Episode 29: Why Most Women Over 40 Keep Getting Worse Even When They're Doing All the Right Things

Why Most Women Over 40 Keep Getting Worse Even When They're Doing All the Right Things

She gets up for boot camp even though she barely slept.

She does the HIIT class.

The spin class.

The strength workout.

She's eating more protein, drinking less wine, tracking her food and staying consistent.

Basically?

Sis is doing the work.

And somehow she feels worse.

Her sleep is getting worse. She's exhausted. Her cravings are louder. Her mood feels different. She's waking up at 3AM.

So naturally, she assumes she needs to try harder.

And that's where I have a problem with a lot of the fitness advice given to women over 40.

More Isn't Always the Answer

For years, we've been sold a pretty simple equation:

Not getting results?

Work out harder.

Eat less.

Be more disciplined.

Push through.

And there are situations where increasing the challenge absolutely makes sense.

I'm not anti-intensity.

I'm not anti-HIIT.

And I'm definitely not about to tell every woman over 40 that she needs to put down the weights and spend the rest of her life doing gentle yoga.

That's not the vibe.

Your body needs challenge.

Challenge helps build muscle, strength, cardiovascular fitness, bone health, and resilience.

But challenge is only one side of the equation.

Your body also needs to be able to recover from it.

Exercise Is Stress—and That's Not a Bad Thing

A challenging workout creates physiological stress.

That's part of how training works.

You challenge the body. Your body responds. You recover. You adapt.

Stress → recovery → adaptation.

The problem isn't the stress.

It's when you keep stacking stress without giving your body enough opportunity to recover.

Imagine you slept terribly last night.

You're stressed about work.

You've got family stuff happening.

Your body is navigating the hormonal changes of perimenopause.

You're already tired.

Then you add a hard workout.

Again tomorrow.

And the next day.

That workout isn't happening in isolation. It's landing on top of everything else your body is already carrying.

That context matters.

Your Nervous System Needs Flexibility

Your sympathetic nervous system—the system associated with activation—isn't something we need to eliminate.

We need it.

It helps us respond, perform, focus, exercise and handle challenges.

The goal isn't to spend your entire life on the proverbial brake pedal.

The goal is flexibility: being able to activate when needed, respond to the challenge, and then recover when it's over.

That's an important distinction because nervous-system regulation sometimes gets translated into:

Do everything slowly.

Never stress your body.

Hard workouts raise cortisol, so don't do them.

Nope.

That's way too simplistic.

The question isn't simply:

Is this workout stressful?

A better question is:

Can I recover from the amount of stress I'm asking my body to handle?

Your Body Gets the Final Vote

This is why I don't believe there's one perfect workout for every woman in perimenopause.

Your body gives you information.

How are you sleeping?

How's your energy?

How do you feel after training?

Are you recovering between workouts?

Are you getting stronger over time?

Or are you dragging yourself through every session because the schedule says you're supposed to?

Some days, strength training may be exactly what you need.

Other days, it's a walk.

Yoga.

Mobility.

Restorative movement.

Or actual REST.

Movement can be matched to what your system needs instead of being used as punishment or another thing to push through.

That's what I mean when I say:

Listen to your body and give it what it needs.

Your body gets the final vote.

Recovery Isn't Giving Up

This can be difficult when you're used to measuring success by how hard you worked.

Rest can feel like you're slacking.

Walking can feel like it “doesn't count.”

Taking an extra recovery day can make you worry that you're losing progress.

But recovery is part of training.

It helps you come back and challenge your body again.

That's why even the Rest & Recover Method isn't positioned as a replacement for exercise. It's there to help your body recover well enough to continue doing the things that make you strong.

And that's the piece I think a lot of women have been missing.

We're Not Trying to Make You Fragile

You're over 40.

You're not made of glass.

The goal isn't to remove every difficult thing from your life or make sure your cortisol never rises.

We're building a body that can handle challenge and recover from it.

Strong enough to lift.

Resilient enough to deal with stress.

Aware enough to recognize when something needs to change.

And supported enough to recover afterward.

So if you're doing “all the right things” and somehow feeling progressively worse, I don't necessarily want you to try harder.

I want you to look at the whole picture.

Challenge + recovery.

Because the strongest version of you isn't necessarily the woman who can push through anything.

She's the woman who knows when to push, when to recover, and how to work with her body through both.