Fitness During Menopause: Reclaim Your Body and Mind with Sherry Jibb
Fitness during menopause is more than keeping that midlife body strong.
It’s a mindset shift.
Keeping it simple means gaining big wins.
What would it feel like to reclaim and empower your physical self, and enhance your mental outlook?
Look no further than embracing movement, with a DIFFERENT MINDSET from your 20's, and 30's.
This episode is for you if you:
Are stuck in the rut of doing the same thing over and over, fitness wise.
Don't have a clear vision of what fit means in menopause.
Feel like you lost your 25 year old self.
Are still doing endless cardio sessions.
Sherry Jibb of The Healing Place Yoga and Pilates joins me on this episode to discuss the necessary mindset changes that need to accompany the body changes in menopause.
Her tip? Allow grief of your past self.
Then, move into what is possible.
Find Sherry at The Healing Place
Connect with her on Facebook or Instagram
Find Sherry on YouTube
Connect with me, and this episode on my YouTube Channel
Sherry lives in Northeastern Ontario, and is the owner and founder of The Healing Place.
The Healing Space includes a virtual studio where Sherry teaches yoga and Pilates. She also has a six month program she pioneered called the Mindful Midlife Program for Women.
Sherry shares how she has been blessed to be able to do what she loves for over 25 years!
The transcript is below!
Sherry Jibb:
It's been wonderful.
I've been in health and fitness for a long, long time, and it's just been a wonderful journey. Now as I'm changing, and my clients are changing and aging, I work more in that realm than anywhere else.
I'm excited to help women create strong mobile bodies, calm minds, and a positive mindset.
Tanya:
One of the reasons I was drawn to you is because of your philosophy of movement, breath and thought. I would love to hear more about that, how you break the movement, the breath and the thought down. How you pull it together when you work with women.
Sherry Jibb:
This originally came about because I was looking on YouTube, (we were just into the pandemic) and I was looking on YouTube, and I thought, okay, “Well here's a chance Sherry to challenge yourself and go pick another teacher online and just do some stuff that feels good for you.”
I was surfing and it was really hard for me to find something that represented my stage in life and represented my body type.
It wasn't there.
And so I got a little frustrated with that and then I just decided, you know what, I'm just gonna create it.
So I jumped on Zoom and here I am today.
What I find with women and movement is that small steps create really big change. As women, we tend to really complicate things.
It has to be an hour.
We should be doing this amount of strength training.
We should be doing this amount of cardio
We should be, we should be, we should …
But we're also at a very busy stage in our lives where possibly we still have children at home, we have post-secondary children, possibly. We also have aging parents who are in that sandwich generation, and on top of that, throw in some menopause and some perimenopause.
And she's a wild ride some days.
And putting that extra stress on yourself to “should” is, you know, it is not going anywhere good. I like to teach movement for women where they can start with 10 to 20 minutes a day. Keep it small, keep it simple.
Just get connected to your body, especially as your body is shifting and changing because you're changing, right?
You need to connect with how that feels for you, where your energy levels are. So we start with some small movement, really keeping it super simple. And then we move on from there. I have modifications for knees and shoulders and all these kinds of things as our joints are changing.
As our body is aging, right?
And then there is breath. The breath is the gateway to the present moment. It is what brings us right here, right now. It is that one tool that we have with us always that we take for granted, and once we understand the power of the breath to really calm us, we also see that it fuels us.
Breath can change how we're exercising, if we're utilizing that breath. You know, yoga and bloodies is all about that.
And then the power of the breath to calm us, to get out of overwhelm, to calm anxiety, to come into the moment. Pair that with movement, you get to know yourself at a deeper level. Let’s take thought in there.
Women, we are just so great at beating ourselves up. At telling ourselves we're not enough. And it's no wonder, because society, and I know you do this work as well, right? Society tells us we're not enough, we should be this and we're not allowed to age and remain youthful.
I don't know about you, but I like the aging process.
I don't think I'm getting old. I don't have an old mindset. But I do understand that my knees don't quite work. They don’t work like they did 20 years ago.
I get that about, about what's changing in me.
I do things that respect my knees.
When it comes to positive mindset or a positive thought, we really have to take a look at how we're talking to ourselves, because I believe, and what I teach my clients is enough is enough.
How many decades have you beat yourself up?
About not being enough, or I should be fitting into this size clothes, or I should be this and I should be that. Start to treat yourself with the love and respect that you deserve because you deserve that.
Once you become aware of your thoughts, (there's a big awareness piece in my work) once you start to become aware of your thoughts, then you can start to change them.
Look at shifting things. When you bring all that together, you're moving in a respectful, loving way, you're still challenging yourself. Don't kid yourself, right?
If you're gonna create change, you gotta challenge yourself, and you're breathing into that movement. Even if you're in restorative yoga, you're connected into that breath, you're calming the mind and oftentimes people's energy will go up.
You know, when the mind is calmer, there's more space.
We have more space to do things with, and we can focus our energies on other things, not just what we “should” be doing or what size we “should” be.
Tanya
There's so much you've said in there that I want to just dig deeper into the first thing. The “should”.
You're speaking to me right now, because I love movement. I always have, it feeds me, it feeds my soul. But I notice thoughts in my head of,
“I should be doing more of this”
“I should have done this exercise today, but I didn't.”
I wondered what you think about all of us in this aging space as a collective, is this part of us hanging onto our past selves? Are we hanging onto the past result of the hour cardio, the hour weight session at the gym?
Where do you think this comes from? Is it just media? What do you think?
Sherry Jibb
I think it's a combination. I believe that as you're coming into the midlife experience, there is a grieving process that needs to happen.
Where we let go of where we once were. For instance, if I was going on a tropical vacation, I had a six week recipe. That worked every single time.
It would involve a food plan to lean me out. It would involve intervals either outside or on the treadmill that would lean me out, get me “bikini ready”, and I was off to the tropics and it worked like charm every single time. It was my recipe.
And then all of a sudden it didn't work. All of a sudden I didn't have the energy to push myself like that and punish myself like that.
And I just got really tired of doing it.
And so I drew a line in the sand, but there was a grieving process for me where I was like, what do you mean this doesn't work anymore?
This has worked always!
And in that grieving process, I was letting go of who I was and stepping into who I wanted to become.
I asked myself the question, okay, what do I want the next 30 years to look like?
Do I want it to look like me punishing myself to try to get into a size? OR do I want to be strong and mobile and playing with my grandkids and hiking and mountain biking and cross country skiing and snowshoeing and doing the things I love that bring quality of life?
Do I wanna stay stuck in this action of trying to remain a size six or a size eight? Cuz that's a lot of energy.
I decided to just really let that go, but there was definitely a grieving process.
The second thing I did was I cleared out my social media, just like you clear out your closet. And I went through my social media feeds and I got rid of everything that if, on first look, I didn't feel good about, if it was something that triggered a, “oh, look at her, oh, I'm not working hard enough” thought. Gone.
I filled it full of positive social media. So my social media feed feeds me. You are on my social media feed. You feed me, my dear, it just, it feeds my mind, my body, and my spirit, and empowers me.
I am not gonna take my time, my precious time and energy, being disempowered by someone else's post.
Tanya
This is one of the reasons why I was drawn to you because when it comes to movement (and the thought process of my past self —> “maybe I should be doing more cardio and not sitting at my laptop all the time”), I find that I see a lot of younger people who I can't relate to.
I think we need more people who are aging REALISTICALLY and well, and authentically, and giving us these messages of respect.
Respect your knees, respect your body changes. That actually gave me goosebumps because I never really thought of it like that.
Are we really respecting our past selves when we're pushing for “used to work”, when we change anyway.
And I love that purging of the social media feed. I did a podcast episode on it just before January. I do that all the time as well. And it really is freeing, I think, when you're thinking about these buzzwords of food freedom and body love or body positivity, if you're not diversifying and purging your social media feed, much like my 22 year old you get a very narrow example of what health is.
Sherry Jibb
Exactly, and as with social media, you look at something, you get more of that.
The algorithm gives you more of the same. You're in control of your social media feed. You know, you don't have to put up with that. You literally don't.
Tanya
Yes.
You bring up a very interesting point, from a consumer perspective.
(Anybody who's listening or watching) When you purge your social media feed, you are going to change those thoughts that will affect your breath and affect your movement.
If you are practitioner in the wellness space, who is in their fifties, we need to think about what we consume professionally as well. We can think that we don't belong here either. That we are not worthy.
Sherry Jibb
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, that's such a big thing for women.
“I'm not worthy.”
Whether they actually say that to themselves or not, often we see that in action. You could affect yourself by what you're saying, even if you don't think you're saying it to yourself.
Action speaks louder than words. We're at a point in our lives where we need to take care of ourselves, not we should. We NEED to.
We need to, because, what do we want our senior years to look like?
What do you wanna be doing?
That is so important and I always take my clients on that journey.
What do you want it to look like? You get to figure that out and they're doing new research now, telling us that the decisions that we're making now in our midlife years are determining dementia, Alzheimer's, this kind of thing.
We're making those decisions right now based on life.
And, you know, if I can't be doing what I love, I'm not sure I wanna be here. I mean, I live on 160 acres. I have trails all over. I climb. I love that. It brings me joy.
To not be able to do that? Ooh, that's not even something I want to consider.
Tanya
You're speaking to me right now. Same!
The way you're laying this out makes me want ask you, because I know you've been in the fitness industry for a long time: was there a time when past Sherry in the fitness industry switched over into this Sherry who has a very different philosophy of what fitness and mobility and health is
Sherry Jibb
I would say personally menopause.
Menopause for me was surgically induced and I was 48 when I went into menopause. I had let go of running, I think when I was around 47?
I ran for over 20 years and that was my lifeline on top of teaching.
I've been teaching since 2000 and doing yoga since 1998. It has really brought me a lot of freedom and connection.
But when I went into menopause, I was not sleeping. I was experiencing extremely high anxiety levels. I have had anxiety for many decades, but at a level I had never experienced. I was at that point teaching a lot of Ashtanga yoga, which is a very powerful power yoga, and I couldn't.
I just physically couldn't do it.
I did not have the energy.
So I started to dive in and do research in yoga, because that was what I knew. Looking for a way to help me manage menopause. I did a lot of restorative. I got into yin yoga, and I really learned a lot about giving myself the rest that I needed.
There was a big “treat myself with love and respect” there and the push workouts, I just didn't have the energy for.
I went more to reformer Pilates reformer, which I love, and that just felt better for me at that time.
Once I came out of that and I looked at going back to those kind of workouts, I just didn't want to. I wanted a different way and I really looked at, okay, Sherry, what is the most important thing that you want right now?
It was strength and mobility. As well as a calm mind.
And you know, that awareness of how I was talking to myself.
So I took a big, deep journey in there that was the biggest shift for me. Biggest.
Tanya
I think you've pulled out something that a lot of us miss in this stage of life as we go through menopause. That is the slowing down.
We forget, or we're not told, that our hormones are governed by this nervous system. We have our brain, which talks to our other endocrine organs, and when we're pushing, whether it's pushing in career, pushing at the gym, pushing mentally, we are keeping ourself on a very specific nervous system pattern.
That fight or flight pattern.
When we allow ourselves to pull back to discover what sounds like your, your shift was the discovery of what works and the uncovering of what you want going forward.
You allowed yourself to calm down and reset.
That actually is very powerful physically for hormones and I have to remind myself that too. We get into this hustle for everything and it doesn't help us at all.
Sherry Jibb
No. Menopause is a time, we often see, we get those hot flashes and when I work with a client, I ask, what's the trigger for your hot flash?
They say: I don't know.
Okay.
Well, I want you to keep a journal and notice. Does chocolate trigger it? Does red wine trigger it?
I found red wine triggered mine. So I'd give up red wine for four years and drink white.
Post menopausal, I could go back to red with no flashes. It was so interesting.
Just little things like that.
And it's not that I drink a lot of wine, but you know what I, I like to have the odd glass of wine and I didn't wanna give it up. And I'm like, okay, body “How do we shift?” How do we change that?
It's funny to think about, but a lot of women are very disconnected.
It's like, menopause is here, so I'm gonna try and really hard and ignore it, because it's frustrating and it's annoying, and I don't like this.
And society tells us the same thing.
Sometimes our doctors are not as educated as needed in the menopausal world and possibly our spouse is not as educated as we need.
That's, you know, part of our job is as we get to know ourselves, is to educate our partners and the people that we live with. It's a real thing.
Menopause is a real thing. It's not an illusion.
It's not something that if you put by the wayside, it's going to go away. Well, it will go away. But if you look at it in yoga, we look at it as an awakening.
As an energy releasing and awakening.
And if you look at it that way, and really slow yourself down and give yourself even 10 minutes a day in a nice restorative yoga post that you are connecting to your breath, you are gonna learn a lot about yourself.
And I gotta tell your, I don't give a crap factor goes way up too. And that is a beautiful thing to find, right? Don't ignore that!
Tanya
Yes. Yes. And we laugh, but it's so true. How many of us have been giving at our jobs, giving to children, giving to parents, partners, friends? We wake up at this stage in life, and we look around and I hear, I'm sure you hear a lot of women say, What's in it for me? Where am I?
Sherry Jibb
Exactly. And who am I? Who am I? It's such a beautiful time of growth.
I really think of it like the cocoon and the butterfly. I really do, because it's just a beautiful awakening and it's the time of coming into your wisdom, of your knowing, right?
Tanya
I think many women are afraid of that. I don't have these kinds of conversations with my friend group from high school because they would give me that “what?” look.
When you allow yourself to tune into your own being, this takes menopause to the next magical.
Sherry Jibb
Magical. I love it. Absolutely right. Yes, it is a hard, it can be a very hard time. It can be annoying. It can be frustrating. I mean, you're at a meeting and all of a sudden you're crimson and all you wanna do is strip, right?
Because you just had a hot flash and you can't move from this seat and this board table you're sitting at. It can be embarrassing, I totally understand that.
But if you can hold your own hand through it and treat yourself with the love and respect you deserve, you will come out the other side just going, huh, wow.
Bring it.
There are women now coming in, you know, as entrepreneurs. When I went into menopause, I wanted support and help. I couldn't find a lot of it.
Hence, my first summit was born, Happy and Healthy in Midlife, because I wanted to have a conversation to educate women so that they didn't have to feel so alone.
Sometimes women don't even talk about it with each other!
Tanya
You are a hundred percent correct.
I'm glad you brought the summit up, I mentioned it in the intro. How many times have you run your summit?
Sherry Jibb
I'm coming into my fourth.
Tanya
There are not too many summits like Sherry’s. We have a lot of information coming at us with “You need to eat this way” or How to manage your menopausal belly.”
This is completely different.
Sherry Jibb
Absolutely right. I mean, knowledge is power. If we understand what is happening to our bodies, we can make better decisions for ourselves.
Tanya
You brought in another layer though, Sherry. It's the accepting of what is happening to our bodies.
We seem to think that accepting means giving up.
When we actually accept that this is where we are at, we can move to the question: what am I gonna do about it? What am I gonna do next? What will my first step be?
It doesn't have to be, oh well.
Sherry Jibb
Oh, absolutely. And I think there's a huge confusion there for women where, we're seeing things and, and we're, you know, we're looking at that and we're going, okay, well I'm here. I'm not, I accept myself.
But that doesn't mean that acceptance is throwing up the white flag and, oh, yeah, okay. I'm just not going to eat healthy. I'm not gonna exercise. I'm not gonna take care of myself. I'm just aging. Here's the white flag I give up. Not at all. Not at all.
But my thing is, if you wanna lose weight, if you feel like that's something you need to do for you, why? Yes. Are you punishing yourself? Do you wanna get back into these certain jeans because you've always been there?
Or you know, do you need to lose weight for less stress on your joints, right?
Why can you come from a place of love and respect for yourself?
And if you can come from that place, and I know you teach that as well, stepping into weight loss, coming into restriction and punishment and beating yourself up, you're not gonna get a positive outcome there.
You're gonna get that cycle going on again.
And you know what? I'm tired of being in the cycle done. Just done.
Tanya
Yep. Me too. Weight loss, it's a hot topic and non diet is a hot topic. It feels like in some circles, if you say non diet and you add the word weight loss, you've just sort of convoluted the issue.
When you said,Why do you wanna lose weight? I think that's an important first step for anybody who's circling back into January and the diet cycle.
When you look at what's behind it, and you mentioned joints, so I wanna touch on that, a lot of women don't realize that they are searching for love, belonging, acceptance and sexiness.
Sexiness starts within.
That's one of the things we think weight loss will give us.
And beyond someone saying, “Wow, doesn't she look good? Did you see how much weight Susie lost? Do you know what she did? She looks great!”
I used to think, wow, why can't I do that?
And now I think, holy cow, like was Susie not good enough before?
Exactly. One of the things that I really work on is really not making comments about weight anymore.
Tanya
Yes, me too.
Sherry Jibb
In all my emails, in all my social media posts, they start with, Hey, beautiful, or Hey, hey, beautiful. Part of my healing was looking at the mirror and going, good morning beautiful.
When you start your day that way, when someone talks to you that way and says, Hey, beautiful, it's, it's just a positive, you know, reinforcement and it makes you feel good.
Tanya
It does. And why can't you say that to yourself? And if you can'tthat's the question, why can't you say that to yourself?
Sherry, when you talk about weight loss and joints, do you look at it from a perspective as, weight loss is the only thing, or what other things do you bring in to alleviate joint strain for women who are really worried about getting back into that diet cycle?
Sherry Jibb
Oh, absolutely. Movement first. Yeah, movement first and foremost, right? You'll, you'll make space, you'll add more stability to the joint depending on the movement. I mean, Pilates is fabulous for that. Builds the foundation of the house around the spine. Works on joint mobility and strength. Helps create space, makes you feel taller. Works on posture, works on that deep core, that might have been affected through pregnancy, might have been affected through, sitting all the time, cesarian sections, surgery, right?
All these things that we think about that happens to our bodies as women. Movement first and foremost, get yourself moving.
I have a YouTube channel where I have movement on there. They're usually under 15 minutes and things to support your hips and your core and just get you moving that are easy and are designed for us.
Tanya
Yes, and I'm a subscriber, so anybody who hasn't taken on YouTube, start with Sherry because it's short, practical, and applicable movement for our age group.
Whoever you are. It's great. I love it.
Sherry Jibb
Thank you so much. And you find that under the healing place, actually? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up. .
Tanya
I would love to wrap this up, with one more tip for the woman who is just coming to the space of loving the skin that she's in, mid fifties.
Sherry Jibb
Get moving. Get moving. Get moving. Get moving.
Small steps create big change don't keep putting it off because one day that may bite you. Things change pretty quickly and so move your body, get your joints moving, and get to know your body in that way.
Tanya
Thank you. This is a reminder for me today, after I finish recording, to go and do some movement!
No matter how much I do and what kind I do, it's great for our mental health.
Sherry, thanks so much for being on. I would certainly love to have you again. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Sherry Jibb
Oh, it's been so much fun. Thank you so much. A beautiful experience. We could do this all day.