If I had a dollar for every time a woman has told me that their doctor’s advice to their complaints about feeling weird and fluffy in perimenopause is to “work out more and eat less”, I would be lounging on a beach in Bora Bora right now. But here’s the problem with that advice… It’s NOT WORKING! What IS the REAL deal when it comes to feeling great in your 40’s and where the heck do we start? Here are the things that I have learned to focus on that have REALLY changed the game for me in mid-life (and really, could have been great to begin focusing on in my 30’s as well).
MAKE SURE YOUR HORMONES ARE HAPPY. First and foremost, it’s a great idea to ask for a FULL thyroid and hormone panel. Scheduled for your annual appointment? Ask for these labs. Many times, women will suffer from thyroid issues and not know it because their doc only runs a TSH (which could be “normal” but your thyroid could still be sluggish). Ask for the FULL panel (TSH, Free T3, Free T4, Reverse T3, TPO Antibodies, TG Antibodies). Running your full hormone panel (estrogen, progesterone and testosterone) will also give the doctor some clues as to where you are in your peri-menopausal journey. This was a GAME CHANGER for me.
STRENGTH TRAIN! There is nothing better than strength training for mitigating a ton of the crappy stuff that happens at mid-life. Muscle is metabolically demanding, meaning it requires the awesome food that you eat to help build it up (hello calorie burn)! Strength training helps us preserve our muscle mass and bone quality. It is also EMPOWERING AF. Aside from shaping your body, it also shapes your confidence. Pressed for time due to a million sports practices and trying to get dinner on the table? My best advice to you is to focus on compound exercises (multi-joint) which will give you more bang for your exercise buck. Things like squats, deadlifts, and pushups are all great exercises. Just starting out? Use a weight that you can safely do 10 repetitions with great form but struggle on the 11th and 12th. Need some workout ideas? I’ll be putting some great strength training workouts for all levels on the blog soon!
NUTRITION. You don’t need to cut out food groups, but you DO need to prioritize protein. A great rule of thumb is to eat between .8 – 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So, a woman who weighs 150 pounds should shoot for 120-150 grams of protein a day. While we are on the subject of food, I know it is super tempting to jump into a fad diet when you feel desperate to fit back into your favorite pants. I continue to get really irate at the multi-billion-dollar diet industry for making women think they need to automatically jump down to a low-calorie level like it is some magic freaking formula number. Please don’t. Please! Instead, download the MyFitnessPal app on your phone and for a week track EVERYTHING you eat and drink. BE HONEST and TRACK EVERYTHING. Oftentimes we underestimate what we are really consuming and overestimate how much we are moving our bodies. Once you have a realistic idea of the number of calories you are consuming over the course of a week you can either adjust your daily intake down by a very small amount (say, 50 calories) OR you can increase your daily movement (parking your car farther away, taking your dog for a brief walk, get up and move around more during the day). You don’t need to AGRESSIVELY change your exercise habit. That will only leave you super sore and unmotivated to get back to it! Easing into an exercise habit is way better than going balls out and then not being able to move for a week.
STRESS RELIEF. Dude…I look back now and remember how freaking stressed I was when I started with my perimenopausal symptoms. I would wake up in the middle of the night FREAKING out about the school event I was running for my kids or remembering a report I forgot to run at work that day (hello brain fog!). We’ll talk about sleep in a second because it is really critical but for now, let’s talk about stress. Many of us report that our middles are starting to get a little bigger, fluffier, muffin toppier… This is all thanks to our friend cortisol. FRIEND? you might say? Well, cortisol is not all bad. It actually wakes us up in the morning and kicks our tushies out of bed. But it is also what comes to our rescue if we are being chased by a saber-tooth tiger (only, our saber-tooth tiger is a work deadline, or a trip back to Michael’s craft store because you effed up your daughter’s Halloween costume on October 30th). Stress is EVERYWHERE in our lives these days, and you know where else it is??? On our treadmills, ellipticals, and spin bikes. Yup. I’m serious. We “burn off our stress” or so we tell ourselves but what is really happening when we hop on our cardio equipment and go brass tacks for an hour is setting that saber-tooth tiger behind us at full clip, calling on our cortisol to help us out. You know what else is happening? Our increased need for cortisol is sending a signal to our body that we don’t need to reproduce (we ARE BEING CHASED BY A TIGER FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!) so it STEALS hormone making ability from our sex hormones to MAKE CORTISOL! Which whacks our hormones even more than they may already be from the drop in progesterone (our calming hormone), estrogen (our happy hormone), and testosterone (our sexy hormone). So, the moral of this story is, we need to check in on our stress level and start implementing some strategies to reduce it. I know that can feel impossible and daunting (I’m with you sister!) but adding a few minutes of meditation, a short yoga video before bed (Yoga with Adriene on YouTube is the best!), reading, talking with a friend, going for a leisurely walk, taking a nap, listening to music, or drinking some herbal tea can be some great strategies for stress relief.
SLEEP. Sleep quality is impacted as we age. Hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, anxiety, stress, they ALL impact the quality and quantity of our sleep. In addition to overall health, sleep quality can also impact fat loss so getting this part figured out is important to helping us get back in those pants! So, what is the solution? I suggest working on your sleep hygiene. Avoiding alcohol and caffeine close to bedtime, sleeping in a darkened room, adjusting your room temperature down around 60-67 degrees Fahrenheit, wearing cooler fabrics, turning on a fan, etc. If you have tried all of the above and are still really struggling, there are some great supplements that can help. Things like melatonin, Valerian Root, Tart Cherry Juice or Magnesium can be great things to try. Talk to your doctor – if you are a candidate for HRT (hormone replacement therapy), this could help too. I can’t tell you how much balancing my progesterone helped me to get a good night’s sleep!
So, there you have it. The things that I wished my gynecologist would have told me when I broke down in tears in their office because I didn’t know what to do about my symptoms of perimenopause. Can you relate to any of these? I would LOVE to hear from you and learn more about your experience with being 40+. My wish is to create community in the comments so we can all feel less alone during this sometimes-confusing time in our lives!
