The Real Reason Weight Loss Gets Harder After 30 — Hormones, Cycles & What Works with Greta French-Kennedy

**Tahlia Pretty** (0:06)
Welcome to The Soulshine Living Podcast. My name is Tahlia Pretty, and I am here to inspire you to live a life you love in a body you love. Welcome back to The Soulshine Living Podcast. Today's conversation is one I've been so excited to bring to you, because it's a topic that comes up almost every single week inside my coaching community. Joining me today is the incredible Greta French-Kennedy, women's health coach, educator and someone I honestly credit with completely changing the way I understand my body. Can I also just say that Greta might genuinely be one of the hottest 40-year-olds I know. But I admire even more than how she looks is how she got there, not through restriction or punishment, but by understanding her body, her hormones and working with them instead of against them. Greta has taught me so much about regulating my menstrual cycle, understanding what's actually happening throughout each phase, strength training for hormones, nourishing my body with the right foods at the right times, and giving myself permission to honor what my body is asking for. Learning about cycle syncing has honestly given me so much peace. Instead of judging myself because one week I'm starving and creating sweet potato on repeat, or another week I barely feel hungry, I now understand what's happening physiologically, instead of forcing myself into harder workouts, or wondering why I don't feel like showing up on social media. Some ways I understand that my hormones naturally influence my energy, my confidence and my motivation. I know this conversation is going to help so many women stop fighting their bodies and start partnering with them. So let's dive in.
Welcome Greta.
I'd love to start today with a little bit about your story. How did you become so passionate about women's health? Was there a moment that completely shifted how you viewed your own body and hormones?

**Greta French-Kennedy** (2:02)
Thank you for that amazing introduction. Very honored to be here and very excited to talk about this topic.
How do I say this in a few words? There's a lot. My journey has been full and big and amazing. I think the whole thing really started in my early 20s, when I was just living life and doing the things, and all of a sudden things started to crop up. My cycle was a bit uncomfortable. I'd get pretty grumpy. I'd have heavy bleeding and I get PMT and all those things, but I didn't really understand it also. I think we just went through that time and I certainly didn't have anyone to mentor me through that. I then ended up with quite a few health challenges in my 20s. You know, the typical label of IBS. I had anxiety, panic attacks. Even a few years later, I ended up with precancerous cells on my cervix. So, oh, there insist that I had to get removed. And in dealing with all of that, so many big stories, but in dealing with all of that, and in that show, it really forced me to consider how I was living and look at how the natural world can help us come back into balance. And basically from then, I just haven't looked back. It's pretty well been 20 years of exploring this realm and delving more and more even last year into the women's health side of things, doing extra study in hormones. And yeah, just getting really passionate about, I guess, living in alignment with our cycle, even just basically understanding our cycle as women, understanding why we are different to men, how that means that our lives actually need to look different and that's totally okay. But in essence, really, my passion is helping women come back into balance through the natural world, doing the basic things, which is what I did. I overcame, my cycle is way more balanced now in my early 40s than it was in my 20s.
I overcame precancerous health and mysox. I overcame a whole bunch of different health challenges, really looking at that natural side, because I think the body always wants us to be healthy. And when we can understand it and listen to it, we can bring it back into balance.
And I think, for women especially, obviously we have a cycle. Men don't have that. We have a menstrual cycle. And that is actually an indicator of how our health is. So every month we bleed and we get to look at what's been happening. Our menstrual cycle is like a fifth vital sign. So it gives us indication of how in balance we are. And I think that is so amazing and a gift really we have as women.

**Tahlia Pretty** (4:56)