5 Things I Would Do If I Were Tired All the Time in Menopause

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Let me just tell you about this episode coming up. I hate it. I hate that I have to do this one, but it's true. So many women, not just in menopause, report that they are tired all the time, even those who do exercise. Supposedly we do this, right, to improve our health, which would include upgraded energy levels, but they will often say, I'm tired all the time. If this is you, it's shocking. I think that we tolerate it. We put up with it as normal. That should stop. And that's why this episode.

I'm Debra Atkinson and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond, before you know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman.

It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence.

My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert and international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause-and-beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you you want, need, and deserve.

So the title of this episode is What I Would Do: 5 Things I Would Do If I Were Tired All the Time. I chose that title very specifically, and, and it is this. I am a medical exercise specialist. I'm a strength and conditioning coach of decades. I have 4, more than 4 decades under my belt. This is what I do. I eat it, sleep it, Breathe It full-time, books on my nightstand to prove it. Nothing sexy there and nothing sexy in my pool bag actually. But I also am very sensitive to the fact that I can't and shouldn't try to diagnose you and I don't, but I wanna let you know based on my personal and my professional experience This is absolutely what I would do. This is, these are the things that I educate clients that I work with on a one-on-one basis and then hold them accountable for the actions they choose to take. My job as a fitness expert is to educate you on the science that's out there. And then my job as a coach, my role is to hold you accountable. For the actions that you want to take. Because you and I, even though we may choose, I want to change in this way, I want to test this, we will default to this habit gravity and find it very hard on our own to move forward because of it. As a coach, I can help. I can be the text that you make when you know you're going to default. And when you do, so that there's no judgment, there's just unpacking why that happened. So it is with that spirit that this episode comes out. Let me share what I would do, and actually what I did at the end of 2019, although that not exclusively and only— I've done bits and parts of this every year since. But let's hope I don't get put back to that one place where it was critical mass, it was pivotal, it was big. I really needed some support. When I found myself recovering from a very big year of mental and physical stressors, like so many of you who might be listening, and like some of you who've experienced none of these, you don't have a big stressor. And so you may be thinking, well, this isn't me, but I want you to stick around because it is. If you've had a lot of chronic stressors and maybe they've only come to you one at a time, you may have simply got a cumulative effect where you've got little water dripping into a bucket and pretty soon you're at tipping point. And there hasn't been a perfect storm, My year was a perfect storm of a lot of big things. Yours may not be. And that I think is the hardest thing of all. When there's no relationship breakup, there's no rupture in a pipe in the basement of your house, there is no mold in the house, there's no need to move suddenly. You don't necessarily have any of those things. But you've got just lots of stressors that you have put on your cape, you know, that Superwoman cape saying, I can do this, I've got this. And people have counted on you, and so you keep doing, but you're getting tapped out and burned out. So stick around even if you don't have a big thing, but you've got plenty of reason otherwise. So before we dive into these 5 things, I want to remind you, 80% of the population reports they don't exercise Specifically, 80% of women don't lift weights the minimum 2 times per week needed for optimal metabolic health. If you are one of the 20%, remember, you should be one of the most energetic women in the mind— in the room, wherever you go. And if that is not true, I don't mean that you're standing up beating your chest saying, I've got all this energy, look at me, but If you are secretly hiding and projecting and putting it on, but you really are not feeling like you've got tons of energy, we need to fix that. If you exercise consistently and you are still tired all the time, something isn't right. And it may be about the exercise you're doing, the fuel you're consuming or absorbing, and the way you're handling stressors on your plate, or a combination of those things. And there may be something more going on, but often when you have this, check engine light going on, tired all the time. Addressing some changes will help. Before we go into this, I wanna make sure you're hearing this is not judgment. You are not doing something wrong. You're probably following the rules of the things you think are right to do. So we've gotta clarify that right for you right now in any given moment you're in with a certain load of stressors, with a certain change of hormones could be different and varying and require pivoting on the daily, and, and maybe not daily but weekly and monthly. Things can change pretty dramatically for women peri- to post-menopause. This is the best place to start, your habits, since almost anything else that you do will improve if you have addressed these. So although we're not talking about, well, maybe you should go get hormone tested, maybe But before you do that, unless you're really feeling terrible, then I want you, yes, to do that simultaneously. But if you change your nutritional habits, potentially your exercise specifically to support you, you'll potentially be in better shape. So you get greater efficacy if you do decide to get HRT or, you know, you need to tweak. That HRT cocktail that you're on to benefit you better. So let's unpack first the things I would personally do if I retired all the time. As a 41-year health and fitness lecturer in kinesiology at a university for 15 years of my career, I'm also a 61-year-old. I'm a coach specializing in hormone-centric fitness and living all the life things right along with you. I've been a certified strength and conditioning coach and medical exercise specialist for decades, and I've trained clients with Parkinson's, with fibromyalgia, osteoporosis, to those elite athletes wanting better triathlon numbers, scores, speed, better golf, better times of as competitive age grouper athletes, you name it, everything in between. Whether you're just starting or you're exercising as an experienced and committed exercise lover, this is for you. So number 1, what I would do is stop exercising as usual, meaning it's in my plan, it's my habit to do something. I would no longer just go and do the workout thinking, this is what I always do, this, this is the work that I always do, I should push myself to go through it because if I don't, I will lose my fitness level. That mentality makes it worse. So even though metabolism changes are documented, pushing exercise to the brink of exhaustion is not the first line of defense in fixing it. Yet hearing science stating the basal metabolic, metabolic Wow, metabolism. Holy cow. The basal metabolism of the female body decreases significantly, which can mean a decrease in the basal metabolic rate of up to 250 to 300 calories per day. That could indeed inspire diet mentality in any of us. And that is, that is a quote, by the way, from literature about what happens to metabolism in menopause. But I would argue that— and, and this is a valid argument. I want you to stay tuned for a future episode coming up with Dr. Stuart Phillips, who does so much research in this area, among others. But looking at, is menopause really a limiter? It doesn't limit our ability to gain lean muscle mass. Being on hormone replacement doesn't necessarily limit or improve our ability to gain lean muscle mass. However, indirectly, I would argue that it might, because for some of you, being on HRT improves your sleep and rest so that you've got more motivation to show up and do the exercise that you really want to do anyway, but that just cannot drag yourself through if you haven't slept. So the, the reason behind it is different. And we do know that HRT improves efficacy of bone density benefits. From resistance training. Nothing is going to trump the ability to do resistance training. Just taking HRT is not going to increase your bone density. It may prevent losses, but if you're taking HRT, you're doing resistance training and impact training if you can tolerate it, maybe whole body vibration, and you're increasing your protein— also good for bone— potentially, yes, you will have a greater chance or likelihood of increasing your bone density. And by that I mean reversing losses if you've experienced them. We're probably not going to increase your bone density above that point that you hit when you were, say, 30 at peak. But for most of us, unfortunately, we don't know what that was because nobody told us to check at that time. I, by the way, I'm gifting my daughter-in-law with a bone density test as soon as she's no longer pregnant. I wish we had had the opportunity to get it done prior to her getting pregnant, but they were so speedy, you know, we didn't have a chance. But because pregnancy can rob a woman of some bone density, so we'll get it before the next one and we'll get it in, um in order to look, she will then know where was I at peak. And so when she's doing a bone scan in the future, she can look at, okay, this is where I was at 30. And/or if she's already losing or experiences a loss and we do it again at 40 or 35, she can act on it sooner. We don't have to wait until 60 or 62 because then, quote unquote, insurance is going to cover it. And this is one of those things. Had we known, you know, when we were 45 where we were, we could have been proactive earlier, sooner, and it would have made weightlifting more front of mind for those for whom it wasn't. It would have made it very clear that we needed to change some lifestyle habits, but many of us just slid because we thought we fit okay in our jeans. And so we weren't bothered by what was happening under the hood that we couldn't see. So number 2, I would begin to move and to eat in small snacks.

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Today. So we call them exercise snacks. We behind the scenes at Flipping 50 call them longevity snacks. I've actually created a series of 12 or more 10-minute, 12-minute exercise snacks that incorporate mobility, high-impact agility movement, power, um, and things that really we don't necessarily get enough of in every day unless we're doing a great warm-up and cool-down in conjunction. But those small movement snacks, whether that's walking, say, 10 minutes, 3 times a day instead of a long walk, will be better for overall fatigue and that tired feeling because they help in sustaining blood sugar levels. And the same is true of eating small meals or snacks throughout the day. If you are tired all the time, there's 2 things happen for some people when you're tired all the time, but really it happens critically, like after one acute night's sleep. Appetite cravings tend to go up. But if you are suffering from adrenal fatigue, you may not have much of an appetite in the morning, and your appetite all day is not all that great. So that sluggish appetite is responsive of, or representative of your overall— things not moving through you. Probably your digestive system is not moving very well either, and so you just feel overall sluggish, behind the eight ball all the time. Eating in smaller snacks throughout the day can help stabilize blood sugar levels. So too can moving throughout the day, because as we move, your muscle pulls the sugar from your bloodstream, keeping it from going up and down, which actually makes us more tight. So that just regular eating, sustaining it, and the regular movement both work really well for those with adrenal fatigue. Because when the adrenals or stress is dysregulated, blood sugar also is a part of that dysregulation. Number 3 is I would track my food to check on my macro and micronutrient intakes. And I am not a big believer in counting calories and getting really micromanaging calories and macros. What are your macros? People will say it. I'm like, oh, it makes me cringe. I do pay attention to protein, and every once in a while I will do a snapshot with clients on let's do a 3-day log, but we're just looking at overall, just let's eyeball how much protein you had versus how many carbs, and why did that Why are you so tired? Because there are more carbs than protein, and that's going to make you bonk later in the morning and, and crave a snack. So let's start with more protein. That's easy to ballpark when you know. And so one of the first things I will do with clients is simply train them to see the protein and to see about how much it is so that you don't have to go look that up. You don't have to go Google it. You don't have to even read the label. You actually know, uh, just by default. So it's kind of responsibility to be able to, you know, run this owner's manual, but we didn't get one. So we work on that. But one way to know how you're doing is track your food. You may be shocked to find out you're really undereating, and that may be part of the problem. If you're undereating, you can't get adequate protein, you can't get adequate carbohydrates, you're probably cutting something out on purpose, and you can't get adequate micronutrient density. And that is very, very critical for energy levels. But for women in midlife, cited in studies as key preventative nutrients for menopause, knowing hormonal shifts have a big— play a big role in how women feel, and energy are one of the first complaints for women. But vitamin D, calcium, vitamin C, the B vitamins, particularly B12 for those who are tired, but the, the suite of Bs and protein intake are really important. I would also say magnesium and omega-3s are important, but you need to make sure, first of all, what are you taking in? And you can eyeball it, you can put it on paper, or you can do it in an app, but it really helps to know what's— what are the total calories on average I'm taking in? If you do 3 or 5 days, you'll know. What are the total amounts of protein I'm taking in on a daily basis? You'll know. And then you can begin to do something about it. Are you having vegetables? I, I've reviewed a couple of food logs just this week. I was like, I don't see too many vegetables here. Yeah, that's the problem. I don't eat too many. Okay, well, all right, do you want to start? Right. So we've got to have that conversation somehow. We've got to be getting in the things that it takes. And this is a consideration in terms of gaining lean muscle and gaining strength, we need both protein and micronutrients. So we can't just bump up protein or take essential amino acids and pop those pills and say, oh great, no calories, because you've got to have the other micronutrients as well. And ideally, supplements are just that— supplements to food, to high-quality food. Number 4, consider lab testing for micronutrient sufficiency. So even though number 3 was tracking food to get an idea of how much you're eating or how little and what micronutrient intake looks like, lab testing will tell you, are you sufficient in micronutrients? And the levels of specific micronutrients, again, that I would recommend is if you're tired vitamin D, your B12 and B complex. Iron can be critical, and those things specifically are very related to your energy levels. Omega-3s would be important, magnesium would be important, but looking at some of those specific two energies would be highly important. And I would do a comprehensive micronutrient sufficiency when it comes comes back, uh, you can take a look at are you in norms or are you optimal. And I want to point out the difference between that. I would also consider doing, along with this lab testing for micronutrients, cortisol levels. And there's a debate, people go back and forth, what do you think is best. I like a saliva cortisol test still. And I know some will say, well, your cortisol levels fluctuate daily, but if you're in a period of time of stress you know, that stress is pretty consistent day to day to day for a bit. So I like knowing where are you in the morning, at noon, at dinnertime, and bedtime. And a snapshot confirms that. If you have two different tests, whether it's dried urine, wet urine, or, um, a blood test only gives you a single singular snapshot, but you've confirmed it by doing the cortisol test too, I think it's a good idea, and you have the most information then to say, okay, I need to do something about this. And there are things that I would do potentially with supplementing. I would look at some adaptogens, which are some herbal supplements like maca or ashwagandha, can be helpful for people. Doing something like Cortisol Manager, which contains ashwagandha, um, among other things. And you can find all of these readily available on Amazon, of course. Um, but you may want to go over this with a health coach to think, what do I need right now and what would be helpful for me? And number 5 is support with adaptogens, as you might guess. So the maca, the ashwagandha, um, another is rhodiola. You will hear people talk about— as a health coach and Personally, both. I found the most benefit personally from maca. I've tried ashwagandha for a period of time, didn't really do anything for me. Nothing, nothing negative, which is generally true of the adaptogens. It's kind of like if your body needs it, it'll use it. No harm, no foul. Though if you don't need it, it's not gonna do anything negative. I have heard with ashwagandha, sometimes people get wound up if they take that too late in the day. Hasn't, hasn't been a factor for me, but maybe I haven't taken it late in the day. So maca, within a week of taking that, and a clinical grade, by the way, I'll put a link in the show notes to the one that I've used, I felt better within a week just taking a morning dose, not even taking morning and afternoon both. I just needed the morning because it— I was no longer a morning person. I was like, What is going on? I'm groggy getting up in the morning. I want to lay here. That's never been me. So that's sometimes— that's how you know, because it's not normal. So these things are really important. These are, these are all steps that you would want to take whether you are or you're not on HRT. Could it help if you're on HRT? Of course, if your progesterone is low and that's interfering with your sleep, it can make a big difference. But these things just cover the basics and then relate to your exercise and to your fitness routine. So, you know, how can I change that in order to benefit me just with things from a day-to-day basis? So additional steps you might want to take could include checking your thyroid with a functional doctor who looks at the whole picture, not just the basics of traditional Western medicine, they may not see what they need to see, but they won't see it because they don't order the tests that they don't know how to interpret. The training they get in medical school isn't all-encompassing. So if you are, you know, wondering or worried about your thyroid, or you've had it tested even but still don't feel better, there may be a reason for that. So you need to look at the integrated Viewpoint. If your digestion isn't what it should be, either suddenly you've ignored constipation or diarrhea for a long time, you may want to get a stool test. And that stool test results will come back and tell you the status of your good to bad gut bacteria. We need both, but sometimes we can have them kind of in an imbalance and we're feeding the bad ones too much stuff, not feeding the good ones. And it will suggest to you the test results often will suggest you need— now you're low in this one, so you know to go to the store and look for a prebiotic that has that active that you need specifically. And if you're high in something that it doesn't have that, so now you're not just shooting blanks and going to buy any old probiotic, you're going to buy one specific to the strains that you you need. And that again can be beneficial to work with a functional doctor who can recommend specific tests and/or specific additional things that you could benefit from. Oregano, for instance, if you've got gut issues, often will be recommended. Or if you've got certain strains of bacteria high or low in your gut, they may recommend grapefruit seed extract for a period of time. So it's not just grapefruit juice, by the way, it's a concentrated version. But you wouldn't necessarily know these things by yourself, and you shouldn't necessarily play a doctor on the internet or TV with yourself either. But hopefully this gives you a little background so you know what are good questions to ask. So let me do a recap here of these things. 5 things I would do if I were tired all the time. Number 1, stop exercising as usual. In fact, we've even built this into our membership. So we have 12, 12-week strength training programs in there among hundreds of other exercises and challenges. But we also have 3 reset programs right there, readily accessible for members, because every once in a while another woman will get hit by life circumstances that happened while we were in this middle of life as females. And we all know it's happening or it's coming. We've watched other women go through it, and we know enough to know we don't want a woman sticking in a program and trying to push through and having that exhaust her more. We'd love for her to stay consistent. I want you to be able to stimulate muscle mass to maintain your strength and/or to maintain some bone integrity even while you're cutting back and maintaining and managing the life circumstances that you need to address right now. But not getting exhausted doing it is really key and crucial. Number 2, move and eat in small snacks. Just illustrated that a little bit in the first one, but eating as well in smaller snacks, not necessarily recommended the majority of the time. I'd rather see and apparently healthy women have 3 meals, no snacks, so that we train the body to start burning fat in that 3 to 4 hour period after a meal. If we're constantly feeding it snacks, you never need to do that. If you're struggling to lose weight or lose fat, that's why you're snacking, you're grazing. It's never going to need to go to the basement refrigerator if you're giving it milk all the time from upstairs. So we've got to really take a good look at stabilizing blood sugar with small meals and snacks, different than what you would do if you're apparently healthy. And number 3, track your food to check on your macro and micronutrient intake just by visually looking at it, maybe walking through that with a coach if you have enough experience and you can see that, or you're putting it in an app that'll tell you where you are. Both are, are all are healthy and good ways to get a handle on what are you doing and is there a reason why you're feeling so tired. By the way, a lot of women are eating so low carb in effort to lose weight, it's actually sabotaging their adrenals. So you might want to take a look at that. Number 4, consider lab testing for both micronutrient sufficiency and cortisol levels. So by micronutrient sufficiency, you can, you can order just a very comprehensive— and it's not free— but you could choose also a handful of things. And if I were choosing to do a micronutrient test, as I have, I always look at vitamin D, magnesium, my iron level, my serum ferritin levels, and magnesium. And I like to look at my omega-3 ratio as well, just for inflammation numbers. But those are many things related specifically to things women in midlife become depleted, and several of those are related to energy. And last, number 5, support with adaptogens to help the body begin helping itself. So if you do know it is cortisol, these are the things that I feel like: I feel groggy when I get up in the morning, I feel sluggish, not hungry, don't get really rolling and functioning until late morning. I sometimes feel like it could crash again in the afternoon. I would rather almost go to bed than have dinner, but if I stay up, I get a second wind. And those are all things descriptive of somebody with adrenal insufficiency issues. You don't have to have all of them, but you may. No matter how long you're in bed, even if you're sleeping, you don't wake rested. Those are, those are all you. And definitely if you're exercising and you feel like afterwards you could take a nap, something's wrong. So yes, change the exercise, but probably you're gonna need more than that to get out of that hole that you have dug for yourself. So you need to get a little more help and out, adaptogens can be an easy, safe way to do so. Maca, ashwagandha, and I mentioned rhodiola, but maca may be enough. And I would encourage, start with one, test it, see how you do with that. That may be it. And that way you, you have no guessing game as to which one it was. So in quick summary, those were number one, stop exercising as usual. Number 2, move and eat in small snacks throughout the day. 3 is track your food, check on your macro micronutrient intake. 4, consider lab testing for micronutrient sufficiency and your cortisol levels. And number 5, support yourself with adaptogens. And in the show notes, I will put links to the maca that I had great luck with. It's a clinical grade, by the way. Just pulling it off the shelf from your store does not guarantee you're getting one of the 11 strains that is of clinical grade. It's just a guessing game. And my guess is if it's very affordable, it's probably not very clinical grade. I'll link to micronutrient testing too. Even if you choose not to use those tests, what you will learn is a little bit about what will I learn from this test, literally. So you can use it like a library as well. I hope that was helpful. We hope that you're listening and that you're asking in feedback. You can reach me directly in my DMs on Instagram, direct messages, or join the Facebook group at Flipping 50 Insiders, Flipping 50 Insiders group for support and questions, something that we may answer next in an upcoming episode. If this is helpful, would you do me one favor? Share this with a friend or two if they're in this menopause journey with you. Do it letting them know you want them to be 95 right there playing along with you.

Thank you so much for listening. To listen and access a decade of episodes and the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all of our our prior episodes. And I made it easy for you to make the most of your listening time by selecting 5 specific areas most commonly high priorities for our community and giving you top 10 lists if you let me know you'd love them. If you know a midlife woman or a soon-to-be one who wants to optimize her midlife energy and time with the right exercise and lifestyle changes and a mindset shift about just what is possible, share this podcast with her and I thank you. There is no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman.