The Forties Formula · Amanda Lim & Jasmin Dhillon

Rebuilding Your Relationship With Your Body in Your 40s

·46 min·3 clips

Melissa says competition-level leanness disrupted her menstrual cycle for about two years.

1. The Forties Formula episode “Rebuilding Your Relationship With Your Body in Your 40s” examines body image, pregnancy, aging, and strength. 2. Jasmine Dillon, an integrated health strategist, and Amanda Lim, Lift Clinic director, interview Singapore-based wellness advocate and former bodybuilding champion Melissa Sarah Wee. 3. The episode asks what strength means when controlling body size gives way to trusting a changing body. 4. Melissa says her school publicly called out girls who were more than 10% overweight during assemblies attended by about 3,000 students. 5. At age 14, she searched the internet for weight-loss methods and found communities teaching anorexia and bulimia. 6. Melissa describes binge eating, secret eating, purging, guilt, and shame continuing into her twenties. 7. She says competitive bodybuilding felt similar to an eating disorder because strict food and training rules gave her a sense of control. 8. Melissa says she competed at about 57 kilograms and learned that scale weight did not determine how muscular or lean she looked. 9. At a Las Vegas competition, Melissa recalls measuring about 8% body fat and not having a regular menstrual cycle. 10. After she stopped competing, Melissa says her cycle took approximately two years to return, especially after she and her husband began discussing children. 11. Melissa says bodybuilding helped loosen her reliance on the scale because lean muscle changed how her weight appeared. 12. She recalls a former gym acquaintance asking, “What happened to you? You’re so out of shape now?” despite her still having visible abs. 13. Melissa says Asian expectations that women should be petite made comments such as “Why do you want to look like a man?” particularly difficult. 14. She encourages women building muscle to practice separating their goals from other people’s opinions, while acknowledging that this takes repeated effort. 15. During pregnancy, Melissa reduced weight training from five days weekly to three and adjusted walking after first-trimester bleeding. 16. At seven months pregnant, she reports walking about 7.5 kilometers four to five days weekly and adding stretching and pelvic-floor exercises. 17. Melissa prioritizes protein, plans meals in her phone, eats beef at least twice weekly, and avoids medium-rare steak during pregnancy. 18. In the “Hot or Hype” segment, Melissa says machines can suit beginners, five-to-six-day training is unnecessary for many lifestyles, and diet creates the calorie deficit needed for fat loss. 19. Women navigating pregnancy, muscle gain, and body-image recovery. 20. Listeners seeking quick fixes or competition-level leanness.

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