21: You’ve Been Rucking Your Whole Life

Hey, it’s Megan. Grab your coffee and let’s have a convo.

Good morning and welcome back to Mornings with Megan. I’m Megan Pfiffner, a Certified Nutrition Specialist and creator of the Perimenopause Matrix™ — and I am so glad that you’re here.

Today we’re going to talk about rucking. And before you change the episode because you think this is a military fitness bro topic, stay with me. Here’s what I want you to know before we even get into it: you have probably been rucking your entire adult life. You just didn’t have a fancy name for it.

— THE REAL TALK —

Can I tell you something that I think about a lot?

When I lived in Queens, I used to see this woman regularly at the subway station. She was just under five feet tall and every single day she would climb two full flights of stairs to the platform carrying — and I’m not exaggerating — a baby on her front in a carrier, a toddler on her back, a stroller folded under one arm, a bag on her hip, and an older child’s hand in her other hand.

I would watch her and think: that is one of the most physically impressive things I have ever witnessed in this city.

And I think about women like her a lot when I hear people say they don’t have time to exercise or they can’t afford a gym membership. Because women have always been movers. We are schleppers. We are haulers. We are foragers and carriers. Think about women in rural communities around the world who carry heavy jugs of water on their heads for miles just to bring their families clean drinking water while holding children or baskets of goods. Think about the woman at the farmer’s market, the mom at the school pickup with four bags on each arm, the woman on the train holding her groceries and her coffee and her kid.

This is ancient evolutionary biology doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Michael Easter touches on this in his book The Comfort Crisis and on his Substack — our history as load carriers is literally woven into our physiology. Carrying is part of how we became who we are as a species. We did not evolve sitting still. We evolved moving under load. And there’s a military fitness world that has just caught up and given it a name. They call it rucking.

— THE REFRAME: YOU ARE ALREADY AN ATHLETE —

Here’s what I want you to sit with for a second.

Somewhere along the way, the fitness industry convinced us that real exercise looks a certain way. It happens at a gym. It requires specific equipment. It has a name and a class and a leaderboard. It probably involves very cute outfits. And if what you’re doing doesn’t look like that, it doesn’t count.

That is a lie. And the science — real science from Harvard — backs me up on this.

In 2007, researcher Alia Crum and Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer published a study in Psychological Science about hotel maids. These women spent their entire working days doing genuinely hard physical work — lifting, pushing, pulling, hauling heavy equipment up and down corridors, scrubbing and moving and bending and carrying. It was not easy work. But most of them believed they were not getting enough exercise. Most of them thought of themselves as essentially sedentary, because it didn’t look like exercise. It didn’t happen at a gym. It was just work.

The researchers divided 84 maids into two groups. One group was told the truth: that the work they were already doing counted as real exercise — that it met the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle. They were shown specifics: 15 minutes of scrubbing burns 60 calories, 15 minutes of vacuuming burns 50. This counts. You are already doing this. The other group was told nothing.

Four weeks later, without changing their actual behavior at all — same work, same hours, same everything — the group who knew their work counted showed measurable decreases in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and BMI.

Same work. Different belief. Different body.

I want that to land. Because this is what I’m giving you today. Not a new program, not another thing to add to your schedule. I’m giving you the information that what you are already doing counts. And once you have this information — just like those maids — your body can fully receive the benefits of the work it’s already doing.

— WHY THIS IS URGENT IN PERIMENOPAUSE —

Now let’s talk about why this particular type of movement — load-bearing, weight-carrying movement — matters so specifically for women in perimenopause. Because this is not just general fitness advice. This is targeted, precise, and frankly urgent for where your body is right now.

When estrogen begins to decline in perimenopause, several things happen to your musculoskeletal system that most women are never told about.

First: muscle. Estrogen has a protective relationship with skeletal muscle. As it declines, you become more susceptible to muscle loss — and I want to be clear, this is on top of the natural age-related muscle loss of 3 to 8% per decade that starts in your 30s. Perimenopause puts that loss into a higher gear. Testosterone — which women have and need — also declines in this window, and testosterone is the other major driver of muscle maintenance. We are losing both protective hormones simultaneously. This is why women in perimenopause often feel like their body composition is shifting even when nothing has changed about their diet or exercise. It’s not your imagination. It’s your hormonal environment.

The primary signal your body uses to keep muscle is mechanical load. Your muscles need to feel resistance to get the message: stay, we need you, don’t break down. Without that signal — without weight, without resistance — the body has less reason to maintain what it has. Muscle is metabolically expensive tissue. It costs something to keep. Give your body a reason to keep it. Walking without load is wonderful — it’s cardiovascular, it supports mood and metabolic health. Do not stop walking. But it does not send the “keep this muscle” signal the way weighted movement does. Rucking does.

Second: bone. Estrogen also regulates bone remodeling. As estrogen drops, bone breakdown accelerates and bone building slows. The hip and lower extremities are particularly vulnerable. The research on weighted walking in postmenopausal women is clear: women who did weighted walking maintained bone density at these sites, while women doing the same walking without load showed bone loss over time. Rucking kept their bones where they were.

I want to be precise here: we are talking about maintaining, not improving bone density. For significant bone building, we still need heavy resistance training — deadlifts, squats, loaded movements at the spine and hip. Rucking is not a replacement for that. Think of rucking as your everyday bone protection and resistance training as your bone investment. You want both.

Third: insulin sensitivity. Estrogen also supports how your cells respond to insulin. As it declines, insulin resistance can creep in — even in women who have never had blood sugar issues. Load-bearing movement, and the muscle mass that comes from it, is one of the most powerful tools for maintaining insulin sensitivity. Muscle is metabolically active tissue — it pulls glucose out of your bloodstream. More muscle means better blood sugar regulation. This is why the Move pillar and the Fuel pillar of the Perimenopause Matrix™ are never separate. They are in constant conversation. What you do with your body directly shapes how your body handles food.

So when I say rucking is almost custom-built for perimenopause, I mean it literally. It addresses muscle, bone, and metabolic health simultaneously — in a low-cortisol, low-impact, highly accessible format. Show me a medication that does all three.

— WHAT THE RESEARCH SHOWS —

Rucking is simply walking or moving with added external load — weight on your body. The word comes from “rucksack,” the military term for a backpack. For decades it’s been the backbone of military training, used to build endurance, cardiovascular fitness, and strength simultaneously.

The research extends well beyond military contexts. The relevant data for us comes from weighted vest and load-carriage walking studies in women — including postmenopausal cohorts. The terminology in the studies varies — “load carriage,” “weighted vest walking,” “backpack walking” — but the mechanics are identical to what the fitness world now calls rucking.

Cardiovascular fitness. Adding load to your walk increases your heart rate, oxygen uptake, stroke volume, and overall cardiovascular demand in a dose-responsive way. More load, more incline, more speed — all of it amplifies the effect. Critically, this happens at the low-impact mechanics of walking. No pounding, no joint stress, no cortisol spike. You get cardiovascular training in what exercise scientists call Zone 2 — the aerobic base zone that is the foundation of long-term metabolic and cardiovascular health. This feeds your Move pillar directly.

Calorie burn. Even modest added load measurably increases your metabolic rate compared to the same unloaded walk. The relationship is roughly linear — each additional pound carried increases your energy expenditure. Ten pounds is enough to see a meaningful difference. Twenty pounds increases it significantly. The effect scales with load, speed, and incline, and you can manipulate any of those variables to progress over time.

Cortisol — and this is the most important one for us. Most cardio formats that build real fitness also spike cortisol significantly. Running, HIIT, intense cycling — all meaningful cortisol stressors. In perimenopause, when our Regulate pillar is under pressure and our stress response systems are already taxed, adding high-cortisol exercise to the stack can backfire. It disrupts sleep. It worsens anxiety. It can drive fat storage around the midsection. It is the wrong tool for a nervous system that is already working overtime.

Rucking is different. It’s cardiovascular exercise that does not spike cortisol the way high-intensity work does. And time outdoors — which is where most people ruck — independently reduces cortisol through what environmental psychology researchers call restorative attention. Green space, natural light, fresh air: these things measurably lower stress hormones. You get the cardiovascular and metabolic benefit while actively reducing your stress load. That combination is rare. It is exactly what our perimenopause bodies need. And it puts your Regulate pillar in active recovery mode instead of deficit.

The female advantage — and it’s real. Research on women doing loaded exercise events shows something interesting: women often rate the same relative load as more strenuous than men — higher perceived exertion. You might think that’s a disadvantage. It’s not. Because despite rating it as harder, women in these studies recovered leg strength faster on retesting and tolerated the sustained load well. Women have better endurance and fatigue resistance than men relative to body size.

This is why I could carry a week’s worth of groceries on the subway for 40 minutes and my ex-husband — who is significantly stronger than me by almost any measure — couldn’t sustain it. Not for that long. He had the raw strength. He didn’t have the endurance for sustained load carrying. I did. And that is not a coincidence. It’s biology. Our hips are mechanically wider than men’s, which means our bodies can distribute load differently and often more efficiently over long distances. We are anatomically adapted for exactly what rucking requires. The military invented the language. Women invented the practice.

I want to ask you something. Do you have a friend in your life who’s walking for exercise and feeling like it’s not enough? Who thinks she needs to join a gym or take a class to get real results? Please share this episode with her right now. You can send it while you’re listening. Just forward it and say: “this one’s for you.” Because what she’s already doing might be working. She just needs to know it counts.

— WHAT RUCKING IS NOT —

Before we get to the practical, I want to spend one minute on what rucking is not.

Rucking is not a replacement for heavy resistance training. If you are in perimenopause and you are not lifting genuinely heavy weights with progressive overload, that needs to be on your radar. Rucking supports your bone and muscle maintenance. Heavy resistance training builds them. We need both. Rucking fills your movement-throughout-the-week gaps. Lifting fills the adaptation and building gaps. I’ll do a dedicated episode on resistance training for perimenopause — it deserves its own conversation. For now: rucking is an addition to your toolkit, not a swap.

Rucking is not an excuse to go harder. I work with women who are chronically under-recovered — poor sleep, high stress, racing nervous systems — and the instinct is often to push harder at exercise as a form of control. Rucking is not that. It’s a walk with weight. The pace is conversational. You should be able to hold a full sentence without gasping. If you’re going hard enough that you can’t speak, you’ve left rucking territory and entered something that is going to cost your Regulate pillar. Slow down. Add weight before you add intensity.

Rucking is not only for people who are already fit. This is one of the most accessible entry points into load-bearing exercise that exists. If you have been sedentary, if you’re returning from injury, if the idea of a gym is overwhelming — a walk with five pounds in a backpack is exactly where to start. Start there. It counts.

— THE MOVE PILLAR ACTIVATION —

Here is exactly how to do this. This week. Not someday.

Step one: find a backpack. Not a special one. Your regular backpack, your kid’s old school backpack, whatever you have. If it has shoulder straps and you can close it, it works.

Step two: add weight. Books, cans of food, full water bottles, a bag of rice. Start with roughly 5 to 10% of your body weight. If you weigh 150 pounds, that’s about 8 to 15 pounds. If that sounds like a lot, start with 5. Your body will tell you what’s right.

Step three: go for your normal walk. Same route, same time. The only difference is the weight on your back. That’s it. You’re rucking.

A note on load placement. Pack the weight high in the bag, close to your back — not hanging down at the bottom. Weight that sits low and away from your body increases strain on your lower back. Weight that sits high and tight stays close to your center of gravity and reduces that strain. If you ever invest in a dedicated pack, look for one with a hip belt. For women specifically, a hip belt shifts some of the load onto your hips rather than your shoulders — which is both more comfortable and more anatomically appropriate for our frame. A chest strap that keeps the pack from swinging also helps with gait.

If you have little ones who can be worn — wear them. If your child is still small enough for a front or back carrier, put them in it for part of your walk instead of the stroller. You get the load-bearing benefit. They get the contact time. That is the most efficient two-for-one in parenting and fitness.

How to progress. Give yourself two to three weeks at your starting weight before adding more. Your tendons and ligaments need more time to adapt than your muscles do — so even if you feel ready to go heavier immediately, be patient. When you’re ready to increase, add load before you add distance or speed. Once both feel manageable, start adding incline. Hills are a significant amplifier.

Your Week One target: Three walks this week with a weighted pack. Twenty to thirty minutes is plenty to start. Just go. This is your Move pillar activation for this week.

— THE PERIMENOPAUSE MATRIX™ CONNECTION —

Let me bring this home through the Perimenopause Matrix™, because I want you to see how many pillars this one practice touches.

Move — the core application. Load-bearing movement is the most important category of movement at our stage of life.

Fuel — muscle mass drives insulin sensitivity. Rucking supports muscle, which supports your blood sugar, which supports your energy, your cravings, and your metabolic health.

Recharge — improved cardiovascular fitness and reduced cortisol directly feed sleep quality. Lower stress hormone load in the evening means your body can actually downshift and rest.

Regulate — the low-cortisol nature of rucking combined with outdoor exposure puts your nervous system in recovery mode instead of deficit. This is active Regulate pillar support.

Connect — walk with someone. Rucking is a social activity if you want it to be. Some of the best conversations happen on a walk.

Clean — movement supports lymphatic circulation and the body’s natural processes for clearing metabolic waste. Your lymphatic system doesn’t have a pump. Movement is its pump.

One practice. Six pillars. This is why rucking belongs in the perimenopause toolkit.

— TLDR TAKEAWAY —

You have been rucking your entire life and giving yourself zero credit for it. The groceries you carry, the kids you haul, the stairs you climb with a full bag — your body has been receiving real, measurable benefits from that load-bearing movement. Now you know. And now that you know, you can be intentional.

Take it one step further this week. Add intentional load to one walk. Put 10 pounds in a backpack. Carry your groceries home instead of rolling them. Wear your baby on the next walk instead of the stroller. Know that what you are doing is good for your muscles, good for your bones, good for your heart, good for your blood sugar, and good for your nervous system — in perimenopause specifically. That’s not general wellness advice. That’s targeted support for exactly where your body is right now.

You are not starting from zero. You never were.

If you want to understand how your movement is intersecting with your hormones, your metabolism, and everything else happening in your body right now — that is exactly what the Perimenopause Matrix™ Lab Review is designed for. It’s a 60-minute deep dive where we look at your actual labs through all six pillars of the Matrix, and I tell you specifically what is going on and what to do about it. It’s $99 and you can find it at meganpfiffnernutrition.com. Link is in the show notes.

See you next Wednesday morning.