You Can't Out-Hustle Your Hormones.

Oct 16

Episode 35 of Wellness Me Up — Wellness Me Up Diary Entry
with Health & Life Coach Jes Brandt
Written and hosted by Amanda Reece, founder of Wellness Me Up.

Jes Brandt is a health & life coach specializing in menopause who works alongside her twin sister Val — a nurse practitioner — to help midlife women figure out what's actually going on in their bodies & brains. We get into biology, habit change, choosing your hard, & why you were never the problem. Also she rides dirt bikes & is a total badass.

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Who Is Jes Brandt?

Jes Brandt is a health and life coach specializing in menopause and midlife women's health. She runs Courageous Vitality — her own coaching practice focused on biology and identity work — and co-runs Brandt Wellness with her twin sister Valerie, a nurse practitioner in psychiatry.

Together they bridge the gap between clinical care and coaching in a way that most women in midlife have never experienced before. Val treats what is happening in your brain. Jes helps you make things happen and works on the identity side. Between the two of them they cover the biology, the lab work, the psychiatric intake, the habit change, and the identity work. All of it. Together.

She also rides dirt bikes. Total badass right??

We talked for a good while before hitting record — about travel, about tacos, about all sorts of things nobody will ever hear. And then we hit record and it just kept going.

You Can't Out-Hustle Your Hormones

This was the line that made my jaw literally drop.

Jes said it simply. In midlife you can't out-discipline your biology and you can't out-hustle your hormones.

And right away my jaw is dropping and I'm nodding my head along.

Because I spent years doing exactly that. Or trying to. Pushing through the exhaustion. Telling myself to get it together. Wondering why I couldn't just do the thing. Going to bed every night beating myself up for everything I hadn't done. Waking up every morning telling myself tomorrow would be different.

And the whole time it was endometriosis wreaking havoc on my body. A full-out rager happening inside me that no amount of willpower was ever going to quiet down.

If I had known that — if someone had believed me, labeled it, explained it — I could have worked with my body instead of against it. Found movement that felt good. Set myself up for success instead of shame.

Nobody told me. And so I thought it was me.

It was never me. And it was never you either.

It Was Never a Willpower Problem

This is the moment Jes described that I want every woman listening to this episode to actually let land.

She works with a lot of high-achieving, over-functioning women. Women who get up at 5am. Women who eat 1200 calories and push through and do all the things they think are good for them — and watch it completely backfire on their midlife physiology.

And when they finally reach the realization together — when it clicks that this is a biology problem, not a willpower problem — Jes said she watches ten years of self-blame leave someone's body.

Ten years. Just gone. In a moment.

My shoulders dropped when she said that. Because I know that feeling. That exhale when someone finally tells you — it wasn't your fault. Something real was happening. You were not making it up. You were not weak. You were just fighting something you didn't have a name for yet.

The Daily Audit

This is one of Jes's most practical tools and I love it because it is exactly what I wish someone had done with me years ago.

She asks clients to walk her through their entire day. From the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed. What they are eating. What their stress looks like. What their routine actually is.

And she listens for the low-hanging fruit. The skipped breakfast. The seven cups of coffee. The zero glasses of water. The little things that seem insignificant but are actually small hinges waiting to swing big doors.

One woman she worked with just started eating breakfast. And a few weeks in she told Jes — you know what? I don't want to take a nap anymore.

Just breakfast. That was it.

I shared my own version of what that daily audit would have looked like years ago. Going to bed at 2 or 3am. Up and down all night. Smoking before I even showered. Dragging myself to a high-stress job. Coming home completely depleted. Sitting on the couch numbing out with alcohol and marijuana and painkillers because my body was vibrating with pain and I did not know why.

That was my day. On repeat. For years.

And if someone had actually sat with me and walked through that with me — without judgment, just curiosity — who knows what we might have found. What small hinge might have started swinging something open.

Choose Your Hard

This is a phrase Jes uses with clients and it landed so hard I want it on a wall.

She talks about two kinds of resilience — the involuntary kind that comes from surviving a crisis, a sudden illness, a loss, something imposed on you — and the voluntary kind that comes from choosing something hard. Training for a marathon. Starting a business. Learning a new skill. Riding a dirt bike.

And the voluntary kind lights up completely different parts of your brain. When you choose a challenge you release dopamine. You build self-efficacy. You get a sense of capacity and independence that imposed hardship — no matter how much you gritted through it — cannot give you in the same way.

So her menopause coaching is not all soft and slow and rest and relax. She also says — go run a 10K. Start dirt biking. Do something hard on purpose. Because that voluntary challenge is going to build your identity and your sense of self in a way nothing else can.

I shared my own choose your hard moment — reading Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. That book was my moment of going... okay. I can choose to keep doing this. Or I can choose the uncomfortable thing that is going to take me somewhere different.

I chose different. And everything changed.

Wellness Is Recognition

The question I end every episode on — what does Wellness Me Up mean to you — landed somewhere really beautiful with Jes.

She said wellness is not an upgrade. It is not a makeover. It is not the new you that everyone keeps selling.

It is recognition. It is waking up and recognizing the person in the mirror again. Finding yourself. Not chasing some big dramatic transformation but just — your daily life. Your routine. Showing up for yourself in the small ways that compound into something real over time.

Small hinges swing big doors. She started with that and she ended with it. And she meant it both times.

The WTF Wheel Question: If Your Healing Journey Were a Movie Genre What Would It Be?

Drama.

With a healthy sprinkle of comedy because there are genuinely funny moments in healing and you have to hold onto those.

Jes talked about turning 40 with her twin sister and both of them — big runners, ultra-marathon training, doing everything right — suddenly gaining weight and exhausted and being told by every doctor that everything was normal. And the drama of trying to figure it out themselves. The pivots. The surprises. The new symptoms that show up with zero warning.

I jumped in with the moisturizing moment — a friend asking years ago if anyone was moisturizing yet and me going... I'm sorry, what? Why? Nobody told me that. That is apparently a whole thing. Who knew.

And then I shared my llama drama water bottle. Which said hold the drama and drink your water and listen to your llama. Because that is the kind of thing that pops into my brain mid-conversation and I have to say it or it is going to haunt me.

Llama drama. It happens.

Want to work with Jes?
Jes Brandt is a health and life coach specializing in menopause and midlife women's health. She offers a free quiz, a No BS Menopause Guide, a Midlife Audit Workbook, speaking at women's events, and a 12-week reset program focused on biology, identity, and purpose. If you are in Washington State her twin sister Val also offers clinical support through Brandt Wellness.

👉 courageousvitality.com
📱 Find her on social — search Jes Brandt or Courageous Vitality

If this one made your shoulders drop a little... good. And subscribe to Wellness Me Up wherever you listen.