What Eleven Years of Practice Has Taught Me About Behaviour Change (and Why It Matters More Than Ever in Perimenopause)
Eleven years into practice, if there's one thing I've learned above all else, it's this: the plans that look the most impressive on paper are rarely the ones that last - and this becomes even more true during perimenopause, when energy, mood and weight can all shift at once, often for reasons that have nothing to do with willpower.
Why overhauls don't work, especially now
I understand the appeal of the overhaul. A client comes to me overwhelmed - low energy, mood swings, weight that's changed despite nothing else changing - wanting a total reset: new diet, new supplements, new routine, all starting now. And it works, for a while. The results in those first few weeks can be genuinely impressive. But a huge overhaul is also a huge amount to sustain, and sustaining it depends on conditions that don't hold forever - motivation stays high, life stays calm, hormones stay predictable. During perimenopause, none of those things can be relied on. The moment any of them shifts, the whole plan can start to feel like too much. What follows is often an all-or-nothing mentality: if I can't do all of it perfectly, what's the point in doing any of it? For women already managing fluctuating energy and mood, that thinking can cause more harm than the original habits ever did.
The domino effect of one small habit
What I've found works, again and again - particularly for women navigating perimenopause - is something much smaller and much less exciting: one new habit, consolidated properly, before adding anything else.
It sounds almost too simple to matter. But something as small as drinking a glass of water first thing when you wake up can set off a domino effect through the rest of the day. That one small win - something you've actually managed, rather than something you're still working towards - tends to shift how the rest of your choices feel. You're more likely to make a better breakfast choice, more likely to move your body, more likely to protect your evening energy rather than running on empty by 3pm. None of this happens because the glass of water is magic. It happens because you've proven to yourself, first thing, that you can follow through. That changes the tone of the whole day, which matters enormously when energy and mood are already unpredictable.
The role of dopamine in habits that actually stick
There's a reason this approach works, and it comes down to how we're wired to respond to reward. Every time we introduce a new behaviour and repeat it, we get a small dopamine response - a sense of reward simply from having completed the action. Do something new and follow through on it, and your brain registers that as a win, regardless of how small the action itself was. That response gets compounded when the behaviour also creates its own reward - the endorphin rush after a workout, the calm after a few minutes of stretching, the steadiness of a blood-sugar-balanced meal. For women managing perimenopausal mood changes, this matters beyond habit-building alone: small, repeatable wins offer a genuine, natural mood lift, alongside whatever nutritional or lifestyle support is happening underneath.
What this means for energy, mood and weight in perimenopause
This is really the heart of how I work with clients now, particularly those navigating perimenopause and its effect on energy, mood and weight. Not fewer changes because change matters less, but fewer changes at once, so each one has the chance to actually take hold before the next is added. Progress doesn't depend on a level of consistency that fluctuating hormones make harder to guarantee. It's slower than an overhaul. It's also the version that's still standing a year later - which, when you're working with a body that's already changing, is the only version that was ever going to count.
