S6: EP 3: burnout & the midlife bloat: constpation cures part ii
You’re a midlife woman who has navigated career peaks, raised a family, managed finances, and perhaps even cared for aging parents.
You’ve done it all with grace—yet lately, your body is staging a revolt. You're tired, overwhelmed, and constipated, yet no amount of water, fiber, or expensive tests seem to help. On top of that you’re constantly getting infections and illnesses that you can’t seem to shake.
If you’re nodding along—and especially if you’ve built a life with structure, high expectations, and impeccable attention to detail—this post is for you.
Stress, Burnout & Digestion: The Hidden Truth
Midlife women like you often live at the perfect storm of stress: demanding careers, caregiving roles, household responsibilities, and hormonal upheaval. In short, whether you feel stressed or not, your nervous system is overloaded—your brain is in “survival mode” all the time.
When you push through your day without giving yourself permission to rest, hydrate, or even use the bathroom, your body suffers.
Constipation, bloating, brain fog, migraines, emotional overwhelm…these aren’t random symptoms. They are signals from your body screaming: “Enough is enough.”
You’ve been ignoring your body’s needs—and now, your body is forced to respond, and it’s doing so loudly.
Recognizing the “Survival Mode” Gut Disruptors
Ask yourself: Do you experience…
Unexpected mood shifts, tears, or irritability—even though you’re always wearing the calm, collected mask?
Midnight wake-ups at 2–4 a.m., often with anxiety and trouble falling back to sleep?
Constant bloating, despite eating “clean”?
Reactivity to almost everything you eat—even things that used to feel safe?
Physical tension—tight neck, jaw, shoulders—that no massage seems to release?
These are not “normal.” These are red flags that your system is chronically overstressed, and your gut is suffering.
How Stress Hijacks Your Digestive System
Your digestive system doesn’t operate in isolation. It’s under the constant direction of your nervous system. In fact, your nervous system literally runs digestion, so anything that throws it off (ie stress, bad sleep, pushing beyond your limits), will mess with your digestion.
Stress hormones slow digestion. That means food stays longer in your gut, fermenting, and contributing to constipation.
Microbiome imbalances take hold. Stress reduces beneficial bacteria (like Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium), allowing opportunistic microbes to grow and disrupt motility.
Stress causes cravings and blood sugar crashes: On top of poor sleep, this triggers intense cravings and further suppresses digestion.
Let me be crystal clear: no diet, no supplement, no pill will fix this alone. The solution is deeper—starting with your lifestyle.
Sleep: The Underestimated bloat-buster and Constipation Savior
When your cortisol rhythm is off—waking at 3 a.m., crashing during the day— your digestion simply won’t work. Your body conserves all energy to run from danger.
In midlife, hormonal shifts make sleep harder, but WHY you’re waking up at 3 am with anxiety is often rooted in overwhelm and a nervous system that just can’t relax. Without rest, you fuel more stress, which worsens constipation, which labels you stressed… vicious cycle.
Boundaries: Self-Care That Heals
Here’s the truth: over-committing only diminishes your bandwidth for health.
Learn to delay your “Yes.” Say, “Let me check…”—instead of just saying yes right away.
Carve protected time for meals, walks, or quiet—even if it’s just 30 minutes of breathing space. Put it in your calendar!
Delegate tasks—professional organizing, housecleaning, grocery delivery—without guilt. Doing so restores personal energy and improves digestion.
Remember, boundaries aren’t selfish. They are how a discerning, busy midlife woman like you nurtures herself so she can continue caring for others.
Asking for Help: A Sign of Strength
From there, learning to ask for help is transformative. High-achieving women often carry a belief that everything must be managed alone, but outsourcing housecleaning, hiring a meal service, or even asking your partner or children to take on more responsibility can radically lower the load on your nervous system. You’ll be surprised how much lighter your digestion feels when you’re no longer carrying the invisible weight of “doing it all.”
You’ve always been independent, capable, and in control. Asking for help isn’t defeat—it’s strategy.
Let others support you: housecleaning, caregiving, meal prep, pet care, even childcare. Join a trusted circle or community (like the Healing Grove) where emotional support is seamless and guilt-free.
You cannot pour from an empty cup—nourish yourself first.
Nourishing Your Body (Without Luxury-Sized Cooking Routines)
Contrary to what you might read on Google or ChatGPT, gut healing meals doesn’t mean gourmet cooking or elaborate meal prep; it means keeping nourishing, easy-to-digest foods available so your blood sugar stays stable. Think protein-rich snacks like a hard-boiled egg, chia pudding, or almond butter with apple slices—quick, supportive foods that keep your gut calm instead of triggering stress-driven cravings.
Try:
Having protein and fiber-rich snacks at hand (a handful of nuts, hard-boiled eggs, simple trail mix).
This helps you prevent blood sugar crashes that shift your body into “survival mode” and shut down digestion which leads to bloating and food reactions.
Planning realistically: no time to cook a meal? Even a couple of well-balanced snacks like a few boiled eggs, a high quality protein bar, or some greek yogourt will do the trick. Or pick up a rotisserie chicken and a bag salad from the grocery store.
Remember, don’t be hard on yourself if you aren’t able to achieve this every day, over time it becomes a habit. Your body thrives on consistency—not perfection.
Why Sleep Becomes a Struggle in Midlife—and What Actually Helps
If you’re finding yourself wide awake at 3 a.m. or dragging through the day after a restless night, you’re not alone. Sleep challenges are incredibly common in midlife, especially for women balancing the demands of work, family, and aging parents while also navigating hormonal shifts. The reality is that poor sleep isn’t just frustrating—it worsens gut health, increases food cravings, and leaves you more prone to bloating, inflammation, and mood swings.
There are a few key reasons sleep becomes more elusive in midlife.
Stress and emotional overload often leave our nervous system stuck in overdrive, making it hard to wind down. This is why movement, connection, and processing emotions are so important—whether that’s going for a walk with a friend, journaling before bed, or seeking support through counseling.
Another major factor is blood sugar balance. A carb-heavy dinner or a late-night glass of wine might make you feel drowsy at first, but both can backfire. Alcohol, for example, is sedating in the short term and may help you fall asleep quickly, but it actually disrupts your sleep cycle—reducing your ability to get into the deeper, restorative stages of sleep your body desperately needs. This often leads to frequent night wakings, restlessness, and that all-too-common 3 a.m. “staring at the ceiling” moment. On top of that, alcohol is dehydrating and affects your brain chemistry, leaving you with higher anxiety, lower mood, and stronger cravings for sugar and processed foods the next day.
Similarly, a blood sugar crash after a carb-heavy dinner signals your body to release cortisol, which wakes you up and keeps your mind racing. Instead, aim for a dinner rich in protein and fiber, and if you’re prone to night wakings, a small protein snack—like a handful of nuts or chia pudding—before bed can help keep your blood sugar stable through the night.
Then there are the hormonal shifts of perimenopause and menopause. Estrogen levels fluctuate and eventually decline, and since estrogen supports serotonin (which converts into melatonin, your sleep hormone), low estrogen can directly impact your sleep quality. While some women try melatonin supplements, many report grogginess the next day. Instead, try incorporating phytoestrogen-rich foods and herbs such as soy, flaxseeds, red clover tea, or hops tea. Gentle natural sedatives like passionflower, lemon balm, and L-theanine can also help calm the nervous system and ease you into deeper rest.
Finally, if you’re someone who gets a “second wind” in the evening, despite exercising regularly and doing “all the right things,” your cortisol rhythm may need more support. Adaptogenic herbs such as ashwagandha and magnolia bark can be powerful allies for reducing evening cortisol and helping your body shift back into its natural rest-and-repair mode.
With the right support, midlife sleep doesn’t have to feel like a battle—you can restore deeper rest, support your gut, and wake up feeling like yourself again.
Resetting Your Microbiome
One of the most overlooked pieces of gut healing in midlife is gently supporting the microbiome—the diverse ecosystem of bacteria that lives inside your digestive tract.
When balanced, this community helps regulate digestion, hormone metabolism, immunity, and even mood.
But when stress and sleep deprivation become chronic—as they so often do in the midlife years—the microbiome shifts into imbalance, a state called dysbiosis.
Elevated cortisol from constant stress and poor-quality sleep can lower levels of beneficial bacteria, increase gut permeability, and make bloating, food reactions, and brain fog far more intense.
Instead of harsh cleanses or extreme diets, I recommend nourishing your microbiome with gentle additions.
This might look like adding probiotic-rich foods such as yogurt, kefir, or sauerkraut a few times per week, or slowly increasing fiber-rich foods like chia seeds, ground flax, and cooked vegetables that feed the good bacteria without overwhelming a sensitive gut.
In functional nutrition, we often use the 4R Protocol as a roadmap to reset and restore the microbiome.
Step one is Remove—gently identifying and pulling back foods, infections, or toxins that are irritating your gut.
Step two is Replace—supporting digestion with the enzymes or stomach acid your body may be lacking, which is especially important in midlife when these naturally decline.
Step three is Reinoculate—bringing back healthy bacteria with targeted probiotics and prebiotic fibers.
And finally, step four is Repair—healing the gut lining with nutrients like zinc, omega-3s, and soothing foods that allow your digestion to function smoothly again.
When you approach gut health through this framework, you reduce bloating, reintroduce and tolerate more foods, and begin to experience the kind of steady energy and mental clarity that makes life feel lighter and more enjoyable.
I walk you through the exact steps you can take to reset your gut microbiome, reverse food sensitivities, banish bloating and feel clear and energized inside the Fix Your Gut App!
You Don’t Have to Fix Everything At Once
Healing doesn’t require a life overhaul—it needs intention, small shifts, and honoring yourself:
Starting your day with some deep breathing or walking outside instead of scrolling your phone
Taking an extra 15 minutes to wind down and read something inspiring before bed
Letting someone else take the groceries once a week.
Accepting homemade soup from a friend.
Relaxing into joy instead of pressing through obligations.
In time, your system resets—less bloating, fewer gut reactions, more regularity, and a sense of calm returning. But, this requires patience, and it’s not an overnight thing.
It can be frustrating and isolatnig and overwhelming - know that you’re not in this alone.
If you feel like you need some daily support, guidance and encouragement, plus gut friendly meal ideas we’ve got you!
That’s why I built The Healing Grove a place to cut through the Google overwhelm and get real advice on gut healing and midlife wellness that actually works. I’m here to guide you with daily inspiration, motivation and gut healing recipes.
You’ll find The Healing Grove inside the Fix Your Gut App, where we learn heal without perfectionism, diets, or extremes, but instead by rejecting the “shoulds” and embracing our body’s needs for rest, nourishment and joy. Join us by clicking here.
You deserve to feel good again, inside and out.
See you in there!
