Michelle Bridges blamed stress for her symptoms. Then a comment from a GP stopped her in her tracks.

Michelle Bridges once said "you are in control of your body". And she practised what she preached.

The former Biggest Loser trainer was uncompromising in her approach, exercising almost every day, eating cleanly, and encouraging other women to do the same.

It was a consistent routine that had served her well for years. She was the healthiest version of herself. Then she hit her late forties and everything changed.

Michelle's body, which once acquiesced to her stringent healthy lifestyle, was no longer in her control. Instead, the personal trainer started experiencing debilitating symptoms which threatened to undo a once airtight routine.

"I was not sleeping, waking up, not going back to sleep," Michelle told Mamamia of the symptoms. "I had tinnitus… it was like the old internet dial-up sound, the sound that I was getting in my ears, thinking we had some sort of internet issue in my house."

Soon, she was struggling to regulate her temperature, feeling hot and sweaty at random times.

"But I wasn't having a hot flash, it was different," Michelle said. "I also had a very uncomfortable gnawing, like a chainsaw, issue with my hip. And I had a little bit of anxiety that I'd never really experienced before in my life."

Watch: Michelle Bridges on how to stay fit during perimenopause. Post continues afterwards.

With each new symptom, Michelle felt more and more betrayed by her body, which she had meticulously looked after for years.

"These are the things that were keeping me awake at night and stopping me from having a great day the next day," she explained.

"If you're not sleeping, everything is impacted, from your work, your relationships with your partner, your children, your workplace, and ultimately the relationship with yourself."

With each restless night, Michelle's motivation would wane further.

"There's a trickle-on effect that maybe you don't want to exercise, maybe you don't want to eat well, because you just feel like a bucket of lead. If I did go and train, I just left the training session early, which was not like me at all."

As her physical health became compromised, the personal trainer felt her emotional health suffer in the fall-out.

"I was looking at myself in the mirror thinking, 'Oh my God, what's happening to my physicality? And then mentally thinking, 'Why am I not wanting to go to the gym? Or when I get there I just feel blah?'" she recalled.

"You're crying at the drop of a hat. You're p***ed off at the drop of a hat. You're snapping at people, or you're forgetting your words. You can't even pull your words together."

At first, Michelle just figured she was burnt out. That she had too much on her plate with work, and being a mother to her son Axel, now nine, whom she shares with ex-partner, and fellow Biggest Loser alum, Steve "Commando" Willis.

"You can easily chalk up [these symptoms] to being overworked, stressed, a mortgage, three kids, elderly parents," she said. "You can chalk all of that up and not realise that it's actually something that you can assist and help medically."

Eventually, Michelle realised something needed to change.

"It got to the point where I was trying to figure out… I couldn't put my finger on what was happening. I just didn't feel myself," she said.

So, the now-54-year-old booked an appointment with the GP for answers.

"I'd moved to a new town and was going to my new doctor proclaiming, 'I promise you I'm not a hypochondriac. This is the most I've ever been to a doctor in my entire life, but I just don't feel things are right'." 

But, even in front of a medical professional, Michelle downplayed her symptoms.

Michelle Bridges is a personal trainer and author. Image: Instagram/@mishbridges

"I said, 'Oh, it's not that bad. Thankfully, I'm fit, I'm strong, I'm active, I eat well, so it hasn't really impacted me that much'," she said. "And [the GP] stopped me in my tracks and she said, 'Michelle, I'd like to stop you there just for you to take a minute to check yourself.

"'You haven't been sleeping. You've woken up the next morning feeling like a bag of dirt, which has impacted on your career and impacted on your training, which is obviously very important to you. You have a hip which has got you to a place where you're now walking and training with a limp. And you're someone that's actually taking care of themselves'."

But even though the GP recognised the damaging impact of Michelle's symptoms, like her patient, she "couldn't put her finger" on their cause.

"As a late 40-something-year-old woman, you would have thought that one of the first conversations might have been, 'Hey, you could be perimenopausal'. That conversation was never tabled ever," Michelle said.

"Instead, I was offered anti-depressants. Which I'm not against. No judgments. But I was very confronted by that, and thought 'I'm going to question this, and is that where I really am at?'."

She wasn't convinced. So, after that appointment, Michelle decided to do her own research. It was only then that she got her answers.

"I quickly found out that I was actually a perimenopausal woman, even though I didn't even know that perimenopause was a thing," she told Mamamia.

"I was gobsmacked that I didn't have this knowledge, that I hadn't been told this information, that there was no playbook, there were no guidelines, there was nothing."

While the personal trainer felt "validated and relieved" that she had a name for what she was going through, she was also angry it had taken so long to get to that point.

"I was really f***ing p***ed that no one had ever bothered to share this knowledge or information. That was a massive shock to my psyche," she said.

"You're telling me that women from 35 to, let's say, 45, that decade where a woman is firing on every freaking cylinder, she has kids, a mortgage, parents that are getting older, she's trying to be the Rock of Gibraltar for everything and everyone, and she's going through a thing called perimenopause, which we didn't know about. She's trying to figure it out, play it off, calm it down, chalk it up to being overworked, and not getting enough sleep, just thinking 'I'll push through'."

It's a mentality that Michelle certainly adopted in her own life as she learns to balance her symptoms with motherhood, her career, and personal responsibilities.

"It's a juggling act, and you've got 700 plates spinning. I'm not professing that I have all the answers because I absolutely don't," she said, adding that she has only recently started to set "boundaries" with people.

"I'm talking about boundaries in all areas… workplace assignments, personal relationships… I'm very clear. I'm very polite. I never offend as far as I can see, but I will be very clear in what I will and won't do. It's a skill, and it takes a bit of practice.  Even still as a 54-year-old woman, I'm still working on them."

According to Michelle, part of being a perimenopausal and menopausal woman is taking ownership of your life.

"You're moving into a space where, hang on a minute, I'm going to start becoming the CEO of my own life. And I'm not going to keep running to everybody else's tune because it's making me unhappy. It's making me uncomfortable, and it's making me feel a little empty. And where's my lot in life?"

Michelle said that, for women of her generation, they have grown up being told that "it's a badge of honour to look after everyone".

"This is what you do. You become a wife, you become a mother, you look after everyone. And it's great, and it's wonderful, and you take care of business, and you run the household and everybody's diaries, and you know when the school run is, and you know when it's library day. All of the s*** that women do in a household that does not get seen or recognised is all happening while, behind the scenes, she is potentially going through perimenopause and menopause, and no one is speaking about that."

Once Michelle realised she was grappling with perimenopause, she started hormone replacement therapy and made lifestyle changes that have helped her take back control of her body.

Now, the personal trainer is helping other women navigate this stage of life with her book The Perimenopause Method. It delves into the underlying causes of menopausal symptoms and provides a comprehensive toolkit of solutions.

"I'm very proud of the book. In Australia, it's definitely the first of its kind, that's why I'm so passionate about it," Michelle said, adding that it took four years of research.

It's a contrast to how women's health has been treated historically, said Michelle.

"Women have just been completely railroaded and blindsided and gaslit… that is what upsets me almost to tears," she said.

"This is a book that will be passed from mothers to their daughters… and that is a legacy that I would be beyond proud of having."

You can buy The Perimenopause Method by Michelle Bridges here.

Feature Image: Instagram/@mishbridges