Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sally Bartlett. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Sally, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
In my early 40’s I began to experience uncharacteristic mood swings, insomnia, sweating, depression, forgetfulness, crying jags, extreme dry skin and changes in the body I had known and loved for years (regardless of how healthfully I ate). See Dammit…It IS Menopause! page 23, for a more complete list of what I experienced. Seemingly overnight, I no longer recognized myself on several levels. I honestly feared I was facing dementia.
After considerable research, I learned it was not dementia at all, but rather I was in the beginning stages of menopause, also known as peri-menopause. Menopause is defined as the point at which a woman has gone one year without a period. After such point, she is considered postmenopausal. Leading up to that one day, she is considered peri-menopausal.*
As a professional health coach who made and has sustained radical lifestyle changes since my 20s that have enabled me to maintain a 35-lb weight loss for over 30 years without dieting, I was humbled. I did not see that struggle coming! I expected that due to my years of healthy eating and moderate exercise, I would breeze through the transition with little awareness of it.
Further, I was stunned to discover how infrequently this vital conversation takes place among women, men, sisters, mothers, daughters, spouses, employers, and even close friends. Having worked in the health and fitness field for over 20 years, I felt called to change that, start that conversation, normalize it, and keep it going.
While the news that I was experiencing peri-menopause rather than dementia brought immense personal relief, my next thought was, “How many other women might unnecessarily be experiencing this trauma without knowing what it is?” They NEED to know they are not obsolete and their Big Amazing Lives are far from over! I vowed to educate and comfort as many women as possible who experienced what I had. I didn’t want anyone to feel as lost and alone as I had felt.
Thus, I spent the next 15 years documenting mine and other women’s journeys through the transition. The result was the book, Dammit…It IS menopause! Meditations for Women to Achieve Clarity and Confidence Beyond Their Wildest Dreams. I independently published volumes 1 and 2 in 2021.
During the pandemic I created an online course that supplemented my in-person one-on-one coaching practice. This helped make the message available to as many women as possible in as many formats as possible. The books and online course went hand in hand with the in-person health and menopause coaching I had already been doing for years. I dared to envision a large community of midlife women living their best lives through mutual support and encouragement.
Without a doubt, the most common complaint I hear from midlife women is about weight gain. Often when a woman comes to work with me, she has spent decades hopping from one extreme diet to another, interspersed with erratic binge eating behavior. Typically, this frustrating cycle results in increased weight gain in the best case, and weight gain, extreme self-esteem and health risks in the worst case. Because I have lost and sustained weight loss without dieting for the last three decades, my coaching style reflects my personal success journey by taking the focus off dieting and emphasizing psychological and mental health solutions for waning midlife body image and self-confidence. Clients build a new personal self-care foundation based on what I refer to as “body-confidence” using my daily self-care P.I.E.S. concept. The concept is outlined both in Dammit! and my online course, but basically P.I.E.S. is an acronym for physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Through daily self-care P.I.E.S., midlife women learn tools that enable them to:
• Make friends with their body
• Emotionally regulate
• End the destructive, paralyzing extreme diet/binge eating cycle
• Improve immune and mental health
• Break free from debilitating negative self-talk through expressive writing (aka journaling)
• Live the life they have always dreamed of
My vision and heart message are to bring women together to lift each other up and collectively reach their utmost potential at this pivotal and potentially challenging time of life. Start that conversation, with someone in your life, normalize it, and keep it going!
*Talk to your healthcare provider to learn more about your personal situation.
Sally, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Sally Bartlett is an award-winning author, and professional health coach who has maintained a 35-lb weight loss for over 30 years through sustained “Varsity” self-acceptance, without dieting. She has coached countless clients through peri-menopause on the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual levels.
She began coaching peri-/menopausal women after she herself experienced a particularly challenging peri-menopause which began in her mid 40s and lasted for over five years. Once she learned what was happening to her body, she pondered, “How many other women might unnecessarily be experiencing this trauma without knowing what it is?” She felt called to spread the message that peri-menopausal women are not obsolete and their Big Amazing Lives are far from over! Not wanting anyone to feel as lost and alone as she had felt, she vowed to educate and comfort as many women as possible.
Sally blends her academic background in psychology, her personal 30-year sustained weight loss, and her decades-long professional fitness and wellness coaching background to impart her unique coaching style that favors a collection emotional regulation and journaling techniques over dieting as a means of coming to terms with a woman’s hormonal transition and body-confidence.
Connect with Sally to discover how amazing your “Varsity Menopause” experience can look today!
• Read her books, Dammit…It IS Menopause! Meditations for Women to Achieve Clarity and Confidence Beyond Their Wildest Dreams, Volumes 1 and 2
• Take her online course, The Health Body Mindset Recipe
• Find out more at SallyBartlett.com
• IG: itssallybartlett
• FB: Sally Bartlett
• Twitter: ImSallyBartlett
• LinkedIn: IamSally Bartlett
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Writing a book was quite scary! I had no idea. There were many times I wanted to quit along the 15+ year journey. Several times I actually did quit in my head. But eventually I resumed writing/editing/marketing every time. That resilience has made all the difference.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
During the pandemic, I pivoted from in-person coaching to providing quick tips to improve immune health and boost morale on social media. From there I built my presentation confidence enough to create an online course that went hand in hand with the book I was publishing. The course eventually lead to small group online support groups where women who were taking the online course could connect and the support element was exponentially increased.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sallybartlett.com
- Instagram: itssallybartlett
- Facebook: Sally Bartlett
- Linkedin: IamSally Bartlett
- Twitter: ImSallyBartlett
- Other: Books on Amazon.com: https://www.
amazon.com/Dammit-Menopause- Meditations-Achieve- Confidence/dp/1735878588/ref= tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding= UTF8&qid=1656526025&sr=8-1
Image Credits
Sally Bartlett