EP 63: 10 No-Nonsense Tips to Build Your Best Body Over 40

0:00Shauna: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. In today's episode, I want to cut through all of the noise because in today's world, especially as a woman over 40, we are hit with so much information about fitness, nutrition, hormones, fat loss, and what we're supposed to be doing. One day carbs are the problem, the next day it's hormones, then it's caffeine. It can really feel confusing to cut through all of the noise and know what action to take to actually see results over 40.

0:30Shauna:And the truth is you don't need more information. You need clarity. You need to know what actually moves the needle, what is worth your time, your energy, and what is just noise. Today I'm going to break down 10 no-nonsense tips that are going to build your best body over 40. When you apply these consistently, you are going to see not just immediate change, but lifelong change. The kind of change that becomes a lifestyle where you don't have to ever look for another diet or feel like you have to start over in January. And these tips don't just change how your body looks. It changes how it functions, how it feels, and how healthy you are for the decades ahead.

1:04Shauna:If it's your first time here, welcome. I'm so happy that you're here. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future content just like this. And now let's dive into the 10 top tips that you can use to build your best body over 40. Tip number one, this is a big one, but strength training has to be your main workout. You can supplement with other things, but strength training has to be the big dog on your list when it comes to staying active. And when I say strength training, I mean structured training where you are following one program for a set amount of weeks, striving to get stronger, using intensity, working close to failure, using full range of motion, really connecting with the exercises, not just trying to get sweaty and burn a lot of calories.

1:44Shauna:That is a big mistake that I used to make and I see a lot of women making now. A lot of times I see women working so hard. They're taking class after class and doing hours of workouts and not seeing the results that they want to. And just because you're getting sweaty, just because you are holding dumbbells does not mean you are growing muscle and muscle is what's going to to help your metabolism. It's going to give you longevity. It's going to give you independence. It's going to help hormonal health. It's going to help insulin sensitivity. All the things that you want as we're aging, all the aesthetic and health things come from having muscle and muscle only comes from structured strength training.

2:17Shauna:And the way that we grow muscle is following a strength training program and applying progressive overload. And when it comes to progressive overload, yes, we can add weight, but there are lots of other ways that you can progress with your exercises that will also stimulate that same muscle growth. So things like adding reps, adding sets, slowing your tempo, improving your form, adding pauses, all of those are ways that you can add progression, add more stimulus, add more intensity to your workouts to get the physical changes and muscle growth that you want to. It doesn't always have to be increasing your weight.

2:49Shauna:And even if you do want to increase weight with an exercise, start slow, anywhere from 5 to 10%. So 2.5 to 5 pounds is all you need to see that next increment of growth. Now, effective strength training has to be done with intention, meaning you want to lift like you're trying to get bulky. That is how you look smaller and toner. I think women fear lifting too heavy because they think it's going to make them bulky. But we just don't have the hormonal profile to build copious amounts of muscle. If you see someone who has that type of physique, it has taken either years of intentional training and nutrition to get that way.

3:25Shauna:or sometimes they're taking performance enhancing drugs. Generally speaking, a woman just doesn't have the hormones to build tons and tons of muscle. It takes a lot of intention and consistency with your training to build even a little bit of muscle. But for every pound of muscle that you build, you're going to have a better metabolism. You're going to have a more sculpted and defined physique. And you're going to have longevity and health for the years to come. So I want you to train like you mean it. Get in the gym and do not fear lifting heavy. I promise the more muscle you have, the smaller the toner you are going to look.

3:58Shauna:Now, if you are in a place where you need a workout program, I will leave my membership down below. You can do a three-day trial, but I have gym and home options there. Women inside my membership are seeing amazing changes with their bodies because we are applying things in this strategic way. Doing random workouts might have helped us when we were younger, but now we have to have strategy. We have to work smarter and not harder. So if there is one workout that you want to focus on to build your best body over 40, it's going to be strength training. Now, tip number two is protein has to be the star of every meal.

4:29Shauna:Now we're in the gym. We are telling our bodies that we need to build muscle. But if we don't have the building blocks to do so, we are not going to see the results that we want to. So protein is that building block. It's what allows your body to build that muscle. It also helps with everything else. hair, skin, nails, every cell that has to rebuild itself requires amino acids from protein. So we need to prioritize it. Having around 0.8 to 1 grams per pound of body weight is a good goal. One thing that happens with age is that we break down protein a little less efficiently. We need a little bit more to actually get the same amount that we did when we were younger.

5:05Shauna:That's why that 0.8 to 1 grams per pound of body weight is a good target. And when we're talking about protein, You don't need to overthink this. Lean animal protein sources are where you'll get all of those essential amino acids, things like chicken, eggs, egg whites, lean beef, fish, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese. You can supplement with whey if you need to, just to help you get to your goal. But when you make protein the star of each meal and you prioritize it for each meal, you are going to see some magical things happen, not just with your physique, but also with how you feel. Protein really helps to stabilize your blood sugar.

5:40Shauna:So you're not going to have those big crashes at the end of the day, especially when you start your day with a high protein breakfast. It's going to keep you satiated through the day. It's going to help protect your energy levels. It's going to allow you to build muscle so that you actually see the efforts of the hard work that you're putting in in the gym. On to tip number three, which is probably going to surprise some of you, but that is that carbs are going to help you look more defined and sculpted. Carbohydrates are your muscle's preferred energy source. They help fuel your workout so that you can push harder.

6:09Shauna:They give muscles a fuller look. As in the word carbohydrate, they help to hydrate the body. So they bring water into your muscle cells, which really helps them when we're talking about performance and recovery. It's also why when you drop carbohydrates off, you see a big change in the scale because your body's dehydrated. You just lost a ton of water. You didn't lose a bunch of fat. And it's also why if you start to eat some more carbohydrates, you might see some fluctuations in the scale. Again, that's likely just water and not fat. But our muscles love carbohydrates and they allow us to perform better and recover better.

6:42Shauna:Carbs also help with cortisol levels and regulating that. So they're not something that you want to eliminate altogether. When you sandwich your workouts with some carbohydrates, you're going to likely feel and see a big difference with your performance and your recovery. I will leave a free guide in the show notes for some pre and post workout ideas that include protein and carbs because those are your two main sources of macronutrients that you want to focus on when we're talking about performing our best and recovering our best. But cutting out carbs will likely impact your energy levels, your stress levels, and will stunt your growth when it comes to building more muscle.

7:18Carbs are not the enemy. They are not something to fear. They are something that you can use to perform and recover better.

7:24Shauna:Have them before and after your workouts, and I promise you are going to see and feel a big difference. Now, tip number four is that walking is magical for women over 40. And this is something that took me a while to wrap my head around because in past, I thought I had to be a sweaty, hot mess at the end of a workout for it to be effective. And that's what I measured my success with. But after years of doing sweaty, high-calorie-burning workouts with nothing to show for it, I started to understand that I probably needed to change some things. Now, we already mentioned that strength training has to be your priority when we're talking about workouts, which is why any supplemental workouts need to complement strength training.

8:02Shauna:Strength training is intense. It requires a lot of effort and energy from your body. And because strength training has to be the main priority to build and preserve muscle, we want to make sure any other activity that we add in is complementary and helping us to recover and not adding to our stress load. And walking is great for this. If you want to, you can add an incline just to increase your caloric burn. Now, walking is magical because of a few different things. Number one, it's really restorative for your body. Like we said, your body needs time to recover after your hard strength training sessions.

8:33Shauna:And walking is an amazing way to support that. It gets your blood flowing. It gets your joints moving, but it's not compounding to the stress from your already intense workouts. Number two is that you can do it anywhere. You can do it anytime. You don't need a gym. You don't need special equipment or an outfit to wear. You can do it on your lunch break. You can park further away. Walking can be done anywhere, anytime with anyone. And that's amazing. Number three is that it burns fat for fuel. This doesn't mean you're burning body fat for fuel, but it uses fat because it's a lower intensity exercise.

9:03Shauna:What that helps with is appetite. Anything that uses glucose for its energy source, like higher intensity cardio, will spike hunger, which is something that you want to avoid if your goal is fat loss and you're in a calorie deficit. So walking is not going to do that. It also helps with blood sugar and digestion and stress levels, especially if you can get outside. And because it's so accessible, because it's so easy to do, it's just something that you can get so consistent with. Now, you don't have to walk 10 ,000 steps a day. However, I would pay attention to how many steps you're getting. 8 ,000 steps is considered active.

9:36Shauna:So you want to get close to that number if you're not there already. And then when you're in fat loss phases, you can up your step goal just to add more caloric output without having to take away more food. Walking really is one of the most underrated fat loss tools that we have as women over 40. Tip number five is that sleep has to be prioritized. This is another underrated fat loss hack or tool. But sleep is when your hormones regulate, your body recovers, your stress is regulated. So when we're not getting enough sleep, we're not going to see the results that we want to with fat loss, with muscle growth.

10:09Our hunger is going to be higher. Our stress level is going to be higher. We're going to hold more inflammation. We're going to be craving more foods and it's going to set us up for just a harder time with reaching our goals. So when we're talking about sleep, we really want to make sure we have a set routine. Wake up and go to bed at the same time if you can.

10:25Shauna:Have a cool dark room. Take magnesium to help your central nervous system relax. Make sure you have a wind down routine. Take some deep breaths before bed. Really support your sleep. It is so, so important. Oftentimes, just dialing that in can create a lot of change when it comes to seeing more fat loss and seeing better body definition just with getting more rest. So really try to get a nice routine for sleep. And if you've implemented a routine and you're checking all of those boxes and you're still struggling, it could be hormonal shifts that are happening. If you want to look into that and start to see where your hormones are and how you can support them at this age, I will also leave a link in the show notes for First Optimal.

11:05Shauna:I work with them for myself. You can have a free consultation with them to talk about what that would look like. But make sure you are prioritizing sleep because it can be a game changer when we're talking about changing your body over 40. Now, tip number six is that I just want you to focus on and master the things that we just talked about. Take them on one at a time if you need to. But when you do, when you master strength training and are consistent with that, nutrition, especially prioritizing protein, walking daily, and sleeping. When you master those things, number one, it's going to create amazing results inside and out.

11:40You're going to feel and look your best. But number two, they are going to become habits that you can execute on the daily so that your results are forever. They're not temporary. Remember that anything that is unsustainable, when you use an unsustainable method to achieve results, you are then going to have unsustainable results. Whatever you do to get your results, you're going to have to do to keep your results. So if you're doing anything extreme, understand that the results that you get will probably be temporary. So it's better

12:08Shauna:to master the basics, dial those in, get them to be habits, build a lifestyle that's going to give back to you. And that's how you're going to get and keep your best body over 40. Now, tip number seven, and something that I think is really important to understand and know is that the The only way that you can lose body fat is with a calorie deficit. What I like to say is that we build the body in the gym. That is not the place we are going to lose body fat. That's the place we go to build our bodies. We build muscle there. And then we reveal it in the kitchen. So you have to have a calorie deficit in order for your body to burn fat.

12:42Shauna:You can do a little extra cardio so that your body burns some extra calories while you're in a deficit. But a calorie deficit still has to exist with nutrition. There are a lot of methods that you can use to achieve a calorie deficit. So things like keto, fasting, meal plans, Octavia, all of them work by restricting your calories, meaning you are taking in less than your body burns so that it has to tap into your fat stores. None of those methods are magical. They are just putting you into a calorie deficit. The tricky thing is with those methods is that if you do not want to follow them for life, again, your fat loss results are going to be temporary.

13:21Shauna:This is why I like tracking calories because it helps put you in the driver's seat. You get to decide what those meals look like to some degree. You can have macro-friendly versions of your favorite types of foods. So you can make macro-friendly versions of pizza, ice cream, burgers, you name it and you can have it. And this is what, again, builds a lifestyle, something that you can do forever. It's no longer your on-plan or off-plan, your on-carbs or your off-carbs. you build a lifestyle that you can maintain forever. That way your results are forever. And tracking calories isn't something you have to do forever, but when you have a specific goal, like putting on more muscle, losing body fat, the more that you are tuned into how many calories you're taking in, the better results that you're going to see faster.

14:07Shauna:You're gonna streamline your results. When it comes to tracking calories, I like to compare it to money because it makes sense. If you don't know how much money you make, don't know how much money you spend, you don't know what your bills are, it is going to be very hard for you to make any sort of progress with your financial goals. Tracking calories works the same way. If you don't know how much calories you're taking in, it's going to be very hard for you to manage your weight versus when you are tracking, you're going to know exactly where those targets should be so that you can streamline to your results.

14:35And it's not something you have to do forever, but tracking does allow you to see what portions should look like. So that way you can intuitively

14:43Shauna:eat because you know what those portions should look like. It gets easier for you to eyeball it because you've measured it out so much. It's also very eye-opening. You know, if you've never tracked your food, oftentimes women either find that they're under eating, especially with protein, or overeating on some of the healthier foods because they just didn't realize it. You know, just because you eat healthy does not mean you're going to lose body fat, especially if you're eating in a calorie surplus. And there's a lot of healthy foods that we might over consume, things like avocados, olive oil, any sort of nuts.

15:13Shauna:Those are great foods to have, but in excess, they pack a lot of calories. So they can potentially stall your progress if you're eating too much. So tracking calories allows you to see exactly where you need to make adjustments so that you can have the results that you want and keep them. And I will leave a link for my calorie calculator in the show notes so that you can calculate your calories to reach your fitness goals. Tip number eight goes right along with tip number seven, and that is that a calorie deficit should be a place you visit and not a place you stay. This is especially important for me to say to the women over 40 because most of us started a diet somewhere in our 20s and honestly we just never stopped.

15:50Shauna:We didn't realize that we should. But when you're in a calorie deficit, what will happen over time is that your metabolism adapts. If you stay in a calorie deficit, your body will adapt. Your body is smart. It is meant to protect you and to keep you alive. When it comes to metabolisms, we all have a set amount of calories that we burn that it takes to run our vessel and that depends on our height, our weight, our activity, our muscle mass. All of those things factor into what our metabolisms look like. So when you start a diet, your metabolism is at a set point. So maybe that's 2 ,000 calories that it takes that you burn every single day.

16:22Shauna:As you're dieting longer and longer, if you're taking in less calories, your body has to adapt to that. Otherwise, you would perish. So over time, if you are chronically under eating, your body, instead of burning 2 ,000 calories now, might only burn 1 ,500 calories. So that anytime you go above that, you are going to pack on pounds and then you feel like you are stuck having to diet forever. There is a way around this. Number one, we want to make sure we are prioritizing muscle because muscle is the way we maintain metabolic health. So the way we do that when we're in a calorie deficit is to prioritize protein and prioritize strength training so that when the body is taking the energy it needs in that calorie deficit is taking it from fat and not muscle.

17:01Shauna:Number two is that we want to make sure our deficit is timed. It's not something that we stay in forever. It doesn't have to be a set time. It can be flexible, but anywhere from like eight to 12 weeks is a good range. See how you're feeling, see how your energy is, and then you can determine if you are good to continue or you might need a diet break. And number three is that when you are done with your diet, when you are done with your fat loss phase, you want to reverse and go back to maintenance. Now, if you have lost some body fat, your new maintenance level might be different because if you are a smaller vessel, you're going to require different energy needs naturally.

17:34But it's important that you go back to your maintenance level so that you can protect metabolism, protect lean muscle tissue,

17:40Shauna:and make sure that you can maintain that fat loss at a healthier calorie set point. I have a whole podcast episode on reverse dieting. If this whole concept is new to you, it is episode number seven. So if it's newer to you, please go back and listen to that episode. But make sure that your calorie deficits are temporary. It's not meant to be a lifestyle. It's meant to be a means to an end. It serves one purpose, and that is to lose body fat. And then we go back to maintenance where we can have a sustainable plan. We can build more muscle, have better hormone health, metabolic health, all of those things.

18:13Shauna:So diets are temporary, and then we go back to maintenance. Now, tip number nine is kind of a mindset one, but that is to be patient. Change takes time, longer than we think. A lot of times these fad diets that we have tried in the past created these huge scale changes really quickly. But as we now know, probably most of that has been water weight. And even if you lost really quickly, there's a good chance that you lost muscle and fat and not just body fat, which is why it left you softer. It left your metabolism sluggish and it left you in a place now where you really feel like you're struggling.

18:45So changing your body composition, meaning putting on more muscle tissue, losing body fat is a slow and steady process. But when you take the time to do it right and you master some of the habits that we've talked about today, you create sustainable change. You create a body that actually looks fit for life. You create a lifestyle and a body that just is always fit. So resist the temptation of following fads and be patient. Progress is going to take time, but it's going to be so worth it. And a quick mention when we're talking about progress is that you can use the scale, but I also want you to use photos.

19:20I also want you to pay attention to how your clothes fit, how your energy is, how your sleep is, your libido, your strength in the gym. If those things are improving, please celebrate those and consider them a win because oftentimes we overlook those and we think we're not making progress when in fact we actually are. So make sure you are counting those as progress, counting them as wins because those are actually more evident that your body is changing, especially with composition, than just watching the scale. And remember that just because it's taking time doesn't mean it's not working. So stay patient, trust the process, and just keep going.

19:53And finally, tip number 10 is just to stay consistent. So this goes along with tip number nine, but it needs to be reiterated because so many of us expect changes overnight and we want to quit or we want to look for the next best plan. We think if results don't happen in two weeks, in three weeks, that the plan is flawed. Give yourself time, be patient, but also stay consistent. Stay consistent with some of these basic things and they will change. They will move the needle forward. We just have to give it time and we have to be consistent and we have to be patient. When I started my fitness journey after having my son, as I mentioned before, I started when I was 39 doing things the right way, strength training properly, eating enough protein, eating enough food in general, allowing recovery.

20:33Felt painstakingly slow at times. Many times I wanted to quit. Many times. times where I'd be in tears thinking nothing is changing and wanting to abort or go back to some of my old methods. But I stayed persistent and I stayed consistent. And little by little, I started to see change. I started to feel stronger. I started to see muscle definition. And I can't, and everyone's timeline is going to be different. What took me, you know, three to four to five years to see might only take you a year, but it doesn't matter. Time is irrelevant. You You know, time's going to pass either way. So you might as well be working towards your goals than wishing you had started or stuck with it.