Total Health in Midlife Episode #205: How Body Image Changes in Midlife

Have you noticed that your internal conversation around your body image has changed recently, but maybe not in the way that you expected? So, maybe you thought by this age you’d be over caring about how you look, and instead you’re facing a whole new set of challenges. Not just about weight in this instance, but about every way your body is changing in midlife.

Now, understand that I am right there with you. Whether you’re frustrated by the reflection in the mirror that looks less like the reflection that you’re familiar with and surprised by the fact that reading glasses are something that you suddenly can’t live without. Or maybe you’re wondering why your body doesn’t have the stamina like it used to.

This episode is going to help you with how you think about your changing body. Now, what if I told you that the struggle that you’re feeling isn’t just about aging? And what if it’s actually about reclaiming a power that women in midlife were never supposed to lose?

In this episode, I’m going to unpack the complex layer that aging has on top of our body image. And then, to understand your power and choose a new story about what it means to be a woman in midlife. Stay tuned because we’re about to flip everything you thought you knew about aging and body image on its head. So, let’s dig into it.

Welcome to Total Health and Midlife, the podcast for women embracing the pivotal transformation from the daily grind to the dawn of a new chapter. I’m Elizabeth, your host and fellow traveler on this journey.

As a Life and Health Coach, I am intimately familiar with the changes and challenges we face during this stage. Shifting careers, changing relationships, our new bodies, and redefining goals and needs as we start to look to the future and ask, what do I want?

In this podcast, we’ll explore physical, mental, and emotional wellness, offering insights and strategies to achieve optimal health through these transformative years.

Yes, it’s totally possible.

Join me in this amazing journey of body, mind, and spirit, where we’re not just improving our health, but transforming our entire lives.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Total Health in Midlife podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman, and I am so grateful that you are here today. Now, if you are a first time listener, welcome. And if you’re returning, thank you for coming back. I’m glad that this episode title enticed you enough to stay.

Now, today we are talking about something that might feel a little bit different from your typical body image conversation. You know, the ones that solely focus on weight or size. This is about something that goes deeper, something that’s happening to all of us as we move through this part of midlife. And it’s the profound shifts on how our bodies look, feel, and function.

So, today, we are talking about body image, but with the added layer of aging. Now, I’ve been noticing these changes in my own body lately. And the way that my hair texture has changed, how my skin looks, and even feels differently. Or my body doesn’t bounce back like it used to. And yes, the reading glasses that I have to hunt down whenever I want to read something that’s printed.

These aren’t just surface level changes; they’re shifting how I move through the world. How I recover from workouts. How I perceive myself, and even how I handle stress. And in my conversations with my clients, I’m hearing similar stories. Stories of frustration when bodies don’t respond the way that they used to. How we expect them to. And the surprise at catching your reflection and seeing, maybe your mother looking back. And the emotional weight that these changes carry.

This isn’t about fighting aging or pretending that these changes aren’t happening. Maybe for some, it is. It’s about understanding, what’s really going on and challenging the stories that we’ve been told about women’s roles in midlife. And finding new ways to relate to our changing bodies. Because there’s power in this transformation, even when it doesn’t feel that way.

So, stay with me as we explore what it really means to navigate body image in midlife. And how we can write a new story about this chapter of our lives. When we talk about body image in midlife, it’s not just a simple shift from one concern to another.

Every woman comes into this stage with her own history. Her own relationship with her body, shaped by years of experiences and cultural messages. Some of you might be experiencing body image challenges for the very first time. Maybe you’ve always been naturally thin and moved through life meeting society’s standards of beauty without a lot of thought to it.

Now, you might be grappling with a culture that seems to be slowly erasing you. Regardless, of your size. Or you might be dealing with a double hit. The weight changes that often come with menopause layered with the natural aging process. I hear from so many clients who believe that if they could just lose the weight, they’d recapture their younger selves.

Of course, they don’t say that out loud. You might not be thinking that. But that’s kind of in the back of your head. I just need to get this weight off, and then I’ll be back like I used to be. But that’s not how aging works.

And it’s a painful realization when you do all that work just to still be unhappy. Or you might be in the camp of people who have always had a complicated relationship with your body your entire life. And now, aging adds another layer to navigate. It’s like adding another voice to an already noisy conversation in your head.

So, be aware that I am right here with you on this. Even as someone who understands that aging is natural and inevitable, I find myself resisting these changes. But here’s something fascinating. I’m pretty sure that five years from now, I will look back at photos of me today and think, ‘what I wouldn’t give to be in those shoes.’ My shoes today.

Feeling a mix of envy for who I was, and deep compassion for the current version of me, and what I’m going through. I’m never going to be younger than I am today. And just like when I look at photos of myself from five years ago.

This push pull between accepting the natural progression of life and resisting it is completely normal. These changes the silver hairs that seem to multiply overnight, the way our bodies need more recovery time after exercise. The reading glasses that we unfortunately can’t live without. They’re not just physical. They’re emotional markers of time passing and of our identities shifting, of learning to know ourselves in new ways.

Let’s talk about some of the myths that swirl around midlife because there’s so much misinformation out there that honestly is causing unnecessary fear and anxiety. First, there seems to be a widespread belief that weight management is impossible once you hit perimenopause. I hear it all the time.

My metabolism is dead. Nothing works for me anymore. Now, here’s the truth. Yes, our bodies change. And yes, what worked in your 30s probably won’t work the same way now. But that does not mean weight management is impossible. It just means that we need a different approach, more patience, and a better understanding of what our bodies need at this stage in life. It’s not impossible.

In fact, one of my clients just lost 20 pounds in 8 weeks by simply paying attention to what she ate. No dieting. Then, there’s the fear of symptoms, the hot flashes, the mood swings, and all the other changes that we associate with menopause.

But here’s something fascinating that no one really talks about. And that is that about 25% of women experience no symptoms or very light symptoms at all. Another 50% have moderate symptoms that are manageable with lifestyle changes and potentially HRT. And only about 25% experience severe symptoms.

Yet, we’ve created this culture of fear around menopause as if it’s some kind of doom waiting to strike. I also hear a lot of, ‘it’s not fair,’ quote unquote, from my clients and friends. And I get it. Maybe you’ve been able to eat whatever you wanted, not really pay attention to your sleep habits, push through stress and your body just dealt with it.

But here’s the thing. Those habits that we’ve gotten away with for years, they start catching up with us in midlife. Those late nights, the stress we never properly managed, the exercise we skipped, and the nutrition that we ignored, they all leave their mark.

But instead of viewing this as unfair, what if we saw it as our quote unquote bad habits, finally catching up with us and our bodies asking us to finally pay attention. To finally, give the body, the care that they’ve been requesting for years. Because honestly, that’s really what’s happening here.

These changes that we’re experiencing aren’t punishments. They’re taps on the shoulder, and for some, a slap upside the head wake up call. And they’re opportunities to create new habits that will serve us, not just now, but for decades to come. And when we understand this, we can stop fighting against our bodies and start working with our body instead.

So, you know, what’s fascinating? The way we view aging women in Western culture isn’t universal. It’s actually pretty unique, and not necessarily in a good way. We’ve created this narrative that older women are somehow less valuable, less relevant. But this perspective, it’s relatively new in human history.

Before patriarchal structures took hold, women in midlife held incredibly important roles in their society. We were the wisdom keepers, the teachers, the mentors. Young mothers weren’t meant to figure out parenting all on their own. They had a whole network of post-menopausal women who had been there, done that, and were ready to share their knowledge and support them.

Think about that for a minute. Every generation now has to reinvent the wheel when it comes to parenting, relationships, and navigating life’s challenges. Why? Because somewhere along the way, that chain of wisdom was broken. When patriarchal systems gained power, they systematically dismantled this network of women’s knowledge. They labeled wise women as witches and dismissed their expertise as old wives tales. And then, pushed them into the margins of society.

This shift created a devastating ripple effect that we’re still dealing with today. We’ve internalized these messages so deeply that many women in midlife feel useless, invisible, and like they don’t have anything left to contribute. And that’s the lie that we’ve been sold. But it’s time to reject it.

So, look at what’s happening when women support other women. When we share our stories, our experiences, and our wisdom, it’s super powerful. We’re naturally rebuilding those networks that were torn down. We’re reclaiming our role as mentors and guides, but in a new way that fit our modern world.

This isn’t just about fighting ageism, although that’s really important. It’s about recognizing that this stage of life isn’t a decline. It’s a transformation into something equally valuable but different. We have the power to reject the cultural narrative that says that we’re past our prime and write a new story about what it means to be a woman in midlife.

I think it helps to know that you’re not alone in this. I’m going through these changes right along with you and I want to be transparent about what that looks like. My body doesn’t recover from workouts the way it used to. I need more recovery time, more stretching, which I still resist. And I’ve had to learn to listen to my body when it says enough.

Food and alcohol affect me completely differently now. I can’t get away with overeating, eating quote unquote junk food, skipping meals, or having that extra glass of wine without feeling it the next day. But here’s what’s really interesting. Instead of fighting these changes, I see them as information.

My body isn’t betraying me. It’s communicating with me. And when I actually listen, when I give it what it needs instead of what I think it should need, everything works better. This shift isn’t just about accepting limitations. It’s about discovering new capabilities.

Yes, I might be able to push through intense workouts like I used to, but I’ve developed a deeper understanding of my body’s rhythms and needs. And honestly, I’m probably healthier now than I was when I was younger, but in a different way.

I see this same pattern with my clients. For example, my client Sharon was frustrated with her changing body. She was convinced that weight loss was impossible. But once we shifted her focus from fighting her body to working with it and having a health first approach. She lost 16 pounds in just six weeks.

Another one of my clients lost four pounds in her first three weeks of coaching. Not because we put her on some restrictive diet, but because we helped her to understand and respond to what her body actually needed. But the real transformation here isn’t in the numbers. It’s in the freedom that comes with acceptance, not resignation but acceptance. There’s a huge difference.

Many of my clients are afraid of acceptance because we think about acceptance as giving up and being complacent. Resignation is giving up. Acceptance is understanding that this stage of life brings its own gifts, its own wisdom, and its own way of being in the world.

When we stop spending all of our energy fighting against these changes, we have so much more energy available for the things that really matter to us. The things that really matter in life. And that’s the real freedom, is not having a body that never changes. But in having the wisdom to change along with it.

So, let me be clear about something. We get to write our own story about what this stage of life means for us. Yes, our bodies are changing. Yes, it can feel overwhelming and frustrating. But we have a choice in how we respond to those changes. And that choice holds incredible power. I see it in my coaching practice every single day.

Women who come in feeling lost and frustrated, but through our work together, discover that this stage of life isn’t about losing themselves. It’s about becoming more authentically themselves than ever before. You are not alone in this. Every woman that you see, who is our age is navigating her own version of these changes.

The difference lies in how we choose to approach these changes. We can fight against every new gray hair and wrinkle, or we can focus our energy on building strength, wisdom, and the resilience that we need in this new phase. This isn’t about giving up or giving in. It’s about getting smart on what our bodies need right now and understanding that different doesn’t mean worse. And creating health habits that serve us today and safeguard our future.

If you’re struggling to navigate these changes, if you’re tired of fighting your body and ready to find a new way forward, I want to invite you to schedule a strategy call with me. This isn’t a sales call. It’s an “I Know What to Do, I’m just Not Doing It” strategy call where we will explore what’s really holding you back and create a clear path forward.

You can schedule your call at elizabethsherman.com/call. Let me help you write a new story about what it means to be a woman in midlife. One that celebrates your wisdom, honors your experience, and embraces all the possibilities that lie ahead.

That’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Thank you for tuning in today. Now, if you enjoy the podcast and are ready to take the next step in addressing your health concerns, I would love to invite you to schedule an I Know What To Do, I’m Just Not Doing It strategy call.

In this 60 minute session, we will explore what’s holding you back and create a personalized action plan. You will gain clarity, support, and practical steps to move you forward.

Visit elizabethsherman.com/call to book your call now. You can transform your health and I would love to be there to help.