I started working out at age 14 due to my interest in fashion. I was constantly looking at magazines that featured skinny, toned models. This led to an ongoing yo-yo relationship with both exercise and food throughout my teen years, one that I still remember pretty vividly even today in my 50s—and I’m thrilled to have healed my relationship with food and movement as an adult.
Back then, I used to treat exercise almost as a punishment. It was something I dreaded. I did cardio seven days a week, using the stair stepper for 30 to 60 minutes at a time. With my diet, I fell into a binge-restrict cycle during these years, too. I tried to cut out anything I considered junk food, but then, I would have cravings and end up eating tons of ice cream or getting fast food. Afterward, I’d feel so guilty. I would lose and gain the same 10 to 15 pounds over again, and I didn’t understand why.
The cycle stopped when I was 21 and got introduced to strength training by my boyfriend at the time—and now-husband!—nutritionist Alan Aragon. He was into working out with weights, and so I started lifting weights with him regularly, which was empowering and made me feel strong. It also transformed my body. For the first time, I gained muscle tone like the models I saw in magazines—but my motivation was no longer about looking like the women in those images. Weight training felt completely different than struggling through a session of cardio where I was just dripping sweat afterward. I felt powerful.
I quickly realized that I wasn’t focusing on losing weight anymore. My reasons for working out had changed.
When I was working out, I was just so happy to be hanging out and sharing a passion with Alan. Plus, I liked the muscle I was gaining. I also started adopting some of his ways of non-restrictive, flexible eating. He ate nutritiously but still had ice cream when he wanted to, which was really eye-opening.
At the time, Alan was also studying to get his personal trainer certification. I thought his material was much more interesting than my job in retail, so I got certified too and left my job in retail. Then, I began working as a personal trainer when I was 25 before I became a stay-at-home mom.
But from the time I started working at the gym to eventually becoming a stay at home mom, I was always working long days in some shape or form. So, I was only able to strength train once or twice a week, if at all, for years.
My routine wasn’t consistent, and I was just going through the motions while working out. During those busy years of my life, my weight stayed pretty consistent; I ate nutritiously because I cooked healthy meals for my family, but I didn’t feel that great about my body because I’d lost muscle. I kept thinking about how one day, I’d get back into strong shape.
It wasn’t until 2019 that I was able to work out on a consistent schedule again. I was going through a particularly stressful period in my life and wanted to find a way to clear my head. I returned to what I knew helped me decompress, which was weight training. I walked into the gym feeling stressed out, but always walked out feeling a million times better.
When I hit perimenopause at 47 in 2020, I began changing the way I eat because I was wary of the weight gain that often comes with the hormonal changes.
Alan helped explain to me that perimenopause can cause women to store more fat in their core if they gain weight. But he said that weight gain wasn’t inevitable—I just had to maintain my weight and muscle. So, my plan was to change the way I ate a little bit and keep working out the way I had been.
I don’t restrict any foods, but I’ve increased my protein intake, and while I don’t track what I eat, I know how much protein the foods I eat contain, and I try to aim for 120 grams of protein each day. I also prioritize eating calcium-rich foods and vegetables. My goal in perimenopause and menopause was to maintain my body weight and composition, and so far, I’ve been successful.
Now, I strength train four days a week, alternating two upper-body days and two lower-body days. Each session is about one hour, and I do two exercises per body part.
On lower-body days, I’ll work the quads, hamstrings, glutes, and then I add a couple of abs movements. Some of the exercises I do are hip thrusts, leg presses, hamstring curls, and leg extensions. On upper-body days, I do chest, back, shoulders, triceps, and biceps moves like incline presses, pull-downs, chest presses, rows, biceps curls and extensions, and rear delt cable pulls.
I typically do 12 to 15 reps for each exercise and four total sets: one warm-up set, where I use half the weight I normally lift, then three working sets where I lift my normal weight. I also recently added a fifth day of working out where I do 30 minutes of cardio on the stair climber. I feel good about my relationship with my body and cardio in comparison to my younger years, and I had extra energy.
On rest days, I don’t do any planned movement, but I’m always on my feet during personal training sessions, and I’m very active in my home.
The biggest factor behind my strength transformation: keeping my workout routine and diet sustainable, flexible, and consistent.
I used to push myself so hard with cardio that I hated working out and exhausted my body, and I struggled with restrictive eating—both of which made my routine unsustainable. When I found a type of movement that I genuinely enjoy—strength training—I was able to build consistency with it, especially because I give myself days off to rest too.
I also learned to be flexible with food and understand what my body needs to stay fueled and energized for life and my workouts—I’ll let myself have French fries when I want!—and now I feel better inside and out. Keeping my routine flexible and consistent ensures that I’ll be able to sustain this routine so I can be healthy and awesome at every age and stage of my life.
