Perimenopause Weight Gain: The 7,000 Steps a Day I Lost

Perimenopause weight gain can start while you keep working out and eating like before. If your weight is going up after 40 and your routine has not really changed, this episode is about the movement you may have stopped counting.

I lost 7,000 steps a day to perimenopause, and I didn't notice for months. I was still in the gym regularly. My diet was the same. My weight went up anyway. My workouts and my meals were never the problem, and the number that finally explained it was sitting in my phone as data the whole time. This is where those calories went, why I stopped moving without ever deciding to, and how I got back in control on the days I didn't feel like doing any of it.

In this episode:

• How you can lose 7,000 steps a day while you're still working out every week
• The everyday movement that burns calories that doesn't show up in a workout log
• What to check on your phone before you change a single meal
• Why the walks and dinners out can and even just leaving the house can stop when nothing about your schedule changed
• The first place to look if your weight is up but your workouts and food are the same
• What I do now on the days I don't feel like leaving the house

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👋🏻 ABOUT ME:

I'm Andrea, a double-certified NASM Nutrition and Fitness Coach and founder of Behind the Body. For 20 years, I under-ate, avoided weights, and lived on cardio chasing skinny, and none of it gave me a body I was proud of. In my mid-30s, I changed my approach: more protein, real strength training, and a plan that fit my life. I lost 20 pounds, and 10 years later, at 45, I'm still maintaining it through perimenopause. I help women over 40 simplify their approach, build real strength, and get results that last. Every week, I cover the science, the strategy, and the honest truth about fat loss and maintenance for women over 40.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER:

This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your diet, exercise, or health routine. Results vary. Andrea is a NASM-certified Nutrition and Fitness Coach, not a doctor or registered dietitian.

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I lost 7,000 steps a day to perimenopause and I didn't notice for months. I was still working out regularly and going to the gym. My diet hadn't changed much, but my weight went up five to eight pounds. And I blamed my hormones, which makes sense since I'm going through perimenopause. Then I opened my health app one day randomly on my phone and I saw that I was averaging 3,000 steps a day. Six months earlier, I was averaging eight to 10,000 steps. The weight came from the walks, the hikes, the general daily movement that stopped without me ever noticing. Nothing dramatic happened. There wasn't one week where I suddenly stopped moving as much. It happened so gradually that I never realized it until I looked back at the data. If your workouts and your diets haven't changed, but your weight has, this is the first place I'd look. You can't control your hormones, but you can absolutely control your daily movement. I'm gonna tell you exactly where those calories disappeared to, why I stopped moving without even realizing it, and the small change that helped me start getting back in control. If you're wondering why your body is changing, even though you don't feel like you're doing anything differently, I think this might help. And in case you're new here, I'm Andrea, I'm 45, I'm in perimenopause, and I'm a double certified nutrition and fitness coach. But more importantly, I'm going through this too, and I feel like we need to stick together. I'm Andrea and welcome to Behind the Body. If you're over 40 and trying to lose fat, build muscle, or take better care of your health, you're in the right place. Every week we'll tackle the questions women over 40 are asking about nutrition, fitness, metabolism, and aging, helping you spend less time doing what doesn't move the needle and more time focusing on what does. Let's talk about where the calories went. When I started gaining weight, the first place I looked naturally was at what I was eating. I looked at my diet. But it turned out that my food hadn't really changed. It wasn't the problem. And I was still going to the gym, so I never would have called myself like inactive. What stopped were my walks, just my daily walks. Walking my dog, walking up the stairs, going on easy hikes with my husband, which we like to do on the weekends, and the times I would normally leave the house to see friends. None of that felt like a big decision or a big change in my life, but I just stopped going. Those walks and evenings out, even just being social, all burned calories too. Even if they're not in high intensity, even if they're not getting my heart rate up, they still count. And there's a name for it: non-exercise activity thermogenesis. We call it meat. That's a fancy way of saying all of the calories that you burn, just living your life when you're not intentionally exercising. When I stopped walking as much and stopped going out as much, I was burning fewer calories every single day. Even though my diet, my food, my workouts hadn't changed. It doesn't sound like much, but those calories add up over weeks and months. You can miss it the same way I did. It's so easy. Your workouts feel like you've accomplished something for the day, right? So you check that box. You exercise, do you burn calories? And it's easy to think that you've done enough for the day, but you don't count the hours that you're sitting. I don't either. Now I find myself obviously sitting a lot during the day, working at my desk. I spent a lot of time on the couch watching Netflix, literally just lounging after dinner. I never track that because I feel like my hard workout this morning was enough. There's research on exactly this. One study tracked adults in their mid 40s who worked out about 30 minutes a day but sat for 10 hours or more. Even with the daily workouts, their insulin numbers were worse, their cholesterol numbers were worse, and their waists were bigger than people who simply moved more during the day. One workout a day did not make up for sitting still the rest of the day. So if this is sounding like you, here's what I would check before you touch your diet. If you carry your phone around, it's been counting steps for you the whole time. Open your health app and compare it to six months ago, or to a time where you were feeling strong and energetic. That number is an honest baseline of where you are now compared to where you were. You might still decide that your eating needs attention too. For a lot of us, it does. It fluctuates. But before you assume it's your diet, look at everything else that changed first. And for me, the walks didn't stop because I got busy. They stopped because I didn't feel like myself. But that still didn't answer the bigger question. Why did I suddenly stop walking and wanting to do stuff in the first place? There was no reason that I could really point to. So did the happy hours, so did the dinners out with my friends. Some days I literally don't even want to leave the house at all. The only way I know how to describe it is that I just didn't feel like myself. I started calling it my numb stretch. At first, I actually thought I was a little bit depressed or that I was just getting older, and maybe my joy for the things that I had once before changed. But then one day I was scrolling on TikTok and I was like in, you know, women over 40 talk, and I heard some women in their 40s describe the exact same thing about how they just don't feel like doing anything. They don't feel like being social, they don't feel like leaving their house. And I thought, oh my gosh, that's me. That's how I feel. I had no idea that this was a symptom of perimenopause. There's research on that connection too. One study followed a group of perimenopausal women for a year. The women whose mood dropped went on to move less. And the women who moved less went on to see their mood drop. So it is like a correlation, right? That study didn't measure anybody's weight and it doesn't prove that working out fixes how you feel. And I'm not saying that what I felt was depression, because I don't think it was. For me, it was a change in how I felt day to day. And it came and went in waves, but it was there for most of the time, if I'm honest. It's still there for me, actually, right now. What it tells me is that this runs both ways. How you feel changes how much you move, and how much you move changes how you feel. If you've been wondering why you've lost your motivation lately, it might not be because you've suddenly become lazy. It might just be because you don't feel like yourself right now, which makes sense. So if your steps dropped during the stretch when you didn't feel like yourself, the good news is there may actually be a reason for it. Understanding why it happened didn't suddenly make me want to go for a walk, right? Like understanding that this is a symptom of perimenopause didn't make me clap my hands together and say, okay, let's get out of the house and go do something. No, I still had to figure out what to do on the days when I didn't feel like doing anything. I can't wait until I feel motivated because on those days, the feelings they don't show up. The motivation doesn't show up. Like I have to start without it. And I'm not talking about the days that I'm sick or injured or need rest. I'm talking about a perfectly normal day when nothing is wrong and I just don't feel like getting out of the house. So for me, I set minimums. And actually, going to the gym is a minimum. And I will say that lately, and this is unique to this time in my life, I don't feel like going to the gym. And I mentioned that in my newsletters and other places, but I like working out. I feel great after working out, but I don't, I haven't felt like going. The good thing is that now I know when I'm uh about two sets into my first exercise, I start to feel like myself again. And that is such great motivation to keep going day after day. So that's still working for me. But when I get home from the gym, I still don't feel like anything. So this is what I do now. I set minimums. And this is outside of the gym. I set minimums for myself. So instead of 10,000 steps a day or 8,000 steps a day, which I just I know I'm not gonna do, and that seems like a monumental goal. I will set a goal to get 5,000 steps a day. That's half of what I used to get, but it's better than 3,000. I keep my step count right on the face of my Apple Watch and I check my aura ring. I'll be honest, sometimes that data makes me feel bad about myself and makes me realize like my lack of energy and movement is like so prevalent and so strong. But I'd honestly rather know the truth than just keep guessing or just pretending it's not happening and just keep pushing it to the back of my mind. And it also lets me make incremental progress while giving myself grace because darn it, I need it. This is a hard time in life. If your movement is walking also and you're just not feeling like it lately, reset your benchmark. If you were walking three miles a day, commit to one. Don't compare yourself to who you were six months ago because that was a different person. That was a different phase of perimenopause or maybe pre-perimenopause. Compare yourself to where you are today and build from there. This might just be putting on your shoes and getting out the door, right? Even if it's just to come right back in, take them off, and go lay on the couch. Like progress is progress. And I'm the same way at the gym, to be honest. In the gym, my minimum is the second set. I don't tell myself that it has to be a good workout. That's like, forget it, right? Like I gotta get in the gym and just get a few sets done, move my body. I don't need to make progress necessarily, but I don't want to set myself back. I don't promise myself that I'll finish the whole workout. I start, I get through the first set, I start to feel amazing, and then I move on to the second set. Just one step after step, and that usually works for me. That's usually where I recognize my own energy again, and I'm so grateful for that. And on the days that I don't want to get out of the house, like I going on walks with my girlfriends is a way that we find time to catch up in our, you know, busy lives. On the days I don't want to go, I go for my girlfriends. When I really don't want to take the walk, I remind myself that they're probably in the same boat. They don't want to go either. They're probably feeling very similar to me. We're all busy, like we just don't feel like it. But getting out of the house, getting some movement, staying connected is so good for all of us. So I go for them. Those walks fill my heart, they fill my soul, and they give me energy that I wasn't finding at home. The friends that you have in your life right now that you may not even talk to that much, they're probably feeling some version of this too. When you make the plan ahead of time and the day comes and you don't feel like going, force yourself to go. Force yourself to get out of the house, force yourself to get some fresh air and connect with a friend. So I'm encouraging you to text one friend today and put a walk on the calendar for this week or next week and commit to it. And you can be totally honest with her. Say that you haven't been feeling like yourself lately and that you just need to get out of the house. I also noticed something else. On the nights that I stay home because I didn't feel like going anywhere, that's when I end up standing in the kitchen eating dessert and snacking for literally the entire night. I mean, actually, that's probably where I get the majority of my steps for the day is getting from the couch to the refrigerator. It's sad, but it's true. So, one thing I keep doing to help this, I eat an actual dinner, like a full-on dinner, instead of letting the night turn into just like dessert and snacks. Sometimes that's dinner with friends, sometimes it's just dinner at home, and that's okay. The point is that I make it a real meal instead of just grazing all night. Because for the record, my lack of motivation or lack of desire to do anything is also a lack of desire to cook. So I really force myself to. I'm not gonna promise you that one workout or one walk with your girlfriends or one dinner out fixes how you feel all day. Sometimes a good feeling doesn't last past the afternoon, but I've never regretted taking the walk or doing the workout. The payoff I can usually count on comes pretty immediately as I'm walking with my friends or out at a restaurant. Leaving the house is hard, but the payoff is there when I'm doing the thing. If I'm lucky, it'll last me all day. And if I'm even luckier, it'll follow me through the next morning. I don't always recognize myself in this part of perimenopause. It's a weird place to be. It's a weird feeling. It feels very isolating. It feels very uncertain. It feels like I'm not myself. I'm normally energetic, outgoing, I'm excited to do things. So feeling numb makes me sad because that's not who I am. And I feel like I'm kind of just wasting the days. At some point, I realized that I had to start waiting to feel like myself before I started taking care of myself again. So I started counting the steps. I named the numb stretch. Giving a name to this, the numb stretch, gives me, I don't know, some validity. It gives me a reason. It gives me something to identify it. So I guess maybe I feel less alone. And I also set a minimum for myself that I can do on the days that I don't want to do any of it. I stopped assuming my weight gain was only about my hormones, which I know that plays a role, but I started looking at the things that I can actually control. And that is liberating. Those 7,000 steps didn't come back all at once. In fact, they're still not back on most days, but 5,000 steps did. And that's where I started. And my dog is happier for it. So are my girlfriends. So if this sounds like you, if you're going through the same thing, don't start by changing your diet. Start by paying attention to your movement and how you've been feeling. You might find the answer isn't exactly where you thought it was. If your weight has changed during the same stretch, getting your movement back may be one part of the answer. But your eating absolutely still does matter. And the next step is figuring out what's actually getting in the way of your results. I have a free metabolism type quiz. It takes two minutes and it tells you which of the five types you are and shows you what to focus on first. I think it's always helpful to have a plan or a roadmap when you're just not sure where to start. So I'll link that free quiz in the show notes below. If you recognize yourself in any of this, follow the show so that the next episode is already in your library. And if you have 10 seconds, I would love if you could leave a rating. It's a single biggest factor that helps other women over 40 like us find this podcast. And if you want more things on all diet, nutrition, fitness, lifestyle, perimetopause, and everything else that goes into losing weight after 40, come and join the behind the body community. Every week I'll send you something straight to your inbox to help you keep making progress. And you can sign up for free at behind the body.com forward slash newsletter. And if you want the next step for those workouts, listen to my episode on muscle loss after 40 and why losing weight speeds it up. I'll see you over there. Thank you so much for tuning in, my friend. I can't wait to chat with you next Monday.