Why Your Body Is Asking You to Slow Down (Especially After 40)

In this episode of She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope, Anna McBride explores what it means to stop fighting your body and begin aging with acceptance, trust, and care.

Drawing from her personal journey through disordered eating, over-exercise, menopause, injury, and healing, Anna reflects on how pushing harder stopped working — and how listening to her body became the path back to peace.

This episode is for women who feel exhausted, disconnected, or frustrated by the changes in their body and want a more compassionate, sustainable way forward.

You’ll hear reflections on:

• Radical acceptance and aging
• Menopause, rest, and nervous system regulation
• Healing body shame and self-criticism
• Reframing strength, care, and self-trust

This is an invitation to let go of old expectations and build a healthier, more loving relationship with your body — exactly where you are.

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Transcript

Dedication And Body Story Begins

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome back to She Asked, Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host Anna McBride, and I'm so excited that you're here. We've been doing a three-part series on topics that are helping us to wind up the year for 2025 and prepare us to head into 2026 with more clarity, more strength, and more joy. Today's episode is about our body and how we relate to this vessel that we've been gifted with. I'll be honest, my relationship to my body has not always been a healthy one. And this year there were things that I wanted to make sure that I no longer did so that I could be in better alignment with my body. And we're going to talk about that today. But first, as in every episode, we'd like to begin with a story. And today's story I want to dedicate to one of my sisters who is herself struggling with her own body, but for different reasons. Her health is failing. She's struggling with cancer. And I want to dedicate this episode to her because I do believe that with the time we have here on earth, we are really meant to heal and grow and relate to our bodies in such an amazing way that only love can come forward. And so here's the story. My body story. I shared in previous episodes that I had an eating disorder growing up, which basically means from an early age, I think it was around age seven, I began a battle with my body where I was at war with it. I chose to not like it. I didn't like the way it looked, I didn't like the way it was performing, and I also didn't like what other people were telling me about it. I didn't understand it, but I was attempting to control things that were not something I could control, meaning the environment I was growing up in was not to my liking. It was very dysfunctional. So I couldn't control that. Yet I could control my body. I controlled what I ate. I controlled whether I kept it down in my stomach, I controlled how much exercise I got, I controlled a lot of things, but mostly I restricted. And I also controlled the conversation I was having with my body. I was at war, which means that all my thoughts were against myself, all of my words out of my mouth were against myself, and all of my behaviors to my body were against myself. It was not kind. It was highly critical, and the results were that I did I did start to lose weight. I became very unhealthy without even understanding what health meant in a body. And I didn't understand how I was contributing to it. That because I was thinking really bad thoughts about myself, and then also talking really badly about my body, I realized that I was also attracting a lot of people that were confirming that, that were supporting that. And I was just a kid, I didn't know. Yet I certainly never challenged that thought process till decades later. I struggled and suffered with an eating disorder for over three decades. And I have learned that when you're at war with yourself in your own body, it's a really hard life. And again, I think people who know me would probably wonder what I'm talking about, and I'll tell you that when you start talking yourself in really terrible ways, there's nothing that you see or experience in your body that feels positive. And so what that looked like was even though I was working really hard to become an Olympic swimmer, I worked so hard to get to the trainings, I worked so hard in high school to compete so that I could get a scholarship to college. I did all these things and at the same time was fighting with myself and both were working against each other. I'm really surprised, to be quite honest with you, that I was as successful as I was. Because there's really no reason when you don't eat much that you ought to be able to perform at the level that I was pushing myself to perform at. So this went on through my later elementary, middle school years, high school years, college years, and then well into my adulthood that I would undereat or overeat, and I was struggling between bulimia and anorexia for a long time. I didn't tell my husband that I had an eating disorder. It was surprising to me that he never figured it out. I raised three kids, and therefore they themselves took on versions of disordered eating pattern. So I was at war with my body, I was at war with my life, and I was so unhappy. I was so grateful that I actually went through that because it led me to really keep seeking ways to feel happier, to get better. Even though I didn't consciously understand it, I chose the fields I went into. First, my undergrad was in dietetics and nutrition, and then my graduate was in psychology, all the while trying to find the secret recipe, the healing recipe to get healthier, to heal myself. And I told myself that I was doing this to be able to help other people. And that's true. Yet the universe has a way, and my higher power has a way of leading me onto paths, down roads where I'm actually helping myself. Because the bottom line is this: that until I shifted my relationship to my body, I wasn't going to be of any help to anyone else. So as I was getting older, I certainly found ways to get better. I think it was around my 40th birthday that I actually admitted that I needed help, that I got the help, and that I was being honest with my husband as well as my family about my challenges with food. And that began the path that led me into the work that I did as a therapist, as well as the healing that got me to a better relationship with my body. I started looking at the way I was talking to myself. I started looking at the way I was relating to myself. I started looking at what I was believing about myself. And first look at all that did not show me a really good picture. I was really mean to myself. So I had to learn how to undo that. And I want to tell you that I began that process at the age of 40. I'm now two decades later. I've certainly healed enough that my self-talk, my beliefs about my body, my acceptance of myself is greatly in the other direction. But to tell you that I'm really perfect at it would not be true. It's something I actually have to keep looking at every day. The food disorder was an addiction. And because it's an addiction, it's something that, you know, even though I can heal from it, doesn't mean I ever get over it. I have to actually keep attending to the mental thoughts that lead to problems. And I have to stay ahead of them. I have to really attend to and look at with curiosity what it is that I'm thinking about myself, how it is that I'm talking to myself, and how it is that I'm taking care of myself. Because it matters. What I want to talk to you about is how we can relate to our bodies differently. How the body has natural cycles that we need to attend to, we need to understand, and we also have to be at peace with. I need more, a different nutrition plan, I need a different exercise plan. And this radical acceptance that I was describing means I am actually attending and taking care of myself the way my body needs me to now. And not the way I needed it a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago. Yeah. I am really being, I'm really attending to my body the way it needs me to right now. So the way I've learned this lesson to be quite clear is I had to have some breakdowns. That's how I always learn. I don't learn the easy way, I always learn the hard way. And it usually comes to me with a breakdown, like I have some sort of injury or I have some sort of physical ailment, something that gets my attention enough to say, okay, whoa, whoa. Generally speaking, I would be rushing or I would be over-exercising. And this year, what I ended up doing was I had committed to a workouts process that I thought made sense, which was increasing the weights that I was lifting in the gym in a way that really was demonstrating just how strong I was. That was an ego thing. What it ended up doing was injuring my left shoulder. And so I have this strained combination, rotary, cuff, bicep, tricep combination, which is taken a very long time to heal. I had been a very active cyclist and was having to understand that when I was doing aerobic things at a high level, that it was affecting my nervous system. And so I wasn't able to calm down. This is something very common with women who become menopausal, is that the elevation within your system, your body, at this stage of your life, it takes longer for the body to settle back down from aerobic exercise than it used to. And I was so used to like bouncing back, like I could go from racing to running to weight lifting and sleep at night and be okay. But what I had noticed besides the injury in my shoulder was that I wasn't sleeping well. Like it was becoming harder and harder for my body just to calm down and go to rest. And so having checked into that with some experts, talking to different doctors, I learned that I had to rethink the way I was approaching all of my workout. I had to allow my shoulder to heal, which means I had to back away from weight lifting or take it way down to much lower weight because that's what my body needed. I also needed to cut back on the intensity as well as the frequency and the duration of my aerobic workout. This seemed ridiculous to me. It seemed like my life as I knew it and enjoyed it was over. That was a story I was telling myself, and that was again creating another war with my body. And so to stay aligned with radical acceptance, I had to be willing to shake things out to realize that I'm not the young version in me that used to bounce back from things. It takes longer for me to recover. And so what I've learned is to appreciate is our rest days, which I used to think made no sense. I thought, okay, I'll have an active rest day. No, I actually have to have a rest day where I don't switch out cycling and then walk 10 miles. I actually don't do aerobic exercise at all. And now it's hard for me to accept. This is a big shift for me. And what I've noticed is that it's allowing my shoulder to heal, it's allowing my body to rest, and it's really accepting where I am right now. So if you're someone in the menopausal section of your life, you'd be surprised if you have to look at everything differently and decide you're working out. You're gonna want to also look at the way you feed your body because of my disordered eating background. I had a really terrible idea of what I needed. I thought that as long as I kept my weight down, that I was good. Here's the thing that doesn't work the older you get, because when you get to my age, you want to maintain your muscle tone. And after menopause, muscle tone goes down very quickly. So in order to counteract that, you need to make sure you're getting enough protein, that you're getting enough carbohydrates, that you're getting enough fat in your diet, and at enough level that you actually can maintain and not grow, which is what I was attempting to do. So now that I'm in this commitment towards radical acceptance, I am also in acceptance of what the tonality is of my body right now. I had a lot of muscle tone just a short decade ago. And now my body chemistry is changing. So I need to attend to it. Radical acceptance means is that you're really staying with where you are right now. I want to also make sure that I am with as much clarity as I can aware of how healthy my body is. I no longer want to ignore anything. I know that when you ignore the state of your body, you're essentially setting yourself up for some surprises that can show up unexpectedly. And I have examples in my family where that's been the case. So I don't want to do that. I want to make sure I am really present to where I am right now. So we think of our cycles in life as there is a a birth and then there's a death. A birth is like a new beginning, right? Those of us that are mothers know what it's like to give birth. You can give birth to children, you can give birth to new ideas if you're creative, you can give birth to different stages of your life, right? If you're continuing to grow in consciousness. Yet we have to realize that for every birth, there has to be an ending, there has to be a death. And so each of the cycles that my body has gone through is something that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And so when I was entering into menopause, and then ultimately where I'm at right now, I needed to accept that I had to let go of these old versions of me. That was the death. I also had to see it as a birth. Like this was a new becoming. Like I was becoming a version of me that was going to age healthily. It was gonna start with my mind, it was going to continue in my body, and it's gonna really be supported as best it can with what I do on a daily basis. So as I moved through these different cycles, I wanted to see that there were opportunities for growth, that was the birth, the opportunities for shifting and changing, that was the middle part, and that there were parts of my body, my mind, my life that were falling away, and those were the deaths. There are opportunities in every one of those cycles. How I face it, the attitude I bring to it, the perspective, as well as maybe the curiosity and the acceptance that I can bring along with me. We have some good news in this area in terms of research, that there was an article and research posted in the Journal for Cell Biology, which states that the body renews itself. We know this, that your skin regenerates every month, your liver every five years, meaning that biologically you're always becoming a new version of you. You're always shedding, releasing, and growing in a new way. This helps to remember that if my cells are allowed to change, so can I. So can I. And I wanted to see aging as more than just me getting older. I wanted to see it as a spiritual practice. Like, how am I going to ease into this chapter of my life? Right? It had to come with acceptance. It also had to come with new practices, and it had to come with me being at peace with where I am. I still like to challenge myself, though. I still like to have some sort of thing that I could grow into because I feel like even though I'm easing into what some people might consider the golden years or the part of my life where I ought to be slowing down, I want to know that I feel most alive. And I do this in a lot of ways. I do this by growing spiritually, like really connecting more deeply with the spiritual side of myself. I certainly make connections through prayer and meditation with my version of higher power or God, as people refer. And I do that as a daily practice because for me right now, to really be at peace with myself, I need to really cultivate a deeper spiritual connection with my life. I also like to expand and grow physically. I mentioned the things that I like to do with the working out. I like to set a little carrot for rule as I can, and I've set one for 2026 where I'm going to be doing a hiking challenge. It's part of this 29029 ever resting, and more will come about that next year. But it's going to be a challenge where I'm going to really see if I am able to hike that elevation 29,000, 29 feet in a course of 36 hours. I'm excited about it actually, because I feel like it will be a way for me to really target certain training that is in alignment with things that I've done. I've known that I've always been built for distance and not for speed. And I've done that in my cycling, I've done that in swimming, and I've done that in hiking, long, long distances. So I set that commitment to myself as a way to really look at each day, like, how can I live my life a little more healthier? How can I really still push myself a little bit because my mind likes that, and also see how I can still be in alignment with my acceptance of where I'm at. I'm taking on that challenge not as a way to beat myself into this activity, but really to see what I'm capable of. And I feel like that is a way for me to keep expanding because I feel like that's what spiritual growth is about, is ways in which we can expand. We can deepen our connection with our spirit. We can also deepen or expand our connection to life. I want to remember that I want to remove certain things, such as the shoulds, the shames, the holding myself to an unrealistic standard and then being critical of myself. I need to remove those things in order for me to be in acceptance with where I'm at and also to be in alignment with my spirit. My spirit never wanted me to dislike myself, to be at war with myself. That's not why I believe I was given this body. I mean I forgot that I was a spiritual being having a human experience in this body, in this life. Instead, somewhere along the line, my mind, my ego got distorted and started creating a lifestyle that was counter the way my spirit always wanted me to be. So I'm so grateful that I've done the healing work, that I've come to peace with my body as it is, so that I can be more connected spiritually and aligned with my body physically. And I want you to remember that there's freedom in accepting that truth, the truth of where you are. When I stop fighting against where I'm at, there's so much more freedom in the way that I'm aging. I can really free up all the energy and thoughts and criticisms and languaging around my body and be able to say things truthfully like I love who I am. I love what I get to do. I love the way my body feels right now. This is a new way for me. I gotta tell you, this is not where I was in my 20s or 30s or 40s. It took me well into my 50s before I got to the point of saying, waving that white flag, I wanted peace, not more. And it really required me to be vigilant about the way I was talking to myself, the way I was relating to my body, and the way that I was taking care of myself. I wanted to do it with peace, with ease, and it freed me from this jailhouse that I had kept myself in, this prison of torture, suffering within my body. The Journal for Women and Aging says that women who speak more compassionately, more kindly to themselves about their body are actually showing significantly higher emotional wellness. They're happier, they're more satisfied in their lives. That's what I work towards. That's what I offer to you is something that you could work on if you're not already there. Because you deserve to be happy in your own skin, in your body, where you are right now. That's what I offer. And that's what I am really excited to be able to say, hey, this is where I'm at. This is where I'm at. And it's it's a good thing. So some of the lessons I learned in 2025 really were about my well-being and how I was challenged with still with taking care of myself. I needed to really be honest with myself about what I was doing that was contributing to my recurring injuries or my lack of sleep or digestive issues that I was continuing. I had to be honest with myself. I had to seek out help. I got a nutritional coach that helped me to understand how to make sure I was getting those main nutrients, the protein, the carbohydrates, and the fats, in the proper ranges, proper caloric intake, all of that. I had to redo everything. And my willingness to do that was my way of showing myself, I see you. I see that you need me to be different, and I'm gonna do it because I love you. Now, movement's important. So I have a regimen every day where I am doing some dynamic movement, some dynamic stretching. I do that whether I'm going to the gym or I'm going to cycle or walk, I'm doing it because it is true, I think, what they say. Use it or lose it. I just don't use it in the intense way that I used to. I let it rest, yet I make sure that all my major joints, all my major muscle groups are moving, stretching, expanding. And at the same time, the way I'm relating to them, talking to them is shifting and change. You can do this too. The National Institute of Aging says that mobility work performed 10 minutes a day helps improve and lowers the risk of falling. It improves our balance by 23%, which is quite a bit. So that's something that quickly goes as we age, is that we can feel off balance. We can actually fall. And I don't want to get injured. So I'm going to make sure that part of my work each day is to make sure that I have mobility, that I'm actually working to connect more with my body so that I, in the words of my Pilates instructor, I stabilize before I mobilize. So that means I think about what I'm doing before I actually do it. Seems so radical, and yet it is really what's necessary in order for me to feel safe in my body and safe in life. Okay. So one of the most profound shifts that I've had to make is the way I relate to my appearance. Let me just be clear. I'm a girly girl. I love fashion. I love dressing up. I love looking good. And I gotta tell you, I have taken for years, decades, good care of my skin. I was blessed with good skin. I don't want to deny that. Yet I have taken care of it so that I don't have to have facelifts. Yet I don't want to deny that I'm not treating my skin because I do. I go to a skin doctor and make sure that I don't have any cancer, that I also do a skin peel. These types of things I tend to, yet I do it for different reasons than I used to. I used to do it because I thought that's what I needed in order to be pleasing to a man, in order to be dateable, lovable. Now I do it as a form of self-care. I have a different intention behind it. I stay on top of my skincare so that my skin, which is the major organ of my body, is healthy. I use a lot of Ayurvedic practices that really help my skin maintain its tone, maintain its circulation, maintain its ability to breathe. And I do this diligently with discipline every day. Probably my next full-time job is my own self-care. And again, I do it because I want to. I do it because I care about my body and I want to take care of it. Some people might see that as self-indulgent. I see it as self-care at a high level about the things that I care about. Yet my beauty is because of the work I've done on the inside is now coming forward in such a way that the way I carry myself, the way I relate to my children, the way I relate to my friends, my family, my clients, I really shine the healing work from inside. So I think that inner beauty gets reflected out as outer beauty. And it really is more of an exuberance for life, a peace that I have within my skin and in life. I allow feelings to come up so I'm authentic. If I feel a grief, the sadness comes. If I feel happiness or really light, the laughter comes. If I feel some upset, a little bit of sternness or anger make out, I just don't hold back anymore. I think back to all the ways in which I used to work to suppress, compress, to shrink down because I didn't want to be too much. Now I'm just really grateful that I'm arriving at the version of me that is really comfortable with who she is right now, with what her skin is, what her body is, and really what she is doing on the daily. So to wrap up this episode, I want to share with you some of the things that I am choosing to let go. And I want to invite you to consider of your own what you want to let go in 2025 and what you'll you don't want to carry with you into 2026 in relationship to yourself and your body. I don't want to beat myself up for needing to rest more. I letting go of this shaming process that I used to really put on myself because I needed to rest, recover, heal. I used to think of that as a weakness. Now I see it as a real strength when I give myself what my body tells me I really need. I want to see that the idea of strength doesn't have to just do with my body. It has to do with my whole being. I have a lot of strength in character, a lot of strength in spirit. I also have strength in my body. I think it's all connected. Mind, body, spirit. If I am strong in one area, it will help me in my other areas. And lastly, I want to let go of seeing aging as a loss. I'm getting older. That's a privilege. I'm actually thinking, I'm getting better. I'm at the stage in my life where I think just like many things in life, I get better as I get older. I certainly get wiser, I've gotten more compassionate, and most importantly, I've gotten more accepting of myself. And through that acceptance, I am here talking to you with peace in my heart, peace in my body, and peace in my mind. And that's what I want to offer to you for the holiday season. Carry yourself with peace. You deserve that. So let go of what you need to, for what you used to do, so that you can become the version of you full of peace, full of acceptance, full of joy. So I hope this episode spoke to you. And if it did, think to share it with other people that you know that are challenged with relating and with the aging process or with their own bodies. Also, I want you to think about subscribing to our newsletter because in there we will continue to offer tips around the aging process and acceptance of our body. And I want you to also think about learning more about the retreats and workshops that we're going to be offering in 2026, which we will provide more information about in the newsletter. So subscribe to the newsletter and you will get all the information you need about what we're doing here at Giask to support you in 2026. So until soon, be well.