What I Actually Do Now (Because What I Used to Do Stopped Working)

I remember thinking, “this doesn’t make sense.”

I wasn’t doing anything crazy. Same meals, same workouts, same routines. But suddenly I felt off—softer, more tired, hungrier… and gaining weight in the places you notice first. My face, my stomach. The spots that make you question everything.

It felt like I was working harder and somehow getting worse results.

And I couldn’t figure out why.

Which, looking back, was the biggest problem.

After I wrote that last post, the messages started coming in—“this is exactly how I feel”… “I thought it was just me”… “I’ve been trying everything and nothing is working.”

And I get that, because that’s exactly where I was.

For a long time, I thought the answer was to try harder. Eat less, be stricter, add more cardio, clean things up for a few days and hope it evened out. That used to work. Or at least it felt like it did.

It doesn’t anymore.

And this is where things started to click for me, because it’s not just in your head. Your body actually is different now.

As we get into our late 30s and 40s, things shift whether we like it or not. We naturally start to lose muscle if we’re not actively working to keep it, and muscle is what drives metabolism. When muscle starts to decrease, metabolism tends to follow, which means your body isn’t using energy the same way it used to and everything starts to feel a little less forgiving.

At the same time, hormones start to fluctuate. Whether you’re fully in that phase yet or just starting to feel hints of it, your body becomes a lot more sensitive to stress, inconsistent eating, and under-fueling. Those shifts can impact where your body stores fat, how you recover, your hunger cues, and even how well you sleep.

So now you’ve got less muscle, a slower metabolism, and a body that reacts more to everything you’re doing—or not doing.

That softer feeling, the puffiness, the weight that seems to show up differently… it’s not random.

And it’s also why it feels so much harder to lose it.

Because the old approach—eat less, move more, push harder—doesn’t just stop working, it usually makes things worse. It adds more stress, increases cravings, drains your energy, and leaves you feeling like you’re doing everything “right” with nothing to show for it.

I’m living this in real time.

I’ve gone through my own hormonal shifts, including Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism. I’ve worked with my provider, done additional testing like the DUTCH test, and paid out of pocket to actually understand what’s going on instead of guessing.

At the same time, I’m working with women who are in perimenopause or already in menopause, having these same conversations every day. The details might look a little different, but the frustration is always the same—trying to do the right things and not seeing the results they expect.

That’s the part that gets frustrating, because most women I talk to aren’t clueless. They’re trying. They’re just tired of guessing.

That’s where I found myself too.

And it’s also what led me to build MINTFit the way I have and partner with FASTer Way to Fat Loss. Not because I needed something trendy, but because I needed something structured. Something that actually made sense for this phase of life.

I’m not a doctor, but I am a certified fat loss coach, and I’ve put the time into learning how to coach women through this stage specifically—because it is different.

One of the biggest shifts for me was realizing it’s not just about calories anymore. It’s about what those calories are made of.

I used to grab quick, easy options and assume I was doing fine. A wrap, a protein bar, something on the go. And while those might technically “fit,” they weren’t actually supporting what my body needed.

There’s a big difference between eating something that fills a calorie target and eating something that actually fuels you.

I didn’t need less food. I needed better food.

Because when you’re not eating enough protein, your body has a harder time maintaining muscle, and when muscle drops, metabolism tends to follow. Protein also helps keep you full longer and reduces that constant cycle of cravings that so many women deal with.

Fiber matters just as much. It supports digestion, helps regulate blood sugar, and plays a role in how your body processes hormones. It’s also one of the biggest things missing from the “grab whatever is easiest” routine most of us fall into.

And this is the part that really surprised me.

Most women aren’t even close to eating enough protein for what their body actually needs.

For me, at around 150 pounds, that looks like roughly 100–130 grams of protein in a day. Not perfectly, not every single day, but as a consistent target. When I first saw that, I thought there was no way, but once you start building your meals around it, it’s not extreme—it’s just intentional.

If you’re reading that thinking there’s no way you’re hitting that, you’re not alone.

That’s actually why I put together a simple 5-day meal guide. Nothing complicated, just real meals that show you what this can look like when you actually build your day around enough protein and fiber. Once you see it, it clicks a lot faster than trying to piece it together on your own.

Because when I really looked at my own patterns, it wasn’t one big thing. It was all the little things adding up.

Skipping breakfast because I didn’t have time. Grabbing whatever I could between meetings. Throwing dinner together after running kids around. Trying to “be good” all day and then feeling like I blew it at night. Starting over every Monday like that was somehow going to fix it.

None of it felt extreme. But together, it wasn’t working.

So what do I actually do now?

I eat consistently, even on busy days, because I know exactly how it ends when I don’t. I build my meals around protein so everything else stays in check, and I make sure there’s fiber in my day—not perfectly, just intentionally.

I lift weights, not to be extreme or to “bulk,” but because building muscle is what supports metabolism and makes everything else work better. And I rely on structure more than motivation, because motivation comes and goes, but my routine is what keeps me moving forward.

Some days feel easy. A lot of days don’t. But I’m not starting over every Monday anymore, and that alone changes everything.

That’s really the difference. Not a perfect plan or a quick fix, just something that actually fits into real life and can be repeated over and over again.

That’s what I was missing before, and it’s what I see most women missing now. Not more effort or more restriction, but a plan, some structure, and something they can actually follow when life gets busy—because it always does.

This is what I’m focused on right now.

Getting back to the basics. Eating enough protein. Paying attention to fiber. Lifting consistently. Not perfectly, just consistently enough that it actually starts to work again.

I pulled that into a simple 5-day reset that starts Monday, April 13. Nothing extreme, just a way to actually follow through on the things most of us already know we should be doing, without overthinking it.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, this is a really solid place to start.