If you are experiencing perimenopause symptoms in your 50s, the first thing I want you to know is that you are not imagining any of it.
I did not know what was happening to me.
That is the honest truth. Nobody really talked about perimenopause, not in the way they should. Not in a way that would have helped me recognize what was coming or feel less alone when it arrived.
I remember it was sometime around 2021 or 2022. I had taken about a week off from the gym because I just felt so down about the way I looked and felt in my own body. And I want to be clear, weight is not a measure of your value. I know that. But I did not like what I was experiencing in my own skin and I could not figure out why.
I used to be able to go on vacation for a week, eat and drink whatever I wanted, come home, get back to the gym, and work it off quickly. That was just how my body worked. But now I was struggling to lose a single pound no matter what I did. Nothing made sense anymore.
The day I went back to the gym, my trainer walked up to me and asked where I had been. Said he had not seen me in a while and was thinking about calling to check on me.
I broke down crying. Right there in the middle of the gym.
He sat with me. Listened. Talked me through it. He was kind in a way I was not expecting and I will always be grateful for that. But even with that moment of grace, I walked away still feeling something I can only describe as lonely. Like my whole body had changed overnight and no one had given me the manual.
That loneliness is still something I feel sometimes. Because perimenopause is one of those things that happens to you in what feels like an instant, even though it is actually a slow shift that nobody warned you was coming.
What I Have Experienced
Everyone’s symptoms are different. Mine have included brain fog that makes me question my own sharpness, insomnia that is genuinely one of my biggest ongoing challenges, anxiety that comes and goes and sometimes hits hard first thing in the morning before I even get out of bed, and a weight gain of about 20 pounds that did not respond to any of the things that used to work.
I tried eating less and doing more cardio. The old formula. And it did not work, because my hormones do not respond the way they used to. My body needed a completely different approach.
What helped me start to understand what was happening was tracking. I now track my food, weigh my meals, monitor my protein intake, and work to stay in a calorie deficit. I am not going to pretend I am perfectly consistent with this. I am still learning the patterns, still catching the places where I fall off and figuring out why. But I am getting better at reading my own data and that feels like progress.
I also track my sleep with my Apple Watch every night and I take supplements to support sleep quality. Insomnia has been one of the hardest parts of this whole experience and I am still working on it.
And I move my body. Every day if I can. I am training for a Hyrox, which is its own kind of emotional journey because I have ruptured both of my Achilles tendons and getting back to running has not been easy. But running does something for my mental health that nothing else replicates. I am tracking my steps, logging my habits, and making strength training a real priority because I now understand that muscle is everything at this stage of life.
The anxiety piece is something I want to talk about honestly because I do not think it gets enough attention. It is not constant for me but when it hits it hits hard. As I am writing this I am going through a period where I wake up every morning with a wave of anxiety before the day has even started. Exercise is one of the main reasons I get through it.
In the early stages I also experienced vertigo and itchy skin, two things I never would have connected to perimenopause on my own. And I noticed I had zero tolerance for small things that never used to bother me. If you know, you know.
What Made It Harder
When I first started noticing the insomnia and the anxiety, I went to my doctor. She told me it was depression and wanted to put me on antidepressants.
I want to say that carefully because I am not anti-medication and I know antidepressants help a lot of people. But in that moment what I needed was someone to connect the dots for me. To say, what you are experiencing sounds like perimenopause, here is what we can explore. Instead I walked out feeling more confused and more dismissed than when I walked in.
If that has happened to you too, please know you are not imagining things. You are not just depressed. Your hormones are shifting and that affects everything, your sleep, your weight, your mood, your skin, your brain, your body composition, your emotional baseline. All of it.
You deserve a doctor who takes you seriously. If yours is not doing that, it is okay to find one who will.
What I Am Doing Now
I am still in it. I want to be honest about that. This is not a post where I tie everything up neatly and tell you I figured it all out. I am figuring it out in real time, which is exactly what this whole blog is about.
The first thing that changed everything for me was understanding my numbers. I use the TDEE calculator online to figure out my calorie needs and my protein target. TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure and it factors in your age, weight, height, and activity level to tell you exactly how much you should be eating. Before I found this I was just guessing. Now I have a real target to work with. You can find it by searching TDEE calculator and it is completely free.
From there I started weighing my food with a food scale. I know that sounds intense but it changed everything for me. Eyeballing portions does not work when your hormones are working against you. The scale removes the guesswork entirely and once you get used to it you will not want to go back.
I track my steps every day and on days when I cannot get outside I use my walking pad. If you work from home or spend long hours at a desk this thing is a non negotiable for me now. I get my steps in without rearranging my whole day and it keeps my energy from crashing in the afternoon.
I also train with a weighted vest on my walks. Adding resistance without adding joint stress is something I wish I had started sooner. It makes a regular walk feel like real training and my body responds to it differently than walking without weight. I did make the mistake of buying too light of a weighted vest the first time I bought it. A good rule of thumb is to choose a weight that is 5%-10% of your body weight especially if you are just starting out.
For sleep I track with my Apple Watch every single night. Seeing the actual data helps me understand what is affecting my sleep quality and what is not. Some nights surprise me. Some nights confirm exactly what I already suspected. Many of my girlfriends swear by the Oura ring which is something I am also considering.
I have also added supplements to my routine and creatine is the one I feel most strongly about. The research on creatine for women over 40 is genuinely compelling. It supports muscle retention, brain function, and energy levels. I was skeptical at first. Now I will not go without it. I also take supplements specifically to support sleep quality and I have linked everything I am currently using in my Amazon storefront below so you can see the exact products without having to guess.
Strength training is the foundation of all of it. Not cardio first. Strength first. Building and protecting muscle at this stage of life is one of the most important things you can do for your metabolism, your bone density, your mood, and your long term health. I am training for a Hyrox and that goal keeps me accountable on the days when I do not feel like showing up, which honestly is more days than I would like to admit.
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
I wish someone had told me this was coming. Not to scare me. Just so I could have stopped questioning myself sooner.
The weight that would not move was not a character flaw. The crying in the gym was not weakness. The anxiety that showed up out of nowhere, the brain fog, the insomnia, the vertigo, the itchy skin, none of it meant I was falling apart. It meant my body was changing and nobody had prepared me for what that would actually feel like.
You are not broken. You are not depressed. You are not imagining it. Your body is shifting in ways that are real and significant and there is a lot you can do about it once you understand what is actually happening.
That is what I am here for. To figure it out alongside you and share everything in real time, including the things that are hard to say out loud.
What I Am Currently Using
I have put together a perimenopause wellness essentials list on my Amazon storefront with everything I mentioned in this post. My food scale, my walking pad, my weighted vest, my creatine, my sleep supplements, and more. Everything is something I actually use. Nothing is here just to be here.
You can find the full list here.
Save this post and come back to it. I will be updating it as I learn more and as things change. And if this resonated with you, please share it with a woman in your life who needs to read it. Because the loneliness I felt standing in that gym is something no woman should feel on her own.
All the best,
Antoinette