Tori Vallen - Integrative Nutrition & Lifestyle Coach for Women

For most of your life, you've measured your worth through your body.

How it looked.
What size it was.
Whether it was acceptable.
Whether it was desirable.

You might not have known it consciously,

But how you feel about your body informed a lot of your daily decisions.

Outfits you'd wear,

Whether you're in a photo or not,

How confident you felt talking to a client...

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Your body was the determining factor.

--

And then 35 hit.

Then 40 hit.

Then 45.

And perimenopause.

Just a few problems at first... then,

Boom.

Everything at once.

And the body that used to cooperate... and mostly do what you wanted it to do... stopped cooperating.

Suddenly weight was MUCH harder for lose.

The skin on your face was aging much more quickly

Your brain was foggy and you'd get easily irritated or overwhelmed,

Your confidence was gone.

And what I see in so many women at this stage isn't just frustration about weight.

It's a full-on identity crisis!

Like completely losing your self.

Because if your worth was tied to how you looked before,

and NOW how you look is changing,

And nothing you do seems to stop it...

Then who are you now?

Are you even of any value anymore?

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Everyone's talking about macros and supplements and hormone panels and what to do to lose the weight.

And those things matter.

I work with all of them.

But underneath the bloating and the fatigue and the weight loss resistance,

There are BIG emotions...

Sadness about the fact our bodies have changed.

Because if you always placed so much value in your appearance,

And now you feels like that is gone,

And no meal plan on earth will fix that.

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This is the work that happens inside Radiant Health Reset that surprises women the most.

They come in wanting to lose weight,

But they end up connecting with a version of themselves that isn't defined by a number on the scale or a reflection in the mirror.

Yes, they lose the weight.

But the weight loss becomes less important than how they FEEL.

They stop abandoning themselves.

They stop measuring things that don't matter.

They start loving themselves in a way that is real.

REAL body love.

Which is DIFFERENT from mere body acceptance.

Your worth was never about your weight.

It was never about your dresssize.

It was never your face or your smooth skin.

And I don't blame you for not knowing that, because the world told you otherwise for about 40 years straight.

Radiant Health Reset intake is open right now.

Intake for this round closes very soon.

Comment RADIANT or DM me.

Tori X

I had a conversation this week with a woman who had been doing everything "right" for her health for at least three years.

Eating well, exercising consistently. Taking great supplements. Tracking everything!

And yet... her body was not cooperating.

The won't shift, she's always tired.

Her brain fog is getting worse, not better.

And lots of other seemingly random symptoms, too. Headaches, nausea, palpitations. Really crappy sleep.

She came to me thinking she needed more supplements.
Or maybe a stricter plan.
Or maybe a test she hasn't had yet?
Maybe she needed to cut even more foods out... More discipline applied to the same approach she'd already been running.

I'm sharing her story because it isn't really one woman's story...

It's the story of almost every woman I talk to.

It's the same conversation with almost every woman I've spoken to this week and last week and the week before that, too.

And if you're reading this, there's a good chance it's your story, too.

What she actually needed (what most of the women who come to me need) was to understand something that nobody had explained to her yet.

There's nothing "wrong" with her body.
Her body doesn't hate her, and it isn't responding incorrectly.

It's actually responding exactly the way it should to the approach she'd been using.

Here's what I mean:

When a perimenopausal body is under sustained pressure (like restriction of calories or long term restriction of foods, over-exercising, cutting things out, pushing through exhaustion, nutrient depletion, using medications to suppress symptoms) it doesn't heal and come into balance.

It conserves... because it perceives threat.

So cortisol stays consistently elevated, and thyroid function slows down more, and insulin resistance gets worse.

And fat storage increases, particularly around the middle.

The strategies she'd been using to create results were triggering the exact biological responses that were preventing them.

And I totally understand WHY she was using those strategies.. a few years ago, in the same body but younger, they would have worked!

But now... the harder she pushes, the more her body digs in.

Because that is the physiological reality of a body that is being forced rather than supported.

She isn't lazy and it's not that she's not trying hard enough. It's that her body perceives her to be fighting against it... And her body has been protecting itself from her.

The women who achieve their health goals in their 40s and beyond are not the ones who whip and beat themselves into shape.

They're the ones who stop fighting and start understanding what their bodies need.

That looks like identifying the cortisol dysregulation, insulin resistance, and thyroid dysfunction running underneath everything, instead of pushing harder on top of them.

It looks like understanding what your body actually needs at this hormonal stage of life, not what worked at 32.

It looks like working with your physiology instead of trying to override it.

Once you do that, everything changes.

The resistance softens and your body stops protecting itself from you.

Then the weight starts to move.

Your energy returns and the brain fog lifts.

Your sleep improves.

Not because you finally found the discipline you'd been lacking and got even harsher on yourself...

But because you stopped forcing and started giving your body what it had genuinely been asking for.

This is exactly what we do inside the Radiant Health Reset.

Not another protocol to push your body into submission.

Instead, it's a program of understanding what is actually driving your symptoms, addressing it at the root, and creating the conditions where your body can do what it is designed to do.

And it's designed exactly for women in the second half of their life, when the body is asking for a different approach.

The doors are about to open for a small number of women.

If you've been applying the right effort to the wrong approach, I'd love to have you in the room.

Comment RADIANT below and I'll send you the details.

And I'd love to know if any of this resonated with you? Have you connected the dots yet that when you that push harder, everything in your body does the opposite of what you'd expect?

Tori X

She took all the supplements and she ate clean. She exercised regularly, too
Yet she still felt like crap and her body just seemed to do the opposite of what she wanted.

(I'm talking about me....12 - 15 years ago...)

For years I did everything I was supposed to do.

I read the research. I tried all the protocols.

I knew more about hormones and nutrients and biochemistry than most GPs...!

I also tried all the self love and the meditation and the mindset.

I tried ALL OF IT. Everything.

But I still wasn't well.

I was always looking for a way to help my sluggish thyroid,
stop my hair from falling out,
overcome my digestive symptoms,
Get rid of my anxiety/panic disorder
Awful/non existent sleep
And control my weight.

I was doing everything I could to fix those things!

I kept thinking I was missing something.

Another supplement I hadn't tried yet?
A test that would give me the answers?
A different approach?

Or maybe a better version of what I was already doing?

What I was actually missing was a wholistic, true root-cause approach.

When I started understanding drivers and applying root cause healing, THAT'S when I started to get well and finally thrive.

I think about that version of me often.

I was SO sad and SO low and SO desperate for answers.

I knew so much, yet I wasn't getting results.

I see that version of me in the women who come to me for help and the steady stream of messages I get in my inbox weekly.

These women are informed, they're disciplined.
They're doing A LOT of things.

But they're also frustrated and sad because in spite of the effort they're putting in, they still feel terrible.

These women don't need to try harder and they don't need to research more.

What they need is someone who can show them what's working and what isn't, and give them a clear path to feel well.

This is the work I offer for my clients.

Later this week, I'm opening the doors to my signature program.

It's the most structured, most wholistic, most supported, most comprehensive health program on the market right now. I only open the doors a few times a year for a small number of lucky women.

Do you relate to doing ALL the things and getting nowhere? Drop me a comment and tell me about it below.

And.... watch this space for the opportunity to change all that.

Tori X

HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) - more recently relabelled to MHT (Menopause Hormone Therapy) - is something I get asked about a lot.

There seems to be three main camps:

Those that think it's the answer to everything,

Those that want nothing to do with it because it's "big pharma" and you should be able to get through peri and menopause naturally,

And then there's the camp that has no idea what to think and they're not sure where to start researching this (they often try Facebook groups or Insta and get inaccurate information).

Oh, and there's a fourth camp I almost forgot to mention: The women who tried it, felt worse, and are too scared to try again,

So instead, they're tolerating symptoms and hoping they'll go away in the next five years.

The truth about HRT/MHT,

Is that your symptoms aren't purely a hormone level problem.

They're the result of a hormone shift,

In a body that has a particular capacity to handle it (or not).

Two women with identical hormone levels can have completely different experiences of perimenopause,

and that difference is not because of their hormones.

It's because of everything else.

Which explains why my clients get well and stay well, even without HRT.

HRT is actually amazing,

When it's used a the right time, at the right dose, in the right combination, for that particular woman.

.. Given her particular state of health.

So the question isn't "Should I take HRT?"

The question is

"What am I expecting HRT to do? And what am I leaving unaddressed while I wait for it to do it...?"

I'm doing this whole conversation properly inside my Perimnopause Challenge.

What HRT/MHT does,
What it doesn't do,
What determines how well you respond to it...

And what the alternatives are for the women who can't,
Or prefer not to take it.

THE FREE 5-DAY PERIMENOPAUSE CHALLENGE

Live daily on Zoom. We start Monday

(I have some fab prizes to give away, too!)

Comment CHALLENGE and I'll send you registration details

Tori x

You fall asleep fine, but then at 3am you're wide awake,

heart going, brain running over yesterday's conversation or thinking about tomorrow's to-do list

You're SO f-ing exhausted.

But you're also wired.

Both at once.

Tired but wired = twired

Which makes no sense at all,

until you understand what's actually happening in your perimenopausal biochemistry.

You've probably been treating it as a sleep problem.

Magnesium glycinate,
Cutting screens,

But it isn't a sleep problem.

It's a hormone problem that starts in the day but shows up at night.

And this is why it's bigger and more important than we realise...

Broken sleep drives cortisol up the next day.
High cortisol drives insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance drives the weight you can't shift.

It's one collection of drivers creating MANY problems in the body,

And waking up at 3am is often where women notice it first.

And if you try to band aid the problem, you are in for a WILD perimenopause experience, (and not the good kind of wild...)

I'm explaining this whole thing properly next week in my free 5-DAY perimenopause challenge.

We start on Monday. And Day 3 is where I'll be explaining this exact thing....

why you're waking at 3am, and how you can change it now, before it creates a cascade of other issues.

Comment CHALLENGE and I'll send you the link to register.

Tori x

I'm 48.... I'm in perimenopause right now.

Smack, bang, right in it!

And yet,

My weight is stable.

I sleep through the night, like a log.

I don't wake at 3am.

I don't get the rage.

My cycle is doing what perimenopausal cycles do, and the rest of me is just carrying on.

My energy is awesome.

But I want you to know, it has not always been like this.

Health and hormonal balance hasn't always been this easy for me.

I've had chronic illness, autoimmune diagnoses...

I was 20kg heavier than I wanted to be,

I struggled with depression and bipolar disorder in my teens and 20s and even spent time in the psychiatric ward at just 22 years old,

I had PCOS and struggled with insulin resistance for years,
thyroid function was always wacky,

Panic disorder and a full blown mental breakdown...

So I had YEARS of feeling like a stranger in my own body, while being told my bloods were "fine"...

So the fact that my perimenopause is easy ISN'T good genes....

It isn't luck....

And it is definitely not me having an easier ride than you.

It's that by the time perimenopause showed up, I'd already done the work underneath it, to create the foundations that support good hormonal balance.

Because here's what you haven't had explained to you yet:

Perimenopause doesn't create dysfunction in our bodies.

It reveals dysfunction that was already there.

Your reproductive hormones have been buffering problems for you for decades!.

Then, they start to drop....

And you FEEL awful... !

You start to feel the dysfunction raise it's ugly head!

And you feel all of it at once.

Which is why two women the same age,
at the same stage,
can be having completely different experiences of perimenopause.

Because they have different underlying foundations.

And THAT is what I'm teaching next week.

I'm running my free 5-Day Perimenopause Challenge, live on Zoom, Monday 17 to Friday 21 August.

10:00am Adelaide
10:30am Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane
12:30pm Auckland
8:30pm New York (the evening before)
5:30pm Los Angeles (the evening before)

Over the five days we go through the four main drivers of your symptoms, what your gut has to do with your hormones (more than anyone has told you), why everything gets worse the second life gets stressful, why the weight is landing where it is now when it never used to,

And we'll take an honest look at HRT. What it does well, where it falls short, and what to do underneath it either way.

It's free, it's live, and I answer questions on the calls.

Comment CHALLENGE below and I'll send you the link.

Tori x