Stop Trying to Get Your Old Body Back: The Midlife Identity Shift That Changes Everything

You pull out the jeans that used to fit. Or a photo from ten years ago pops up on your phone, and you think, if I could just get back to her.

Maybe you’ve been chasing that body for a while now. The one from before kids, before your 40s, before perimenopause moved your weight to places it never used to live. You’ve tried eating less. Working out harder. Starting over every Monday. And every time it doesn’t stick, the gap between who you were and who you are gets a little louder.

What if your old body isn’t coming back? And what if that’s actually good news?

That’s the heart of my conversation with Mindy Keegan on Episode 114 of The Midlife Mom Edit. 

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.

Mindy is a midlife and post-divorce coach and the founder of Bad Influence Rebellion, a community for women over 40 who are done living by everyone else’s expectations. In her 40s, she went through a divorce, became a single mom, and then nearly lost her life to necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating bacterial infection that required 19 surgeries. Her body changed. Her career changed. Her relationships changed. Her whole identity changed.

And instead of trying to get her old body back, she decided to build someone new.

You don’t need 19 surgeries to relate to that. If you’re a mom in perimenopause, your body is already changing, whether anyone warned you about it or not. The real question is whether you keep chasing the woman you were, or start becoming the woman you want to be.

Why You Keep Chasing Your Old Body

Perimenopause changes a lot more than your hormones. Your sleep shifts. Your weight settles in places it never used to. Your patience runs thinner. And because so much is changing at once, it’s natural to grab for the last version of your body that felt steady and try to get her back.

Mindy described the script so many of us followed without ever questioning it. You go to high school, then college, then you get a job, get married, have kids. You do the things you’re supposed to do. You take care of yourself. And then life still happens anyway.

When it does, that script stops working. And the question stops being “How do I get back to my old body?” It becomes “Who do I want to become now?”

The “Shoulds” You’ve Been Living By

When I asked Mindy which parts of herself turned out to be real and which were roles she’d been playing for everyone else, her answer was simple. She’d always played the role of being good. Of doing what she was supposed to do.

I know that one well. Growing up, I was taught that you finish everything you need to do before you get to go out and have fun. It took me a long time to realize I didn’t have to fold the laundry before I went to brunch. I didn’t have to clean the whole house before taking my family to the park. These days, most weeks my clean laundry lives on top of the washer and dryer. Everyone can find what they need. Life goes on.

The shoulds show up in perimenopause, too. You should be eating less. You should be working out harder. You should be able to get back to your pre-baby weight. You should be able to figure this out on your own. Some of those rules never fit you in the first place.

So here’s a question worth sitting with: Which parts of you do you want to hold on to, and which ones can take a hike?

Why Changing Who You Are Feels So Scary

If deciding to become someone new feels terrifying, there’s a reason for that. Your brain loves predictability. It wants to know what’s coming next, and when it can’t, it sounds the alarm.

Mindy put it perfectly. When you’re married, it feels like you have a path laid out in front of you. When that ends, you’re left asking, “Well, now what?” A health crisis does the same thing. Suddenly you don’t know what your limits will be, or even how to get dressed anymore.

That fear doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means your brain is asking for certainty it can’t have yet. The only way to build the confidence you’re looking for is to go through the uncertain part, not around it.

Scary or Exciting? You Get to Decide

One of the most useful things Mindy shared was a small mindset shift she had to make after her divorce and her illness. She realized she could look at her situation as scary, or she could look at it as exciting, because she had a blank slate in front of her. She could make it whatever she wanted and stop living by someone else’s rules.

Same situation. Two very different thoughts. Two very different feelings. And those feelings drive what you actually do next.

This is the exact connection I teach inside my programs. Your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings drive your actions, and your actions create your results. When “I’ve lost who I was” becomes “I get to decide who I’m becoming,” everything downstream starts to change.

Look for Evidence Before It Feels Comfortable

Mindy didn’t rebuild her life with one big leap. When she came home from the hospital, she had to relearn how to walk. Her arm didn’t move on its own, so she physically swung it while she walked. Then her occupational therapist had her push a towel across a table, left and right. Then wrist exercises. She was starting from the very beginning.

What kept her going was a picture of who she wanted to be a year from that moment. Walking again. Moving on her own. Wearing normal clothes again. She kept that woman at the front of her mind before every physical and occupational therapy session.

Notice what she didn’t do. She didn’t picture the body she had before she got sick. She pictured the woman she’d be a year from that moment. That works for weight loss, too. Instead of holding up a photo from 2012, picture the woman you’re becoming and let her pull you forward.

I do something similar with Pinterest mood boards. What do I want my life to look like? What do I want to change? When you can see it, taste it, and hear it, it becomes real enough to carry you through the hard days.

You don’t need to wait until change feels comfortable to start collecting evidence that it’s working. Every small win counts.

Your Boundaries Can Change Anytime

Then there’s the dating story. I won’t spoil all of it, but here’s the short version. While Mindy was in the hospital fighting for her life, the man she’d been seeing kept showing up, even after she gave him multiple chances to walk away. She planned a birthday scavenger hunt for him right there in her hospital room, complete with a pineapple upside down cake. And after the cake? He broke up with her. In her hospital room. The Sunday before her first reconstructive surgery.

It’s the kind of story you have to hear in her voice. But what she took from it matters most. It changed her boundaries and her standards. She wants someone who wants to talk to her, who wants her to call anytime, and who is clearly attracted to her. And she learned to say what she wants and needs out loud.

Here’s the part I want you to hear: you don’t need a catastrophe to change your boundaries. You can decide to ask for something different, and expect something different for yourself, any day of the week.

Be a Bad Influence on Your Own Limitations

That’s the whole idea behind Mindy’s community, Bad Influence Rebellion. Not a bad influence in the “let’s get into trouble” sense. A bad influence on your own limitations. On the shoulds, the expectations, and the rules other people set for your life.

Mindy said something that stuck with me. So many women feel like they need a permission slip before they’re allowed to change. You might wake up one day and realize the life you’re living doesn’t fit anymore, and still wait for someone to tell you it’s okay to do something about it.

Consider this your permission slip.

Start With One Thing This Week

If you’re ready to stop chasing your old body but you have no idea where to begin, Mindy’s advice is refreshingly small. Here’s her exercise:

1. Picture the woman you want to become.
2. Think about how she moves through her day. How does she wake up? How does she feel? What habits does she have?
3. Pick one of those things.
4. Do just that one thing for a week and notice how it feels.
5. Build on it from there.

It could be getting dressed for the day. Putting on jewelry, even with a hoodie. A slow, unrushed morning. A quick 30-minute walk or a Pilates class. Anything that makes you feel like her.

Trying to change everything at once gets overwhelming fast, especially if you’re a high achiever who wants results yesterday. One small change, repeated, compounds over time. That’s how you actually become someone new.

Why Your Old Body Isn’t the Goal

You might be wondering what a conversation about divorce, surgeries, and dating has to do with losing weight in midlife. Honestly? Everything.

As long as you’re chasing the body you had at 32, every week becomes a measure of how far you still have to go. That’s exhausting, and it’s a big reason so many women quit. The woman who loses the weight in this next chapter, who feels good in her body and finally does the thing she’s been putting off, isn’t the woman you were in your 20s or 30s. She’s someone you get to become. And all of that starts with how you see yourself today.

That’s why I start with mindset before I ever touch nutrition. If you’re ready to start your own identity shift, start here with my 5 Steps guide, designed to help you with perimenopause weight loss while also changing your identity.