EP 80: Building My Best Body After 40 Meant Breaking All The Fitness Rules

0:28Hello and welcome back to Becoming Her, Fitter, Better, and Stronger over 40. of supersets, circuit workouts, plyos between my sets, hard cardio after every workout, low carb, no carb, fasting, meal replacement shakes, cleanses, you name it. Anything that helped the scale move. And they would work for a while until they didn't. And then I was on to finding the next new thing. But looking back, they were all built around the same thing. Burn more calories and eat less calories. That was the formula. And honestly, that's why those approaches often did work initially. You lose weight, people would notice, you felt good, you felt motivated, but then you'd burn out, rebound, feel defeated, blame yourself, and look for the next new trend promising even better results.

1:11What no one ever really talked to us about then was metabolism, muscle preservation, body composition, hormonal health, or sustainability. No one was talking about what happens after years of constantly trying to shrink yourself. And this is where so many women over 40 find themselves now. They are eating very little, exercising a lot, working hard, but frustrated because their body composition is not changing in the ways that they want it to. And that used to be me. And now I understand why. Because so many methods we were taught and followed for years were centered around calorie burning and restriction, not preserving muscle or helping our metabolism.

1:47And after 40, that becomes a big problem because we are just more vulnerable to muscle loss as we age. So when you combine years of dieting, constant restriction, stress, poor recovery, and workouts focused only on exhaustion, we create the perfect environment for muscle loss and metabolic adaptation. And muscle is not something that we want to lose. It impacts everything. Our metabolism, our strength, our body composition, our insulin sensitivity, our recovery, our energy, our longevity, and how firm and defined our body looks. So when years of dieting costs us muscle loss, eventually our body stops responding the way that it used to.

2:26And once I finally understood all of this, I understood that the body that I wanted after 40 was not going to come from getting better at shrinking myself. It was going to come from learning how to build up my body and my metabolism instead. So today I want to walk you through the three shifts that completely helped me transform my body and become my fittest at age 47. And these are also things that I help my clients apply to so that they can get their best bodies over 40. Now, shift number one was that I started to eat to support muscle and used a phased approach. One of the biggest mindset shifts for me was realizing that the body does not thrive when it's in constant restriction.

3:03Those old approaches had us permanently dieting, always trying to weigh less, always trying to eat less. But eventually the body adapts to that. Looking back now, I spent years teaching my body how to just survive and not thrive. And honestly, I think this is why so many women over 40 feel stuck now. They're eating low calories while still being stuck with their body composition. Because muscle requires enough nourishment for your body to actually adapt, perform well with proper resistance training, and recover. But for years, so many of us were trying to create a toned and leaned body from a body that was chronically underfed.

3:39There are times for a deficit, but they should be a phase, not a lifestyle. This is also why I stopped dieting year-round and started to use a phased approach instead. I actually broke this down in another video. I will link that in the description. But I talked about the three phases of body transformation and why sometimes rebuilding your body first is often what creates a better environment for fat loss and better body composition. Especially if we've been in a place where we were chronically dieting, because oftentimes our body needs a season where it can focus on rebuilding things, meaning more nourishment, more muscle, better recovery, improving performance, improving metabolism, before we put it into fat loss again.

4:18And this was such a huge mindset shift for me. But ironically, once I stopped constantly trying to survive on the least amount of calories possible, my body actually started to respond so much better. Not overnight, but steadily. I saw my energy improve, my workouts improve, recovery improved, my body composition improved. And this is now how I eat more at 47 than I did in my 20s while looking leaner and stronger. I have more muscle and I have a plan that's protecting my metabolic health. You know, your body responds differently when it feels supported instead of constantly deprived. Now, once I changed the way I approached nutrition, I also had to completely rethink what I was doing for exercise.

4:59Because for years, I thought workouts were just supposed to leave me sweaty and exhausted. But as we just mentioned, that does nothing to preserve or build muscle. So the second shift was that I started to use the gym to build and not to burn. Most of my old workouts were designed to keep my heart rate really high, burn as many calories as possible. All of them were fast-paced workouts, circuits, minimal rest, plyos between sets, constant movement, trying to end my workouts a sweaty mess. I used to think that if I wasn't drenched in sweat afterward, the workout didn't count. But being exhausted, sweaty, and burning a ton of calories does not mean it was an effective workout, especially when we're talking about building muscle.

5:39There's a huge difference between exercising and training to create enough stimulus for muscle growth and preservation. because muscle requires stimulus, tension, progression, and recovery, not just sweating, not just burning calories. And I know this is where so many women get frustrated because they are in the gym, they are working hard, but their workouts are still built around burning and not building. And after 40, that distinction matters even more because preserving muscle becomes critical for our metabolism, our strength, our body composition, our bone health, and our health overall. So once I shifted my focus from burning calories to building strength, everything changed in the best of ways.

6:19My workouts became simpler. They were more intentional, more focused. I was lifting with intention, progressing my lifts over time, controlling my reps, recovering properly, and actually creating the right stimulus for my body to respond. If you want a deeper breakdown as to how to train to get toned, I also did another episode on that. I will leave it below. but there's a massive difference between workouts built to burn calories versus workouts built for body composition. And the irony and the cool thing is, is I work out less now than I used to, but getting dramatically better results. I'm in the gym three to four days a week for 45 minutes to an hour versus six days a week, one to two hours a day.

6:58And I look and feel so much better. More is not always more. At 40, it is all about working smarter and not harder to build your best body. Now on to the third and final shift, and that is the scale. I had to divorce that number in my head and shift my focus from body weight to body composition. You know, so many of us are chasing this trivial number in our heads, but the scale does not tell us the whole story because you can be losing weight, but also be losing muscle. And that's exactly what happened to me for so long, which is why even when I got smaller, I was still soft. I didn't have shape, strength, and it took so much for me to maintain it because less muscle meant a slower metabolism.

7:41But once I understood body composition, everything started to make more sense. Having that toned, defined look is not created through endless restriction and endless calorie burning. It comes from everything we just talked about, you know, having enough muscle, reducing body fat strategically, supporting your metabolism. recovering well, and building sustainable habits over time. And this is why the foundation of my fitness journey looks so different than it used to. Now my foundation is all about fueling my body properly, lifting with intention, walking daily, prioritizing recovery, focusing on body composition instead of just body weight, and building habits that I can sustain for the long term.

8:20And I know this approach sounds less exciting. It's not flashy. It's not trendy. It's not extreme. It's not dramatic or fast, but that's exactly why it works because it's built on habits to last, not just giving you temporary weight loss. And I think this is a big distinction that we need to understand. Fast weight loss and long-term body transformation are not the same thing. You know, a lot of those old methods we used to use could create quick scale changes, but very few of them helped you improve your metabolism, helped you build a muscle, or helped you get results long-term. And that's what most of us want, not just to lose weight temporarily, but to feel strong, lean, healthy, energized, confident, and be our best for the years ahead.

9:02Building my best body after 40 meant breaking almost every rule I spent years following. And it was scary to lean into those new things, but I'm so happy that I did because I look and feel so much better. And that's what I want for you too. I hope this was eye-opening and inspires you to be a rule breaker too. You know, you can build the best body of your dreams over 40, but it's going to come from building it and not burning it away. Don't forget to check the description for those other videos that we mentioned, plus some free resources and ways to work with me so that you can build your best body over 40.

9:37Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I genuinely hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, please leave a rating or review. I would be so thankful. And if you have future show ideas, message me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Until next week, keep getting stronger and I'll see you in the next episode.