Guide to Training in Perimenopause

Perimenopause may feel like it “creeps up on you” in your 40’s, and makes you feel like the things you did before “don’t work the same anymore.” That’s certainly how I felt – I couldn’t explain the body fat that kept creeping on, or that my body scans were showing lower less muscle – despite me continuing to do the same healthy practices of training and nutrition intake I had been using for years prior.

It was quite unsettling, and it made me wonder if I was doing something wrong. I felt like I had no control over my body, which is scary. What I didn’t know was that I had been kickstarted into perimenopause by exposure to a toxic form of mold (podcast about it here) that took some time to diagnose and treat, and that my hormone levels tanking was one of the byproducts.

I was able to get testing that helped shed light on what was going on “under the hood” and begin to address my health on multiple levels, and I began to learn as much as I could about this important life transition we go through as women.

That’s helped me navigate perimenopause with a lot more confidence and develop the training and nutrition strategies (as well as a lot of other fantastic tips I’ve picked up along the way) that really work! Here’s a snapshot of a 5 year span of some of my journey – while I’m a trainer by trade, I too had to learn about perimenopause and how to navigate it!

Our hormones exist in a delicate balance, one that cycles evenly month to month in an ideal scenario. But illness or high levels of stress can also impact our levels of these hormones, just like the transitions we go through as women from puberty to perimenopause and then post menopause.

When we’re in our regular cycling years, the fluctuations between estrogen and progesterone that happen with our monthly menstrual cycle give us a bit of an “edge” when it comes to building muscle and lowering body fat.

That regular cycle of estrogen and progesterone fluctuating back and forth keeps everything on an even keel. Higher levels of estrogen than we have later in life meant we recovered a bit more easily from our workouts, had more resilience to training more frequently, could regulate our body temperature more easily, and had an easier time rebuilding muscle.

Higher levels of progesterone than we have later in life meant we had more support for bone remodeling (supporting our bone density), and more buffering for our cortisol (supporting our stress levels) among other things.

Here’s what that hormone fluctuation looks like (based on a 28-day cycle for illustrative purposes as women have all different lengths of cycles that are normal). Note that there is a somewhat even balance of estrogen to progesterone levels on either side of ovulation:

Additionally, we had our highest levels of testosterone during this time of our lives. Testosterone is really important for women, and contributes to our libido function and the growth and renewal of our bone and body tissue (including our muscle tissue).

Muscle tissue is what we call “metabolic currency.” The more muscle you carry, the more efficiently you burn fat and regulate many body functions. This is the body tissue we most want to hold onto as we go into perimenopause and then post menopause. Muscle tissue doesn’t make us bulky; it gives us our tone, tightness and strength in all we do.

Further contributing to why it was easier for us to build and hold onto our muscle tone back then is that we absorb more of the amino acids from the protein we eat during the earlier life stage, providing us with maximum access to the building blocks our bodies need for muscle repair and regrowth after our workouts.

I’m not saying we didn’t have to “work” for our results back then, but it was a lot easier then for some of these reasons.

Perimenopause is that transition phase when our menstrual cycle starts becoming erratic, and the hormone levels can become imbalanced as a result. Since most of our sex hormones are produced in our ovaries, as we have more sporadic and less menstrual cycles we’re producing less and less of these essential hormones that do so many important things for us.

We have receptor sites all over our bodies for these hormones, and they impact every aspect of our health and lives as women. So as we have less of them in our system – which tends to be a gradual process – we start to feel subtly different on so many levels.

This is the life stage when you may first have noticed your body not responding as easily as it did before. That might be when you started to struggle with your energy or weight, mood, sleep, period irregularities and/or body temperature. It might feel like you have PMS symptoms that just last for ages. Since perimenopause often coincides with a very busy time in our lives, you might attribute your symptoms to just “having more stress” in your life, or “not getting enough sleep,” or blaming yourself for “not exercising enough” or “not dieting enough.” Nope – it’s perimenopause.

That’s represented on the left side of this chart – where the estrogen and progesterone lines start to get out of sync – a shift away from their regular, even keel – and one that gets more pronounced the farther we get towards menopause (when our period stops):

While testosterone is not represented on that chart, it is also starting to decline in perimenopause. And that also adds to the symptoms you may start to notice.

Symptoms you may experience include (but aren’t limited to):

• weight gain
• muscle loss
• irregular periods
• heightened anxiety
• lower energy
• poor sleep
• hot flashes
• mood swings
• dry skin
• sore joints, or more aches and pains

Helpful tools and actions for help addressing symptoms

Some of the symptoms you may experience can be addressed and mitigated by working with your doctor to monitor your hormone levels, and you might consider using some type of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to help ease the transition symptoms and support energy levels. Bio-identical hormones can help you manage things like mood swings and hot flashes.

If you’re interested in hormone replacement therapy and hearing about the different options available, I did a great podcast with my doctor where she goes over the landscape of different hormone treatment options for women. That’s a great episode – in the first half she covers the testing she likes to see from her patients, and the second half she talks all about hormone treatment options. You can always skip around in my podcasts by using the show notes or transcripts to listen to just what you want to hear.

I liked this conversation a lot, because she explained why she recommends some types of treatments over others, which can be helpful in understanding the landscape of what’s available so you can have an informed conversation with your own doctor.

It’s ideal to have blood work or a urine test done (for example the DUTCH test, prescribed by your doctor) to determine what is right for you, and to test periodically when using anything to see how your levels are responding.

Supplements like DHEA, a commonly available supplement that acts as a precursor to testosterone and estrogen can be useful in stimulating their production (I recommend working with a doctor on dosing and determining if this is appropriate for you).

Cortisol: the stress response and its impact on you

While most of your sex hormones are made in your ovaries, some are made by your adrenal glands. This is one of the reasons I am always talking about (and personally focusing on) being proactive with stress management, in order to support a healthy stress response. You can support the production of some of your hormones over time, even post menopause with healthy adrenal function.

So many women in my community tell me about the stress they are dealing with. They make time for exercise and they’re doing pretty well with their nutrient intake. But they are still struggling with seeing fat loss. Constant stress can impact our HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis. This is how the body regulates our hormone balance in response to stress, which can increase the cortisol levels in our system, causing more fat storage and muscle breakdown.

Cortisol is an important hormone that helps support our sleep/wake cycle and our energy balance. But when it’s chronically elevated, it promotes fat storage and breaks down our valuable muscle tissue.

As we gradually lose our levels of progesterone in perimenopause, we lose some of the buffering effect that progesterone had for our cortisol response. That can be part of what makes you feel more anxious and stressed, it can impact your sleep, and it can also be part of why you’re more easily losing muscle and/or gaining body fat.

Be mindful of not over-consuming caffeine, as this can also increase cortisol levels. I personally switched to half decaf/half regular for my morning coffee routine a few years back and it’s helped me a lot. I still have 2 cups of coffee, but they’re both half decaf so I’m getting a lower dose of caffeine overall.

This may be a good time to start a daily meditation or breathing practice or make it a priority if you’ve fallen out of the habit. Even if you take 5 minutes to sit and breathe or listen to the sounds of nature (the Calm app is a great tool), this practice can help ground you, bring you back into equilibrium, and over time help you develop more resilience to the stress you face.

We’re all going to have stress to deal with that we can’t plan for, it’s part of life! But proactively creating a routine that grounds you and supports your nervous system response is something that will increase your resilience to the stress you face. Just like building an exercise practice helps give you the strength to call on when you need it, building a grounding practice will give you more space to recover and respond to stress in the moment (if this is a topic of interest, here’s a podcast where I share 12 ways to do just that).

Adaptogenic herbs are promising for supporting the body’s stress response and hormone levels, and in some cases help balance these levels. You might enjoy the article in which I feature six adaptogenic herbs and their properties. These are just a few of the many natural herbal supplements that can support your hormones. What you need will be unique to you. I would also recommend getting some type of hormone testing done to see what herbs might be right for you as well. While herbs are gentle, they still impact your body and it’s good to customize.

We also want to be mindful that we’re not over-exercising, as exercise creates stress in our body. It is a healthy stress when we are prepared and ready – and as I’ll discuss shortly, we need a little more time to recover between workout bouts to reap the best results from our training post-menopause. But if we are chronically overtraining and not recovering we can be undermining our goals and adding undue stress to our system.

Knowing that the body is changing and that we won’t “bounce back” as quickly from an injury, or build strength as quickly means that self-care and consistency with stress management techniques are invaluable.

We lose collagen and elastin over time, and being more proactive with warming up and cooling down around workouts, stretching, mobility work and doing more yoga can really help you keep you limber and flexible, and support joint health (more on that coming right up!).

Plus, intentional movement can calm and restore the nervous system, lower your stress response and boost your mind-body connection.

A great form of movement that has major benefits for us as women – plus contributes to our bone density, muscle preservation AND lowering body fat is good old fashioned walking.

Low impact movement is a big part of our overall daily energy expenditure and walking and moving more is a supportive piece of your long-term health and self care. Here’s a recent podcast where I talked about 8 really amazing benefits women get from just walking a little more each day.

You could consider developing a “walk after eating” practice where you go for a 10-15 minute walk after dinner (or any meal, but if you are at work during lunch or too busy at breakfast, dinner might be the best time to make it a habit).

Walking after eating has the added benefit of supporting digestion and regulating your blood sugar (which means it’s easier to lose body fat).

I got very committed to walking more as I hit perimenopause myself. While I get to walk my dog as a regular practice, during my busy work day, it’s harder for me to fit in a walk after lunch.

I got a walking pad to get me moving more often, and sometimes wear a weighted vest when I walk to increase the (low impact) intensity. I have also used a compact “stepper” in my house that I take with me on long road trips now (here’s a link to see all those options).

I’ll often hop on and walk for 10-15 min after lunch, and I also walk on it at night, sometimes while watching a show. If you can’t get a fancy “walking desk” at work and your time is limited, you might consider something portable and compact for your job as well.

Developing more proactive self-care practices may not sound like the fast track to fitness in perimenopause, but I assure you it is an essential component. Of the 3 types of estrogen (E1, E2 and E3), the E2 is the one most supportive of our muscle tissue. And that’s the one we most start to lose in perimenopause. This really contributes to our dip in resilience (or what we might feel as how quickly we recover, or bounce back from a workout).

So as we begin to lose those higher levels, it’s super important to start paying more attention to self care that supports the body in recovery. I have embraced the pieces of my training that I used to sometimes skip, like warming up, cooling down, stretching more and really leaning into my yoga practice (fortunately, I have a helper for that, lol!).

Inflammation: how overtraining and under-fueling backfire on us

When it comes to your workouts, staying active and being consistent with your training is important – but this is the life stage where we want to get really strategic about our training, rest days and eating habits rather than trying to follow every diet and every influencer with 6-pack abs.

I see a lot of women do inadvertently make things harder for themselves by training more and eating less. I thought maybe that’s what I needed to do too when I started experiencing the weight gain and body composition changes! But this actually has the opposite effect as it creates a greater inflammatory response in the body, and a greater loss of muscle and increase in fat storage.

I think one of the reasons a lot of us accidentally overtrain perimenopause is because we expect to get results during our workout – so “more workouts must equal more results.”

But actually, muscle tissue does not develop or strengthen when we are exercising. It develops and strengthens after we work out, and after we have challenged ourselves, when we are resting and refueling.

Some of the featured meals in My Dinner Plan! Recipes and eating plans for 6 months laid out for you to use again and again!

This seems to be the same reason why some women under-eat, or “under-fuel” as I call it – we think eating less means we’re going to become smaller. Depriving the body of nutrients actually means we create a stressful environment internally that deprives us of the building blocks we need to hold onto our muscle, weakens our bones, diminishes our energy, and creates more fat storage.

During perimenopause, we start to need a little bit more of a workout stimulus to get those adaptations in our tissue, a little bit more of a protein stimulus to get the body the building blocks it needs, and a little bit more of a recovery period to support the tissue repair and regrowth process as our hormone levels begin to go down. This is the path to seeing results again – we just have to dial in our approach. This is all totally accessible, and I’ll show you how!

Perimenopause Training Essentials

When you work out you create an inflammatory response in your tissue by creating micro tears in the muscle. This is why I always say “exercise is a healthy stress when we are healthy,” because exercising when our system is already stressed doesn’t contribute to muscle strength or fat loss – it creates more muscle loss and can be a contributing factor in fat storage.

If you don’t get enough rest, you will stay in an inflamed state from your workouts, and not be able to repair the muscle tissue – which means you’ll always be losing it faster than you can rebuild it.

This is where many women go wrong – they keep training and training thinking that they’re going to lose the weight, but it’s actually keeping them stuck in an inflamed state that contributes to weight gain and muscle loss. Not to mention, a heightened state of inflammation doesn’t do us any favors in general: it contributes to achy joints and soreness that doesn’t go away.

Paying attention to the rest your body needs is crucial. You don’t have the same “bounce back” resilience you used to have from the estrogen/progesterone cycling. In the past those higher levels of key hormones allowed you to recover much more quickly, so it was easier to “go hard” maybe multiple days in a row without noticing any ill effects.

But at this stage of life, we need to get smarter about creating an effective stimulus with the workouts we do, as well as giving our body a long enough recovery period to repair and regrow with less of those cycling hormones to support us. This only gets more important the deeper we go into perimenopause, and will set you up successfully for postmenopause as well – as these strategies will be the foundation you’ll build on as you transition into the next level.

An “effective stimulus” means that your training is challenging enough to stimulate the muscle tissue to respond and the fat to mobilize (in the next section I will detail exactly what to do).

That’s going to be subjective to each of us, of course. What’s challenging for you will depend on what you’ve been doing before – so work within your limits and avoid programs that are going to just run your energy into the ground.

We want to create a more polarized workout experience, where we go hard then rest well – and stay out of the “grey zone” doing workouts day after day that aren’t that challenging because we think we need to be “working out more often to see more results.”

When you do workouts that really challenge YOU, triggering that adaptive response (and inflammatory response) you need to be fully recovered before you tackle your next workout, or your body will just keep constantly breaking down your muscle without having the chance to rebuild. Losing more muscle than you can rebuild means less metabolic flexibility, strength, and mobility. And coming to your next workout recovered means it’s more effective – you’re rested, so you can push harder and get a better result.

The perimenopause “training trifecta” that drives results

There are three specific types of training that will help you improve your muscle and bone density, and lose body fat:

• resistance training,
• high-intensity interval training (explosive cardio, plyometrics, tabatas, sprint training – all of these can be types of HIIT),
• self care training types (the yoga, mobility and stretching you do around your workouts).

(Of course you can enjoy many types of exercise – these are not the only things available! But including them in some form each week will really support you in strengthening and maintaining muscle and bone density, and losing body fat.)

ONE: Resistance training is incredibly beneficial for your body, and the amount of resistance that is right for you depends on what you’ve been doing before.

Here’s a guide to help you find where you are now, and what the next steps are:

• If you’re new to training and building a base, bodyweight training can be a great way to build a strong foundation.
• If you’ve mostly been doing bodyweight training, now is the time to explore how you can make that more challenging and start to add some weighted objects to some moves you’re doing.
• If you’ve been training with some equipment (like dumbbells or bands for instance), now is the time to get more specific with how you approach using that weight. If you can start to work within rep ranges – say 8-12 to start – you give yourself a ceiling of how much weight is appropriate for you and a benchmark to get stronger from. So if you choose a weight for a biceps curl and you can do 20 reps with it, go heavier. Find a weight that makes it very hard to go past 12 reps, but that you can do at least 8 with. You will need to do some experimenting but try different things out.
• As you build confidence with this type of training, you will get stronger. You will need heavier weights to do the same amount of reps as before so keep going! If you start finding an 8 rep weight that is fatiguing, you can build into lower rep ranges and heavier resistance, working into a 6-8 rep range and then down into a 4-6 rep range. This might mean you want to expand your collection of home equipment, or go to the gym and start using the options they have.

But whatever you do, wherever you’re at, the goal is to work against enough of a load where you are challenged because that is what will stimulate your tissue to respond in the absence of that anabolic (muscle supporting) estrogen.

TWO: Explosive cardio, like high intensity interval training (or HIIT), plyometrics, jumping, sprint training, interval training, etc – are highly effective and efficient types of cardio that will yield better results in perimenopause than a) too much cardio, or b) longer, slower types of cardio.

Rather than making every cardio session a long slow distance workout of repetitive impact on your joints in one direction, explosive cardio is dynamic, highly efficient and yields better results in the long run. It contributes to strong joints, and strengthens your muscle tissue. You can do it on the same day as your resistance training or do low impact resistance training one day, and dedicated HIIT training another day.

If you struggle with cardio, short-burst training can be a great way to slowly ramp it up. If you need to do a lower-impact version of a HIIT move, do what gets your heart rate up and take a modified version as you get stronger.

I hear from a lot of women runners in perimenopause who notice more aches and pains than they used to. That is a sure sign their body is not able to recover – either because they’re not resting enough to handle the inflammatory burden created by their training, and/or they’re not eating enough protein to support the repair process their body goes through after their training session.

It might be running, or it might be something else – but if some type of outdoor exercise is something you really enjoy frequently and it’s starting to create more pain in your body, work it in more strategically. That probably means a little less often, and pair it with more resistance training to strengthen the muscles around your joints rather than making it the only way you’re training.

THREE: Yoga, mobility and stretching

This is the time to focus on keeping your muscle tissue healthy. You may need a little more of a warm up before your workouts than you used to – and if you’re training at a higher volume, you definitely want to be warmed up going in.

Sometimes you can use the beginning of a workout to warm up. But if you have the time, get on your foam roller (a great self-care tool) and spend a few minutes warming up the fascial connective tissue and preparing for your training.

Post-workout, while your body is still warm, do a little cool down stretching. This is a healthy way to transition from an intense workout session and bring your heart rate down, but it also supports your joint health and mobility. You could use your foam roller on either side of a workout, in addition to stretching.

Adding mobility or yoga sessions on a rest day is great too, because improving flexibility helps your muscle tissue stay supple and responsive to resistance training and keeps your joints healthy too.

Regular movement is important throughout the day, and a great amount of fat loss comes from low key daily activities like walking – so get in the habit of walking daily, include walking on your rest days, and avoid long periods of sitting (here’s a podcast that specifically covers muscle preservation and fat loss and the way walking can support it).

So a sample schedule for you might look like one of these roughed in schedules:

Option 1 (3 main workout days):

• M – resistance training + explosive cardio
• Tu – REST
• W – resistance training + explosive cardio
• Th – REST
• F – resistance training + explosive cardio
• Sa – REST
• Su – Mobility, Yoga or other self care activity

Option 2 (4 main workout days):

• M – resistance training (lower body focused)
• Tu – resistance training (upper body focused)
• W – REST (mobility, self care activity options)
• Th – resistance training (full body focused)
• F – explosive cardio
• Sa – REST (mobility, self care activity options)
• Su – Yoga (or other type of self care activity)

There are other ways I could write those sequences, but the main point is that there is a very balanced recovery plan built around your training. For instance, doing resistance training and explosive cardio on the same day is a high volume of training, and your body will recover well with a day off in between.

With the second option, it’s not that you have to train upper body/lower body on back to back days, it’s just that if you are training on back to back days, you want to vary the training you do – either the body parts or the type and intensity. The second half of the week shows the example of the resistance training next to a dedicated high output explosive cardio session for instance.

While these training sequences are not unique to perimenopause (in fact, you can find them in some of my other programs already), they can serve us particularly well at this time in our lives because training volume (as in intensity) paired with enough recovery becomes essential for us in seeing results as our hormones change.

For the ultimate perimenopause training program, check out PerimenoFit!

Where protein fits in, and why it’s so important

Here’s another essential piece of what will get your body to respond to your training in perimenopause: eat more protein. If you don’t have enough amino acids (from protein) circulating in your system throughout the day and your body needs to use them, it breaks down your muscle tissue to access the aminos stored there.

The amino acids that we get from our protein foods play an important role, contributing to:

• Muscle tissue repair and regrowth (known as muscle protein synthesis)
• Immune system support
• Cognitive function and mood (supporting the production of neurotransmitters)
• Forming the building blocks of our hormones
• Forming the building blocks of enzymes (important messengers)

We don’t absorb the amino acids as easily as we age, which means we need to eat more protein to do the same amount as before.

If you were eating on average 20-30 grams of protein per meal under 40, it’s ideal to bump that up to more like 30-40 grams per meal over 40. These numbers are just ballpark ranges, you may need a bit more. You can also think of it like 25-35% of your meal is coming from your protein source, with my suggestion being that you go on the higher end of that percentage if you’re looking for a body composition shift (more muscle, less fat). This will give your body the building blocks it needs for all the things amino acids are needed for, in addition to helping preserve muscle tissue.

This is one of the reasons why a lot of women start to see such a change in their body composition starting in perimenopause. They start losing muscle because they’re not eating as much protein as their bodies need to maintain their muscle tissue. You can maintain a lot of your tissue – even without much training – if you eat enough protein.

We want to include protein with each meal, and pay attention to fueling around our workouts to optimize our body’s ability for tissue repair and muscle protein synthesis (using wholesome supplements like the Whole Betty protein powders I make or other high-quality products can be really helpful and make life easier).

Here’s a podcast I did about protein for women, what changes as we age, and my tips for choosing the right protein powder for you (if you choose to use it – it’s totally optional).

Maybe you’ve never looked at how many grams of protein are in the meals you’re making. This is the time to start paying attention. You can look up the amount of protein in the food you’re making by searching online, or by reading the nutrition label, and then boost your recipes with a little extra of your protein source to get your numbers up. Start with 20-30 grams per meal, then slowly build on that. It will become easier with practice.

Your gut health, plus fiber rich carbs and healthy fats

One of the causes commonly attributed to things like hot flashes, weight gain, poor sleep, brain fog and many other symptoms associated with the perimenopause years is estrogen dominance, which is where our estrogen is too high in relation to our progesterone.

Even when we’re losing our estrogen, sometimes we can end up with estrogen dominance. Since these two hormones serve as counter balances to each other in our regular cycling years, when they get off balance things can really get uncomfortable!

There are several reasons we can end up with estrogen dominance (and a hormone test is the best way to be sure), but one reason can be because we’re not eliminating excess estrogen from the body as efficiently as we should due to poor liver function or compromised gut health.

The gut contains an ecosystem of bacteria and microbes that perform important tasks. Your gut is designed to absorb nutrients from food and turn them into energy and eliminate waste. Your gut also plays a key role in immune health, mood, hormone formation, and elimination – including helping to keep estrogen levels balanced. The microbes play key roles in these processes.

The balance of the gut bacteria is impacted by what we eat and drink, regular exercise, and our stress levels. Compromised gut health makes it harder to stay healthy and have a strong immune system, can promote feelings of anxiety, plus it disrupts our hormone balance and makes it harder for us to absorb the nutrients we eat.

The Estrobolome
Your gut has a specialized section that deals with the breakdown of estrogen called the estrobolome. The bacteria in that specialized section further break down the estrogen using an enzyme called beta glucuronidase.

This enzyme is super important and has to be in a “just right” balance in order to process and break down estrogen, otherwise those estrogens get recirculated back into the bloodstream as “dirty estrogen” and can further imbalance your hormone levels and contribute to estrogen dominance.

The estrobolome and the bacteria it contains, along with the gut itself and the friendly gut bacteria it contains can all get imbalanced from high levels of stress and inflammation to our system from eating too many processed foods or sugar, drinking too much alcohol, or using a lot of antibiotics without a good gut restoration protocol afterwards. Want to learn more about your gut health and estrogen balance? I did a podcast about it right here.

Eating enough fiber from whole food carbohydrate sources is an important aspect of supporting optimal gut health.

Carbohydrates are broken down into glucose, which can be used for immediate energy, or sent to the liver and muscles and stored as glycogen. Your body needs this fuel for energy, performance in your workouts and recovery too. When you don’t have that ready energy source, your body will break down your muscle tissue, something you want to avoid.

Fiber is an important component in whole food carbohydrates that slows the release of sugar into the blood, which gives you more steady energy, supports your healthy gut bacteria and immune system, and supports an optimal digestive flow.

Fiber rich carbs from fruit, vegetables and whole grains are more satisfying and digest more slowly – plus they won’t trigger an insulin response like high-sugar processed food will – so make them your go-to energy source.

If there was ever a time in your life to be mindful of sugar consumption, it is now. Protein can help with that if you struggle with cravings – it is the most satiating nutrient (even more than fat or carbs) and eating enough can help balance out your cravings.

One of the impacts that too much sugar can have is lowering our testosterone. Alcohol consumption does that as well, so be mindful and aware that this can contribute to greater bone and muscle loss as testosterone levels diminish.

I don’t recommend a no-carb or low-carb diet for any length of time. Long term carbohydrate deprivation leads to a complete depletion of your body’s storage glycogen levels, depresses your immune system, reduces your exercise tolerance, decreases metabolic function, and a host of other issues.

I know there is no one-size fits all diet. We have to do some experimenting and different things work for different people. Here’s a conversation I had about how different “healthy eating” can look for different people, why that is, and some suggestions to help you find the right fit for you.

Fat helps fuel your muscles for low to moderate intensity activity. Healthy fat in your meals is also very satisfying, and can help you feel full when you include it in balance with other nutrients. It also helps slow down how quickly food exits your stomach.
This helps keep your blood sugar levels stable which prevents an insulin spike that can trigger fat storage.Keep in mind that some vitamins that your body really needs like A, D, E and K are all fat soluble, and can’t be absorbed without the presence of dietary fat.

Having enough healthy fat in your diet provides you with lasting energy in your workouts and daily activities. Along with glycogen (how your body stores glucose from carbohydrates), fat is burned during exercise and low impact activities to spare the vital amino acids from protein in your muscle tissue.

Eating enough for your needs daily as an active woman

To optimize our workout output, muscle recovery and energy balance, it really serves us to get consistent with our nutrient intake daily. A startling statistic I learned in my research was that a huge percentage of female athletes (active women count as athletic here!) suffer from LEA, which stands for “low energy availability.”

In a nutshell, LEA is defined as having limited energy available to support your normal body functions once your energy expended through exercise is subtracted from your total dietary intake energy.

In other words, if you’re not eating enough, your body can’t sustain normal functions on top of your workouts. When active women don’t eat enough, their metabolic health and hormone levels, their bone density, mood, ability to build lean muscle, and so much more are affected. This can hit us hard in perimenopause, as we more easily lose our muscle tissue as our our cycling hormones levels start to decline.

Fueling around your workouts will allow for adaptations, enhance energy output, and help you preserve the lean mass you have so you can build more. If you just focus on 3 meals a day that include enough protein for your needs (alongside your fiber-rich carbs and healthy fats) this can be pretty simple.

You might want to add a bonus protein smoothie at any time of day that it’s convenient. This can help boost your overall protein intake for the day if you’re not sure you’re getting enough in your other meals.

If you train first thing in the morning, just have your first meal after your workout. We do need to replenish our glycogen stores (with carbs) and get the amino acids from protein our body needs for tissue repair in soon after we train. So I don’t suggest waiting for hours to eat after a workout, especially if you did it first thing on an empty stomach.

You might benefit from using a free-form amino acids supplement that contains all the essential aminos your body can’t make on its own, including the BCAA’s which help support your tissue repair and regrowth like my Rock and Restore aminos formula during your workout.

The way I generally work my training into the day to ensure optimal fuel and optimal support for my body in perimenopause is like this:

• Breakfast
• Workout
• Lunch
• Dinner

Or

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Workout
• Dinner

Depending on my timing, if I’m a ways off from my last meal and have a tough workout ahead of me, I will have a protein smoothie 30-60 minutes before my workout so I don’t go into it on an empty tank. Then I just fuel up with lunch after I train. Or, if I work out and am not going to get lunch for a while, I’ll just have a protein smoothie after my workout as a mini-meal to tide me over til my next full meal. I’m just prioritizing protein intake there to support my body composition goals – but I’m still eating my 3 main meals and not cutting out my important fiber-rich carbs and healthy fats.

Don’t complicate it. Start with being consistent with those 3 main meals, then add a smoothie in there if it’s helpful.

Try My Dinner Plan for tasty easy meals, “smart” grocery lists done for you and 6 months worth of eating plans!

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How to put it all together

Here’s 3 essentials to use for best results in perimenopause when it comes to your training:

1. Your training program should include resistance training and HIIT, be challenging for where you’re at, and include self care (like warming up/cooling down, using a foam roller, etc).
2. Rest days should be real rest days (not trying to sneak in a long run or an extra workout). Yes you can do some mobility or self care activities, but remember you’re giving your body recovery time so you can hit your next workout hard and drive those adaptations.
3. Increase your protein intake and fuel around your workouts so you have the building blocks you need to support your training and daily needs for amino acids.

To sum it up…

Surrounding your training with a focus on low impact activity like walking, more self care activities that support your nervous system response, an increased protein intake and quality nutrients in general all add up to you being able to bypass your lowering hormone levels and still make muscle effectively, burn body fat, maintain bone density, and feel like the Rockstar you are!

You may want to consult with your health care practitioner for additional support, and for tests to check in with your thyroid, insulin, cortisol, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone levels periodically. There is a lot that is beyond our control – but there is plenty we can do with the actions we take daily to impact our health and support our body’s natural processes.

Remember, it’s not our workouts alone that drive the results we see. It’s how we apply our workouts, and all the things we do around them that create the strength in our bodies.

Give yourself time as you work on a goal. There’s a lot to learn and integrate along the way. Keep my “all or something” mentality in mind – it’s one of the most important things I’ve learned that’s helped me stay consistent, and avoid that “all or nothing” mindset that throws me off track.

Thanks for taking the time to read this guide! I hope it was helpful. Remember, I’m always in your corner.

For the ultimate perimenopause training program, check out PerimenoFit!

You can also find these type of programming splits built into my Betty Rocker programs!

• Home Workout Domination was written as a 4-day split, and includes a bonus calendar with a 3-day split.
• Home Workout Domination 2 has a bonus calendar with a 3 day split.
• Lioness was written with both a 3 day and a 4 day split built right into it.
• The Booty and Abs Challenge has 3 tracks, with a 3 and 4 day split as two of the options.
• The 90 Day Challenge has a bonus 4-day split calendar that adjusts the plan days slightly to your benefit.

And inside Rock Your Life, I’ve got over 70 challenge programs for which I’ve created these training splits. There are different tracks: one for anyone to use in conjunction with their natural cycle, and 1-2 others that follow the 3 and 4 day splits.

All of my challenge programs incorporate strength training plus explosive cardio. I have everything from bodyweight training to home workout equipment (dumbbells and bands) to full-on barbell weight training. There are low-impact challenges, and support for those beginning or rebuilding.

Rock Your Life is an amazing fitness program, and it’s designed for women of all ages. 

How to join: New members can grab a 30-day trial to Rock Your Life, my online fitness studio – no commitment to stay, no contract. Full access to everything in Rock Your Life! Returning members use the returning members button, and welcome back!

What is Rock Your Life: My online gym studio where I host all of my challenges for member access 24/7! It’s the gym that never closes, and the one you can take with you everywhere you go. 

Enter the online gym with your login and password, and enjoy instant access to:

• Class library with over 1000 classes of all types so you can get a head start on your fitness goals for 2024!
• Challenge programs – over 50 different challenges for women of all ages that you can start anytime as a member, including 30-day challenges, 14-day, 21-day, 7-day and 5-day challenges of all types of training to sculpt and strengthen your body and mind! 
• Healthy recipes to inspire you with new ideas for easy cooking and fueling your body with the building blocks it needs to thrive
• Top-tier support in our private women’s fitness community online or via email – our members are our VIP’s! 

Click here to access Rock Your Life!

Progress pics from Meg, above, as she was transitioning in perimenopause. Progress pics from Krystal, below as she was going through the perimenopause years.

Remember, consistency with your workouts along with your healthy eating, sleep and stress management – and applying guidance for YOUR LIFE STAGE – whether it’s your regular cycling years, perimenopause or postmenopause is what creates a healthy, strong physique and lasting results – and we’ll support you with all of it in Rock Your Life!

ROCK YOUR LIFE RIGHT HERE!