EP 44: Why the Diets and Workouts From Your 20s Don’t Work After 40 (and What Actually Does)

0:00Hello and welcome back to Becoming Her, Fitter, Better, and Stronger over 40. I'm your host and coach, Shauna. I am 46, a wife, a boy mom, and a fitness and nutrition coach helping women over 40 become their best. Let me start this episode by saying this. If you are a woman over 40 and you have found yourself saying, I don't get it. What worked for me in my 20s and my 30s is not working anymore. I want you to know you are not alone. I hear this every single week from women I coach. I used to say it myself because we find ourselves eating less than ever, training harder than ever, but yet there are no results to show.

0:36They're slow, they're inconsistent, or they're just not there at all. And it might be easy to believe that your age is the problem, but that's not the full truth. What really is happening is that the methods we were taught in our 20s and our 30s were never built for long-term results. They relied on brute force, on deprivation, and in some cases relying on our youth to make up for the flaws in those approaches. But now our body is in a different place, in a different stage in life, and it's not going to tolerate those subpar approaches. But once we understand why those old methods are not optimal and start to implement methods that are, we're going to have a better approach and you're going to see better results, better than you did even in your 20s and 30s.

1:20So let's go layer by layer. We're going to unpack the old way of what we were taught. we're going to explain why it's failing you now and why it really wasn't a great idea in the first place and we're going to unpack a science-backed approach that's going to actually work. So grab your favorite drink or a cup of coffee and let's dive right in. Let's start with workouts. We grew up in the calorie burning era. The measure of a good workout was how drenched in sweat you were, how many calories the treadmill flashed at the end. And the goal was always to burn more. But the reality is that calorie burning is temporary.

2:00You only burn calories while you're moving. So once you step off that treadmill, once that class is over, game over. Calories are no longer being burned. Compare that to strength training with the goal of building muscle and it's night and day difference. So when you lift weights, you are creating small tears in your muscle fibers and your body spends hours, even days repairing and building that tissue, which not only raises your caloric burn after, but it also adds new lean muscle tissue. And that muscle tissue is your metabolic engine. For every pound of muscle that you carry, you are going to burn more calories all day long just by existing, even while you're sitting, even while you're sleeping, even while you're scrolling or Netflixing.

2:46Beyond that though, muscle is what gives your body shape. It makes it appear toned and defined. So instead of asking yourself, how many calories can I burn today? A better question and a better mindset to have when you're approaching a workout is my training in a way that tells my body to adapt and build muscle. This is the new vibe for our 40s. It's all about getting stronger in the gym, using the gym to build the body. And then nutrition is where you are going to reveal that body. But stop using your workouts as just a way to pummel your body into the ground, sweat as much as you can, burn as many calories as you can.

3:23That is never, never going to give you a toned body that's going to be able to sustain fat loss and be optimized for fat loss. Having more muscle will change the intention, change the mindset, approach your workouts like an athlete, not a dieter. Really step into that role. Think of how can I get stronger with this workout? When you do that, you are going to unlock a body like you have never imagined, a body that not only looks strong and lean and defined, but is able to achieve fat loss easier and sustain fat loss for the long term. And that's what this is really about here is long term sustainable changes.

4:04We have all been on the yo-yo diets, on the back and forth, gaining and losing the same 10 pounds. So let's leave those in the 90s and let's step into the new era, the new vibe, which is getting strong. And that brings us to our second big shift that we need to make because you cannot get stronger if you are constantly starving yourself. So let's get into nutrition. So let's talk about nutrition. We lived through the era of eat less, train more. So we were doing things like skipping breakfast, training fasted, surviving on small salads and 100 calorie snack packs thinking, if I'm hungry, it must mean this is working.

4:44But I want you to zoom out here and I want you to look at the physiology. When you chronically under eat, your body lowers thyroid output, reduces your non-exercise activity, which is a subconscious movement like fidgeting, walking, even blinking, and that slows down your metabolism. And your body does this to conserve energy. It thinks food is scarce, so it needs to protect you. Also, when you're training fasted, you're not magically burning more fat. You're often breaking down muscle because your body doesn't have fuel. Less muscle means a slower metabolism. You also won't have as much energy to have the optimal workout that you could if you were fueled properly.

5:23Fueling properly is a game changer when it comes to getting stronger, building more muscle, which we already know is the key to unlocking your best body over 40. Now, when it comes to what to have before your training, carbs are your body's preferred energy source. They help you push harder and they help you recover faster. Protein is also important here because it's going to supply those amino acids, which are the building blocks of muscles. So instead of asking yourself, how little can I eat? I want you to ask yourself, how can I fuel my body so that it performs at its best? Because when you fuel properly, your training is going to improve, your recovery is going to improve, and your results are finally going to stick.

6:05I invite you to not just think about weight loss here, but I want you to think about body composition. When you do that, it's going to create a body that, again, physically is going to look better, but it's going to perform better and it's going to create long lasting results. We don't just want to chase a number on the scale and get there by however means possible. We want to fuel our body. We want to make sure that it's strong and capable for the years ahead. Starving your body will never lead to that healthy, defined, toned, strong body that you want to have. Fueling it properly is going to do that.

6:43Now, if you are training first thing in the morning and you're thinking to yourself, I cannot have a meal before I'm training, Shauna. I am training at 4.30 or 5 in the morning. I get it. I understand. Have a half a banana. Have a whey protein shake with just like a little bit of water. Something that's really quick digesting just to experiment. And I want you to really start to see, is your performance better? Is your recovery better? Do you feel better throughout the day? How does your strength improve? How is your progress over time? Really try to experiment with it. And you might be surprised at your results.

7:18If you really can't stomach anything, then at least try to have some essential amino acids that will provide your body with those building blocks so that it has something to rely on as you are strength training. But if you're training later in the day, then definitely have something to eat beforehand. Again, we want to go back into that athlete mindset, like really set yourself up to have a great performance, not necessarily to burn calories. We're using the kitchen to manage body fat. we're using the gym to build muscle. So we want to make sure we are prepared and fueled to do so. Now let's move on to recovery because this was a huge component for me, something that really helped my progress.

8:02Because for years, I glorified the grind like a lot of us did. Six workouts a week, in the gym for an hour and a half or more, sometimes even two a days. We thought that the harder we pushed, the better our results would be. But that's not the truth. The science is that workouts are a stressor to the body. They do create microscopic damage to your muscle. The growth and adaptation that you're chasing happens during your recovery. That's when your body repairs, it strengthens, it adapts, and it recovers. When you train constantly with no recovery, cortisol stays elevated. Now we are equipped to handle some level of stress and some level of cortisol.

8:42It's totally natural to have elevations and spikes. But when it's constantly staying elevated, you are going to have a harder time with fat loss. You're going to have more inflammation. Your sleep is going to get disrupted. Your hunger hormones are going to get disrupted. You're going to have more muscle breakdown and you're going to be constantly fatigued. So I want you to think about workouts like this. They are planting a seed and recovery is like watering them and letting the sun do its job. If you never water, nothing grows. And if you've been pushing harder and harder without results, it's probably not because you need more workouts.

9:17It's because your body is screaming for recovery. If you have been pushing harder and harder with your workouts and you're not seeing results, it's not because you need to do more. I don't want you to keep adding to your workload. Maybe you actually need to back off. Maybe you need to add some more recovery days. If you are strength training, three to four days is all you need. You don't need to do more. You need to do better. Our workouts shouldn't necessarily just be filled with junk volume. We want to be intentional with the exercises that we choose, how many sets we're doing, making sure we're using intensity, meaning weights that are challenging for us, getting close to failure, and then getting out of the gym, getting fueled properly, and then going to rest and recover so that we can allow those muscles to adapt and grow and recover in the best way possible.

10:08More is not better as we get older. Better is better. When it comes to growing muscle, science says that it takes 10 to 20 working sets per muscle group per week. So when you break that up into three to four days, that's all you really need to see progress. Anything above that, and you're really just adding stress to the body with no return on investment. This is when we want to work smarter, not harder, especially after 40, because we don't have the ability to recover like we did in our 20s. And again, adding stress with no return on investment really just doesn't make sense. So instead of mindlessly going into the gym six days a week, pummeling yourself into the ground, I want you to be intentional with your training.

10:53I want you to work hard with the sets that you have, but then recover just as hard. When you allow yourself that recovery, that's when lean muscle tissue is going to repair itself and grow and you're going to see huge changes with your body composition. And that's a perfect transition into our next topic, which is all about the scale, because I know it still has a grip on so many of you, and I can relate. We were taught from a young age that smaller equals better. We only celebrated if the scale was going down. The goal was always just to weigh less. And that number dictated everything, our mood, our food, our self-worth.

11:31But the truth is, the scale does not tell the whole story. It doesn't just measure fat versus muscle. It doesn't account for water retention, glycogen storage, or hormonal fluctuation. It's just one data point. Two women could both be 150 pounds, but one could have 30 % body fat and the other could have 20 % body fat, and they would look completely different. They might weigh the same, but their bodies would visually look drastically different. And that's where body composition comes in. And that's what the focus should be. The focus should not be just on body weight anymore. The focus should really be on body composition.

12:08So instead of chasing a low number, I want you to chase recomposition, meaning you are having the goal of getting more muscle and less fat. And that's what's going to create that tone-defined look. That's what's going to create a healthier metabolism, more longevity, better health overall, optimal fat loss, and an easier time sustaining that fat loss. This is also why just using the scale to measure your success is really dangerous because there could be so many things that are progressing. And if you're not looking for them, you're never going to see them. What about your energy? What about how are your clothes fitting?

12:45How is your mood? How does your body look? Like if you are not taking photos and accounting for all the biofeedback that might be improving, you're missing the big picture. A lot of times too, if you are losing fat and then gaining muscle, you're not going to see a huge difference in the scale, but your photos are going to look dramatically different. This just happened to one of my one-on-one clients. She's been working with me for about eight weeks and we have had her in a reverse diet with the goal of improving her lean muscle mass. And her body in eight weeks has dramatically changed. When I tell you her check-in photos had my jaw on the floor, her waist has come in.

13:27I can see ab definition. Her glutes are lifted and tight. Her back is chiseled and she has a gorgeous hourglass figure. She didn't have that when we first started and it didn't take her eating less and moving more. It took her eating more and training with intensity. and that's what's helping her create a new body composition, which is what creates that aesthetic look that we are after, as well as the health and the longevity and all the other good stuff. So body composition is what we want to focus on. Eating enough, lifting heavy, eating enough protein, having enough calories in general, lifting to get strong, all of that is what's going to help us with body composition.

14:08This is why staying in a chronic deficit will never help us because it strips away at the very thing that gives you that toned, defined look, which is muscle. Speaking of chronic diets, that is the next topic we are gonna dive into. And this is a huge one because in the 90s, that's all we heard about was dieting. There were new fad diets coming out left and right, but all of them really just did one thing. They slashed your calories in some way, shape or form, whether it was cutting out fats, cutting out carbs, reducing your eating window, replacing your meals for a shake. All that did was put you in a calorie deficit, it, sometimes to an extreme.

14:44And at first they work, you know, you start to lose weight, but eventually the scale stalled and then your energy tanked and you were stuck eating very little with nothing to show for it. And you couldn't eat anymore because the weight would start to pile back on. And there's a reason for this and it's called adaptive thermogenesis. And that's just a fancy term for saying that your body adapted to the environment that it was in. It's meant to do this. Your body is smart. It's trying to help you survive. It doesn't know you're trying to lose body fat. All it knows is that you are getting less calories now and it's got to adapt and slow its metabolism down so you don't perish.

15:18When you eat less, it burns less over time. Your metabolism will slow, your energy output decreases, and fat loss will come to a halt. But there is a workaround to this and that is periodization, which is just a fancy way of saying cycling through your nutrition phases. So just like your training has phases, your nutrition should as well. You shouldn't just stay in a fat loss phase. If you're in a fat loss phase, the goal should be getting back to maintenance at some point. That's going to help your metabolism, your hormones, and create that sustainable fat loss forever. You can go back into fat loss if you need to, but cycling in and out of that is what's going to help protect your metabolism, keep it healthy, keep it optimal, help your hormones, and make sure that your results are sustainable.

16:01This was something that really was a newer concept for me because like you growing up in the 90s, all I heard was that we had to eat less. And I thought that's just where you stayed. I didn't know that you should go back to maintenance. And it can be a little unnerving thinking that you're going to eat more to help your fat loss be sustainable, but it's what your body needs. If we chronically stay in a fat loss phase, our metabolism is just going to adapt. And just like it can adapt to less calories, it can adapt to more. But we just have to do things in a strategic way. Again, if this is a whole new concept to you, the idea of a reverse diet, I have a whole podcast episode, episode number seven, that you can listen to after this.

16:40But it is a game changer because it's the way that you can get away from a calorie deficit without rebounding, gaining a bunch of fat, and being able to sustain that fat loss at a more healthy caloric intake. And this is important for many different reasons, but especially to help your metabolism, help your hormones. Being undernourished is stressful for your body. You don't get the proper nutrients that you need, which is only going to impact your energy, your health, your thyroid levels. There are so many things that can go wrong when you are undernourished. So a deficit should be temporary.

17:14It should not be a permanent place that we stay. And this is a piece that so many women are missing because the old culture never taught us about maintenance, but maintenance is where your metabolism heals. It's where muscle is built and it's where long-term results are secured. Now, all of the points that we brought up today, focusing on building, not burning, focusing on fueling, not starving, focusing on recovery and body composition, not staying in a chronic deficit. These points matter to everyone, but especially for the women that are over 40. Because after 40, hormones like estrogen and progesterone begin to fluctuate or drop.

17:53and this will impact how your body stores fat, how well you recover, how well you sleep, and muscle can naturally decline with age if you are not intentionally building it. That means that the old burn more, eat less playbook is even less effective now. What worked before barely worked then and it absolutely won't work now. When we were in our 20s and 30s, we had hormone levels on our side. We don't have that now. But even when we were using those methods, you can see how they weren't going to lead to long-term results. If they did, you would not be listening to this podcast episode. So it's time to embrace what actually works.

18:32It's trying to let go of those old myths because if you continue to chase them, like we chase those calorie burning workouts, it's really going to lead you nowhere. But the good news is this, is that with the right strategy, with the right mindset, you can build muscle, You can strengthen your metabolism and you can look better now than you did in your 20s or your 30s. Experienced it myself and I continue to see it happen over and over again with my clients. So let me leave this with you because I want you to really wrap your brain around this. I want you to stop chasing calorie burn and I want you to start chasing building muscle.

19:08I want you to stop starving yourself and I want you to start to fuel your beautiful body. I want you to stop thinking you have to train every single day and start prioritizing recovery. I want you to stop obsessing about the scale and I want you to start tracking and focusing on body composition. Use pictures, use measurements, start to think about how much energy you're having because of all the positive things that you're doing with proper nourishment and getting stronger in the gym. and I want you to stop living in a deficit and I want you to start cycling your nutrition so that you can have a better body and a better metabolism.

19:46When you shift the old way to the new way, you can stop spinning your wheels and start building a body that feels strong, lean, energized at 40 and beyond. This is exactly what I walk women through with my one-on-one coaching. We build your phases step-by-step together. No guessing, just a plan that works for you and your body. If you are ready to put this into action, I have two ways that you can do it. Number one, you can apply for one-on-one coaching. This is where I will walk you through step-by-step the exact training and nutrition plan that you need personalized to you and your goals. Or option number two, you can join my monthly membership, which doesn't include coaching but gives you a proven framework.

20:31So inside you'll get your full workout plan with updated workouts consistently, a nutrition guide that's going to teach you how to set your calories and cycle your calories for better body composition, a recipe hub that's updated regularly with high protein, easy recipes, and a video library packed with lessons on nutrition, mindset, metabolism, and more. Plus, you'll be a part of an amazing community of women who are on the same journey. I even have a sneak peek video that shows you exactly what's inside that membership linked below. And if you want one-on-one coaching, the application for that is also linked below.

21:06You can check the show notes to explore both of those options and see if they're the right one for you. But you can also just continue to listen to this podcast episode and start to implement some of the things that I share. That is my goal with this podcast is to help you understand your body better, to step into your best, to become her, that best version of you, that strongest version of you, and to find your confidence again or maybe for the first time ever. I really hope this episode was helpful. I hope that you took away some value from it. If you did, I would be so thankful if you left a rating or a review.

21:38It really does help the show grow. I'd be so appreciative. And if you have ideas for podcast episodes, please DM me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Until next time, keep getting stronger and I will see you in the next episode.