You Are Not Lazy, Your Hormones Just Quit Without Notice
The truth about losing motivation, weird mood swings, and realizing your body has a mind of its own.
I was headed to Vegas with friends, already planning to sip margaritas poolside, when I realized my cycle was supposed to hit that exact weekend. I had all the symptoms. My back hurt, I was bloated, and it felt like my uterus was about to fall out.
So I did what any woman would do. I overpacked tampons, Advil, heating pads, and everything I could possibly need. I came prepared for battle.
And then… nothing.
Not a sign, not a cramp, nothing. I spent that entire trip waiting for disaster, and it never came. Then three months later, boom. She made her dramatic comeback like nothing happened. Son of a bitch!
If I think back, the signs were there earlier. Around 40, my cycle started doubling up some months, two periods in one month. I remember thinking, this has never happened before! Oh well, it has only happened two or three times in the last year, no biggie. I blamed stress, travel, life. Turns out, it was my body starting to rewrite its own script.
That is when everything began to shift. My energy, focus, and motivation, all unpredictable. I would have one week where I was crushing workouts, meal prepping like a pro, and feeling unstoppable. The next week I was crying because I could not decide between chicken or salmon for dinner.
It felt like someone had swapped out my hormones for a chaotic intern who didn’t read the manual.
This is what women over 40 are rarely told. Sometimes even younger! Your hormones do not gracefully decline. They throw fits, miss memos, and change their mind mid-sentence. One day you feel calm, the next you are Googling “rage during ovulation” at 3 a.m.
But here is what I have learned as a nurse, a coach, and a woman living it. Your body is not betraying you. It is recalibrating. It is messy, inconvenient, and occasionally hilarious. I have had out-of-body experiences where I can see how ridiculous I sound, but I can’t seem to control it! Then I get pissed because I can’t control it!
Suddenly, at 44, the fatigue after just a normal day of work that in reality wasn’t even that bad, exhausted me to the point where I would skip the gym for days. I felt hungover, even though I didn’t have an ounce of alcohol.
I say all of this to say. You are not lazy. You are running a system update without a user guide. AND….it sucks!
This is not the time to punish yourself for being tired or unmotivated. It is the time to figure out what actually supports your body now. And it might be different than what worked in your twenties.
You can still train, lift, eat well, and feel strong, but you need to work with the version of you that exists today, not the one from ten years ago.
Originally published on the Hormone Hangover Substack.
This Week’s Hormone Hangover Tip
If your energy and motivation have been all over the place lately, try this.
If anything, do NOT skip strength training. Lifting supports muscle, mood, and metabolism far better than long cardio sessions. Don’t think you have to go for an entire hour. 20-30 mins is better than nothing.
Eat 25 to 30 grams of protein at breakfast. It stabilizes blood sugar and keeps you from raiding your pantry midmorning.
Add magnesium and electrolytes daily. They calm stress hormones and reduce that wired but tired feeling.
Sleep like it matters. If you wake up at 2 a.m., stop panicking. Get up, stretch, sip water, and go back to bed instead of doom scrolling. STAY off your phone or watching TV.
Be realistic. Some days, your best effort might be showing up for 20 minutes instead of 60. That still counts.
Your body is not the enemy. It is asking you to listen in a new way, sending signals that are getting harder to ignore. You cannot just sleep it off like a hangover and wake up pretending everything is fine, like you did in your twenties. This version of you needs awareness, attention, and a little honesty about what is actually working.
