You probably do not think very much about your balance when it is working well. You step off a kerb while talking, pull on a pair of trousers standing on one leg, reach into a high cupboard, turn quickly when somebody calls your name and walk across uneven ground without consciously calculating a...

There is a familiar moment many women recognise. You stand up after a long meeting and immediately reach for the back of your thighs. You get out of the car and instinctively stretch your hips. Your shoulders feel tight after a day at the laptop, so you pull one arm across your chest and hope it wil...

You can exercise regularly and still stand up from your desk at five o’clock feeling as though your hips have forgotten how to move. The first few steps feel stiff, your lower back may complain, and after a long drive or train journey you find yourself instinctively stretching before you can walk co...

You stretch. You go to yoga. You can still touch your toes, perhaps quite comfortably. Yet your knees complain when you get out of a low chair, your hips feel stiff after sitting through meetings, your shoulders grumble when you reach overhead and the first few steps after getting out of the car fee...

Why Your Body Feels Stiffer in Midlife Even When You Still Exercise

You can be doing many of the “right” things and still notice that your body does not move quite as freely as it used to. Perhaps you walk several times a week, go to the gym, practise yoga or make a genuine effort to stay active. Y...

There is a particular kind of optimism that happens on a Sunday evening. You decide that this will be the week you go to bed earlier, exercise every morning, prepare proper lunches, drink more water and finally stop feeling exhausted by Thursday. Then Monday arrives. A meeting overruns, somebody ...

There are days in midlife when the moment you finish work, all you want to do is sit down. You close the laptop, move to the sofa and tell yourself you are too tired to walk, stretch or exercise. Yet an hour later, you do not necessarily feel restored. You may actually feel flatter, stiffer and even...

You can spend eight hours sitting at a desk and still arrive home feeling as though you have run a marathon. It seems contradictory. You have not been lifting, running or doing anything obviously physical, yet by five o’clock your shoulders ache, your hips feel stiff, your eyes are tired and the ide...

One of the more frustrating changes many women notice in midlife is not simply feeling tired. It is not knowing which version of your energy you are going to wake up with. 

One day you can manage a full working day, fit in a workout, cook dinner and still feel reasonably capable in the evening. Two...

There is a moment many working women recognise. You have made it through the morning, dealt with meetings, answered emails and kept everything moving, but by mid-afternoon it feels as though your energy has simply disappeared. Your concentration slips, exercise later feels increasingly unlikely a...

You start the day reasonably well. The morning disappears into emails, meetings, deadlines and other people's priorities, and for several hours you manage perfectly well. Then somewhere around two-thirty or three o'clock, it happens. Your concentration begins to fade, your eyes feel heavy and even a...

There is a kind of tiredness that many women begin to notice in their 40s and 50s that is surprisingly difficult to describe. You may not feel ill, and you may still be getting through your working day, attending meetings, looking after other people and keeping everything moving. Yet you wake withou...