INTRO
Megan Pfiffner (00:01)
Hey, I’m Megan Pfiffner, and welcome to Mornings with Megan. Grab your coffee and let’s have a convo.
PART 2 INTRO
Megan (00:07)
Welcome back to Mornings with Megan. If you haven’t listened to part one of my conversation with Morgana yet, go back and start there, because what we covered, the diet culture loop, why restriction backfires biologically, and the nervous system piece, is what we are going to build on today. In part two, we’re getting into sleep: why it sits above nutrition as a priority, what is actually driving those 2 a.m. wakeups, and it is not just anxiety. It is cortisol and blood sugar. And Morgana’s non-negotiables for protecting your sleep. Let’s get back into it.
LISTENING TO YOUR BODY: REST VERSUS PUSH
Megan (00:43)
I love your framing of perimenopause as a beautiful way your body is asking you to prioritize yourself. If we can listen to what our body is saying, that is a really wonderful reframe. It is your body saying: we are going to do this transition, and you need to make me a priority.
From the boundary conversation, you also talk about the idea of listening to your body as a signal from the nervous system. So when you are talking with clients about whether they should be doing less rather than more, what if someone wakes up in the morning and feels like they got hit by a dump truck? Are you guiding them to skip the workout because their body said so? Or are you saying push through?
Morgana (01:37)
I always say sleep is your foundation. Get your sleep first. And then if you have sufficient sleep and you feel better in your day, go for the workout. But listen to your body. It is not failure if you skip the workout. You are prioritizing how you feel.
And even if you do go because you’re trying to build consistency, you can listen and say, okay, maybe I’m not going to hit PRs today. Maybe I’ll bring the weights down. But I’ve shown up, I’ve checked the box, and I’m building trust with myself. You do not have to be at a hundred percent every single day. Some days can look more like 40%. I just used my own body weight today, but I went to the gym. I did it. I have that trust with myself.
Even last night, I violated my own boundary. I still teach dancing and I was in the studio until 11 p.m. I always work out in the morning, but I am going to sleep until 8 a.m., come on this podcast refreshed, and do my workout later in the evening, because I will feel so much better having protected those eight hours of sleep. It is just about priorities. And once you have the education and you learn that running yourself into the ground is not something to be rewarded, that’s the shift. Actually having good sleep and not pushing yourself to the brink of exhaustion: that is something we should be praising.
HUSTLE CULTURE AND THE 40% DAY
Megan (03:21)
I completely agree. I live in New York, and the hustle culture here is very much grind, grind, grind, sleep when you’re dead. That was very much my twenties. And now in perimenopause I am like, let’s hold the phone. Do we actually get more from this? The studies show that we do not. Focused work is something like six hours of what you’re actually producing. You cannot work twelve hours a day and be productive. And if 40% of your hundred percent is what you had access to that day, then you gave a hundred percent of what you had. That should be celebrated.
Morgana (04:15)
Maybe if we had twenty four hour cycles like men, that would make sense. But that is not how we are built.
SLEEP AS THE NON-NEGOTIABLE FOUNDATION
Megan (04:16)
Exactly. You and I are very aligned on sleep as the foundation. As a nutritionist, I work on sleep first, because even if we put in a lot of the food work, it is not going to be as effective without sleep. Why do you think that message has not broken through yet? Women are still treating sleep as the thing they will fix after everything else. And how do you coach the woman who is listening right now saying, I cannot go to sleep, I have a million to-dos?
Morgana (05:01)
I would love to know where that comes from, because somewhere along the way we just disregarded sleep. Maybe it is because it is a passive activity and we want to get all the check marks in for the day.
The way I approach that conversation is through education. Once you understand how impactful good quality sleep actually is, you can make better informed choices. During deep restful sleep, that is where we detox. Your brain has glial cells that expand and allow cerebrospinal fluid to clear out amyloid plaques, which contribute to Alzheimer’s and dementia. That is where your hormones are regulated. Where your appetite for the next day is set. Where protein synthesis and muscle recovery happen. Practically every reparative process in the body is happening during sleep. You are not going to see results without it.
Once I communicate that education piece, we build in strategies to make it realistic. Life happens. Last night was an example of that. But when it does, you still go and protect your sleep when you get home. I wore blue light blocking glasses. I took my magnesium. I did what I could. And now I’m going to be in bed by midnight and up at 8 a.m. and I’ll feel recovered.
THE 2 A.M. WAKEUP: CORTISOL AND BLOOD SUGAR
Megan (06:30)
So let’s get into the 2 a.m. wakeup. Because I know a lot of women are experiencing this, and I think most people assume it is anxiety or just perimenopause being perimenopause. But you make a really specific case that there are two hormones driving this. Can you walk through what is actually happening?
Morgana (07:00)
Yes. So there are two main culprits. The first is cortisol. Your cortisol should follow a circadian rhythm: high in the morning, slowly declining throughout the day, low at night. For many women, this is inverted. They wake up feeling flat and then get a second wind late at night because their cortisol spikes again. This can happen from caffeine too late in the day, from an intense workout in the evening, from working late and pumping cortisol right before bed. When you are in a chronic stress state and cortisol comes back on during the night, you wake up. And then you have those racing thoughts and cannot fall back asleep.
The second culprit is blood sugar instability, which is actually connected to cortisol. When blood sugar drops too low overnight, the body releases cortisol and adrenaline to compensate, and that wakes you up suddenly. If your last meal was very carbohydrate-heavy and you did not have enough protein and healthy fat to stabilize your glucose through the night, you are going to experience that crash. And many women confuse this for anxiety, because you wake up in a panic. But it is actually metabolic. It is your body asking for blood sugar, not your mind spiraling.
Megan (08:15)
That is such an important distinction. And it connects directly to why blood sugar management is so foundational, not just for weight, but for sleep, mood, energy, all of it. Estrogen and progesterone play a significant role in insulin sensitivity, which is part of why this becomes more of an issue in perimenopause specifically. As those hormones decline or fluctuate, blood sugar regulation becomes less stable. So it is not just that you had a carb-heavy dinner. It is that your hormonal buffer is thinner now and the same habits that worked before are not working the same way anymore.
MORNING ROUTINE AND BREAKFAST
Megan (09:20)
So let’s talk about what you are building in with clients on the other end. Because if the night is about protecting sleep and blood sugar stability, the morning has to set the tone for the whole day. What are your non-negotiables for the morning?
Morgana (09:45)
The morning routine is so important. I always push for a protein-forward breakfast within about an hour of waking, because that is going to set your blood sugar up for the whole day and prevent those crashes and cravings later. And then getting some movement in, even gentle movement, natural light exposure, and avoiding reaching for your phone first thing. That cortisol spike you naturally get in the morning is actually a good thing, it is your body waking up. You want to protect that by not immediately flooding yourself with stress from your inbox or social media.
I also love a morning routine that has some kind of nervous system anchor in it. Even five to ten minutes of something that grounds you before the day takes over.
THE 90-DAY SHED FRAMEWORK
Morgana (19:46)
So we have a couple of pillars we work through with clients. The first is the fat burn protocol, getting away from diet culture, practicing intuitive eating, building balanced plates, portioning, learning how to meal prep. We also use biohacking elements and lymphatic drainage techniques, because a lot of women come in with a lot of built-up inflammation and water retention from years of following diet culture trends.
Then clients move into the second pillar, the Hack Your Body method. This is where we align the body’s internal systems to create a safety response so the body can release weight. Blood sugar hacks, hormone hacks, cycle syncing for perimenopausal clients, hormone feasting for postmenopausal clients. Gut health, nervous system regulation, sleep optimization. All of that coincides with their individualized protocols.
And I always gauge expectations from the beginning: this is not something where you lose ten pounds in one month. That is not how this works. You are going to see gradual but sustainable change over time. We are actually phasing the 60-Day Shed into a 90-Day Shed, because I love having three complete cycles to work through so we can see change from a cycle perspective as well. Same price, just a longer program. That is how clients hit ten, twenty pounds lost in that period.
CONNECTING FRAMEWORKS
Megan (22:11)
I think that is so important. My framework is called the Perimenopause Matrix, and it touches essentially the same things you are describing: fuel, movement, recharge, regulate, clean, and connection. All of those pieces matter when you are helping someone find that safety signal, because if the nervous system is in overdrive and there is constantly a proverbial bear in the room, your body is not going to let go of any weight. That fat is your mobile savings account. It is what keeps you alive. And keeping you alive is your body’s number one priority.
All the things that happen in perimenopause that we experience as our body working against us are actually just your body loving you quite a bit and wanting to make sure you make it till tomorrow.
So if you could go back and say one thing to yourself at the height of your competitive dancing career, when you were restricting and your body was in distress, what would it be?
CLOSING REFLECTION
Morgana (23:12)
I would probably just tell myself it’s going to be okay. To be completely honest, I wouldn’t try to communicate everything I know now, because I feel that people like us come into this space from our own pain journey because we are meant to help more people through it. Even though it wasn’t fun to go through, it was necessary to get to where I am. Otherwise I would probably still be dancing. And while that’s great, I feel this is my passion and my purpose.
I would tell myself to throw out the timeline. When you’re young and ambitious, you freak out: am I going to achieve this, am I going to hit this goal, on this timeline? And as you get older, you realize everything is going to work out regardless. That is also what I would say to your audience: it is going to work out. And if you need help, whether that is one-on-one support or getting the right information from people like Megan and myself, investing in that support is how you fast-track your healing journey instead of spending ten years and $80,000 figuring it out alone.
Megan (24:41)
That resonates so much. I also spent a decade trying to figure it out. And like you, I don’t know if I would change it, because if it were different, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I love working with women in perimenopause, I love this work, and it feels like the pain was worth it to now be able to say: I’ve done this, you don’t have to go through the ten years, you don’t have to spend the $80,000. Let me help you get there faster.
Morgana, before I let you go: if someone is listening right now and something we talked about today resonated, where do they go next, and what do you want them to know about working with you?
MORGANA’S CTA
Morgana (25:17)
Our website is thisisntadiet.com. We have an amazing hormone and metabolism toolkit on there with a bunch of free resources. My Instagram is at Shed with Morgana. Please DM me if you have questions. I always respond in the DMs.
And if you DM me the word PODCAST, I will give you 30% off the 90-Day Shed program, which is our bestseller. I am really looking forward to speaking with you all. I hope you took something away from this that you can use right away.
PART 2 OUTRO
Megan (26:17)
Thank you so much for such a wonderful conversation. Everything Morgana shared today, her book, her Instagram at Shed with Morgana, and the 90-Day Shed program, all of it is linked in the show notes. And if you’re listening and something connected for you today, Morgana has a gift for our community. DM her the word PODCAST on Instagram and she will send you 30% off the 90-Day Shed. If today’s conversation resonated, part one is in your feed. Share this episode with a woman in your life who is doing everything right and still watching her body change. She needs to hear this.
Megan Pfiffner (27:02)
Can you do me a favor? If this episode gave you something to think about, share it with one woman in your life who needs a different story about perimenopause. Our bodies didn’t come with a user manual, and this perimenopause thing can feel confusing and lonely. But you are not alone. You are not crazy, and you are definitely not broken. And maybe someone in your life needs that reminder today. Let’s spread the word and be kind to each other and ourselves.
Now the legal bit. I’m a nutritionist, but I’m not your nutritionist. This podcast is for information and education only. No client relationship is formed. Always seek medical advice when necessary. I’ll see you next Wednesday morning.
