Episode #284
284: How Ignoring Your Body Signals Impacts Your Health After 40
Years ago, Elizabeth stood in a kitchen at a party complaining about brownies, and a woman she barely knew looked over and said, "I guess I just listen to my body," and walked out. Elizabeth thought she was insufferable. She also had no idea what the woman was talking about. She'd been in the fitness world for years. She knew macros and training programs and the protein content of just about anything. And she could not have told you the first thing about what her body was actually saying to her. If you know exactly what you should be doing for your health and still can't get yourself to do it, this episode is going to feel familiar. Because the reason usually isn't a lack of information, and it isn't about trying harder. Somewhere along the way you learned to override what your body tells you, and you got so good at it that you don't even hear it anymore. In this episode, Elizabeth walks through what that override looks like in a real day. Wanting pasta, eating the chicken and salad the plan allows, then standing over the counter eating almonds out of the bag and never feeling satisfied. Resisting the cookies all week and then eating seven of them on a Thursday night. Sitting exhausted on the couch at 8pm and deciding it's "too early" for bed. Biting your tongue for weeks and then coming unglued over a glass left on the counter. Every one of those is your body asking for something, and every one of those is a moment you talked yourself out of hearing it. And here's the part that makes midlife women feel like they're losing it: this used to work. At 30, you could ignore your body and recover fine. Now one bad night of sleep costs you three days, and the strategy you built decades ago has quietly stopped working. Elizabeth explains why that happens in perimenopause and menopause, and what it means for whether you can actually follow through on the things you already know how to do. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Why "listen to your body" has probably never meant anything real to you, and what the phrase is actually pointing at The everyday moments you override your body without noticing, across food, movement, sleep, and unspoken stress Why pushing through worked at 30 and quietly stopped working in your mid-40s What your cravings, 3am wake-ups, and afternoon crashes have been trying to tell you the whole time The Listener Takeaway: Why This Episode Matters If you've been calling yourself lazy or broken because you know what to do and still don't do it, this episode hands you a more accurate explanation. Your body has been talking to you the whole time. The brain fog, the cravings, the exhaustion, the mood that turns on a dime, none of it means something is wrong with you. Your body is communicating, and you were trained to tune it out, and in midlife that costs you more than it used to. The relief here is that this is learnable. Elizabeth didn't know how to hear her body either, and she does now, and that changed whether she could actually stick with the things she already knew. You are not a different kind of person than the women who seem to do this easily. You just haven't been taught the one thing that makes following through stop feeling like a fight with yourself. RESOURCES Free quiz: Why Do Your Healthy Habits Keep Falling Apart? (elizabethsherman.com/quiz) Episode 254: How to Trust Yourself Around Food Again in Perimenopause (https://elizabethsherman.com/254) Episode 256: Fearing Hunger: How Dieting Trained You to Overeat (https://elizabethsherman.com/256) Episode 252: Nighttime Cravings in Midlife: It's Not a Willpower Problem (https://elizabethsherman.com/252) Hey! I love hearing from you. Send me a text. Let me know what resonated with you. I submitted a talk for SXSW 2027: Biohacking Is Just Dieting in a Lab Coat . Community voting runs through August 23rd, and it's part of what determines who gets on stage in Austin next March. If this resonates, I'd love your vote: CLICK HERE . Free account required, takes about a minute. If you’re a woman in midlife who wants better health without obsessing over weight, you’re in the right place. I’m Elizabeth Sherman, a life and health coach and host of the Total Health in Midlife Podcast. After coaching hundreds of women, I know the real problem usually isn’t “not enough information” – it’s too much of it, and not knowing where to start. With close to 300 episodes, this show can feel that way too. To make it easy, I created a free Listener’s Roadmap that helps you figure out which episodes are right for you right now. Tell me what you’re struggling with – low energy, emotional eating, stress, sleep, exercise, or all of the above – and I’ll point you to a curated path of episodes and resources to get you moving. Download your free roadmap at https://elizabethsherman.com/roadmap.
