Let’s talk about a growing problem in the fitness space:
Coaches clinging to research on sedentary populations to justify claims about weight, hormones, and health in active, midlife women.
And then using that data to say things like:
“Hormones don’t cause weight gain.”
“It’s just about energy balance.”
“There’s no need to adjust your training or nutrition in menopause.”
Let’s break down why this isn’t just lazy—it’s misleading.
Most Hormone Research Wasn’t Designed for Athletes
Here’s the real issue: most studies on menopause, estrogen, cortisol, and metabolism are done on sedentary or overweight populations.
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They're not training 4–5x a week.
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They're not strength training or racing.
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They’re not managing fueling, recovery, or performance.
So when a coach quotes a study to “prove” hormones don’t matter—or that weight gain is only from overeating—you’ve got to ask:
Who was studied? What were they doing?
Because a perimenopausal runner navigating disrupted sleep, fluctuating hormones, and marathon training is not the same as a 55-year-old with a desk job and minimal physical activity.
The variables are wildly different.
Sedentary Research Can Underestimate the Impact of Hormones
Here’s what gets ignored:
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Active women tend to have higher energy demands. If estrogen drops, they lose a key ally in managing inflammation, recovery, and glucose regulation.
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Cortisol hits harder when the body is under physical stress (like training). Combine that with a hormone landscape in flux, and you get a very different stress response.
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The impact on muscle retention, injury risk, and fatigue in active women is magnified because they’re already pushing their systems.
So using sedentary data to say, “Hormones don’t cause weight gain,” is like using elementary school lunch studies to inform high-performance fueling.
It’s not just inapplicable—it’s irresponsible.
“Evidence-Based” Shouldn’t Mean Ignoring Lived Experience
When hundreds of midlife women report:
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Gaining fat despite consistent habits
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Losing muscle even while lifting
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Struggling with sleep, stress, and cravings
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Feeling slower recovery and more injuries
And the response is, “That’s just not what the data says,”
…it’s not skepticism. It’s gaslighting.
Being evidence-based means seeking the right evidence—not cherry-picking what matches your bias.
What We Need Instead:
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More research on perimenopausal and postmenopausal athletes
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Coaches who are trained in reading studies critically, not just parroting them
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A willingness to integrate science and lived experience to shape smarter training and nutrition strategies
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Nuance. Not soundbites.
If your coaching advice hinges on studies done on sedentary women in controlled metabolic wards and you're applying it to masters athletes? You're missing the mark.
The real evidence-based coaching for women in midlife means accounting for hormonal shifts, training load, recovery demands, and the complexity of what they’re juggling—not dismissing them with a PubMed link from 2004.
Midlife women aren’t broken. They’re being underserved by lazy coaching and narrow research.
And we can do better.