Anneli (00:00)
Turning 40 is not the time to slow down. This is not a slow fade, okay? This is your prime time. For too long, women have been sold a lie. You know, the lie that, fatigue, brain fog, and losing our strength are just things that we have to accept. We've been told to give everyone else our best and then take whatever energy we've got left and just to deal with that.
Well, not on my watch.
if you're ready to reject that script, okay, if you want to stop just.
barely surviving and actually stop building an unbreakable version of you that not only dominates today, but carries you all the way into your 80s and beyond. Welcome home.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Mind and Muscle Beyond 40 podcast. I'm your host, Aneli Marinovich, a certified menopause coach, personal trainer, and also author of Project 80.
Now, if you're a regular listener to the show, you will know that I'm normally sat here chatting to an incredible guest expert talking about things like longevity science, fitness, nutrition, mindset, strength training, my favorite topic. But today it's just you and me, babes. No frills, no filter, just you and I having a really good heart to heart. I've been meaning to record a solo episode for the last few weeks, and I've only just gotten around to doing this. So here we are. But this is a special episode to
to really get you up to speed with what's been happening lately behind the scenes at MMB40 and also why writing Project 80 literally changed everything for me.
Today, I'd love to take you back to January 2025 when Penn first hit paper on this book. And I want to share with you how that entire year actually shaped the message of Project 80. We're going to talk about the incredible emotional feedback that I've been getting from readers who are finally ditching the cardio, insane cardio burnout sessions and actually picking up heavy weights, making simple tweaks to their nutrition and just feeling.
Much better for it. Women who are finally not starving themselves. It makes me so happy to hear this. And I also want to share with you what's next for MMB40, my push into corporate wellness, upcoming live events and workshops, and just to give you really a sense of what I'm what I'm working on. Really, my mission is to get this blueprint into the hands of as many women as possible all over the world. So grab a coffee, settle in, and let's dive straight in.
So before we jump back into January twenty twenty five, when I first started writing Project Eighty, I just wanted to touch on something I said at the start of the episode. If you're a woman in your forties and you've been sold this lie about this is a slowdown period, you're now in midlife, be sensible, slow down, you know.
This is the kind of like a s a slow downhill scenario. This ain't it. Okay? If you need a hype girl to remind you every single day that this ain't it, I'm that girl for you. Okay. So make sure that you join my channel, like and subscribe this video, listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you're consuming your information, I want you to
Stay in touch with me so that I can remind you every single day that that's not our story, that's not our narrative. And actually, as it happens, that is one of the main reasons I decided to write Project 80 because I want women to believe in themselves, I want them to have the confidence to own their 40s and beyond, and then build or use a blueprint that will actually help them build a stronger, healthier, more resilient future version of themselves.
Anneli (03:42)
Okay, so let's rewind back to January 2025. I had started writing a book and I kept getting stuck in a loop of not quite knowing how to condense all the knowledge and all the, well, essentially 20 years or self-experimentation down into a format that would actually make sense, that would be easy to digest.
And that would also include my story, my own transformation story, which, if you don't know what I'm talking about, go and look on my podcast playlist. It's episode one showing my own transformation story. And on YouTube, I show you before and after photos. I have been on an epic journey of being the woman that you see today. So I started writing the book and it just didn't quite feel right. So I ended up putting it on ice quite a few times.
Then January 2025 rolled into February and then it snowballed. And to be honest with you, 2025 was, I've said this before on the show, one of my toughest years ever. Which essentially culminated in September 2025, when I lost my mum, my wonderful, beautiful mum, who passed away in September 2025.
And it broke me. It completely shattered my world. And it has taken me a long time to be able to sit in front of you like this and talk about mum without being a hot mess. So I'm really grateful for that. And it's also given me a massive driving force to help as many women as possible take better care of themselves, both mentally and physically. So
All of what happened in 2025, all of the grief, the breakdown of very close family relationships and everything that I went through in 2025, my own hormonal perimet perimenopause chaos led me to be able to write the book that Project 80 is today. So after going back to the book several times in 2025, I was finally in a position
earlier this year to again put pen to paper and actually the book that you read today is vastly different to what it would have been had I written it last year. So I'm very, very proud of this book and I have shared a lot of my own personal journey in here. And I really hope I've had a few women say to me, It feels like you're talking to me, which makes me so happy to hear because I wrote it like that. I want it to feel like I'm talking to you because I am. And I wrote it in
Obviously, my own voice. So if it feels like you're having a chat with Annalie, that is exactly what it is and it should be. So I'm immensely proud of the book, and I've essentially taken twenty odd years of self-experimentation experimentation and condensed it into a blueprint for coaching women over 40 to build mental and physical strength so that you not only start dominating your life today, but also build an unshakable future.
Version of yourself at the age of 80 and far beyond. Because that's what it's all about. Yes, of course, we all care about what we look like. You know, we all want to look good. We want to, you know, feel good in our clothes and we want to get compliments. Of course we do. But what's more important right now is for you to start your journey.
Of creating a strong, resilient, and independent version of yourself when you're 80 and beyond. Isn't that more meaningful? Of course, it's more meaningful. And that's what I want to try and help women to focus on with this book. So the backbone of this book.
The main premise of it is that I would love for women to shift away from that short-term mindset of this six-week Ibiza body blitz, okay, to a long-term sustainable, let me put the work in, it'll take as long as it takes because I'm on this journey for me and I will get there when I get there, right? Nothing worthwhile happens overnight.
And the most rewarding project that you're ever gonna embark on is your own project 80. Your project of building a future version of yourself that actually she's gonna look back at you today one day and she's gonna go, Yes, girl, yeah, you did this, you nailed it, you did it for me, and you are doing it for her.
So every time you're in a situation where you're wondering whether you should you should pick up the heavyweights or whether you should make a healthy choice in terms of your dinner instead of just eating a bag of crisps. Listen, we've all been there, but this is about the habits that you stick to 80% of the time. Not the one off, you know, the few times when you're off track. It doesn't matter. The few times you're off track doesn't matter. What matters is sustainability.
And your consistency over time. So, what I'm saying to you is, I want this book to be your blueprint for actually building long-term physical independence and also metabolic resilience. What do I mean by metabolic resilience? Being able to turn your body into a fat-burning machine. You can't do that if you're currently surviving on sugar.
Because your energy crashes all the time and so you've got to wake it up every time it crashes. Because what's happening then is your blood sugar is just doing that. It's spiking all that all throughout the day. Because the cycle is this: you get tired, you have some sugars to pick me up, you feel great, you crash again because the sugar's now burnt down and essentially your insulin spikes. So ultimately, your energy is all over the shop. So what I want, what I'm teaching women in Project 80
Is how to build metabolic resilience. And that you do by honing in on your nutrition, learning how to manage your blood sugar, learning what healthy fats are, learning how much protein you need, and how to actually eat carbs so that it serves your body, as opposed to just thinking of carbs as I should never eat carbs.
You should 100% eat carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are really valuable when you're trying to build the guns, okay? You're not gonna get the guns without the carbs. So just saying. So metabolic resilience. And then also the MMB40 pillars that you may have heard me talk about before.
So, your four pillars in MMB40 is mindset, muscle, nutrition, biohacking, which then all enables you to really own your hormonal power. And hormones, my goodness, the importance of the hormones as we get into midlife. I myself am in perimenopause. I am managing my perimenopausal symptoms with lifestyle.
I am experimenting with HRT, yes. And I am lifting the heavy weight in order to build more muscle because the more muscle you have, the more metabolically res metabolically resilient your body is. And talking about muscle.
If you've not listened to the episode that I recorded with the wonderful Maggie Topham, it's the one right before this one, episode six, where we talk about building muscle and how that changes your metabolism, you need to go and listen to it. Maggie is an inspiration, and also it'll just explain to you really well why it's so important to focus on building muscle versus focusing on being skinny. Muscle is way more important.
So ultimately, all of these factors come then come into play with how you manage your hormonal power. But it also in the book I talk quite a bit about having agency over your own body and actually advocating for yourself. Just this morning I had a conversation with a coaching client where I explained to her what a well woman blood panel is and why you should advocate for having one done at the very least once a year.
If you're a woman over 40, you should be having a Well Woman blood panel done every year. Because it looks at really important health markers. And yes, there's a hormonal lens to it, but it's more important as well to have a good overview of what's going on inside your body.
Because things are changing, and there might be a reason why you're tired all the time. It could be your thyroid, you could be your iron levels, could be really low, you could be struggling with iron absorption. Yes, it could also be your fluctuating hormones, but we only know what we know. So if you go to the GP, I want you to be able to advocate for yourself. And in this book, and I will say this: she is a beefy girl, okay? She is 293 pages strong, so all the information.
That you need on how to advocate for yourself, how to eat well, how to train right, how to take care of your mind. It's all in here. I also explain the body composition changes that are happening in your body after 40. One of the main things that I keep getting from my clients is: I have this belly fat now, and I don't know where it's coming from. I can't do anything to shift it.
I'm doing the cardio, I'm not eating the carbs, sound familiar. I am doing the HIIT five times a week. I am, you know, going for a jog. I mean, all the things, all the things. And in Project 80, I also discuss how doing more is not the approach that we need after 40.
Doing less is the approach we need, but working smarter, eating the right foods, and actually fueling your body as if you were an athlete. And if there's one thought I want you to get from this book, it's this is not about being smaller, this is about being stronger and more resilient and being independent when you're 80.
You are going to struggle being independent and being mobile, going for lovely long walks or hikes, or going for a lovely, you know, outdoor adventure with your friends at 80, if you don't have enough muscle and if you don't have enough bone density. And the more muscle you have, the denser your bones, right?
Because when we build muscle, when we do weight training, the muscle pulls on the bone, which forces the bone to get thicker and stronger. And especially that's why weight training is so important when it comes to mobility as you get older. So, long story short, the book is
your blueprint. It is a roadmap. And at the end of the book, I've included a six-week roadmap where you can take everything that I've taught you in the book and you can put it into practice. Now, when I launched the book, this was hugely exciting. I launched the book at the Kent Wellness Festival mid-June, the weekend of the 14th of June, and it was incredible. I think I took around 45 books with me and I completely sold out. Which
far exceeded my expectations. I wasn't prepared for that, but it made me so happy. But what made me even happier was the conversations I had at the festival. And I know that my mum was there in spirit because so many women who were also nurses, like mum was, came up to me
the festival and we had these incredible conversations where yes, they take care of everyone else but themselves. And after sharing the book with them and explaining to them what it was and sharing my journey with them.
they realize that yes, they need to start making small changes to their lifestyle because let's be completely honest, we're all really busy. Women are busy, we take care of everyone, and so it's understanding how you can get more bang for your buck with the time that you do have. So, if you do have time to do a workout, what workout do you do? What exercises do you do? I've gone to I've gone as far as actually including.
Strength training exercises in here. And I've taken photos of them. I'm showing you which exercises you should be doing with kit that you can just have at home. If you only have dumbbells at home, you can do these workouts. But the point is, you need to do strength training at least three times a week to be able to, at the very least, maintain the muscle that you have.
So the conversations I had at the festival were so heartwarming. I did a full body strength class, which was incredibly fun, and I had a wonderful group of women in the class and a few of them came up to me afterwards and then we started chatting about how women tend to do the workouts that are usually the sweatiest and the toughest, and they torture themselves and they think it has to be like that for the workout to be worthwhile. And that is also a lie.
So in the book, I'm talking about, of course, cardio is important for your heart and your lungs and for your mental health, but weight training is the thing that is going to build your 80-year-old frame.
And wouldn't it be lovely to get to 80 and have a frame that is rock solid? Wouldn't it be great to get to 80 and go, you know what? I'm gonna carry my own shopping. Wouldn't it be great to get to 80 and go, hmm, I feel like a hike. I think I'm gonna go for an hour-long hike up a hill. Great with my friends. Wouldn't it be great at 80 to look around you and just have so much gratitude for your body and your mind and your resilience? Because you've spent the last 40 years working on it. So if you're sitting here,
And
you're listening to this and you're finding it really hard to visualize your 80-year-old self. Again, I have a wonderful visualization exercise in the book where you're gonna close your eyes. You're gonna close your eyes and you're gonna visualize your future 80-year-old self. You're gonna see her. You're gonna you're gonna watch her move. You're gonna see the shape of her arms. You're gonna look at how
How fluid her movement is, and and and and and you're gonna think to yourself how people usually go, wow, she she's so mobile and so flexible and so independent for her age. Because the value of visualizing your future 80-year-old self, honestly, priceless. Because if you can't visualize her, you can't work towards becoming her. So for me, Project 80 is about so much more than just
It's about so much more than losing the fat, you know, getting rid of your belly fat, which I know a lot of women really struggle with when you're over 40. It is about that, yes. But it's not just about that. This is about building a future version of yourself that is gonna absolutely rock her 80s and feel great doing it. Be able to go and do a 45-minute spin class and really go hell for leather, you know? So we're playing the long game, and for that to happen, you have to be able to visualize her.
So some of the other emotional and empowering feedback I wanted to share with you today is some of the women have said to me that for the first time in their lives, they feel like they actually have a plan that works for their body where they're at right now.
Because you can't follow the plan that you had in your 20s and 30s. It's a different plan. You're a different woman. Your body's different. Your hormones are different, vastly different. Your estrogen and progesterone, your sex hormones, are fluctuating wildly if you're in perimenopause. If you're in menopause, less so, but they are still fluctuating. If you're postmenopausal, you're probably having a better time of it. However, you still have lower levels of estrogen and progesterone, and that has a knock on effect to everything, it has a knock on effect to bone danger.
density, muscle mass, cognitive function. So it's important for you to focus on the mental and physical strength now so that you can keep your hormones happy, but also keep your body functioning properly, right?
So, yes, woman telling me that they feel like they now have a blueprint that they can use into their forties and well beyond, which is wonderful to hear. And I also think it's just great to be able to give someone a tool that they can keep coming back to. I purposefully left spaces in the book where you can go and make notes because I'm the kind of person
I like writing things down. Now, this book is available on Amazon as an ebook. So if you're a Kindle kind of person, you can have an ebook, of course. But I personally think the best way to remember and learn things is to write it down, take your post-it notes, stick it in, keep coming back to it because this is essentially your your your your blueprint, your your roadmap for how you move forward. So make the book your own, draw in it, write notes in it, just enjoy it, and journal in it.
So, yes, and of course, other feedback I've been getting is the nutrition changes. So, in the book, I share quite a lot about the value of protein. I talk about healthy fats, what they are. I go ahead and I list all the actual healthy fats, the protein sources, the sources of great nature's carbs, all of these things that you need to know about.
All you need to do is educate yourself on what your body needs to feel its best and how to take better care of your gut. And I've put all of this into the book for you. So it's a one-stop shop, which is why it's taken me so long to write this book. but yeah, so essentially I
I've been enjoying getting the feedback from the book and just the massive confidence boost that most women are experiencing by actually going and doing weight training for the first time. Feeling more empowered, feeling more confident within themselves, and having a strategy that is tailored for someone in their late 30s upwards is hugely valuable because there is so much overwhelming advice out there. There's a lot of
information on the internet, on social media, and it's very difficult to know what to believe, who to believe, who's saying one person says this, another person says that. Ultimately, I always think I'm the kind of person I do my own research, I make up my own mind, and I go and utilize multiple sources of information and then I see how it all stacks up. But when the chips are down, the only way to know what works for your body is to go and experiment.
So I'm hoping that Project 80 gives you a blueprint for self-experimentation and that you have fun doing it because it's not meant to be scary. Experimenting with different nutrition styles, with different training, changing things up should be exciting. You get to have agency over your own body. You get to go and do these things. You get to go and explore with wonderful biohacks like cold plunging or fasting or changing your sleep routine.
The worst thing we can do in midlife is to get stuck in a rut of doing the same things over and over and over. Or getting getting stuck in those habits that you've been doing for years because you think they're good for you. But actually when you go and sit down and review your habits, they re you realize that they're actually keeping you stuck. And the very first chapter in the book is all about mindset.
And in there, I actually share, I think there's 21, 21 of my mindset strategies that I share with you that have been a game changer for me. And one of those things is Not letting your habits keep you stuck, because habits do that. We tend to see habits as a little comfort blanket, right? So they keep you in your comfort zone. But the thing about comfort zones.
It might feel comfortable. Think about a nice warm blanket. It's comfortable, but it might not be the best thing for you. So the thing that you might be finding comfortable could very well be the thing that's holding you back. So it's time to change things up. It's time to throw the old rule book out, grab your copy of Project 80 and push forward. Try new things. Be gung-ho about it because you're doing this for your 80-year-old self, right?
Okay, so also within the book, I've got the pulse check, which is a very useful tool. At the start of the book, I want you to be able to go, right, let's do a little check-in. Let's see where we're at. Okay. How's my sleep? How is my nutrition? And be honest with yourself. There is no reason to lie to anyone. You're reading this book, you're on this journey. You're gonna be honest with yourself and go, right, okay.
I need to take a long hard look at myself and I need to look at the areas where I'm letting myself down. Now it could be sleep. Very often is sleep for most women. If you're surviving on five, six hours a night, nothing will change until you lock in your sleep routine, okay?
So forget about fat loss or building muscle or or or feeling more energized, doing, you know, feeling stronger. It's not going to happen until you sleep properly. So things like sleep, looking at your nutrition. Maybe you're great during the week. You're knocking it out of the park Monday to Thursday and then Friday to Sunday. Woo! YOLO. Been there, done that. I still have occasions where my weekends are a bust because I'm a normal human being. And
Regression is not failure, okay? I want you to hear me when I say that, because you are not failing because you've not managed to stick to the plan. You're just a human being. All you need to do is go back to base, just keep going back to what you were doing before you fell off the wagon, okay? That's how simple it is. We don't feel guilty, we don't beat ourselves up, we just go right back to what we were doing before.
So if you do the pulse check at the start of the book, you can write in, I've got questions that you're going to write in and you're going to say, right, okay, this is how I score here, this is how I do here. And then by the end of the book, you might find that you've already done some work because you can start using the book straight away. Or you can work through the entire book and then do the roadmap.
You've got all these tools in your hands, and I've designed these tools so that you actually have something that makes sense for your body and your mind over 40, but something that also feels flexible and that you can mold so it can suit your lifestyle. And I will say this: if you're completely new to weight training, Project 80 is a perfect solution for you.
The strength training exercises I have in the book are my what I would call my big hitters, my big compound movement hitters. Okay, what does that mean? Compound movements just means exercises that you train multiple body parts. So if you do a chest press, you're training your chest muscles, you're also training the front of the shoulder and your triceps back here. So movements like that or squats that hit your front of the leg, the back of the leg, the glutes.
Making the most of the time that you have by doing compound exercises that are going to get you stronger, but also train multiple body parts at the same time. So we've got that in the book as well. So I've spoken about the book quite a lot, but I wanted to do a proper episode on the podcast to talk about Project 80 because this.
Is the most important thing I've ever done with my life, okay? And it is my mission and my vision to put this book in the hands of as many women across the world as possible. So if you're listening to this podcast or you're watching on YouTube, firstly like and subscribe or come and follow the podcast.
I would love for you to reach out to me if you have any opportunities for me to come and speak at a wellness event or a workshop or a festival that you're running, or if you're a corporate client and you'd love for me to come in and run a workshop for your employees talking about Project 80 and the five pillars for aging strong, I would love to do that.
I want to be in a position where I can help as many women as possible and also not just women, they're partners. When I was at the Kent Wellness Festival, this wonderful man came up to me
afterwards. I did the class, a strength class, and I also did a a keynote talk on the five pillars of aging strong. So this lovely man sat in the talk and
He joined me afterwards at my son and he said to me that he is a physiotherapist and he's been looking for a resource to help educate himself on what his female clients in midlife are going through right now and to also provide his clients with a tool or a roadmap on how they can manage this season of their lives. And he said to me, I really enjoyed the talk and I thought it was incredibly valuable, and I now understand better what is happening with hormone shifts and how that
how that impacts your body composition, how it impacts the joints, the mobility, the strength training, and how mindset also forms an important part. So I found it hugely satisfying that he came to the talk, he enjoyed it and that he's willing to kind of spread the word to his clients as well. So Project 80 is not just for women, it is for men as well. So if you're listening to this and you might have a partner who's in midlife and you think this book would support her.
Great. If you want to read the book to be able to support her better, even better. So what I'm saying is if you're listening to this episode and you would love for me to come and talk at your festival, your event, your workshop, or you'd love for me to come into your business and run a workshop or a talk, I would absolutely love to do that. And I would also, I'm on a drive this year to go onto other podcasts and talk about the book and talk about Project 80, my mission, and
how can I help women build mental and physical resilience that is going to see you all the way through into your 80s and beyond. So, where are we? I have to catch up on my notes. I have a lot to say in this episode. But yes, I'm really excited. When I started MMB 40 in 2025, I was focusing quite a lot on the online coaching side of things, and as much as I've loved that.
Being the person that I am, I love being out and about. I love having conversations. I love doing talks. I love being on stage, sharing my my knowledge, inspiring people to take better care of themselves. And I now love sharing the message that is Project 80. So I'm excited for the rest of 2026 going into 2027 to
be out there to to to be at more events, to be doing more speaking, to get out into the physical spaces. and I'm excited to
Attend some events later this year. Keep an eye on my social media and I will let you know where I'll be for you to come and meet me. And if you want a signed copy of Project 80, all the events that I'm attending and that I'm speaking at and that I'm exhibiting at, I will have signed copies at the events. You can come and grab a signed copy there. You can also get a signed copy off my website. Or if you want your copy of Project 80 tomorrow, you can grab it on Amazon.
building a future version of yourself that is independent, metabolically resilient, strong, healthy, excited about life.
That should really be the most important journey that you ever embark on. And that's the journey that I'm on. And I hope that you come with me on this journey. The choices you make today.
Directly impact your future 80-year-old self. So think about it this way: whatever you choose to do today can be a gift that you're leaving for the future version of yourself. So be kind to her. Do something that's going to serve her. Do something that's going to make her strong and healthy and happy, and take care of her today so that she can take care of herself in the future.
If you've enjoyed this episode today, thank you so much for listening or watching on YouTube. Hit the like and subscribe button. Tune in for the next episode. I will be back next time interviewing an incredible guest expert. And I'm just so glad that I'm able to share this with you. Keep an eye on my socials to come and find me at the events that I'll be at in 2026. And please, please, please reach out to me for any speaking inquiries, any workshop inquiries. And I'd also love to connect with you on social media.
All the links will be in the comment section. Go and watch the rest of the videos and keep an eye out for what's to come. But for now, thank you for watching and for listening. This is Project 80. I am Annalie and I'm signing off from the Mind and Muscle Beyond 40 podcast. I will see you in the next episode.
Bye!
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