I used to build muscle without trying
I grew up on acreage. My childhood was riding horses, water skiing and all the physical jobs that come with living on land. I never thought of any of it as exercise. It was simply how our days ran.
Muscle came easily to me for a long time. If I took a break and went back to training, the strength returned within weeks. There’s real biology behind that. When you train, your muscle fibres gain extra nuclei, the control centres that drive repair, and research suggests they stay put even when you stop. That makes rebuilding faster later. I was drawing on years of stored capacity.
Midlife changed the equation. These days I exercise to keep the muscle I have. Building new muscle takes more training, more consistency and more recovery than it ever did, and a few missed weeks show up far faster.
You’re putting in the effort and seeing less for it
….I hear this in clinic every week.
You’re doing reformer Pilates or getting to the gym three times a week. It’s the same effort that used to work. Yet you feel softer than you used to, especially through the middle. The weight that once shifted with that effort now stays put. You’re feeling flat by mid-afternoon, your joints feel stiffer in the morning, and the words – well, they go missing mid-sentence more often than you’d like. Your blood tests come back “within range,” and you’re left wondering whether this is how the next thirty years will feel.
Many women say to me that they assume they’ve lost their discipline. Instead, what you’re feeling has a clear physiological explanation, and once you understand it, you can work with it.
Your muscle cells are tuned to oestrogen. It helps them repair after exercise and respond to the signal to grow. As oestrogen starts to swing and then decline through perimenopause, muscle becomes less responsive to that signal. We call this anabolic resistance. In plain terms, the same meal and the same exercise class build less muscle than they did a decade ago.
This is the shift I’ve felt in my own training, and the one my clients describe when the same Pilates class or gym session stops delivering the same result.
Other pressures pile on at the same time. When stress runs high for months, cortisol starts breaking muscle down for fuel. Broken sleep cuts into the deep-sleep hours when most of your repair happens. And many women eat less protein as they try to manage their weight by cutting back on food. Muscle is affected in many ways, often years before anyone thinks to measure it.
Why this matters well beyond how your clothes fit
The urge to keep going tells you about the pattern your body has practised. It says very little about what needs doing.
Progesterone does far more than manage your cycle. Your brain converts it into a calming compound called allopregnanolone, which works on the same receptors as GABA, your main settling brain chemical. Think of it as the brake pedal on your stress response.
In the years leading up to menopause, ovulation becomes hit and miss. Progesterone drops and swings from one cycle to the next, and oestrogen swings with it. Researchers studying this transition suggest these swings make the brake less reliable, so stress hits harder and takes longer to clear.
So you have the same life and the same list, with a stronger stress response and a weaker brake. Rushing now costs more in sleep, digestion, memory and weight around the middle.
It also feeds itself. A body already working hard to steady shifting hormones gets a fresh wave of stress chemistry every time you rush, and the busy cycle keeps itself going.
Finding the middle ground
I watch how easily kids can sit and do nothing, or at least nothing more than be on their devices, without a flicker of guilt. I’d happily leave the devices and borrow the ease.
Somewhere between their stillness and our constant motion – there is a middle ground, and your body can learn it. A system that adapted to pressure can adapt to calm when it’s given the chance, gradually and with the right support.
These days I catch myself when I’m rushing about simply to be busy. I stop, and I give myself permission to rest.
You can start the same way:
- Catch it. Notice the moment you get up to do something that could easily wait.
- Ask. “Does this need doing now, or do I just need to be doing?”
- Stay. Sit for five minutes with nothing in your hands. When the restlessness arrives, stay one more minute. That extra minute is training the body.
Many of us learned by watching our mothers that a good woman is a busy one. I’d love our daughters to learn something different by watching us sit down.
If you recognise yourself here and you’d like help working out what your body needs to settle, book a consultation with me. I’d love to help.
Teressa,
Naturopath | Clinical Nutritionist | Biochemist
Gold Coast Naturopath, Gold Coast Health, Naturopath Australia, Gold Coast Wellness, Holistic Health, Naturopathic Medicine, Functional Health, Midlife, Personalised Healthcare, Midlife Stress
