The Hidden Metabolic Cost of Control: How Over-Tracking, Over-Exercising, and Overthinking Keep You Stuck
When did being a healthy person and wanting to feel good get so……complicated?
So much information, so much time invested, so much energy, so much spendy spendy.
I get it.
I’m a woman in my 40s. And even though I’ve spent over 15 years studying and practicing as a qualified naturopath and yoga teacher, I still find myself feeling lost and overwhelmed by the constant barrage of health advice. Just today, my feed was flooded with tips about strength training, weighted vests, mobility, protein……protein and protein (did I mention protein?), collagen, creatine, and fasting. One moment it’s keto, the next it’s plant-based with a side of {insert random and expensive product here}. It’s exhausting.
And if you’re anything like the women I see in clinic, you’ve tried to keep up. You’ve added magnesium for sleep, adaptogens to your smoothie, and a probiotic you saw recommended on Instagram. You’ve cut gluten because someone said it might help your bloating. You’re eating “cleaner,” working out harder, and pushing through the fatigue. You’ve got the weighted vest, the 10k steps, the pilates classes, the yoga mat, and the pressure to do it all. This is on top of your day job and having a personal life.
You’ve Googled “best supplements for perimenopause” and now you’re taking five. Or maybe eight. You’ve listened to the podcasts, followed the hormone experts, and tried to piece together a plan that actually works but instead of clarity, you’re more confused than ever.
And your body still feels stuck.
The weight won’t shift.
Your sleep is broken.
Your energy crashes halfway through the day.
Your digestion is off and you’re still feeling bloated
Your libido is low.
You don’t feel like yourself anymore.
And at some point, that voice in your head starts to tell you….maybe it’s just you. That maybe your body is too far gone for you to ever feel good. That maybe you’re missing something obvious, or worse, doing it all wrong. That you are broken.
But here’s what I want you to know:
It’s not that you haven’t tried hard enough.
It’s not that your body is broken.
It’s that no one has helped you connect the dots and been there to hold your hand through this journey.
What you need to understand is it’s not just one thing. It’s how everything works together. The issue is, we’ve been taught to treat symptoms in isolation.
Low energy? Take iron.
Gaining weight? Eat less.
Can’t sleep? Try a sleeping tablet.
Anxious - there’s a pill for that.
Hormonal? Maybe it’s time for HRT.
Everything in isolation. But here’s the truth. Your body isn’t made of compartments. It’s a finely tuned system, and everything is connected.
Your metabolism speaks to your hormones.
Your hormones respond to your nervous system.
Your nervous system is shaped by your gut.
Your gut function depends on your liver.
And your liver is influenced by what you eat, how you sleep, how you feel, how you move, and even how safe you feel in your own body. And that’s not even scraping the surface of how interconnected everything in your body is.
This is why a one size fits all approach often falls flat. Because when your body is trying to protect you, pushing harder won’t help. Healing requires understanding the entire picture, not just patching the pieces together and doing every single thing that’s apparently “good” for us.
The body doesn’t heal in isolation. It heals in rhythm and it responds very well to kindness and being gentle with yourself. Every single cell of your body is listening to you so be nice ok.
Here’s what I see all the time:
A woman comes in exhausted, bloated, gaining weight despite “doing everything right.” She’s tried fasting, gone low-carb, done HIIT, and is tracking every meal in MyFitnessPal. She’s taking supplements for hormones, herbs for stress, and probiotics for her gut. Tick tick and double tick right??? The issue is, no one has helped her connect the dots.
Her digestion is slow because her nervous system is stuck in survival.
Her blood sugar is spiking because she’s skipping meals and drinking coffee instead of eating and then eating “healthy” protein bars all day.
Her liver is struggling to clear excess oestrogen.
Her thyroid is sluggish, but her TSH is “normal.”
She’s inflamed, depleted, and running on stress chemistry, not nourishment.
In cases like these, it’s rarely straightforward. But more often than not, at the heart of it is a deep disconnect. And it’s often in these moments I see women pushing harder, desperate to feel like themselves again, throwing everything at it, only to feel worse. The harder they push, the more the disconnect lingers. It doesn’t move the needle, it digs in. Because it’s not about doing more, it’s about doing what’s right for their body at this moment. Because when systems that are meant to work together fall out of sync, your body stops trusting the process. It holds on. It slows down. It waits. What it’s really asking for is rhythm. Clarity. Coherence. Not more noise.
So what does healing look like?
It looks like restoring rhythm to the systems that have been pulling against each other. It means bringing your blood sugar, hormones, digestion, stress, and sleep cycles back into alignment. It means moving from fragmentation to flow.
And it starts by listening, not just to your symptoms, but to the relationships between them. You’re not broken. You’re just out of rhythm.
Your symptoms are not failures. They are communicating with you.
And when you learn to understand them as part of a wider conversation between your metabolism, your hormones, your nervous system and your gut everything begins to shift.
You don’t need a more extreme plan. You need the clarity to understand where to begin, and the right support to move forward.
This is what I support my clients with. Whether you’re just beginning to notice that something’s not quite right or you’ve already tried multiple approaches that haven’t delivered the results you hoped for, what you likely need now is integration.
Working together we will begin with a deep dive into your history, your blood work, your symptoms, and your lived experience. We don’t just look at one hormone or one diet.
We look at how your systems are communicating and where the messages are getting crossed.
Then we layer in real, individualised support:
Personalised nutrition, based on your biochemistry
Nervous system strategies to support repair
Gut and liver support based on your symptom patterns and test results
Supplementation that’s purposeful, not excessive
Gentle lifestyle changes that help your body trust itself again
Please know this isn’t about restriction or control. It’s not about discipline or perfection. It’s about creating the right conditions for your body to do what it’s designed to do, heal.
If you would like support I welcome you to book a free discovery call with me. Here we can have a chat about what's going on with you and if seeing a naturopath is right for you or if I can recommend another modality. I am here to support you so feel free to book in, or you can always email me hello@carolynallenhealth.com.