You're Not Lazy, Your Body is Just Playing by New Rules
- Feb 19
- 9 min read
Written by Joanne Pagett, Midlife Mentor & Strategist
Joanne Pagett is a Women’s Wellness Strategist and Mentor who empowers women to navigate the emotional, physical, and mental transitions of midlife. She helps them rediscover their energy, identity, and joy, and partners with organisations to create supportive, wellbeing-focused environments for women in the workplace.
Why women in business, executives, and female founders over 40 need to rewrite their approach to energy, health, and sustainable success
If you're a woman over 40 running a business or leading a team, chances are you're exceptional at solving problems, except when it comes to your own energy and health.
You know the pattern intimately: You're the last one to eat and the first one to skip the workout "just this once" (which becomes every time). You push through the exhaustion because there's always something more urgent than taking care of yourself, client deadlines, team crises, financial pressures, family obligations. The list is endless, and you're at the bottom of it.
Somewhere along the way, the strategies that used to work, the early morning gym sessions, the willpower-driven clean eating, the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" mentality, stopped delivering results. Now, well, they just leave you more depleted, more frustrated, and wondering what you're doing wrong.
Here's what I wish someone had told me earlier: You're not failing. The rules have changed, and nobody sent you the memo.
The biological shift nobody warned you about
In your 30s, your body could absorb almost anything you threw at it. Bad food choices, late nights, followed by early morning workouts? Fine. Skipping meals when you were busy? No problem. Running on stress and adrenaline for weeks at a time? You bounced back. Even living on cigarettes and alcohol, different times!
But now, perimenopause has arrived, which can begin anywhere from your late 30s to early 50s, fundamentally shifting the entire playing field. This isn't just about hot flushes and mood swings. These fundamental changes run deeper and affect women to varying degrees.
Oestrogen and progesterone aren't just reproductive hormones. They affect how you build muscle, how you metabolise food and store fat, how well you sleep, how you respond to stress, and how quickly you recover from exercise.
As these hormones decline and fluctuate, your body's response to everything changes. That HIIT (high-intensity interval training) that used to energise you might now leave you wiped out for days. The calorie deficit that used to result in steady weight loss? Now your body stubbornly holds onto every pound, interpreting the restriction as a threat.
Your metabolism shifts, too. Not because you're "getting older" in some vague way, but because oestrogen plays a key role in insulin sensitivity and how your body uses nutrients. When oestrogen declines, your body becomes less efficient at building muscle and more efficient at storing fat, particularly around your midsection. Hence the Meno-middle.
This isn't failure. This is biochemistry.
Your nervous system has a shorter fuse
You're managing more complexity than ever:
Business decisions with real financial stakes
Team dynamics that require constant navigation
Ageing parents who need support
Maybe your children are still at home or just about to fly the nest
Shifting financial pressures
Relationship dynamics
The mental load is enormous.
Your autonomic nervous system, which regulates your stress response, is already running in a heightened state much of the time. You're operating from “fight-or-flight” mode far more than “rest-and-digest” mode.
When you add intense exercise to chronic stress, your body doesn't distinguish between "productive stress" and "threat stress." It just registers more demand, more depletion. Your body responds by ramping up cortisol production, the stress hormone, disrupting your sleep, increasing inflammation, slowing down your metabolism, and making you crave quick energy in the form of sugar and refined carbs.
The harder you push, the more your body pushes back. "Pushing harder" activates the wrong response.
Here's the paradox: The approach that worked for decades, willpower, discipline, pushing through discomfort, now triggers your body's protective mechanisms instead of its adaptive ones.
When your body perceives sustained stress (whether from work pressure, inadequate sleep, intense exercise, or calorie restriction), it shifts into conservation mode. It:
Slows your metabolic rate to preserve energy
Holds onto body fat as a protective buffer
Breaks down muscle tissue for energy (because muscle is metabolically expensive)
Disrupts your sleep-wake cycle, leading to that wired-tired insomnia
Increases cravings for calorie-dense foods
Reduces your capacity for stress tolerance and emotional regulation
You interpret these responses as personal failure. But really, it's your body's sophisticated survival system doing exactly what it's designed to do: protect you from what it perceives as a sustained threat.
What actually works now: The alignment approach
This isn't about doing less; it's about working with your body's current needs rather than against them. Strategic alignment rather than forceful override.
1. Reframe what "taking care of yourself" actually means
Self-care isn't indulgent; it's necessary, the basics. You cannot run a business, lead a team, make strategic decisions, or show up for the people who depend on you if you're running on fumes.
Think about how you manage your business resources. You don't run equipment at maximum capacity 24/7 without maintenance. If your phone is running low on battery, you plug it in, and you wouldn’t deplete your financial reserves without a plan to replenish them.
Your body is the most critical asset you can ever own. Putting yourself on the priority list isn't selfish; it's strategic resource management. When you're well-rested, properly fuelled, and not chronically stressed, you make better decisions, communicate more effectively, solve problems with clearer thinking, and have greater resilience in the face of challenges.
Action step: Identify one non-negotiable self-care boundary you'll protect this week. Not "if I have time," but scheduled and protected like any other critical business commitment.
Maybe it's a 20-minute morning routine before you check email. Perhaps it's a firm stop time for work three days a week.
Start small, but start.
2. Focus on nervous system regulation, not just exercise
Movement still matters, but the type and intensity matter more now than the volume.
Strength training over cardio: Resistance/strength training is one of the most effective things you can do for maintaining muscle mass, supporting metabolic health, and improving bone density during and after menopause. You don't need hours in the gym; start with two to three focused sessions per week, 30-45 minutes each. This can be remarkably effective.
Be strategic with high-intensity activity: If you're already managing high stress in other areas of your life, adding more high-intensity exercise can tip you into chronic cortisol elevation. This doesn't mean doing intense activity every day, but it does mean being honest about your overall stress load and choosing intensity strategically, maybe once or twice a week when you're well-rested.
Include nervous system downregulation: Walking, gentle yoga, stretching, and breathwork. These aren't "less than" or "easy" workouts. They're practices that help shift your nervous system from “fight-or-flight” to “rest-and-repair.” This is when your body adapts to exercise, builds muscle, and restores depleted systems.
Protect your rest days: Rest isn't laziness; this is when our bodies transform, and recovery happens. When you strength train, you create microtears in your muscle tissue. The repair and rebuilding that make you stronger happen during rest, not during the workout itself.
3. Eat to support your energy, not restrict it
Your body needs consistent, adequate fuel, especially “complete” protein. This becomes even more critical in midlife when your body's ability to build and maintain muscle mass is challenged by hormonal changes.
Include protein at 'every' meal: Aim for 25-35 grams of protein per meal. Protein supports muscle repair, keeps you feeling full, stabilises blood sugar, and has a higher thermic effect than carbs or fats (your body burns more calories processing it).
Don't skip meals or undereat: When you're already managing chronic stress, under-fuelling signals scarcity to your body. This triggers the same protective mechanisms, metabolic slowdown, muscle breakdown, increased cravings, and disrupted hormones.
Balance blood sugar: Blood sugar swings and drops from skipping breakfast, then having a carb-heavy lunch, then crashing mid-afternoon create additional stress on your system. Include protein, healthy fats, and fibre-rich carbs together for more stable energy throughout the day.
Don’t forget hydration; it matters: Even mild dehydration affects cognitive function (The human brain is approximately 75-80% water by weight), energy levels, and metabolic processes. If you're drinking coffee all morning and still wondering why you're exhausted by afternoon, or if you have a thumping headache, start tracking your water intake.
4. Protect your sleep like you protect your calendar
This is non-negotiable. Sleep is when your body repairs tissue, consolidates memory, regulates hormones, clears metabolic waste from your brain, and resets your nervous system. If you're not sleeping well, everything else becomes exponentially harder.
Hormonal changes during perimenopause frequently disrupt sleep, night sweats, and increased anxiety, which also lead to changes in sleep. But poor sleep habits make everything worse.
Create a consistent sleep schedule: Your circadian rhythm functions best with consistency. Going to bed and waking up at roughly the same time, even on weekends, supports better sleep quality.
Manage evening light exposure: Blue light from screens suppresses melatonin production, the sleep hormone. If you're working on your laptop or scrolling on your phone until you fall asleep, you're making it harder for your body to transition into sleep mode. Use blue light filters, dim screens, or create a screen-free wind-down period.
Address the underlying causes: If you're experiencing significant sleep disruption from hormonal changes, talk to your doctor or practice nurse. HRT (hormone replacement therapy), when appropriate, can significantly improve sleep quality. This isn't about toughing it out; it's about addressing the root cause.
5. Ask for support and actually accept it
You've spent decades being everything to everyone else, that person everyone else relies on. You're the problem-solver, the decision-maker, the one who holds it all together. But you can’t do everything yourself. Trying to is a recipe for depletion and resentment.
Delegate at work: What tasks are you holding onto that someone else could handle? What are you doing that's keeping you busy but not moving the business forward?
Redistribute at home: If you're managing most household responsibilities in addition to your professional work, something must give. Have honest conversations about sharing the load.
Hire help where you can: House cleaning, meal prep services, online shopping deliveries, and virtual assistants. These aren't luxuries. They're strategic investments in your time and energy. If hiring help for a few hours a week gives you back time to sleep, exercise, or work on high-value business activities, it pays for itself.
Let go of perfect: The house doesn't have to be spotless, the meal doesn't have to be Instagram-worthy all the time, the presentation doesn't have to have 50 slides when 20 will do. Perfectionism is often how we maintain control when other things feel uncertain. But it's also exhausting and ultimately unsustainable.
The bottom line: Lead yourself differently
You've spent decades proving you can do hard things. You've built businesses, led teams, managed complex projects, and solved problems that seemed impossible. You don't need to prove your capability anymore.
What you need now is alignment. Working with your body's new reality instead of trying to force it back into patterns that no longer support you. Treating your energy as the finite, precious resource it is. Recognising that sustainable success, in business and in life, requires you to be well, not just productive.
Your body isn't betraying you; it's not lazy or broken. It's asking you to live differently, to lead with wisdom instead of willpower, with strategy instead of force, with alignment instead of override.
But you know what? You already know how to do this. You solve complex problems every day by understanding the underlying dynamics instead of just pushing harder.
It's time to apply that same level of strategic thinking to yourself.
The women who thrive in their 40s, 50s, and beyond aren't the ones who push the hardest. They're the ones who learn to work intelligently with their bodies, who create sustainable systems instead of relying on unsustainable willpower, who protect their energy as carefully as they protect their time.
They understand that taking care of themselves isn't something they do after everything else is done. It's what makes everything else possible.
Here’s my question to you: What's one thing you could shift this week, not next month, not when things calm down, but this week, to support your energy instead of depleting it?
That’s where it starts. Not with a complete overhaul, but with one strategic, aligned choice that honours where you are right now.
I’m Joanne Pagett, coach, the creator of “The StrongHer FAB FrameworkTM,” an executive body recalibration focused on 3 core pillars: “Foundation – Alignment – Breakthrough” for women in business, female founders, and women over 40. I’m also a member of the Professional Speakers Academy and a public speaker.
Read more from Joanne Pagett
Joanne Pagett, Midlife Mentor & Strategist
Joanne Pagett is a Women’s Wellness Strategist and Mentor who helps women navigate the emotional, physical, and mental transitions of midlife. As the founder of The Female Energy P.O.W.E.R System™, she empowers women to rediscover their confidence, energy, and sense of purpose. With over 25 years of corporate experience, Joanne also partners with organisations to create supportive and inclusive wellbeing strategies for women in the workplace. Through her coaching, writing, and workshops, she inspires women to transform midlife from a season of uncertainty into one of strength, clarity, and joy.
