Perimenopause, the point at which a woman’s body starts to transition towards menopause, is as inevitable as it can be challenging. During this transition, your ovaries begin producing less hormones, causing your menstrual cycle to become erratic or irregular.
This can manifest itself through any combination of many different symptoms, including irregular periods or skipping periods, periods that are heavier or lighter than usual, hot flushes, vaginal dryness and discomfort during sex, urinary urgency, insomnia and changes in mood like irritability, depression or mood swings.
During such a time, it’s important to keep your body in the best condition that you can, because regular exercise can benefit your overall health when your body is changing and mitigate the worst symptoms that come with perimenopause.
The Benefits of Exercise for Perimenopause
Two of the symptoms of perimenopause are weight gain and muscle loss, and regular exercise can help to alleviate these symptoms. Exercise has also been shown to be good for insomnia, as well as being beneficial to your mental health through the release of ‘feel-good’ endorphins while you’re engaging in it, at a time in your life when hormonal changes can bring about low mood and anxiety. Exercise can even help to keep your balance and bones stronger, even though a loss of oestrogen is linked to weaker bones in women in later life.
Best Types of Exercise for Perimenopause
If you want to get the most out of exercise during perimenopause, it’s best to do a variety of different types of exercise.
Cardiovascular Exercises
Cardiovascular exercises (frequently shortened to ‘cardio’) improve the efficiency with which your heart pumps blood around your body and the health of your lungs and blood vessels. Post-menopausal women are at greater risk of heart disease, so it’s particularly important that perimenopausal and menopausal women keep their hearts strong. Cardiovascular exercise includes walking, swimming, cycling, and dancing. Cardio also boosts significant amounts of those mood-improving endorphins.
Strength Training
Post-menopausal women experience a loss of oestrogen, and one of the most damaging effects of this is an increased risk of osteoporosis. Osteoporosis causes issues with bones, which may lead to pain and increase your fracture risk. Helpfully, Strength-based exercises can reduce this risk by boosting production of the materials that keep your bones healthy and the muscle around them, which supports them. Doing strength exercises can also help to keep you metabolically healthy, which can help lower your risk of other conditions, including heart disease and diabetes.
You might think that strength training requires expensive equipment or a gym membership, but this doesn’t have to be true. Dumbbells can be bought inexpensively online, and if you can’t stretch to that, even push-ups and pull-ups qualify as strength training, so it’s easy to do them at home.
Yoga and Pilates
Depending on the style, a regular yoga practice can help boost your physical strength (bones and muscles), mental resilience, heart health, sense of balance (to avoid dangerous falls) and keep you flexible, supple and mobile. Flexibility and core strength are particularly important. A loss of muscle mass can lead to problems with balance, and falls can be a significant problem for older women.
Another advantage of doing these particular types of exercises is that they usually also involve a mind-body aspect, which can reduce your stress levels and significantly benefit your mental and physical health.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has been shown to help you lose weight faster and keep it off, especially during times when this can be more challenging, like menopause. HIIT is an exercise method designed to burn more calories in a shorter amount of time. HIIT workouts can be significantly more effective for many women than endurance workouts for overall weight and fat loss during menopause.
Note that HIIT is what it says – high intensity – which means that it isn’t necessarily intended for beginners new to exercise. Start with shorter, less intense sessions if you haven’t exercised in a while. However, if you’re used to regular exercise, HIIT may be just what you need to switch up your routine and see the desired weight loss results. It’s important not to overwork your body, so make sure you listen to it if you’re exercising.
Developing a Balanced Exercise Routine
Everybody should get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise weekly. You can also engage in an equal combination of moderate and vigorous activity. Aim to exercise most days of the week. Get 300 minutes a week or more of moderate aerobic activity for even more health benefits. Exercising this much may help with weight loss or keeping off lost weight.
How you divide this time up is up to you. There is nothing to suggest that shorter workout times are less effective than longer ones, so long as the overall amount of time that you’re spending exercising remains the same. So, for example, if you’re doing thirty minutes a day, you’ll see the same benefits from three ten-minute sessions. And if you miss a session, don’t beat yourself up over it; any exercise is better than none!
It’s also important to remember to mix up what you do. Different specific exercises work different specific muscle groups, and as we’ve already seen, different types of exercises perform different functions for your body. Remember to listen to your body and adapt your exercise programme to how you feel.
Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them
There may be as many different challenges and solutions to these challenges as there are people, but broadly, we can cluster them together under three headings: motivation, finding the time, and dealing with fatigue.
The first two are often interlinked. Remember that you can fit your exercise around your day with mini workouts, should that work better for you. Others prefer a more regimented approach of knowing that they need to be at the gym at a certain time each day.
Fatigue needs to be dealt with slightly differently. All good personal trainers will say the same thing: rest days are critical to any good exercise programme. Your body needs time to recover from exercise, and overworking yourself can cause you more problems than it solves.
Can Exercise Delay Perimenopause?
It may be possible. Physical activity can impact hormonal balance. Exercising several days a week may help you better manage the menopausal transition. Entering menopause later in life may have some health benefits, and there is some evidence that your lifestyle may impact menopause timing.
How Much Exercise Is Too Much During Perimenopause?
This is why listening to your body is so important since the answer to this question will vary enormously from woman to woman. Hormonal changes stress your body, and if you exercise yourself to a state of exhaustion, you will literally grind to a halt and find it difficult to get the energy to do anything!
What Exercises Should Be Avoided During Perimenopause?
It’s not about exercises that should be avoided, so much as avoiding overdoing it. It’s okay to make adjustments while your body is physically changing. Some forms of exercise can feel too intense, so choose lower-impact exercises while you get your symptoms under control. If you experience days when exercising feels too overwhelming, try something less stressful, like going for a walk. Remember, all movement is good!
What Exercises are Good for Perimenopause Weight Gain?
Start with a mix of moderate and vigorous exercise to burn off menopausal weight gain. Your routine should include aerobic exercises like swimming, walking, bicycling, and running, resistance or strength training, and yoga or pilates. HIIT is good for burning off excess fat, but remember to build up to it rather than jumping straight in and risking injury!
If managed successfully, exercising during perimenopause can have substantial benefits. You can mitigate muscle loss and weight gain while protecting your heart and mental health, as well as bone strength, balance, and poise. Implementing a regular exercise programme is a variety of natural ways to manage symptoms and improve overall well-being. Getting started with it now could benefit you for decades to come.
