Women 40+ Are Getting the Wrong Message

A few months ago, I let my eating and workouts slide. And it showed…

With bag-of-hammer levels of fatigue mid-afternoon, mornings so groggy I reset the alarm for 2 hours later than normal (and skipped my weights routine), and started reaching for pasta, cookies and pizza way more often.

I’ve experimented on myself a LOT through my own hormonal journey, and I’ve learned first-hand just how quickly the wrong diet and mindset can f**k up my life!

A lot of women - in that same cycle of morning fatigue, afternoon crashes, and poor diet choices - will find information “supporting” their perimenopause perils with messages like:

• Rest more - you need to slow down.

• Eat what you want - your body knows.

• It’s okay to take a few (weeks’) of recovery - when you’re tired, you need that.

But I’m a high-functioning, bit of a Type A woman…

And I refuse to sit down and accept my hormonal problems as ‘normal’…something to coddle!

I’m not alone in this (strange) attitude either.

So many women in their 40s and 50s don’t want to slow down, take time off for hormonal woes, or be seen as “weak” amongst their colleagues.

We’ve fought too hard to get to where we are today to suddenly, just because of a few hormonal imbalances, quit going after our ambitions.

Most of the health & wellness messages for women over 40 are all WRONG…

Because they assume we want some chauvinistic level of “support”.

Instead, what we need, is the RIGHT support - support that levels up our ambition, productivity, creativity and energetic capacity.

Here’s WHY women like us struggle with hormone and health issues after 40:

Most productivity conversations assume output is free.

That if you’re capable, disciplined, and motivated, you should be able to sustain the same pace indefinitely — as long as you optimize well enough.

But output always has a cost.

And this phase of life that cost quietly increases, even when ambition, standards, and responsibility don’t change.

Perimenopause doesn’t suddenly remove a woman’s capability.
It changes how much it costs to sustain output.

• Recovery takes longer.

• Stress hits harder.

• Cognitive bandwidth narrows more quickly.

High-performing women feel this first — not because they’re doing anything wrong, but because they’re still operating at a high level.

This is where most advice misses the mark.

The dominant narrative assumes women want to slow down.
Rest more. Lower expectations. Design life around symptoms.

That’s useful advice for some.
It’s completely misaligned for others.

Because many women don’t want to disengage from their work, creativity, or leadership.
They want to continue — without constantly overriding themselves to do it.

The real issue, in my experience, is rarely motivation or mindset.
It’s resourcing.

You cannot regulate your way out of under-fueling.
You cannot supplement your way out of missing inputs.
And you cannot “optimize” a system that doesn’t have the raw materials it needs.

High performers don’t stop expecting a lot from themselves when conditions change.
They change inputs so capacity can keep up with demand.

That’s strategy.

This is the conversation I believe more professional spaces need to be having — especially with women who are still ambitious, still responsible, and still deeply engaged in the work they care about.

We need to know how to maintain capacity when the cost of output changes.

If this resonates, you’re not alone.

You’re just being asked to operate with better information.