#41: Stress - why you should NOT ignore it in perimenopause & menopause

🙄 You hear it ALL the time: you should manage your stress. 

Everyone is saying it. But nobody ever tells you WHY. 🤔

In this episode of the podcast, I break it down for you: 

• Why you may feel extra stressed in perimenopause & menopause
• How our capacity to handle stress changes in midlife
• Why chronic stress is bad idea in perimenopause & menopause
• How stress affects our health, body composition and quality of life!
• Practical ways to manage stress - including some which are super easy to implement

Transcript

#41: Stress - why you should NOT ignore it in perimenopause & menopause

Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host. And in today's episode, we are going to be talking about stress and particularly about stress and perimenopause and menopause. And you may wonder like, Oh, I hear about stress all the time. Why, you know, like, why do we need to talk about this? But the fact is that at this time of life, Stress management is actually particularly important for both your fitness and your health.

So we will be getting into that topic in a bit more depth, probably things you don't know yet. But before we do that, I wanted to say today's, actually November 11th as I record this and it is international singles day. So to all the singles out there, happy singles day. And if you are, you know, decided to [00:01:00] be single for the rest of your life, not looking for a companion, great.

I love that choice. One of my best friends has actually made that choice as well. She's like, I never want to live with another person. You know, I don't want some kind of a serious relationship. And she's been living happily that way for the past, I want to say almost 10 years. Anyway, and then for the rest of us who are maybe hoping to find somebody, enjoy the single time because tomorrow you might not be single anymore.

So make the most of it. So on to the topic of stress. So you hear it all the time. You know, you should be managing your stress, but they don't really talk so much about why. And I have to say, if you're anything like me, you have had a lot of stress in your life. I mean, my whole life has been at a very [00:02:00] high level, starting from, , when I was younger, back when I was living in the States, I was going to extremely competitive schools.

So, you know, workload was very heavy and. , the competition was very fierce and I was playing sports, played division one lacrosse all the way through college and, , , went to one of the top universities and I was doing extra work. I, I did a research project at Dartmouth medical school during my sophomore and junior years.

I was doing extra conditioning, , for lacrosse. So I was running and weight training beyond what our coaches were asking of us. And, you know, of course I partied hard. Dartmouth, Dartmouth, in case you didn't know, was the college that the movie Animal House was kind of Uh, modeled on and they have very, very much of a work [00:03:00] hard, play hard, party hard mentality.

And I lived that. So I feel like if I think about myself, I'm somebody who manages stress. No problem. I'm super organized in college... Uh, I was doing calendaring before I even knew what calendaring was every day. I would have like this lined paper because Back then. Well, we did use computers.

Um, but you know, you didn't have mobile phones with apps or anything like that. So I had a line piece of paper and each line was 15 minutes and I would block in when I was going to be training, showering, eating, studying, you know, which subjects when I had my lectures, when I had lab time and all the things.

And. I felt like, yeah, I just managed it and I was not terribly stressed. But the thing is that that was my 20 year [00:04:00] old body. And now I'm living in a 50 year old body and. Things are different. So I've talked a lot about how the hormonal changes in our body affect like our physical structures. And for example, how we should be training and how our muscles respond to stimulus and all this kind of thing.

But the other thing that our bodies change is how we respond to stress, unfortunately. And I want to also say that this doesn't mean that we are somehow worse or weaker or less capable than we were before, but we just need to be aware of our new bodies and maybe adjust what we're doing or how we're doing things to match our new bodies a little bit better.

Now, in general, this menopause time of life can be very stressful and it's [00:05:00] because we're in our forties and fifties. And at this time of life, , you might be dealing with big life transitions, like your kids going off to college or leaving home, you know, so you're empty nesting. A lot of people actually end up getting divorced at this time.

I know I did smack dab in the middle of perimenopause. Got divorced your parents, maybe aging and starting to need help. Oh, this is, yeah, this is a small stressor that is like. It's, you know, in the back of my head all the time as I, every time I see my parents, I'm like, you know, they're not young anymore and they're going to need more help.

And when my mom struggles with, oh, I can't deal with the bank this or the bank that, it's like I notice, oh no, I'm going to have to help. And, and that's another thing on my plate. Of course I want to help them, but it's, I also kind of feel like, Oh, I don't have so much capacity for all of this stuff. It may be that you're taking on more [00:06:00] responsibility at work.

You know, this is a time in your career where you're really leading, going into leadership Even bigger leadership positions or taking on more responsibility, or it might be that you're kind of getting ready to retire. And that also is a stressor, like changing your life in a big way. And for a lot of us, this is the first time that we really start to recognize our own mortality.

That we are not here forever. And, and that is an, its own stressor, you know, that you have this little feeling like, Oh, , I have limited time, a little bit of a clock ticking, kind of like the biological clock that you might've had ticking when you were in your twenties and Hey, I got to have kids.

But now it's a little different kind of biological clock and we don't know how much time we have left. So how should we balance the things that we want to do in our lives?

And [00:07:00] added to that, the fact that our bodies are changing, I mean, it's, it's like, they talk about menopause, perimenopause as being like puberty all over again, that you have major changes in your body and the things that you, your old standby go tos, the things that always worked for you aren't working before.

So that whole canvas already right there already is like. A bit more stressful than what you've had before. Plus, of course, we know that our cortisol levels are higher in perimenopause menopause, just naturally. Then you add those kinds of stressors on top of it. And I want to bring up a concept that I think I've mentioned in an earlier podcast, which is the concept of a stress bucket.

So if you think about, , your ability to handle stress, you can think of it as a bucket where there's a spout coming out the [00:08:00] bottom of it and things like water pouring into the top of it. And the things that are acting like water pouring into the top of it are all the stressors. And these can be positive stressors as well, right?

So positive stressors, negative stressors, they can be. Your exercise is a type of stress, your work, your argument with your teenager, the fact that you're hungry, maybe you're in a calorie deficit, that's a stressor, all kinds of stressors adding

into your bucket. And the thing is that the spout is of course your ability to kind of handle these stressors.

So as long as you keep that in balance where Your, the amount of stressors that are going in are not more than the water going out, then you're okay, right? And the nice thing about the bucket is of course that it gives you a little bit of give. So that's your resilience, right?

You can have a little [00:09:00] bit more stress happening. So the bucket gets a little bit more full, but then you do something where you either reduce your stress or you increase the size of the spigot of the water going out. So you're able to lower your stress levels. So it never overflows, right? So let me tell you what happens in midlife.

So it turns out that actually your stress bucket shrinks. That's right. It's capacity to hold water. Stress is less. And what's even worse is that the spigot, which is letting the stressors flow out. is shrunken as well. So you are actually dealing with a whole new bucket than what you were dealing with before.

And that may be why you are really not feeling so great.

So let me say that again, that when we hit midlife [00:10:00] in our stress bucket, the bucket and the spigot both shrink. And that means that we need to learn how to manage our stress better if we're going to feel good. So, you know, you may ask like, okay, so stress, stress, , what does stress matter? So stress is something that your body does naturally, you know, raising your levels of cortisol.

And the reason that it happens is, well, our biology has really not changed since caveman. So you can imagine when we heard caveman, we wanted to be able to respond really quickly to any kind of dangers in our environment. So we wanted our stress hormone to go up. If we saw a lion or some kind of danger, like we're about to fall off a cliff or whatever, you want it to be able to raise your stress level.

So your body could respond. And that's great. It is really a great [00:11:00] adaptation that we have, but What's not great is if that adaptation is triggered, like all the time, so what's so bad about having chronically elevated stress? Well, as a woman in perimenopause or menopause, if you're having menopause symptoms can actually make them worse. So if you're suffering from something like depression, anxiety, brain fog, or hot flushes, those can get worse from chronic stress.

And the elevated cortisol levels wreak havoc really on your body physically, so it can shrink your muscles. So because it puts you into this catabolic state and you get a loss of bone density and increase of belly fat, and none of those things are something you want.[00:12:00] And if you're suffering with anxiety, that too can really get worse with the chronic stress.

And, by the way, that's not all. Let me read you the full list. So, chronic stress can cause insomnia and disrupted sleep. Increased pain, high blood pressure, higher risk of cardiovascular disease. And by the way, cardiovascular disease is no joke for us women. That is one of the leading causes of death for women.

Metabolic disorders like poor glucose control. So this diabetic, pre diabetic stuff. Going on a weakened immune system and flare ups and autoimmune diseases. So that's really not good. Skin issues like rash and even accelerated skin aging. Plus all the things like [00:13:00] reducing your sex drive, accelerated aging through the body.

So that's the bones, the muscles, the tendons, ligaments, all kinds of things. Like your body really does not like to be in a state of stress. Decreased ability to focus, increased risk, risk of injury and poor recovery. So like basically it's really a poop show when you are in a state of chronic stress. So that's why really it is something we should be thinking about and how to improve things.

So there's like. No good side. And the thing is, I think we get a lot of messages from out there, the media, or a lot of encouragement to be kind of doing it all and fitting it all and, and you know, powering through and [00:14:00] long days and wow, you're really a superhero and all that. And, like, yeah, we should be continuing to like Bravo that we're keeping ourselves into this chronic stress state that Bravo that we're pushing ourselves to our limits.

And when you're doing that all the time, that's really not good. We need to kind of change that message. So what can we do about this stress? We can think about it in different categories. So, you know, there are these bigger changes you can make in your life. So if you notice that you're really stressed out, are there some bigger things you can change?

For example,, if your job is super duper stressing you out, is there an opportunity to change that? And here, I mean, I am talking about things that are not quick fixes, right? I, I was working at a job where my boss was really, I don't know. Apparently I reminded him of his wife [00:15:00] who he was on really bad terms with.

And yeah, it did not make me his favorite employee. So I got a lot of. Shit rained down on me from him. , anyway, so there was a very, very stressful situation for a year until I finally left that company. And Oh my God, I'm so much happier now that I don't have to deal with that every day, wondering like, when is he going to come up and do something really nasty and mean to me?

You may have teenage kids and you're the one who's like doing everything, the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, the grocery shopping, and all that. You know what? Part of raising those kids is also helping them to learn how to do things on their own. So what I actually did when I got divorced, because I was like, I can't do all of this and then be driving kids around and Holding [00:16:00] down a job and all the rest all by myself.

So I've made chore lists. And every day, each of us does one long chore and a short chore. And the long chores are taking the long dog walk, uh, cooking dinner and cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. So I actually do not cook every day. And that is... Because as you may know, I'm not a big fan of cooking. So that is a huge stress reliever for me.

And then things like emptying the dishwasher, peeing the dog in the morning and the evening, these kinds of things are on the list of short chores. So, you know, share, share the chores if you can, and just lowering your stress a little bit. Um. Fitness itself can become a little bit of a stressor for people if you look at the recommendations.

So I am studying for a new certification and it was funny. It [00:17:00] had like the list of things, you know, an ideal, ideal, like the perfect, uh, all the things that perimenopause menopause women should be doing. And as I was reading the list, I was like, man, you would like to have. no job, no family, and almost no social life in order to actually fulfill that list.

And I think those lists can be really dangerous for that reason. People think like, Oh, I got to do all these things. And then your fitness becomes your stressor. So like the 10, 000 steps a day thing, which Absolutely. Walking is excellent for your health. , and the amount of steps means amount of movement that you're doing each day.

But if you're going to walk 10, 000 steps a day, and you're going to go do it at a separate time, like you're going to walk, get outside and you're going to walk. You're going to spend like an hour and a half just [00:18:00] to do that. Could be even longer depending on the pace of your walking. So for me, for example,

I got really stressed out about the fact that, Oh, I'm working like 10 hour days in front of my computer.

Then I want to go to the gym. Then I also want to get in my steps. Plus I have cooking and, you know, kids and blah, blah, blah, all the other stuff. And it was stressing me out my walks. I would go on my walk and I'd be thinking. Oh no, when I get back, I still need to do this, this, this, this. And so you might find a solution like I did, which was to get a walk pad.

So now I do my walking. I get in my 10, 000 steps while I'm working. And, uh, luckily I have the kind of work where I can walk and you don't have to walk fast. It's not like you're bouncing. You just need to be a little bit moving. So I get in my 10, 000 steps that way. So that has really reduced my stress to be able to,

deal with that during my workday instead of having to add it as a yet another thing I need to do every day. So there's some other [00:19:00] practical things. I just want to throw these out there because I hate it when people are like, oh, just just try to outsource some stuff or whatever. Like, I want practical ideas.

So, for example, , if you don't like grocery shopping, or you find that that takes a lot of time, what about having your groceries delivered? And okay, I don't do this myself, but those of my friends who do this, they say, yes, setting it up the first time, it's kind of a pain in the butt because you have to choose all your products, but then you've got like your list of what you normally get.

And then you just a little bit, adjust them and then they come right to your doorstep. So super duper handy. And what about making your mornings a little bit less stressful, , instead of when you get up in the morning thinking, Oh my God, what am I going to wear? What if you lay out your clothes the day before?

What if you pack your gym bag the day before? Or even set up the coffee so you just flip on this, flip the switch in the morning. These are like little things, , but it just, you know, can help your morning be a heck of a [00:20:00] lot less stressful. And by the way, meal prep is something that can really help, , your daily life be less stressful.

If, if you're, you know, five o'clock rolls around and you're like, Oh my God, what am I going to cook today? And you go over to the fridge and you think, Oh, what do I have here? And what can I make from this? You know, doing meal prepping could really be something that helps you. Of course, it takes some time to do the prepping, but at least that's like controlled time.

And then your days. If they're like mine, that once you hit that Monday morning, it's just, you know, a race to get through till Friday and the weekends are a little bit more flexible. Then that meal prepping can really help. Or if you have like a Wednesday night, that is a little bit more open. You could meal prep or even chop the stuff up with the kids helping you or whatever.

, And then calendaring. So I mentioned that before. So I don't know if you know about calendaring, so if I calendaring just [00:21:00] basically means is you take your calendar. And for me, I just have a calendar. That's my Google Google calendar. So I have a Gmail account and then I have the calendar associated with it.

And I put everything that I'm going to do in there. So if I'm going to go to the grocery store, I stick it in the calendar. If I need to remember to call, you know, and make a dentist appointment for my kid, I put it in there. It's kind of like, I don't have to have a to do list because I've already decided when I'm going to do the thing and I've stuck it in the calendar.

And it has actually been shown that once you calendar Uh, something, then you are able to kind of release it from your mind, having to always kind of keep it there, remember, remember, remember, remember. And so that can reduce stress as well. Calendaring is, yeah, I definitely recommend it. And I do the calendaring also for my workouts and my life.

My life is in my calendar. And, [00:22:00] yeah, and I trust my calendar so much that my kids ask me like, what time do we need to leave today? I'm like, I have no idea. Look at the calendar of course I'm looking at it like I look at it in the morning, but anyway.

So those are some kind of medium sized ways. But then what about if you're feeling super stressed, like right now in this moment, you notice that, Oh, now my stress levels went up really high. For example, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you, you think about something, well, first of all.

Writing things down helps to sort of empty it. , and if you remember something in the middle of the night, I always have a piece of paper and a pen handy next to me. So I can just quickly write it down. It might be a work idea. And by the way, I do it in the dark. So that's always interesting writing in the dark.

But usually I can make some sense out of my scribble in the morning. . And then when you wake up, you can also do breathing exercises and actually these breathing exercises are things you can do [00:23:00] anytime. And I know that

sounds like really woo woo breathing exercises, but it really doesn't take very much time at all.

, there are a lot of different ways you can breathe. You may have heard of other ways, but I do a one, two breathing, which means that I breathe in for a count of one and I breathe out for a count of two and your one and your two can be as slow as you want to make them. That's why I like the fact that it's a one and a two.

It's just easy to One can be like one and then two, you yeah. Anyway, double the amount of breathing out. And actually a little tip is that after your workouts, this breathing, uh, is a really good idea. If you've ever done yoga, you know, you have a sabasana at the very end when you're like just lying there and you might do some little.

Uh, you know, your yoga instructor might walk you through feeling different [00:24:00] parts of your body, feeling how you're touching the mat and, you know, feeling your breath and all that. That is a great thing to do just any time, really. And also after a weight training exercise. And it really does not need to be long often in those classes.

It's like three minutes, two minutes, but it's just enough to lower your stress levels, bring your body back to, you know, a rest and recovery state. And then another thing, which I haven't tried yet, and this is something that I want to add because, because I know my stress levels are just too high because I have packed my life a little bit too full right now.

And I know that. So I need to help the spigot part. Even though I should be, uh, just adding less water to the bucket. But, mindfulness meditation. So these are the kind of meditations where you're really focusing on [00:25:00] being present. So, for example, paying attention to your breathing, paying attention to your bodily sensations, your thoughts or your emotions.

And research shows that that can actually rewire our brains. To improve our ability to reduce stress, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression, as well as improve our mental health and cognitive performance. So, and you don't have to do that for very long, right? There are all kinds of apps that have these kinds of meditations.

Uh, personally, I have an Oura ring. So I listened to some of the meditations on there, but there are, oh, I wish I had written them down, but there are some. Some different apps also that you can download onto your phone, have

meditations. And, and then finally, another way to reduce stress is just spend like five or 10 minutes doing something you enjoy.

And now I'm talking about something that's [00:26:00] not scrolling on your phone. So like actually doing something and being present in doing it. So somebody might find a lot of pleasure from like tidying up a room. I know. One thing I kind of like, and this may sound really weird, is I like folding laundry. It somehow is satisfying to get it down off the drying rack and into piles and then delivered.

And it doesn't take very long, five, ten minutes. So I do that as a little break and, you know, it's satisfying. Or you pet your dog or cat or... You will cuddle with your significant other, talk with your child, uh, go do a tiny bit of gardening, something, all of these things actually help reduce your stress.

So yeah, that was a lot on, on things you can do. So I, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but [00:27:00] by the way, so workouts are a form of stress on your body. And so when you do a workout and that can be, um, a weight training workout or some kind of aerobic workout, running steps, doing a group fitness class, whatever it is.

You are putting your body in a stress mode and realize that when you're in a stress mode, that is a mode where muscle is being broken down. Okay. Muscle is being broken down. So you want to get out of that mode when your workout is over and some ways to help your body get out of that mode are these breathing exercises for the three.

minutes. , and the other is to eat protein. So eating that big dose of protein after your workout, 30 to 40 grams. And I do that as a wheat whey protein shake [00:28:00] that drops the level of your stress hormone. So those two tips for after your workouts to. Pull your stress levels back down. Okay. So that was a lot.

And that was maybe very different from some of my earlier podcasts, so what I want to say today is that if you are feeling more stressed or less able to cope in menopause, perimenopause. You're not alone. It's a hard period in life, and it's made even harder by the fact that your stress bucket has actually shrunken. And from a health point of view and fitness point of view, chronic stress really is a No joke.

So just like you have needed to adjust your exercising to accommodate your new body, please consider that it might be time to think about adjusting

things in your life[00:29:00] so that You can manage this new ability to cope with stress, and that can include some of the bigger changes that I talked about before, or even smaller changes are, you know, take up 10 minutes a day.

So just to finish off, I want to invite you to think about one thing you could do to decrease your stress. So let's not try to revamp your whole life, you know, to make it stress free, but let's start like with baby steps. So what is one thing you could do in this coming week? One thing you could adopt that will decrease your stress.

Or one thing that you could do that will increase your body's ability to handle the stress because you can either decrease how much stress is going into the bucket or how big that spigot is coming out of the bucket. So for example, maybe that could be that you add protein [00:30:00] in after each of your workouts.

That's a fairly easy one to add or add five minutes of breathing each day and on the days when you work out. How about doing it right after your workout to bring your cortisol levels down or maybe make that chore list so that you can split some of the chores with your kids or how about meal prepping?

So those are just some ideas. And if you have other good ones, please share them because then I can share them forward with others. You can DM me in my Instagram. Yeah. So hopefully that got you thinking about stress management a little bit different way rather than just this. term that keeps getting thrown around there at perimenopause and menopause women.

And hopefully this has stopped you and gotten you to think a little bit about maybe you, maybe you need to do a little something to help yourself.[00:31:00] So that's it for this week. And I will see you next week. Happy training.