EP 54: Soft & Stuck: The Hidden Reasons Your 40+ Body Isn’t Changing

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. And I'm really glad you're here today because this is one of those episodes that I know is just going to hit home with a lot of you. Over the last few weeks, we've talked about why being in a maintenance phase during these holiday months is important. Also, we talked about how to add cardio strategically. But today, we're going to shift gears a little bit because I know so many of you feel like you're doing all the right things, but not seeing the results that you want.

0:38You're walking every day, you're hitting your protein, you're lifting, you're drinking your water, you're not skipping workouts, and you still feel soft, and you're still not seeing that toned, strong body and wondering why things don't look different. And first, what I want to say is you're not crazy, you're not broken, and your effort might not be the issue. In fact, a lot of women over 40 are working way too hard and harder than they need to be, but in a way that keeps their body stressed, flamed, and unable to change. So today we're going to talk about why you can train hard and still not look toned, the science behind muscle building after 40, the hidden habits that are keeping you soft even when you think you're doing everything right and the simple shifts that you can make today to finally see your work pay off.

1:24All right, let's dive right into it. Get your favorite drink and let's get into the good stuff. First things first, I'm going to give you a little tough love, but this is coming from a place of compassion and understanding because I used to be this woman too. What I need you to understand is that you don't get toned by burning calories. You don't get toned by just doing more workouts. You don't get toned by just sweating and suffering. Toned, simply put, is having enough muscle tissue and lower body fat. That's it. It's not complicated. But it is something that's very confusing for us because of all of the things that we were told and taught, especially during the 90s diet culture era.

2:08But here's the thing. Most women over 40 are not training in a way that supports either of those things. They're building stress, not muscle. They're burning out, not building themselves up. They're consistent, but not strategic. And that's what creates that soft and stuck look. So let's break down the most common reasons why this happens. And of course, let's get into what we can do to change it. Let's start with a big one, because this is something I see with 90 % of the women that I coach, is that most women are actually training too much. I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out. Muscle doesn't grow in the workout.

2:47It grows during your recovery. And for women over 40, we need more recovery. We need more intentional training. We need rest between our sets. We need more fuel, especially before our workouts. And we need proper sleep, not just more sweat sessions. Here's what the science says. When you're in your 40s, cortisol becomes more reactive, meaning your body elevates stress hormones faster and stays there longer. Elevated cortisol is catabolic, meaning it breaks down muscle. So if your training looks like lifting five to six days a week, classes layered on top, hours of cardio sessions, fasted workouts, minimal rest days, minimal sleep, your body is in a constant breakdown mode.

3:34No amount of protein is going to offset that. And when we blame ourselves and think that we're just not working hard enough and try to layer in even more, we're doing ourselves a disservice. When women transition from training five to six days a week with those high volume workouts into three to four days of intentional strength training per week, they unlock a body that they did not know was possible. So if you are in the gym five to six days a week, this is my invitation for you to work smarter, not harder. We want to strength train properly, but we also want to give our bodies rest. So that's the first thing that we have to do is just work smarter, not harder.

4:17All right, let's get into the next one because this is also a big one and something that I often see and hear from clients, but it has to do with nutrition and potentially our fear around food. So if you're training fasted, if you're scared of carbs, if you've been dieting for years, this might be the exact reason your body is still soft. So let me break this down in a very simple way. Muscle needs glycogen, aka carbs, to contract with power. No glycogen, no force. No force, no overload. No overload, no muscle growth, no muscle growth, no tone. Remember, toned equals having enough muscle tissue and low body fat so you can see that muscle tissue.

5:02So basically, when you're training without carbs, when you're training without fuel, you're working hard but getting very little in return. Fasted workouts are especially damaging for women over 40. When you train fasted, cortisol will spike, muscle is broken down for energy, your strength output drops, Your recovery is slower. Your appetite is dysregulated and fat loss becomes harder. You cannot build without fuel, period. So here is a quick way for you to change that, especially if you are a person who is training first thing in the morning. Eat something that's very quick to digest. Carbs and protein.

5:40My favorite things are either a whey shake with a banana, whey shake with a rice cake or banana or rice cake with a Greek yogurt. something that's very easy to get down, quick digesting. If you cannot stomach those things, at least, at least have a whey shake. And that's just going to help protect your muscle so that you're not tapping into that as you are training. But I highly encourage you to experiment with even just like a half a banana and the protein shake. You are going to see that your strength output, your performance, and your recovery is that much better. I'm going to leave a freebie for you in the show notes called Fueling for Performance.

6:19It gives you different ideas for you to eat pre and post workout to really support your performance and your recovery. There's ideas for if you're training first thing in the morning, you need something light. And there's also ideas if you're training later in the day, you need something a little bit heavier, but definitely check out that freebie and put it into action. And I promise you, in about a week's time, you're going to see a difference in your performance, your recovery, your muscle contraction, you're going to have better pumps, meaning like as you're training, you're going to actually see that muscle contracting and getting blood flow and working for you.

6:51And that's going to compound over time. Experiment with this. Download the freebie, put it into action, and I promise you're going to see and feel a big difference. All right. The next thing that I see that keeps women staying soft and stuck is random workouts with no strategy. And this is a silent progress killer. Most women don't realize that doing a different workout every week or every other day, switching programs every few weeks, keeps the body stuck because muscle doesn't grow from confusion. Muscle grows from progression. That means repeating movements, improving your form, adding weight, adding reps, getting stronger over time with the same program, with the same exercises.

7:33So if your week looks like Monday bootcamp, Tuesday bar class, Wednesday Pilates, Thursday random YouTube video, Friday spin class, Saturday upper body circuit, you're not giving your body the repeated stimulus needs to adapt. Your workouts are going to feel hard. You're going to be burning some calories, but you are not giving your muscle a reason to change, to grow, and to look toned. If you're that person who is doing random workouts, different classes, and you are not seeing the changes that you want to with your body, I highly suggest that you stick with one program and follow it through for 6, 8, 12 weeks, and you're going to see a major difference with what your body looks and feels like.

8:14I will leave links to my programs in the show notes, but I'm telling you that alone is a game changer. The next thing I'm going to talk about that keeps us soft and stuck is sleep, stress, and cortisol. And this can be an invisible reason why so many of us stay stuck, even when we feel like we're doing all of the right things. Now, cortisol is not necessarily the enemy. It can actually be helpful for us. We are meant to have cortisol so that we can stay alive. However, when it's chronically elevated, it becomes catabolic, meaning it breaks down muscle. It increases inflammation. It disrupts your sleep, especially around 2 to 3 a.m.

8:52If you find yourself waking up around that time, that could be cortisol. It lowers your strength output and it slows recovery. If you're not sleeping, if you're not pushing hard, if you're skipping rest days, you're under eating, you're over caffeinating, and you're not getting the recovery that you need, your cortisol is likely running the show. And you cannot look toned if your cortisol is constantly elevated. You just can't. this is why women who lift smart and allow proper rest and fuel themselves will always have better results than those who just are trying to go harder and harder now there's a few other reasons that i'm going to kind of rapid fire through as to why women stay soft but i want to rapid fire them so that we can get to the good stuff which is how we can go from soft to sculpted first one is never spending enough time in maintenance.

9:44If we are always chasing fat loss, we never give our body enough nutrition to actually grow muscle, which again is what allows you to look toned. Next up, we have protein. If we are under eating protein, we do not have those building blocks to build muscle. So it doesn't matter what we're doing in the gym. If we don't have those building blocks, we're not going to see the muscle tone that we want to. Then we have not training close enough to failure. Now, this is really important as well. Just feeling a burn in your muscles from like isometric holds or lots of reps is not the same as using intensity and going to muscular failure.

10:23There's a big difference. And I talk about this and I teach about this inside my membership because it is a game changer once you understand how to execute it. And this doesn't mean you have to lift hundreds of pounds, but you do have to challenge your muscle and make sure if your rep range is 8 to 12 reps, that those last two to three reps are hard to do, almost impossible. That is what signals to your body to, in fact, grow more muscle. Next, we have just overdoing it with cardio, which we talked about last week. We want to add in cardio strategically when we need it, but strength training has to be the priority.

10:59Now, if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, I might be guilty of some of these things. That's okay. I think a lot of us were confused from the decades of misinformation that we were taught. So I want to reframe and restructure things so that you know the right things to do, especially if you're in a place where you feel stuck. If you are enjoying what you do, if you like just being active for the sake of active, by all means, go have fun. But if you are in the gym with the intention of growing muscle, of losing body fat, of changing your body composition, of adding years to your life, making sure that you have health and longevity and healthy hormones and good metabolism, then these tips are going to be for you.

11:40So here's what you can start doing today. Let's make this super simple. Here are five shifts that will change everything. First up, like I said, we are going to dial back on training. More is not better. Better is better. So we're going to go from six days a week in the gym to three to four days in the gym. Number two, we are going to fuel before and after our workouts, protein and carbs always. Again, check that freebie in the show notes. That's going to give you some great ideas on how to do that. Number three, we're going to lift heavy relative to our strength with intention, with slow and controlled reps, controlling our tempo and focusing on building, not burning.

12:21Number four, we're going to prioritize sleep. If you fix your sleep, you're going to see dramatic changes with how you feel and how you look. And last up, we are going to spend some time in maintenance. Maintenance is where your metabolism resets and it's where muscle can actually grow. We need to shift away from constantly trying to chase fat loss and understand that to look toned requires us to have enough muscle tissue. And if we are always in a deficit, we are not giving our bodies what it needs to actually grow muscle so that we can lose fat and then look toned and maintain that at a higher calorie set point.

12:59These strategies, I promise you, are not only going to give you better aesthetic results, but they're also going to make you feel a lot better. And for a lot of us, that's a big part of why we are trying to change ourselves at this age. We are seeing changes with our energy, with our mood, with our libido. And yes, there are some hormonal shifts going on, but we also have to learn to work with our bodies at this stage. And if you implement the things that I talked about, giving yourself more rest, training with intention, getting enough fuel before and after your workouts, getting enough sleep, you are going to see huge changes with how you look and how you feel.

13:41If today's episode feels like I just described your body, your habits, your frustrations, then my Soft Sculpted mini course is literally built for you. Inside, I teach you why your metabolism feels slower at this age, the exact formula to build your best body. We talk about why your workouts aren't working and how to actually build muscle to burn more calories. And then we talk about how to phase your nutrition to align with your goals. It's simple, it's powerful, it's high value, and it's something that if you resonated with this episode, you definitely need. And today is the last day that you can get it for 75 % off.

14:23I will leave the link in the show notes, but definitely grab it before it goes back to regular price. I also will have my workout programs that are 40 % off for Black Friday. That sale also ends today. Everything will be in the show notes, but I hope this episode gave you clarity and relief to know that you're not failing, you're not too old, your body isn't broken, you're just working with a system that does not align with your hormones and your metabolism anymore. So when you shift the strategy, you will shift your results. I really hope that this was helpful. If you implement some of these strategies and you start to see some positive changes, please DM me on Instagram.

14:59I would love to hear from you. And if you love this episode, If you are enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating or a review. I would be so thankful. And until next week, keep getting stronger and I will see you in the next episode.