The diet that worked for 20 years. It just… stopped. Same effort, no result. I’d never experienced that before and it shook me.
Harder workouts. I pushed. I got more tired, more sore, and more discouraged. My body wasn’t responding the way it used to, and grinding harder only made me feel older.
A popular weight-loss program. It was built for 30-year-olds. It said nothing about hormones, nothing about sleep, nothing about menopause. I felt invisible inside it — like the instructions were for a body that wasn’t mine.
A drawer’s worth of supplements. Generic “metabolism” capsules. I never noticed a thing.
Then I mentioned it at a check-up and got the line so many of us get: this is just part of menopause — you may have to accept some of it.
Accept it. Spend the next 20 years like this.
I drove home and felt something I hadn’t let myself feel in a while. Not sadness, exactly. Grief — for the woman I used to be, who I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back.