EP: 93 Why Eating Less STOPS Working After 40

0:00Hello and welcome back to Becoming Her, Fit or Better, Better and Stronger over 40. I'm your host and coach, Shauna. I'm 47, a wife, a boy mom, and a fitness and nutrition coach, helping women over 40 become their best. Welcome or welcome back. If you're in your 40s and your goal is to look toned, sculpted, and defined, another diet might be the last thing that you need. For so many years, we've been taught that progress equals one thing, and that's weight loss. But losing weight and changing your body composition are two different things. You can lose 10 pounds and still not have the shape or definition that you're looking for because that sculpted look comes from two things.

0:32building enough muscle to create that shape and losing enough body fat to reveal it. And if every time you don't like what you see in the mirror, you immediately turn to eating less, you will spend years losing and gaining the same 10 pounds without ever transforming your body. I know because that was me. That was my story. That's what I turned to for so long until I actually understood what it took to transform my body, to change my body composition. And that's exactly what I want to talk to you about because I want to help you avoid all of the mistakes that I made. Today, I want to explain to you why constantly dieting will keep you stuck, why there are times you should actually be eating more to help your progress, and the three phases of body transformation that I've used with myself as well as my clients.

1:10Before we dive in, let's first talk about why constantly dieting can actually backfire and keep you stuck. One of the main reasons is because your body adapts. So when you stay in a deficit for months or years on end, your body starts conserving energy. You are naturally going to move less, your hunger can increase, and you risk losing muscle, especially when you're not pairing that deficit with enough protein and strength training. And muscle loss is the last thing that we want. It's our metabolic powerhouse. Losing that means we burn less calories at rest. When you combine adaptation plus muscle loss, you then create an environment where the calories that once helped you lose are no longer effective.

1:45The second problem that comes up when we're chronically dieting is that it's harder to train well when you're constantly under-fueled. Building muscle requires hard training with intensity and progression. So you need to get stronger over time and give your muscles a reason to grow. And that's a lot harder to do when you're always trying to eat as little as possible. And lastly, and the most important reason, if you never give yourself time to build, you never create the framework that helps you look toned. If your goal is to look lean, strong, and defined, you need muscle. So at some point, you're going to have to stop trying to make your body smaller and actually spend some time building it.

2:15That was one of the biggest shifts that I had to make myself. I stopped looking at food as something that I needed to constantly cut back on and started to look at it as fuel for the body that I wanted to build. And that changed everything in the best of ways. And that's what I want to invite you to do as well. Stop thinking about weight loss and start thinking about body composition. Give yourself intentional time where you are eating enough, training hard, and getting stronger to build muscle. Then you can use a calorie deficit strategically when it's actually time to lose body fat. I think a lot of us get caught up in trying to build muscle and lose body fat at the same time.

2:47But truth be told, it's a lot easier to focus on one thing at a time and phase out your plan. Which brings me to the phased approach we talked about earlier, build, reveal, and maintain. That's the three phased approach that I use with myself and clients. And where you start will depend on your body, your history, and your goals. But let me break down each one so you know exactly how they work and what they help with. So first we have phase one, which is build. And this is where we focus on muscle. We're eating enough to support training, prioritizing protein, following a structured strength training program, and working on getting stronger.

3:18And this doesn't necessarily mean eating in a huge calorie surplus. For many of us, this just means eating around maintenance, maybe slightly above, while focusing on progressive strength training. And this is a phase that can often include something called reverse dieting, where we slowly bring calories up to a healthy baseline and prime the body for fat loss. Goal is to give your body enough fuel and enough training stimulus to actually build muscle. Then we have phase two, which is called reveal. Once we've built that strong foundation of muscle and we're at a healthy level of maintenance calories, then we're ready to reveal it by losing body fat with a calorie deficit.

3:52And this is not a crash diet. In fact, it's very strategic. The goal is to lose body fat while preserving your muscle. And the way that we do that is we keep protein high and we continue to strength train with progression and intensity so that we are sending the signal to your body that we need that muscle and it will turn to fat stores instead. The goal is not just to make the scale move, it's to lose body fat while keeping as much of that hard-earned muscle as possible. Because that's what's going to create that leaner, more defined look and helps you maintain a healthy metabolism so you can maintain your results forever.

4:23Now once fat loss is done, we move into phase three, which is maintain. And this is a phase I think a lot of us completely skip or don't even realize that we need. Once fat loss is over, it's important not to stay in that deficit. Deficits are meant to be a place that you visit, not a place that you live. The goal after fat loss is to move back into your new maintenance level of calories so that you can support your body, support your muscle, keep getting stronger, and practice what it looks like to maintain your results. This is where you learn how to live there because maintenance is not just the time between diets, it's where you should be most of the time.

4:56And you use those other phases when you want to make small improvements to your body composition. One important thing to note is you won't necessarily go through these phases in this exact order. Someone who already has plenty of muscle but wants to lose body fat may start with the reveal phase. Someone who has spent years dieting may need to build more muscle and they will start with the build phase. Where you start really depends on where you are right now and what your goals are. And if you're thinking, okay, this makes sense, but I don't know how to do this, I have two ways that I can help you.

5:24The first thing that I have is my soft to sculpted mini course that walks you through the foundations of fueling your body, building muscle, and creating that lean sculpted look without going back to the eat less, do more approach. In this mini course, you get three video trainings breaking down everything you need to know about changing your body. The first video walks you through what metabolism is and how you can improve it after 40. The second video walks you through how to build, to burn, so that you create a body that burns more fat and has more muscle. The third video breaks down the phases of transformation like we talked about today, but I give you specific details on how to execute all three.

5:58You also get endless resources and access to it for life. I'll leave the link for that course in the show notes. Or if you want to work one-on-one with me with a plan that's built specifically for you, you can apply for one-on-one coaching with the link below. That's where I look at your history, your current starting point, your lifestyle, your goals, and map out your exact roadmap with nutrition, training, and support along the way. I genuinely hope that you found this helpful, and I hope that it gives you an invitation to look at transforming your body in a completely different way. I spent years thinking that being fit meant staying small, and staying small meant eating less.

6:32But what finally changed my body was eating more and realizing that there is a time to eat less, but there's a time to fuel, there's a time to build, then there's a time to reveal, and then there's a way to maintain your results without constantly being on a diet. When you take this phased approach and actually work on changing your body composition, that's what creates results that last. And that's how you stop losing the same 10 pounds over and over and actually transform and build your dream body. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I hope you found it helpful. If you did, please leave a rating or review.

7:03It would mean so much to me. And until next week, keep getting stronger and I will see you in the next episode.