Holding Your Ground: Staying Strong as the Clocks Go Back

October is the month things quietly slip. Not dramatically — nobody decides to give up. It is more subtle than that. The mornings are darker, the weather turns, the clocks go back towards the end of the month and suddenly it is dark before you have finished work. Christmas appears on the horizon, the diary fills, and your own plans get moved gently to the bottom of the list with a promise: I'll sort it in January.

I understand it. I feel the pull of it myself. But January is nearly three months away, and three months is a quarter of a year. If you let the whole autumn go, you do not arrive in January fresh and ready — you arrive tired, heavier, achier and starting from further back than you are now. This month is not about doing more. It is about holding your ground.

A quick note: I coach from the UK, so this is written with a northern hemisphere autumn in mind — shorter days, colder weather and the clocks going back. If your October looks completely different where you are, the principle still holds: when the season shifts, your routine has to shift with it rather than disappear.

Why the season change hits harder in midlife

There is a reason this feels harder than it did in your twenties. In midlife, your hormones are already affecting sleep, mood, temperature and energy. Oestrogen and progesterone are fluctuating, sleep is often lighter and more broken, and your stress response is less forgiving than it used to be. Now take away three or four hours of daylight and add cold, wet mornings.

Your body clock runs on light. Bright light in the morning tells your brain it is daytime — it lifts cortisol when you want it up, supports serotonin through the day and sets the timer for melatonin roughly fourteen to sixteen hours later, which is what helps you fall asleep at night. When you get up in the dark, commute in the dark and finish in the dark, that signal never properly arrives. You feel flat, foggy, hungrier, and less inclined to train. For some women it goes further than that: Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a genuine, recognised low mood pattern that arrives with the darker months.

Ten minutes of light, first thing

This is the single change I would make first, because it costs almost nothing and it affects everything else — mood, energy, appetite and sleep.

If there is daylight, get outside. Ten minutes with your coffee, a walk round the block, the dog out first thing. Daylight outside on a grey, overcast day is still far brighter than any indoor lighting in your house, so it counts.

When it is genuinely dark when I get up — which is most of this month — I use a light therapy lamp. I invested in a Lumie Mini compact light therapy lamp, 10,000 lux, and I sit in front of it for about ten minutes each morning while I have my coffee and go through my day. It is small, it lives on my desk, and it means the dark mornings do not dictate how I feel by mid-afternoon.

View the lamp I useAffiliate link — I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.

• Use it early. Within an hour or so of waking is where it does the most for your body clock.
• Ten minutes at 10,000 lux is the usual guide — you do not stare at it, you just have it on beside you while you do something else.
• Not in the evening. Bright light late will push your sleep in the wrong direction.

A light lamp is not a treatment for depression. If your low mood is persistent or affecting your daily life, please speak to your GP — and do check with them first if you have an eye condition or take medication that makes you sensitive to light.

The 1st of October vitamin D rule

From October through to March, the sun in the UK does not sit high enough in the sky for our skin to make vitamin D, no matter how much time you spend outside. That is not an opinion, it is the angle of the sun — and it is why UK public health advice is that adults consider a daily vitamin D supplement through the autumn and winter.

It matters more than people think in midlife. Vitamin D supports bone density at exactly the point oestrogen is no longer protecting it, plus immune function through the season everyone gets ill, and mood. I treat the 1st of October as the date it goes back into my daily routine, and I keep it there until spring.

I have written a full guide on what to take and how much, if you want the detail: Vitamin D in midlife.

Calendar defence: your three non-negotiables

Here is the honest bit. Motivation is not going to carry you through October, November and December. It will not turn up on a wet Tuesday when it is dark at half four. Structure will.

So pick three things — no more — and put them in the diary like appointments you would not cancel on anyone else. Mine this month are two strength sessions and my ten minutes of morning light. Yours might be a walk at lunchtime, a Sunday cook-up, or protein at breakfast.

• Write them in, with times. "Train three times a week" is a wish. "Tuesday 7am, Thursday 7am" is a plan.
• Protect them like a work meeting. You would not cancel a client because it was raining.
• Shrink, do not skip. A twenty-minute session still counts. Missing the week entirely is what breaks the habit.
• Plan around the light. If your evening walk has gone dark, move it to lunchtime now rather than losing it altogether. And if getting outside feels impossible — it's dark, wet and cold, and you're office based — consider investing in a walking pad. They slot under a standing desk at work or tuck away at home, so you can keep your steps up whatever the weather is doing.

That is what stops you getting to Christmas feeling out of control, and it is what makes January a continuation instead of a rescue mission.

What's coming this month

This is week one of Strong Through Autumn. Over the rest of October I will share the warm, protein-first food I cook when it turns cold, how to keep strength training going through the dark months, and the autumn kit I actually use myself.