64: What If You Are Not A Problem To Fix

You ever catch your reflection and feel a split second of grief, like you’re looking at someone you don’t fully know? I’m coming to you solo and unfiltered, talking from the messy middle of it: turning 40 this year, carrying extra “fluff” after two kids, and wrestling with the gap between gratitude for my body and frustration with how unfamiliar it feels.

I open up about postpartum body changes, C-sections, weight gain, bloating, gut inflammation, and the exhausting cycle of trying to “fix” myself with diet culture shortcuts. Supplements, electrolytes, creatine, magnesium, bloat products, all the things that work great for someone else can totally backfire for me. That’s where the comparison trap hits hardest, especially when you’re surrounded by curated social media bodies and the quiet pressure to bounce back like motherhood never happened.

We also get into hormones and birth control, including how mood swings and pre-period depression can show up out of nowhere, and why I’m hoping a more localized option supports my mental health. I talk about reformer Pilates, impatience, chronic low back pain, and the bigger mindset shift I’m trying to make: learning my body instead of fighting it. I even share the part of my story that shaped all of this, my past with anorexia and bulimia, and why self-compassion isn’t optional when you’re rebuilding trust with your body.

If any of this sounds like your life, I hope you feel less alone after listening. Subscribe to Turn The Page Podcast, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to tell us what you want to hear next. What’s one thing you’re doing to meet yourself where you are right now?

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Transcript

Welcome And A Car Confession

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the friends.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Real, honest, and a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Talk about it all. So grab your favorite drink, put the kids to bed, lace up your space or whatever you need to do, and join us. We can't wait to connect with you.

Turning 40 And Feeling Unfamiliar

The Fix It Trap And Comparison

Supplements Experiments And Pilates Reality

Birth Control Shifts And Mood Swings

Social Media Pressure And Self Compassion

Eating Disorder History And Closing

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Welcome to Turn the Page Podcast. This is one of your co-hosts, Tawana Page. This is actually a solo episode today. I'm coming to you live from my car with my earphones in. So if the sound is bad, don't come for me. It's the car. I'm not a sound person or technician. Just record my phone when I need to. But before we get into today, into today's episode, I just wanted to share that I took all the supplements right before I got on here: pills, gummies, gummy vitamins. That's what I meant by gummies, gummy vitamins. I mean, I'll do an electrolyte packet later. Still working with creatine, the creatine packets. But yes, and I'll take some tonight, some more supplements tonight. But this is leading into today's very, very vulnerable episode. For those of you that know me or that don't know me, I am an 86 baby, forever millennial. Thank you. But which means if we do the math, it's 2026 this year. I will be 40 this year, the big 4-0 towards the end of the year in October. I've been stressing and thinking about this since last year when I turned 39, which is what I currently am right now. Just because I feel like 40 is so old. Like when I was younger, I thought 30 was so old, and here I am, like, you know, 39, almost 40. I don't know. It's just, it's been weighing on me. And that's slightly what this is about today. This essentially is about me not recognizing myself when I look in the mirror from a physical standpoint. Moms, you'll hear this loud and clear, and also non-moms, just women in general, when you get older. Your body just changes. I don't know if I'm in periomenopause yet. Who knows? May or may not be. Um I've had stomach issues since for as long as I can remember, since like high school. I have an inflamed stomach lining, so I take medicine for that. My low back has hurt since I was younger because of gymnastics. So I just have that, the mildly bulging disc and L5. I've been dealing with that since forever. I am in and out of physical therapy for that. I just had a PT appointment today for my low back. Just so many things. And when I look in the mirror, I don't recognize myself. And if you can see me in the car, I'm currently playing with like the temperature gauges right now because I'm nervous and I do other things when I'm nervous than actually doing the thing. But I don't recognize myself right now. After two kids, I've gained so much weight. One side I'm not happy about it because I don't love the way I look. The other side, my body and my stomach and my uterus, you know, grew and carried two beautiful, healthy baby boys, you know, at the same time, but within like three years of each other, two C-sections. That was in my early 30s, so it was 32 and then 35 when I gave birth to them. And then that year I was turning 33 and 36. But I just people can come on here and say it's like an age thing if I did it earlier. But I don't know, man. I mean, I know people who had kids like in their 20s and like they went through the same stuff like with their body, just like your body changes so like I can do a whole nother episode about that. We've done a few actually. Sheree and I have done a few episodes about like your body changing since having kids and just like getting your pink back and like just I just all the things. It's just like I'm turning 40, I don't love the way I look physically. I just like need to try to get it together, or do I? I don't know, because that's what I wanted to talk about today, which is like I've always had this mentality of like if there's something wrong, I need to fix it. So it could be like don't love the way I look. Let me try to like, you know, do diet pills or like do the shake or whatever, or fast, or like whatever. Try all these things to like fix the problem that I find myself in. But I've been thinking recently because I realized that in the past that shit does not work, like going into the mindset of, oh, you need to fix this problem that you've now found yourself in, which is your weight and just like letting yourself go. And I realize that is not the best approach to this situation. This approach is learning about my body. I've learned so much about my body over the past like two years. I've been diving into hormonal stuff and birth control effects and just like all the effects, but main thing is hormones, and I'm super bloated and like inflamed all the time, and it's just like my stomach has been acting like been having flare-ups more recently than I have in the past. Can we equate that to age? I don't know. Could we equate that to like just I don't know, I like literally do not know, but I just I do not do not love the way I look. I just look at myself and I'm just like, I just it makes me sad, frustrated, compassionate. I'm getting to the compassionate part. Not that size or like numbers matter on the scale, but when I look at myself from high school and college, I was like a whole person smaller, which makes sense because I was like in my 20s and my teens. But like now, and then like I'm in the comparison game where there I know plenty of other moms, obviously, because I'm a mom now, so it's like I have a bunch of mom friends, and just being in the company with their moms, I'm like, wow, they've had like two kids or like three kids or like more kids, same amount of kids as me, or more kids than me, and they look like they've never had a child a day in their life. So that messes with me, which I know is not fair because like if I know them personally, or if I don't, like either way, it's not fair because it's like I don't know their story, they can only know my story. Their body could be responding differently to certain things than my body responds to other things. That's another thing. It's like I get caught in that comparison. I feel like we all do, because we're like, well, if this shake worked for them, then it has to work for me. And that is not true at all, because there are plenty of things out there that work for person A that don't work for person B. And they could be like the same body type and height and all of that stuff. I feel like that's what society does to us is just like try this thing, and if it like it's gonna work, if it doesn't work, there's something wrong with you. And it's like, no, there's something wrong with your product. One and two, not everything works for everybody, like not everything is for everybody, and I just literally like have to dive that in. Like, not everything is for everybody, and I have been slowly accepting that because for some people they love a diet, they love you know, cutting back on things like food or what have you. For some people, they can't do that, maybe because they have a medical condition unrelated to like food or whatever, but just like not everything that's out there works for everybody, and I get caught in that mindset because, like, for example, um, I wanted to try magnesium. I don't ask me the name, I just know the one I'm trying now starts with the it's like magnesium and it has a G and like giltrade or something. I tried another type of magnesium like years ago, like maybe two or three years ago, and it made me dizzy. Other people have tried it and they're fine. It's just the way my body reacts to it. I've tried this one and I'm groggy as hell in the morning. So I'm trying to like figure out the best approach to that because magnesium is good for you. They mixed it with electrolytes, both of them together fucked up my stomach. Like, what? Why? Because I was gonna do like the powder to mix it in. I was like, no, you know what? I'm gonna do the single pack, just like pour it in my water and go. No. So I took away the creatine pack yesterday, tried the electrolyte, and my stomach was fine. And then I was taking some other supplements for blow day and for weight loss, and those also fucked up my stomach. So it's like I stopped taking those and my stomach is fine. It's just, but like it works for other people, so that's where I get caught into the comparison trap as well, where it's like, well, damn, it works for A, but it doesn't work for B, and like maybe I'm B. So that's extremely frustrating because why not? But I have started reforming Pilates and I love it. I want to be more like defined and like toned in my body, but I just feel like also when things take longer when you're older, and I like heard this when I was younger, but I was like, whatever, like I'm not old. But now almost 40 and like trying to lose weight is like fighting for my life. But like when I was 30, probably wouldn't probably wasn't that bad, I don't remember. But it's like now I literally feel like I'm fighting for my life every day, like just trying all the supplements, like trying all these fats and just trying everything, and it's so frustrating. I like I said, I don't recognize myself anymore physically when I look in the mirror, I get frustrated with myself, and it's just like I feel like a lot of like my extra fluff, as I call it, not fat, but extra fluff, is due to like gut resistance and like hormones and all that stuff and inflammation, and I'm gonna see a doctor about that. But it's like because I've tried all the things and like nothing is working, it's driving me insane. But I just don't like I mean I have to accept it because it is what it is. I am like this is my body, but it's like I'm in the category of people that like everything doesn't work for me, but then there's some things that do work that do wonders for me, and for other people, they can't like they can't take it. Full disclosure, I was on the birth control pill. Like for some people, that's like horrible for them because they gain weight and they're just like up and down of their moods. I didn't gain any weight when I was on birth control, I was on it for like almost 20, like probably 20 years. When I went through like different symptoms with like the different brands that I was on, like I would have my period when I wasn't supposed to, and like I've done like the every four-month thing and blah blah blah blah blah. But like when I got off of it to have kids, I felt like I was coming off of a drug. That was just the worst first week off of it was the absolute worst. Some people, when they get back on the pill, they like go crazy, like quote unquote crazy, because it's just not for them. So it has worked for me for like you know, 20 plus years. I just rationally switched the type of birth control that I'm on, and I believe that it's working better saddle back because over the past year, being on the birth control has like really fucked up my moods. Like the week before my period, I would get like super depressed and like it would come out of nowhere. And I'm like, what is going on? I've never had this before. Or like if I did, I never knew what it was. Like you should just have like lower back pain. Like, no, then it was just like super low moods, like, don't want to get out of bed, like feeling really down. And then I get my period the next week, and it's like that went away. Like the period stuff stayed, but that went away. And also, my period sometimes also changed. That was with age too and after birth. So I'm not gonna equate it fully to the pill because it is a fact and I've experienced it that after you have children, your period does change, you know, the consistency or whatever, however you want to say, but like the f the personality of your of your period changes after kids and with age as well. But this new birth control, I've switched like the form that I'm on. Um, my doctor said that it might be better for my hormones because it's localized and it's just in like one part of my body, as opposed to the pill where like it travels throughout your system to go where it needs to go. And like as of now, it has like when I first got it, I didn't get my period and I was supposed to, but like I've only had it for like three weeks. So we'll see next month when I'm due for my period if it shows, and if it's not, it's not because I'm pregnant, because I'm never doing that again. We're done, shop it's closed. Did an episode about that, but it's because of the new birth control, which would be amazing. And I hope it really does like help my mood like in a good way. But I just get super down and super like in my head about things. I used to be like this hot mama, like before I was a mama, like I'm still hot, like a hot mom, but like before kids, I was like smoking, but I was just like on fire. Like I was like, I'm still pretty now with like a little fluff in my face and like a little fluff like in my belly, and it's like I try to do all these things to make myself feel better, but I'm like, what is the root cause of all of this shit? Like it's like I'm holding on to like this fluff, like emotional, and it's just like just so many things, and I think it's just like a lot of other things might be going on in the background that might be affecting like me holding on to my fluff, but I don't want the fluff anymore. The kids are here, the boys are here, the kids are fine. Seven and four this year. Like, I don't need the fluff anymore. Like the kangaroo patches got to go. We done, we're done. Shop is closed, like you know, the house is boarded up. So I've just been really struggling with that because I look at old pictures of myself and want to cry. Because of course it was pre-kids, but I'm just like a picture of myself before kids and like a picture of me now. The person that I was in the picture pre-kids, if you told her she would look like she did like after kids and she saw the picture, she would probably cry and not have kids, which sounds awful because I'm obsessed with my children. They get on my nerves, my last nerves, but I can't imagine life without them. So, like, I just don't like that like my mind takes me there. It's like, well, if I have kids, I wouldn't like blow up like this, but not always true for some women. I mean, it's getting it's like everyone is different, and I keep reminding myself of that. But I'm like, I used to be a certain size, and then you had kids. It's like, how come I can't go back to that size? Like some people can. Um, and it looks like they never carried a child day in their life, and meanwhile, they have like six children, so that's what I struggle with. And also, which doesn't help what doesn't help this affliction that I'm going through right now is social media. I know it's like a double-edged sword. I use Instagram, we use it for the podcast, I use it for my um personal page. Like, I use it to send memes to my friends, and like just like there are good parts of it, but if you have a history of comparing yourself to other people, it is like it's the worst thing you can ever do. It's just like knock me while I'm down, why don't you? Like, Instagram is full of curated photos and like crooked looking people, and also if you know me, and if you don't know me, I'm a perfectionist, recovering perfectionist, and it's like perfectionists and you're trying to attain something that is unattainable. Perfection is unattainable, it doesn't exist. I heard somebody say they don't believe in perfection, they believe in excellence. So it's like you get up every day and you just like strive to to for excellence and just to do things like excellently. Excellently, it sounds weird. You strive to do things in like an excellent way, and you wake up and you do it again. Like, yes, there's gonna be mistakes and trials and roadblocks on the way, but it's like the excellence in that is like bouncing back and not letting those setbacks like hold you down. But like there's no such thing as perfection, and like I know this and I've known this my whole life. I am a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser, and by recovering, I mean not cured of it because it still shows up constantly, but it's like little by little, I am like just like taking it by the neck and being like, not today, Satan, not today. But it's just so hard. And just like the pressure that society puts on moms and just like to bounce, like what am I bouncing back to to before I had kids? Like, no, like obviously I wanted kids, so I had them. It's like, why would I want to bounce back to a time before, like, body-wise? Because it's like my body didn't go through growing a whole freaking human and having them come out cut out of me yet, like before kids. Like, I didn't know what was like. It's all a beautiful experience and whatnot, but it's like I just have been like trying all of these things to like fix me, and I don't need to be fixed, I just need to constantly remind myself to like meet myself wherever I am and whatever season I'm in to just meet myself there. Like, if I am in a season where I'm fluffy, like meet myself there. Like, what does my body need to like feel comfortable in this fluff? But like there might be seasons where like I want to get rid of the fluff, which I do, but like trying, trying, trying, trying and not working, that's my problem. Other problem, I'm very impatient, and I'm like, you know, I know it's unrealistic, but it's like, damn it, I've done two like PLODDES twice a week. Like, I should be toning up by now, but obviously it takes time and Pilates might take a little longer just because it's like not cardio, but it like it takes time to build, you know, leanness and muscle, and I know that. But I'm just always like, I've been trying all the things, and it's like when is my time gonna happen to love my body again? Because right now, honestly, I do not did before kids, I did a little bit like after kids, a small window, but it's like I just keep reverting back to like I don't like the way I look in the mirror, like I don't recognize myself at all, and it makes me sad because I'm just like I used to like love my body, and now I'm like, who is this? And like when I wear clothes now, I'm like, oh my gosh, like when I find church to like cover my stomach, they look like five months pregnant, and it's just and I just like hate trying things and like it not working. It's like I've wasted my time and I can't get back from trying the shit that doesn't work. But it's like I know that's all a part of experimenting and finding what works for you, but just everything. It's just like it's frustrating. But I'm still here, still kicking, still trying the things to find out what works. I mean, I've obviously found things that work, like the supplements that I do take that don't fuck up my stomach, do work, they keep me healthy. My blood pressure has always been great. Went to the doctor physical today, my blood pressure was really good today. About to get my hair done now, but it's just like I just wish that I would find more compassion for myself. But also back in the day, if you guys know and didn't know, like in high school, I had an eating disorder. So anorexia and bulimia. But I just wanted to be like a certain size so badly, and now I look back and I'm just like, okay, like for me, to me, like my size, my body type, like I looked sick, like like sick, not disgusting, but like look like I was sick and that like I needed help. Got the help that I needed back then. I don't not enter Billy Mick anymore. For a while, like the voices were still in my head, like when I was early, mid-20s, like when I passed it, like whenever I felt like fluffy, like those voices would come back in my head to like do something about it, like not eat or like eat and then like throw it up. But you know, I'm I'm past that. Those voices no longer enter my head, which is good. So I'm past that. But when I look at myself now, I'm just like, I can't believe that like I look like this today. Like, what happened? I never pictured myself to look like I do now. And it's like, it's because now I'm becoming more of a woman, so it's like I have to look like a woman now, like I've got hips. I've always had hips, but like just the fluff man on my stomach. It's just like once I get rid of that, she's back. It's on and poppin'. But it's like I'm grateful for it because it, you know, grew and carried my my, you know, healthy baby boys. But I'm like, we done. Like my youngest will be four this year. Haven't been pregnant in like four years come June. It's just like, can we get rid of the fluff? We're done here. Like, no more residents are in this home. The house is blurred up, we're done. My oldest will be seven, so it's just like, and it was back back to back because it was like three years back to back. Not back to back to back, but just once the three years, but still, I your body I think takes like minimum 18 months to recover from having a baby, like minimum. It could take longer depending on the person and their body. And then it's like my kids are three years apart, so it's like I was just coming out of that, and then I got pregnant again. It's like you go through it all over again, and like each time you have another kid, like you're older than the last time. So it's just like, oh my god, it's just torture on your body. It's like absolute torture. But I'm here, I showed up, I'm vulnerable. Sharing this with you guys just in case anyone else is going through the same thing or has gone through the same thing or will go through the same thing, whatever category you fall in. I hope this episode was helpful to you and comforting to know that you are not alone and that you know I still show up when I don't want to. I still do. But here I am being vulnerable because that is what our platform is about. Talking about the things that people don't want to talk about or just simply don't talk about. And also, my dress is covered in food. Let's talk about that. Yogurt and some grease. Like what literally in public, about to get my hair done. I look like a mess. I literally look like a dumpster fire right now, but I just laughed off like oh it's. Ignore the food stains on me. I was hungry. It's just like I can't even blame the kids because it's not from them. It's from me. But let me sign off here. I'm about to get my hair done. Yes. So don't love my body right now, but I still think I'm really pretty. I just have always thought that I just don't love my body right now, but I will get that back. Maybe, maybe not. I'm just trying to meet myself where I am right now, which is not loving my body, but also from that, like what is my body trying to tell me? What can I do to like be gentle with myself in this season? But I hope you guys are doing good. And I hope you are learning to meet yourself wherever you are in any season. It's just ebbs and flows. Not every day is gonna be good, and not every day is gonna be bad. It's just you know, you learn from both the good and the bad days. But let me sign off here, guys. I hope you have a good one. Don't forget to like, listen, subscribe, and review. And I will talk to you soon. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Alright, everyone. This was another episode of Turn the Page Podcast. Thanks for hanging out.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Don't forget to like, listen, and subscribe. And also don't forget to leave a review, please, and let us know what you thought about today's episode and all the other episodes. Thanks, guys. Talk to you soon. Bye.