I went through menopause early—starting at 40 with my last period at 43. Though my experience wasn’t extremely difficult, it prompted me to completely reevaluate life as I entered a profoundly different chapter. Menopause serves as both a death of sorts and a gateway to an entirely new phase of womanhood.
As estrogen recedes—which once naturally directed our focus outward—a new clarity emerges. Our attention turns inward, allowing us to preserve our energy and see situations through a more discerning lens. The menopause stripped away coping mechanisms I had developed to function within societal and patriarchal systems. Things such as self-hate, self-sacrifice, and putting up with situations that weren’t right for me have been dissolving since my menopause journey began.
I now channel my energy toward creative pursuits that bring me joy. The freedom from seeking external validation from men feels incredibly liberating, and I express myself more boldly than ever before. I consider myself fortunate that the menopause happened early enough to give me plenty of time to embrace its benefits and embrace my authentic self in ways that I never was able to before.
I understand that many women struggle with intense symptoms during the menopause, so I can only speak from my experience. During this transition, my body communicated with me with remarkable clarity. By listening to these signals—understanding which foods nourish rather than trigger my system, how much rest I truly need, which situations and people I needed to avoid, and what types of movement support my well-being (and which types of movement hindered it)—I found my symptoms eased considerably. This transition invited my evolution, and embracing it rather than fighting the changes allowed me to have a more peaceful passage. Surprisingly, I’m now fitter and stronger than I’ve been in years.
Society often portrays menopause negatively and almost as if it is laughable. I believe this is because menopausal women challenge the status quo and are no longer willing to put up with the kinds of things we put up with before. The patriarchal system’s typical methods of control become less effective as we grow into ourselves. I think this may partly explain why so many women burned as witches were over 50.
There’s a deep wisdom that emerges with menopause. We’ve been conditioned to reject our emotions—especially anger—and to believe the menopause makes us irrational. But perhaps this is when we become truly rational and sane, similar to how we were as little girls before we learned to silence our inner voice. Gabor Maté offers a compelling perspective on this in one of his conversations with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee on youtube (I’ll link the specific interview when I locate it). He suggests that women are often socialised to prioritise others’ needs and suppress their own feelings and boundaries. The menopause, in his view, acts as a biological rebellion against this conditioning—forcing out years of repressed emotions and teaching us to finally honour our authentic needs and limits.
For me the menopause has become an opportunity to reclaim my authentic self—like a grounded and wiser version of my 8-year-old self. Since my menopausal journey started, I have felt a freedom to pursue the dreams that that little girl had which I later convinced myself weren’t worth chasing. In the last 5 years I have become more creatively bold than I ever managed before.
Practical Strategies That Have Worked For Me
My symptoms included weight gain, fatigue, mood changes (that’s an understatement! Intense murderous rage is probably more accurate!), and hot flashes. I discovered what worked partly by accident while addressing sugar and insulin spike fluctuations that were making me feel terrible and practically comatosed in the afternoon. I also needed to address inflammation due to costochondritis. Recent research suggests that many foods we were able to once tolerate become problematic during perimenopause and menopause (especially foods like breads and refined carbohydrates) and the sugar spikes become far more extreme which increases menopausal symptoms. Jessie Inchauspé (aka The Glucose Goddess) has a lot of useful tips on how to decrease sugar spikes if you don’t want to do an extreme dietary change like I did. However, that being said, the following are what has helped me:
- Increased protein intake (crucial as muscle mass decreases very fast after menopause)
- A pretty strict vegetarian ketogenic diet. This is very low carbs, in fact no refined carbs at all (such as breads, pasta etc), and no starches. Cutting out refined carbs and starches avoids spiking glucose and insulin, (also refined carbs just make you feel hungry all the time and never really full). I also don’t drink fruit juice or eat very sweet fruits.
- Increase in fibre (I eat large – huge in fact! – organic salads every day)
- Zero processed foods (no more ready meals!)
- Zero (or very close to zero, sugar, although I do have the odd dark chocolate bar) but I recognise the importance in not spiking insulin in order to avoid becoming insulin resistant (this is all round bad, not just for the menopause time, and i also don’t want to get diabetes
- Eating lots of healthy fats. This provides satiety making me want to eat less
- Quality cholesterol sources (which research is starting to show can help adrenal function and thus reduce menopause symptoms)
- Pre and probiotics (both supplements and fermented foods like kefir and un-pasteurised sauerkraut). Probiotics support weight management by nurturing a healthy gut microbiome, which enhances digestion efficiency, reduces systemic inflammation, and helps regulate hormones that control appetite and fat storage patterns.
- Key supplements: vitamin D, magnesium, B vitamins and creatine (to help build muscle). I also hear ashwagandha and black cohosh are excellent but I haven’t tried them yet because I seem to have stabilised all symptoms without needing them. Also the probiotics I already mentioned.
- I also do regular intermittent fasting, and less regular prolonged fasting (between 36 hours and 72 hours)
These changes helped me return to my pre-menopause weight, stabilise my energy, reduce hot flashes, as well as eliminating my chest pain from costochondritis and and other inflammation in my body.
For exercise, I’ve embraced:
- Heavy weight training (crucial for combating muscle loss) (Check out Dr Stacy Sims research on how to train and when and how to eat for the best results during menopause – lots of videos on youtube).
- Regular walking, which is better than running as running can spike cortisol (cortisol causes the body to store fat)
- Occasional HIIT classes with proper recovery periods for overall fitness
- Lots of recovery time after exercise and never training on sore muscles. The more I push myself to keep going or do extra workouts, the less improvement I see!
I also use stress reduction techniques (again to reduce cortisol) and remove stressful situations from my life as much as possible.
The menopause journey is deeply personal, yet universally transformative. I believe that by honouring rather than fighting this natural transition, we don’t just survive it—we have a better chance of emerging more powerful, more authentic, and more at peace with ourselves than ever before. Perhaps this is nature’s greatest gift: the opportunity to finally become who we truly are, unburdened by expectations and empowered by hard-won wisdom.