Menopause, Exercise and Me!

I wanted to start a conversation, about menopause! All women go through it one way or another eventually but I find that the amount people are aware of when and if it is happening, or if they've even gone through menopause, really varies. The main reason for the next few blogs that I plan on writing is going to be aimed more at exercising through the menopause and how we need to change how we train. Our bodies change and how they react to exercise changes too. At 48 this is something I am personally going through and learning as I do, and I want to share that in hope that it may help some of you.

Did you know that menopause is one moment in time? And did you know that perimenopause can vary in length, is usually 5 to 7 years but can be longer? Menopause is the moment in time when you haven’t had a period for 12 months. Perimenopause is all the time before then when your hormone levels are changing and postmenopause is everything after menopause has happened.

It can be hard to pinpoint when perimenopause happens and often we don’t even know it's happening to us. Doing my job I talk to a lot of people about all sorts of different things and menopause comes up now and again and I started hearing about how different it is for everyone.  The more I heard the more I started to be aware of all the different symptoms there are of perimenopause, and it's so much more than irregular periods, hot flushes and night sweats. I am definitely in perimenopause but I don't have any of these symptoms.

So, for me, if I think about it, it started during or soon after lockdown which is why I didn’t pick up on it until the last year or so. When we came out of lockdown I had no motivation to do the things I used to enjoy, struggled to get my running distance above 10k despite running 2 marathons only a few years before, and no joy from things I used to love doing. I just put it down to not getting myself back into things post lockdown, and to be honest, getting older. DId it matter if I didn’t do the things I used to enjoy??

But I really started to suffer from fatigue which meant I had even less desire to do things I used to want to do, and work was really starting to be a struggle, and this led to me feeling down because I just had no energy for anything outside of work. Anyone that knows me knows I’m an active person. I’ve always loved running and going to the gym. Sometimes on the weekend I used to enjoy a bike ride or a long walk but I just wanted to spend the weekend on the sofa. 

So I did what I always do and I started reading books, listening to podcasts. I really believe that knowledge is power and understanding our bodies helps us to help ourselves. On my learning journey I found out that we have to change the way we eat, the way we exercise, change the way we fuel and recover from our exercise. I've worked in the fitness industry for 30 years, done numerous courses and qualifications and none of it, apart from Pilates for the menopause, talked about changes that are needed to be made either to enhance our training or to use training to help with symptoms of menopause. 

Now, if this is a revelation to me then I'm sure it's a revelation to a lot of you. So I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learnt. I’m starting to realise that a lot of the fitness knowledge I have is relevant to men or younger women. If the average woman hits perimenopause at 47, or even earlier, we spend a lot of time either in peri or post menopause so I think it’s important there is more awareness of changes we go through and changes we need to make. And no, it isn’t always always a case of calories in and calories out for us anymore! If you’ve found you’ve gained weight through menopause and your PT is telling you to move more and eat less then find a PT that understands menopause!!! Someone that understands what you’re quite literally going through. Yes I have been one of those PT’s!! But I didn’t know any better as that is what we are led to believe and understand.

Over the next few posts I want to cover the basics of the changes we go through, the variety of symptoms, but will focus more on how we need to alter our eating habits and training plans.

If you want to do more reading to get more understanding I can highly recommend

Menopausing by Davina McCall and Dr Naomi Potter

Next Level by Stacy Sims and Selene Yeager

I really want to know what you think! So if you have any specific questions I’ll do my best to answer them. But do remember I’m not a specialist, just a woman going through perimenopause that has a good understanding of how her body works and has a lot of fitness knowledge which is always being added to. You can never stop learning!

Lyndsey x