This post is aimed to all women who is aspiring to change their body composition and improve their health at the same time. I want to talk to you about my experiences and knowledge I have collected throughout the years when it comes to this subject.

Women are not little men

Firstly – do not compare yourself to men and their body composition and health journey. Men has a completely different hormonal makeup then women. Women are not little men. Women have the ability to give birth to a child. And mother nature has outlined it so that we should carry more fat on our bodies to be able to produce new life. To reproduce is one of the most important things that evolution strives towards. So you need to work with mother nature and not against her to be able to get your body composition and health moving in the right direction.

Increased sensitivity to stress

As we age as women, we are also more sensitive to stress and at a higher risk of developing autoimmune conditions. Such as illness’ connected to the thyroid for example. These types of diseases often pop up when we go through big hormonal changes such as puberty, after pregnancy and menopause. The reason why is once again because of our ability to host another living being inside of us. Our immune system is built up differently to be able to tolerate an external host inside our bodies. But if we are subjected to high chronic stress, we run the risk of our immune system “turning against us”. So to reduce stress is one of the key factors if you also at the same time as you age, strive to keep those extra kg off of your body.

Less effective at nutritional uptake and decreased metabolism

Another thing working against us is that we get less and less effective at picking up nutrients from our food. At the same time we need less calories to keep the same weight as our metabolism decrease. Here is where I believe that fasting can be a good tool. But you need the right knowledge on how to use this tool as a woman. Fasting is an hormetic stressor so it needs to be treated with respect in regard to our menstrual cycle and hormonal changes. Fasting helps us to become insulin sensitive and once we open up our eating window our cells are primed to effectively absorb all the nutrients coming into our bodies. To read more about your first meal after a fast please go hit.. Fasting also opens up opportunities for us to reduce our calories in “the right way” without our bodies perceiving that we are under some kind of starvation. The reason for this is because of – yes you guessed it – hormones. To read more about my mindset with fasting please go hit..

Patience is a virtue

As a woman you therefore need to equipment yourself with a tremendous patience. You cannot expect to see results in the same manner as guys. You need to think in the term of years not months to really see a difference. And the closer you get to your optimum weight the harder it is to adjust those final kilos. With this timeframe in mind you then probably realize that this is not a quick fix, not at all, you need to find a way of living (lifestyle) which is sustainable to you. Something you can keep on doing day by day, week by week, month by month and year after year.

My health journey

Now let me talk about my health journey for a second. I am a woman who is over 40 years old, and I am also a mother. I have worked myself through an exhaustion back in 2016. You can imagine the hormonal imbalance that I have been through with all of these factors. From age 36 my hormones started to change quite drastically ,and I was less resilient to stress. And with a life that already had too much stress in it – this sent me in to an exhaustion.

Engineer at heart

I am an engineer at heart, and I realized at that point that I had to do something about my situation. So I started to learn in my free time about stress and hormonal imbalances and what actually constitutes a good health. From that point on I have made changes to my lifestyle which mainly involved food, training, and recovery. My goal is for my life to have as much positive stress as possible and minimize the negative. Positive stress you get from training for example or challenging but at the same time doable tasks at work. We need the positive stress to tell our body that it needs to adapt to a new situation. If we do not send signals to our muscles that they need to get bigger for example, then we will not get any bigger muscles. That is just how mother nature works. Challenging tasks at work gives us stimulation and personal development in other aspects which also promotes a good health.

De fyra hälsopelarna

As the years have passed, I have evolved my thinking around health to be based on four pillars. To read more about the four pillars of health you can go hit..

So to all women out there, do not lose your hope. The changes will come if you are persistent and focus on the pillars of health from a female perspective!

Wishing you a great day! 😀