You know what to do. You have known for a long time. So why does doing it — actually doing it, consistently, week after week — feel so much harder than it used to? This episode is the honest answer to that question. And it is not the answer most of us have been giving ourselves.

Consistency coach and author Carla Birnberg has spent years helping women untangle the difference between what consistency actually is and what we have been trained to believe it must look like. Her conclusion? We have gotten it wrong. We think consistency means predictability — showing up the same way, every day, no exceptions. But in midlife, with hormone fluctuations, energy dips, caretaking responsibilities, and a nervous system that is working harder than it ever has, predictability is not the goal. Adaptability is.

In this conversation, Carla walks through her framework for rebuilding self-trust through small, steady actions — including her concept of Minimum Viable Presence (MVP): the smallest thing you can do on your hardest days to honor your goal without abandoning it. She also introduces the powerful practice of connecting with your future self as a source of motivation that has nothing to do with perfection and everything to do with compassion. If you have been caught in the cycle of starting strong, falling off, and telling yourself the story that you are someone who cannot stay consistent — this episode is going to change that story.

Carla is the author of the Everyday Consistency book series, which she is building to cover every area of modern midlife life — health, relationships, finances, parenting, and more. Her approach is rooted in the belief that health is the foundation, community is the scaffolding, and neither has to look the same every single day to be real and lasting.

• Why consistency is adaptability — not predictability — and how redefining it through the lens of hormonal and energy changes in midlife can immediately reduce the shame cycle of starting over every Monday
• What Minimum Viable Presence (MVP) means and how showing up at 30% capacity and giving everything you have that day is not falling short — it is the actual definition of discipline in midlife
• How connecting with your future self through small daily practices — including Carla's Consistency SE Profile — builds the self-trust and momentum that motivation alone can never sustain

About Our Guest

Carla Birnberg is a writer, speaker, and consistency coach who helps women build lives rooted in small, steady actions. With a background in English literature and marketing, she is the author of the Everyday Consistency series — including her latest book, Everyday Consistency: The Hidden Power of Showing Up — which explores how identity, structure, and self-trust, not willpower, shape lasting change. She found her voice in the weight room at 21 and has never stopped showing up.

Additional Resources

The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here: https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause

Our Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by Reverse Health. Finally, a fitness and weight loss app for women 40+. Use promo code HOTFLASH for 10% off: https://www.rgds43jd.com/G1S938/7XDN2/

Most women have heard the word “fasting” and immediately pictured something that sounds like punishment: restriction, deprivation, white-knuckling through another attempt at controlling a body that refuses to cooperate. This episode begins by putting that version down entirely — and replacing it with something far more powerful and far more true.

In this second part of a two-part series, we go deeper than the science of sugar cravings — though we go there too. We walk through what sugar actually is physiologically, why it behaves like an addictive substance in the brain, and why the midlife body is uniquely and specifically vulnerable to its effects. We examine four distinct types of fasting — complete, intermittent, the Daniel Fast, and the targeted fast — and make the case for why a 40-day sugar fast is the most accessible, sustainable, and whole-person intervention available to women in this season of life.

And then we go somewhere most health conversations never go: into Scripture. Into Matthew 6, Isaiah 58, and Joel 2. Into what God actually says about fasting — not as a religious obligation or a performance, but as an act of return. A way of bringing your whole self, body and spirit together, back toward the One who designed both. The argument of this episode is that the spiritual clarity promised through fasting and the physiological clarity that comes from removing sugar are not two separate experiences running in parallel. They are the same experience. The same clearing. The same quiet where something different can come in. This is Part 2 of a two-part series. If you have not yet heard Part 1, go back and listen first — it will make everything here land more completely.

What You Will Learn

• The four types of fasting — complete, intermittent, the Daniel Fast, and the targeted sugar fast — what each one does physiologically and spiritually, and why the 40-day sugar fast is uniquely powerful for midlife women navigating perimenopause and menopause
• What Scripture actually says about fasting in Matthew 6, Isaiah 58, and Joel 2 — and why the language of chains, yokes, and freedom is not metaphorical but deeply personal for every woman who has felt trapped in a cycle she cannot break alone
• Why the spiritual and physiological benefits of a biblical sugar fast are not two separate things but the same transformation operating through the same mechanisms — and what the honest 40-day arc actually looks like, from the hard first week to the quiet opening that arrives around day eight or nine

This is a solo episode hosted by Stephanie Shaw, founder of Hello, Hot Flash and creator of Reclaimed: 40 Days — a 40-day faith-integrated sugar reset designed for women navigating perimenopause and menopause.

To learn more, visit: [EPISODE URL]

Reclaimed: 40 Days. A 40-day faith-integrated sugar reset designed specifically for women navigating menopause — with live coaching calls twice a week, a private community, a full education library, and a 10-episode private podcast. The first 50 women to enroll pay $100. After that, the price goes to $150. Enroll here:

https://hellohotflash.com/reclaimed

Join me for an interactive workshop where together, we will map out a practical menopause meal plan using simple macro principles so you understand how protein, carbohydrates, and fats support energy, metabolism, and hormonal changes. You will also build a daily faith practice to help anchor your mindset, strengthen resilience, and stay steady through this season of transition.

https://hellohotflash.com/workshop

The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here:

https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause

This episode is also sponsored by Delta Dental. Protecting more than smiles. Visit the Delta Dental Institute to discover how they are advancing menopause care:

https://DeltaDentalInstitute.com

Or learn more about menopause and oral health directly here:

https://www1.deltadentalins.com/wellness/menopause-oral-health.html

You know sugar is making things worse. You know it is worsening your hot flashes, disrupting your sleep, and contributing to the belly weight that will not budge. You have set the intentions, made the plans, started fresh on Mondays more times than you can count. And you still cannot stop. This episode is not here to tell you to try harder. It is here to tell you why.

The real reason sugar is so hard to quit in midlife is not willpower. It is not discipline. It is not faith. It is biochemistry — and in perimenopause and menopause, that biochemistry becomes significantly harder to manage. When estrogen declines, serotonin production becomes less stable. Serotonin regulates mood, yes — but it also regulates appetite, sleep, impulse control, and specifically, carbohydrate cravings. When that system becomes unreliable, your brain reaches for the fastest available way to restore it. And the fastest available way is sugar. This is a loop with a biological mechanism — and it is not your fault.

But the science is only part of the story.

In this episode, we also go somewhere most health conversations don't: the emotional layer underneath the reaching. The comfort, the reward, the relief, the one thing that is privately yours at the end of a day you gave to everyone else. And the spiritual layer — the part of you that has been praying about this and wondering if it is too small a thing to bring to God. It is not. Your body and your spirit were designed to work together. This episode is about what it looks like to bring both into the conversation — and what becomes possible when you do.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 goes deeper into the theological and scientific case for a faith-integrated approach to breaking this cycle.

What You Will Learn

• The exact neurological mechanism behind sugar cravings — how dopamine tolerance and withdrawal work, why willpower was never designed to win this fight, and what makes the midlife body uniquely vulnerable to this loop
• How declining estrogen during perimenopause and menopause directly drives cravings for sugar and simple carbohydrates — and the specific ways sugar is worsening your hot flashes, sleep disruption, belly weight, mood, and brain fog
• Why the sugar reach is never just about sugar — what it is emotionally and spiritually doing for you, why you cannot white-knuckle past a coping mechanism, and what it actually means to bring your body and your faith into the same conversation

• Reclaimed: 40 Days starts June 1. A 40-day faith-integrated sugar reset designed specifically for women navigating menopause — with live coaching calls, a private community, a full education library, and a 10-episode private podcast. The first 50 women to enroll pay $100. After that, the price goes to $150. Enroll here: https://hellohotflash.com/reclaimed
• The limited-series podcast Christian Women and Menopause teaches what the Bible says about stress, anxiety, health, and confidence in midlife. Listen here: https://hellohotflash.com/christian-women-and-menopause

This episode is sponsored by Reverse Health. Finally, a fitness and weight loss app for women 40+. Use promo code HOTFLASH for 10% off: https://www.rgds43jd.com/G1S938/7XDN2/