Week 42: Three weeks on the couch, one spin class, and what actually changes in midlife

Hey {{first name | reader}},

It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for your weekly fitness check-in. Welcome to Week 42.

Yesterday I took my first spin class since spraining my ankle.

It felt glorious to get my heart rate up again after three weeks of sitting on the couch, ordering more takeout than usual, and watching my normal activity level disappear. I was also wondering what all that enforced inactivity was doing to my metabolism.

The answer: less than I feared.

Three weeks of rest did not break my metabolism. It did, however, remind me how many things we casually blame on metabolism when what has actually changed is how much we move, how much muscle we carry, how well we recover, and what we eat while watching Canadian crime dramas.

We have all heard some version of this:

After 40, your metabolism slows dramatically. You gain weight no matter what you do. It’s inevitable.

The actual story is more interesting.

A large 2021 study published in Science analyzed energy expenditure in more than 6,600 people. After accounting for body size and composition, researchers found that total and basal energy expenditure remained surprisingly stable from about age 20 through 60. After 60, adjusted expenditure declined gradually, about 0.7 percent a year.

That does not mean our bodies stay exactly the same through our 40s and 50s. They absolutely do not. It means that metabolism alone is a poor villain.

So what does change?

When I was younger, movement was scattered throughout my day: walking across campus, chasing cabs, teaching classes, commuting, dancing at bars, and moving apartments because I was both broke and restless.

I still walk almost everywhere—I haven’t owned a car since 2005—but I now work from home. My movement has shifted from constant low-level activity to planned walks and workouts.

That system works well when all my parts work. A sprained ankle exposed the flaw immediately. There were fewer walks, no gym commute, no stairs, and far too many Instacart and Uber Eats orders.

None of that meant my metabolism had failed. My days had simply become much more sedentary.

Muscle leaves when you stop giving it a reason to stay, and it comes back when you give it one (see last week). Three weeks on the couch was a small, unwelcome demonstration of the first half. The spin bike and the gym machines are working on the second.

I am stronger now than I was at 30. That is not evidence that aging is optional. My ankle has already submitted a rebuttal.

It is evidence that decline is not perfectly linear or entirely beyond our influence.¹

Perimenopause and menopause can affect fat distribution, sleep, temperature regulation, mood, cognition, and the ability to recover from training. Those changes are real even if our age-adjusted metabolism has not abruptly driven off a cliff.

Last Thursday, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued its most comprehensive menopause guidance to date, strongly recommending hormone therapy for hot flashes, night sweats, and the sleep problems that come with them. It also stresses that the decision depends on a person’s circumstances, and it is not right for everyone.²

A year ago I tracked my food for two weeks, not because I wanted to live permanently inside a spreadsheet, but because I was curious. I was eating more than I thought: a handful of almonds, a second scoop of almond butter, an extra glass of wine, a “small” amount of cheese apparently selected by a person with very large hands.

None of those foods was bad. I had simply stopped noticing the total. I was also lifting more than I had ten years earlier without checking whether my meals had kept up.

The lesson was not “eat less.” It was “occasionally check whether what you think you are doing resembles what you are actually doing.”

One night, a friend and I were listening to bluegrass at a bar and comparing notes on how long injuries now take to heal. Nothing makes you feel youthful quite like discussing connective tissue over a beer.

I cannot stack hard sessions indefinitely and expect sleep, enthusiasm, and functioning joints to appear through force of personality.

That is not necessarily a metabolic problem. It is a programming problem.

Before the ankle injury, I was lifting five days a week and fitting three spin sessions and three runs into some of those days. I am not jumping straight back into that schedule.

Week one: passive rest; week two: upper-body work and supported lower-body machines.

This week includes three lifting days, spin, and an actual rest day. Running remains under review by the ankle committee.

The goal is not to prove that I can resume everything immediately. The goal is to return without producing Week 43: I Have Made Another Error.

“Is it impossible to lose weight after menopause?”

No. But the process may feel different.

Menopause shifts where fat is stored, toward the middle and away from the hips and thighs. It also tends to arrive alongside worse sleep, less muscle, more stress, and often less movement. Any one of those can move the scale.

I had all the worst symptoms. Three months after starting HRT my symptoms were almost all resolved.

Lift. Eat enough protein. Keep moving. Take sleep seriously, even if, like me, you have spent decades being bad at it.

If your weight or energy changes suddenly, or your efforts produce results that make no sense, ask a doctor about medical causes. “It’s just age” should not end every conversation.

Myth: After 40, everyone needs to eat less because metabolism slows down.

Reality: Your energy needs may change, but your 40th birthday does not issue a smaller dinner plate. What usually changes is everything around the plate: fewer steps, less muscle, worse sleep, sometimes a new medication. Cutting food without checking those first treats the wrong problem, and severe restriction makes it harder to train hard enough to keep the muscle you have.

The plate didn’t shrink. The day did.

This is what I make when I want a substantial breakfast and do not want another protein shake.

Layer it in a bowl or mix the entire situation together.

The exact protein total depends on the brands and portions, but the eggs, beans, and cheese provide a solid start to the day. Add more beans, egg whites, or another protein source if your individual needs call for it.

I keep returning to Mind Pump because it is one of the few fitness podcasts that does not leave me feeling as though I need to replace my entire life by Thursday.

In this episode, Sal, Adam, and Justin talk with Dr. Lauren Fitzgerald about menopause symptoms, hormone therapy, thyroid issues, and the lingering effects of decades of confusing medical messaging. It runs about an hour. The essentials are at the start, where she explains why the black box warning on hormone therapy existed and why it is gone, and around the 36-minute mark, where she takes on the big myths about HRT.

The episode was also recorded last December, before ACOG’s new guidance, which makes it a good preview rather than the last word. Bring the questions to your own clinician.

For three ordinary days, write down how much protein you eat at breakfast. Don’t change anything first. 

Use an app, read the labels, or write everything down. The purpose is observation, not judgment.

You may discover that you are already doing fine. You may find that breakfast is contributing six grams and optimism. Either result is useful.³

Stay strong,

{{first name | reader}}

P.S. My metabolism survived three weeks on the couch. My tolerance for being told to rest remains considerably more fragile.