Training and fuelling through your forties and fifties

What oestrogen was quietly doing

Oestrogen is not only a reproductive hormone. It supports muscle protein synthesis, helps regulate where fat is stored, contributes to bone density and influences insulin sensitivity. As it declines through perimenopause, all four shift at once, which is why the change feels like several separate problems arriving together.

The visible version is familiar: the same training producing less, recovery taking longer, and weight settling around the middle rather than the hips. None of it is a failure of discipline. It is a different hormonal environment doing the same job with less help.

The instinct to eat less is the wrong one

The common response is a calorie cut, which addresses the scales and worsens everything else. Muscle is harder to hold in this decade, not easier, and losing it lowers resting metabolic rate and bone loading at exactly the moment both matter most.

Protein requirements rise rather than fall — anabolic resistance means older muscle needs a larger dose to trigger the same response, so the per-meal target moves up towards the higher end of the range. Add resistance training and impact work for bone, and the picture improves in a way that a smaller plate never will.

What is worth measuring

Bone density if there are risk factors. Ferritin, because heavy perimenopausal bleeding is common and quietly depleting. Vitamin D, thyroid function, and a lipid panel, since cardiovascular risk changes with the hormonal shift.

These are also the markers that respond to the work, which makes them worth re-testing. A woman who can see her ferritin recover and her lipids move has something more useful than a number on the scales.

• 01

  Lift, and lift heavy enough to count

  Non-negotiable
• 02

  Raise protein rather than lowering calories

  The counterintuitive one
• 03

  Measure ferritin if bleeding has become heavier

  Commonly missed