5 Ways To Thrive In Perimenopause
Somewhere in your late 30’s to mid 40’s, seemingly overnight, you suddenly gain weight. You don’t feel like you recognize your own body anymore and all the things you did in the past to slim down and fix it no longer seem to work.
New symptoms creep up on you like night sweats, acne, difficulty sleeping - you are just laying awake at night in your bed…most likely initiated by the increased number of times you have to pee now. And your period that was once clockwork seems to be totally doing its own thing now.
Oh, and then there’s chin hairs.
And it’s not like there is just some new normal to get used to, these symptoms constantly shift and change.
With perimenopause, it’s almost like this state of transition IS the new normal.
I see many women scramble in response to these changes. Desperately trying to get back to what they once knew as normal. Certain that they must be doing something wrong or otherwise they wouldn’t have all this weight gain and other symptoms.
Yes, perimenopause CAN require different approaches to taking care of ourselves than years past, but I believe that there are ways to thrive in perimenopause that don’t involve spending your 40’s and 50’s using exhausting measures to be healthy and feel good in your own skin.
And most of what is promoted to women in perimenopause as solutions are just that, exhausting (and not sustainable)…which is the last thing women in perimenopause need!
So let’s take a look at five different areas that you can tend to, so that you can feel better and thrive in this precious time of your life that is perimenopause!
1) Sleep
I think we have all heard “get enough sleep” ad nauseum. I’m not going to tell you what you already know. But what I do want to name is that the amount of sleep that you got away with in your early to mid 30’s often changes during perimenopause.
But we tend to chug right along into aging at 6-7 hours sleep at night expecting our body to still make do.
Now I’m not trying to say that that was enough sleep in our 30’s, I’m just trying to say that the negative impact can be greater now. We can feel it more. And the stress on our body can be greater and more apparent.
And many of us see the recommendation for sleep for an adult of 7 hours or more and feel pretty good about ourselves if we clear that 7 hours (even if barely) but don’t stop to ask ourselves if we are one of the many adults that need 7.5, 8 or even 9 hours of sleep a night.
If you are curious if you could optimize your sleep more, you can start by trying to go to bed earlier (a little earlier each day) and see if more sleep makes a difference in the way that you feel.
And if you are the person who is just lying awake at night not sleeping, you can adjust your sleep hygiene one change at a time to see if you can sleep better. And if that is not helping, talk to your doctor about what else you can do, sometimes a sleep aid can be helpful. Also consider that not enough sleep can increase stress, anxiety and depression…which can impact your sleep and can create a cycle.
2) Stress
Right now, would you try something with me? I want you to breathe in for four counts and breathe out for eight counts. I want you to drop your shoulders. I want you to look up from the computer or phone and stare out to the furthest part away from you for a few seconds then come back.
Doesn’t that feel better?
Managing stress can be done in small breathes of time throughout our day such as taking small breaks like we just did, or by going outside to enjoy nature, or laying down with your eyes closed for a few minutes (or longer - I love a nap!) or taking a walk around the block.
We may also need to do big hard things to manage stress such as cutting back at work if possible, setting boundaries with our family to get time that we need to rest, learning when we need to say ‘no,’ and outsourcing certain tasks at home like cleaning our house, laundry, or grocery shopping (as in outsource them to someone outside your home OR inside your home).
Oh, and going to therapy to deal with our trauma or to help us learn to do the aforementioned things that can be so hard for us to do.
This is another area of our lives that we tend to just keep chugging along with the way that we always did something without ever considering that perhaps we shouldn’t, nor do we have to, keep going at it in the same way.
Stress can have a negative impact on your physical and mental health and it can exacerbate symptoms of PMS, perimenopause and menopause.
One of the things I love about working with women in their 40’s (and late 30’s and early 50’s!) is that they are reaching a point in their lives where they are realizing that they can’t keep at life at the same pace they did before, hustling and churning and burning. Living up to other people’s expectations or definitions of how they should be. Nor do they want to. And they are starting to consider what they need to holistically take care of themselves (when I say holistically, think whole person, whole big picture…not functional medicine/nutrition).
Unfortunately many women reach this point AFTER they have maxed out on stress and feel like they have run their body into the ground.
But it is NEVER too late for us to manage our stress better and I would argue that we never stop learning to better tend to this area of our lives because stress is a constant part of being human.
Learning about what causes us stress and how to minimize what we can minimize and change how we react and deciding what we are going to allow to impact us and what we are not can teach us a lot about ourselves and help us connect to our worthiness.
3) Nutrition
I want to preface what I am about to tell you by stating that the information I share here about nutrition in perimenopause is based on health and wellbeing, not weight loss.
It is important for me to establish that because weight loss and health or healthy eating are not one in the same as we are so often told.
I find that women who are focused on weight loss (or not gaining any weight) are actually unknowingly making a lot of unhealthy choices (which are also choices that for most women ultimately lead to more weight gain).
Now that that is addressed lets get down to business.
I’m going to start with protein since that is the celebrity nutrient of the hour.
Protein:
Do your protein needs change as you age? They can. They can mildly increase. And this is also relative as it depends on how much protein you ate to begin with.
What I can’t find a rationale for is the high triple digit protein recommendations across the board to all women in perimenopause that I am seeing on the regular on social media from Doctors to influencers.
The data that they point to (if they are pointing to ANY data) just doesn’t support a recommendation of protein this high.
And many of the people making these recommendations are using a calculation to determine protein based off of an ideal body weight calculation, which has been identified as being inaccurate and problematic.
Which I see as a red flag right out of the gate.
I think it is far more important to approach protein by *most of the time* offering a source of protein to yourself at 3 meals a day and at snacks if you feel so inclined. I think it is important to listen to your body and use it as a guide to determine if you need more protein or not.
If you think I am cookoobananas when I say listen to your body, I get that. Most of the messages we get regarding health and weight loss tell us NOT to listen to our body so that concept can seem not only foreign but also reckless.
I get it.
But your body does actually hold a lot of wisdom about what it needs, and reconnecting to it can help you know many things including what, when and how much to eat.
Some women feel better when they eat more protein, some don’t notice a difference, some feel worse. Some women love protein at breakfast, some do not. Individual needs vary.
What I don’t think is healthy is stressing about how to fit X grams of protein into your day everyday and pushing out other valuable nutrients like carbohydrates to fit it in.
This approach also ignores that we have individual needs and that those needs change from day to day, week to week and month to month.
Something that is also important to know about protein that I don’t see getting addressed when high protein diets are being promoted is that you can eat large amounts of protein, but if you are also restricting calories and aren’t getting enough, that protein is not going to be used for muscle building and repair, it is going to get used for energy instead. You may even break down muscle in this case.
You have to eat enough to get the muscle benefits of protein… and most of the diets and plans that I see promoted are not providing enough calories.
Carbs:
Perimenopausal or not, we need carbs and more than many are suggesting. I am seeing a lot of women on high protein diets who are feeling bloated and tired and it is because carbohydrates have been reduced to fit in the protein or because someone recommended a carb amount that is not enough.
Carbs are where we get energy from and they are our brain’s preferred source of energy (which is why they can feel addicting when you let yourself have them again after restricting, your brain REALLY wants to use carbs for energy). They are also a great source of fiber which is important for our GI tract.
Carbohydrate sources include things like bread, cereal, pasta, crackers, beans, fruit, and starchy vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, beans and peas (while I’m here - many people want to label other vegetables as carbohydrate sources. While they do have carbohydrate in them, in the nutrition world it is generally considered not enough to count it as a carb source unless you are eating very large portions (think entree salad)).
Just like protein, I think it is important to offer yourself a carbohydrate source (or two - read source not serving) at every meal and at snacks as you feel so inclined. Our needs for carbs are individualized and our individual needs change from day to day.
As we age, we can naturally become more insulin resistant, which can impact the way that we digest carbohydrates. This is not a reason to avoid carbohydrates as we age, but instead stay attuned to our body.
Learning to listen to your body about how much you need is an important skill for eating the right amount of carbs for you today, tomorrow and 30 years from now.
Fat:
Fat also gives us energy, helps us absorb certain vitamins (vitamins A, D, E & K) and it makes our food tasty and gives us that felt sense of satisfaction when we leave a meal.
Sources of fat include things like: dressings, oils, avocado, mayonaisse butter, full fat cheese, and higher fat meats like bacon.
If you have a meal devoid of fat, you might leave the table feeling like your stomach is full of packing peanuts and you will find yourself staring into the pantry later wondering why you are there.
You are there because you were likely unsatisfied.
I think it is important to include a source(s) (read source, not serving) of fat at 3 meals a day and snacks as you feel so inclined. Some people need more fat, some people need less. Say it with me now, our fat needs are individualized and our individual needs change from day to day.
Fruits and veggies:
Fruit and some veggies as I mentioned before are a source of carbohydrate, but they also deserve their own category because they provide us with valuable vitamins and other nutrients.
I recommend (you probably guessed it by now) that most of the time you are make a source (read source, not serving) of fruits or vegetables available to yourself at every meal and as snacks if you feel so inclined.
And I think it is important to note that as we age, it can be more difficult to digest large quantities of raw vegetables. If a client I am working with is complaining of stomach discomfort and bloating, this is one of the things that we take a look at and often with adjustments to raw vegetable intake, we can eliminate the discomfort and bloating.
I think this is another place where our body compensated for so long as we kept eating salad after salad thinking it was the healthy choice and we keep chugging along and don’t stop to check in and see if it is “working" for us any longer.
A note to those of you who made yourself eat vegetables in large quantities for so long because it is what a diet plan required or it was what you thought you “should” do. I often encourage clients to give themselves a break from vegetables if they don’t sound interesting.
Often women are afraid that they will NEVER come back to eating vegetables again. But that is rarely (if it has ever been) the case. Your body will ask for them again and they will sound interesting to you again and you will get to change your relationship with vegetables and enjoy them for life!
4) Movement
Exercise is another area where we often keep chugging along, expecting that we should maintain the same level of activity throughout our life. We are used to running X number of days for X minutes for years and suddenly we start to feel more tired after or get injured more often or the movement just feels harder (read more intense).
And new aches and pains may creep up that make day to day life more uncomfortable. But we don’t stop to think that maybe that the exercise type, duration, intensity or frequency is not best for our body anymore.
You may find that the way you moved before does not serve you as well in this season of life. You may need to adjust your frequency, duration, intensity or try a different type of movement altogether.
If we don’t adapt to our changing needs, maintaining the same intensity can result in increased stress in our body as can be seen in rising cortisol levels.
Long, intense aerobic sessions that are so often promoted to women may not be the best thing for you in perimenopause.
And in our 40’s, we also need to think about movement that is helpful in preventing bone loss. If you haven’t already, you may want to consider resistance exercise or strength training. A number of studies have shown that you can decrease your bone loss or even increase bone growth using these methods.
I highly recommend working with a trainer to show you proper form if you decide to lift weights. Poor form can result in an injury which will keep you from being active and doing other things that you love!
When thinking about movement, it is so important that you pick something that you enjoy. And what you enjoy may change overtime. It is ok to switch it up. And more types of movement “count” when it comes to promoting health than we are made to think by a lot of the prescriptive exercise regimens being promoted.
5) Acceptance
Perimenopause can result in changes that feel sudden and super uncomfortable. Hormone changes and shifts in your metabolism can result in weight changes all over your body but especially in your stomach area.
And the things you used to do to slim down, just don’t seem to work any longer. You may have pushed even harder as a result, eating even less and working out even harder and may have even gained weight as a result. You might be feeling pretty terrible at this point.
It is important to understand that eating less and exercising harder is likely resulting in an increased stress response in your body (yes, more cortisol!).
And, approaching food and your body this way can make you feel pretty bad emotionally.
You may be thinking to yourself WELL WHAT DO I DO THEN??!!!!
Well, the way I see it, you can do one of two things:
1) You can spend your 40’s and 50’s endlessly trying to make your body smaller (there is no shortage out there of diets being promoted to perimenopausal and menopausal women).
OR 2) you can embrace these body changes as a normal and important part of the aging process and take all of that time and energy you are saving and put it into other areas of your life that matter to you.
If number two resonates more with you but also seems like you would still want some more structure, I have something that can help. I have created a video series (short videos!) and a workbook for you to use as a guide. You can click here to get it for free.
Hi! I’m Meg. I am a registered dietitian nutritionist and coach and I help women stress and obsess less about food and their body so that they can enjoy life more and make a bigger impact on this world!
If you want to become more nutrition and body confident, click the button below to get my free video and workbook series, 4 Steps To Becoming Body Confident.