You train hard. You eat "clean." You show up on the days you don't feel like it. You've been disciplined about this for years.

So why TF are you slower, weaker, and more banged-up than you were five years ago?

One expert says it's your age. Another says it's your cortisol. And that one over there says "welcome to perimenopause."

Nope. Nope. And nope.

Here's the real problem.

Most of the training and nutrition advice aimed at women over 40 was never built to make you a better athlete. It was built to make you smaller. It's diet culture in disguise — and most of us are still following it without realizing it.

Because for women, fitness has only ever meant one thing. Thinness as the goal. Skinny as the proof.

The rules were never the same for us as they've been for men.

In a male athlete, size is an asset. In a female athlete, it's treated like a liability.

The fittest women on the planet still get their bodies picked apart in the comments — as if being visibly powerful somehow cancels out being athletic AF. You don't see that under the men's videos.

And as long as you keep using covert fat-loss tactics to build athleticism, the math will never work. Performance declines. Recovery tanks. The injuries keep cycling through — hamstring, foot, hip, shoulder. And you feel like garbage the whole time you're "doing everything right."

Here's the part that makes me want to punch someone. Underneath all of it sits an uglier, more damaging story: that female bodies are delicate. Fragile. Better spent on looking younger and prettier than on getting genuinely strong. That fitness for women is about how we look — not what we can do.

I don't accept that. I've run 20 marathons and 9 ultras, competed in CrossFit and Olympic weightlifting, and I'm navigating perimenopause now too. I'm not hanging up my shoes. Neither are you.

So what do these women-only "fitness" rules actually sound like in the wild?

• "Just eat less and move more."
• "Don't train too hard — you'll get bulky."
• "Women over 40 just can't tolerate carbs anymore."
• "Running will make you fat."
• "Endurance training eats your muscle."
• "HIIT is wrecking your metabolism and spiking your cortisol."
• "Fasted cardio is better for women your age."
• "Your hormones mean you have to train completely differently now."
• "Sync your workouts to your cycle instead of following a progression."
• "Menopause means shorter, gentler, low-impact workouts."
• "Strength training counts as cardio if you go fast enough."
• "You're not 25 anymore — lower your expectations."
• "Stop chasing PRs. Just walk and lift."
• "Running destroys your joints and makes you look older."

Any of those sound familiar?

Every single one of the above assumes that you either (a) should be chasing weight loss and focus on how you look and/or (b) you're too old and fragile to be athletic.

I CALL BULLSHIT.

​Watch: Better Training Starts When Chasing Skinny Stops​

And if you want to find where this is playing out in your training specifically, start with my free Age Athletically™ Training Audit. Ten minutes, pillar by pillar — it shows you exactly where your strategy stopped matching your goals.

​Take the free Training Audit.​

You were built to do more than shrink.

— Alison

P.O. Box 601, Clarksburg, MD 20871
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