A real teacher in the room...
From the other side of perimenopause, and inside the rooms where the guidelines are taught.I'm Catharine. Certified Menopause Coaching Specialist and Nutrition + Strength Coach. I teach women the foundations that carry them through peri, meno, and post, scaled to the body and week they're actually in.
New here, not sure where to start? Take the quiz.
There is no shortage of menopause transition information out there. There is a flood of it. What is missing is someone who sits with a real woman's body and her real life and translates which foundations actually meet her, in the body and week she's actually in. That is the work I do as a menopause transition coach, and this is how I got here.
Three doctors told me I was fine. I wasn't.
One morning, I couldn't move. Not physically. I was 42, lying in bed after another wrecked night of sweats, and I just could not get up.
I'd been a nutrition and personal training coach for years at that point, mom of three, and I knew every "perfect" rule there was because I taught them for a living. By every visible measure, I was the woman who had it figured out. And I felt like a ghost of the person I used to be.
I had gained 30 pounds without really changing what I was doing. My energy was gone. My moods swung in ways I didn't recognise. The occasional Friday glass of wine had quietly become most nights, and the pyjamas that had been loose for years were suddenly tight and sticky from the night sweats. I'd wake up at 3am and lie there for hours, feeling something I didn't have a name for.
So I went to the doctor. Then a second one when the first waved me off. Then a third when the second ran one blood panel and told me everything looked great. All three said I was fine.
Fine? How could I be fine? I wasn't "me" any more.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I had an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured. I was 42. My periods had been all over the place for a year and a half, and pregnancy hadn't been on anyone's radar, mine or any doctor's. The emergency surgery saved my life. It also sharpened something I hadn't been able to put words to. My body was doing things nobody around me was tracking, professionally or otherwise, and I was on my own with figuring it out.
What kept me moving was that I kept looking. Some part of me knew this was hormonal, I just couldn't get anyone to confirm it. Eventually I found a doctor who did. He was an older male doctor, of all people, and he listened. Then he said, "this is perimenopause, and we can't fix it because you aren't broken, but we can help you feel a lot better while you go through it."
The next piece was hormone therapy, mostly to give me back my sleep. By that point I was walking around my house from 2am onward most nights, either dripping in sweat or wired with anxiety. Once the night sweats settled and the sleep started coming back, the dark clouds began to lift. My energy slowly returned. The fog cleared enough that I could think again.
And once I could think again, I wanted to understand all of it. I went deep. Online menopause certifications, layered on top of the nutrition and training credentials I already had. As I worked through the coursework, I started to see something I hadn't quite clocked from inside my own crash.
The information itself wasn't the problem. There was plenty of it. What was actually missing was the translation layer. The part where someone sits with a real woman's symptoms and her real life and helps her figure out which information actually applies to her. Once I had the science to compare it against, the noise was suddenly impossible to miss. Myths, misinformation, products being sold to "fix" women who weren't broken, conflicting advice in every direction.
What's missing is a real teacher in the room. Someone who notices you and sits with what's actually happening in your specific body before they hand you a plan. That's the work I do now.
From the woman in the dark to the woman in the rooms.
I have been the woman suffering and asking what the f is happening to my body, with no one in the room who could answer. That part isn't background. That is the spine of everything I do.
Now I sit in the rooms where physicians debate the guidelines. The 2026 CMS Menopause Masterclass with the Canadian Menopause Society. IMPART Levels 1 and 2. Continuing education in nutrition, training, and menopause-specific care. I sit in those rooms, I read the studies the physicians read, and I watch the gap between what gets debated at the guideline level and what reaches women in their kitchens at 3am.
The work is the translation. I hold the clinical evidence in one hand, the nutrition and strength evidence in the other, and the lived experience of having been the woman in the dark across both. I translate between them for women who do not have time to read 200 studies and do not have the room I had to find a fourth doctor.
The foundations. Scaled to the week you're actually in.
As a menopause transition coach, I teach women the foundations that carry them across peri, meno, and post. The pieces worth working on this week, in the body and life you actually have. The result is a way of living that builds steady health benefits across the years, less noise to wade through, and the language to walk into your doctor's office knowing what to ask for.
One framework, three foundations. Every piece of teaching, every podcast, every 1:1 session maps to one of them. Imperfect consistency, kept up across the years, is what builds the body and life you want.
Nourish
The nutrition foundations. The math underneath what you eat. Tracking as a tool for awareness, not as a forever rule. A way to fuel that fits a real, busy week.
Move
The training foundations. Strength, cardio, walking, and recovery, scaled through symptoms and life seasons.
Flourish
The mindset and long-game pieces. Planning, sleep, stress, doctor advocacy, and the community that keeps you in the work through grief, moves, training cycles, and life transitions.
The official version, plainly stated.
Certified Menopause Coaching Specialist · NASM-CNC · NASM-CPT · PN Level 1 · GGS-1 · Mindset Coaching Certified L2 · NASM Weight Loss Specialist · CMS Masterclass (2026) · International Menopause Society — IMPART L1+2 · Founder, The Meno Collective
Menopause transition coach. Twelve years currently in nutrition coaching and personal training, with earlier health-industry roles in my 20s as an eating disorder counsellor and supplement-store owner. When my own perimenopause hit and the doctors waved me off, I went looking. Online menopause-specific certifications and coursework, layered on top of the nutrition and training credentials I already had. Not a formal degree. Coursework, study, ongoing learning, and lived experience from the other side of it.
A log home, a lake, two malamutes, and one opinionated cat.
I'm 53, post-menopause, and live in British Columbia. I have three kids, all in their early twenties, and a husband I've been building this life with for a long time. From our log home on a pristine Canadian lake, I live what I teach. You'll find me on mountain trails, biking with my husband, hiking with our malamutes Zorro and Chilko, or paddling at dawn. Whiskey, the cat who actually runs the household, keeps me grounded.
I still put it all in practice, every day, post-menopause. The foundations didn't stop being the foundations when my last period did.
Three clean routes.
Depending on where you are, here is how the work meets you.
Not sure what's happening
Start with the quiz. Three minutes, private, and gives you a clearer sense of where you might be in the transition and what to actually look at next.
Take the quizWant the live class
The Perimenopause Navigator is my evergreen 8-week program. A menopause transition coach in the room, week by week. Weekly lesson, one weekly Live Room on Google Meet (alternating time slots). A real teacher in the room.
See the NavigatorWant execution support
1:1 nutrition and training coaching through Macros Inc. The layer most plans skip, the part where you actually keep what you build when the week falls apart.
Work with me 1:1Less noise. Steady work. Back to yourself.
If that lands, the next step is the Navigator. Eight weeks, live, with a real teacher in the room.
See the NavigatorQuestions? iam@catharineadams.com