“It is possible for midlife women to flip how they view exercise, learn to love it and lose weight!”
— Helen L. Coons, Ph.D., ABPP
Most women know that exercise is good for them and can lead to weight loss and better health, especially in midlife. So why aren’t women exercising more? Motivation has a lot to do with it, but other factors contribute as well. Most midlife women juggle a heavy load of work, household duties, and caregiving for children and parents. Finding time in busy schedules is challenging and exhaustion often sets in during the evening. Some women are also constrained by not having an affordable, convenient, or safe environment to exercise in. A few lucky women may even have gotten away earlier in life with managing their weight without exercising at all and struggle to get started.
At the Translational Science Symposium on Midlife Wellbeing held in advance of the 2021 Annual Meeting of the North American Menopause Society, expert Dr. Helen L. Coons, Associate Professor and Director of Adult Psychology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, shared with healthcare providers a framework for having conversations with women about finding and sustaining motivation to exercise. Dr. Coons also offered strategies to women to become the exercise enthusiast they always hated.
