Menopause Fitness Programs Are Missing 90% of It

Menopause Fitness Programs Are Missing 90% of It

Why you keep starting over in menopause, and the 3 things running beneath the surface

Have you ever seen one of those pictures of an iceberg? There's a little white tip poking out of the water. And under the water, there's a huge mountain of ice you can't see from the boat.

About 90% of an iceberg sits under the water. The part we can see is just the tip.

That's what I see when I think about midlife health.

Above the water is everything we can see. Your physical body. The workouts. What you eat. The scale. Whether your jeans fit. Whether you showed up this week.

Under the water is where your thoughts and beliefs live. Your feelings. The way you talk to yourself. Who you believe you are. Your energy, and the old habits running on autopilot.

Most of us spend all our time working on the tip. And then we wonder why it doesn't stick.

The Sunday game

I bet you know this one.

It's Sunday night. You've got the plan. The groceries are bought, maybe you meal prepped, and the weights are out. Your motivation is really high. I call this the Sunday game. On Monday, you're all in.

Then life happens. A busy week. Your brain wakes you up at 3 AM. Something comes up with your family. You miss a workout, then two.

And that becomes a loop. Motivation. Action. Life happens. You slide back into familiar habits. Here comes the self-talk. And then, "Okay, I'll start over Monday."

So take a second with this question: when you stop following through, what's the first thing you say to yourself? Just notice it. You don't have to do anything with it yet.

And please hear this. If you've been in that loop, nothing is wrong with you. You know what to do. Most women I know could write the workout plan and the grocery list in their sleep. Information isn't the missing piece.

The missing piece is under the water.

How I ended up under the water

I know this because I've been there.

2024 was a really hard year for me. In April I was in a car accident and had whiplash, and that same month we moved. There was a lot of family stress, and I was running my business. I was at the bottom of my own list.

By the end of the year, I remember getting dressed for Christmas and doing the layer thing. How many layers can I wear to hide my belly? Will anyone notice? I didn't recognize myself. And of course, I made that mean something about me.

That sent me under the water. I went deep into NLP (neuro-linguistic programming, which is basically working with your brain) and hypnosis. I've been certified at the mastery level and trained in hypnotherapy. Two years, hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars.

What I found down there changed how I coach. We can talk about what's stopping you all day long. Or we can change how your brain sees it. There's a huge difference.

Here are the three things I see beneath the surface over and over, in the women I work with and in me.

1. The stories you're running

The first thing under the water is your stories. The thoughts and self-talk that run in the background. They sound like this:

• "I always quit."
• "I have to do it perfectly or it won't count."
• "I'm too old to get strong."
• "Ten minutes isn't going to make a difference."
• "I don't have time for this."

Do any of those sound familiar? Your unconscious mind follows those directions perfectly.

And most of those stories aren't even ours. We picked them up somewhere. Maybe as a little girl watching our moms. Maybe from a gym teacher, or something we saw on social media and decided to carry with us.

Here's the insider part. Your brain isn't broken. It's efficient. It's really good at doing what it's always done. So when you're tired and stressed on a Wednesday, it doesn't pick the new plan. It picks the old story, because that's the path it knows.

That's why willpower runs out. You're trying to muscle your way past a story that's been running for decades.

2. The feelings you were never taught to handle

The second thing under the water is your feelings. Frustration. Disappointment. That heavy feeling when you miss another workout or eat something off your plan. Sometimes it's loaded with shame.

A lot of us were never taught what to do with those feelings, so we push them down, deeper into the water.

Here's something from my training that I absolutely love. There's a part of you that wants to start the new program. She's making the plan on Sunday night. She's ready to go.

And there's another part of you that pulls you off course. That part isn't your enemy. She's part of you, and she's trying to keep you safe.

Maybe she remembers a time you went all in and were so sore you could barely walk up the steps. Or a time you got hurt, burned out, or felt so disappointed when it didn't work out. Maybe she just sees how much you're carrying and wants to give you a break.

The answer isn't to make one part win. It's to find out what each part really wants underneath. When you do that, you can usually find a way for both of them to get what they want. That's when things stop feeling like a fight, and you go into flow.

3. Your identity and your energy

The third thing is the deepest part of the iceberg: your identity and your energy.

Identity is who you believe you are. "I'm not a workout person." "I'm the one who takes care of everybody else." "It's selfish to take care of myself." "I'm just not disciplined."

When a new habit doesn't match who you believe you are, your brain pulls you back to the old you. It isn't trying to hurt you. It just wants things to match.

Then there's energy. That's whether you have anything left in the tank. When you're pouring into everybody else and you're at the bottom of your own list, there's nothing left over for you.

Your four bodies, on the iceberg

If you've heard me talk about the four bodies, here's how they fit.

The tip of the iceberg is your physical body. It's what you see, and it's how you get to experience life. That's the part most programs work on: the workouts, the protein, the steps.

Under the water are your mental body (your thoughts and self-talk), your emotional body (how you feel about yourself) and your energetic body (what you have left in the tank).

So if you've only been working on the tip, starting over makes so much sense. Ninety percent of the iceberg never got invited to the party.

If you've wondered why your body seems to hold on no matter how hard you push, my post on the three hormones behind menopause belly fat tells the same story from the physical side: your body isn't betraying you. It's protecting you.

The part of the iceberg that changes how you see your progress

Your physical body is often the last place you see the change.

You might be changing how you think. Responding differently to stress. Talking to yourself more kindly. Building new habits. All of that happens under the water, long before anything changes in the mirror.

So if you're only watching the tip, you might miss the progress you're already making, and quit right before your body shows it.

This is where I use my favorite question. When an old story pops up, like "Nothing's changing, I might as well quit," I stop and ask myself:

Is that even true?

Then I notice how it feels in my body when I say it. When you take those thoughts to court, they usually don't hold up. Something is changing. It's just under the water right now.

Come look under your own waterline

I'm hosting a free live masterclass called Make This the Last Time You Start Over, and I'm teaching it twice:

• Thursday, October 29 at 2 PM ET
• Friday, October 30 at 12 PM ET

This is the secret sauce: the tools I spent years learning, so you can see what's under your own waterline. We'll look at the start-stop cycle and what it's trying to tell you, go deeper into the four bodies, and look at the beliefs, feelings and self-talk running underneath your patterns.

I'll also show you a video of me, a health and fitness coach, trying to break a board. It didn't go the way I thought it would. And I'll walk you through a short, gentle guided reflection. You're in control the whole time.

Bring one moment with you: one time life pulled you off course. What was going on, and what did you say to yourself? We'll look under the water together, with a whole bunch of kindness and a lot of curiosity.

Save your seat for the masterclass

Menopause is an invitation to get to know and love the entire iceberg, not just the tip. Let's make this the last time you start over.

Cam Allen is a health and fitness coach for women over 50 and the host of the Midlife Method with Cam Allen® podcast.