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This week's issue of Feisty 40+ is presented by Hettas! Use code STAYFEISTY at hettas.com for 20% off.
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🛌 4 Core Behaviors to Improve Sleep & Fitness
Circadian rhythms were a big throughline of the body composition and cardiovascular health sessions at this year’s Menopause Society Meeting. The take home: the more you can align your sleep and meals to your natural circadian rhythms, the better.
In fact, Brooke Aggarwal, EdD, explained that women could lower inflammation and visceral belly fat by reducing the variability in their sleep and wake timing (aka going to bed and waking up about the same time every day), even if they didn’t actually sleep more. Same goes for syncing up your meal times. Aligning mealtimes with the body’s natural rhythms is better for metabolic health. Research shows having an early breakfast
and earlier dinner improves blood glucose while eating later is associated with higher risk of metabolic disorders.
Adding to the circadian rhythm conversation is a new study published in the journal Sleep, titled Four Core Circadian Behaviors That Improve Cardiorespiratory Fitness Through Consistent Sleep, which set out to determine if simple circadian-alignment habits — light, meal timing, aerobic activity, and breathing — could collectively stabilize sleep–wake timing and thereby improve HRV, resting HR, and overall recovery. Spoiler: the answer is yes.
What are Circadian Rhythms?
Before we dig into the study, let’s do a quick circadian rhythm 101. Your circadian rhythm is your body’s 24-hour internal clock that regulates when you feel awake, sleepy, hungry, energetic, and ready (or not) to perform. It coordinates your core body temperature, hormone release, digestion, heart rate, and metabolism to your sleep-wake cycle.
The master clock resides in the brain and takes its main cues from light. You also have peripheral clocks in your liver, muscles, gut, and other body tissues that also sync to eating, activity, and rest.
When your clocks are aligned–i.e. your light exposure, activity, meals, and sleep follow a consistent pattern–your physiology runs smoothly. When they get out of sync because of scattered meals, late night eating, inconsistent sleep and waking times, and poor daylight exposure, you end up with circadian misalignment.
Syncing Up Your Clocks
Back to the study. In a nutshell, the folks at WHOOP held a Core Four Challenge (which was their active intervention) where users who joined (38,838 total; 34% female) were asked to change behaviors (as seen in the chart below) to align with their circadian rhythms for 4 weeks and the findings were compared with demographically matched WHOOP users who didn’t join.
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The result? Participants who increased engagement in the four circadian-alignment behaviours showed improved sleep consistency (i.e., going to bed / waking up in a more regular pattern) compared to matched controls. Improved sleep consistency was in turn associated with improved cardiovascular/fitness physiology: lower resting heart rate (RHR) and higher heart-rate variability (HRV) (a marker of parasympathetic tone).
Of the four, morning light and consistent meal timing had the most consistent, strong effect. So start with sunlight and consistent eating timing; they directly reset circadian rhythm and improve sleep predictability.
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Turn down the winter blues and turn up the winter cycling
Winter training can feel isolating. Training apps spit out workouts but don’t explain the why or account for everything you’re balancing in life as a woman — from hormones to childcare to work. Coaching is expensive and everywhere you look, there is conflicting information on training, strength and nutrition.
That's why we launched Winter Training for Cyclists, a 16-week program that gives you structured workouts, practical education and community support so that you can start the 2026 season on the right foot.
Learn more and sign up here! Get $50 off with the code HITPLAY.
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💊 The Supplement Cabinet
Antioxidants were all the rage back in the late nineties and early aughts. We thought of free radicals as marauding molecular pirates that had to be neutralized by free radical fighters (aka antioxidants like vitamin C). Now we know better.
Scientists see reactive oxygen species (ROS, what we call free radicals) not only as damaging, but also as essential signaling molecules. They help regulate mitochondrial biogenesis, muscle adaptation to exercise, immune responses, and cellular repair. Too much antioxidant supplementation can actually blunt these beneficial signals — for instance, high-dose vitamin C and E can impair training adaptations.
So, routinely popping 1,000 mg of vitamin C is counterproductive. But there may still be a place for vitamin C in the supplement cabinet, mainly when your immune system is under stress. Vitamin C accumulates in immune cells and gets depleted during infection. So short term use post surgery or during periods of high physiological stress may aid recovery.
There’s also a bit of evidence that vitamin C may help prevent and shorten respiratory infections. So, short term use (i.e., 100–200 mg/day for a few days) when you’re traveling or in a state of high physiological stress may make sense, especially if you’re short on produce (as is often the case during travel).
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🔥 Feisty Badass Athlete of the Week Goes To…
Hands up for Great Britain's Sarah Webster, 46, who set a women’s 24-hour world record last month at the International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU) 2025 World Championships by running a distance of 278.622 kilometers (173.127 miles) 🤯.
As reported in Marathon Handbook, her incredible feat added more than 8 kilometers (about 5+ miles) to the existing record. The competition took place on a 1.5k loop, where she clocked 185 laps and one partial lap in the final minutes.
Amazing effort Sarah! Thanks for the inspiration.
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👉Want a chance to be featured? Click here to share your badass story
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Treat your feet 👟
For decades, running shoes have been researched, tested, and designed for men. Brands have relied on the shrink-it and pink-it approach to sell male shoes to female customers.
But women’s feet differ from men’s in numerous ways. We have increased toe splay, higher arches, a more narrow heel, a lower ankle bone, upward angled toenails, and a rounded instep that is smaller in circumference.
That’s where Hettas comes in.
Hettas has unlocked the science behind women’s biomechanics through dedicated research and creates running shoes specifically designed for women. Every feature is engineered to give you more power, not more problems.
Try Hettas out for yourself today! Just go to Hettas.com and use the code STAYFEISTY for 20% .
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👩🏻💻 Hit Play Research Round Up
We spend a lot of time scouring the latest research for news you can use to stay strong and feisty forever. Here’s what’s making waves this week:
🏋🏻♀️ Heavy lifting gives your brain a boost. A new study comparing single sessions of high- vs. moderate-load resistance training found that lifting heavier weights acutely sharpens focus, mental control, and working memory. These quick cognitive gains likely come from short-lived increases in brain oxygenation and neural activation. The effect peaks in the first 45 minutes after lifting—a mental spark, not a full rewiring. But keep strength training regularly, and those momentary boosts may add up to lasting cognitive benefits, as shown in
longer-term research
🏃🏿♀️➡️ Exercise significantly improves both sleep and mental health in peri and postmenopausal women. A systematic review of randomized controlled trials in Menopause found that nearly any type of exercise, including aerobic, yoga, Pilates, resistance training, and stretching has a significant positive impact on quality of sleep and psychological well-being, with aerobic exercise showing the most consistent benefits.
🍳 Skipping breakfast linked to higher risk of metabolic syndrome. Data from more than 118,000 adults from nine studies found that skipping breakfast was associated with increased risk of abdominal obesity, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol. The authors note that skipping breakfast can disrupt your circadian rhythms (which, as we talked about earlier, are pretty important!) and lead to generally less favorable eating patterns.
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What's On My Mind...
Social media. (I know it’s on my mind a lot here in this little space.) I find that it’s become an almost unbearable space some days with big names in menopause trying to take each other down. That’s not good for us, because stress isn’t good for us. Research shows midlife women are especially vulnerable to social media’s negative effects on stress and well-being. So while I’m grateful to have you following Feisty Menopause, don’t forget to take breaks—get outside, move your body, soak up some sunshine, and enjoy real-life stress relief.
🎧 Listen to this week's episode of Hit Play Not Pause - Active Release Techniques, Massage & Musculoskeletal Health in Menopause
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Feisty 40+ is written by Selene Yeager. Edited by Maya Smith. Ads by Ella Hnatyshyn
Live Feisty Media Corporation, 2031 Store St #30, Victoria, British Columbia V8T 5L9, Canada
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