I took a picture of myself in my workout clothes in my garage gym last week. I meant it to be a “before” photo, to look back on later when things have changed. I was being optimistic. Then I looked at it and felt sad.
That’s not like me. I’ve always been someone who takes care of herself, who feels good in her clothes, who doesn’t need much convincing to move her body. Somewhere in the last year that stopped being true, and I’m still trying to figure out when it happened.
Nobody explains how fast midlife body changes happen
My clothes don’t fit the way they used to, and it isn’t because I stopped trying. I’m doing the same things I’ve always done. My body just suddenly changed the rules without telling me. One day I felt pretty good, and the next day I looked in the mirror and thought, what the heck happened?
We hear that women our age let themselves go, as though we stop caring somewhere along the way. That has not been my experience at all. What I’ve found is that maintaining anything now takes real work, and most of us are doing that work without a personal chef or a spare two hours a day at the gym.
Is anyone else here? I have a feeling I’m not the only one.
The plan I made for this season
For a long time I told myself that when the boys were grown and gone, I’d have a little more room on my plate. That was the plan. I wanted some time to take care of myself, to feel better in my clothes and better in general, and to be in a good place mentally for the stretches when the house is quiet and for when the nest fills again.
It felt like a reasonable thing to want. After years of everyone else’s schedules coming first, taking care of my own health seemed like the natural next thing.
Then my foot happened
I had foot surgery a year and a half ago and the recovery was long. It was much longer than I expected, and harder than I let on. There were months where walking normally was the goal, never mind anything else. So the plan sat there, waiting, while I healed.
A few weeks ago I finally felt ready. I found a program I liked and started following the daily workouts, and for the first time in a long time I felt a little spark about it. I made it a handful of days in, which was enough to remember what it feels like to move on purpose.
Now something isn’t right in that foot again, and I’m scheduled for an MRI. I don’t have answers yet. What I have is the memory of the last recovery and a sick feeling in my stomach when I think about doing it over.
Nobody tells you about this part.
When a Season Ends is a FREE reflection guide for women navigating loss, change, and the season that comes after.
Sent straight to your inbox.
What I’m doing while I wait
During my last recovery I found something that really surprised me. There are more workouts for people with injuries than I ever would have guessed! YouTube is full of them. It took a while before I could do any of it, since early on my foot had to stay elevated or it felt like it might burst right off my leg. Once that settled down, I found floor and mat workouts I could actually do, and I remember being so relieved that choices existed at all.
I’m reminding myself of that now, before I know anything. If the MRI brings news I don’t want, there will still be a way to move. It might look different from what I had in mind, but there will be something.
The other thing helping is understanding what’s actually happening in my body instead of assuming I’m doing it wrong. I’ve been reading The New Menopause by Mary Claire Haver, and it put words to a lot of what I’ve been feeling. It isn’t a diet book. It’s a straightforward explanation of why the rules changed, which turned out to be exactly what I needed.
Until then I’m keeping my routine. I’ve done three days this week and I already feel better. Three days is not a transformation. It’s enough to remind me that my body still responds to being cared for, even now, in the middle of this midlife menopause mania.
If you’re somewhere in the middle of this too
This is the same question I keep running into in every part of midlife. Who am I now that things have shifted, and what do I do with the version of myself I’m becoming? I wrote more about that here: How to Find Purpose When You Don’t Know Who You Are Anymore
What I’ve learned is that waiting for the perfect starting point keeps you standing still. Some days you get the full workout. Some days you get ten minutes on the floor with your foot elevated. Both of those days count.
If you’re tired of restarting every Monday and want a simple way to figure out what actually matters on the day you’re having, that’s exactly what I built Your Plan For Today for. It’s not about doing everything. It’s about knowing what’s worth doing right now.
