Why I wrote it

I’ve coached women through pregnancy, postpartum and perimenopause for years, and I kept running into the same gap: most fitness advice out there is written for a body that isn’t changing. Mine changed three times over. So did the bodies of almost every woman I’ve trained. There was no shortage of generic workout plans — what was missing was something that met women where they actually were, instead of where a 12-week transformation plan assumes they should be.

So I wrote the book I wished existed when I was pregnant with my first, exhausted with my second, and rebuilding strength after my third. It’s not aspirational. It’s not about “getting your body back.” It’s about training through the actual mess — sleep deprivation, hormones, a toddler on your hip — because that mess is real life, not an obstacle standing between you and it.

Who it’s for

Any woman training through preconception, pregnancy, postpartum, or perimenopause — whether you’ve never lifted a weight or you’ve been training for twenty years and suddenly nothing about your body responds the way it used to. It’s written for the specific, unglamorous seasons in between: the trimester where nothing feels safe to try, the six weeks postpartum when everyone tells you different things, the perimenopause fog nobody warned you about.

Every chapter was reviewed by an OB/GYN, a pelvic floor physiotherapist, and a clinical nutritionist — so the practical handholds inside are things you can actually trust, not just things that sounded right.

Ebook and paperback are both on Amazon. The full exercise library that goes with the book — every movement, searchable and filterable by phase — lives on the ActiveWomen site, along with sample chapters and reviews. A Dutch edition, Kracht door de Chaos, is in the works.