You’re doing the same things you’ve always done. Eating reasonably well. Getting your walks in. Trying to keep portions in check. And the scale is doing the opposite of what you’d expect.

So you land on the most logical explanation available:

“My metabolism must be broken.”

It’s a reasonable conclusion. But it’s usually the wrong one.

Most of the time, your metabolism isn’t broken. It’s responding exactly the way a human body is designed to respond – to the conditions you’ve been living in for the past several decades. Once you understand what those conditions actually are, a lot of the frustration – and honestly, a lot of the self-blame – starts to make a different kind of sense.

What’s Actually Happening to Your Metabolism

Metabolism doesn’t usually change overnight. What I see most often – with my clients and in the research – is something much quieter. A slow accumulation of small shifts over years and decades that, individually, you’d never notice.

One of the Biggest Is Muscle Loss

Muscle is metabolically active, meaning your body burns energy just to maintain it, even at rest. But many women spent their younger years steering clear of strength training. Not out of laziness. But because the cultural ideal for women’s bodies for a very long time was thin, not strong. A lot of us absorbed the message that lifting weights would make us “bulky” – and quietly avoided it for years.

When you lose muscle over time, your body simply doesn’t need as much fuel to run itself. That’s not dysfunction. That’s physics.

The Second Shift Is Daily Movement

Here I do not mean formal exercise, just the low-grade physical activity that used to fill a day. Walking more, standing more, moving between tasks. Life got more sedentary in ways that are easy to miss. Being mentally busy all day is genuinely exhausting. But the body registers something different than the brain does, and over time, those small reductions in movement add up.

Less muscle. Less daily movement. A body that burns fewer calories than it used to. None of this happened dramatically. It happened gradually – and most women never saw it coming.

The Diet History No One Talks About

Here’s the piece of the metabolism story that doesn’t get nearly enough attention.

If you’re a woman 40+, there’s a reasonable chance that dieting has been part of your life since you were a teenager. And years of cycling between restriction and eating normally has real physiological consequences – not because you did something wrong, but because that’s how the human body works.

There’s a famous piece of research called the Minnesota Starvation Study, conducted in the 1940s. Researchers restricted calories in a group of healthy young men for several months. The results were striking. The men became preoccupied with food – reading cookbooks for entertainment, dreaming about meals, talking about food constantly. Their energy dropped. Their mood destabilized. Their metabolism slowed to conserve resources.

These were psychologically healthy people. The restriction itself produced those effects.

Many women have unknowingly recreated similar conditions – not in one dramatic diet, but across years of the weekday-restriction, weekend-overeating cycle. Careful Monday through Thursday, then something gives on Friday night. Then Monday, start over.

That pattern has a cumulative effect: disrupted hunger signals, loss of lean muscle, lower baseline energy, and a brain that becomes increasingly preoccupied with food. None of that is a character flaw. It’s biology responding to conditions.

Why Eating Less and Less Eventually Backfires

When weight loss stalls – and at some point it almost always does – the instinct is predictable. Cut a little more. Maybe it’s the carbs. Maybe it’s the snacks. Maybe if you stop eating after 7pm, something will shift.

Afterall, we’ve all been taught – eat less and move more is the key. And that’s where things start to backfire.

Your body is not a calorie calculator. It’s designed for your survival. When it senses that food intake keeps dropping, it starts making adjustments: energy decreases, spontaneous movement quietly dials down, muscle breaks down to keep things running, and cravings get louder. You might find yourself standing in the kitchen at 9:30 at night thinking about something crunchy or sweet. Not because you lack discipline. Because your brain believes it’s solving a survival problem.

Eventually something gives – usually on the weekend, or at the end of a long day when the mental brakes finally come off. The scale stalls or creeps up. And you’re back to the same conclusion: “My metabolism must be broken.”

Your body’s job is not helping you fit into your jeans. Its job is keeping you alive. When it believes food is scarce, it becomes very good at protecting what it has. That’s not a malfunction. That’s the system working exactly as designed.

What Recovery Actually Looks Like

Most women are watching one signal: the scale. And if the number doesn’t move fast enough, the assumption is that nothing is happening.

But the body gives us useful information long before weight changes. Hunger becomes more predictable – you’re hungry around meals, you eat, and you’re satisfied for a few hours without white-knuckling your way through the afternoon. Energy steadies out. Cravings quiet down from emergency-level to background noise. Mood evens out. Sleep becomes more consistent.

These are the signals worth paying attention to first. They tell you the body is starting to receive what it needs. Weight loss, when it happens, tends to follow – not lead.

It May Not Be Your Fault. But Here’s What’s Yours

A lot of women land in one of two places. The first is blame: something must be wrong with me, I lack discipline, everyone else manages to figure this out. That’s not true, and it’s not a useful place to work from.

The second is: it’s not my fault – hormones, menopause, genetics, aging. There’s real truth in that. We were handed bad information for decades. Diet culture gave us rules that were never designed to support health. And that matters.

But fault and responsibility are different questions. It may not be your fault that you ended up here. What happens next is still yours to decide. And the good news is that the body is genuinely responsive when you start supporting it properly. Not overnight. But steadily.

What Actually Helps

Here’s the thing most women already know: eating enough nourishing food, moving regularly, sleeping well, and managing stress are the foundations of metabolic health. None of that is new information.

The gap isn’t knowing what to do. The gap is doing it consistently in a real, messy life – especially when the week goes sideways, stress is high, and the old patterns are right there waiting.

There’s also something worth noting about how you do those things. Two people can follow the exact same habits and have completely different experiences depending on whether they’re approaching their body as something to punish into compliance – or something to support. That shift in orientation changes more than you’d expect.

Find Out What’s Actually Getting in Your Way

If you know what healthy habits look like but can’t seem to make them stick, the problem isn’t information. It’s the specific pattern underneath your follow-through. And that pattern is different for everyone.

My quiz, Why Do Your Healthy Habits Keep Falling Apart?, takes about 3 minutes. It identifies your specific pattern and tells you what to address first. Results go straight to your inbox. No generic advice. Just a clear picture of what’s actually getting in your way.

Because once you can see the pattern, it stops feeling like a problem with your DNA – something that is part of your fiber – and it starts feeling like a problem you can actually solve. Because you can.

I’d Love to Hear from You in the Comments:

When it comes to your health habits, where do things tend to fall apart? Is it getting started, staying consistent when life gets busy, or something else entirely?

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There is something delightfully ironic about commencement speeches. At the exact moment people are least interested in sitting still and listening, some notable steps up to a podium and delivers a carefully crafted sermon about life, purpose, resilience, and possibility.

After spending more than a decade of my midlife career as a school administrator, I have attended enough graduation ceremonies to earn an honorary doctorate in uncomfortable folding chairs and ceremonial polyester. I have heard the soaring metaphors, the inspirational anecdotes, the encouragement to strive, and endless references to “journeys.”

Most graduates, understandably, are too busy thinking about dinner reservations, student loan payments, or where the after-party is happening to fully absorb the wisdom being handed down from the stage.

But lately, I’ve started to think commencement speeches may have been written for women over 60 all along.

Maybe This Is Our Real Graduation

If there is any group of people standing on the edge of a wide-open, uncertain, exciting next chapter, it’s us. Women in later life are reinventing careers, leaving marriages, launching businesses, downsizing homes, traveling solo, dating again, relocating, caregiving, retiring, unretiring, or simply asking themselves the big question that feels both thrilling and terrifying:

What now?

The Surprisingly Poignant Wisdom of Roger Federer

That question hit me recently while researching a story about retirement reinvention and stumbling across Roger Federer’s 2024 commencement address at Dartmouth College.

There he was, arguably one of the greatest athletes of all time, admitting that he, too, was figuring out his next steps. “Like you,” he told graduates, “I’m figuring out what that is.”

Honestly? That may be the most comforting thing any post-60 woman can hear, because somewhere along the line, society decided that older women are supposed to have arrived already. We’re expected to know exactly who we are, what we want, how to do Medicare enrollment without tearing out our hair, and what we should wear to stay stylish in the process.

Many of us are not winding down. Instead we are waking up to a wide-open landscape, and that’s exactly why commencement speeches suddenly resonate with us. When we listen through the lens of a woman entering her next act, the messages become surprisingly relevant. The themes are timeless: choose courage over comfort, remain curious, stay connected, expect setbacks, keep growing anyway.

Why “Yes… And” Feels Like the Perfect Midlife Philosophy

In her 2012 address at Smith College, Jane Lynch spoke about the improvisational principle of “Yes… and.” The idea is simple: accept what life hands you, and then build from it. Don’t resist. Don’t deny. And definitely don’t spend years wishing things had gone differently.

“Yes… and.”

It feels like the perfect philosophy for later life. Yes, our lives may not look exactly as we imagined at 25… and maybe that’s not a tragedy. Maybe the divorce becomes freedom. Maybe the empty nest becomes possibility. Maybe the layoff becomes the business idea. Maybe the loss becomes the thing that finally teaches us how precious time really is. Lynch’s advice feels especially meaningful for women stepping into unfamiliar territory after decades spent taking care of everyone else first.

Reinvention Requires a Little Foolishness

Starting over requires a willingness to look foolish occasionally, which is unfortunate because many of us spent our 50s trying very hard not to.

Which brings us, naturally, to Steve Jobs and his legendary 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, which remains iconic for one enduring line: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

That line lands differently after 60, too.

Because being “foolish” at this age might mean signing up for the painting class, launching the Substack, wearing the sequined skirt, taking the solo trip, learning pickleball, falling in love again, or admitting you still want more from life.

And hunger? That’s not something to apologize for but instead is an invitation to become more ourselves than ever before?

More curious.

More expressive.

More daring.

More alive.

Maybe that’s why commencement speeches resonate now in a way they never did at 22. At this age, we understand that reinvention is not a straight line. We know failure is both inevitable and survivable. We appreciate the value of friendships, resilience, humor, and good habits around wearing sunscreen and making movement part of our daily routine. Mostly, we understand that possibility does not have an expiration date, and neither do we.

So perhaps we should start treating this chapter like our own private commencement ceremony – minus the polyester robes and ridiculous caps.

That deserves a standing ovation.

A Few More Commencement Speeches Worth Revisiting

• Kerry Washington — George Washington University, 2013
• Michelle Yeoh — Harvard Law School, 2023
• Melinda French Gates — Stanford University, 2024

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Which commencement speeches have held the most meaning for you? Have you made a graduation speech?

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Last Thursday night, I found myself at a hotel bar at 10pm. I was very proud of myself for staying up so late. I know, I know – retirement means I don’t have to get up early. But the truth is, I’m an early-to-bed kind of person.

I was out with my cousin, who was visiting from Boston and is significantly more of a night owl than I am. We’d been to a comedy club. And I didn’t want to disappoint her by getting home too early. So I suggested one cocktail at a swanky nearby hotel, and off we went.

When we arrived at the bar, I noticed them immediately: a large group of people from a conference. You could tell because they were still wearing name tags, all from the same organization. Different ages, different backgrounds, all animated and talking over each other in that particular way people do at the end of a conference day – full of ideas, loose from the cocktails, glad to finally be out of the session rooms.

The women had clustered together at one end of the bar. The men were at the other. Everyone was in full networking mode.

I watched them for a moment and felt something I didn’t quite expect.

Not envy, exactly. Not nostalgia. I found myself thinking about all the conferences I used to attend – the nice hotels in fun cities, the cocktail hours I always dreaded walking into, the colleagues from across the country I’d see once or twice a year. And I realized: I don’t miss the conferences. But I do miss what they gave me.

That distinction took me a while to understand.

The Social Connection That Came with the Job

When I worked at a university, I traveled to conferences regularly. Over the years, I became friendly with colleagues from across the country. We’d catch up on each other’s projects. We’d hear about each other’s families. We’d have dinner and laugh and feel, for a few days, like we were part of a larger community of people who cared about the same things.

Back at the college, there were the people I saw daily – teammates and collaborators I’d spent years working alongside. I knew what stage their kids were in. Eventually what colleges the kids were applying to. I knew who was going through something hard and who had just gotten exciting news. That daily contact felt genuinely good. The kind of easy, built-in connection that doesn’t require any effort to maintain. It’s just… there.

What I didn’t fully understand until I retired was how many of my daily social needs had been met by my job – the sense of being known, of seeing familiar faces, of having people around who were glad to see me – without me having to seek any of it out.

Looking back now, almost a year into retirement, I can see honestly that I don’t have friendships with most of those people anymore. I enjoyed the relationships while I had them. I liked those people. But the relationships were situational. They existed because we worked together, traveled together, shared a professional context. Like being friendly with a neighbor – warm and real while it lasts, but not something that typically survives a move.

That’s not a criticism of those relationships. It’s just an accurate description of what they were.

Why This Happens — and Why No One Warns You

Repeated contact with the same people tends to create liking – even without deep conversations or shared values. Simply being around the same people regularly – in meetings, in the hallway, at the coffee machine – builds a sense of familiarity and warmth over time.

Work supplied this effortlessly. And along with it came something else that’s easy to overlook: the everyday, low-key moments that make you feel like you exist in someone else’s world. The colleague who always says good morning. The team that knows the inside joke. The person who asks how the weekend was and actually remembers what you said. These aren’t deep friendships. But they create a steady sense of being seen. Work provided them for free.

Studies show that retirement itself doesn’t cause loneliness. But it removes the structure that was providing connection – and eventually we figure out which relationships were deep enough to survive outside of work.

Most of us don’t realize how much of our daily social connection had been built into work – until the workday disappears.

The Checkout Clerk Moment

I’ll be honest about something that’s a little hard to admit.

There are days in retirement when I make more effort to chat with the checkout clerk at the supermarket than I ever did when I was working – because sometimes that’s my main social interaction outside of time with my husband.

If it sounds a little sad, it is a little sad. And I think it’s more common than most of us let on.

Retirement hands you unstructured time where the workday used to be. And what you discover, standing in that open space, is exactly how much of your daily sense of connection was built into the schedule.

What Chosen Connection Actually Looks Like

A few months into retirement, two friends had the idea to bring together a group of women they thought might enjoy each other. The five of us started getting together for dinner once a month. We named ourselves after the first initial of each of our names and call ourselves the WACKE Pack.

We’re slowly getting to know each other. We’ve made art together, gone on e-bike rides, played games. There’s an innocence and hopefulness to it – women in their late 50s and 60s intentionally building friendship at this stage of life.

What we’re building is different. It’s slower. It requires more initiation. But there’s something more solid about it – because we actually picked each other. Nobody has to be there.

A study found it takes roughly 50 hours of time together to move from acquaintance to casual friend, and more than 200 hours to develop a close friendship. Here’s the part worth sitting with: hours spent working together don’t count as much. The work time built familiarity – but it wasn’t accumulating toward the kind of closeness that outlasts a career.

That explains a lot, doesn’t it?

Where to Start

A few things have helped me and the women I work with:

Start with an Honest Audit

Look at the connections in your life right now. Which ones exist because of proximity or circumstance – a job, a neighborhood, an organization? And which ones would survive a retirement or a major life change? That gap is worth knowing. It’s not a depressing exercise. It’s a clarifying one.

Don’t Wait Until You Feel the Absence

The best time to build new connections is before you feel acutely lonely. If you’re still working, start thinking now about which relationships you’d want to invest in and carry forward.

Start Low-Stakes

You don’t need to find your new best friend immediately. A class, a club, a regular volunteer commitment – anything that creates repeated contact with the same people over time. The WACKE Pack didn’t become close overnight. We’re still becoming.

Let Someone Connect You

One of the most effective ways to meet people at this stage is through someone who already knows you both. Tell the people in your life that you’re looking. That’s how the WACKE Pack started for me. It changed things.

The connection you want in this chapter isn’t going to arrive automatically the way it did at work. But it can be built — deliberately, at whatever pace feels right for you.

If you’re also navigating the identity questions that come with this transition – the “who am I now that work isn’t defining me?” piece — I wrote about that too: Why Retirement Feels Harder for High-Achieving Women.

A First Step

This chapter takes time to design. And the social piece is one of the most underestimated parts.

If you’re navigating this – whether you’ve recently retired, you’re still deciding, or you’re a few years in and still finding your footing – my free Retirement Vision Starter Kit is a good place to begin. It’s a short, guided reflection to help you get honest about what you want this next chapter to actually feel like – in your relationships, your daily life, your sense of purpose, and the experiences that make you feel most alive. It takes about 20 minutes, and most women tell me something shifts just from working through it.

Here’s what’s inside:

• A guided reflection on how you want to feel in your relationships – and what’s missing.
• Questions to help you name what you want more of and what first step might get you there.
• Space to get clear on your daily rhythms, sense of purpose, and what a genuinely fulfilling day looks like.
• A section to capture the vision you’re starting to build.

Download the free Retirement Vision Starter Kit

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What’s one social connection from your working years you miss more than you expected – or one you’ve been intentionally trying to build since retiring? I’d love to hear in the comments.

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