From Hard Worker to High Performer, Why Nutrition Is The Missing Link. How eating for abundance is now the unapologetic standard for women 35+
It was 3 days before my daughter’s 5th birthday, I didn’t know if I would make it. I’d been admitted to ICU and was in isolation.
As I stared at my reflection in my phone’s camera, my body hooked up to tubes and wires, I knew something had to change.
Have you ever had a moment in life where you come face to face with yourself, knowing you were literally hanging off a cliff with your health, business or finances, there I was with all 3.
I had to make a conscious choice.
My body couldn´t keep up with my ambition.
What I didn’t know then and what I know now is this, and it’s something we see with the high achieving women we work with.
How we do one thing is how we do everything. The same woman who wears achievement as a badge of honour will set her standards in all areas so high that sometimes her superpowers are also her kryptonite.
The desire to achieve, to succeed, to do more, will also subconsciously seek out the most heart racing workout to burn maximum calories paired with the latest diet to get the most dramatic results.
Struggle becomes confused as safety, your nervous system and subconscious learn to seek pain as validation, when pressure and struggle feel like achievement, you’re not building yourself, you’re breaking yourself down. On the surface it can feel like “discipline”.
We’ve learned that we must sacrifice in order to be successful. Over time your psyche becomes that of a woman who is an expert at seeking out the uphill battles that proves her worth by overcoming them.
“When pressure and struggle feel like achievement, you’re not building yourself, you’re breaking yourself.”
However, the difference with high performance isn’t how many hours you work, or the struggles you face, it’s the self mastery of how you align and manage your energy. To break glass ceilings without ending up in burnout.
Knowing your worth isn’t about your stripe balance, your title or how much you can endure. It’s about actively choosing standards from a place of knowing you have nothing to prove, that you deserve to thrive, that you are enough, and recognising that those choices start with how you show up and nourish yourself.
THE MYTHS WE WERE TOLD:
If you’ve been around since before the 1980´s, you’ve been sold the same lies about health. Eat less. Move more. Low fat is healthy. If it isn’t hard, it isn’t worth it.
For women over 40, this messaging hasn’t just been unhelpful. It´s been actively destructive.
We work with women who have been dieting since their early teens. Some since childhood. Women who have wasted years to calorie restriction, to overexercising, to earning and un-earning their food, and who get to their 40s with slowing metabolisms, worsening hormonal symptoms, brain fog, exhaustion, and a growing frustration that no matter what they do, nothing seems to work the way it used to.
So they do more, try harder, eat even less.
The fatigue and lack of energy impacts everything from their body to their confidence to their cognitive ability to their performance in business. Because ambition needs fuel and we simply cannot run on empty.
And this is the big lesson in all of this.
I came out of that hospital bed and changed everything.
From running and slogging through bootcamps on zero calories, low carb and no fat, to eating in abundance and training for strength. Not only did I recover, but I went on to build a seven figure business off of the back of the unapologetic confidence that came from working smarter with an energy first mentality.
Here’s what I learned, and what Catherine, our Certified Hormone Specialist and Behavioral Psychology Coach, and I reinforce with every single client we work with:
Top performers don’t separate their health from their success. They use it as leverage. Your ideal high-ticket client invests in who you are being, your energy, your presence, your capacity to deliver on your promises.
“Your body is not separate from your success. It is the asset everything else is built on.”
And if you’re running on empty, they feel it.
Your body is not separate from your success. It´s the foundation of it.
Because a well fuelled, unapologetic woman, is a dangerous woman.
WHAT YOUR BODY IS ACTUALLY DOING:
When you chronically restrict calories on top of the high cortisol load of running a business, a family, and a life, your body fights back.
Elevated cortisol can cause an increase in weight. Particularly around the middle. And in perimenopause, with declining levels of estrogen and progesterone, this effect is amplified.
Calorie restriction itself is a physiological stressor. Dieting further increases cortisol, which can accelerate muscle loss, slows metabolism, impairs cognitive function and disrupts the hormonal balance that women navigating perimenopause are already working hard to maintain.
In short, it depletes the very energy that your business and your life run on. HERE´S THE FIX
For decades, dietary fat was the villain. The logic seemed reasonable enough. Fat has nine calories per gram, more than twice the amount of protein or carbohydrates, so slash the fat to slash the calories. Calorie deficit equals fat loss.
What that guidance missed entirely is that fat is not just a calorie source. It is the raw material from which your hormones are made.
Estrogen. Progesterone. Testosterone. Your sex hormones cannot be manufactured in your body without dietary fat. And as women move through perimenopause, already navigating a drop in these hormones, a low-fat diet is quite literally the opposite of what you need.
You’ll also find it harder to lose body fat, because without adequate fat intake and metabolic flexibility, the body becomes carb-dependent, insulin sensitivity drops, and appetite becomes harder to regulate.
TRY THIS INSTEAD
1. Eat fat to supercharge your mood
Olive oil, avocado, oily fish, eggs, nuts, seeds. Fats support hormone production, reduce inflammation, improve brain function, and teach your body to use fat as fuel.
2. Protein at each meal.
Protein stabilises blood sugar, eliminates cravings, and provides zinc and iron that support testosterone production in women over 40 essential for lean muscle mass.
3. Eat breakfast.
Cortisol peaks first thing in the morning. Running on coffee and adrenaline until midday keeps your body in full stress mode. Eating within an hour of waking signals to your brain and nervous system, there is enough. We’re safe.
4. Time your carbohydrates.
Complex carbohydrates around training and in the evening support sleep, recovery, and hormonal regulation. For perimenopausal women, eliminating them entirely can actively worsen the very symptoms you’re trying to fix.
5. Do the identity work
Nutrition knowledge is not what most women are missing. What they are missing is the identity work that makes the knowledge connect on a deep emotional and subconscious level.
The most powerful thing a high-achieving woman can do for her health is decide, from a place of genuine self-knowledge, that she deserves to be fuelled. That nourishment is not a reward. Choosing the more supportive path is not weakness, it´s high performance.
THE TRANSFORMATION
The shift from hard worker to high performer isn’t about doing less.
It’s about energy management, knowing when to push and when to pull back, not once in a blue moon, but intentionally and strategically, regulating your body and nervous system daily, with nourishment your body thrives on.
What it comes down to is this:
Your health and your body is the asset from which everything else flows. A high performer knows that. And she fuels accordingly.
Hustle ‘N’ Health is an online Health, Hormones & High Performance coaching business for ambitious, high-achieving women 40+ who want time-saving strategies to strengthen their bodies, minds, and businesses to elevate both health and wealth.
Co-founded by Natalie Guyan, a TEDx speaker, MNU Nutritionist, Master Personal Trainer, and Behaviour Change Specialist with 21+ years in business, and Catherine Lynch, B.A., M.A., a Certified Hormone Specialist, Behavioural Psychology Coach, and former professional athlete.
Together, they deliver whole-woman coaching for those ready to shift from hard worker to high performer.
FREE: The Hustle ‘N’ Health Nutrition & Supplements Guide for Women 40+ scan the QR code. (let me know if you would like us to generate the code). This is the hyperlink to the lead magnet https://hustlenhealth.com/free-toolkit/
