Biggest Fitness Mistakes Women Over 40 Make

Nikkiey: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show. Today is a big one. Today is the 400th episode. That's 400 conversations, 400 topics, 400 times that I sat down here and had these conversations with you guys. Maybe you've listened to all of them, or maybe you're just tuning in for the first time. Regardless, it's 400 episodes talking about things that actually matter: your body, your health, your mindset, your life. And I don't take that lightly, because you did not have to show up for any of these episodes. You didn't have to tune in to the ones that release every single week, but you did, week after week. Monday and Friday, these go live. I just want to say, you should give yourself a pat on the back for showing up and listening to these episodes. And also, a big thank you for tuning in and listening to them.

So today I'm bringing you a 400th episode, and it's going to be a compilation of all of the cool things that we've done: the real, honest conversations, the tips, the tricks, the strategies, the things we've gotten into from episodes 300 to 399. I'm bringing you the best of that today, and I hope you enjoy it. I hope you walk down memory lane with me as we have been on this journey together. A big thank you to everybody that's listened to this podcast. So let's get into it. This one's for you guys. Let's go.

Today's topic is one you have heard me talk about many, many times. Stay with me, though, because you can never get enough of this topic, in my opinion. Maybe today when I dive into protein and all the things about protein and why it's so important, there will be some new things that come out of this episode that leave you learning something new about how to implement it, how to get more of it, or how to make sure you're staying consistent with it throughout the day.

We're going to dive into various topics when it comes to this today. Let's start with the most important part of the protein conversation, which is the protein foundation, because I never want to assume that everyone is starting from the same place. Some of you are beginners. Some of you are more advanced. For those of you just getting started, you need to know that protein is one of the three macronutrients, alongside carbohydrates and fats. But protein is very unique. While carbs and fats are primarily energy sources, protein is a structural macronutrient.

It is your body's primary building material. I know a lot of you don't get enough protein, and this should be a light bulb right there: I don't get enough protein, and that's probably why I'm not building my hair, my skin or my nails the way I want to. Or why my skin is breaking out, or why my muscles aren't growing. It is a building material. Your body uses protein every single day: building and repairing muscle tissue, producing every enzyme and hormone inside your body, building and maintaining your immune system.

It supports your hair, your skin and your nails, transports oxygen through your blood and keeps your metabolism running efficiently. And I think this one surprises people the most: protein is the most satiating macronutrient. The more protein you have in the day, the fuller it's going to keep you for longer than carbs or fat do. If you are somebody that just eats snacks and fats during the day, you're going to find yourself hungry at the end of the day, because you didn't give your body the most satiating macronutrient, which is protein.

Protein is made up of smaller building blocks called amino acids. I've said this before: think about amino acids like individual Lego pieces. Your body breaks down the protein that you eat into these amino acids, and then it uses them to build and repair whatever it needs: muscle, hormones, enzymes, tissue, all of it. This is why you're going to hear people say, yeah, take BCAAs. I personally think the most important thing you can do is make sure you're getting enough protein in your day instead of wasting money on a supplement.

Because food is going to give you exactly what that supplement is giving you, and you're probably spending more money on the supplement than you are on a pack of chicken. Just some food for thought. Now, there are 20 amino acids total. Nine of them are called essential amino acids, meaning your body cannot make them on its own. You have to get them from food. And whether you are consistently getting all nine of them is one of the most important nutritional questions you can ask about your diet today.

I want to talk about why protein is especially critical for the women listening to this, because I know a lot of you are 35, 40, 45, 50, or in your 60s. I really want to lean in here, because as we age, something called sarcopenia begins to occur. Sarcopenia is the natural age-related loss of muscle, and it can start as early as our mid-30s.

After 40, the rate of muscle loss accelerates if we are not actively doing something to counteract it. And here's why that matters beyond the way you physically look. Just a reminder for those of you who have been listening episode after episode: muscle is metabolically active tissue, meaning it burns significantly more calories at rest than fat tissue does. So as you lose muscle, your metabolism slows down.

Your body then needs less energy to function, so fat storage becomes easier for your body. And suddenly you are eating the same way you always have, but your body is responding completely differently. This is not all in your head. This is just how the body works. And protein is one of the most powerful tools you have to fight back against this. There's also something called anabolic resistance that increases as we age.

It means your body becomes less efficient at converting the protein you eat into muscle tissue. The muscle-building signal gets blurred over time, which means that as you age, you actually need more protein than younger women to get the same muscle-building response. Not less. A lot of you think, I need to eat less, I need to eat less, because it's going to help me lose more weight.

I know this all sounds counterintuitive to what you've learned. But just trust me here, please. We've helped over 21,000 women inside of WarriorBabe, and on the other side, they have more muscle. Their metabolism is revving. They're losing the weight. They're getting more toned. They came in believing they had to eat less and eat less, but that wasn't getting them anywhere in terms of results. With these things happening as you age, this is why you need more.

Because the muscle-building signal is being lowered, your body has a less efficient time converting the protein you eat into muscle tissue. So as you age, you need more protein than someone younger than you. This is why the "I think I eat enough protein" claim needs to be examined honestly. For someone over the age of 35, enough is higher than most people think.

Most women are significantly under-eating protein. And the consequences of that, muscle loss, muscle breakdown, low energy and reduced strength, are very real over time. Some of you may already be experiencing that. If you could look at just one thing in your day, ask: am I eating enough protein? And I'm going to challenge that thought, because I hear it all the time. I would ask, do you actually know how much you are eating?

Because a lot of women, when they actually break it down for me, and I ask, what does that look like to you? What does that mean to you? They're still only eating 80 grams of protein. "I'll have some eggs for breakfast. I'll have some chicken for lunch. And then I'll have something for dinner." That is nowhere near enough. I'm going to make it make sense in a second.

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So just think about that. A lot of people in the space I've talked to have said, oh, that's just the bodybuilding world, protein is just for bodybuilders. It's not just for bodybuilders. It is for every woman who wants to maintain strength, support her metabolism and feel good in her body at every age, especially as you get older.

Eating too much protein is not going to make you store fat. High protein will not damage your kidneys if you are a healthy individual. And the claim that you can only absorb 30 grams of protein per meal: you can absorb more than that. Just remember, only upwards of 30 to 50 grams is going to help optimize the muscle-building aspect.

Macros control what your body actually looks like, and that's the magic. You can lose weight eating 1,200 calories a day. Yes, you can. But what you will end up feeling and looking like is more of a skinny-fat version of yourself. You're going to end up tired. You're going to end up flabby. You're going to end up more frustrated, because yes, you wanted to lose weight, but in your mind, losing weight also has this image of: I want to be toned. I want to be lean. I want to be defined. So first of all, get clear and use clear verbiage on the goals you want. Because if you want to lose weight, focusing on calories in, calories out, blah, blah, blah, whatever, that jazz, focusing on calories will help you do it.

But I know the majority of you have that other goal: I want to be toned, I want to be defined, X, Y and Z. If you eat 1,800 calories with the right macros, you're going to be able to build muscle. You're going to be able to tone your body. You're going to be able to boost your metabolism. You're going to actually be able to feel very strong. And that's typically the goal the majority of you want. Calories are going to determine your size, but macros are going to determine your shape.

Here's the thing. Calories measure energy. They tell you how much energy you're putting into your body, but not what kind of energy it is. Macros, on the other hand, are protein, carbohydrates and fats. I asked my son, my mom, family, friends, older generations, whether they know what a macronutrient is. One of my friend's moms said it's a superfood.

So this education isn't reaching those of you who have no idea what a macronutrient is. The information is out there, but it's about understanding what it actually is. Macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates and fats. They tell you what your calories are made up of and how they work once they're in your body. So think of it like this. You've got a calorie number, say 1,600 calories. What are those calories made up of?

It's not just a blanket statement of 1,600 calories. There's so much more behind that number: what percentage of that number is protein, what percentage is carbohydrates and what percentage is fats. And we're going to elaborate on that. But calories, again, will help you lose weight. My friends, if you are eating 1,200 calories, you're probably going to lose weight. But like I said, the majority of you want that tone, that definition, that sexy body.

Macros are what help you lose fat and gain that tone and definition, and build that muscle. That's what tone is. You're eating the right nutrients to give the body what it needs to build muscle, which then helps you decrease body fat and helps your metabolism, your hormones and all the other things. It also aesthetically gives you that toned look when you have more muscle on your body. That's why you can have two women eating 1,500 calories a day who look completely different.

One looks lean and strong, and the other probably feels soft, tired and frustrated. The difference isn't their calories. It's their macros. If I haven't nailed this enough yet, the one macro that changes every single thing is protein. Most women eat half the protein they need in a day, especially women over 40, 45, 50. I would even argue women in their mid-30s. And when you under-eat protein, your body becomes a fat-storage machine instead of a fat-burning one.

Why? Because protein preserves muscle, like I was just mentioning with the two images I wanted to paint in your head: skinny fat and a toned individual. Muscle increases your metabolism, and a higher metabolism means you burn more fat, even at rest. So if you've ever felt like your metabolism has, quote unquote, slowed down as you've aged, it's not age. It's the muscle loss from years of under-eating, from years of under-eating protein, from years of over-focusing on calories.

"Let me just focus on a calorie number. Let me just focus on hitting 1,500 calories in a day." If you're over-focusing on calories, let me remind you, it's probably like the breakdown I just gave you: it's really focused on carbohydrates and fats. When women start hitting their protein, and I've seen this time and time again with the thousands of women inside WarriorBabe, when they focus on hitting their protein goals consistently, everything changes. They're suddenly full between meals. They have way more energy. Their cravings drop drastically.

That's the number one biggest thing I hear: their cravings drop drastically. There's something I see in multiple conversations I have with women on their fitness journey, in conversations their coaches have with WarriorBabes, and in conversations I had with WarriorBabes back in the day. It's a sneaky problem, especially for women who think they're doing everything, quote unquote, right. You're eating, quote unquote, healthy. You eat salads.

You skip the dessert. You hit the gym. You stay disciplined. You do all those things, but you're still tired all the time. You feel puffy. You feel constipated. You're moody. And you're not getting to where you think you would be by eating healthy and doing all the right things. You feel like you've hit a wall and you can't figure out why. That's why I want you to hear what I say, and I know I say this a lot, but I truly mean it from my heart: your metabolism isn't broken. You're not broken. The concept I really want to nail home is that you're underfed.

And I know you're thinking, I've heard you talk about this all the time on multiple podcasts. Well, listen to me when I say this. I will repeat things over and over and over again. I think that's what makes a really good coach. Even though it may be the same topic, I may use different words or different analogies or educate you differently in a way that resonates with you more than it did the first, second or third time you heard it.

One of the biggest psychological successes I've seen with women in WarriorBabe is that the thing I said the first time didn't necessarily land. But maybe by the fifth time, the sixth time or the tenth time I said it, maybe in a different way, light bulbs finally start to go off. When you don't eat enough, your body literally doesn't have enough glucose to power your brain, your organs and your muscles. You are literally running on fumes at that point.

What's crazy is that when you consistently do that, especially if you've been doing it for decades, your body adapts to it, and it normalizes the fatigue to protect you. So you might start thinking, maybe I'm just tired because I'm getting older. No, you're tired because you've been dieting since your 20s and your body hasn't had a break. And the crazy part is, when women finally start eating more, they realize how bad they actually felt before. Because you've been doing this for so long, it's become normalized within the confines of your body.

It's your homeostasis. Your body is just used to this. It doesn't know what it feels like to feel better. So when you interrupt the pattern, give it what it wants and eat more, you start to know what it feels like to thrive. You look back and say, holy cow, I didn't realize how bad I actually felt before. I thought that was normal. When you start fueling your body, your energy skyrockets and your focus gets sharper.

You feel powerful again. Your workouts feel powerful. You're sleeping better. It's like flipping the lights back on, because your body was never meant to run on empty.

The second sign I want to talk about is your mood, because that one's sneaky. You wake up fine, but by noon you're anxious and edgy and snapping at people for no reason. That's not you being stressed. That is your blood sugar tanking, because when you under-eat, your blood sugar spikes and crashes throughout the day.

Especially if you skip breakfast, then grab a snack, then have lunch, then grab a snack again, and you're eating mostly carbs with no protein, that's what your body is doing internally. What you're feeling secondarily in your mood is your blood sugar spiking, then crashing. That's where you get irritable and moody. Then it spikes again and crashes, spikes again and crashes. With each crash, your body releases cortisol.

It's releasing that stress hormone and basically signaling to your body that we're in danger. And from that, you feel wired, restless, anxious, on edge, and you go grab another coffee, thinking this will help. But it just spikes your cortisol even more. It's a constant roller coaster, up, down, up, down. It's exhausting. And it's why so many women feel emotionally unstable even when everything else in their life looks totally fine.

Yes, we experience emotions and mood, 100%. But if that's you all the time, that is a sign of being malnourished. Because when you start eating enough and fueling your body with the right balance of protein, fats and carbs, the roller coaster flattens out. It's like when you're at an amusement park and you get on the train that takes you all around the park.

It's like that. Your brain gets stable, smooth energy. Your mood evens out. You're even-keeled the whole way on the ride. Your anxiety, unless you're an anxious person, drops. You stop feeling like you're fighting yourself all day long, because when your body feels safe, your mind does too. So if you feel moody and irritable all the time, take a look at whether you're eating enough.

I will tell you that you probably aren't. But if you start eating enough, you can experience a drastic difference and a stabilization in your mood.

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"I don't want to get too bulky" is what women say. "I just want to tone up. I want to be lean and toned. I don't want big muscles." I've heard it thousands and thousands of times. Toned is not a fitness term. It's not actually a scientific term. It's a marketing term that the fitness and wellness industry invented to sell women on a version of training that feels safe, acceptable and not too intimidating. But biologically, what does a toned body actually look like?

What is physically happening in the body that makes it appear toned? To answer that, there are two things, and only two things. Number one is muscle, period. There is muscle present under the skin: developed, defined muscle that has shape and density. When people look at arms, you can see the curve of a shoulder. You can see the definition of the arm. You can see the line of your quad.

The shape of a glute. That visual definition comes from muscle existing there. So number one is muscle. Number two is having low enough body fat that the muscle is visible. It doesn't matter how much muscle you have. If there's a significant layer of fat sitting on top of it, you won't be able to see the muscle definition. Tone is muscle plus the leanness for that muscle to show through.

So one, it's having developed, defined muscle that has shape and density. And two, it's a low enough body fat percentage that the muscle can be seen and show through. That's it. That's the entire equation: muscle plus leanness. Nothing more, nothing less. And this is where it gets very important: there's no such thing as toning a muscle as a separate activity from building it.

You cannot tone a muscle that isn't there. You cannot firm up something that doesn't exist. A muscle either grows, maintains or shrinks. Those are the only three options available to it. So when someone says they want to tone their arms, what they're actually describing, whether they know it or not, is wanting to build the muscles in their arms and reduce the body fat covering them enough that those muscles become visible.

That is body recomposition. That is changing your body composition. That's what toning is. And the approach required to actually achieve it is radically different from what most women are actually doing. I want to walk carefully through the approach I see over and over again from women who want to tone up.

I don't want to make anybody feel guilty or shame anyone. But I think understanding exactly why it doesn't work is what finally makes the right approach click. The typical, quote unquote, toning program looks something like lots of cardio: treadmill, elliptical, cycling, high volume, done daily. The logic is that cardio burns calories, burning calories reduces fat, and reducing fat will reveal tone.

Then light weights with high reps: the five-pound dumbbells, the resistance bands, lots of repetitions of relatively easy exercises. The logic behind that is that light weights create long, lean muscles without bulk and heavy weights make you big. What I want to do is walk through why each of these pieces works against the actual goal. First, the cardio problem. Cardio burns calories. Yes, that is true.

But cardio does not build muscle, and we just established that muscle is half of the toning equation. No amount of cardio is going to create the shape, the definition, the curves that women describe when they say they want to look toned. Now, cardio can help with the fat-loss side of things. Don't get me wrong. But fat loss without muscle building doesn't produce a toned body.

It produces a smaller version of the same body. Less of what you had before, not a different shape. You hear the term skinny fat often. This is where I was at the beginning of my journey. I signed up for half marathon after half marathon after half marathon, because I fell into the trap too. I thought this was the way to get toned, the way to get the body I'd been wanting forever: do cardio, do cardio. And again, I don't want to put down cardio.

It is so important, especially for your heart muscle, and it can help on the fat-loss side of things. But fat loss alone won't get you there without building muscle, and cardio doesn't build muscle. Now, the light weights problem. I feel like this is one of the biggest myths for women in the fitness space. I also see a lot of women who just go through the motions in the gym. Light weights with high reps do not produce meaningful muscle development.

Let me just say that point blank, period. Not because effort doesn't matter, but because muscle growth requires progressive overload. Your muscles need to be challenged at a level that creates enough stimulus to adapt and grow over time. Those cute little pink five-pound dumbbells, for most women past the beginner stage, are not creating that stimulus. Now, if you need them because you're just starting out, don't get me wrong, use those. But past a couple of months of using them, you're not creating the challenge the muscle needs in order to grow.

The muscles are not being asked to do anything they can't already do at that point, so they don't grow. So the toning you're working toward never materializes. It never turns into anything. You just stay where you are, stuck, like I said at the beginning of the podcast. And then there's the fear that, quote unquote, heavy weights make women bulky. I want to put this to rest. Building significant muscle mass as a woman is genuinely hard to do.

It requires years of consistent, progressive, heavy training, plus eating in a calorie surplus. It doesn't happen accidentally. It doesn't happen just by picking up a pair of dumbbells or getting under a barbell or getting on a machine. The women you see in the fitness space who have a significant amount of muscle mass have worked for it. For me, it's 11 years and counting.

I worked extremely hard, intentionally, for years to build it. And at the gym, yeah, I've got a pump and I'm taking a selfie and putting it on social media. But in my day to day, I just have nice, toned arms. They look fit. You won't stumble into being bulky by accident. If your goal is to build muscle, your workouts probably need to be a little more boring than you want them to be.

To put it simply, you need to do the boring work in order to recomp and change your body composition. I know nobody wants to hear that. I had to lean in with babes in my previous coaching days and tell them that, and I know our coaches lean in and say that the boring work is where the work actually gets done. And people still resist it. Babes still resist it. Women still resist it.

You don't want to hear it, and I get it. Doing something new is fun. Walking into the gym and doing something completely different feels productive. I know a lot of women get so excited when new training programs open every six weeks, because it's a new challenge to the muscles. You feel like you're doing something. You feel productive. You're sweaty. You're sore. Your heart rate is up. You're like, oh yeah, that was a good workout. But was it a good workout, or was it just a different workout?

Because those are not necessarily the same thing. If your goal is muscle growth, constantly changing what you're doing can actually make it harder to determine whether you're progressing at all. Training has intention behind it. Training means there's a desired adaptation you want to happen over time. And if there's a desired adaptation, we need to be able to measure whether it's actually happening. If you're into sports, think about how an athlete trains.

Take a basketball player. Imagine that person saying, I don't want to practice free throws anymore because I've already done those, I need something new. You think LeBron James or Kobe Bryant or whoever your favorite player on your local team is would say that? No. They shoot the same free throw over and over and over again. Why? Because repetition creates skill.

So I want you to start thinking about strength training as a skill. A squat is a skill. A deadlift is a skill. A Romanian deadlift is a skill. A shoulder press is a skill. A lat pulldown is a skill. You have to become good at these movements. This is something people underestimate when it comes to progressive overload: the better you get at performing a specific exercise, the better you're often able to load the intended muscle.

As you get better at an exercise and put more weight on it, you're becoming more stable. Your technique on that specific exercise is improving. You may even feel it in different places. As you go down in a squat, you think, I only ever felt it in my quads, but now I'm getting into my hamstrings because of the depth, because I've worked on my technique, because I've worked on my skill. You learn what the movement is supposed to feel like. You understand where your failure point actually is.

And then you start pushing that movement harder. But if you change the workout every single week, or every day, or every two weeks, you're constantly living in the learning phase. You're never giving your body enough time to become really freaking good at that specific movement, at that skill. So I want to make that differentiation known.

Exercise is not the same thing as training. Everybody, quote unquote, exercises. But how many people actually go into the gym with intention? If you have a progressive overload program, if you're inside WarriorBabe working with one of our coaches, you have a program that's been developed over four, six or eight weeks, depending on how your coach has laid it out for you. It has progressive overload behind it. It has intention to it. And some of you will notice this.

You start a new workout program, and the first week is typically hard, because you may be calling on muscle fibers that weren't incorporated in your previous training block. They're waking up. That's why you probably feel a little more sore. And by the end of that training block, not only do you know the routine in the gym, I go from this equipment to this equipment to this equipment, but you also recognize that the exercises are actually getting, and I say this word lightly, easier.

They should still be hard with the load you're putting on them. But the exercise feels better. That's everything I just described happening. You're getting better at the movement. Your skill is developing. Adaptation is happening. To piggyback off what I just said, why do new workouts always feel effective? This is where I think people get fooled a little. You try a new workout, and the next day you can barely sit down on the toilet. Your glutes are destroyed. Your hamstrings are sore.

You're having trouble walking up or down the stairs. You have to walk up sideways. And you think, wow, that workout worked, that felt great. But let me remind you that soreness is not an indicator of progress. It isn't proof that you built more muscle. A big reason you're sore is that the stimulus was new. Like I just said, the muscle fibers weren't yet used to this new training block.

Your body wasn't used to it. And new doesn't automatically mean better. This is where I think a lot of women accidentally start chasing the soreness feeling instead of chasing progression over time. I would say at least a solid 80% of women walk into the gym and leave judging the workout by whether they're going to be sore the next day. That is a terrible gauge. The gauge doesn't happen on a day-to-day basis.

The gauge is whether you are progressing over time. And I think a lot of people get fooled because so many people want instant progress, an instant, tangible result, something that happens in a 24-hour period. I hope by now you understand that muscle is not an overnight process. Building it is not going to happen in a 24- to 48-hour period. It happens over time. Your muscles don't need more confusion. What they need is consistency and progression. So stop thinking that a good workout has to be new.

Or that you have to be sore, because soreness means you're growing. Stop thinking, oh, I just adapted and I've plateaued, and now I need a new exercise for a few weeks. Give yourself time to actually master each movement. Track what you're doing. Train intentionally. Make sure you're getting good recovery. Then come back, repeat and do it again. The women who understand this are the ones who will eventually look like they've been training for years.

Because they actually have. They know it takes time, and they don't spend their years starting over every two weeks. They let it compound over time: rep by rep, workout by workout, year by year. Your muscles love repetition. Just repeat that. Your muscles love repetition. All right, I hope this episode helped you, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace out.

Hey, really quick, before you go, I have one small favor to ask. If this episode brought you value or sparked something in you, take just a moment to hit that review button. Your rating and review make all the difference in helping more women discover the tools they need to transform their fitness and their confidence. It takes less than a minute, but it can change the path of someone else's journey. Thank you so much for leaving that review. I appreciate you so much.