I Was Training to Be a Personal Trainer When Menopause Hit. Nobody Was Talking About It.

I was 42, was it time just to settle down to being old?

I was 42, nearly 43, sitting in a room full of people who were, largely, not 42. I was training to become a personal trainer, which felt exciting and slightly terrifying in equal measure, and I was quietly going through an early menopause at the same time.

I say quietly because that's exactly what it was. Quiet. Private. Something I was just getting on with.

The thing about going through perimenopause while training in fitness is that you'd think the knowledge would help. And in some ways it did. But mostly it just made it more confusing, because I thought I knew what was happening with my body and I really, really didn't. I was tired in a way that sleep wasn't fixing. My training felt harder than it should. I felt older than I was, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

And the industry around me wasn't helping. Nobody was talking about this (at the time). The fitness world felt built for younger women, and if you were somewhere in the messy middle of midlife, you were mostly just expected to get on with it. So I did. For a while.

But something shifted when I started to understand what was actually happening hormonally, and more importantly, what could actually help. Not in a "fix yourself" way. In a "your body is changing and here's how to work with it" way.

That's when strength training stopped being something I did and became something I believed in. Properly. Not because it changes how you look (though it does that too, if you want it to). But because it changes how you feel. How sturdy you feel. How capable. How at home in your own body.

Muscle mass declines from your mid-thirties. Oestrogen, which helps protect bone density and supports muscle repair, drops significantly in perimenopause. Fatigue, sleep disruption, brain fog, joint aches, mood changes: these aren't you falling apart. They're your body running on different software and needing different support.

The most evidence-based thing you can do? Lift weights. Eat enough protein. Eat enough fibre. Move consistently. Not perfectly. Consistently.

I know this because I lived it, and because I've spent the last few years making sure I understand it properly, not just for me but for every woman who's sitting in a room somewhere feeling older than she should and wondering why nobody's talking about this.

They should be. We are.

If any of this sounds familiar, come to the Midlife Manifesto. It's free, it's 90 minutes onliner, and it's where we start.