It’s 6am, still dark, and I’m lying on somebody else’s garage floor beside a box of old paint tins, a resistance band suffocating my thighs.

This is my women’s small-group training and, suffice to say, it’s Not Glamorous. If I were looking for an Insta-worthy workout, I’d be somewhere with flattering lighting and matching dumbbells. But I’m not, so I’m not. I come here because “getting ready” constitutes a cold flannel. We’ve never discussed our ages, although one recently retired and another has seen her youngest off to college. By my calculations, I’m the baby, despite perimenopause nipping at my heels for nearly a decade. Recently, that nip has become, well, nippier.

Let me reassure you: this isn’t one of those “I became a menopausal triathlete” stories. There are no transformation photos down the page. Last week I smashed the bench press and left humming the Gladiators theme tune. Today, I feel heavy, bloated and red-eyed (eyelid dermatitis being one of perimenopause’s nastier little surprises), and, aptly, Chas & Dave crackle from a speaker balanced on a rusty barbecue (not my musical choice, I hasten to add).

Ergo, today there will be no personal bests. All things considered, I’ll take the piddly dumbbells, thanks very much, and be kind to my knees during those goddamn reverse lunges that never get easier.

If these mornings had a slogan, it would be: ‘Four menopausal women, sometimes smashing it, sometimes not. Both absolutely fine.’ It won’t catch on, but it does what it says on the paint tin I just stubbed my toe on.

I started 18 months ago for reasons that were roughly 50 per cent health and 50 per cent vanity. Perimenopause had introduced me to the increasingly bossy corner of the internet telling midlife women how to preserve their bones, muscles and joints, ideally while eating more protein, sleeping eight uninterrupted hours and remaining completely unstressed by everything else we’re apparently doing wrong.

“Over the past ten years, we’ve gone from having very little knowledge to being inundated with options and advice,” agrees women’s health coach Pamela Windle. “It’s important to frame this as information rather than something that must be done. What’s missing is that women often don’t know what’s right for them individually. If having information were all we needed, everyone would be thriving.” Exactly this.

Beneath all the noise was an instinct that lifting weights would be good for me. It has made me physically stronger – no surprise there. What I hadn’t expected was that feeling stronger would make the aesthetic ambitions quieter. They haven’t disappeared – I still own mirrors – but they’ve made room for something more useful: noticing what my body is capable of, what it needs from me and how both can change from one week to the next.

Body confidence in midlife is not feeling consistently good about your body or even loving your body consistently. It’s having a relationship with it that can withstand the days when you really, really, really don’t. Beneath the self-doubt and 3am searches for menopause pillows there’s something steadier. Let’s call it peace. Not peace with sore skin, night sweats or forgetting the word “toast” so asking the children if they want “some of that hot bread stuff”. It’s knowing that a bloated day, fewer squats or stubborn jeans are not a verdict on your body or on you. You can fall out without the whole relationship being over.

Perimenopause can certainly wreak havoc with body confidence. A systematic review of 18 studies described it – alongside puberty, pregnancy and the postnatal period – as a “window of vulnerability”.

Hang on a minute. Add up those life phases and that’s what, 20 years? Less a window, more a gaping hole in the side of the house. By the time our ovaries take their final bow, we’re well practised in vulnerability – and perhaps we’ve learnt not to mistake every wobble for a structural failure.

One of the easiest tropes is that women stop caring. Cherie in the garage – someone Gregg Wallace might call “a woman of a certain age”, although I’d dare him to say that to her face – has fully bought into it: she maintains that she says what she thinks, wears what she likes and no longer gives a damn who approves. Today she’s wearing Lululemon, so I’m not sure what this proves. I’m also not convinced it’s true – or particularly helpful.

Stopping caring sounds like giving up, and Cherie, grunting through Romanian deadlifts, blatantly hasn’t.

Isn’t the truth almost the reverse? We care deeply about our bodies – the global menopause market could be worth as much as $25 billion by 2030 (PwC), which is evidence enough. What’s changed, perhaps, is what caring means.

Nobody has made a better case for caring than Davina McCall. She was 44 when perimenopause arrived, took up weights properly in what she calls her second act, and went on to get British women talking about the menopause out loud on television. She hasn't stopped caring what her body needs, she just took control back.

Sure, I can look at my pre-teen daughter and feel nostalgic for a time when varicose veins happened to other people. But I can also watch my 94-year-old neighbour hotfooting it uphill and think: that. That is what I want. A body that carries me through the world until – with a bit of luck – menopause feels as distant as puberty does now.

Windle also rejects the idea that confidence means appearance no longer matters. “And yes, they are bothered by how they look. Why wouldn’t they?” Women may be more confident, she says, but still care about what their bodies need, “not just for this moment, but for the next five, 10, 15 or 20 years, if we’re lucky enough to be here”.That doesn’t make practical support irrelevant. A cooling pillow for a comfortable night's sleep, or supplements that target brain fog can be self-care. The key is finding retailers that help us cut through the noise rather than add to it, making it easier to focus on what might genuinely help right now. The useful word is “your”: does a new regime or purchase answer a need you recognise, or is it just reinforcing the idea that your body is another project you’re failing to optimise?

Back in the garage, the soundtrack has improved considerably thanks to Dolly Parton (a role model for being comfortable in her own skin if ever there was one). My squat form has not. But that’s sort of the point: feeling rubbish about my body today doesn’t mean my body is rubbish. Next week might be Gladiators again. Either way, I’ll be back.

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