I was 34 when I found out I was perimenopausal.
I'd been a personal trainer for years. I knew how to eat, how to train and how to push through. Then stress piled up, I stopped listening to my body, and everything came apart. I gained weight and my mood crashed. Testing showed adrenal fatigue, insulin resistance and very low cortisol. Working harder and eating cleaner, the approach I'd always relied on, stopped working.
What brought me back wasn't doing more. It was doing the right things.
After more than 15 years of coaching women, and after completing Dr. Stacy Sims' Menopause 2.0 course, I've seen the same pattern again and again: many women in midlife are following a plan built for a body they no longer have.
If you're training as hard as ever but your body composition is changing, your sleep is off, your recovery is slower and your skin feels different, this is for you.
What's Actually Happening?
Perimenopause can start in your late 30s or early 40s and last several years. Menopause itself is one day: 12 months after your last period, at an average age of around 51. Everything after that is post-menopause, when your hormones settle at a new, lower baseline.
Many changes aren't simply because hormones are "low." They also come from estrogen and progesterone rising and falling unpredictably while the body adjusts. You may notice changes in:
- Muscle: Lower estrogen weakens the signals that build and repair muscle, so strength and power can drop faster.
- Metabolism: Blood sugar regulation becomes less efficient, and body fat tends to shift toward your middle.
- Sleep and stress: Falling progesterone takes away some of your natural calm. Many women feel "wired but tired."
- Bone: Bone density can decline more quickly during and after menopause.
- Skin, hair and joints: Estrogen supports collagen and connective tissue, so skin can get thinner and drier, and tendons and joints often feel stiffer.
None of this means you're failing. It means your approach may need to change. I think about midlife health through four pillars.
Pillar 1: Exercise — Lift, Build & Move
Long hours of moderate cardio and light "toning" workouts don't send a strong enough signal to protect muscle and bone. Piled on top of poor sleep and under-eating, they can also keep stress hormones high.
Instead, focus on:
- Progressive strength training 2–3 times per week: squats, deadlifts, presses and rows. Work toward heavier loads of about 3–6 reps per set, with 2–3 minutes' rest between sets.
- Some higher-intensity work, if appropriate for your fitness level: for example, one short sprint session of 6–8 all-out efforts of 20–30 seconds, with full recovery between each.
- Impact or jumping exercises when appropriate: a few minutes, 2–3 times a week, of squat jumps, skipping or lateral hops to help keep your bones strong.
- Walking, ideally every day.
- Mobility, Pilates and pelvic floor work to help you feel good in your body.
You don't need to spend hours in the gym. You need to give your body the right stimulus consistently.
Pillar 2: Nutrition — Eat to Support Your Body
When women notice their bodies changing, one of the first things they often do is eat less and exercise more. I've been there.
But it backfires. Your body treats a big energy gap as stress: it turns down your thyroid and hormones, raises cortisol and holds on to fat. The symptoms of under-eating (fatigue, poor sleep, irritability, stalled progress) look almost exactly like perimenopause.
A few of my priorities:
- Aim for about 30–35 g of protein at meals. Midlife muscles need a bigger dose to switch on repair.
- Don't train fasted. Even at 6am, have something small first, like coffee with protein powder, or half a banana with Greek yogurt.
- Don't be afraid of carbohydrates. Eat more on training days, and have protein and carbs soon after hard workouts to start recovery.
- Build meals around protein, colourful produce and quality carbohydrates, with plenty of fiber and fermented foods to feed your gut.
- Stay hydrated.
- Skip long fasts and keto. In active midlife women, they tend to raise stress hormones and disrupt sleep. A simple 12-hour overnight break works better.
The goal isn't to eat as little as possible. It's to give your body what it needs to perform and recover.
Pillar 3: Rest — Protect Your Sleep
You can't out-train poor recovery. When I was burnt out, getting to bed by 9pm was one of the first things that helped me feel like myself again.
- Keep a consistent bedtime when possible.
- Create a cool, dark sleeping environment.
- Have caffeine before noon.
- Cut back on evening alcohol, which breaks up sleep and can trigger hot flashes.
- On high-stress weeks, swap a hard workout for a walk.
Rest is also about calming your stress system. Breathing exercises, time outside and saying “no” more often all help. In seasons when stress is running high, I also lean on an adaptogen. More on that below.
Pillar 4: Recovery — This Is Where You Adapt
Training creates the stimulus. Recovery is where your body actually adapts.
Recovery takes longer as we get older, so schedule real rest days and take an easier week every 3–4 weeks. Several nights of poor sleep, prolonged soreness, declining performance or feeling run down are information, not something to push through.
Recovery also means supporting your body beyond your workouts. When you lift heavy, you're asking a lot of your tendons and joints, and they're changing along with your skin. This is where a few targeted supplements come in.
Why I Use Bend Beauty
Food and lifestyle come first for me. But as I've gotten older and increased my training demands, three Bend Beauty products have earned a consistent place in my routine.
MARINE COLLAGEN + CO-FACTORS
Each scoop of MARINE COLLAGEN + CO-FACTORS provides 4,500mg of hydrolyzed marine collagen from MSC-certified wild pollock, plus organic vitamin C from acerola cherries and silicon from bamboo. I stir the unflavoured version into my morning coffee or a smoothie.
It helps in collagen formation, helps maintain healthy skin, hair and nails, supports immune function and provides antioxidants that help protect against free radicals. It's an easy daily habit alongside heavy lifting, and my clients notice the difference in their nails first.
RENEW + PROTECT
RENEW + PROTECT combines omega fatty acids, antioxidants and vitamin D to support healthy-looking skin from within. It's designed to support skin elasticity, firmness and hydration, help reduce roughness and redness caused by skin inflammation, and help reduce the skin's sensitivity to UV-induced sunburn. Bend says results can show in as little as four weeks.
It's especially helpful when midlife skin starts feeling drier and more reactive. It doesn't replace sunscreen, but it's another part of my skin-support routine.
INNER HARMONY
This is the newest addition to my routine, and it makes sense to me because stress, sleep, energy and recovery are so closely connected.
INNER HARMONY is a vegan capsule that combines:
- KSM-66 Ashwagandha®, an adaptogen that helps increase resistance to stress in people with a history of chronic stress and helps improve the quality of sleep.
- Oxyjun® Arjuna, traditionally used in Ayurvedic medicine as a heart tonic and included to support endurance and physical performance.
- Vitamin C from organic acerola cherries, which supports collagen formation and immune function.
Falling progesterone and rising baseline cortisol leave so many of us feeling stressed and running on empty. We're balancing work, family, training and changing hormones, and we often try to solve low energy by pushing harder when what our bodies need is better recovery and stress support. That's where INNER HARMONY fits.
The directions are three capsules once a day between meals, a few hours away from other supplements or medications.
My Rule With Supplements
Keep it simple. One new supplement at a time, and give it enough time to see how you respond: about four weeks for skin support, and at least eight weeks for INNER HARMONY.
Rather than adding a long list of supplements and hoping something works, take photos and rate the things that matter to you each week: energy, sleep, stress, recovery, skin, hair and nails, strength and overall wellbeing.
Always check with your healthcare provider before adding supplements, particularly if you take medications or have a health condition. MARINE COLLAGEN + CO-FACTORS contains hydrolyzed collagen from fish, so skip it if you have a fish allergy. INNER HARMONY contains ashwagandha, so Bend recommends asking a healthcare practitioner first if you have thyroid disease, take blood thinners, have a heart condition or are breastfeeding. It can also make some people drowsy.
The Bottom Line
You can unlock your potential at any age, but sometimes that means changing your approach, not working harder at the same strategy.
You aren't broken, and your best years of strength aren't behind you. Your body is changing. Your strategy should change with it.
Start this week with one habit from each pillar:
- Exercise: two strength sessions
- Nutrition: 30 g of protein at breakfast
- Rest: a consistent bedtime and a calmer evening routine
- Recovery: one daily recovery ritual, like your morning collagen
Small, consistent choices add up.
Sylvia Peters is a Personal Trainer and Holistic Lifestyle Coach with over 15 years of experience and co-owner of Nova Fitness in Downtown Halifax. She specializes in women's health and hormones and is the author of Unlocking Your Potential and The Nutrition Guidebook.
This article is for educational purposes and isn't medical advice. Talk to your healthcare provider before changing your exercise, nutrition or supplement routine.
