Midlife Revival - The Great Hormone Heist and the Mission to Change the Ageing Narrative with Mary Boyer

Hey Mark. Hey Katie. Hey you want to do a podcast? Yeah. Sweet okay. Welcome to the

Unforget Yourself Show where we use the power of blue and the proof of science to help

you identify your blind spots and get over your own bullshit so that you can do the fucking

thing you actually want to do. Absolutely. I'm Mark. And I'm Katie. And we're the founders

of Unforget Yourself and the creators of the Unforget Yourself system. Look, being a

business owner is tough with vulnerability and with humour, we'll be sharing with you

the real stories behind the success of those brave and crazy enough to start their own

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We talk about the challenges that they faced and what they're currently dealing with in

real time on the roller coaster. Along the way, we want to show you that it's you. You are

the most important asset in your business. Yeah you are. So let's cut the bullshit and

start the show. Enjoy. Okay, hello everyone and welcome to the show. Now, just a quick

interruption to a normally scheduled episode. If you wish more people knew you, trusted

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to profitablepodcasts.com and we'll show you how this will work for you. And now onto

your scheduled podcast episode. So today we have this, Mary Boyer, a fitness and lifestyle

coach and author who helps mid-lifers build strength, confidence and healthier lives through

practical training and mindset support. Through small group and personal training along with

her writing and education work, Mary draws on more than 30 years in the fitness industry

to support women and men navigating mid-life, aging and long-term well-being. Now, Mary's journey

from a self-taught entrepreneur with no formal college education to building and sustaining a

brick and mortar business for over eight years demonstrates what resilience, discipline and belief

can create over time. And while rebranding her work as the mid-life movement and stepping into

the online space, she's on a mission to change the narrative around aging and show what's truly

possible in mid-life and beyond. Mary, welcome to the show. That was amazing. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm glad to be here. Oh, you're super welcome. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

So to kick us off, can you expand just a touch more on where you are today with your business?

And who is it that you'd love to work with?

Expand on a business. I'm excited to, as you noted in there, that I am rebranding. And that just

basically means that I am looking to, and my vision is to move into the online space more

opening up online programs, getting into the podcast, indulging into the podcast that I had

started a little while ago. And just being able to reach more men and women, specifically women,

just I'm drawn to women of a certain age, and that looks like anywhere from 30s all the way up

into the 60s and 70s, being a 58-year-old woman who's gone through cycles of life. And I've done

research. I've studied. I've got, you know, other entrepreneurs around me in the health and wellness

field who we've just come together. We've had conversation and they've helped me create my programs,

my book. I'm looking to just expand that knowledge to educate. That's what I love to do. And just

inform women that the narrative that we have in our culture is such a negative gaslighting dismissive

conversation out there across the board. I've heard it. It's been around for far too long. And

I want to help them get rid of that nonsense and understand that they do have control over a lot

of things that they don't necessarily think they do. Okay, so it's a message of empowerment. I love

that. Okay, so let's dive into that narrative because you're right. There's so much going on, so

much misinformation, so much gaslighting and people away. We need to trust ourselves. We need to trust

our body, especially women going through the natural rhythms of life. You get to trust your body

and say, something's not quite right. I mean, from my perspective, yeah, in my 40s, it is different

to put on muscle now than it was in my 20s. My body changes. Everyone's does. But women, you have

more and more things going on, more happening. There's more changes. And it's oftentimes it's dismissed

or that's just normal. So can you share the narrative that you hear and let's bust a few myths

or try and shift that perspective if that sounds good? Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I could talk

on this forever. And in my book that I wrote the Great Hormone Heist little plug there, I walk

the community through the struggles that I had because not only was I in denial, but

anytime that I ever had a conversation with a doctor, everything was dismissed or I was just

told that it was all in my head that you're too healthy to have these problems. And oh, well,

here's a pill. Here's medication. It sounds like you have anxiety and maybe you're depressed and

maybe you need this that. And I kept hearing this same conversation from my women clients that would

come in and we would sit down and go through our consultation and let me know what's going on in

your world and your health. And every last one of them, leaving their 30s, going through their 40s

and other 50s, were struggling with that same dismissive gaslighting conversation where I'm going

to my physician. I'm telling them how I feel. They're writing me prescriptions or they're telling me

it's in my head. And that's the dance that we all hear. And it's been the same conversation

or, you know, you look back in history. And when women are going into that stage of life, you

know, well, we're marked as crazy or psycho. Then we need to be on those medications. And

then I come to uncover, you know, as I go down more rabbit holes and I do more research and talk

to more people across the board. Unfortunately, in America, I'm not sure, you know, in other

parts of the world, but our doctors, our gynecologists don't even have real education put in front

of them to understand menopause and the cycle and to be able to talk to their patients about what

truly is going on. And I was just floored by that. I'm like, wait a minute. So you're, I'm going to

you, not only for, you know, reproductive years, but now I'm going to you for midlife years,

and you really don't have any education other than maybe what you're going through,

but you're probably going to dismiss it too and just think that you need to be medicated or whatever.

And I was, I was just thrown by that, right? So that made sense to me in the beginning why

every last doctor that I saw, whether it was a female or a male, just looked at me like I was

a little crazy. Like, I don't understand what you're going to. And for me, with a lot of my

clients too, nine times out of 10 because I am, I'm healthy and I'm fit and I look like I

lift weights, I would walk in and immediately be dismissed of anything that I just told them

because they're looking me up and down and judging me based off of how I look.

So that was frustrating. And I was hearing that same thing from my clients.

Mary, pause that right there. I think that's a very interesting point. Someone like yourself

takes very good care of yourself. So on the outside, you can seal this, but that has nothing to do

with the hormones and how you feel on the inside. So I've not heard it from that perspective before

to have, oh, look at you, you'll find that is that's next level dismissive. And maybe it's

they only have a certain amount of time with you or have a certain amount of education. So there's

there's there's reasons for this. It's such a shame that it happens. So let's let's talk about

your book. I mean, the great hormone ice. What a great title, by the way, I love that. Tell me more

about what this is about and and what readers will get from this. You know, I started writing it

when I decided to not be in denial anymore that I was joining the ranks of my peers and

the symptoms were real. And I couldn't, you know, I couldn't be Jim Mary and get away with it, right?

So for me, just years ago, I fell in love with writing. I started journaling shortly after

my divorce that kind of helped get through a lot of things in life. And I just fell in love with

writing. And so with the help of another friend who's an amazing author, I just started putting

pen to paper and just started writing my journey as a woman at this age and going through this

stage of life and just putting down the stories and, you know, what was happening when I was having

the hot flashes and what was happening with the insomnia and what was happening, battling, you know,

that mental dysfunction that happens in one minute, I love you. Next minute, I want to beat

somebody up and and and all things. I just started writing it out to see what the heck was going on

with myself. Because again, like I said, the few doctors that I saw just literally dismissed it

because of how I looked. I mean, I was having heart palpitations. I went to go see a cardiologist,

he completely dismissed me, gave me some random, you know, diagnosis of a heart thing, which that

wasn't true. You know, insomnia, I had met everything else, just became drugs. They wanted to put me

on blood medication, blood pressure medication, all based off of those things. But nobody,

none of them wanted, not one of them, including gynecologists, ever looked at me and said,

oh, wait, how will for you? You know, maybe the way it sounds, these symptoms sound maybe like

you're in Perry, Menopause, not one time in those five years. Did they ever ask me that question?

Ever. So I started writing everything down and just then just was loving it because what I

have done for women is take them through this journey of taking all of the symptoms that are

the typical symptoms that most go through. There's a ton of them. But I took the most typical ones,

the hot flashes, the insomnia, the heart palpitations, the anxieties, you know, the panic attacks,

the restless, all that kind of stuff. So what I did is I started with a couple of stories that

happened to me with each one of those symptoms. And I write it in a, you know, if anybody knows me,

I'm very, you know, I'm a Southern girl. I grew up on a farm in a single wide trailer with a lot of

boy, you know, cousins, so a little bit of a trucker's mouth. But I have a, you know, a theme going

through the book because I want the women to know just because I'm a professional in this business

that I can relate, even though I didn't want to be relatable for a long time and I was in denial.

So I give them stories that they can go, oh God, yeah, that happened to me. And then I take a

section where I'm giving them the science of what I've uncovered through research, through the

likes of a good friend of mine who is a nurse practitioner in a functional med. And then I gave them

that. And then I went to another story and then another science to back it up. And just basically

it was for me first and foremost to just rest easier with this cycle of life. Have some fun with

it if I could. And then be able to share with other women that, hey, I know it's going to be a

rough journey, but it doesn't have to be. We don't have to fall victim to the narrative that's

out there. We don't have to throw our hands up at 45 and go, oh, well, I'm never going to be fit

again. And I'm just going to, you know, have saggy skin and never sleep and yaddy, yaddy, yadda.

So kind of the start of it. Well, I love this with all these, these quests, these missions.

There's a personal story behind it. And I love that you're like, I was in denial. And there's

that hold on. That's whilst as hard as it was for you, there is this is this is the gift that came

from that. So I know it must have been tough, but to go through this experience and now be able to

put pen to paper and share this with more and more and more women. What selfishly, what's

it like for you as you get these messages as people read this, as people reach out to you for

for personal help? What, what, what do you love to see happen for those women?

Well, I love, I love getting the conversations, whether it's in person for my clients or from,

you know, just people throwing me a conversation in my inbox that they're listening and that

through them reading the book and understanding that they do have control. You do have control

over what is going on in your body. And that let me help you. Let me walk you through

a few steps that it's going to take. It doesn't have to take an on a money. You don't have to

spend all this time in the kitchen. You don't have to spend all this time in the gym, but if we just

can get rap change our mindset and rap it around the fact that you do have control and that you can

become fit and healthy and sexy. You know, that was the other thing too. It's like the more women that I

met, the internal conversation that they have with themselves. You know, I'm like, hey,

Jan, you know, how many times a day do you tell yourself that you that you actually love yourself?

Oh, God. I don't love myself. And I was there too. But if I don't, if I don't love who I am,

and if I can't say that to myself, how am I going to be better for my family? How am I going to be

better at my job and my kids and all those things? And I used to think that it was, you know, like a

wonky thing, but it's so true. I talk about that a lot. But for me, seeing them open up their mind

and make the choice to change that narrative and go, you know, what I do have control.

I can change the way I am doing my lifestyle. I can change a few habits. I can find a different

practitioner, because then that's another thing, educating women on the difference between

Western medicine and functional med. And there's nothing, and there's nothing against Western

medicine. You know, it's great and catastrophic ways and technology has gone in so many amazing

directions. But at the end of the day, if you're going to be dismissed and they're not going to

truly listen to you to help you get to the root cause, then we got to go elsewhere. You know,

yeah. Again, the story of empowerment is you can make the right decision. You can control this.

There are changes that are happening, but find the support, the people that work for you.

I think that gives hope. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, tell me about this shift for you,

because I'll see this whole conversation, if I was been about transition and change,

and with you yourself, now as you reach more of the online community, as you reach more and more

people, your reach has gone so much further as an author as well. What's it like for you as

as you're shifting your business model as things are changing? Because there's a lot that goes into

this. Oh, yeah. Yes, there is. Yeah, there is a lot to go into it. And it's, you know, it could be

scary at times. And for me, I love change. I don't know why that is. You know, so I feel like so

many people, especially women are afraid of change. But I just get jazzed and excited to look

to doing and sharing something new. So, so this whole process of going from one named

business that is truly a part of who I am. I spent a lot. I spent eight years building and crafting

staff and, you know, a brick and mortar business and a way that I program and a way that I interact

with my members. And I love that. And that's still a part of who I am. But because I love to,

you know, think about the future. And I love to, you know, create this whole middle-life movement

is just my calling. And I just want to be in that space with women a little bit more. I want to,

like you said, empower them. It makes, because it does. It makes me sad when I come across women

that are just not happy with the way things are going. Not just with their physical body, but

everything else. And it makes me sad. I'm like, no, give me your hand. Like, let me take your hand

and let's, let's go. Like, you know, I, let me help you. So I've just always had that, I guess,

as my nature. But that's where I'm jazzed to go. What was it like when she wrote that this was

your calling that it may look like, you know, in hindsight now, it was always leading to this.

But that moment where you were like, okay, I'm making a decision. Yes, this is what I'm doing. What was that like?

Um, you mean like the aha moment of when I made the full decision to just, for some people,

it was, it's maybe one moment. There was like big light bulb and, and, and lightning. And yes,

there's that other people. It's like a slow burn. It's just a natural progression. What was it for you?

Well, I mean, I would have to say that it started as I was finishing up the book last year.

Uh, getting the publishing going and, and doing all those things. And I've been working really hard

on listening to the guts, you know, how they say that intuition. Um, and I just felt and prayed on it

that this, not just the name, but it just needed to carry over. And it was just the moment after I

wrapped up that book and I just sat there and I was like, yeah, I feel like this is where I need

to be. And it was, you know, it was exciting, but I was excited for just everything. For the change,

certain other personal things in my life were shifting. Um, and,

which were maybe not as pleasant. But, um, I don't know, I just, it was, it was probably more at that

moment as I was wrapping up that book because at that moment, I could also see so many more

additions coming out, which this particular book is the foundation of the midlife movement.

So for me, it's now I'm going to create a series of books from this beginning and go a little

bit more into depth of certain things that had to do with Perry Menopause that are doing with,

you know, 60s around the corner. What is that going to look like? You know, that

frightens me in some aspects, but I'm kind of jazzed about being able to share what I know

with the women to move into that decade and how we can be strong and successful and all those

things. So I don't know, I don't know if I answered you, but I tried. Well, I think it sounds

like you're also, it's almost like a documentation of as you go through because with a lot of business,

it's not really a one and done. There's always an evolution with you, you're, you're obviously,

we're all aging. We're all going through different changes. So to, to see this from a new perspective,

from that lens, you almost get to enjoy the journey even more by, okay, here's what's coming up,

here's what happens. You have the tools, the tactics, the understanding, but also the foresight to

know that I may not know the next chapter and that's okay because you set the foundation for that.

So tell me about the ex, maybe the excitement. Where's all this going for you? What are you most excited

about? Meeting more women, meeting more women and getting to share just my experiences with them,

educate them, like I said, on letting them know how much control they really do have

and that change and that change is going to be a good thing, glaking them up to all that.

Okay, let's, can we still be done on that? Because I think I said in the last episode,

we spoke about change and that change is hard as a great book, change or die. I forget the author

right now, but it was such a great book. It really goes into detail why as human beings we struggle to

make a, a big change in our life, even though there's a dramatic financial or health or relational

issue, it's embedded into our DNA. It's so tough. You just said that change can be a good thing.

Can you please qualify that statement? So how, from your perspective, so we can all shift up

our thoughts on this a little bit? Where and how can change be good?

Well, I'm going to start by saying that I haven't always looked at change in a positive.

You know, I think for most people, especially as we get into our adult life, it becomes really

easy to get comfortable in our, in our lifestyles and even when things are not going well,

and we know that we should shift and make a change, but that fear just sits there and talks to

us on the one shoulder. And you know, that just takes a hold of us. And we know what we should do.

We know what we want to do, but we just stay in that path. And then it becomes the path of regret

ultimately. But I've gone through a lot of personal challenges, not to say that it was any more

than anybody else, just if I'm talking solely about myself from some challenges that I think I

wrote to you guys and, you know, coming out of school, you know, being told and just having a

narrative around me that I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't going to be able to accomplish this,

that didn't go to college, spent too many years in my adult life believing that narrative around me.

So to change out of that, to have any strength behind me to think that I could

jump into fulfilling what I had early on, interestingly enough, was an entrepreneurial

spirited mindset from like high school I could remember, well, why would I want to go work for

somebody else? When I can create this or I can do this, but then it just kept getting squashed

and squashed and you don't have this and that and whatever and I let that, you know, be, but

then going through a divorce and, you know, there's really no divorce that ever is, I think, a happy

divorce. But then finding in that moment, that's probably going to be the moment that I realized when

I was in that house alone with the three girls thinking that 18 years of marriage that when I gave

my spouse the opportunity to take care of the finances and I said, I'm going to do everything else

and I held true to my word to find out that that was not being held true to, to basically go,

oh god, if I don't make a change right now, if I don't do something and step up to the plate,

what's going to happen to me and the girls? And it just, in all of a sudden,

everything that I ever thought of doing back in my early days, I was like, I got to do this,

and if I don't do this, what's going to happen? And all of a sudden, here I start moving forward

and I'm changing and I'm allowing myself to talk about these entrepreneurial ship things and

finding supportive people and like-minded people and getting behind them and starting to just change

my attitude and change my outlook and dump the conversation that was around me about what I

couldn't do and believe in myself that I could and then all of a sudden my fouries went through

and here I am and I'm meeting people like-minded, I'm meeting as somebody who has supported me

in terms of you should be doing everything that you ever said you could do and then some

and so yeah, I mean that's pretty much when the whole excitement started to happen behind the change.

Well, I think you're wrapping up in a big, big beautiful bow because we started this

episode talking about the false narrative and now you've done it again that you know that you

spend too long believing that false narrative and when you came through this, yes, through necessity,

but you could see how this changes, how it evolves and how it was just holding you back. So

I love how this change shifts in the narrative, empowering yourself is the core message here. It's

fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I mean it's really what you know when I say that people

you know what you see is what you get it is the honest of God truth. I have walked through my

own fitness journey, my own health journey, my own journey as an entrepreneur, you know authentically

giving everyone that I meet. This is who I am. I don't mind sharing any part of what I've gone

through. I think that it's important for people to understand that owning a business is not all

bells and whistles because it's about that much especially in this industry and that you have to

just be real and people have to know that it's hard work. I mean the grind is hard. I never one time

denied that. I spent so much time grinding 24-7. I sacrificed seeing my three girls for a long time

but as young adults and women in their late 20s and 30s, they respect it now. So I've given

also them a little bit more confidence and empowerment as a young woman coming up.

So yeah, I mean just what you see and what I've been through is all of what I'm trying to

put into the midlife movement and share those experiences to help empower women.

I love that. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. So look for those people that want to know more about you

and the amazing work that you do. How can they reach out? How can I find you?

If I'm here right now, if everybody can hold tight but I do have a website,

it's midlife with the hyphen revival. I have to look revival.com because it's new.

So it is up and coming. I am working on it day-to-day. I have some Instagrams if you just type in

Mary Boyer. I think it's MK, Midlife Coach. You can definitely go to Amazon. I have five books

that are published there. My most recent one, The Great Hormone High. So if you think everybody

will love, I've got some tracking books and things of that nature that have to do with my fitness

business. But yeah, right now that's where I would love to meet the community. Fantastic.

Well, everyone, if you're curious or think it's just amazing, go to midlifehyphenrevival.com

and it's The Great Hormone High. Grab that book. Let us know what you think and then reach out to Mary.

And if you want, start the conversation. But again, Mary, thank you so, so much for this. This

has been so much fun. Yes, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Oh, you're welcome.

Hey, Katie. Yeah, Mark. Wanna do an outro? I sure do. Sweet. Hey, thank you so, so much for

listening and making it to the end. Yay, you. So what happens next? We ask them the things that

podcasts are supposed to ask at the end of an episode. Can you please rate, review, download?

Subscribe. Yeah. But why is it important? Because that's how our podcast gets noticed.

Some people find us. It is. And we want all their earballs. All the earballs, all over place.

We do. Nice. Yeah. So please do all those things. We'll be ever so grateful.

And then more people here, your beautiful voice. Oh, yeah. See you next time. Bye.