How I’m Staying Fit and Strong During Perimenopause

The importance of protein, strength, intervals and sleep

Author’s own image of her racing to 1st place in a 38-mile race

My Menopause Brain is an entirely reader-supported publication that wants to spread Menopause Awareness to as many women as possible. If you read our blog regularly and value the information you get here, please consider sharing this article or becoming a paid subscriber!

---

Last year, life hit me like a truck.

I used to run over trails and hills like a gazelle, but suddenly, my spring was replaced with a clunkiness, and I felt like an old rusty tractor. My body was betraying me.

There were other things at play, too. I endured fatigue, teariness, irritation, anxiety, low mood and a sense of hopelessness.

My body seemed to be changing shape before my eyes, yet my training routine and nutrition were the same.

I couldn’t figure out if there was something physical going on, which was also dragging me down mentally. Or whether the root of my issues was more mental but with a vice grip on my physical well-being.

And so I did what every self-respecting human would do — I turned to Dr. Google.

The contenders were seasonal affective disorder (I’ve never wintered well), low iron or even B12, stress, cPTSD, low testosterone, or even the start of perimenopause.

I trotted off to my doctor for blood tests and had my hormone levels, including testosterone, checked, as well as my vital blood markers.

Everything came back normal. And yet, I felt far from normal.

Run like a girl

Despite the lack of confirmation, everything was pointing toward perimenopause.

On the one hand, I look forward to being post-menopausal. No more periods and no more fear of an unwanted pregnancy. On the other hand, I was a competitive runner at this time. I knew only too well the impact of perimenopause on women athletes with its steep decline in performance.

I needed to reevaluate my training and do it fast because everything that had worked for me before was suddenly failing me.

The thing is, for too long, women have been treated like small men.

The pink-it and shrink-it approach shoehorns male-centred research onto women, and as Caroline Criado Pérez outlines in her book Invisible Women, gender biases have been applied across the board, from medical research through to the use of crash test dummies. So, it is hardly a surprise that we see this pattern of gender bias in the fitness industry.

Heck, I’m surprised that menopause studies aren’t based on men.

I am a qualified ultra-running coach, and yet nowhere in my training was I taught to differentiate between the genders for training programmes. Nor was I taught to adapt training sessions for different life stages, such as working with a woman’s menstrual cycle or being cognisant of perimenopause and menopause.

Sounds ludicrous, right?

So, for the sake of myself and my fellow women running clients, I took matters into my own hands.

I adapted my training programmes to work with perimenopause as opposed to allowing myself to be guided by what works best for guys.

I completed the Well-HQ course about training the menopausal body. I also devoured Dr. Stacy Sims’ book Next Level which is all about “kicking ass, feeling great and crushing goals through menopause and beyond.”

If I were to sum up my new-found knowledge into an easy-to-apply package, it is this: Don’t deprive yourself of calories, ensure you get adequate rest, introduce intervals into your runs and in the words of Dr. Stacy Sims, “lift heavy shit.”

Here’s why.

Fuel your body appropriately for what you are asking it to do

It may seem counterintuitive, but if we don’t eat enough calories, we risk putting on weight. You see, we send our body into a panic that food is scarce, and so instead of losing weight due to a calorie deficit, our bodies store it. When we deprive our bodies, we send them into fat-storing mode and slow our metabolism down.

Make sure you fuel your body adequately for exercise both before and after. This means no exercising in a fasted state, which can increase the stress hormone cortisol, and result in weight gain and other issues such as chronic fatigue and susceptibility to injury.

If you are unsure whether you have eaten enough before exercise, eat a snack. A banana and a handful of nuts may be enough.

And now more than ever, make sure you consume adequate protein for your size and exercise level. Protein is needed to repair and grow your muscles after exercise, allowing them to perform optimally at your training session.

Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass. Women can lose up to eight percent of muscle mass each decade after their thirtieth birthday. According to Dr. Sims, one way to counter this loss is to “lift heavy shit,” which we will come on to. In short, for the muscle to be able to grow and repair, we must feed it. And this is where protein comes in.

When I was training for ultra marathons, I sat about 57kg and aimed for 120 grams of protein a day. This is consistent with recommendations suggesting active people need 1.2–2 grams of protein per kg of body weight per day. Although that said, Dr. Sims recommends consuming upwards of 2 grams for endurance and strength athletes.

Put your feet up, take it easy, your body is slower to recover

If there’s one thing I learned as a running coach, it is the power of rest. Rest is an instrumental part of training. In fact, it’s when we rest that all the good adaptations occur in our body, which leads to an increase in fitness.

But try to get any committed athlete to rest, and you’ll have a tough negotiation on your hands.

I was the same. Rest feels counterproductive. In days gone by I would rather do a double training session than take extra rest. And yet rest is where the magic happens, especially for those of us in midlife.

The truth is that our bodies take longer to recover than the male body. In her first book, Roar, which is all about optimising training and nutrition for women and serves as a prequel to Next Level, Dr. Stacy Sims talks about how the female fat-burning system returns to normal levels post-exercise after 3 hours, while for men, this stage lasts for up to 21 hours.

Sure, it’s not fair, but we just have to work with it.

Sleep is when our bodies repair and regenerate. Sometimes, it’s a toss-up between sleep and training. For instance, our only window to train may result in us getting up early. But a consistent lack of sleep may compromise our fitness long term and deprive our body of that essential repair time.

It’s all about balance.

I trained six days a week with one rest day, during which I incorporated a gentle yoga session. Now, I find my body feels much better after five training sessions a week.

While it feels like I’m not doing enough, ultimately, my body needs this rest to stay energised and functioning optimally while also avoiding fatigue and burnout.

Enough of the slow ploddy runs, mix in some speed and fly

Dr. Sims talks about the importance of sprint interval training (SIT), where we have a burst of hard and fast running followed by a recovery period.

So why incorporate SIT into our fitness regime? Science has proven that it improves our body composition. It increases lean muscle mass while reducing fat—music to our menopausal ears, right?

SIT boosts the number and function of mitochondria, our energy-producing cells. Think of them as generators in your body. Mitochondria also improve our sensitivity to insulin and lower our blood sugar levels. Their number and function are essential for our cardiovascular and metabolic health.

But that’s not the only benefit. Belly fat is an unwanted guest of menopause, but SIT is particularly good at burning belly fat.

A good example of a SIT session is running hard for 30 seconds, then at recovery pace for 30 seconds, repeating this six times, then taking a four-minute extended recovery, ready to repeat the set another one or two times. Remember to make sure you are adequately warmed up. There are some more examples you can use in this article by RunRepeat.

So, if you run several times a week, why not mix it up a little, add some SIT to your sessions, and see how you go?

Time to get strong

Ahhh, yes, the whole “lift heavy shit” strapline that Dr Sims is famous for.

With the drop of oestrogen during perimenopause and into menopause, we no longer have oestrogen’s help for power, strength and lean muscle development. So, we need to train smarter. Note I didn’t say harder — smarter.

This is why we need to “lift heavy shit,” as it stimulates the central nervous system to replicate the same benefits that we used to get from oestrogen.

Ultimately, lifting heavy shit supports our whole body by increasing our metabolic rate, improving stability and posture, producing stronger bones, and resulting in healthier blood pressure.

They say if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it right? If we don’t use our muscles, we will lose them. We will become the doddery and frail women that we fear turning into.

I’m no fan of strength work if I’m honest, but I’m aspiring to do three sessions a week. Right now, I’m using my weighted vest and free weights through a series of squats, lunges and heel raisers. I hate to admit this, but strength work does much more for my tone than running ever did.

The key point when it comes to strength is this: if there’s no other motivation to lift heavy shit, surely to be able to live an active and independent life for as long as possible is incentive enough.

I recently had a lady named Mary comment on one of my running stories. She told me she had run all her life and kept herself fit, strong, and healthy. She was 70 years old and about to do a half marathon. While some folk aspire to be like celebrities, not me, I aspire to be like Mary.

Truthfully, I still feel like a bit of a tractor, but I’m working on it. I may not return to my bouncing gazelle legs, but I’m not ready to swap out my gym kit for knitting needles just yet.

I will accept my performance deterioration with grace, but I refuse to allow perimenopause to take the best of me.

Remember, it’s all about training smarter, not harder.

---

My Menopause Brain is an entirely reader-supported publication that wants to spread Menopause Awareness to as many women as possible. If you read our blog regularly and value the information you get here, please consider sharing this article or becoming a paid subscriber!

You can also buy us a coffee instead.

My Menopause Brain is looking for writers. Details on how to apply here.