Ally Houston, PhDI’ve spent many years coaching people, mostly women, on their metabolic health. Each of them arrived with a list of symptoms (tiredness, irritability, an overwhelming urge to throw a mug at their husband’s head when he chewed his toast too loudly). They also had a list of goals they hoped I would help them achieve (lose weight, gain energy, get muscles, use newly acquired muscles to throw mugs with more force).
But I often noticed something else in our early conversations. Something deeper and rawer, which went beyond the obvious goals and aspirations; something that sounded like grief for a person they missed deeply but no longer felt connected to. They said things like “I don’t feel like myself,” “I don’t recognise myself in the mirror anymore,” or “I just want the old me back, I miss her.”
For ages I assumed this was something unique to the people who chose to work with me, that it was some sort of self-selecting sample. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if this was the case. Were these feelings unique to my clients, or were they part of a bigger picture? So, I did what anyone with a science background would do: I started doing some research.
I read nearly eight thousand social media posts by women sharing their experiences. Women writing openly and honestly, women who weren’t trying to sell anything, women who just wanted to get what was happening to them out there to try and make sense of it all. The more I read, the more I began to see a pattern; the same jokes hiding the same fear and worry cropped up time and time again. It wasn’t just my clients: thousands of women were all going through the same thing, but all of them felt that it was just them.
What was odd was that despite their numbers, this was an invisible demographic. And then I realised that it was actually the number of women involved that made them invisible. Why? Because when everyone is tired, has brain fog, and doesn’t feel quite themselves, it seems normal, and when something seems normal, you don’t question it as much as you should. We forget that “it happens to everyone” isn’t the same as “right” or something you should just put up with.
It was heartbreaking to read, but as many of these women said themselves, the stories often had a funny side. One woman posted about forgetting the word “wrists” and resorting to the phrase “hand ankles.” Another tidied a lit candle away into a drawer, closed the drawer and wandered off. Thankfully, the smell of smouldering furniture alerted her to what she’d done. Amongst the stories of looking for the phone that’s in your hand, or walking into a room and forgetting why, was the story of the woman who forgot her own daughter’s name mid-sentence and had to try to describe her instead. Imagine what that conversation sounded like: “I’m off shopping with… you know, that girl, the one with brown hair, lives in my house, I give her pocket money every Saturday… the one I bloody well gave birth to! Her!”
While I’d not experienced anything quite as extreme as forgetting a family member’s name, these stories resonated with me. A few years ago, I sorted out my own health by looking for patterns among the scattered dots. It’s why I spotted a pattern in these women’s stories.
In a previous life I worked as an engineer in a laser factory (I had a degree in physics and annoyingly Einstein and Newton had already done all the really cool stuff). Every so often a laser would randomly start working better, or worse, than before, and we couldn’t work out why. When this happened, we blamed “cosmic rays.” It was a joke, but also our way of saying, “Something’s going on, but we can’t be bothered investigating what. It’s not serious enough to worry about so, no biggie.” (Bet you’re glad I worked in a laser factory, not a nuclear power plant!)
The way women’s feelings and experiences get dismissed and written off as “no biggie” reminds me of those “cosmic rays.” But it’s not nothing. It shouldn’t be written off. It is worth looking at. I’m not going to promise a miracle fix, I’m not even going to say that there’s a tidy pattern and a neat answer to be found. Anyone who makes promises like that is probably trying to sell you something. Your body isn’t simple, and neither are the solutions (no matter what all the “protein bros” and supplement salesmen try to tell you).
What I will say is that things like what you eat, your sleep patterns, how much you move about, and where you are in the month can be more tied to how your head feels than you might think. I’m not here to mansplain your body and feelings to you (apart from the fact that that’s well beyond my experience; I don’t want any mugs thrown at my head). I just believe that these connections might be something worth looking at and exploring.
You might be wondering why I’m telling you all this; after all, I’ve already said that I’m not punting a product. I don’t even have an online academy for you to sign up to for a handy monthly fee. What I do have is a knack for spotting patterns and personal experience in how that can be helpful. And from talking to my clients and reading those eight thousand posts, I believe that the first step towards feeling like yourself again is recognising your experience and realising you’re not alone.
This blog post reflects the opinion and/or experience of the author. It is provided for informational purposes only and should not be considered a replacement for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any questions about a health condition or concerns related to your well-being, always consult with your physician or another qualified healthcare professional.
