Lifestyle and self care

When the basics feel impossible

This page is full of sensible suggestions. Some days, sensible is a country you cannot get to.

Some days a shower is climbing Everest. Some days putting on clean clothes is. Some days the kindest thing in the world is sitting on the bathroom floor in your pyjamas with the door shut and the fan on, so nobody can hear you crying.

That counts. That was the shower today. That was the move-your-body today.

The aim is not to be optimised. The aim is to still be here tomorrow.

If today the win is brushing your teeth and putting clean knickers on, the win is brushing your teeth and putting clean knickers on. Nothing else has to happen.

What self care actually means in real life

A glass of water before the second coffee. Going to bed half an hour earlier. Saying no to one thing on the list. Eating an actual lunch instead of crisps at your desk. Putting the phone in a different room. The boring, undramatic stuff.

It is not a spa weekend. It is not a 5am routine. It is small things that you actually do, often, that add up.

The basics, said honestly

• Sleep matters more than anything. Cool room, dark room, no screens in the last hour. Boring, evidence-based, transformative.
• Movement you will actually do beats movement you won’t. A daily walk is more useful than a Peloton you ignore.
• Strength training, twice a week. The single most underrated thing for women in midlife. Bones, mood, body composition.
• Protein at every meal. A fist-sized portion, three times a day. Quietly changes everything.
• Fibre. 30 different plants a week is a good target. You will not hit it. That’s fine.
• Alcohol gets harder. Most women find this around 45. Your body is metabolising it differently. It is not a moral failing.

Picky eaters, real talk

If you are a picky eater (and many women are, including the founder of this site), the standard advice can feel impossible. Boiled eggs and hummus and salmon and pulses, for someone who has never liked any of those things, is a wall.

What helps: protein shakes you actually enjoy. Greek yogurt with whatever you can tolerate stirred in. Chocolate rice cakes with peanut butter. Cheese on toast. The list is allowed to be short. Eating something is better than eating nothing because the “right” thing was beyond you.

A multivitamin tablet bridges some of the gaps. A vitamin D supplement is sensible for almost everyone in the UK. Omega-3 if you don’t eat oily fish. None of this replaces food, but none of it is failure either.

Weight, honestly

Most women gain weight in midlife. The same diet stops working. The shape changes, often around the middle. The advice (less food, more exercise) often makes it worse, because the body, under-fuelled and over-stressed, becomes more protective of fat, not less.

What sometimes helps: more protein, not less food. Strength training, not more cardio. Sleep, properly. Reducing alcohol, which is fundamentally just liquid calories that also worsen everything else.

GLP-1 medications (Wegovy, Mounjaro) are real, and they work for many women, and they are not cheating. If you are considering them, do it with proper medical supervision and pay attention to your nutrition. Speak to your GP or a registered nutritionist.

What we won’t tell you

That you need to fast for 16 hours. That seed oils are poison. That you need a £400 supplement stack. That your morning routine should start at 5am with cold water immersion.

Some of that helps some people. Most of it is content, not medicine. Trust your own body and your own GP over an influencer’s reel.

Pick one thing

Just one. Do it for a month. Don’t add anything else until that one is genuinely a habit. Most of us crash by trying to fix everything in a week. Most of us. Not just you.

Rest is part of the plan, not a reward

Real rest, not productivity-disguised-as-rest. A bath without a phone. An afternoon with a novel. A walk with no podcast. A nap, in the day, without apologising for it.

We have forgotten how to do this. Practising it is half the work.

And for the days when none of this is possible

Some days are too hard. You are still allowed those.

Open one window. Drink one glass of water. Lie down somewhere that isn’t your bed. Talk to SAM for ten minutes. That is enough for today.

Tomorrow might be different. It often is.