Amanda ThebeRecensioni

I wanted to love this book. Don't get me wrong - there is a lot of good info here if you have not already studied nutrition/fitness/wellness. I just didn't find enough new/specific menopause-related information for me. I was also struck by the conflict of the definite bias towards hormone therapy and the line from the epilogue which states that "your body is designed to handle" menopause. If my body is designed to go through menopause, why do I need HT? A little disappointed, all in all.

The redundancy of the author this book made it impossible to read.½

For women just about to embark on this stage of life, this is a good source of earthy, realistic info. The author is down-to-earth and does a great job of explaining medical and emotional facts in an understandable way with some humour and heart.

Highly recommended! Neither pushing nor badmouthing hormone therapy, this is by far the best book about menopause I've found. Thebe won't tell you whether to take hormones. She WILL tell you a lot about how to eat and exercise, but that's great because she is absolutely right about food (pro-protein AND pro-healthy fats AND pro-complex carbs) and about strength training (we need to do it)!

The illustrated instructions for DOZENS of strength-training exercises make this book a valuable resource even if you don't (always) follow Thebe's specific exercise program.

By the way, this is an excellent complement to Strong Women Stay Young. Considering that both books promote strength training regimens for middle-aged (and older) women, there is remarkably little overlap. This book teaches different exercises, and it will motivate you in different ways.

The book explained several issues I didn't even realize I was experiencing until I read it here. I'm paying more attention to my body and my behavior now, all thanks to this book.

I received a galley of this book through Library Thing Early Reviewers.

I'm 41. I've been pretty aware of the unpleasantness of perimenopause for about 2 years now. It sucks. It sucks a lot. Therefore, I was happy to get an advanced release copy of this book--but I felt some trepidation, too. There is a lot of junk science out there around the subject of menopause, and I knew nothing about the author, Amanda Thebe. I didn't know what to expect.

Therefore, I was pleased to encounter a book that didn't focus on fad diets or miracle cures. Thebe's approach was blunt, honest, and sometimes profane: menopause sucks but here are some strategies to try to make it suck less. She addresses hormone replacement, incontinence, sexual issues, eating healthy (very common sense advice, too, no fads), stress, and exercise--including a fairly large portion near the end of the book with many photographs of different strength training moves along with a suggested regimen. Her attitude is always kind, and she's forthright about things she's tried or embarrassing things she's endured.

I enjoyed the healthy attitude of this book. This isn't a book that screams at the reader, 'You missed a day of exercise! Start this 100-day routine from day 1 again!' No, she emphasizes that some days are too busy, or frankly, too miserable to do a full work-out, so take care of yourself and do what you can. She has the same approach to food. She brings up that women in this age group need more protein, and that fruits, vegetables, and less-processed foods are the way to go, but no food is banned. It's a common sense approach that doesn't feel that common these days.

Not only am I going to keep this book around for reference, but I joined her sizable Facebook group, too. I'm curious about what else she has to say, as I know all too well I will need support as I go through this sucky stage of life.

As I am about half-way into menopause, I am this book´s ideal audience. I liked it very much and we need many new voices in this silent world. I did not find anything new in the solutions part as I have worked out and have been planted-based for many years. That said, I am now connecting the dots that that crushing tiredness and low grade cold symptoms were related to peri-menopause. I always thought it was PMS. It is good to know how early those symptoms can come on, because at times I swore I had some very serious problem. I am crazy driven, so always plowed through it, but it would have just been nice to know what was happening. Thanks a mountain, Amanda, for sharing all of this information. Some will help, some won’t, but it is nice to have the information.

Amanda Thebe wants you to join a community of women pushing their way through middle age. Through her book, Menopocalypse, she wants you to know you are not alone, nor are you living in Crazy Town. Your body and mind may feel like they have been taken over by aliens, but fear not! This too shall pass. Thebe’s style of writing is approachable and conversationally candid. She swears a lot. I'm okay with that. I'm less okay with how often she repeats herself. In the chapter about stress and sleep she bullets different ways to combat stress and get more sleep. Only they are not all different - walking is mentioned three different times. It's as if the repetitiveness is there to combat a shorter book. That being said, there is a lot of great information in an easily digestible format. I never knew the loss of balance after menopause was a thing.
Admittedly, I was skeptical about this book. I requested an Advanced Reader’s Copy because I am in the thick of “the change” myself. Most appreciated: the photographs of strength training moves and a suggested scheduled routine. As an avid runner, I always appreciate a variety of routines to keep me fit.½

Thank you, Amanda Thebe and Greystone Books, for providing an Early Reviewers copy.

Tremendously helpful! On a subject where there's little discussion and it's hard to find the reliable information among the chaff, Amanda Thebe has written an informative, conversational owner's guide for the perimenopausal and menopausal body.

In the first half, she distills the research on how the body changes as it experiences hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause, and she conveys this information in language accessible to a lay reader. In the second half, she discusses strategies to help each woman devise her own successful approaches to nutrition, exercise, stress and sleep, and mindset and perspective. Throughout, she shares her own experiences, confiding in the reader as frankly and warmly as one might to a dear friend.

I particularly appreciated the book's kindly acknowledgement and reminders that each person's experience will be different, and the encouragement she gives each reader to figure out her own strategies. Amanda does great job of being supportive without being prescriptive; it's easy to see her coaching background coming through in the writing.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and I strongly recommend it for anyone going through menopause, anyone who has graduated into menopause, anyone expecting to go through menopause, or anyone related to any who fits any of those categories. Basically, everyone should read this book!

When I saw this book, I thought it would be a very useful tool for my daughter and my daughter-in-law, and even my friend’s kids. I had long since passed through this phase of life. I had been lucky. I had few overt symptoms of menopause, and took to calling myself “our lady of the hot flash” when I had to deal with my most obvious symptom. My hot flashes occurred largely during the day, when my upper lip would suddenly look like it was blooming with water droplets, my face would turn red as a beet, and the top of my head would feel like it was boiling hot. It was at those times that my husband always felt compelled to tell me that my face was dripping. I always wondered why he thought I was not aware of that fact!
Truthfully, I was naïve, I had been sheltered, most of my life. I was not aware of the many other issues of menopause except for the fact that I knew that some women experienced deep sadness, sometimes for no obvious reason. A friend of mine was driven to tears by the vision of a can of peas on a supermarket shelf. She needed medication to get through menopause. For me, it seemed to be no big deal. Most of the time, I dealt with it calmly. One day, my periods simply stopped and never returned. I had a short temper, and it grew a little shorter. I never gave it much of a second thought. I had hot flashes during the day, not at night, so they were not debilitating. Medications had adverse effects on me, so I toughed it out without them. I was lucky. I had minimal symptoms of the “pause”.
Did I realize it would affect my bone density one day? No, I most certainly did not. I broke my wrist because a five pound bag of potatoes was wrapped around it when it slammed into the ground. Did I realize I would struggle with weight gain, which I had never had a problem with, and which used to infuriate a teenaged friend of mine as she gained weight watching me eat my ice cream sundaes? I had no such suspicion. Did I ever worry about insomnia? Not a chance. Sleep, was a no-brainer for me. I hit the pillow, and I was asleep in no time. If I was having a slight problem, I did a crossword puzzle and bingo, I had zzz’s. Do I sleep now? If I am honest, my answer is not very well. I don’t fight it, though. I do something to calm me down, so I can fall back to sleep. Most of the time, I am successful.
The author was in her late thirties, fairly young, when she realized something was happening to her mind and her body. A fitness guru, she bounced from doctor to doctor for several years before she was told she was in perimenopause and that was causing most of her problems. Menopause is a condition that has largely been ignored by the medical profession. Perimenopause is what happens to women before they actually go through menopause. The next stage is called post menopause.
Studies of various bodily malfunctions had always used men and had concentrated on those from which men suffered. As a result, little was known about the cycle of women’s bodies that led to menopause, when reproductive hormones lessened, and her psyche and physical body underwent many changes. In the past, women had often been diagnosed with mental or emotional disorders when menopause problems arose. Women were often misdiagnosed and mistreated.
To defeat the enemy her body was fighting, Amanda did what she could do to fight the symptoms and the loss of hormones. She learned to cope with, and to embrace, the problem. She learned to defeat it so it was not a problem, but a fact of life that all women endure. With this book she is teaching others how to do the same. There are foods to help with weight control, medications to help with mood swings, exercises to strengthen weakening muscles and activities to distract us from our symptoms and our aging. We can broaden our horizons in different ways, instead of shrinking it.
In the first part of this book, Amanda writes about the trials we women experience in midlife. In the second part, she gives women the tools to overcome the trials of menopause and to become better at living. Menopause is a stage of life; it is natural, and we can overcome it.
After reading this book, I am aware that my thickening middle when I was not pregnant, my unexplained bouts of fury, my resentment towards my husband for no apparent reason, and my fear of leaving my apartment although I desperately wanted to, were symptoms of menopause, along with the embarrassing water moustache that decorated my lip. I had accepted these things as my life, and I had tried to ignore them. Did I know my muscles would weaken as my reproductive hormones diminished? I did not. I did not know that my migraine headaches would disappear for a decade, only to return after a car accident. When my memory slipped a bit, I thought doesn’t everyone’s?
So now I must confess, this book, although decades late, answers many of my questions about my body and its failure to please me. It also makes me feel a lot less guilty about how I have reacted to my body. To me, menopause was a sad time of life because it meant I was old, could no longer bear children and would have less desire. I know now that it is much more than that; it is a fact of life and one simply has to do what is necessary to wade through the morass that accompanies it. At least I can be wiser, and more open minded, with my daughter and daughter-in-law, as they experience it now. It is not the end of one world, but the beginning of another.

Thanks to Greystone and Amanda Thebe for providing this book though the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

Amanda's book covers many different topics and gives a pretty thorough view of this time of life. There were some things in here that I've seldom run across, like the decreased tolerance for alcohol and how intermittent fasting is stressful for women. I've read a lot of books on Menopause, but think this is the most thorough for the page count. I would have liked to have seen a bit more on supplements. I've found MACA and digestive enzymes to be very helpful with my symptoms.