How I got here.

(Or: What Nobody Told Me About “The Pause”)

I've been obsessed with food and nutrition since I was a teenager. Not in a fun, "I love cooking" way — more in a "consulting beige scientific tables to decode what's actually in my food" way. Slightly nerdy, deeply practical, and honestly? Mostly motivated by not wanting to be fat. Body image in the 80s and 90s was... a lot. We'll leave it there.

Fast forward a few decades and I thought I had the nutrition thing reasonably figured out. Then my body had other ideas.

After a hysterectomy in my mid-forties, I had no roadmap for what came next. No periods meant no obvious signpost saying "Welcome to Perimenopause! Population: You." . So when the wheels quietly started coming off, I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at.

The crying that came from nowhere? Clearly my depression and anxiety returning. The complete loss of patience with my husband? He was annoying and didn't listen. (He is. He doesn't…But still.) The belly fat that appeared despite me not eating more? Obviously I was eating more. Obviously.

Then came the hot flushes and the penny dropped with a very loud clang.

Here's the fun part: I was living in the Middle East at the time. Information was scarce. Finding clear, practical guidance on what was actually happening in my body — what I could eat, how I could live, what might help — felt like searching for a specific grain of sand in the actual desert I was surrounded by.

I did eventually see a gynaecologist. A woman, which I thought was promising. She sent me for a mammogram, an ultrasound, and put me in stirrups for an internal exam I hadn't experienced in over a decade (no cervix = no reason, until suddenly there was a reason). After all of that, her clinical summary was delivered with the warmth of a quarterly financial report: "Breasts unremarkable. Ovaries shrunk. Vagina atrophied."

She then prescribed me a contraceptive pill more commonly used in gender-affirming care for transgender men.

That was my introduction to HRT. Welcome to the sisterhood.

It helped, to be fair. But when I returned to Australia and met my new doctor — who is genuinely brilliant and actually up to date on women's health, which turns out to matter enormously when choosing a doctor — she took one look at what I'd been prescribed and was quietly horrified. We did proper testing. I moved to estrogen gel, progesterone, a little testosterone. More testing, more tweaking. Life became recognisably normal again.

In the meantime, I went deep. Very deep. The internet rabbit hole of menopause research, podcasts, studies, experts, and lived experience became something of a part-time occupation. I read obsessively. I listened to everyone worth listening to. I connected the dots between hormones, nutrition, energy, mood, muscle, sleep, and all the other things that quietly shift during this transition.

And then I thought: other women shouldn't have to do all of this alone.

That's why The Cooks Catalyst exists. Not to replace your doctor or your dietitian, but to sit alongside you in the kitchen — practically, warmly, without the overwhelm — and help you nourish yourself through one of the most significant transitions of your life. With less effort. More knowledge. Better tools. And the occasional laugh at how spectacularly unprepared most of us are for any of this.

You deserve to feel well. Let's make that easier.

Ready to explore? Start with The Catalyst Journal