By Stephanie Valentine, BA, CNP, MHWC · 6 minute read · Updated September 24, 2026
Midlife rarely settles for long. Here's why next month always looks roomier than this one, and what to do with the week you actually have.
Waiting for life to settle down is the most expensive health plan I know, because the calm stretch keeps not arriving. Research on how we forecast our own time says we reliably expect more free hours next month than we have today, and we make that mistake with time far more than with money. The fix isn't a quieter season. It's choosing the one habit carrying the most weight right now and shrinking it until it fits the week you already have.
Since April our house has had one thing after another, some of it happy and some of it heavy, most of it landing before the last thing had finished. I kept saying the same sentence: once things settle down, I'll catch up on sleep and get back to the gym. Then last week my husband Mark and I were booking flights out west for another family funeral, and I looked up from the laptop and thought, maybe this is what life is.
Key takeaways
- People expect to have more spare time in the future than they have now, and the bias runs stronger for time than for money (Zauberman and Lynch, 2005).
- Two to five minutes of light walking, repeated through the day, lowered blood sugar and insulin after meals in a pooled analysis of seven small studies (Buffey and colleagues, 2022).
- Adults who did more enjoyable leisure activities had lower blood pressure and cortisol and better mood in a survey of 1,399 people (Pressman and colleagues, 2009).
- Start with the pillar that gave way first on your hardest recent day rather than repairing all six at once.
- Fun belongs on the calendar, booked with another person, before next month fills up.
Why do we keep saying "once things settle down"?
Because next month's calendar looks emptier than this one, and we take that at face value. In 2005, Gal Zauberman and John Lynch ran seven experiments on how people judge future resources and found we expect "slack," their word for spare capacity, to grow over time [EXTERNAL LINK: https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.134.1.23 — "published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General"].
Their explanation is the useful part. Money behaves much the same way week to week, so we learn its patterns and budget accordingly. Time gets filled by a different set of demands every week, so we never quite notice the pattern underneath.
Next month looks roomy because nothing has landed on it yet. The appointment, the parent who needs help, the work crisis: none of them are in the calendar when you make the promise.
Does midlife actually get less busy?
Midlife tends to bring overlap rather than one tidy crisis. Parents need more support while adult children still need plenty, careers are often at their most demanding, and bodies are changing through perimenopause and menopause. Celebrations and losses cluster in the same years, which is exactly what our spring looked like.
None of that means you're doing this stage wrong. Overlap is the shape of it.
Once you accept that the calm patch may be brief when it finally comes, the question changes. It stops being when will I look after myself, and becomes how do I want to feel while life stays unsettled, which is a question you can answer this week.
What happens to your body while you sit and wait?
Long stretches of sitting change how your body handles a meal, and the effect shows up the same day. A 2022 systematic review from the University of Limerick pooled seven studies comparing an uninterrupted day in a chair with a day broken up every twenty to thirty minutes. Two to five minutes of light walking lowered blood sugar and insulin after meals. Standing helped as well, though less. The studies were small, short-term and mostly in healthy adults, so I'd call it a strong hint rather than a verdict.
The mechanism takes the guilt out of the afternoon slump. Contracting muscles pull glucose out of your blood with less help from insulin, and hours in a chair switch that off.
Why does two o'clock feel so heavy?
The two o'clock dip usually has several parents, including your sleep the night before, your natural body clock rhythm, and what lunch did to your blood sugar while you sat still afterwards. Inactive muscles take up less glucose, so the meal lands harder than it would if you had moved.
That's why my fix is small and frequent instead of heroic. You don't need a workout to change your afternoon. You need your legs to do a little work, often.
A lunch built around protein and fibre helps too, which is the food half of the same problem /products/blood-sugar-regulation-guide .
Is fun actually a health habit?
Fun earns its place, and it isn't officially one of the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, the framework I build my work around: food, sleep, movement, stress, community and avoiding risky substances.
In 2009, Sarah Pressman and colleagues surveyed 1,399 adults, roughly three quarters of them women, about how often they did enjoyable things in their free time [EXTERNAL LINK: https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0b013e3181ad7978 — "published in Psychosomatic Medicine"]. People who did more of them had lower blood pressure, lower cortisol, smaller waists and fewer symptoms of depression. It's a correlation, so it can't prove the fun caused the results.
Fun sits underneath stress relief and community, feeding both at once. After that moment at the laptop, Mark and I booked two days of golf. Two hours each day, outside and walking, phones away.
What does movement look like when the week is a mess?
Any plan that needs a clear week will wait forever, so build for the week you have. Two minutes at the top of each hour and a walk after one meal will beat the gym membership you're saving for a calmer month.
| Waiting for the gym | Two minutes an hour | A walk after a meal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it asks | A clear hour, a change of clothes, travel | Standing up where you already are | Ten minutes after lunch or dinner |
| When it happens | Once life settles | Every hour you're at your desk | After eating |
| Evidence | Strong, if you get there | Short breaks lowered post-meal glucose (Buffey, 2022) | Same analysis, same effect |
Set an hourly reminder on your phone and give those two minutes to whatever your body is stiffest from: standing and marching on the spot, a few squats beside the chair, rolling your shoulders back. Nothing to change into, nothing to book.
How do you put fun on the calendar without it becoming a chore?
Treat it as an appointment rather than a reward for finishing your list, because the list never finishes. Open your calendar for the coming two weeks and block an afternoon for an activity you would do purely for the pleasure of it, nothing that improves your career or your house.
Then book it with another person. Plans with someone else are much harder to cancel, and you pick up the community pillar while you're at it.
If an afternoon feels impossible, start with an hour. The point is that it exists before next month fills up, because it will.
My other free trick is the kitchen playlist, lately heavy on Harry Styles and the new Miley Cyrus, which turns dinner prep into dancing /products/love-whats-on-your-plate-book — "a recipe from my cookbook"] and folds movement into the cooking.
FAQs: waiting for life to settle down
Q: Why do I always think I'll have more time next month? A: Zauberman and Lynch found in 2005 that people consistently expect more spare time in the future than in the present, and more so for time than for money. Because each week fills with a different set of demands, we never learn that it always fills.
Q: How long should I walk after a meal to help my blood sugar? A: A 2022 analysis found that two to five minutes of light walking, repeated every twenty to thirty minutes, lowered blood sugar and insulin after meals compared with sitting. Many women find a ten-minute walk after lunch or dinner easier to keep. If you take blood sugar medication, check with your healthcare provider first.
Q: Why am I so tired at two in the afternoon? A: Sleep, body clock rhythms and what you ate at lunch all play a part, and sitting still afterwards adds to it, because inactive muscles take up less glucose. Short movement breaks and a lunch with protein and fibre are good places to start.
Q: Which of the six pillars should I work on first? A: Picture your hardest day in the last few weeks and ask which piece collapsed first. If you ran on five hours of sleep, start with bedtime. If you never left your chair, start with movement breaks. One at a time beats all six at once.
Start where you are
Life may not settle for a while, and I've made my peace with that. What changed was deciding I didn't need it to, and building the small things to fit the week in front of me instead.
Pick your one pillar this week and shrink it until it fits, then reply to this week's Slice and tell me which one you chose. If the afternoon slump is a food question for you, the guide below is where I'd start. LINK: Blood Sugar Regulation Guide
About the author
Stephanie Valentine, BA, CNP, MHWC, is a holistic nutritionist, clinical hypnotist and mental health wellness coach, and the author of the award-winning cookbook Love What's On Your Plate. She completed Harvard Medical School executive education in Women's Health and Wellness and writes The Slice, a weekly newsletter for busy midlife women, at SV Living.
This article is for general information and isn't a substitute for personalised medical advice.
