She Coaches CrossFit. She's Going Through Perimenopause. Here's What She Wants You to Know.

I am co-owner of CrossFit Secaucus and a CrossFit Level 2 coach. I have been strength training for years. I coach women through lifts and hard workouts every single week.

In 2025, perimenopause hit me like a wall I did not see coming.

I want to talk about what that was truly like, what I tried, what worked, and what I wish I had known before it started. Not as a cautionary tale. As a coach who has been through it, is still in it, and has come out the other side with a very clear picture of what actually helps.

If you are somewhere between 38 and 55 and something has felt off for the past year or two (the sleep, the weight that will not move, the brain fog, the body that seems to have stopped cooperating) this blog is for you. I am not here to diagnose you or prescribe a protocol. I am here to tell you what I learned the hard way, and what I see working for women who walk into our gym.

When I Knew Something Had Changed

In March of 2025, my work schedule completely changed. The ideal work-life balance schedule I had built my life around disappeared overnight. I knew I was in my perimenopause phase, but I thought I had it under control for the most part because I had spent years dialing in on my foundational habits (protein, sleep, steps, stress). In reality, the disruption magnified even the symptoms I did not yet know were perimenopause symptoms.

I was already not sleeping well. My new schedule cut my sleep by another hour because I had to wake up earlier for my 1.5-hour commute. On top of that my brain would not turn off at bedtime because of this stress and anxiety. Most nights I would randomly wake up at 2am running through my week's to-do list in my head. That became a nightly routine.

The sleep disruption was the first domino. Once it fell, everything else followed. The brain fog got worse. The hot flashes and night sweats that had been quietly lurking became constant, all day and all night. The scale started climbing even when I was eating in a moderate deficit. My midsection felt different in a way I could not explain. And the more I cut calories, the worse everything got. I was doing the things I had always done and getting results I had never experienced before. I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind.

The moment that hit me hardest was during coaching. I would forget my words mid-sentence and immediately spiral into a sweat episode. Drenched. In front of members. It happened often enough that I started dreading it. I felt helpless and embarrassed in a space where I had always felt completely at home.

What I Tried That Did Not Work

I did what most women do first. I tried to eat less and move more, but still within a workable range for me. I cut calories slightly. I pushed harder in the workouts. I expected the formula that had worked for me for years to keep working.

It made everything worse. Cutting calories even slightly, when your body is already under hormonal stress, is adding fuel to a fire you are trying to put out. Your body reads the deficit as another threat and responds accordingly. The brain fog deepens. The fatigue compounds. The weight does not move because your metabolism is not behaving the way it did at 32, and with heightened stress levels, the body's natural response is to keep you functioning and alive. It goes on lockdown.

These were also things I saw through coaching women who came in and tried similar approaches on their own. Endless cardio, dramatic calorie cuts, and a scale that refused to cooperate. That combination is a recipe for putting your body further into fight-or-flight mode when it is already there. You cannot expect a car to run well on an empty tank, and neither can your body. The signs had often been there for years before these women finally decided that something was not right.

What Actually Changed Things

I had to go back to foundations. Not as a starting point, but as a recalibration. I looked at every pillar: nutrition, sleep consistency, stress management, and strength training. And I got more intentional about all of them.

The shift that mattered most was in how I approached my lifting. It was no longer about moving and sweating more or eating less. It became about maintaining and building the muscle I had. I asked Coach Rob to build me a program centered on progressive overload. I took my rest days seriously. I stopped treating recovery as optional.

I also started building small habits that I stacked into my routine deliberately. Getting outside in the morning sunlight. Watching the sunset. Even five minutes. These were not dramatic interventions. They were small, consistent commitments that added up.

I increased my calories, not decreased them. When you strength train consistently, your hunger signals increase for a reason. Feeding that demand with quality whole foods, combined with bio-identical hormone replacement therapy and the training, stabilized my weight. I stopped doing any cuts for a year. My body did not need that stress. I had to work smarter, not harder, and learn to give myself some grace during this phase.

The sleep improved. The bloating decreased. I started feeling more like myself again. Not overnight. Over months. But the direction changed.

What I Tell Women Who Come In Exhausted

When a woman walks through our door and she is exhausted, gaining weight around her midsection, not sleeping, and feeling like her body is working against her, the first thing I do is ask questions. What does her diet look like? Her sleep? Her stress? Her training? I want to understand the whole picture before I say anything.

Hormone replacement therapy helps many women, including me. But I also want to be honest about something: the foundations matter enormously in terms of how well HRT can work. Nutrition, sleep, strength training, and stress management are not optional support structures around HRT. They are the environment HRT works inside of. Without them being reasonably dialed in, you are not giving your body the conditions it needs to fully respond well.

And I want to say this directly because I have experienced it myself: too many women get dismissed by their providers. They are told that what they are feeling is just part of life. They leave the appointment without answers and without support. If that has happened to you, you are not imagining it. Your symptoms are real. And you deserve actual guidance, not just reassurance that this is normal.

The Scale Is One Tool. It Is Not the Whole Story.

One of the most important conversations I have with women coming through this phase is about the scale. We have a member who joined group classes and told me she was going to see how training helped her weight loss journey before committing further. About two months in, she came to me during class and said her clothes were fitting better but the scale was the same. She did not know if that was a win.

I asked her to rephrase it. Instead of 'the scale has not moved,' try this: 'Because I have been consistently coming to strength sessions, I have seen real improvement in my strength and my clothes fit better.' That is a win. A significant one.

As a woman, if you weigh yourself every day for a week, you can see seven different numbers. The average over time is what matters. There are so many variables on any given day: where you are in your cycle, your stress level, what time you ate the night before, hydration, digestion. The number on the scale on a Tuesday morning tells you almost nothing on its own. How your clothes fit, how your energy holds through the afternoon, how you feel walking up stairs, those tell you something real. That is the power of building and maintaining muscle.

What I Know Now That I Wish I Had Known at 35

I wish someone had told me earlier how important it is to build muscle and then protect it. Not just for how you look, but for how your metabolism functions as you age. Muscle burns calories even at rest. The more you have, the more you can eat while maintaining or improving your body composition. That is not a small thing when perimenopause arrives and everything that worked before stops working.

I also wish I had understood sooner that a lot of the severity of my perimenopause symptoms was an accumulation. Years of low-calorie diets. Years of mostly cardio with not enough resistance training, or none at all to be honest. Years of running myself down and calling it discipline. By the time perimenopause arrived, my reserves were not where they needed to be.

There is a time and place for cardio. I still include it. But nothing compares to strength training as the foundation, especially for women over 40. It is not just about aesthetics, although that is a plus too. It is also about giving your body the hormonal environment and metabolic machinery to handle what perimenopause throws at it.

What My Training Looks Like Now

I am all about strength. I get my core movements in: squats, deadlifts, bench, and I love an Olympic lift. The conditioning comes through the programming at CrossFit Secaucus, and it provides a great balance. I walk after breakfast, lunch, and dinner when I can. It helps digestion and it gets me outside.

Recovery is non-negotiable now. A rest day is not laziness. It is part of the program. A day of rest and baking. A day of rest and reading or watching something you love. Doing the things that make you feel better and happier is not just doing right by yourself. You are going to show up better for the people around you because you are making it a point to take care of yourself first. That was a hard lesson for me to learn. I am glad I learned it.

I also want to say that I have invested in coaches throughout this process. A hormone coach, a nutrition coach, personal training programming from Coach Rob. Even coaches need coaches. Doing this alone is genuinely hard. Having someone aligned with where you want to go, who helps you understand what it actually takes and who cares about your long-term health, makes an enormous difference.

If You Have Been Thinking About Coming In

If you are 42, or 45, or 48, and you are exhausted and frustrated and feeling unlike yourself, and you have been thinking about coming in but keep finding reasons not to: I want to ask you one question. How is it that you are making the people around you complete, while leaving yourself out of that equation entirely?

The only person who is going to take the best care of you is you. I know that because I lived the alternative for years.

I took the leap and tried CrossFit in 2013. I was scared. I was in a bad place. And I asked myself: what is my alternative? To keep being this unfulfilled? What is the worst that could happen? I got my CrossFit Level 1. Then my Level 2. I started eating and lifting in a way that transformed how I felt and looked. And eventually I became co-owner of the very place that changed my life. I did not see that coming when I walked in the door the first time.

Perimenopause is not the end. It does not have to feel like things are shutting down. We do not have to accept living disconnected from feeling well. We can pivot, reassess, and give our bodies what they need to function at a high level for a long time. We have that power. We just have to use it.

If sleep has been one of the symptoms hitting you hardest, Rob wrote specifically about what strength training does to sleep and why it tends to help — that is worth reading too.

If you are in Secaucus, North Bergen, Kearny, Jersey City, or Hoboken and you want to have an honest conversation about where you are and what might actually help, come in for a No Sweat Intro. No workout. No commitment. Just a real conversation. I would love to talk with you.

Debbie is a CrossFit Level 2 coach and co-owner of CrossFit Secaucus in Secaucus, NJ. She coaches group classes daily and has personal experience navigating perimenopause through strength training, nutrition, and lifestyle. This blog reflects her personal experience and her coaching observations. It is not medical advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for diagnosis and treatment of perimenopause symptoms.

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