Perimenopause & Strength Training: The Duo Your Mind & Body NEED

If you’re in your forties or fifties and starting to feel like your body doesn’t look, feel or behave like yours anymore - welcome to perimenopause. As a mother of two, clinical psychologist and a firm believer in weight training, I’m right there with you. And I’m here to encourage you to fall in love with lifting weights if you haven’t already.

When your body starts changing the rules

My own journey into weight training came six weeks postpartum with my second child. I had diastasis recti, a pelvic floor that had waved goodbye at the delivery room door after a posterior delivery, and 10kg of extra weight. I had a tiny gym with ageing machinery in my apartment building, and the Sweat app on my phone.

I had tried a personal trainer with my first child, but didn’t go back after the first four sessions when they lost me at, “Have you tried sleeping more?”

With this postpartum period, I knew I wanted to get some sense of strength back, but I also knew instinctively that I wanted to do this in private and in peace when I felt weak and broken. I would go to our tiny gym when my children were asleep and my husband got home from work - it was a time of night when the gym would be empty. I started by completing one of Sweat’s postpartum programs, then moved on to HIIT and strength. 

Six months passed, and I remember the first time I completed a whole round without stopping or modifying exercises. I kept it at it, and by the time my baby was a year old, I couldn’t have been happier with the fit, strong body that stared back at me. A body that could do burpees, that could lift weights! All it had taken was my phone, 30 minutes a day, some dumbbells and belief in myself.

Taking back my power

Fast forward seven years and here I still am, still working out with the Sweat app and my AirPods. I usually work out five days a week, and it’s still just 30 minutes a day. I love that I can find something to do anywhere, even without equipment, and whatever I’m in the mood for, Sweat has a workout. I have loved so many programs in the app, but what I love the most is how Sweat has grown with me and my fitness journey. 

I have completed over 1000 workouts with Sweat, and I can truly say it has changed my life and been there for me throughout every chapter. I’ve never been fitter, stronger, or so happy in my body.  Every aspect of my being has been improved, and Sweat gave me the confidence to say, “Fitness can be for a woman like me”. At 42, I’ve never felt so confident to walk into a gym as I do now. 

Anyone who is in perimenopause will recognise this image: one week you’re sleeping fine; the next, you’re staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, wondering why you feel anxious for no reason. Your clothes fit differently, your energy dips, and you’re trying to figure out if the brain fog you are experiencing is here to stay or if a better night's sleep is all you need to cure it.

What’s actually happening is not just that your periods will soon stop; it is a hormonal maelstrom. Perimenopause is not solely a hormonal event; it is a biological transition.  

Oestrogen and progesterone fluctuations influence neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and GABA, contributing to:

• Mood fluctuation

• Brain fog

• Increased anxiety (Santoro et al., 2021)

• Decreased bone density

• Loss of muscle mass (Greendale & Karlamangla, 2017)

These changes can leave many women feeling physically and psychologically at a loss. The body they have always had seems to be working against them, combined with an awful feeling that society is agreeing. This ageing body doesn't seem as “good” as your old one.

A new life chapter

Alongside this hormonal storm of perimenopause comes the environmental realities of midlife womanhood - caregiving responsibilities of ageing parents, increased work pressure, motherhood and its changing stages, financial pressures, and relationship stresses. With all of these things combined, it can easily feel as though agency and control are slipping away from you. Everything seems to be fluctuating and changing, and we are pulled along in its wave. 

In psychology, we know that having a sense of control over one’s life is fundamental for psychological wellbeing and managing anxiety, yet not until recently have we considered the psychological impact on a perimenopausal woman when she experiences a loss of agency and control over her own body. 

This is where strength training comes in.

Why strength training matters during perimenopause

Physiologically, we know that weight training directly counters the biological drivers of midlife decline:

• Muscle and metabolic preservation: Two sessions per week of progressive resistance training can halt or reverse muscle atrophy and preserve your resting metabolic rate (Westcott, 2012).

• Bone health: Load-bearing exercise improves bone mineral density, reducing your risk of osteoporosis (Watson et al., 2018).

• Hormonal balance and sleep: Resistance training improves insulin sensitivity and reduces circulating cortisol (your stress hormone), supporting both hormonal stability and restorative sleep (Hackney, 2020).

Psychologically, weight training also produces profound cognitive and emotional benefits:

• Mood and cognition: Strength training increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), improving cognitive function, memory, mood and reducing depressive symptoms (Cassilhas et al., 2010).

• Self-efficacy and control: Weight training with progressive overload reinforces an internal feeling of control and improvement, helping to reduce perimenopausal anxiety, racing thoughts and sleep disturbances (Bandura, 1997; Segar et al., 2022).

• Structure: The rhythm of training (effort, rest, recovery) is exactly the rhythm midlife often disrupts. It brings back a sense of structure and predictability when your hormones are doing the opposite.

In clinical language, strength training promotes self-efficacy, behavioural activation, and emotional regulation. In real life, it means:

• You feel calmer.

• You sleep better.

• You like yourself more.

• You stop apologising for taking up space.

That’s the psychology of strength in motion. The happy friendship of these physical and psychological benefits can have a huge impact and help to move us away from the perimenopausal feeling of body betrayal and into a space where every weight lifted becomes a moment of mastery: “I did that.”

Stronger muscles, stronger mind

Every time you add a little more weight to the bar, you’re teaching your brain something powerful: I can adapt and I can grow. 

Psychologists call this self-efficacy - the belief that you can influence what happens to you. And it’s one of the most protective factors against anxiety and low mood during perimenopause. We tell ourselves: I might be different today than I was yesterday, but that is growth, not a failure. Yes, your body has changed, but we can reframe that message into a positive one. Change means there’s room to grow.

When everything else feels unpredictable, strength training offers measurable progress. Every small win, every extra rep, every ounce of muscle gained is a reminder that you have more left to give, even on the days when you feel there’s nothing in the tank. You can see yourself getting stronger, and the psychological impact of that, the increase in the resilience - it extends way beyond your workouts.

From "fixing" your body to celebrating it

Many women spend decades in a cycle of dieting, cardio, and guilt. Perimenopause brings with it the opportunity to say “enough.” It’s an opportunity to stop apologising for the body you have and the space you take up. 

Whilst many women look at their bodies in perimenopause as a declining version of their younger selves, with a small shift in mindset, this time can actually be transformational. 

It can be the chance to say, “Look at the body that carried me here”. This is a magnificent body that has perhaps carried you through pregnancy, motherhood, relationship breakups, job losses, bereavements, celebrations, friendships, the big wins and the smaller ones. It’s a body that says, “I’m right here with you through all of it,” and didn’t give up on you even when you felt like it did.

Perimenopause doesn’t have to mean looking at your body and wishing for something different. Instead, it can be a chance to appreciate all that you’ve done and can still do.  Instead of trying to shrink yourself, you get to build yourself.

Strength training is fundamental for your health, and it also helps reframe your relationship with your body. It’s no longer about punishment but partnership.

You start to respect what your body can do, not just how it looks. That shift is deeply therapeutic; it replaces shame with pride and scarcity with capability. Look at any woman in a weight training section of the gym, whatever age, whatever size, whatever weight she is lifting… and look at the gain. I’m not talking about the aesthetic gain, I’m talking about a woman saying, “I’ve got strength, I’ve got power, and this hour is about me."

My own lifts in the gym wouldn’t probably draw admiring glances in elite circles and probably won’t even draw an eyebrow raise in the free weights section of any gym. Still, every time I turn up, even on the days my sleep has been terrible or motherhood and midlife has been kicking me, and every weight I lift (no matter how big or small) I’m telling myself- I’m worthy of my own applause.

This isn’t the end

Perimenopause doesn’t have to be an ending; it’s an invitation to rebuild.

When you pick up a weight, you’re sending your nervous system the same message you send your muscles: I can handle more than I thought.

And perhaps that’s the most important lift of all. So from one forty-something woman to another, if you are reading this: girl, there’s a lot more life in you yet! 

See you in the weights section.

With love,

Dr Alison

References

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W.H. Freeman.

Cassilhas, R. C., Antunes, H. K., Tufik, S., & de Mello, M. T. (2010). Mood, anxiety, and serum IGF-1 in elderly men after three months of resistance training. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 110(1), 265–276.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Self-Determination Theory. Oxford University Press.

Greendale, G. A., & Karlamangla, A. S. (2017). Menopause and bone loss. Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Obesity, 24(6), 402–410.

Hackney, A. C. (2020). Exercise as a stressor to the human neuroendocrine system. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 52(3), 675–685.

McAuley, E., et al. (2000). Social relations, physical activity, and well-being in older adults. Preventive Medicine, 31(5), 608–617.

Santoro, N., Epperson, C. N., & Mathews, S. B. (2021). Menopausal symptoms and their management. Endocrine Reviews, 42(6), 726–752.

Segar, M., et al. (2022). Exercise motivation in midlife women: The role of meaning and self-determination. Health Psychology, 41(2), 94–104.

Stults-Kolehmainen, M. A., & Sinha, R. (2014). The effects of stress on physical activity and exercise. Sports Medicine, 44(1), 81–121.

Watson, S. L., Weeks, B. K., Weis, L. J., & Beck, B. R. (2018). Heavy resistance training is safe and effective for postmenopausal women. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, 33(2), 211–220.

Westcott, W. L. (2012). Resistance training is medicine: Effects of strength training on health. Current Sports Medicine Reports, 11(4), 209–216.*