WTF IS HAPPENING TO ME? (Peri 101)

Perimenopause 101: WTF Is Actually Happening?

If you’ve hit your late 30s, 40s or early 50s and suddenly feel like your body has changed the rules without telling you, welcome to your Peri Era.

Maybe your periods are still regular, so you’ve dismissed perimenopause completely. Maybe they’ve gone rogue. Maybe you’re sleeping terribly, feeling more anxious, forgetting words, struggling to recover from training or wondering why your tolerance for absolutely everyone seems to have disappeared.

So, let’s start at the beginning.

Understanding what perimenopause actually is makes a lot of what happens during these years make much more sense.

First: menopause is actually ONE day.

This is one of my favourite menopause facts because so many women don't know it. Menopause itself is a point in time. Natural menopause is confirmed once you've gone 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period, where there isn't another medical reason for your periods stopping.

That point marks menopause. After that, you're postmenopausal.

The years of hormonal transition leading up to menopause are what we call perimenopause.So when we talk about the years of changing periods, sleep problems, mood changes, hot flushes and all the other fun stuff that can come along for the ride? We're generally talking about perimenopause.

Think of it like this:

REPRODUCTIVE YEARS → PERIMENOPAUSE → MENOPAUSE → POSTMENOPAUSE

So when does perimenopause actually start?

There's no magical birthday where your ovaries receive a memo saying: Righto girls, she's 45. Time to cause chaos.

Perimenopause commonly begins during the 40s, although some women experience changes earlier or later. The average age of natural menopause is around 51 years, but there's a fairly wide “normal” range.

Perimenopause isn't necessarily quick; the transition can last several years, sometimes as long as 10 years.

This is one reason I want women learning about this before they think they're “menopausal”. You don't suddenly wake up at 51 with a hot flush and enter menopause. Changes can begin years before your final period.

Why do my hormones suddenly go nuts?

Here's where things get interesting. One of the biggest misconceptions about perimenopause is that your hormones simply start declining steadily until they're gone. It's not quite that tidy. As we age, the number of follicles remaining in the ovaries declines and the communication between the brain and ovaries begins to change. Ovulation can become less predictable.

And that matters. After ovulation, the structure left behind by the follicle (called the corpus luteum) produces progesterone. So when ovulation becomes less consistent, progesterone production can also become less consistent.

Meanwhile, estrogen doesn't simply march steadily downwards. It fluctuates, sometimes considerably, before eventually settling at lower levels after menopause.

In very simplified terms:

Your hormones aren't gently sliding down a hill.

They can be more like:

📈 📉 📈 📈 📉 📉 📈 WTF 📉

And suddenly some of the unpredictability of perimenopause starts making a little more sense.

That's why YOU can feel unpredictable too

You can have a month where you feel pretty bloody good. Then suddenly:

You're awake at 3am.

Your boobs hurt.

You're starving.

Your period arrives eight days early.

You can't remember the name of the person you've worked with for six years.

Training feels horrendous.

Your partner chews slightly too loudly and divorce suddenly seems entirely reasonable.

Then two weeks later...

You feel fine again.

This unpredictability can make women question whether what they're experiencing is even real.

It is worth paying attention to.

BUT, and this is important, that doesn't mean every symptom you experience in your 40s is caused by perimenopause. Which brings me to something I really want women to understand.

Perimenopause isn't diagnosed by Instagram

There are a LOT of symptoms associated with the menopausal transition. Sleep changes. Mood changes. Hot flushes. Cycle changes. Vaginal symptoms. Brain fog. Joint aches. Headaches. But many of those symptoms can also occur for other reasons.

Fatigue isn't exclusively perimenopause.

Neither is anxiety.

Neither is weight gain.

Neither is waking during the night.

That's why I don't love the idea of looking at a giant list of 50+ symptoms, ticking twelve boxes and deciding:

Yep. Hormones.

Your age, menstrual history, symptoms, health history and other possible causes all matter.

And if something is new, severe, concerning or just doesn't feel right, please talk to your GP or appropriate healthcare professional rather than assuming you simply have to put up with it because you're in your 40s.

 “But my periods are still regular…”

This one deserves its own section. You can still have periods during perimenopause. In fact, in the earlier stages of the transition, your cycle changes may be relatively subtle. Your periods don't have to disappear before other changes begin. Over time, cycles may become shorter or longer. Flow can change. You may skip periods. Eventually, periods become increasingly infrequent before stopping.

But:

Period = not perimenopausal is simply not a useful equation.

If you've been waiting for your periods to become wildly irregular before you're “allowed” to consider perimenopause, you could be missing years of the transition.

What should I actually be looking for?

Rather than obsessing over one symptom, I encourage women to start noticing changes and patterns.

Your cycle

Has the length changed? Is your bleeding heavier or lighter? Are you skipping periods? Has your usual PMS changed?

Sleep & energy

Are you struggling to fall asleep? Waking during the night? Waking too early? Feeling exhausted despite apparently sleeping?

Mood & brain

Anxiety, irritability, mood changes, difficulty concentrating or that incredibly annoying “I know the word but my brain has apparently deleted it” feeling.

Physical changes

Hot flushes and night sweats are the famous ones, but headaches, joint and muscle discomfort and changes in body composition may also be part of the picture.

Sexual health

Changes in libido, vaginal dryness or discomfort, pain during sex and urinary symptoms deserve attention too.

Training & recovery

Maybe the training you've always done suddenly feels harder to recover from. Or poor sleep and fatigue are affecting your motivation, performance and ability to train consistently.

None of these things exists in isolation. That's exactly why tracking can be so useful.Don't just track symptoms. Look for patterns.

 Instead of:

“My sleep is terrible.”

We might discover:

“My sleep consistently deteriorates around this point in my cycle.”

Instead of:

“I'm hungry all the time.”

Maybe:

“On the days after I've slept badly, my appetite is noticeably higher and I struggle more with food choices.”

 Instead of:

“Exercise isn't working anymore.”

Maybe we discover that you're sleeping five hours, under-eating protein, doing four HIIT sessions a week and never taking a recovery day.

Hormones matter. But so does everything happening around them.

And that's one of the reasons I don't believe women in perimenopause need another list of things they're doing “wrong”. We need to understand what's happening first. Then we can decide what actually deserves our attention.

Where do nutrition, strength and lifestyle fit into all of this?

We cannot stop our ovaries ageing and I'm certainly not going to promise that eating broccoli and lifting dumbbells will “balance your hormones”.

What we can do is support the body that's experiencing those changes.

That might mean looking at nutrition that supports muscle, bone and metabolic health; strength training to preserve and build muscle; sleep and recovery; alcohol; stress; cardiovascular health; and habits that are realistic enough to actually maintain.

Where appropriate, it also means discussing symptoms and treatment options with qualified healthcare professionals. It doesn't have to be medical treatment OR lifestyle. For many women, good support involves looking at the whole picture.

Start here:

Before you change your diet.

Before you add another supplement.

Before you decide you need more cardio.

Before you blame yourself because what used to work suddenly doesn't...

Get curious.

What's changed?

When did it change?

How often is it happening?

Is there a pattern?

What else is going on when it's at its worst?

Attached is a Perimenopause Symptom Tracker - The Greene Climeratic Scale.

Use it.

Not because I want you obsessively documenting every grumpy Tuesday.

But because understanding what's happening in your body gives you something useful to work with - whether that's with your GP, another healthcare professional, or someone like me helping you work on the nutrition, training and lifestyle pieces.

The awareness that “I just don't feel like myself anymore” is important and sometimes tracking what's happening is the first step towards understanding why.

Next up: NUTRITION. (And no, I'm still not taking your carbs away.)

 Kate x

DISCLAIMER

This information is general education only and isn't individual medical or dietary advice. Your needs may differ depending on your health, medications, medical history and circumstances. Speak with your GP or an appropriately qualified health professional for individual advice.