Hit Play Not Pause

Does it feel like your back is always cranky or your hips are chronically tight? Your problem might not be where it hurts…or what it seems. As Dr. Heidi Prather, a sports medicine and hip preservation physiatrist at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), explains this week, back pain can start in the hips, and “tight” hips can be a sign of instability—which stretching can make worse. We also cover estrogen and inflammation in the menopause transition, plus fascia, angry nerves, frozen shoulder, how sleep and anxiety affect pain, and her best advice for staying out of her office.
Dr. Heidi Prather is a Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS)/Weill Cornell Medicine and the Founder and Medical Director of the HSS Lifestyle Medicine Program. The program helps people with musculoskeletal pain reduce pain and function better through behavior change. Before HSS, she spent more than 20 years at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where she founded the Living Well Center, the first standardized musculoskeletal health program of its kind built on lifestyle medicine. She is board-certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Sports Medicine, and Lifestyle Medicine. She was the first female president of both the North American Spine Society and the Physiatric Association of Spine, Sports and Occupational Rehabilitation. Her research focuses on hip and spine disorders, sex differences in musculoskeletal injuries, and lifestyle medicine, and she has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers.
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You run (or bike or swim or hike…), you lift, you've got the training logs to prove nothing has changed. You eat the same as you always have. And you’ve still gained 10 pounds…or more. Obesity medicine physician Dr. Michelle Gordon is here this week to explain why. She covers the metabolic slowdown of perimenopause, the drop in fat burning, why the new fat lands around your middle, and why "calories in, calories out" doesn't cover it. She also talks about her own experience with tirzepatide as a lifelong athlete: losing 30-plus pounds, running out of motivation to run, and figuring out what exercise means to her now.
Michelle E. Gordon, DO, DABOM, DACLM, FACS, FACOS, is board certified in obesity medicine, lifestyle medicine, and general surgery, and is a fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons. She spent 15 years as a surgeon before switching to women's metabolic health, because she kept seeing the downstream complications of disease that had started years earlier. Today she runs a telehealth practice to help high performing midlife women feel like themselves again. Her approach is rooted in physiology and incremental behavior change. She treats obesity as a chronic, relapsing disease that calls for long-term care from a physician. You can learn more about her at drgordon.me and on her Substack.
Resources
Trajectory of weight regain after cessation of GLP-1 receptor agonists: a systematic review and nonlinear meta-regression here
Continued Treatment With Tirzepatide for Maintenance of Weight Reduction in Adults With Obesity: The SURMOUNT-4 Randomized Clinical Trial here
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Recorded live at FeistyFest, the week Hit Play Not Pause turned six, this bonus episode hands the mic to you.
Selene starts with how the show began, including her own experiences with 2 a.m. wake-ups and sleepless nights, performance decline, anxiety, the urge to pull back from people, and the changes she didn't see coming. She and longtime producer Carrie walk through their hormone therapy journeys and where they are today. Then they hand the mic to the crowd for a wide-ranging discussion including managing menopause after breast cancer, the cost of HRT, symptoms that don’t seem to stop, getting brushed off by doctors, GLP-1s, and much more.
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Hit Play Not Pause Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/807943973376099
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Cozy Earth: Use Code HITPLAY at https://cozyearth.com/ for up to 35% off
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Iron is one of the most-requested topics in the Hit Play Not Pause community, and it's one of the most confusing. Sports dietitian Kristen Arnold, who works with pro teams and everyday athletes, returns to explain what iron does and why you can have symptoms from low iron long before you're anemic. She also covers how our needs change after menopause and how new ferritin thresholds from the American Society of Hematology reset the old, far-too-low targets. We get into the full iron panel, hepcidin, heme vs. non-heme foods, every-other-day supplementing, when an IV makes sense, and why altitude calls for a bigger buffer. We also look at what the popular Iron Protocol gets right and where it goes beyond the evidence.
Kristen Arnold, MS, RDN, CSSD, is a board-certified sports dietitian, cycling coach, and retired professional athlete. She has practiced sports dietetics since 2015 through her private practice, Sports Nutrition for Women, where she and her team of qualified, compassionate practitioners work with athletes and teams ranging from recreational to professional and Olympic-level. Kristen’s work centers on empowering active women across the lifespan through evidence-based sports nutrition education and individualized coaching. She has worked with hundreds of athletes and teams and currently serves as a team nutritionist for EF Pro Cycling, a UCI WorldTour team. She is also a first author on peer-reviewed research examining targeted nutrition strategies to support the health of postmenopausal women. Kristen regularly speaks on podcasts and contributes to publications on sports nutrition, with a particular focus on women’s health, endurance performance, and nutrition across the lifespan.
Resources:
New guidelines for iron deficiency
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Hit Play Not Pause Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/807943973376099
Support our Partners:
Cozy Earth: Use Code HITPLAY at https://cozyearth.com/ for up to 35% off
Previnex: Get 15% off your order with code HITPLAY at https://www.previnex.com/
Wahoo: Use the code FEISTY2026 to get a free Headwind Smart Fan (value $300) with the purchase of a Wahoo KICKR RUN at https://shorturl.at/WVhdr

As an Olympic cyclist and speed skater with scores of medals, Clara Hughes thought she knew how to breathe. Then came menopause, along with a catastrophic knee injury, COVID, and months stuck in stillness. All of it broke open what she'd spent a lifetime outrunning. In this conversation about her new memoir, Learning to Breathe, Clara opens up about her dark journey through the menopause transition, being offered antidepressants instead of hormone therapy, finally getting care from a women's health specialist, and how somatic therapy, psychedelic-assisted therapy, breathwork, and long days on trail helped her face childhood trauma she had pushed down for decades. We also cover why menopause can feel like a betrayal to athletes, how her relationship with movement has changed from punishment to love, and the two questions she hopes every woman will ask herself.
Six-time Olympic medalist Clara Hughes became the only athlete to win multiple medals in both the Summer and Winter Games. She is a member of the Order of Manitoba and an officer of the Order of Canada, has received a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, and was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. Clara was Canada’s flag bearer for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. She was the founding spokesperson for Bell Canada’s Let’s Talk initiative, a campaign dedicated to breaking down the stigma of mental health. In 2014, she was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross, which recognizes those whose outstanding personal commitment has brought honour to Canada. In 2022, she was named an Olympian for Life in recognition of her making the world a better place by promoting the Olympic Values at every stage of her life. Clara lives with her husband, Peter, on Vancouver Island, and continues to enjoy bike touring and hiking.
Resources
Learning to Breathe by Clara Hughes
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Courses and Coaching: https://livefeisty.com/courses/
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Follow Us on Instagram:
Feisty Menopause: @feistymenopause
Hit Play Not Pause Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/807943973376099
Support our Partners:
Cozy Earth: Use Code HITPLAY at https://cozyearth.com/ for up to 35% off
Previnex: Get 15% off your order with code HITPLAY at https://www.previnex.com/
Wahoo: Use the code FEISTY2026 to get a free Headwind Smart Fan (value $300) with the purchase of a Wahoo KICKR RUN at https://shorturl.at/WVhdr