my Body can : midlife exercise experiments and reflections

Midlife Exercise Blocks: Rediscovering Barre in a Body That Changed

I didn’t stop doing barre because I didn’t like it.I stopped because I didn’t feel “good at it” and that mattered for some reason. This was an unconscious consensus for sure. And it stuck. The way subtle pressures rest on our body before the brain ever checks them.I’m realizing now that a lot of my movement history lives there.In the quiet decisions.In the things I stopped trying without ever officially quitting.This is my Body can, after all.Not my body should.Not my body used to.Just what my Body can do. Right now.And lately, my body can do five minutes of barre.Five minutes.That’s it.And somehow, that’s enough.💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com

Managing Exercise Soreness in Midlife

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about soreness. Not pain. Not injury. Just that dull, sometimes surprising physical soreness that shows up after movement. The kind that makes you pause and ask, wait, why now?If you want to keep thinking about this with me, you’re welcome here.What keeps catching my attention is not just that I get sore, but when I get sore. Sometimes it’s immediate. Sometimes it’s the next morning. And sometimes it shows up two or three days later, long after I’ve forgotten exactly which movement might have caused it. That timing feels different than it used to, and I’ve been curious about what that difference is asking of me.If you want to keep thinking about this with me, you’re welcome to follow me here. https://mybodycan.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com

Releasing Stress When Chronic Pain and Trauma Change How I Move

For a long time, I released stress by moving for a long time.Long walks.Long hikes.Long bike rides.Not fast. Not intense. Just long enough for my nervous system to settle into a rhythm and let whatever needed to move, move. I never thought of it as regulation back then. It was just what felt good. What worked.And then, not so slowly I couldn’t do that.Foot problems. Back problems. Endometriosis. Surgery. Recovery. Vertigo. Unpredictability.It wasn’t one thing. It was a pileup. And somewhere along the way, the main way I knew how to get energy out of my body didn’t work.I didn’t just lose exercise. I lost a pressure valve.When energy has nowhere to goStress doesn’t politely stay in the brain.It shows up in the body whether we invite it or not. And when I couldn’t move the way I used to, the stress didn’t disappear. It just stayed. It pooled. It poked. It pressed.I didn’t always notice it right away. Sometimes it showed up as irritability. Sometimes exhaustion. Sometimes sadness that didn’t seem to belong. Sometimes it was just a sense of being weighed down by something I couldn’t name.The hardest part was not knowing when my body would cooperate.💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com

How to Rebuild a Healthy Nutrition Mindset in Midlife Without Restriction

There’s a particular kind of frustration that shows up in midlife.You’re moving your body.You’re getting stronger.You can feel progress, even if you can’t always see it.And then your eating habits quietly slide sideways.Nothing dramatic. Nothing intentional. Just a slow accumulation of “this is easier,” “this is around,” “this will do for now.” Suddenly, the feedback loop between effort and outcome feels… blurry.That’s the moment I’ve been sitting with lately.Not because I want to “fix” my body, but because I want to understand how easy it is to lose focus on what my body can do when food becomes noisy again.💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com

How Much Exercise Do We Really Need in Midlife

How Long Is Enough Movement?I’ve been thinking a lot about a question that kind of annoys me.How long do we need to work out for it to “count”?There’s something about that framing that feels gross to me. Not because it’s a bad question. It’s a very practical one. Life is busy. Energy is finite. Time is weird in midlife.But the idea that movement only matters if it crosses some invisible threshold feels off.Still, I think about it a lot. Probably because I’m living it.Most of my workouts right now are short. Ten to fifteen minutes. Dumbbells for arms. Resistance bands. Booty bands. The usual suspects if you’ve been following along for a while. I’ve also added some fascia work, though I learned quickly that thirty minutes of that was a little too ambitious for me. So now I’m doing about ten minutes there too.And here’s the thing. I feel progress.Not visually. Not in a mirror. But in what my Body can do. In how it feels during the day. In how it functions when I’m not “working out” at all.That shift is kind of the entire point of this project. It’s not about how I look. It’s about what I can do.But even with that mindset, this question keeps coming up. Especially in conversations with other midlife women.How long do we need to move?How long do we want to move?And are those the same thing?💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com