5 Ways to Live Your Best Life After Menopause
Menopause is not a limitation but a transformation. Take these five steps to care for yourself and learn more about your body and what it needs to flourish in your second half. My 6 Pillars of Wellness One-on-One Coaching incorporates these and other elements to help you live your best life.
1. Set Realistic Goals– What is it that you really want to achieve when it comes to your health and wellness? Weight loss? Strength gains? Less aches and pains? More energy? Reduction of medications and risks for disease? Meet yourself where you’re at. If your goal is to lose weight and reduce medications, it’s going to take some time. Make the journey part of the goal to help you stay on track. Set a daily goal to eat more whole foods and stop snacking after dinner. This gives you something short term with which you can be successful. The results of this goal will help you achieve the bigger, long-term goal. To build strength, create a goal to get to the gym twice a week to lift weights. As you become consistent with this goal, you will start to build muscle and enjoy strength gains. When you set smaller, realistic goals that tie in with your bigger, long-term goal, you gain momentum. This will help keep you motivated and keep you consistent with your plan. Part of living your best life is enjoying a sense of accomplishment and success. Celebrate the small wins as much as the big wins. It’s the small wins that make up your daily life and will ultimately get you to your larger goal.
2. Create a Regular Self-Care Routine– What do you consider self-care? Taking a walk with a friend, preparing a healthy meal, taking a hot bubble bath, starting a meditation practice, attending your favorite yoga or Pilates class, MELTing, journaling…the list can go on. Choose what really makes you content, relaxed and feeling your best. Self-care is not a luxury, it is a way to de-stress, feel good in your body and help to down regulate your nervous system. In a crazy world where we rush through our days, having a ritual that we look forward to is an important part of a healthy, happy life. Click here to learn how The MELT Method changed my life.
3. Build Muscle and Stay Active– Being strong and active in our second half is critical for enjoying life. If you haven’t lifted weights before, now’s a good time to start. Research shows that women over 50 benefit both physically and mentally from lifting weights. This can be as simple as doing a short strength circuit, using mostly body weight in your own living room to joining a gym, hiring a trainer or working with a coach. In my free Facebook Group, Losing Weight After 50, I demonstrate simple strength exercises that help you build a foundation with proper form. It’s never too late to start.
4. Adopt a Positive Mindset- Menopause gets a bad rap. I hear women younger than me refer to themselves as old. Yes, we’re aging but growing old is a mindset. I’m not saying we deny the fact that we’re in our second half of life. I’m saying, let’s be grateful for making it this far. Practicing gratitude is one of the quickest and simplest ways to gain a positive mind. Become your own best cheerleader. How do you talk to yourself? Are you kind and loving and supportive or do you criticize your every fault? As you become aware of your internal voice and change the way you speak to yourself, you’ll start to feel differently and change your self-talk and the way you treat yourself. Instead of criticizing yourself about your body or actions, find something positive to say to yourself. You can’t heal a body you don’t like.
Try this exercise. Pick something you’re grateful for and then list at least three reasons why you’re grateful for it. This gives more meaning to why you’re grateful and will have a deeper impact on your mood.
5. Embrace Change– Menopause is a natural and inevitable part of life that can bring change to our physical, hormonal and emotional self. As we enter this next chapter, not only do we experience change in our bodies, but we may also experience change in our families, careers and other aspects of our lives. Change can be challenging but when we learn to embrace change, instead of fighting it, it can be a liberating and freeing experience. If you’ve put your health and wellness on the backburner in your younger years and you’ve been lucky enough to get away with it, now is the time to make preparations for your future self. If you’ve been extremely athletic your whole life, you may need to tone down your activity just a little bit. Either way, as we move closer to older age, paying attention to how our bodies move and feel helps us gauge what’s working and what’s not. We won’t be able to control every change that happens during life but taking charge of our own health and wellness by utilizing my 6 Pillars of Wellness, Sleep, Stress Relief, Exercise, Nutrition, The MELT Method and Mindset you can enjoy better health and pain relief while staying active to enjoy our best life after menopause.
If you're ready to start making changes that will last, email me at mariarigo@boundlessbalance.com to set up a Discovery Call. We'll discuss what your goals are, how you can start working towards them and see if we're a good fit to work together.