A certified menopause coach’s honest take on why you don’t recognize your body, the motivation gap, and why this summer may be the worst time to quit.
You’re not sleeping the way you used to. You’re more fatigued than you can explain. And some mornings you catch your reflection and genuinely don’t recognize the person looking back at you.
If that’s you right now, I want you to know something first.
You are not broken. You are not lazy. And you are absolutely not alone.
The Research Backs Up What You’re Feeling
A recent survey of nearly six thousand women found that while the vast majority recognize the physical and mental benefits of exercise, almost a third exercise less than once a week or not at all during perimenopause and menopause. The top reasons? Lack of motivation, lack of time, and for many women, symptoms themselves… joint pain, fatigue, hot flashes mid workout… that make showing up feel impossible.
If you’ve ever loved running or the gym and somehow lost that connection during this transition, you are part of a very real, very common pattern. This isn’t a personal failure. It’s a documented experience shared by women everywhere.
Why Quitting for the Summer Is the Opposite of What You Need
I get it. When your body feels unfamiliar and your energy is unpredictable, the instinct is to wait it out. Tell yourself you’ll start again in the fall when things settle down.
Here’s the problem with that plan. Things don’t settle down on their own. And the research actually shows the opposite of what your instinct is telling you.
Resistance training has been shown to produce real, measurable improvements for women in this exact stage of life. One study found a twelve week strength program led to meaningful gains in hip function, flexibility, and balance, and those benefits held steady whether women were perimenopausal, postmenopausal, or premenopausal. Your body is still capable of adapting and getting stronger. The conditions have just changed, and your approach needs to change with them.
Strength training also plays a direct role in protecting bone density during a time when estrogen decline naturally accelerates bone loss. This isn’t about chasing the body you had at thirty. It’s about building the body that will carry you confidently through the next thirty years.
What I’ve Learned After 47 Years and Three Kids
I used to use exercise as a way to fix myself. An eraser for what I ate the day before. A box to check so I could feel worthy.
Somewhere along the way, especially after watching my own body create and carry three children, that shifted completely. I stopped needing my body to change and started learning to actually love it. Perimenopause has been another invitation to practice that same lesson. Not to fight my body, but to treat it with patience, flexibility, and respect.
That doesn’t mean every day is easy. Some days I still struggle. But most days, I genuinely like who I am inside this body, exactly as it is right now.
What Actually Helps
Here’s what I tell every woman I coach through this stage:
Lower the intensity expectations, not the consistency. Three solid strength sessions a week beats five exhausting ones that leave you wrecked for days.
Build in recovery on purpose. A deload week isn’t falling off track. It’s part of the plan.
Focus on what your body can do, not what the scale says. Grip strength, balance, how your clothes feel, how you sleep… these matter more than a number.
Find your people. Training alongside other women going through the exact same transition changes everything. You stop feeling like you’re the only one struggling, because you’re not.
A Real Moment That Says It All
One of my members recently texted me from a girls’ trip to Nashville. They were all in a pool, and when it was time to get out, everyone else walked to the shallow end and used the stairs.
She didn’t.
She pushed herself up from the deep end and lifted her entire body out right there on the edge of the pool. Her friends were stunned. How do you even have that kind of upper body strength?
She’s in her mid fifties. Her friend turning sixty that weekend asked the same question.
She texted me afterward just to say thank you. Not because she was showing off, but because she said it never even crossed her mind that she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a question. Her body just did it.
One of the best parts of my job is hearing stories like this on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. People tell me how proud they are of things they never thought they’d be able to do. Strength training does that. It recalibrates how we think about exercise entirely. It stops being about how we look and becomes about how fully we get to live. That’s exactly why I always say strong looks good on you. Not because of what it looks like in the mirror, but because of everything it lets you do.
We want to go on girls’ trips and keep up with our friends. We want to visit our kids at college and carry their boxes up three flights of stairs without thinking twice. We want to get down on the floor and play with our grandkids and pop back up without help. We want decades of living fully, not carefully.
I always tell my clients, I want you walking out of every single session saying, I’m so glad I did that. That feeling is the whole point.
You have the power to build that. And if you’re wondering how… that’s where I come in. Helping people discover how strong they really are is one of the greatest honors of my life.
You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone
I’m a certified personal trainer with over twenty years of experience and a certified menopause coaching specialist. I lead small group training and a dedicated six week menopause coaching group specifically for women navigating this exact stage of life. I also offer one on one and two on one personal training if you’d rather bring a friend along for the journey.
My studio is located in Cornelius, North Carolina, in the Lake Norman area, and I work with women throughout Davidson, Huntersville, Cornelius, Concord, and Mooresville.
And if you don’t live anywhere near North Carolina, that’s not a barrier either. I offer daily Zoom classes so you can stay consistent no matter where you live, with me as your coach every step of the way.
I’m forty seven. I’m in perimenopause myself. And I feel genuinely amazing, not because I have it all figured out, but because I finally stopped fighting my body and started working with it.
If you’ve been wondering whether you like who you become when things get hard… that’s actually a question I wrote about recently, and it applies here more than almost anywhere else in life.
This summer doesn’t have to be another season of waiting it out. It can be the season you finally start.
Ready to feel like yourself again?
I run small group training and a dedicated six week menopause coaching group for women navigating this exact transition. Come try a free session and let’s figure out what actually works for your body right now.
Follow Good Gaines on Instagram so you’re the first to know about upcoming pop-up events around the Lake Norman area, new YouTube workouts and everything else happening in the studio.
Andrea Gaines is a certified personal trainer with over twenty years of experience, a certified menopause coaching specialist, and an Emeritus Whole30 coach. She owns Good Gaines Fitness, a boutique fitness studio specializing in small group personal training for women in the Lake Norman area.
Strong looks good on you. 💛
