The Natural
GLP-1 Reset
A 24-week programme to restore your natural satiety, metabolic flexibility, and body literacy — without medication.
Your metabolism is not broken.
It is simply offline.
And what has been switched off can be switched back on.
Health is beauty.
Vitality is everything.
Nothing looks as good as vital feels.
This companion exists to help you rebuild both — from the inside out.
The 24-Week Arc
Three phases. Each one builds what the next one needs. The sequence is not arbitrary; it is the reason this works when everything else has not.
- Gut reset protocol
- Power Cuppa daily
- Food sequencing begins
- Post-meal walking
- ACV and digestive support
- Food trigger identification
- Botanical amplifiers
- Protein and phenylalanine
- Fasting windows
- Resistance training begins
- Glucose monitoring
- Blood sugar calibration
- Resistance training 2-3x per week
- Circadian rhythm anchor
- HALT check as habit
Weight loss and feeling a million bucks is the goal. Vitality is the road to that destination.
A Note to You from Dr Kirstey
You are not here because you failed.
You are here because everything you have tried has asked the wrong thing of you. Move more, eat less. Cut the carbs. Follow this plan. Take this supplement. And when it worked — briefly, partially, temporarily — you believed it was you who had failed when it stopped. It was not.
The systems that regulate your hunger, your satiety, your energy, and your body composition are biological systems. They respond to biological conditions. When those conditions are right, they work. When those conditions are disrupted — by the food environment we live in, by chronic stress, by sleep deprivation, by years of restriction and rebound — they stop working. Not permanently. Temporarily.
Your L-cells — the tiny cells in your gut that produce the hormone telling your brain you have eaten enough — have been silenced. Not destroyed. Silenced. By chronic high insulin, by gut dysbiosis, by years of operating in a metabolic environment they were not designed for.
This programme exists to change that environment. Not through restriction. Not through deprivation. Through repair, rebalance, and reclamation of the metabolic architecture your body was designed to have.
I want to be honest with you about one thing before you begin: this takes time. The principle I apply clinically is one month of healing for every year of symptoms. If you have had food noise, energy crashes, and metabolic disruption for five years, expect five months of genuine work before the foundations fully hold. The 24-week arc in this companion is the beginning of that work — and it is the most important part.
It is also the last food protocol you will ever need to do.
My protocol is not about weight loss. It is not designed to be a restrictive diet but rather a balanced approach to nutrition, so it is sustainable and becomes part of your lifestyle. Done the right way, it can be the last food protocol you will ever have to do.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
Three voices. One companion.
This companion is not written from a single perspective. It is a conversation — between the clinical reality of what is happening in your body, the voice inside your head that has an opinion about all of this, and the version of you who already knows how this ends.
You will hear from all three throughout these pages.
Your clinical guide. She has sat with women like you for 26 years. She knows exactly what is happening in your body and she has a clear, evidenced path back. She is direct, warm, and she will not waste your time.
She has a lot to say about this. She has watched you start things before. She is not cruel — she is scared, in her way. She will appear throughout this companion in her own box, because her voice is real and naming her is the first step to not being ruled by her. You will recognise her immediately.
She is two people at once. The eight-year-old who ate until she was full and then ran outside without thinking about it once. And the eighty-year-old looking back at this exact moment, who wants to tell you one thing.
Before I Begin (an acknowledgement)
Once I am done with this,
I will wake up and trust my hunger.
I will eat a meal and feel satisfied — genuinely, cleanly, without effort.
I will finish eating and simply not want more.
I will move through the day without food noise following me.
I will have energy that belongs to me, not borrowed from caffeine.
I will feel like I live in my body rather than manage it.
I will feel light, strong, and genuinely well.
But right now, that is not where I am.
I am tired of trying things that work for other people.
I am tired of the rules, the noise, the guilt, the rebound.
I am ready to stop blaming myself for a biological problem.
I am ready to repair what was disrupted.
I will begin before I feel perfectly ready.
I will follow the sequence, trusting that each phase earns the next.
I will take my measurements and know where I am starting — not to judge it, but to know it.
I will reset my pantry before I begin.
I will make my Power Cuppa every morning.
I will eat my vegetables first.
I will walk after every meal.
I will build strength a little more each week.
I will use the HALT check when food noise arrives.
I will stay connected to the clinic.
I will be patient with the pace of biology.
I will be gentle with myself in the way I would be gentle with someone I love.
I have always had what my body needs. I am just learning to use it again.
Your Metabolic Flexibility Assessment
Dr Kirstey: This one tells you where to start — not what's wrong with you. There's a difference.
Before reading anything else, complete this short assessment. It takes five minutes and identifies which phase of this programme your body needs most urgently — and where to direct your attention first.
This is not a diagnosis. It is a starting point map.
Your Metabolic Flexibility Assessment
Five minutes. Tick every statement that is true for you right now. Your result tells you where to focus first.
Your Companion Tools
Your kitchen environment does more work than your willpower ever will. Before Phase One begins, the Pantry Reset Companion walks you through exactly what to remove and what to replace it with — specifically for the Repair phase.
Open the Pantry Reset Companion →Shape, not weight. The measurement tracker documents your waist, hips, arms, thighs, and key ratios across all six months — so you can see the changes that matter, not just the ones the scale shows.
Open the Measurement Tracker →Let's Start with Just Five Actions
Allow 30 minutes for every meal: 15 to eat slowly, 15 to walk gently.
So why does my body feel like it's working against me?
Your metabolism is not broken; it is simply offline or out of balance. When your insulin levels stay high for too long, they begin to interfere with how your body responds to insulin, trapping you in a cycle where you can only burn sugar for energy — not fat.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
Portrait view recommended on mobile.
Something in my gut is not doing its job. Here's what.
Inside your gut, you have specialised cells called enteroendocrine L-cells. They line your intestines, sense when you have eaten, and release a hormone called GLP-1 — glucagon-like peptide-1 — into your bloodstream. GLP-1 travels to your brain and delivers one message: you have eaten enough.
When your L-cells are working, satiety arrives naturally. You eat a meal, you feel satisfied, the meal ends, and food stops occupying your mind. This is how the system was designed.
This is what happened. And it was not your fault.
Two upstream drivers account for the vast majority of silenced L-cell function in perimenopausal women:
- Every time you eat refined carbohydrates or sugar, insulin is dispatched to manage the glucose. This is normal. What is not normal is when insulin is chronically elevated — dispatched so frequently, and in such high volumes, that cells begin to ignore its signal. The medical term is insulin resistance.
- Dr Ben Bikman's research demonstrates that this same insulin resistance affects the L-cells in your gut. A cell that cannot respond to insulin cannot function normally. It cannot produce GLP-1 effectively. It cannot tell your brain that you are full. The result: food noise. The relentless mental chatter about what to eat next is not a personality trait. It is a biological consequence of cells that have been overwhelmed into silence.
- Your L-cells do not exist in isolation. They live within a gut microbiome — the ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms that line your intestinal wall. When this ecosystem is healthy and diverse, it actively supports L-cell function and GLP-1 production.
- When it is dysbiotic — disrupted by ultra-processed foods, antibiotic use, chronic stress, the oral contraceptive pill, or years of dietary restriction — the physical environment that L-cells depend on is damaged. The gut lining becomes permeable. Tight junctions open. Endotoxins enter systemic circulation. Inflammation rises. And L-cell signalling capacity falls further.
And then perimenopause showed up.
Declining oestrogen directly reduces insulin sensitivity. Research by Dr Roberta Brinton documents a reduction in cerebral glucose metabolism of 20–25% in some brain regions as oestrogen falls. The brain, which consumes 20% of the body's glucose despite being 2% of body weight, becomes increasingly glucose-starved. It responds by signalling urgently for more food — particularly quick-energy carbohydrates.
This is why women in perimenopause describe the food cravings and loss of satiety as sudden, surprising, and unlike anything they experienced before. The hormonal shift has compounded an already-compromised metabolic picture.
But both drivers are reversible. The L-cells are not damaged beyond repair. The gut microbiome can be rebuilt. The insulin sensitivity can be restored. The programme in this companion is designed to do all three — in the right sequence.
Why has nothing else actually worked?
The honest picture — and why action now matters.
You have almost certainly tried more than one approach. Most of them had some logic behind them. The reason none of them held is structural — and it is worth understanding precisely, so you stop wondering whether the problem was you.
Move more, eat less. You've heard this one before.
Caloric restriction lowers insulin temporarily. But it treats all calories as metabolically identical, ignores the hormonal drivers of hunger, and makes failure the patient's fault.
The central flaw: hunger is not a choice that can be overridden by willpower indefinitely. Leptin signals the brain that there is enough energy stored. Ghrelin signals the brain to eat. When these hormones are dysregulated by chronic hyperinsulinemia, hunger is a biological command — not a moral failure. The CICO model has no answer for this. It simply asks you to white-knuckle a biological reality until you cannot.
Keto worked — until it didn't.
Reducing carbohydrate lowers insulin — the core logic is sound. But severe carbohydrate restriction also starves the gut microbiome of the prebiotic fibres beneficial bacteria need. Many women see strong early results and then plateau as gut dysbiosis worsens.
When keto ends — as it does for most people, for entirely reasonable social, practical, and psychological reasons — the weight returns. Because the underlying gut architecture and L-cell function were never addressed. The body was operating on a different fuel temporarily. The metabolic engine was never repaired.
Eat protein, lift heavy. You tried that too.
Resistance training is genuinely non-negotiable. But beginning resistance training on a damaged gut means the protein cannot be properly digested and absorbed. Muscles cannot repair efficiently in a state of chronic inflammation.
Women who try this approach on an unrepaired gut often find they are eating large quantities of protein, still losing muscle, still exhausted, and still gaining fat. The intervention is correct. The sequence is missing.
The clean eating approach. Also not the full picture.
Vegetables, legumes, and diverse plant foods are genuinely anti-inflammatory and prebiotic. But many women in perimenopause cannot absorb adequate protein from plant sources. And some plant foods that are marketed as universally healthy — lentils, chickpeas, chia seeds — are high in lectins that actively damage a fragile gut lining.
Carla followed a high-fibre plant-based programme to the letter, yet the only results she saw were weight gain, joint pain, and constipation... Once we identified lectins as a major food trigger for Carla, we removed the highest lectin foods from her diet, which finally gave her gut a chance to heal.
— Dr Kirstey Holland O.M.D, This Is Perimenopause
The named programmes. Galveston. Whole30. Paleo. The one your friend swears by.
Most named programmes have a sound central principle. They fail because they are written for a population, not a person. They cannot account for your individual food triggers, your gut microbiome composition, or your hormone status.
The Galveston programme does not know that your gut cannot tolerate nightshades. Whole30 does not know that you are an endomorph for whom high-fat eating drives weight gain. No commercial programme can know this. And when the programme produces partial results — as it will for everyone whose biology does not match its assumptions — the programme is never questioned. The patient is.
And then there's the version no one talks about — the woman who isn't overweight, but is exhausted.
Using caloric restriction to maintain weight does not repair the metabolic architecture. It suppresses the symptom — food noise — through conscious effort. The moment effort relaxes, the biological drivers reassert themselves.
If you maintain your shape primarily through restriction and effort rather than genuine satiety, this companion is as much for you as it is for the woman who has more weight to lose. Your L-cells are as silenced. Your food noise is as real. Your right to metabolic repair is identical.
You've been doing something extraordinarily difficult: using willpower to perform a function your hormones were designed to perform for you. And you have been doing it for years, possibly decades. That is not failure. That is a remarkable demonstration of commitment to a system that was never going to be sustainable, because no human being can override their own biology indefinitely through willpower alone.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
So why will this be different?
Every model above was written for someone else. Not you. The average person in a clinical trial. The majority of a study population.
This programme does not ask you to conform to a population average. It asks you to discover your own data. The Heal, Seal, Repair protocol identifies your food triggers. The biomarker testing reveals your insulin picture. The reintroduction protocol tells you which foods your gut can handle.
And the sequencing ensures that each intervention has the foundation it needs to work. Probiotics do not work in a gut that has not been sealed. Resistance training does not build muscle in a body running on chronic inflammation. The sequence removes the variables that cause every other intervention to partially fail.
- A body literacy — a genuine knowing of how your specific biology works — that does not expire when the programme ends. Not maintaining the habits through ongoing effort. The habits dissolving into the fabric of how you exist.
- That is what sustainable means.
How will I actually know if this is working?
You cannot improve what you are not measuring. And measuring the wrong things — scale weight above everything — is one of the primary reasons women lose faith in programmes that are actually working.
Baseline blood markers — before you begin
Take these before Week One starts. Retest at Week 8, Week 18, and Week 24.
| Marker | What it measures | Optimal range |
|---|---|---|
| Fasting blood glucose | Snapshot of blood sugar after overnight fast | 3.9 – 4.9 mmol/L |
| CGM fasting / pre-meal glucose | Continuous glucose monitor reading | 3.9 – 4.9 mmol/L |
| CGM post-meal glucose (1–2 hr) | Body's response to a meal | Peak below 7.8 mmol/L; back to baseline within 2 hr |
| Fasting insulin | The more sensitive metabolic marker | 3 – 5 mIU/L (below 8 acceptable) |
| HOMA-IR | Calculated insulin resistance index | Below 1.0 optimal; below 1.5 acceptable |
| HbA1c | Three-month average blood glucose | Below 5.4% optimal; below 5.7% acceptable |
| hsCRP | Systemic inflammation | Below 0.7 mg/L optimal; below 1.0 acceptable |
| Triglycerides | Most direct dietary / insulin marker | Below 1.0 mmol/L optimal; below 1.7 acceptable |
| Triglyceride : HDL ratio | Single best predictor of insulin resistance | Below 1.0 optimal |
| HDL cholesterol | Rises as metabolic health improves | Above 1.5 mmol/L optimal; above 1.3 acceptable |
| Fasting leptin | Satiety hormone — often dysregulated | 4 – 8 ng/mL (lower is generally better) |
Body measurements — monthly
Take these on the same day each month, at the same time of day, before eating.
| Measurement | Notes |
|---|---|
| Waist circumference | The single most clinically important number. At the narrowest point, or at the navel. |
| Waist-to-hip ratio | Target below 0.80 for women. Divide waist by hip measurement. |
| Waist-to-height ratio | Target below 0.50. The best single predictor of metabolic risk. |
| Hips, thighs, upper arms | Track change in body composition over scale weight. |
| Grip strength | Proxy for lean muscle mass. Use a spring grip dynamometer. Test both hands. |
- The scale will not move reliably in Phase One. While your gut is healing and inflammation is reducing, water retention may actually increase temporarily. This is not failure — it is repair.
- The measurements that matter in Phase One are your gut symptoms, your energy quality, and the first shifts in satiety. The scale becomes meaningful in Phase Three.
But honestly — I just want to fit back in my jeans.
The thing the scale cannot tell you
Two women standing side by side. Identical height. Identical number on the scale. Different bone density, different muscle mass, different fat distribution, different metabolic health profile. The scale treats them identically. Clinical medicine does not.
Weight is the sum of bone, muscle, fat, fluid, and organ tissue. It cannot tell you where fat is stored — whether it sits around your organs where it drives inflammation, or subcutaneously where it is relatively inert. It cannot tell you how much muscle you have. It cannot tell you whether your waist-to-height ratio is inside or outside the metabolic risk range.
What matters clinically is proportion, composition, and the distribution of tissue — not a number on a scale that has never been calibrated to your specific body.
There is no single healthy weight. There is a range of healthy proportions — and within that range, there is room for every body type, every bone structure, every version of what vital looks like for you.
What we are building toward is not a target weight. It is a body in healthy proportion: lean around the middle, strong in the limbs, and metabolically flexible enough to run on fat as easily as on glucose. That body looks different on every woman who achieves it. That is not a flaw in the target. That is the beauty of it.
My gut needs to come first. Here's why.
The L-cells that produce your native GLP-1 live within the gut lining. You cannot wake them up without first repairing the environment they live in. This is why Phase One comes first, and why nothing else can replace it.
It wasn't the prescription that failed Rene; it was the fact that her underlying issues weren't addressed first. Her practitioner didn't first heal, seal, and repair her gut. The treatment did not follow the Hierarchy of Healing in the right order.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
The Elimination Phase — Weeks 1 to 4 (or 1 to 8 for chronic gut issues)
Remove the primary inflammatory inputs that are damaging your gut lining and feeding dysbiotic bacteria. This is not a forever list. It is a temporary removal to give the gut a chance to heal without ongoing damage.
- Gluten — the primary intestinal permeability driver in sensitive individuals. Clinical evidence shows markers of leaky gut reduce within six weeks of elimination.
- Refined sugars and ultra-processed foods — the primary fuel for dysbiotic bacteria and the primary driver of chronic hyperinsulinemia.
- Alcohol — directly damages the gut lining and suppresses immune function.
- Seed oils (vegetable, canola, sunflower, soy) — pro-inflammatory, ubiquitous in processed foods.
- Dairy (temporarily, for most) — a common inflammatory trigger during gut repair. Reintroduce in Phase Two.
- All non-starchy vegetables — in generous quantities, eaten first at every meal.
- Quality protein: fish, chicken, eggs, lean meat, legumes (if well-tolerated).
- Good fats: olive oil, avocado, coconut oil, nuts.
- Bone broth — the most concentrated gut-lining repair food available.
- Fermented foods if tolerated: natural yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut.
- Warm, cooked foods over raw — easier on a gut that is in repair mode.
The Reintroduction Phase — Weeks 5 to 12
One food group at a time. Reintroduce, observe for 72 hours, record the response. This is how your personal food triggers are identified — not from a generic 'avoid' list, but from your own body's data.
Your journal is your clinical tool during this phase. Log what you reintroduced, when, and exactly what happened. Bloating, mood changes, skin, digestion, energy. This data belongs to you permanently.
The habit that starts everything.
Every time you eat something that spikes insulin, the overnight healing window closes. The Power Cuppa extends that window — delivering functional nutrition to your gut lining without triggering an insulin response. You are feeding your gut without feeding your insulin resistance.
Three ingredients. Two minutes. Three simultaneous jobs.
- Extends the overnight fast: collagen peptides have a negligible insulin response; MCT oil is ketogenic and does not trigger insulin; prebiotic fibre feeds the microbiome without a glucose spike. Your body stays in its fasting repair state for an additional two to three hours.
- Repairs the gut lining: hydrolysed collagen peptides provide the structural protein your intestinal wall needs to rebuild tight junction integrity. GI Restore prebiotic fibre feeds the beneficial bacteria that support L-cell function.
- Fuels the brain cleanly: MCT oil converts to ketones within minutes, providing the brain with stable fuel that does not require insulin or cause a glucose spike. This is why the Power Cuppa produces the mental clarity that coffee promises and rarely delivers.
How to make it
One heaped scoop of hydrolysed collagen peptides. One scoop of GI Restore prebiotic fibre. One to two teaspoons of MCT oil powder. Add to hot water. Stir. Drink before breakfast.
Pre-mix travel portions in small resealable containers — one for your bag, one for your car, one for your desk. Hot water is available everywhere. This habit does not require a kitchen.
- Take your Power Cuppa first thing in the morning, before eating. If you normally eat breakfast immediately upon waking, delay it by 30 to 60 minutes while you have your Power Cuppa. This extension of the overnight fast is one of the most metabolically significant habits in Phase One.
One tablespoon. That's it. Here's what it actually does.
ACV improves insulin sensitivity, slows gastric emptying, and reduces post-meal glucose excursions — all three of which directly support the L-cell restoration goal of Phase One. One tablespoon. Available to everyone. Starting today.
How and when
One tablespoon of raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar in a glass of water, taken five to ten minutes before your largest meal of the day.
The acetic acid in ACV activates AMPK — the same cellular energy pathway that berberine activates — which improves how cells respond to insulin. It also slows the rate at which the stomach empties, which means glucose arrives in the bloodstream more slowly, which means a smaller insulin spike.
If the taste is unpleasant undiluted, add a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of salt. Do not take it undiluted or brush your teeth within thirty minutes of taking it.
Power is in Your Plate
Eating in the right order increases your body's own GLP-1 production by up to 38%. You do not change what you eat. You change the order. The body responds differently to the same food depending on when in the meal it arrives.
The sequence
1. Vegetables and salad first. Always. A small plate of salad, a serving of cooked greens, or any non-starchy vegetable eaten before the rest of the meal. The fibre slows the subsequent arrival of glucose and directly stimulates L-cell GLP-1 release.
2. Protein and fat second. Your main protein source and any healthy fats eaten after the vegetables. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient and a direct GLP-1 trigger — particularly foods rich in phenylalanine (beef, chicken, tofu, tuna, pinto beans, pumpkin seeds).
3. Starches and simple carbohydrates last. The potatoes, the rice, the bread, the pasta. Eaten last, after the fibre and protein have already slowed gastric emptying, they produce a significantly blunted glucose response and a stronger GLP-1 signal.
- A controlled study published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care demonstrated that the carbohydrate-last eating pattern significantly lowers post-meal glucose and insulin excursions in people with type 2 diabetes.
- A separate study showed that eating vegetables first and starches last increases native GLP-1 production by up to 38% compared with the same meal eaten in the conventional order.
- At a mixed dish meal where sequencing is not possible, add a small plate of vegetables at the start. Even partial sequencing produces a meaningful effect.
Eat slower. Walk after. Why these two things matter more than you think.
Your satiety signal takes 15 to 20 minutes to travel from your stomach to your brain. On a silenced L-cell system, it may take longer. Eating faster than the signal arrives means you consistently overeat a system that is already struggling to hear itself.
15 minutes to eat. 15 minutes to walk.
The first 15 minutes: eat slowly. Cutlery down between every bite. Chew until food is genuinely soft — roughly 20 to 30 chews per mouthful. The mechanical act of chewing solid food directly stimulates GLP-1 release via the cephalic phase of digestion. Approximately 30% of starch digestion takes place in the mouth. Food eaten in haste bypasses this entirely.
Decide the portion before you sit down. Not stop-when-full — pre-decide, because your body cannot reliably tell you in real time.
The second 15 minutes: walk gently. A published clinical study in Diabetes Care found that three 15-minute bouts of moderate post-meal walking significantly improve 24-hour glycaemic control. When muscles contract during movement, glucose transporters migrate to the cell surface and absorb glucose directly — no insulin required. This is a direct bypass of the insulin resistance driving your metabolic picture.
- At your desk: eat for 15 minutes, walk the corridor for 15 minutes.
- At home: eat for 15 minutes, walk around the block.
- At a restaurant: eat for 15 minutes, walk to the car slowly.
- This is not an exercise prescription. It is a metabolic one.
What you're taking and why — Phase One.
These are the clinical foundations of the Repair phase. Start with these before adding anything from Phase Two.
- GI Restore — prebiotic fibre and gut lining support. In your Power Cuppa daily. Non-negotiable.
- SB 5B (Saccharomyces boulardii) — the most evidence-supported probiotic for intestinal permeability. Specifically studied for endotoxemia reduction.
- Lactoferrin — antimicrobial, mucosal protective. Acts as a selective filter: hostile to pathogens, nourishing to beneficial bacteria.
- Collagen peptides (hydrolysed) — structural protein for gut lining repair. In your Power Cuppa daily.
- Hydrozyme or Peptease — digestive enzyme support. Taken with main meals, particularly important while gut healing is underway.
- Magnesium glycinate — 30 minutes before bed. Supports sleep quality, muscle repair, and cortisol regulation.
- Digestion is more regular and comfortable than at the start.
- Bloating has reduced — not necessarily absent, but noticeably less.
- You are noticing the first subtle shifts in satiety — feeling full a little earlier in meals.
- Your Power Cuppa and post-meal walking are habits, not decisions.
- Gut symptoms are substantially improved. If they are not, extend Phase One before moving forward.
- Food noise has begun to quieten — not dramatically, but noticeably.
- Energy is more stable. The afternoon crash is less reliable.
- Your body is beginning to produce measurable signals again. Trust them.
If gut symptoms are not substantially resolved by week 8, do not move to Phase Two. The foundations must hold before the next phase can work. Contact the clinic.
Time to find your trigger foods. Not a generic list — yours.
A general 'healthy eating' plan cannot tell you which specific foods are triggering inflammation in your gut. Only a systematic elimination and reintroduction protocol can do that. This is how you discover your personal food map.
The reintroduction method
One food group at a time. Reintroduce a food on Day One. Eat it again on Day Two. Observe for 72 hours. Record every response: digestion, bloating, energy, mood, skin, sleep. If a food triggers a reaction, remove it and wait five days before trying the next.
The foods most commonly identified as personal triggers in perimenopausal women:
- Gluten (wheat, rye, barley) — the most common permeability driver
- Dairy (particularly cow's milk casein)
- Nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes) — inflammatory in susceptible individuals
- High-lectin foods (lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans, peanuts) — damaging in endomorph body types particularly
- Eggs — common trigger despite being a high-quality protein
- Corn and soy — common in processed foods and often trigger gut responses
Both Carla and MaryAnne were unaware of their food triggers that worked against their unique biochemistries. When each of them eliminated those specific foods, their symptoms resolved. The way I work with women in my clinic is to identify food triggers through elimination, then reintroduce to see what works with their bodies, what works with their distinct biochemistries, and what won't trigger their systems.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
Why protein is doing more than you think.
Protein is the most satiating macronutrient and a direct GLP-1 trigger. The specific amino acid phenylalanine is the most potent dietary stimulus for L-cell GLP-1 release identified in research to date.
Your protein target
1g of protein per kilogram of ideal body weight, every day. Eaten first or early in every meal.
If you are 70kg ideally, that is 70g of protein daily. One egg provides approximately 6g. Greek yoghurt (170g) provides approximately 15g. A palm-sized piece of chicken provides approximately 25–30g. You need to be deliberate about this.
Phenylalanine-rich foods to prioritise
- Beef, chicken breast, pork — the highest concentrations
- Tuna and other firm fish
- Tofu and tempeh — if tolerated following reintroduction
- Pinto beans and other legumes — if tolerated
- Pumpkin and squash seeds — excellent addition to salads
- Greek yoghurt — if dairy has passed reintroduction
The natural compounds that turn the signal back on.
These compounds directly stimulate L-cells to produce more native GLP-1. They are Phase Two additions — they amplify a gut that has been repaired. Adding them to an unrepaired gut produces minimal effect.
- Yerba Mate tea — a high-polyphenol South American tea with documented GLP-1-stimulating effects. One to two cups daily, ideally before meals.
- Eriocitrin (concentrated lemon extract) — clinical trials show GLP-1 production increases by 17–22% after three months of daily supplementation. Standard lemon juice does not contain a therapeutic dose — a concentrated extract is required.
- Huang Lian (Coptis chinensis / berberine) — activates AMPK, the cellular energy pathway, and directly prompts the gut to release native GLP-1. Used in TCM for thousands of years for patterns that map precisely onto insulin resistance and metabolic stagnation. The most studied natural insulin-sensitising compound available.
- Shan Zha (Hawthorn) — supports lipid metabolism and digestion. In TCM, resolves the food stagnation and Phlegm-Damp accumulation that mirrors the metabolic picture we are addressing.
- In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Spleen governs the transformation of food into usable energy. When Spleen Qi is weakened by years of processed food, chronic stress, and erratic eating, the result is Dampness — bloating, fluid retention, brain fog, fatigue, and an inability to lose weight despite reasonable eating.
- Dampness maps precisely onto insulin resistance in modern metabolic science. The botanical and dietary interventions of Phase Two are doing the same clinical work in both languages: reducing insulin, restoring L-cell function, and clearing the metabolic stagnation that has been accumulating.
Your body does its best repair work when you're not eating.
Every hour your insulin stays low is an hour your body can access its fat stores and your gut can continue repairing. Time-restricted eating aligned with daylight is the most accessible, lowest-effort insulin-lowering tool available.
The practical approach
Aim to eat within a 10 to 12 hour window aligned with daylight. This means finishing your last meal by 7–8pm and having your first meal — after your Power Cuppa — at 9–10am. You are not changing what you eat. You are changing when.
The Power Cuppa extends the overnight fast without breaking it. Having it at 7am and your first solid meal at 9am gives you a 14-hour fasting window effortlessly.
- Insulin falls. Without insulin present, fat cells can release stored fat for energy.
- Autophagy activates — the cellular clean-up process that repairs damaged tissue, including gut lining.
- Growth hormone pulses, supporting muscle repair and body composition.
- The gut microbiome undergoes its own repair cycle without the constant interruption of incoming food.
I need to lift. Here's why I can't skip this one.
Muscle is your metabolic engine. It is the largest glucose-absorbing tissue in the body and the primary defence against the sarcopenic obesity pattern — losing muscle while retaining fat — that makes metabolic recovery so difficult without it.
In Phase One, walking was sufficient. Your gut was healing and intensive exercise would have diverted resources. By Phase Two, your gut foundations are stable enough to begin building muscle.
- Two resistance training sessions per week. Add a third when the habit is solid.
- Full body focus. Prioritise large muscle groups: legs, back, glutes, core.
- Progressive load: 8–12 repetitions per set at a weight that challenges you genuinely by the final two reps.
- Post-workout nutrition within 30 minutes: 25–30g of protein — a Power Cuppa plus an additional protein source.
Through our East Asian medical lens, load-bearing exercise cultivates Yang — the active, warming, metabolic fire that naturally declines in perimenopause and must be deliberately rebuilt to support long-term metabolic health.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
The question that changes your whole relationship with food.
Stress chronically elevates cortisol, which chronically elevates insulin. You cannot fully restore metabolic flexibility while living in a chronic stress state. The mind work of Phase Two is metabolic medicine, not optional self-care.
The HALT check
Before eating — and particularly when a craving arrives — pause and ask:
| H | Hungry Am I genuinely physically hungry? When did I last eat protein? |
| A | Angry — or anxious Is there an emotional charge that food has historically managed? |
| L | Lonely Is this social disconnection that food is being recruited to fill? |
| T | Tired Am I reaching for food because my energy is depleted? |
HALT is not a test to pass. It is a practice of curiosity. As L-cell function restores and hunger becomes a cleaner signal, this practice becomes easier — and eventually automatic.
- Food noise has meaningfully quietened. Not absent — but notably different in quality and frequency.
- Energy is more stable across the day. Afternoon crashes are less reliable.
- Blood sugar markers are moving: triglycerides falling, fasting insulin improving.
- At least two resistance training sessions per week are in the calendar consistently.
- Energy is stable and reliable most days.
- Sleep is restorative most nights.
- Your personal food trigger map is largely established.
- Resistance training is a non-negotiable habit.
- Satiety signals are readable and trustworthy.
See exactly what your food is doing. In real time.
You cannot build body literacy without real-time data. A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) shows you exactly how your body responds to food, sleep, stress, and movement — not in theory, but in your own biology, in real time.
Dr Kirstey uses continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) with every woman entering the Reclaim phase — not to create anxiety about numbers, but to create genuine metabolic understanding. A CGM is a small sensor that sits on the back of your upper arm for fourteen days at a time and feeds your glucose readings to your phone every few minutes.
It is the single most useful piece of self-tracking equipment a perimenopausal woman can wear. Two weeks of CGM data will teach you more about your own metabolism than years of guessing.
That seemingly healthy Thai chicken salad Cecilia was ordering? She couldn't believe it spiked her blood glucose to seven mmol/L. That moment gave Cecilia the valuable insight she needed... It's not about perfection. It's about building awareness. Once Cecilia could see the impact her food choices were having, she could make more informed choices. This is the kind of body literacy I want for every woman in Reclaim.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
What to track
- Fasting glucose upon waking — your metabolic baseline.
- Post-meal glucose (1 hour and 2 hours after eating) — your body's response to specific foods.
- Response to exercise — most women find glucose falls reliably during and after resistance training.
- Response to stress — cortisol raises glucose independently of food. This is information.
- Response to sleep quality — a poor night of sleep often produces a notable rise in fasting glucose the following morning.
Muscle is your metabolic engine. Here's how to protect it.
By Phase Three, resistance training moves from introduction to non-negotiable foundation. Muscle is the primary glucose sink. Without it, blood glucose calibration cannot be achieved regardless of what you eat.
- Three resistance training sessions per week. Progressive load — increase weight or reps every one to two weeks.
- Prioritise compound movements: squats, deadlifts, rows, presses. These recruit the largest muscle groups.
- Exercise in a fasted state when possible — this is one of the clearest tests of metabolic flexibility. If you can train without eating first and maintain energy, your body is successfully burning fat for fuel.
- Measure grip strength monthly. It is your proxy for lean muscle mass and one of the most powerful predictors of long-term health outcomes available.
Women in my clinic know they've achieved metabolic flexibility when they can fast for 12–16 hours without their energy crashing, exercise in a fasted state and still feel full of energy, and feel focused and clear-minded.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
My body runs on a clock. It's time to actually set it.
Every major hormonal system runs on a clock: cortisol, insulin, leptin, ghrelin, growth hormone, thyroid function. When the clock is disrupted, the hormonal orchestra falls out of rhythm. Resetting it is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost interventions available.
- The Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR): get outside into bright natural light within 15 to 20 minutes of waking. This single habit strengthens the CAR — the sharp morning cortisol spike that activates metabolic function for the day. Even on overcast days, outdoor light is 10 to 50 times brighter than indoor lighting.
- Darkness at night: dim lights and reduce screens in the two hours before sleep. Blue light suppresses melatonin and delays the sleep cascade your body needs for overnight repair.
- Sleep duration: 8 hours minimum. 9 to 10 hours is therapeutic during active metabolic change. Growth hormone pulses during deep sleep. Muscle repair happens during sleep. Gut lining restoration continues during sleep. This is not indulgence. It is medicine.
The day hunger becomes a signal I trust.
By Phase Three, the HALT check has been in practice for several weeks. The difference in Phase Three is what it is checking against.
In Phase One and Two, hunger signals were partially unreliable — muted by dysbiosis, confused by blood sugar fluctuations, amplified by insulin resistance. The HALT check was a discipline.
In Phase Three, as L-cell function restores and insulin patterns stabilise, hunger becomes a clean signal again. The HALT check transitions from discipline to confirmation — a brief pause to verify that what you are feeling is genuine physical hunger, before eating in response to it.
The day you realise you have done the HALT check instinctively, without thinking about it, is the day you know the protocol is working. That instinct is body literacy.
- Body composition is shifting — clothes fitting differently, waist-to-height ratio improving.
- You can fast comfortably for 12 to 16 hours without energy crashing.
- You can exercise in a fasted state.
- Fasting glucose and insulin markers are within or trending toward healthy ranges.
- Food noise is minimal or absent on most days.
- Hunger is a signal you trust.
- The habits no longer feel like effort. They have become how you live.
The clinical question at week 24 is not whether you have reached a target weight. It is whether the foundations hold independently — whether the body you have rebuilt is sustaining itself through its own restored architecture.
In Reclaim, it feels almost easy because you are at peace with your body. You've already done the hard work of Repair and Rebalance. You have restored your foundational health, creating powerful alchemy within your own body.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
Before you begin this month, sit with one question.
What would it mean for my relationship with food to be genuinely easy?
Daily Log — Month One
| Day | Food noise 1=loud 5=quiet | Satiety 1=poor 5=full | Energy 1=crash 5=steady | Digestion 1=bad 5=good | Sleep 1=poor 5=good | Notes |
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Weekly Reflections — Month One
1. What is actually driving you to begin this programme — the real reason, beneath the clinical one?
2. What does food noise feel like in your body, right now, today? Where do you feel it?
3. What has the first week felt like — physically, emotionally, practically?
Before you begin this month, sit with one question.
What have you noticed about your body that surprised you?
Daily Log — Month Two
| Day | Food noise 1=loud 5=quiet | Satiety 1=poor 5=full | Energy 1=crash 5=steady | Digestion 1=bad 5=good | Sleep 1=poor 5=good | Notes |
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Weekly Reflections — Month Two
1. How has your satiety changed since week one? Even small shifts count.
2. What has been the hardest moment so far? Not the most dramatic — the genuinely hardest.
3. Are there foods you have reintroduced that produced a response you did not expect?
Before you begin this month, sit with one question.
What is your relationship with food teaching you right now?
Daily Log — Month Three
| Day | Food noise 1=loud 5=quiet | Satiety 1=poor 5=full | Energy 1=crash 5=steady | Digestion 1=bad 5=good | Sleep 1=poor 5=good | Notes |
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Weekly Reflections — Month Three
1. Food noise at week three compared with week one — describe the difference in your own words.
2. What habits have formed without effort? What is still requiring conscious decision?
3. How is your energy quality changing?
Before you begin this month, sit with one question.
What does your body feel like when it is working with you rather than against you?
Daily Log — Month Four
| Day | Food noise 1=loud 5=quiet | Satiety 1=poor 5=full | Energy 1=crash 5=steady | Digestion 1=bad 5=good | Sleep 1=poor 5=good | Notes |
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Weekly Reflections — Month Four
1. What metabolic flexibility markers are you noticing — can you exercise longer without eating first?
2. How is your sleep this month compared with month one?
3. What have you learned about your personal food triggers?
Before you begin this month, sit with one question.
What are you building that will last beyond this programme?
Daily Log — Month Five
| Day | Food noise 1=loud 5=quiet | Satiety 1=poor 5=full | Energy 1=crash 5=steady | Digestion 1=bad 5=good | Sleep 1=poor 5=good | Notes |
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Weekly Reflections — Month Five
1. Where do you feel the biggest shift from where you started?
2. Which of the seven pillars has surprised you most?
3. What does the HALT check feel like now, compared with when you first started?
Before you begin this month, sit with one question.
If you wrote a letter to the woman who began this six months ago, what would you most want her to know?
Daily Log — Month Six
| Day | Food noise 1=loud 5=quiet | Satiety 1=poor 5=full | Energy 1=crash 5=steady | Digestion 1=bad 5=good | Sleep 1=poor 5=good | Notes |
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Weekly Reflections — Month Six
1. Your measurements from month one and month six — what is the story they tell?
2. What does metabolic flexibility mean to you now, in your own words?
3. What have you learned about your body that now belongs to you permanently?
This isn't a phase. It's a new baseline.
This is not a phase. This is a reclaimed baseline.
At the end of 24 weeks you are not finished. You are established. The gut architecture is repaired. The insulin patterns are restored. The L-cells are producing native GLP-1 again. The muscle is protecting the metabolic engine. The food triggers are known and managed. The habits are no longer habits — they are how you eat, how you move, how you sleep.
The clinical ambition of this programme is not that you maintain results through ongoing effort. It is that the results maintain themselves, because the underlying biology that produces them has been genuinely restored.
Once you step into Reclaim, it feels almost easy because you are at peace with your body. In Reclaim, you've already done the hard work. You have restored your foundational health, creating powerful alchemy within your own body — you've achieved not only metabolic flexibility but also body literacy.
— Dr Kirstey Holland, This Is Perimenopause
That alchemy belongs to you. Permanently.
What does it feel like on the other side?
This is not a weight target. These are the markers of a metabolism that has genuinely healed.
That is what we are building. Everything else is a byproduct.
Sources and References
The following peer-reviewed sources directly inform the content of this companion.
Shukla AP et al. Carbohydrate-last meal pattern lowers postprandial glucose and insulin excursions in type 2 diabetes. BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care. 2017;5(1):e000440.
Cesar TB et al. Nutraceutical Eriocitrin (Eriomin) Reduces Hyperglycemia by Increasing Glucagon-Like Peptide 1. Journal of Medicinal Food. 2022;25(11):1050-1058.
Gambero A, Ribeiro ML. The positive effects of yerba maté (Ilex paraguariensis) in obesity. Nutrients. 2015;7(2):730-750.
van der Klaauw AA et al. High protein intake stimulates postprandial GLP1 and PYY release. Obesity. 2013;21(8):1602-1607.
Müller TD et al. Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1). Molecular Metabolism. 2019;30:72-130.
Kamemoto K et al. Effect of vegetable consumption with chewing on postprandial glucose metabolism. Scientific Reports. 2024;14(1):7557.
Bikman B. Why We Get Sick. BenBella Books. 2020.
Holland K. This Is Perimenopause. 2026.
Mayer EA. The Mind-Gut Connection. Harper Wave. 2016.
Brinton RD. Estrogen-induced plasticity from cells to circuits. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2008.
Nothing looks as good as vital feels.
— Dr Kirstey Holland O.M.D