The Cyclist

Jess Quinn and Katherine Douglas
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  • Health & Fitness
  • Updated Weekly

The go-to women’s health podcast for real, honest conversations about hormones, periods, PCOS, endometriosis, fertility, and the rest. Hosted by Jess Quinn & Katherine Douglas, we dive into all things women's health and help you to demystify owning a female body— with expert advice and real stories to help you feel empowered and informed. If you’re tired of being dismissed and want to decode your body, this podcast is for you. Subscribe now and let's learn to cycle better together.

  1. Sep 29

    She Had Brain Surgery and Built a Condom Brand: Ema Beard on Cleoh, Women's Sexual Health and Starting Over

    She had brain surgery. And then she built a condom brand. In this episode, Jess sits down with Ema Beard, teacher, mum of three, and founder of Cleoh, the New Zealand-born sexual wellness brand putting women at the centre of a category that has largely ignored them for decades. This is one of those conversations that starts in one place and ends somewhere completely unexpected. And is all the better for it. Ema's path to founding Cleoh began in 2023, during her recovery from brain surgery. She wasn't looking to start a business. She was focused on healing and getting back to her family. And then, scrolling through her phone during a quiet moment, a condom ad appeared. And it felt outdated, tone-deaf, and designed entirely without women in mind. She couldn't stop thinking about it. And Cleoh was born.  She opens up honestly about what recovery from brain surgery actually looked like, the cognitive changes, the fatigue, the identity shift of going from a high-functioning teacher and mum to someone relearning how to be in her own body. And how that experience gave her a clarity about what she wanted to do with her time and energy that she'd never had before. They go deep into the conversation that Cleoh is trying to normalise. Sexual health as a women's health issue, not just a contraception issue. Ema shares why she became passionate about women understanding their own bodies, the connection between sexual health and overall wellbeing, and why the shame and stigma that still surrounds this category is actively harming women's health outcomes. She talks about what it felt like to walk into a pharmacy and buy condoms before Cleoh existed, and why the experience of purchasing protection should feel as considered and dignified as anything else in a woman's wellness routine. Cleoh condoms are free from parabens, casein, fragrances, and unnecessary chemicals. Ingredients that most women have never thought to question but that matter enormously when it comes to vaginal health. Ema explains what those ingredients actually do to the body, why the standard options on pharmacy shelves weren't designed with women's physiology in mind, and what she looks for in a product she'd actually feel good about using.  This is a conversation about courage, clarity, women's health, and a brand that is quietly changing the way New Zealand women think about protection. Thank you Chief for sponsoring this episode! They are products Jess is using daily and are so delish while having fab clean ingredients. Go check out wearechief.com Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com Hit play. And maybe add Cleoh to cart while you listen.

  2. Sep 1

    Meg Mansell: The 14-Week Scare, Postpartum Haemorrhage and Living With Debilitating Health Anxiety

    This episode contains open discussion about bulimia, disordered eating, body image, pregnancy loss, postpartum haemorrhage, and health anxiety. Please take care if any of these are sensitive topics for you. Jess sits down with Meg Mansell, beloved New Zealand radio personality from The Edge, mother of two, and as it turns out, Jess's new best friend, for one of the most wide-ranging, raw, and genuinely hilarious conversations The Cyclist has had. They were meant to talk about birth. They talked about everything. Meg opens up about growing up as a dancer, deeply aware of her body from a very young age, watching the way the world responded to her beautiful mother, feeling the pressure to look the same way, and realising quickly that she hadn't inherited her mum's body. What followed were years of hyperawareness, comparison, and eventually bulimia from around 15 or 16. She speaks honestly about what it's like to carry 36 years of that conditioning while trying to raise daughters differently, telling Daisy her tummy is her favourite part of herself because it made her and her sister, while sitting quietly with the word fraud flashing in her own head. Then there's Miller's pregnancy, a story that barely exists in the public conversation around pregnancy because it sits in that rare and terrifying 1%. At 14 weeks, Meg woke up covered in blood. She drove herself to hospital alone at 1am while Guy stayed home with Daisy. Blood tests came back showing a dramatic drop in hCG. She and Guy sat in hospital for eight hours grieving a baby they were told they'd lost, making quiet decisions about whether they'd even try again, before a scan revealed a heartbeat. The results had been mixed up with her previous pregnancy. What followed was daily bleeding until 23 weeks, repeated hospital admissions, and a day-by-day pregnancy that somehow made it to 37 weeks. Miller's birth was its own story entirely. An induced labour, a 30-minute window from five centimetres to birth with no epidural after the anaesthetist couldn't reach her in time, a postpartum haemorrhage of 2.1 litres, emergency surgery, and, in a moment Meg still can't fully explain, convincing the nurses not to tell Guy she was okay so she could roll in and surprise him herself. She has apologised profusely. They also get into health anxiety, something both Meg and Jess share deeply and personally. Meg describes the particular brand that keeps her awake at night: the constant, exhausting fear that she will miss something and her children will die. The 1am checks. The spiral from a cough to meningococcal. The dog with a bump the vet said was a bug bite that turned out to be cancer. The way being right once makes it impossible to ever believe you might be wrong. And then Hashimoto's, the autoimmune thyroid condition Meg was eventually diagnosed with after months of blaming herself for her own exhaustion, bone aches, and weight changes. A female doctor who pushed for bloods. A 9am phone call the next morning asking her to come in. Antibodies hundreds of times above normal range. Want to try Go Mama? Shop here! https://gomamamaternity.co.nz Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com Hit play. And maybe clear your afternoon.

  3. Aug 18

    Nutrition, Strength Training and Why You Don't Need to Shrink with Renee Diment

    CW: This episode contains open discussion about disordered eating, body image, and diet culture. Please take care if these are sensitive topics for you. In this episode, Jess sits down with Renee Diment, New Zealand nutritionist, REPs-registered personal trainer, NZ Personal Trainer of the Year 2024, and founder of Beyond the Body,  for one of the most grounding, refreshing, and genuinely practical conversations The Cyclist has had about food, movement, and what it actually means to look after yourself as a woman. Renee opens up about her own story, a 10-year-old on a beach in Perth, looking down at her body and comparing it to the girls in Total Girl magazine. The friend with anorexia at dance class. The restricting that started at 11 or 12. The gym before school at 14. And how 13 years of working with women eventually taught her that fat loss was always just the surface-level goal, and what women actually needed was far deeper than that. Her business is called Beyond the Body for a reason. She shares how her coaching evolved from helping women lose weight to helping women discover who they actually are. Their values, their why, their relationship with themselves. And how the biggest wins her clients have had weren't about the scales at all. From there, this episode becomes one of the most practical nutrition conversations The Cyclist has had. Jess asks all the questions she's been holding for years, from someone who knows a lot about nutrition but has spent years lost in the noise of it all. Renee walks through the four phases of the menstrual cycle and how understanding them gives women better body autonomy, not as a reason to stop doing things but as a guide for listening in. She explains the 10-minute rule for those days when you genuinely don't know whether your body needs rest or a push. On nutrition, Renee introduces the add-in approach: forget elimination diets, forget what you're cutting out, just start adding. Protein, fats, fibre, carbohydrates on every plate. She makes a case for carbohydrates that will make a lot of women exhale, pushes back on the protein obsession dominating social media right now, and makes the case that fibre is actually the thing most women are deficient in and nobody is talking about it enough. She talks about the f**k-it mode that follows restriction, why sharing a pizza with friends is genuinely better for your health than ordering the salad, and why your body is not broken, it just needs the right support and understanding. And then there's strength training. Renee is passionate about this in a way that is completely unrelated to aesthetics. Building muscle protects your bones. It helps your body metabolise food. It combats stress and supports your nervous system. A 70-year-old client who broke her pelvis in a car accident recovered in months because of her training. That's the real reason to lift weights. Not Greece, not a bikini, but your 90-year-old self. She wraps by saying that you do not need to shrink yourself to fit into a box someone else created. You are enough as you are. And when you truly allow yourself to believe that, everything else becomes possible. Renee is coming back for a gut health and nervous system episode, because they ran out of time and there was still so much to cover. If you want that episode, let them know in the comments. Find Renee at reneediment.com Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com Hit play. And maybe eat something while you listen.

  4. Jul 21

    It's Not Just a Headache: Ellie Fitzgerald on Living With Chronic Migraines

    It's not just a headache. Not even close. In this episode, Jess is joined by Ellie Fitzgerald, The Cyclist's most regular guest and, as it turns out, a fellow migraine sufferer, for a conversation that is equal parts validating, practical, and genuinely funny. If you've ever had someone tell you to just have a Panadol and drink some water, this one's for you. Ellie takes us right back to her very first migraine at nine years old, Easter weekend, a backseat full of chocolate, and three days bedridden. From there, migraines became a constant presence in her life through primary school, intermediate, and beyond. Two or three days a week at her worst. Vision loss so complete she couldn't see the paintings on the wall in her classroom. A 40-minute aura that gives her just enough warning before the headache, the nausea, and the numbness down her left side set in. At 35, she's still navigating them. Jess shares her own experience, three years of chronic tension headaches so severe she couldn't see properly, a visit to the headache clinic, and the medications she's tried along the way. They compare notes honestly, including what works, what doesn't, and what they wish people around them understood. This episode covers the full picture of what living with migraines actually looks like, the aura, the attack, and the migraine hangover that sometimes hits harder than the migraine itself. The triggers that are impossible to fully pin down. The jobs affected, the opportunities missed, the wedding day fear that it would all fall apart. The moment Ellie's boss wouldn't let her go home while she was vomiting behind the shop counter, because her boss had never experienced a migraine and just thought she had a headache. They build a practical migraine toolkit together, what Ellie always keeps in her handbag and what's always waiting at home, including the eye mask, the full sugar Coke, the salty fries, the peppermint roller, sunglasses, earplugs, and electrolytes. They also talk about Cadence Head Ease, the riboflavin-based supplement Jess and Kat developed for exactly this community, which Ellie has been on for three months and credits with reducing the severity of her attacks. This is a short episode, intentionally so, because Jess wants you to send it to someone. A partner, a friend, a boss, anyone who has ever minimised what you go through. Because understanding is the thing that makes it easier to live with. Find Ellie on Instagram @ellie__haines Find Cadence Head Ease: https://www.cadencewellbeing.com/products/headease Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com Hit play. And send it to someone who needs to hear this.

  5. Jul 7

    From Severe Bloating to Nomu Matcha: Tessa Stockdale on Chronic Gut Issues and Healing as a Founder

    Two gut girlies sit down to talk. In this episode, Jess is joined by Tessa Stockdale, co-founder of Nomu Matcha, the award-winning New Zealand ceremonial matcha brand she built with her mum Karen, for a conversation that started, fittingly, over a shared obsession with gut health. Tessa takes us back six years to when her gut issues first started showing up in her mid-twenties. She was in advertising, early mornings, late nights, plenty of alcohol, high-intensity exercise on an empty stomach. The kind of lifestyle that looks pretty normal from the outside but, she now knows, was putting enormous stress on her body. What followed was months of severe bloating so extreme her mum asked if she was pregnant, constipation, brain fog, thunderclap headaches, and a histamine response that felt like boiling water in her gut. She walks us through the medical journey, the gastroenterologist referrals to rule out stomach and ovarian cancer, the $250 specialist appointments, the lack of holistic perspective in the system, and then the moment she drove to Hamilton to see applied kinesiologist Kate Moffat out of sheer desperation. The session that changed everything, where the pressure of a hand on her leg identified leaky gut, an estrogen imbalance, IBS, and candida overgrowth, and finally gave her somewhere to start. Tessa shares what the anti-candida diet actually looked like, how twelve weeks of eating nothing from a packet during COVID lockdown taught her more about food and inflammation than anything else had, and why the healing process, while transformative, also came with unexpected consequences. Developing a peanut anaphylaxis allergy. New intolerances she hadn't had before. A fear response around food that nobody warned her about. The exhausting mental tax of navigating every meal, every restaurant, every dinner with friends. The conversation moves into the gut-brain connection, why 90 to 95% of serotonin is made in the gut, why anxiety and gut issues are so deeply intertwined, and why Tessa's move from Auckland to Mount Maunganui last year has given her something she says she's never had in her adult life: a balanced nervous system. And then there's Nomu. Because Tessa's caffeine sensitivity, a direct result of her gut journey, is what led her to matcha, and a blunt comment from a barista at 7am who raised an eyebrow at a decaf order is what started it all. She and Kat talk about building a business while managing a chronic health condition, why hustle culture is not the only path to success, and why showing up well for yourself is actually what makes you show up better for your business. This is an episode for anyone who has spent years trying to figure out what's wrong with their gut, anyone running a business while managing a chronic health condition, and anyone who has ever felt like healing one thing just opened the door to something else. Find Tessa and Nomu Matcha at nomumatcha.com and on Instagram @nomumatcha_ Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com Hit play. And maybe make yourself a matcha first.

  6. Jun 23

    Jess Is Pregnant! The Full Story: Miscarriage, Sertraline and a Very Positive Pregnancy Test

    There’s a third person in the room in this episode with Kat and Jess…  Jess is pregnant! In this episode, Jess and Kat talk about baby number two and share the full journey of how they got here.  This is the conversation Jess says she has dreamt of recording, and it's everything. Honest, emotional, funny, and deeply real. Jess takes us back to the beginning. After a two-year journey to fall pregnant with Marla, a loss along the way, and a more recent miscarriage that hit harder than she expected, Jess and Todd made the call to take six months away from trying. She opens up about what it's like to try for a baby when you're already living with a panic disorder, the internal conversations around medication, the question of whether it was irresponsible to grow a family when she wasn't in her best space, and the fear that the panic disorder might never fully end. She talks candidly about going on sertraline, the two years she resisted medication because pregnancy was on the horizon, and the guilt of knowing the research said it was safe while still carrying a quiet doubt in the back of her mind. The decision that finally shifted things: realising she wasn't able to enjoy the life she'd worked so hard to build, and that a healthy mum was the most important thing she could give her family. Then there's the trying-to-conceive reality, the scheduling, the long cycles, the months of negative tests, the switch that flips when you've had a loss and every negative brings it all back. The moment Todd came down with man flu on what turned out to be their last window for a 2026 baby. The password on Jess's laptop. The morning she snuck into the bathroom to take a test she was expecting to be negative, and wasn't. Kat shares what it was like to watch from the outside, holding her tongue through the hardest months because she had a feeling it was going to happen, and not wanting to say that out loud in case she was wrong. They also go into the pregnancy itself, the four emergency scans, the breakthrough bleeding that sent Jess to the hospital at eight weeks, the anxiety of standing up slowly every single time and checking for blood. The moment at the studio, ten minutes before a podcast interview, when Jess came to Kat and said she was bleeding and had to leave. And through all of it, the mindset she kept coming back to, miscarriage is never anyone's fault, and worrying about it won't change the outcome. Jess is now in her second trimester, due in early December, and not finding out the gender. Baby's working name is Pickle. Marla has been told there's a baby in mummy's tummy and has asked whether it's in her boobies too. This one will stay with you. Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com Hit play. And congratulations, Jess!

  7. May 5

    Period Pain: The Pain I Learned To Normalise with Ella Cunningham

    We're closing out our period pain miniseries the way it started. With a real story. In the final episode of the Period Pain Mini Series, Jess sits down with Ella, founder of Els Lovers, a New Zealand-made brand creating wearable heat packs designed specifically for endometriosis and period pain relief.  Ella takes us right back to the beginning to a musical theatre rehearsal camp, three days before her 14th birthday, when her very first period arrived and brought her to her knees. From that day forward, eight-day heavy periods, severe pain, and chronic exhaustion became her norm. Because her mum had always suffered the same way, Ella assumed that's just how it was for her too. What followed was years of dismissed symptoms, a GP who attributed her chronically low iron to her plant-based diet rather than the blood she was losing every month, and a gynaecologist at family planning who told her that heavy periods were an opinion. It wasn't until a nutritionist connected the dots, low iron, low B12, IBS-like symptoms, painful heavy periods, and said the word endometriosis, that Ella finally had somewhere to start. She shares what it took to push for her diagnosis, what her endometriosis surgery in February 2024 actually involved, and why the year and a half she spent with a Mirena afterwards was the most painful of her life and how trusting her body and getting it removed was the decision that finally started turning things around. Ella also opens up about having to leave her first full-time job out of university at just 21 because her pain had become too unpredictable to manage, and how that painful chapter led her to create Els Lovers. Handmade in Aotearoa from 100% natural cotton, Els heat packs were born out of Ella's own search for something wide enough, long enough, and weighted enough to actually wrap around the places that hurt. This is the episode we want every young woman who is quietly pushing through to hear. Because how the hell are you supposed to know if your period pain isn't normal if nobody is talking about it? This is episode five of five of The Cyclist's period pain miniseries. All episodes are available now. Find Ella and Els Lovers at elslovers.com or on Instagram @elslovers Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com Hit play. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, send it to them.

  8. May 5

    Period Pain: The Part No One Talks About with Psychologist Andy Leggat

    Your pain is real. And your brain is trying to protect you. In episode four of our period pain miniseries, Jess sits down with Andy Leggat,  registered Health Psychologist and Fertility Counsellor with over 15 years of clinical experience, for one of the most validating conversations we've had on this podcast.  Andy is a returning Cyclist guest, and if you haven't heard her first episode on the emotional side of infertility, we'd highly recommend going back to that one too. If you've ever been told your pain is in your head, been referred to a psychologist and felt confused or even insulted by that, or spent years quietly gaslighting yourself into thinking you're just not coping, this episode is for you. Andy explains why psychological care isn't the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff when it comes to period pain. It's a core part of the picture. She breaks down how the brain actually processes pain, not as a simple tissue-based experience, but as a deeply contextual one shaped by the nervous system, past experiences, trauma, environment, and the relationship we have with our own bodies. Two people with the exact same diagnosis can experience pain in completely different ways, and this conversation explains why. They get into pain memory and how significant pain experiences shape future ones, the cyclical nature of anticipatory anxiety around periods, and why years of chronic dismissal, from doctors, from family, from ourselves, can create deeply entrenched thought patterns that spill over into health anxiety, hypervigilance, and conditions like panic disorder. Jess shares honestly that this conversation hit close to home, describing how she was body scanning and messaging her husband in a spiral just minutes before they sat down to record. Andy unpacks self-gaslighting, what it is, why it's concerningly common, and why it makes complete sense when you've spent years being told your pain is normal. She talks about the grief that quietly sits underneath chronic pain, the grief of missed career milestones, changed relationships, and lost trust in your own body, and why naming it as grief can be one of the most validating things a person can do. There's practical guidance throughout, too. How to navigate period pain conversations in the workplace, how to raise children who feel safe talking about their bodies without amplifying anxiety, and exactly what a first session with a health psychologist looks like so there are no surprises before you walk in the door. This is episode four of five of The Cyclist's period pain miniseries. All episodes are available now. Follow and connect Instagram: @wearethecyclist Website: wearethecyclist.com Hit play. Your body is working hard to keep you safe. This episode will help you understand how. Listen to Andy’s episode, Infertility Unfiltered: The Emotional Side of Infertility with Psychologist Andy Leggat Here’s the link to it on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1S5M8ob4zVC0kDGi1J44wi

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About

The go-to women’s health podcast for real, honest conversations about hormones, periods, PCOS, endometriosis, fertility, and the rest. Hosted by Jess Quinn & Katherine Douglas, we dive into all things women's health and help you to demystify owning a female body— with expert advice and real stories to help you feel empowered and informed. If you’re tired of being dismissed and want to decode your body, this podcast is for you. Subscribe now and let's learn to cycle better together.

Information

  • Creator
    Jess Quinn and Katherine Douglas
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    57
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Jess Quinn and Katherine Douglas
  • Show Website
    The Cyclist

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