There’s something that frequently happens when midlife women gather together. Alongside wonderful conversations about relationships, work, parenting, menopause, ageing parents, health, and other challenges associated with this changing stage of life, there’s another pervasive topic often woven through it all: Weight.
Recently, I had a social night out with a group of women around my age. Thoughtful, intelligent, successful women with full lives and a wide range of experiences. Despite everything these women have achieved and everything they carry, conversations about bodies, food, weight gain, ‘being good’, and feeling unhappy with how they look came up again and again.
Some women spoke about avoiding photographs. Others talked about feeling ‘disgusted’ with their bodies. There were jokes about needing to ‘work off’ the meal or ‘earn’ dessert. There were comments about clothes not fitting the way they used to, and worries about what’s changed with age, menopause, hormones, and lifestyle. And there was plenty of appearance based praise for the thinnest ones amongst the group.
It really struck me just how pervasive the preoccupation with body image is for women in midlife.
For most women, these concerns about weight and shape are not new, but have been recurring throughout their lives. Women who are now in their 40s, 50s and 60s grew up during a time when dieting was normalised, thinness was idealised, and body dissatisfaction was rife. Many of us witnessed our mothers immersed in diet culture, which was everywhere during our childhood years. We saw women absorbed with ‘new’ and ‘revolutionary’ diet programs like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, replacing meals with shakes, diet bars and Limmits biscuits (if-you-know-you-know).
Women from this generation were commonly exposed to messages such as:
- Thinness equals worth
- Weight gain should be feared
- Staying young is important
- We should always be trying to improve or shrink our bodies
- Food needs to be controlled
- Appearance really matters
The years these women grew up in were diet culture prime time – it was everywhere… in magazines, television, conversations between friends, comments from family members, workplace chats, school experiences, medical and healthcare settings. It shaped how women learned to think about themselves, and for many it began a lifetime preoccupation with weight, shape and appearance concerns. For some women, these beliefs have become so ingrained that they no longer feel like cultural or societal messages. They simply feel true.
Body image concern can become particularly intense at midlife. Bodies change A LOT during perimenopause and menopause. Hormonal changes can influence everything from weight distribution, appetite, energy levels, sleep, mood, and metabolism. Most women notice changes in shape, muscle mass, and other aspects of appearance. At the same time, many are juggling significant responsibilities and stresses, leaving little time or energy for self-care, making it difficult to sustain levels of activity they may feel driven to achieve.
For women who have spent years believing their value is strongly connected to their appearance, these changes can be deeply challenging.
Many women describe feeling like they no longer recognise their bodies. Some grieve the body they once had. Others feel shame, frustration, fear, or a loss of control. They may find themselves returning to dieting, restrictive eating, over-exercising, or becoming increasingly preoccupied with food and body image.
This is not because midlife women are vain. It’s because they’ve spent decades living in a culture that’s taught them their appearance matters more than just about anything else. Alongside the significant changes occurring in the midlife years, this is a tricky combination.
Weight stigma can make this even more difficult. Women in larger bodies are often exposed to judgment, unsolicited comments, assumptions about their health, discrimination, and ‘well meaning’ pressure for weight loss. Women in smaller bodies can feel constant pressure to avoid weight gain at all costs. There can be an unspoken belief that changing shape in midlife is a personal failure, rather than a natural part of ageing.
The impact of this is significant.
Body dissatisfaction affects self-esteem, relationships, intimacy, social confidence, and mental health. It can stop women from participating in social activities, from wearing clothes they enjoy, going on holidays, being photographed, swimming, dating, being intimate, exercising, and fully participating in life. It can also contribute to disordered eating and eating disorders in midlife, including binge eating, restrictive eating, compulsive exercise, and cycles of dieting.
Hearing these conversations made me reflect on just how much time and energy women spend thinking about and trying to control their bodies. What was also confronting was just how personally challenged I was by the pervasive appearance focused talk – how hard I had to work to maintain my own body acceptance and avoid the contagion of body dissatisfaction. I’ve been a weight inclusive eating disorder therapist for almost 30 years, and I’ve professionally rallied against the impact of weight stigma for my entire career… and still, this was personally challenging.
The midlife years offer opportunities to question some of the messages we have been carrying for years. To consider where these beliefs came from. To wonder what might be possible if we spent less time trying to change the body we have, and more time caring for it. Yes I can hear the responses now – focusing on adequate nutrition and enjoyable movement are aspects of caring for our bodies. But there’s an important differential. Are we driven to do these things out of a spirit of respect and care for our bodies, or in response to dissatisfaction and a belief that our bodies are ‘wrong’?
When women continue to support and uplift each other, and to celebrate the things that really matter: our values, our kindness, the way we support and care for others, who we are in the world, we can remind each other (and ourselves) that the least important thing about us is our appearance.
Many women have spent decades at war with their bodies. Midlife can be a chance to do things differently.
Article written by Mind Body Well Director and Principal Psychologist, Janet Lowndes.