EP 78: Why Fat Loss Feels Harder After 40 (And The Truth About Metabolism Nobody Told Us)

0:00Hello and welcome back to Becoming Her, Fitter, Better, Better and Stronger over 40. I'm your host and coach, Shauna. I'm 46, a wife, a boy mom, and a fitness and nutrition coach helping women over 40 become their best. One of the biggest lies women were sold from the 90s was that the answer to getting and staying lean is eating less forever. And as a 47-year-old, I eat more now than I did in my 20s, and I look and feel better than I ever have. Not because I'm lucky, not because I found some magic supplement, and not because I ate less and moved more, but because I've stopped doing the things that were hurting my metabolism, exhausting my body, leaving me softer despite trying so hard.

0:37For years, I thought the answer was to eat less and burn more calories and just be more disciplined. But by my late 30s, I was in the gym six days a week, training one to two hours a day, gaining and losing the same 10 to 15 pounds, but never really changing my body. And maybe you can relate to this. That drive to eat less and move more left me tired all the time. Fat loss became harder, and it seemed like the harder I push, the worse things seem to get. And I know so many women over 40 are quietly experiencing the same thing. You feel like you're doing everything right, yet somehow your body just feels more resistant than ever.

1:12So in today's video, I want to talk to you about what's actually happening with metabolism after 40, why so many of us feel stuck, and the things I wish more of us understood about muscle, hormones, metabolism, fat loss, and aging. You know, so many women blame themselves when really we were just not taught the right plan and the right way to support our bodies and our metabolism. And today's conversation is honestly one that I wish I had had with someone years ago because I spent a huge part of my life trying to shrink myself. I was always trying to burn calories, burn off food, undo meals, earn food.

1:46And I truly believed that if I got lean enough or small enough, I'd finally feel confident and in control. But what I didn't realize at that time was that those methods I was using were slowly working against me. And I think that's where so many women find themselves now at age 40. They've spent decades dieting, decades under eating, decades chasing smaller, decades doing workouts to burn off calories or fat, only to find that eventually those methods stop working and almost feel like they're making things worse. And there is some truth to that. The eat less, move more advice is not something that's going to help your metabolism long term.

2:23There isn't a time and a place for those things, but if that's all you do, it will backfire. To understand this, I think it's important that we talk about metabolism and what it actually is because I feel like it can be this mysterious thing that you think either is working for you or against you. But your metabolism is basically the total amount of energy your body uses every single day. And your body is using energy constantly for things like breathing, thinking, digesting your food, repairing tissue, producing hormones, keeping organs functioning, maintaining body temperature. All of that requires energy or calories.

3:00And one of the biggest things that influences your metabolism is muscle mass. Muscle is metabolically active. It's your metabolic currency, meaning the more of it that you have, the more energy or calories your body requires overall. So muscle plays a huge role in how well your metabolism functions. It's also important for body composition, insulin sensitivity, strength, recovery, and how your body utilizes nutrients. Unfortunately, muscle is one of the things that women often lose because of years of their chronic dieting. And that's the part no one taught us. We were taught how to lose weight, but we were never really taught how to preserve muscle while doing it.

3:38When we diet for long periods of time, our bodies adapt. It is meant to. Your body is incredibly smart and it's trying to work for you. So when calories stay low for long periods of time, when stress is high, when your recovery is poor, the body has to respond. Not because it's broken, because it's trying to protect you. And one of the ways it adapts is it becomes more efficient, meaning it burns less calories over time. And you do this by unconsciously moving less. So your energy output decreases, recovery will slow, training performance can drop, hormonal output will shift, sleep can worsen, hunger and cravings will increase.

4:13And there's even research that shows that our NEAT or non-exercise activity, all the movement that you do outside of the gym, will decrease during prolonged periods of dieting. And having less movement throughout your day really makes a big impact on your metabolism. So now we have less muscle from our chronic dieting. We're moving less and that creates a body that just burns less calories over time. Then we add in muscle loss from aging and it just compounds all of those things. We start to lose about 3 to 5 % of muscle every year after age 30 if we're not actively trying to build it or preserve it.

4:46And then we also have to add in hormone changes that come in at 40. You know, estrogen and progesterone will start to decline as we're in perimenopause, which impacts our insulin sensitivity, fat distribution, meaning whenever you're gaining now, it's going to go more to the belly area. Your recovery changes, your stress tolerance changes, your sleep can change. And women become more vulnerable to muscle loss with all of these things going on. And this is why the eat less and move more advice becomes problematic. because if you're a woman already dealing with all these things, you're already stressed, you're already under eating, you're already exhausted, already losing muscle, and then your go-to to try and change your body is always cutting calories or pushing harder in the gym, it will backfire.

5:25Maybe the scale drops temporarily, but your body composition worsens, energy worsens, recovery worsens, and this is why so many women that I talk to feel smaller but still softer. I genuinely feel like we were failed by the fitness industry for a long time because the focus became so heavily centered around shrinking instead of building. One of the biggest mindset shifts for me personally was I stopped asking myself, how can I change my body weight? And I started to ask myself, how can I change my body composition? And that changed everything. For years, I approached fitness from this place of punishment.

6:01I was trying to burn calories. I was trying to do more, eat less. But eventually I realized my body didn't need more punishment. It needed more support. And once I shifted my focus towards improving my body composition with strength training, protein, recovery, walking, and actually fueling my body properly, my body composition changed for the better. And it wasn't overnight. You know, I think that's important to say, too, because sometimes social media makes everything look instant. But this has been years of me learning how to work with my body instead of constantly fighting against it and spending time building muscle, eating more, fueling enough, getting stronger with my lifts and resisting the urge to go back to my old methods when progress was taking time.

6:41And this drive to change was kind of accidental as and I've shared this before, but I had my son right before I turned 40. And my goal now is to live as long as possible and hopefully meet his babies. And my research for longevity led me to muscle. So once my plan was muscle centric, not only did I feel better, but I was leaner. I was eating more. I was working out less. And I now have the best physique of my life at age 47. I have more muscle. I have better structure, better habits, better relationship with my body, with food and with fitness. And I'm no longer stuck in that cycle of chronic restriction followed by burnout.

7:16That's what I want for you too, is to teach you how you can help your metabolism. So let's dive into the practical tips here because I always want these episodes to help you and give you something you can walk away with and use. So if you're over 40 and feeling stuck and those old methods are no longer working, here are the things I'd focus on if I wanted to improve my metabolism and my body composition. Tip number one, of course, is going to be strength training, but with intention. Not exercising, not moving with dumbbells, but training with progressive overload and intensity, meaning your last one to two reps are hard, close if not to failure.

7:50And then each week you're going to focus on adding reps, adding weight or improving your form. This is why working with one program for six, eight, 12 plus weeks is so important. You need to be able to track to know if you're progressing. Strength training with progressive overload is the optimal way to build muscle. As we've talked about, muscle is so important for us as we're aging, for our metabolism, our insulin sensitivity, our body composition, longevity, bone health, confidence, all of the things. And strength training is probably one of the most powerful anti-aging tools that we have, so we want to make sure we are including it.

8:23Tip number two is you want to prioritize protein, and this isn't new, but it's so important. Protein is going to help support muscle retention and growth. It helps recovery, fullness. It has the highest thermic effect of food, meaning your body uses more energy just to digest it when compared to carbs or fats. And after 40, since we are at risk of losing muscle, protein becomes that much more important. Try to have 30 to 50 grams, three to four times a day. This is going to help stimulate muscle protein synthesis and protect the precious muscle that you have. Now, tip number three is to stop living in a deficit.

8:53And this is a huge one. And I think so many women are terrified to increase calories and go back to maintenance because they think they're automatically going to undo all of their hard work. But let me tell you that maintenance can be one of those incredibly transformational phases. It helps with recovery, training performance. It helps your energy. It helps you build more muscle. You know, my best physique changes came when I was in maintenance phases. So take time being there. You know, prime your metabolism. Get your hormones and your body composition in a better place and your calories into a healthier place so that you don't have to drop them so dramatically low in order to lose body fat.

9:26And if the idea of phasing your nutrition is new to you, I have a whole episode that breaks it down. I will leave it below. But just know that fat loss should be a phase, not a lifestyle. Spend time in maintenance and work on your body composition. Now, tip number four is just to start walking more. And walking is honestly one of the most underrated tools for our metabolic health. It helps with blood sugar regulation, stress reduction, digestion, recovery. It expends energy without overtaxing your body. It's good for cardiovascular health. And unlike intense forms of cardio, it's not going to spike your hunger and it's really easy to recover from and it pairs really beautifully with strength training.

10:02And as far as how much to walk, I would aim for 30 to 60 minutes a day. It doesn't have to be all at once. You can do little walk snacks and break them up through your day. I love to start my day with a walk. I use a walking pad. It's a foldable version, which I love. I just tuck it away in my bedroom. But walking first thing just really helps me feel more awake and alert and be ready for my day. Now on to tip number five, and that is to prioritize sleep. You know, recovery matters so much more, especially after 40. Poor sleep affects everything. Your hunger hormones, your cravings, your cortisol, your insulin sensitivity, your recovery, your performance.

10:38And so many of us are trying to force results while running on empty. This, again, is not going to do your metabolism any favor. So really try to prioritize it. You know, get to bed early enough so that you have seven to nine hours where you can be asleep, have a routine and stick to it. And I know these tips sound boring, but I promise you it's the boring basics that when you do them consistently bring the most exciting results. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation because I really felt like it was an important one to have. You know, so many women I talk to feel betrayed by their body. Like suddenly after 40, all the rules changed.

11:12And honestly, they kind of have, but for a good reason. You know, there's something so empowering about learning how to work with your body in this season instead of constantly trying to fight it like we did in our 20s or 30s. And this chapter of life does not mean you have to decline. You know, I genuinely feel stronger, wiser, healthier and more grounded now than when I was in my 20s or my 30s. And I'm seeing the same thing happen for my clients who are in their 40s and 50s. You know, they're building these amazing bodies, helping their metabolisms and looking and feeling better than they have in years.

11:43Please know changing your body, changing your metabolism after 40 is absolutely possible. I am proof. My clients are proof and you can do it too. If you want more of a detailed explanation, step-by-step breakdown of how you can start to improve your metabolism, I have a whole metabolism masterclass that I will link in the show notes. Please have a listen. It's 20 minutes and then there's a fat loss over 40 guide that you can also download. Start to implement some of those things. Stay consistent with them. And I promise you, your body will change in some of the best ways. And if you ever want more personalized support and want to work with me one-on-one, I will leave a link also for my coaching below.

12:20But most importantly, I hope this episode helped you feel less alone in what you're experiencing. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today and spending some time with me. I really hope this episode helped you today. If it did, I'd be so thankful if you left a rating or a review. And if you have show ideas, please DM me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. And until next week, keep getting stronger and I will see you in the next episode.