The Menopause Journey: What I Learned from Selene Yeager

by Dr. Jodie Lawston

The Menopause Journey: What I Learned from Selene Yeager

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Selene Yeager. If you don’t already know her work, Selene is truly a force of nature: host of the Hit Play Not Pause podcast, content manager at Feisty Menopause, a best-selling professional health science writer, NASM certified personal trainer, Pn1 certified nutrition coach, GGS Menopause Coaching Specialist, Gravel Cycling Hall of Famer, and former All-American and Ironman triathlete.

She’s also the author of several well-worn books on my own shelf, including Ride Your Way Lean and Every Woman’s Guide to Cycling, and co-author—alongside Dr. Stacy Sims—of ROAR and Next Level, both staples for women endurance athletes looking to train smarter across life stages.

I reached out to Selene because of the work she’s done to pull menopause out of the shadows and into the mainstream, especially for athletes and active women. I wanted to understand how this transition affected her not just as an athlete and coach, but as a human navigating change, identity, and longevity in sport. This conversation was highly personal: I’m in perimenopause, most of my women friends are in it, and yet so few of us were prepared for just how all-encompassing this journey can be.

When Your Body Stops Feeling Familiar

The journey leading up to menopause—known as perimenopause—can last for years and affect nearly every system in the body. It doesn’t just impact how we train; fluctuating hormones can impact how we feel, think, sleep, and move through the world.

Mentally, that can look like anxiety, brain fog, mood swings, depression, or the unsettling “out-of-body” feeling many women describe. Physically, symptoms range from hot flashes, night sweats, and sleep disturbances to changes in body composition, decreased strength and power, and longer recovery times. For endurance athletes, this can show up as workouts that suddenly feel harder, inconsistent performance, or the sense that your body isn’t responding the way it used to, even when training and nutrition haven’t changed (Both the physical and mental effects are quite wide-ranging and unpredictable; for a full list of symptoms, The Menopause Society is a great resource, or check out Feisty for their Perimenopause Starter Pack class on navigating the symptoms of perimenopause).

My Own Wake-Up Call

I first noticed something was off around age 46, when I began struggling with what felt like a very deep depression and a loss of motivation to ride my bike—something I had always loved. At the time, I didn’t connect it to perimenopause. I had heard the term, but I actually knew very little about perimenopause.

I remember walking my dogs with a friend and telling her how depressed and unmotivated I felt, which scared me as up until that point, I had always been achievement-oriented and had not experienced any prolonged depression. She gently suggested it might be hormonal. That idea didn’t fully register; I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I had never thought much about how hormones affected me at all. I pushed on the best I could, forcing myself to train, even when life felt dark and I felt depleted. Intense bouts of anxiety followed, particularly at night, when I’d lie awake for hours worrying about everything under the sun. Then, inexplicably, I’d feel fine for a short while, only to have the cycle repeat.

It's taken nearly two years—and many conversations with other women, hours listening to Selene’s podcast, and support from a functional medicine doctor—to really understand that what I have been experiencing is, indeed, hormonally driven. While the depression has eased, I’ve continued to navigate anxiety, brain fog, fatigue, strange (and sometimes terrifying) out-of-body experiences, dizziness, and prolonged periods of low motivation. Understanding what is happening to my body, however, has given me a framework with which to understand this period of my life.

Selene’s Story: Naming the Chaos

Like many women, Selene was in perimenopause long before she knew it. For her, it first showed up as anxiety, which is often one of the earliest and least recognized symptoms of perimenopause. Around age 46, she began waking up at 2 or 3 a.m. with a racing heart and a sense of impending doom. Night sweats followed, and anxiety amplified some OCD tendencies she’d always managed well. Although Selene was aware of the term “perimenopause,” at that time, people typically only talked about it in terms of belly fat and hot flashes, not anxiety. She assumed she was “coming undone” (a feeling I have had many times over the past two years as well) until she noticed something else: her power on the bike suddenly dropped. Body composition changes also began, and they happened too quickly to chalk up to aging alone.

Around this same time, she was talking with Dr. Stacy Sims about writing another book, as there was already demand for a menopause-focused follow-up to ROAR. Dr. Sims helped her see that what she was experiencing was hormonally driven. Even before taking action, simply knowing what was happening helped. In a sense, naming the experience removed the fear of the unknown.

What Helped: Strength, Stability, and a Shift in Perspective

One of the most impactful changes Selene made was adding heavy strength training to her routine. By dialing back training volume and lifting heavier, she gradually felt her power return. Strength training didn’t just support performance—it restored a sense of agency in her body.

On the other side of the “messy, painful rebirth” (as Selene aptly described it) of perimenopause, Selene described a return to predictability. Moods stabilize. Emotional volatility eases. While the body may perform differently than it did pre-menopause, how you show up—on the bike, in the gym, on your run, or in any of your activities—becomes far more consistent again.

Perhaps the biggest shift, though, was perspective. Selene noted that one of the biggest changes she experienced was that she stopped caring so much about other people’s perceptions and expectations: “I do think the quieting of the hormones that make you care about what everybody thinks of you, it really does change you. You are not as concerned with the perceptions, or trying to please people, or trying to live up to the expectations or your perceived expectations of people.”

There is science to back this up; neurological and hormonal shifts, as women navigate the menopause transition, mean we care far less about people-pleasing. While part of this is the aging process—which challenges us in midlife to reflect on where our lives have been and where they are going—the menopause journey “really is a transition into another chapter,” Selene stated. “And in many ways, it’s a great chapter.”

Living Forward

Today, Selene still loves hard things, but her definition of success has shifted. She’s not drawn to podiums so much as to big adventures, bikepacking, trail running, and challenges that excite her. Strength training remains a cornerstone of her routine, supporting not just performance, but brain health, bone density, cardiovascular health, and longevity.

Her message to women is clear: don’t be afraid. Learn what’s happening. Lift heavy. And stop stealing your own joy by living in the rearview mirror.

“There’s all kinds of rad stuff ahead of you,” she said. “You just have to look forward and scan the horizon for what excites you. There’s lots of life ahead. Live forward.”

Key Take-Aways

The menopause journey isn’t the end of performance. It’s recalibration.
If you’re in perimenopause or suspect you might be, feeling “off” doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means your body is changing, and it needs different support.

Train smarter, not harder.
Many women benefit from consistent strength training. Lifting heavy supports muscle, bone density, brain health, and power—especially as estrogen declines. In my case, to deal with the lack of motivation that pops up, I also now change my workouts to where I ride my bike but I do not force myself to do it everyday. I instead run, weight train, hike with my dogs, and even toss in some stand up paddle boarding. I have found that challenging myself differently helps increase my motivation, keeps me fit, and keeps me interested in the activities I am doing.

Fuel like it matters
Hormonal changes can increase protein and carbohydrate needs while reducing tolerance for underfueling. Stable energy supports mood, recovery, and training consistency.

Expect change—but not decline.
Your body may not show up the same way every day during perimenopause, but that unpredictability doesn’t last forever. Once you are on the other side of it, your body stabilizes and you can build forward with it.

For more information, visit these sites:

Feisty: https://feisty.co

The Menopause Society: https://menopause.org

The We Do Not Care Club, run by Melani Sanders, is a must-join club for getting through this time in our lives: https://wedonotcareclub.com/join-the-club/ 

Dr. Jodie Lawston is a tenured professor at California State University, San Marcos. She has published articles and books in the field of sociology and gender studies. A lifetime athlete, she started cycling in 2010, quickly entered the world of ultra cycling and raced both the Silver State 508 and Hoodoo 500. She now rides road and the mountain bike for fitness and fun.