Online barre classes are a brilliant way to move your body — especially at our age and stage of life. They’re flexible, low-impact, surprisingly spicy, and right there in your living room, ready to fit around your schedule.

(Here’s a clue — exercise still matters, even if you’re losing weight without it.)

You’d have to have been living on Mars not to have noticed the inexorable rise of weight loss injections like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. Whether prescribed for diabetes or used off-label for weight management, they’re everywhere — in the news, on social media, in group chats. For some people, they’ve been genuinely life-changing. For others, micro-dosing has become a way of life.

At this stage in life finding the time for fitness can feel like an uphill struggle.  It’s another thing on the to-do list and squeezing in a workout amidst the chaos of our daily lives seems almost laughable.  BUT, and it’s a big but, there is a way to make exercise fit around your life, and not the other way round…

Intermittent fasting, or time-restricted eating, was not something I had ever considered before I damaged my back. I've always thought it screamed disordered eating, but there's good scientific evidence that fasting aids cellular repair. If your system doesn't have to work on processing food, it can work on fighting the cause of inflammation.

The intense focus on weight in the media, coupled with the subliminal messaging we have been receiving our whole lives about how women should look is hard to shake. When our youth and fecundity start to slide, it causes untold misery, and the redistribution and gaining of weight remains the most pressing symptom for women when questioned about their fears around menopause.  

Nobody likes being stressed, but in midlife, learning to manage your stress becomes significantly more important.  Why?  Stress affects the whole hormonal cascade and if our stress response is pinging constantly then this has a major effect on our hormonal health.  

None of us wants to be poking the hormonal bear very often – so if every thought we have produces a reaction let’s try and manage our thought processes a bit better.  Whilst it is impossible to eliminate stress in today’s world here are some ways we can build our resilience to it and manage it. 

This is a whopper of a topic - and it’s been the elephant in the room for so long. But as it’s right at the heart of the changes some of us are battling with on a regular basis, I’m not just inviting it in, I’m serving it tea and bloody cakes. This is an elephant worth making friends with…