EP 89: How I Finally Toned My Legs After 40

0:00Hello and welcome back to Becoming Her, Fitter, Better, and Stronger over 40. I'm your host and coach, Shauna. I am 47, a wife, a boy mom, and a fitness and nutrition coach, helping women over 40 become their best. If you would have told me in my 20s or 30s that the things that finally changed my legs were the very things that I spent years avoiding, I would have thought you were crazy. For so long, I thought if I wanted to see toned legs, that meant losing weight, and I did what we were taught. I ate less. I chose workouts that burned the most calories, added more cardio. But even when the scale would move, my body didn't change, not in the ways that I wanted it to.

0:31I could lose weight, but I was still soft. I saw cellulite, no shape, no definition. And I remember thinking, what's missing? Because it wasn't like I wasn't trying, but the effort was not matching the results. I wanted to be toned. But what I now know is that looking tone is not something that you can have without muscle. So that became the focus for me, not just mindless chasing of skill loss, but intentional planning to actually improve my body composition. And that approach completely changed the way I trained, the way I ate, the way I thought about the gym, and ultimately the way my legs and my entire body looked after 40.

1:03So today I want to share four big shifts that helped me transform my legs because if you're putting in the work and wondering why your legs or your body isn't looking the way you want to, I have a feeling that you're making some of those stakes that I used to make. Now the first thing that I changed was that I moved away from body weight and started to focus on body composition. For years my goal was simple. I just wanted to lose weight. I thought if I could get the scale to drop, my legs and my body would eventually look toned. Every time I hit a plateau, felt frustrated, I had the same solution.

1:29eat less and burn more calories. Try to lose another few pounds. And I kept waiting and hoping that there would be some magical scale number where my body would finally tighten up. And maybe you are there too, thinking if I could just lose another five pounds, I know I'd have my dream body. But here's what I actually realized is that the scale only measures body weight. It does not measure the one thing that can create change, create more definition, less softness, and that's body composition. Body composition is simply the relationship between the amount of muscle that you have and the amount of body fat that you carry.

1:59Both matter, especially when we're talking about looking toned and defined. I was only chasing one part of the equation. The part that I completely missed was muscle. Muscle is what creates shape. Muscle is what gives your legs curves in the right places. It creates definition in your quads, in your hamstrings, and it will give you that firmer look that we describe as toned. But without enough muscle, you can lose weight and still feel soft and disappointed when you look in the mirror. I know because I lived it. The biggest mistake that I made was assuming that weight loss and body transformation were the same thing, but they're not.

2:31You can lose weight without dramatically changing the shape of your body. But when you build muscle and you lose body fat, that's when your body composition changes in the best of ways. That's when your body begins to look different. And after 40, this matters even more. We lose muscle with age if we're not intentionally working to maintain it or build it. If we're only focusing on eating less and moving more, we are ignoring one of the biggest drivers of the toned, sculpted look we're after. Not to mention, that's the organ that's going to allow us health and longevity. Once I understood that, my goal completely changed, and everything I did from that point on started to support that goal.

3:05The focus shifted from body weight to body composition. Now, the second change I made was how I trained, because once I realized muscle was the missing piece, I had to change my approach in the gym. I wanted toned legs, but I was spending most of my workouts trying to burn calories instead of build muscle. And those are two very different goals and two very different workouts. For years, I went to the gym with the sole purpose of sweating and burning as many calories as possible. Even when I used weights, I was still doing supersets, high reps, circuits. If I left the gym sweaty and completely exhausted, I thought that meant I had a great workout.

3:37Because in my mind, the harder I worked, the more calories I burned, the faster I would get results and look toned. But I was measuring the wrong thing. Once I shifted to body composition, my workouts had to change too. And instead of focusing on burning, I started to focus on building, which meant proper strength training, repeating the same lifts, tracking my progress, adding weight when I could, adding another rep, training close to failure so that my muscles actually had a reason to adapt and grow. They don't grow from being exhausted. They grow from being challenged in the right way. The gym no longer was a place where I went to burn calories and sweat.

4:07It became a place where I went to build my body, and that changed my legs in the best of ways. Now, the third thing that I changed was how I ate. Once I changed the way I train, I did see changes with my body, but I did reach a point where I plateaued, and that's because I was still making a big mistake. I was trying to build muscle, but constantly underfueling my body. For years, eating less felt like the answer. If progress was slow, I cut calories. Vacation coming up, I cut calories. If I felt uncomfortable in my clothes, I cut calories. Dropping calories can help you move the scale, but that doesn't mean that you are getting more toned.

4:37In fact, sometimes that can mean muscle loss too, especially when we're talking about hormone changes over 40. And as we just mentioned, there is no toned without muscle. So I found myself at this crossroads where I wasn't progressing. I knew eating less was not going to fix it. So I did a very scary thing and decided to eat more. And the thought of eating more terrified me because I thought it meant I would go backwards. You know, I would gain a bunch of body fat and undo all the hard work I did. But here I was, I was training hard. I was trying to lift heavier. I was asking my body to build muscle while not giving it enough fuel to work with.

5:09It's kind of like trying to build a house, but never delivering enough materials. eventually construction is going to slow because there's simply not enough to work with. And that's exactly what I was doing with my body. Once I understood how muscle was built, my relationship with food changed and I stopped seeing food as something that I needed to earn or fear and started to see it as what it is. It's fuel for my body to get stronger. Protein became the priority because that is the building block of muscle. I also stopped trying to stay in a calorie deficit all year and instead I phased my nutrition based on my goal.

5:38So every phase had a purpose. This phased approach is what I use with clients. I have a video that breaks down each phase while showing you the results with a real client. I'll leave that link below so you can check it out. Now, ironically, eating more did not undo all of my progress. In fact, it helped to fuel my progress even more. And this is not just my story, but it's also what has helped hundreds of women that I've coached that were in the same exact place. I now understand that food is fuel. It's not something to fear. When you use it correctly, your body will look and feel better than you can imagine.

6:06I'm now at this place where I train far less than I used to. I eat more than I used to. And I look and feel better than ever. And that's just proof that leaning on strength, leaning on health is going to make you feel your best. And then the cherry on top is that you are going to look your best. Our bodies are not meant to live in a deficit year round. It should be a place that you visit, not a place that you live. When you fuel your body in the right ways, you are going to thrive. You're gonna have better energy. You're gonna have better hormones. You're gonna have better strength. and you're going to be able to build and maintain your best body over 40.

6:40Looking toned, looking sculpted, looking defined comes from having more muscle, but you cannot build muscle unless you are fueling your body properly. I know the idea of eating more can be scary when you've spent so many years trying to do the opposite, but when you do it correctly, it will unlock a body you didn't even know was possible. If the idea of phasing your nutrition is new to you and this whole concept is a little bit scary, I totally understand. I was in that same place. That's why I created a free masterclass so that you can understand exactly what helps your metabolism, like some of the things that we've talked about today, muscle, fueling the right way, getting stronger in the gym.

7:19I will leave that linked below. Make sure you check it out because it's gonna empower you with the right tools and the knowledge and the know-how so that you can build your best and strongest body. Now onto the fourth and final change, which was my mindset. Because the biggest transformation was not just physical, it was also mental. It meant changing how I thought about everything. And once my goal became about building muscle and improving my body composition, I could not just keep thinking like someone whose only goal was to lose weight and become smaller, you know, thinking like a dieter. And I've talked about this before, but I switched my mindset from being a dieter into being an athlete.

7:52The woman trying to just lose weight and the woman trying to improve her body composition, they think very differently. I used to only measure progress with one metric, and that would be the scale. If it went down, I felt worthy, accomplished, and successful. And if it didn't, I felt like I failed. In one bad meal, I was beating myself. If I missed a workout, I felt guilty. If I got off track on the weekends, I thought I ruined everything. It was an exhausting way to live. But today, my inner dialogue is completely different. I still have standards, but I don't expect perfection, and I don't just focus on getting smaller.

8:23If I have an off day, I don't quit, I just ask myself, what can I learn from this? How can I be better tomorrow? And that's a different conversation and a completely different approach. And I also don't focus on just the scale. I'm also tracking photos, strength, measurements, and those are going to tell me a lot more about my body composition than the scale ever can. Transforming my legs, transforming my body, becoming my best meant having a mindset of an athlete. An athlete knows the value of consistency, of showing up, of practicing, of honing in on skills, of failing forward, and always getting back up and trying again.

8:54And they're also not beating themselves up all the time. Think about an athlete before a big event. They're not telling themselves that they're about to fail. They are speaking possibility into themselves. They are visualizing success. They know that if they are consistent and they are practicing, it's going to improve their performance. And if they improve their performance, it's going to produce desired outcomes. When you step into that mentality and you start acting like the woman that you're trying to become before you are actually her, your decisions begin to change and you stop chasing outcomes and you start chasing identity.

9:22and that's when your body starts to change too. And that sums up the four things that I changed to really transform my legs, my body. You know, I had to unlearn old programming. I had to lean into a different mindset, a different approach and it's not easy but I am here to tell you that doing these things has helped me transform in the best of ways. I'm 47, looking and feeling better than ever and I am passionate to help other women do the same because I know how frustrating it can be when you feel like you're putting in all of this effort and not seeing the results that you want to. If you've been trying to tone your legs by eating less, sweating more, and chasing a lower number on the scale, I hope this video gave you some new perspective.

10:03But I didn't change my legs because I finally lost enough fat or hit a certain number on the scale. I changed them because I changed my approach. I'm now working with my body instead of against it, with my metabolism instead of against it. I'm working smarter, not harder. And that's exactly what I'm here to teach you how to do. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I genuinely hope you found it helpful. Remember, you are not doing this alone. If you need more help with your Fit Over 40 journey, you can always find ways to work with me in the show notes. And if you did find value in today's episode, I'd be so thankful if you left a rating or a review.

10:37Until next week, keep getting stronger, and I will see you in the next episode.