Why Midlife Women Deserve Better: Inside The Forties Formula

Women in their forties have long been asked to manage symptoms quietly and carry on. Bloodwork comes back "normal," yet something still feels off. Sleep thins out, energy dips, and the workouts that used to work stop working. For a long time, there was nowhere honest to take that frustration.

That's the gap The Forties Formula podcast was built to close. We sat down with hosts Amanda Lim and Jasmin Dhillon — one a metabolic health coach, the other diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency at 36 — to find out what it took for two women to say the things doctors weren't saying. True to form, before putting their name to anything in this collab, they went through the ingredients the way they fact-check every episode, and curated the three that best fit their audience. That's The Forties Formula System.

First, the numbers behind why these conversations need to happen.

For a long time, menopause and the years leading up to it were talked about only in whispers, if at all. Symptoms were written off as ordinary tiredness, mood swings, or simply "getting older," and women were often left to work out on their own what was happening to their bodies. That silence has started to lift in recent years, but it has also revealed how far behind the healthcare system still is. The numbers back up what many women already knew from experience.

In Singapore, KK Women's and Children's Hospital launched the country's first official menopause management guidelines in February 2026, built on research showing that 70% of women with moderate to severe symptoms had never sought medical help, while 90% of healthcare professionals admitted they lacked confidence diagnosing or treating those symptoms. In Australia, a 2024 Senate inquiry into menopause and perimenopause heard that more than 85% of women with bothersome symptoms were not receiving evidence-based care, with one submission describing a sector marked by under-diagnosis and misinformation.

I've come to know The Forties Formula as the work of Amanda Lim and Jasmin Dhillon, two nutritionists based in Singapore who met through a networking group and quickly realised they shared the same mission, even if they had arrived at it from different directions. Amanda spends her days as a metabolic health coach and director of LIFT Clinic, watching women walk in with bloodwork that looks fine on paper while they still feel unlike themselves. Jasmin's turning point was more personal. She was diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency at thirty-six, years earlier than she ever expected, and the diagnosis reshaped how she thought about ageing and her own work as a nutritional health coach.

Statistics can tell you a system is failing women, but they can't tell you what it feels like to sit across from a doctor who doesn't believe you, or to lie awake wondering if you're imagining it all. For that, I wanted to hear it straight from Amanda and Jasmin. I sat down with them, and the conversation ran the same way it does on the podcast: warm, honest, and grounded in real days spent with real women. Here is some of what they told me, in their own words.

Amanda remembers the years that led to The Forties Formula clearly. "I'd spend days in clinic with women who walked in with completely normal bloodwork, then spend the rest of the appointment trying to sleuth out why they felt anything but normal," she told me. Jasmin was living her own version of the same problem at home. "I'd spend evenings googling symptoms, like why I wasn't sleeping as well as I used to, or why the workouts that used to work just didn't anymore." I pictured the scene as she described it: a woman lying awake at midnight, phone lit up, trying to work out whether what she's feeling is normal or worth mentioning to a doctor who might just tell her it's stress. 

That was Jasmin's evening routine for a while, and it's the exact moment the podcast was built to interrupt. "We were tired of the conversation being either too clinical to be relatable or too obscure to be trusted," she said. "We wanted something in between: rigorous, but said like you'd say it to a friend over coffee."

Their instincts still pull in different directions, and that's by design. "My instincts are always to collect data and act on its results," Amanda told me, a habit built over two decades in the fitness industry and now full-time clinical work. 

Jasmin comes at it differently. "My past struggles with my weight and health, and the way I examine how my clients are actually living and feeling, inform my practice," she said, "that's often the harder thing to measure." Between the two of them, I could see how they'd landed on a show that pulls from both ends of the wellness spectrum, which is why an episode can move from a lab result to a late-night text about not being able to fall asleep without ever feeling like a lecture.

I asked what actually works, and the answer came fast. "Prioritise strength training and adequate protein, unglamorously and non-negotiably," Amanda said. "Muscle is the hardest thing to get back once it's gone, and most women in their forties don't even realise that menopause is when the majority of it walks out the door if we don't do something about it." 

What she's become comfortable tuning out is everything sold with urgency attached, from thirty-day resets to a green powder promising to fix a "broken" metabolism overnight. "If it's designed to make you feel like you're failing by Tuesday," she said, "it's not advice. It's marketing."

Jasmin's own turning point came earlier than most. She was thirty-six, younger than she expected, when her doctor told her she had premature ovarian insufficiency. "That diagnosis was hard to sit with," she told me. "It challenged everything I thought I had time for, and forced me to separate how I looked from how well I actually was." She retrained as an Integrated Health Strategist not long after, focused on the hormone and gut health work she wishes someone had explained to her at thirty-six. 

Amanda's shift came more gradually, through years of clinic work and becoming a mother of three. "I used to believe more was more: more miles to run, more weights to lift," she said. "Now I realise the real game is recovery and longevity. It's not about what you can do perfectly for a short while, it's about what you can sustain in the worst of times." She calls it raising the floor, and I noticed how easily the line came to her: consistency wins over intensity, every time.

After talking to more than a hundred women and experts for the show, one pattern keeps surfacing for Amanda and Jasmin, and it has nothing to do with a specific habit or supplement. "They've stopped asking permission," Amanda said of the women who seem most like themselves in their forties. I thought of a friend who finally booked the appointment she'd been putting off for a year, or another who started lifting weights at the gym despite feeling like the only woman doing it. 

That's the shift Amanda means: not certainty, but a willingness to just try something and see.

I asked what an unstoppable life looks like now, and the answers have changed since their thirties. For Jasmin, it used to mean staying slim and not looking her age. "Now it has nothing to do with looks," she told me. "It means having the strength and the sleep to still be fully present for my sons in twenty years. That's my bottom line." 

For Amanda, it used to mean being the hardest worker in every room. Now it means something quieter: getting through a busy clinic day with enough left over to actually be present with her three kids at the end of it, rather than handing them her leftovers. "In my thirties, I would've called that ambition," she said. "Now I'd call it capacity."

That same philosophy, rigorous but never punishing, is what shaped my collaboration with Amanda and Jasmin. The Forties Formula System pairs The Skin, an ultra-absorbable nano collagen, with The Protect, a clinically studied combination of Setria Glutathione and PureBKale Glucoraphanin. Setria Glutathione is often called the body's master antioxidant, and PureBKale Glucoraphanin is a black kale extract that helps activate the body's own detox pathways. Together they work on both sides of skin ageing: rebuilding collagen from within while defending those new fibres from daily oxidative stress. 

Every purchase through this collaboration also includes a free pack of The Unwind, formulated to support deeper, more restorative sleep, which felt fitting given how often sleep came up in conversations about midlife health.