing in popularity.

Jenn Salib Huber: 15:10

It definitely is actively being researched. I don't think we know everything there is to know about it yet, but it definitely. It's interesting what's out there.

Sarah Dosanjh: 15:19

So I tried it for about six months and I really did feel great and for the first time I was in my eating disorder at the time, so it wasn't great for me in that aspect, but for the first time I lost weight, so I was extremely excited about that at the time too. But it gave me really bad breakout in my skin. I used to have really good skin and it's never actually gone back to how it was before, even though I stopped taking it.

Sarah Dosanjh: 15:39

Now gosh eight, nine, maybe even 10 years ago I've done the mass a long time ago, but it really affected me and also gave me a lot of extra facial hair as well. So I didn't want any of those symptoms too. So I stopped taking the testosterone, even though it did make me feel pretty good More recently, because Sorry, go on, jeff, we're going to say something.

Impact of Restrictive Dieting on Binge Eating Patterns 

Jenn Salib Huber: 16:00

I was going to say can we back up one second? Because something that you said earlier was that the binging was still happening and that it was because you were trying to control what you were eating, which we know is a big trigger for binge eating and binge eating behaviors. Did you know it at the time? Did you know that at the time.

Sarah Dosanjh: 16:27

No, I was so black and white in my thinking because for me I really saw my weight as the problem, so I couldn't imagine recovering from binging without losing weight because that like for me, losing weight was recovery from binge eating. I don't think I really got it into my head that there was a behavior here that needed to be addressed independently of trying to chase any kind of weight loss. I did start to hear the message about it and I remember originally doubting it because I wasn't somebody who was particularly good at dieting. Some people have eating disorders, go through patches where they can really double down on the dieting. I never could.

Sarah Dosanjh: 17:00

So I always felt like that talk about restricting and binging didn't really apply to me until I heard about the concept of last supper eating from the intuitive eating book, which, of course, is this idea that okay, tomorrow it's going to look like this perfect version of food and tomorrow comes.

Sarah Dosanjh: 17:16

And then the minute I felt like I'd blown it, it was like, oh, tomorrow it's going to be. And then you binge because it's like I need to get all the food in today. This is my last supper eating because I'm not going to have them again after today, and you really convince yourself of that each time, and I could get in these patterns of last supper eating a lot, and then I do think another layer to it was food did then start to become a way to cope. It hadn't previously. 

I didn't have an emotional relationship with food previously, but I think when you struggled with food in a disordered eating way, it becomes this very emotional object, because how you feel about yourself is like how well am I eating? And as soon as you start getting into that territory fighting, craving, resisting relief you binge. All of that gets your emotions tied up in it. So then there was some emotional eating as well.

Breaking the Cycle of Last Supper Mentality in Binge Eating Recovery 

Sarah Dosanjh: 18:03

So it was a bit of a.

Jenn Salib Huber: 18:04

And it's so hard, I think, for you know what you said about how I thought that weight loss was going to free me from binge eating, that you know. You really believe that you had to lose weight first before you could even consider working on the binge eating. That is the default for most people. You know that, but I'm kind of saying that just to point it out that most people really believe that they are the problem and their body is the problem, and sometimes it's completely new information. I know there will be people listening to this podcast that, for the first time, are hearing that it's the behavior of restriction that's what we need to work on and that changing your body will not change the binging because food isn't the problem.

Sarah Dosanjh: 18:51

Right, yeah, and restriction and even planning to restrict I think that's the one that doesn't necessarily get yeah, yeah, and restriction and even planning to restrict, I think that's the one that doesn't necessarily get the airtime. And I sometimes think of it as if you're going on a big holiday tomorrow. You think about it today. You can feel that excitement in your body.

Sarah Dosanjh: 19:05

Your biology reacts in anticipation of that and I think it could be similar with food you can be planning this all the time, never quite meeting it, and that can trigger off more overeating here. But it's hard, it's a really tough ask for people to say hey, don't focus on weight loss, because people might want weight loss for all kinds of reasons, and I tend to think most of the time, the people who are able to let go of it in recovery usually happens for one or two reasons, either one which was mine, either one which was mine. I realized how the and when I say realized, I saw it in myself how the pattern of trying to lose weight was causing me to eat even more so.

Jenn Salib Huber: 19:45

I got to a point.

Sarah Dosanjh: 19:46

I was like oh, I see how this is gonna have the opposite effect. I'm gonna keep gaining and gaining. At what point do I accept and go like, okay, okay, fine, I'll stay where I am? Um, so that's one. And then the other one might be simply because it's hurting too much to keep trying. So some people might be able to like, maintain or suppress their weight, hold it in a certain range, but the cost of it, um, just becomes too high because maybe it's all they can think about. Maybe they're extremely anxious and guilty about food all the time. Whatever it might be, and I think it's the biggest sticking point for most people for binge eating, recovery is that it feels impossible to let go of.

Jenn Salib Huber: 20:26

Absolutely, absolutely. And something else that you said about last supper eating. I think that is an easily recognizable pattern. Sometimes the first pattern I think that people see themselves in and what I really realized is that it also has convinces us that we can store up satisfaction, that if I eat all of these things today, that I can store up enough satisfaction in the process of eating them to never have them again or to never want them again, and satisfaction which I love.

The Role of Intuitive Eating in Healing Relationship with Food

Jenn Salib Huber: 21:04

I call the secret sauce. You know it is, but it's in the moment. You can't store it up, you can't like save some for tomorrow, because it really is like a subjective thing that you experience while you're doing it and that this last supper eating keeps pushing the ceiling up of like a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, and but it just doesn't work that way. Which is why I think intuitive eating is kind of like unconditional permission, can really help people get out of that last meal mentality, because it doesn't exist in a world where there's unconditional permission, because there never is a last meal.

But I love that you brought up the last meal mentality because that's a really recognizable place for people, I think, who might be listening and thinking oh gosh, this sounds like me. How do I know so?

Jenn Salib Huber: 21:53

then, all of this, the catalyst is happening right, so what's the next step in this reaction?

Turning Personal Struggle into a Career in Psychotherapy

Sarah Dosanjh: 22:01

Okay. So in 2010, that's when I had the surgery on the pituitary tumor, and it's also the same year that my mum died, and I was extremely close to my mum. She was an incredible source of support. So 2010 and I had a pretty rough time during the surgery as well. I was ill for quite a while.

Sarah Dosanjh: 22:18

Um was a really, really tough year. So 2011, I would say, was actually the darkest year. It was the year after it was all happening. When everything's going on, you're just dealing with what's going on, but then, when everything's happened, there's something about the picking up the pieces afterwards. That was really difficult, and my eating disorder was at the worst it had ever been.

Sarah Dosanjh: 22:37

At that point, um, and I was feeling so lost, so lost, and I moved. I moved and a friend came to visit with her dog and we went out for a walk with her dog and the dog stopped to do what dogs do she's clearing it up and I just stood there on the pavement looking around and then I see this big sign that says metanoia, counseling and psychotherapy training. It's almost like this is the point in the movie, where the lights would come on and the choirs would sing, and I remember thinking how have I not noticed this massive training center just around the corner from where I live?

And I'd never even heard the word metanoia. It was a strange word to me and so, for whatever reason, I thought of it later and I Googled it and they were doing an evening class in basic counseling skills. And again, not for one second Jen did. I think this was the beginning of a career change. I just remember thinking that will get me out of the house one evening because my life had become really small.

Sarah Dosanjh: 23:30

I was just sitting in my room with my food. Um, I just shut myself off from life and I went to this evening course and I just fell in love with it. And so many people on the course were doing it because they were going on to train and they were offering this master's program. Um, at the same time as they changed the pensions for the police, which meant I was going to have to work longer, pay more, get less back. So that felt like a little nudge as well. Didn't have the whole golden handcuffs holding me in.

Sarah Dosanjh: 23:58

Um, so I decided to become a therapist at that time, not thinking, oh, I'll be the binge eating therapist. I didn't think I'd be working with binge eating. I was still. I was still struggling with an eating disorder myself. So I didn't think I'd be working with binge eating. I was still. I was still struggling with an eating disorder myself. So I didn't think that that would be what I would be working with.

Sarah Dosanjh: 24:14

But I guess I think it did a couple of things for me. I think one it gave me a sense of purpose again in my life, just a sense of meaning, something that felt important, that I felt I could be good at and strive towards, and also the people who were also training to be therapists towards. And also the people who were also training to be therapists were just incredible people. I found myself having these kinds of conversations with people about ourselves and understanding ourselves. That felt really connecting, which I didn't have so much with the friends in my life, and so it kind of went from there, and part of the criteria as you're training to be a therapist is to go into therapy yourself. So I was like, great, I'll go to therapy and fix myself.

Sarah Dosanjh: 24:51

None of my therapists that I worked with knew anything about binge eating. I mean, some of the things they were suggesting were just absurd and I know to certain people would have been actively harmful, but they didn't know. It was just kind of an ignorance. But it really did help me understand myself quite a bit and so there were lots of different pieces that kind of came in that helped me get into a balance with food and when I changed the goalpost to I need to figure out how to regulate my appetite, not figure out how to lose weight, that made a big difference. After my surgery they damaged my pituitary gland a bit further and I lost another hormone.

Sarah Dosanjh: 25:28

I lost my antidiuretic hormone, so I now have to manage my own fluid levels artificially by taking an antidiuretic and then most recently just November actually so a year ago now I had the coil fitted the progesterone coil because I've been taking oral progesterone since I was diagnosed back at 27, whenever it was, and I thought to myself 27 to 42, that's 15 years of putting this hormone through my digestive tract every day, not every day. 12 to 14, 12 days of the month, I think, I took it.

I found it also really affected my mood and my sleep. I didn't particularly get on with it. Um, I found it also really affected my mood and my sleep. I didn't particularly get on with it. So I thought I'll try the coil because obviously the progesterone is then being locally delivered and I used to have horrendously heavy, painful periods.

Sarah Dosanjh: 26:19

The coil has taken some time to settle down. But interesting what you were saying earlier, jen, about feeling so much better, about you feeling so much better in general because you're not having to deal with these cycles. You're feeling so much better in general because you're not having to deal with these cycles. I would say, since being on the coil, I feel this menstrual cycle and I have a couple of really difficult days, mood wise, really difficult days.

Jenn Salib Huber: 26:39

I'm having something of a cycle.

Sarah Dosanjh: 26:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jenn Salib Huber: 26:44

Yeah, I mean I think that you know you have a really interesting experience of having this major hormonal disruption in your late 20s. That was really a brain problem, so not because you were running out of eggs, but obviously the brain impacts how the reproductive system works, so it was causing this menopause-like picture, right, and obviously you've continued to have a lot of hormonal changes, but it's been a roller coaster for you really. I can't imagine how I mean I just can't imagine what that's like. So how does it feel now that you're in the normal age range for when people might be starting to experience things? Because it must have been fairly isolating to be in your late 20s, early 30s and going through all of these major hormonal changes in ways that most people don't.

Sarah Dosanjh: 27:44

Well, it's funny because during that time I was just obsessed with the food. So I wasn't even I wasn't particularly, certainly wasn't even thinking of the word menopause. I knew these hormones had been knocked out, but it wasn't probably until later on, when I heard other people talking about, oh, wait till you get to menopause or something like that, and I would say, well, I'm guessing I won't have one because I've already, in theory, I've already gone through it. I I've already, in theory, I've already gone through.

Navigating Hormonal Health and the Decision to Stay on HRT

Sarah Dosanjh: 28:15

I'm not going to go through some kind of I guess up and down and I think, because it happened to me so young and so you know clearly, if you like, I was really well looked after and I've had incredible treatment from doctors, surgeons everybody who's looked after me in this condition, with this condition, has been absolutely amazing. I guess now, at 42, there's a little question in my mind. I remember when you came on our podcast I think was it you who said that your grandmother or your mother at 45?

Jenn Salib Huber: 28:38

Both my mom and my grandmother were menopausal by 45, and I was 44.

Sarah Dosanjh: 28:42

Yeah, because part of me is thinking gosh, when can I come off this HRT? Because I've been on it, really, because I'm thinking about bone health if I, you know, my estrogen was wiped out in my 20s and they're offering this, they're saying this is good for my health and I need to take it. But really I would love to just come off of HRT but I'm like when is the sensible time to do it? And that's going to probably be quite a rational, just thought out decision, but I don't even know how to make that decision at what point, because my endocrinologist has been great, as in she's often been. We'll go with my wishes. Sometimes I'll be like, can we try tweaking this a bit? Can we try tweaking that?

Sarah Dosanjh: 29:17

My estrogen, I've been on everything from 75, the patches 75 patches up to 200 and down, and whenever they were doing my blood, sometimes it would be high, sometimes it would be low and I'm not convinced that I don't know if it's my skin is even absorbing the estrogen in a very consistent like leveled out way. So I feel like there have been well, I've seen in my blood tests there have been these spikes. So we're forever tweaking my estrogen. It goes high and it goes low and it's like I don't even know why that would be considering. I'm not making my own.

Jenn Salib Huber: 29:52

Yeah, and it's a great question. I mean the standard guidelines for premature ovarian insufficiency are to continue hormone therapy until the average age of menopause, so kind of 51, 52. But I certainly know many people who continue it beyond that, you know, for reasons that they discuss and feel like there are benefits. But it is a bit of a line in the sand being able to evaluate risks alongside kind of age-related peers and not as someone who was kind of in the outlier group for most of it. So it's a great question. 

So what do you feel like now that you're doing what you do and what you've learned? What you've learned? What would you say to somebody who? What do you wish you you've learned? What would you say to somebody who? What do you wish you had known? What would you say to your younger self who was going through that again, somebody who's listening who might think, oh my gosh, this is me. Or like, what do you wish you had known about all of it?

Sarah Dosanjh: 31:00

either the binge eating, the eating disorders, the menopause, like what would have helped you to, for to have an easier time well, I'm not sure I would have been able to have heard it at the time, but I guess what I'm thinking of, what came to mind when you were speaking then, was actually how much peace mental and emotional peace there can be in acceptance, even if it's not how you would want it to be. For the longest time, I was fighting myself, I was fighting my body. I was fighting my body, I was fighting my health conditions, everything. It just felt like this constant state of resistance. It wasn't like pity, but it was just. I couldn't like. I couldn't accept that I can't completely control my appetite. So I spent years trying to prove that wrong.

Sarah Dosanjh: 31:48

When actually that was a battle I was never going to win. So at the point when I was like, hang on a second, I really have to work with this appetite rather than against it, and the same with, like, the hormones as well. I need to work with this. So one thing my energy levels really changed after this and so now again, maybe because I'm coming into the average, it seems like a lot of my friends are just as tired as I am. But I think in my 30s I might have been struggling with my energy more than my peers were, and that was really hard for me because it felt like part of my personality how energetic I was as well. So I think there's something lovely in that and kind of growing into that and allowing that slowing down of that kind of energy and meaning like how finding other meaning.

Sarah Dosanjh: 32:34

I think so much of my meaning before was just in how other people thought about me or viewed me. You know I was chasing admiration, I was chasing approval, but in a very um, there are people who might chase approval through people pleasing. I think I chased it through trying to somehow be superior and I don't. I don't like that piece. Like I look at her and I'm like I. I have compassion for her. I know why she was like that, but it was about I need to feel okay by if I compare myself to others and I can compare myself more favorably, and that I've realized how disconnecting that is. Whether you put yourself above or below somebody, you're disconnected. So I've learned a lot about connection.

Sarah Dosanjh: 33:18

I think as well, which is just lovely to me. Connections what makes me feel safe in the world? Because we're all living in our own minds and our own bodies. No one else is there, it's just us here so it's important.

Jenn Salib Huber: 33:31

Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your insights because, um, I found I found it really interesting to hear how you connected the dots and how that has informed the work that you do. Before I ask the last question, um, if people want to learn more about you, where's the best place for them to go?

Sarah Dosanjh: 33:55

So I have a YouTube channel, which is probably where I'm most active and that's called the binge eating therapist. You can find me on YouTube. My website is also the binge eating therapistcom, and I do have a podcast, which Jen has been on. You could come over to our podcast and listen to Jen's episode. It's the life after Diets podcast that I co-host with Stephanie Michelle, who's also been on this podcast.

Jenn Salib Huber: 34:12

We're having like this little exchange. It's great, but I mean that really speaks to, I think, how we have a very common and shared message for people around their relationship with food and their body, and I think the work that you're doing is great. So thank you for sharing your work, thank you for sharing your story, and now for the last question what would you say is the missing ingredient in midlife, now that you actually could technically say you're midlife, now that you're 42,? What would you say is the missing ingredient?

The Missing Ingredient in Midlife According to Sarah

Sarah Dosanjh: 34:46

For me and it might be similar to my previous answer, but it's your, is your values, finding your values, because we grow up in these families and in this culture where we have these values thrust upon us and you're very welcome to take on those values as your own. But most of us do it without thinking, without critical thought. Um. So really stopping and, for me, really shifting my values has completely changed even just how I feel about being in my midlife now. So, yeah, something about being value, led by your own values that you have chosen, consciously chosen. I want this to be what is valuable to me in my life and this is how I'm going to try and live life.

Jenn Salib Huber: 35:31

I love it. That's perfect. Thank you so much for joining us. We will put links to all the things in the show notes and I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you, jen. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast For more non-diet, health, hormone and general midlife support. Click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me. And if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in midlife.