How to exercise when you’re tired in perimenopause (and still get results)

If you’re a midlife slag trying your damnedest to stay consistent with exercise, you’ve definitely had this moment.

You planned a workout. But you’re absolutely shattered and just... can't. You know strength training is important but you just... don't have it in you.

Standard. Because between life admin, work, dickhead kids and the hormonal rollercoaster of perimenopause and menopause, bone-deep fatigue is incredibly common. It can make even the most motivated women feel like exercise is the absolute last thing they want to do.

The good news is that it isn't just a choice between living the slug life or forcing yourself through workouts. There’s a middle ground, where you can learn how to adjust your exercise efforts to your energy levels, you can still make progress with your fitness or fat loss goals, even on low energy days.

You've also got to enjoy it, and we try to make sure you do!

Why being tired in perimenopause makes exercise harder

A lot of us in perimenopause and menopause are genuinely tired – and not just of everyone else's absolute BS. And not even the 'I stayed up too late scrolling' kind of tiredness either.

Our hormones are doing an absolute number on us at this stage of life, and that often means other delightful symptoms that affect energy levels. One of the biggest culprits is sleep disruption, which around 60% of women experience. Difficulty falling asleep, waking during the night, waking up absolutely drenched in sweat or generally just sleeping poorly for no real reason... any of this sound familiar?

Shit sleep always makes exercising the next day (or even just coping with normal life the next day tbh) feel much harder. But hormones aren’t the only factor. Most of us are in the busiest stage of life and juggling careers and work pressures with kids (and let's face it, doesn't matter if they're preschoolers, primary age or teenagers, they all come with a high level of admin) and if we're really unlucky, an extra dose of ageing parents. Life admin has never been so relentless.

Add the fact that we're now existing in bodies that are getting a older and fraying a bit at the edges. Recovering from workouts, bad nights and hangovers takes longer, we start making weird noises when we need to squat down or get up from said squat (although you can offset this with exercise of course, hint hint), and even after a stellar night of sleep, our energy levels are not always as predictable as they were in our bountiful collagen days.

If you still have a menstrual cycle, you may also notice extra fatigue during the luteal phase (the week or two before your period), which is when motivation to exercise drops to almost-imperceptible levels. So if on some days you feel completely drained without any 'real' reason, dw, you’re not imagining it.

Should you change your exercise around your cycle?

You may have seen a lot online about cycle syncing, where you change your workouts, depending on where you are in your menstrual cycle. We call (partial) BS on this, because the reality is that everyone's different. Just like some of us have horrific periods, and some breeze through every bleed, some women feel stronger at certain times of the month and others would be hard pressed to notice any difference.

So much like almost anything else, when it comes to women, one-size-fits-all can do one. A much more practical approach for perimenopause exercise is something called auto-regulation. Read on, slags.

Working out with low energy

Auto-regulation means adjusting your workout based on how your body feels that day. Instead of pushing through exhaustion or skipping it all completely beause you can't be fecked, adapt the session to match your current energy. Imperfect is better for you than nothing.

Start the workout and see how you feel. Sometimes you start knackered but end up feeling brilliant at the end. Energy can improve once you warm up and get your minge moving. So instead of deciding in advance that you’re too tired, just do it anyway and see how your body responds. You may surprise yourself. If not, scale the workout down – who's going to stop you? No one mate. Not even us.

If you warm up and realise your energy is genuinely at the bottom of the barrel, this is where you adjust. Not abandon completely, mind. Just dial it all back: use your lightest weights, reduce the number of reps, do two sets instead of three or even sack it off after first block of the workout instead of the whole session. You have our full permission because you're doing something rather than FA.

You’re still reinforcing the habit of working out, which is the hardest fking thing of all, without draining what's left of your energy. Just doing what you can manage today is one of the simplest ways to manage low energy workouts for women in perimenopause.

You can always take it even further (and we mean downwards) and switch to a lower intensity way of moving. Some days, lifting weights of any description just ain't happening and that’s FINE. Something we wang on about even more often than eating protein is that movement doesn’t have to be intense to be beneficial. Walking, swimming, gentle cycling, mobility work (also in the membership) or stretching sessions all count. These activities still improve circulation, support joint health and increase daily movement, all of which support long-term health and fat loss.

Walking is one of the most underrated forms of exercise during perimenopause. It supports energy, recovery, mood and overall activity levels, especially on days when you feel tired (and on this note, may we direct you to our Walking Challenge).

Listening to your body

... is important because nobody else is going to! So rest when you need to – sometimes that really is the best option for your health (physical and mental). Take the day off, babes. If you’re absolutely completely bone-shatteringly tired, ill, or dealing with strong hormonal bollocks, rest probably is exactly what your body needs.

Some women do choose not to exercise during heavy periods or particularly difficult hormonal days, and it isn’t being 'weak' or any other patriarchal BS. It’s just listening to your body.

One of the most important things to bear in mind when you're starting (or maintaining) a fitness programme is that progress isn’t linear – especially in midlife. One of the biggest mistakes women make with exercise is believing every workout needs to be intense to count, and that belief can stop the less exercise-minded and lower-motivated of us to just not bother at all. The ol' all-or-nothing approach.

But real fitness progress – especially through these bloody tough perimenopause and menopause years – rarely looks like that. Some weeks (/days/hours) you’ll feel energised and like a strong btch. Other time you’ll feel like you're walking through treacle. That’s normal.

For our squad of FitBtchs, and our actual selves tbqh, the goal isn’t to smash every workout in a programme. It's to keep going and doing whatever you can, whenever you can, even if that sometimes means a shorter session, piddly little weights, lowering the intensity or just going for a stroll. Moving your body helps move the needle – literal on the scales, metaphorical on the progress metre.

Avoiding burnout when exercising in perimenopause

We want to burn people's retinas with our sheer goddess-like radiance instead. Which is a challenge if you’re dealing with menopause fatigue and exercise feels harder than it used to. So just remember: progress over perfect workouts. Adapt, adjust, move when you can and rest when you need to. The end.