Turning 40 and things are changing

I’m not sure what it is about aging and being a woman.

When I turned 20 I thought I was so old now and so mature yet I knew nothing.

Turning 30 felt scarier even though I knew so much more and yet didn’t feel like I did.

But turning 40, although I knew technically I was older, I wasn’t as scared as I thought I would be.

I believe we are only as old as we feel and we only fear aging when we are not in the places we want to be. For example, when I turned 30 I felt I needed to make some concrete decisions on having a child. In my 20’s I often said I didn’t want kids and I didn’t have to think about it further. Take the pill, don’t have unprotected sex, and there you have it.

But at 30, it’s time you make that decision final. However, it’s not that easy. If you’ve read my post before, you know we went through fertility treatment despite my not wanting kids. This is a ride that I can’t ever explain properly. I didn’t want kids, and yet here I was trying to have a baby. What kind of 30 year old bullshit was this? It’s a confusing time in your life. I was building a successful career, I had met the man that was going to be my partner in life, we had an amazing house and we had made a lovely life for ourselves. The only thing missing, was a child. So we tried, and we failed and we closed that chapter but still didn’t really prevent it from happening.

Once I got to 40, it felt good. I was where I wanted to be in life, business was better than ever and we had closed an important chapter in our lives. Its so strange to get to an age where you feel so good about yourself mentally, physically and yet, your body is starting to transition into a whole new body.

Why can’t I enjoy this feeling of finally being the best me I can be without now adding looming menopause to the equation?

now, my skin is dry, I’m breaking out constantly, my mood swings are ridiculous and I’m starting to not sleep during certain parts of my cycle. Sleep was never an issue for me.

This is about the time I started looking into perimenopause and hormonal imbalances. I discovered that I probably had low progesterone in relation to estrogen and I started working out based on these new findings: I only lifted heavy during the first part of my cycle, then after ovulation I did yoga. I started taking supplements such as magnesium (always)  and ashwaganda (an adaptogen) during the second part of my cycle while my cortisol levels were highest.

I focused on different nutrients during each part of my cycle and increased fat and grass fed animal protein during the second half as well.

All these changes were extremely beneficial. Even though I say never ever depend on the scale, I saw for the first time in probably 15 years, that I lost weight and kept it off consistently all the while working out less and eating way way more. My sleeping was better, my mental health and clarity was better.

this helped me develop a completely different approach to coaching our clients. What a difference it has made so far!