How Building Muscle Boosts Your Metabolism After 40

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.

The paradigm, the mindset, of building muscle is not that it means you're going to be bulky. Building muscle is a statement of strength. It's a statement of discipline. It's a statement of your overall body composition and giving you the results that you want.

What is going on, my friends? What's up? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to today's episode, episode 108, where we're going to talk about muscles and your metabolism. Two of my three favorite words, the third word being macros.

For today's podcast, I'm going to discuss with you why and how building more muscle can significantly enhance your metabolism, your metabolic health, and your overall health in so many ways. We're going to break it down to four key benefits of how building more muscle can significantly enhance your metabolism so it works with you instead of against you.

My big thing with this, you guys, is that I'm obsessed with this topic. I'm obsessed with muscles. I'm obsessed with metabolism. I'm obsessed with macros. And my big thing is to shift the paradigm that women live in and have lived in for so many years of just focusing on wanting to lose weight. All of the guidance and resources that lead to that outcome just end up making women look like a skinny-fat version of themselves.

Another part of the paradigm that I want to shift is how building muscle, eating right, and moving your body can have a huge positive impact on your overall health, and not necessarily having to take things to treat just symptoms, but getting down to the root cause of things. You probably understand where I'm going with that.

And then there's the mindset that building muscle means you're going to be bulky. Building muscle is a statement of strength. It's a statement of discipline. It's a statement of your overall body composition and giving you the results that you want, right? Losing weight and losing fat are two different things. And like I said, treating a symptom and treating the root cause are two different things. And then there are limiting beliefs and understanding what muscle actually does. These are all things I want to break through.

I hope that, 108 episodes in, with all the things I'm about, my social media, WarriorBabe, and what our coaches preach, we're getting through to breaking these things that are just flaws in the industry, and revamping the paradigm to: building muscle is a beautiful thing. Building muscle is so supportive to your overall health and longevity. Building muscle can add years to your life.

Okay, so with that little rant, let's dive into these four things on directly how building muscle can significantly enhance your metabolism.

My immediate thought with metabolism: metabolism is what a lot of people think is broken because of the things you've maybe done or tried that have led your metabolism to slow down and not really work with you, and kind of work against you. People are eating 1,100, 1,200, 1,300 calories, and I'm going to get to that in a second, but that's just enough to basically help you survive. But what about the other calories you use when you work out and build strength and build muscle? It's like you're throwing spaghetti against the wall and it's not sticking, and you're wondering why you're not getting results. It's because these methods, like I mentioned earlier, are flawed in a sense. We need to bring into the picture why strength training is so important and why having more muscle on your body will improve your metabolism in so many ways.

So if you want to eat more, and you want to decrease any health conditions or reduce the risk of them coming in the future, building muscle is your answer. But for the sake of the podcast today, we're going to directly correlate it to your metabolism.

First and foremost, one way building more muscle significantly enhances your metabolism is by increasing your BMR. Your BMR is the number of calories your body needs in order to perform basic functions like breathing, circulating your blood, and repairing the cells in your body.

The reason muscle tissue increases your basal metabolic rate is that muscle tissue is metabolically more active than fat tissue. That means the more muscle you have on your body, the more calories your body burns at rest.

For example, somebody's BMR, what they need to perform basic daily functions of survival, is different for everyone. Nobody has the same BMR number, but it can range from around 1,000 calories to 1,300 calories to beyond. I'm going to explain this in a second with an example from me, but if you just let that ruminate and think about the numbers I just said, some women are eating that or less in order to get the results that they want. And then six months down the road of eating that, they're wondering why they're not getting results. It's because they're just not giving their body enough.

And then you double it with following a program that's telling you to strength train, which means you have more metabolically active tissue working, and you're not feeding your body what it needs to make that muscle work, to make that whole system work, and you're wondering why you're not getting results. This is why: you're not eating enough food to make these processes happen.

So here's what happens when you focus on building more muscle. For me, I started my journey maybe around that normal BMR number, which is around 1,100 to 1,300 calories. It's different for everybody. It's based on your age, your weight, your height, and your sex, and even your body composition and other things as well. I don't have a measure of where my BMR was when I started my journey. But through the years of strength training, eight years now, putting in the work, being consistent, making it my routine and my whole lifestyle, I have significantly added more muscle mass to my body. Therefore, my BMR has increased, and my ability to burn more calories while my body is at rest is higher, because I have more metabolically active tissue on my body, which is more active than fat tissue. Okay, is this making sense? Wonderful.

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So, by building more muscle, you burn more calories, because you're making your metabolism work for you instead of against you.

Okay, number two. Babes who struggle with insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes, listen up. When you focus on building more strength, when you focus on building more muscle, which is a byproduct of strength training, you improve your insulin sensitivity. Muscle helps to regulate blood sugar levels by using glucose for energy. So by building more muscle, you can improve your body's response to insulin, which will reduce the risk of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

This is huge, especially for the women that come top of mind who have a family history of type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance, or things like high A1C levels. If you know you have this in your bloodline and your genetic makeup, you should focus on strength training. And if you already have this diagnosis, you can still lower how intense that type of disease is.

This is so important, because as you focus on making your insulin sensitivity better, your body can handle carbohydrates more efficiently. Huge.

This is where I have seen so many women inside the WarriorBabe program come back sharing huge wins: how they're coming off cholesterol medications, how their A1C is way better than in previous months of testing, that they've reversed their type 2 diabetes. There's a plethora of life-changing outcomes that building more muscle and focusing on strength training have created for women inside our program. And that's exactly what I want it to do for you guys too.

That's why building muscle is so important, not just for the overall aesthetics, but because it can literally add years to your life. It gives you more longevity. It's the organ of longevity, as Dr. Gabrielle Lyon says. It can lower the risk of experiencing these types of diseases, or lower the need to be on medications for these diseases. It's incredible.

And I wish more people understood this so that they could embrace strength training. I hear it, and it breaks my heart. I want this message to be understood so that you can apply it, and so women can get past the fact that strength training is intimidating. I get it, at first. But remember the why. Remember what I'm saying. That will make you go and do it. It'll make you more excited. It'll help you understand why this is so important, and you'll want to do the thing.

Or I hear women say these exercises are so boring. And I'm like, yeah, but understand the method to the madness. Understand the why. You have to do the boring work because of the why behind it. This is so good for your overall well-being and your overall health. Okay, so that's number two.

Number three. Ladies who are going through menopause or are perimenopausal: focusing on building strength and building muscle, which again is a byproduct of strength training, enhances your hormonal balance. Building muscle directly influences the production of various hormones. For instance, it leads to increased production of growth hormone and testosterone, both of which are so incredibly important for healthy metabolic function. These hormones don't only help in building and maintaining muscle mass, they also play a huge role in fat metabolism.

So by incorporating these strategies, by doing these things, it's not just that you're building muscle. You're also getting the results that you want by focusing on building muscle, because it all works together. All the hormones work together to achieve this result, and building muscle is really the cornerstone of it. Okay, so that's number three.

The last one is short, simple, and to the point. I've already touched on it, but building muscle increases your energy expenditure during and after exercise. When you are working out and breaking down muscle fibers, the muscle contractions during that training session consume a lot of energy. This means the more muscle mass you have, the more energy and calories you will burn during and after a workout. I touched on this when I said it increases your metabolic rate. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn, point blank. Those two kind of combine together.

So, all in all, in summary of those four things I just talked about, building more muscle can significantly boost your metabolism. If you're somebody coming from a world of not eating enough food, and your metabolic health is in the dumpster right now, almost being lit on fire, know that it can be reversed. And know that one of the cornerstones of reversing it is focusing on strength training, so that you can significantly enhance your metabolic health through building more muscle.

And it's not only done through an increased resting metabolic rate, but also by improving what I talked about: hormonal balance, insulin sensitivity, and the efficiency of your body during and after physical activity. More muscle is a beautiful thing that I wish so many people understood a little bit more.

Once people understand why this is so important, they're more willing to apply it and do it. And once they understand it, they get past what I said at the beginning, these limiting beliefs: muscle is going to make me too bulky, if I touch a dumbbell I'm going to look like a man, I'm intimidated to walk into the weight room, I don't know where to start. Those are all fair. However, attach yourself to why this is so important, and you will find ways to support yourself doing more of this activity instead of allowing these limiting beliefs and stories to get in the way. Because they're not going to serve you or the person you want to become, by one, getting the aesthetic look you want, and two, getting the overall health you're striving for.

At the end of the day, I think everybody wants to be healthy. Well, this is a huge counterpart to doing that, to being that healthy person, to striving for longevity and living in a healthy way. That's point blank. Again, I want to shift that paradigm. No longer is it the way it used to be for women, where eating less will get you slim and skinny. Skinny is not cool anymore. Strong is cool.

And in order to get toned, which a lot of women say they want, this is the thing too: there's a difference between weight loss and fat loss. I think a lot of people, when they want to go after a goal, say they want to lose weight, because that's what's commonly known or said to do. But what does that mean to you? First of all, so I can understand where your mindset is at with losing weight, I ask, what does that mean to you? And people say, well, I want to tighten up or tone up. And I'm like, well, that's completely different from what you just said about losing weight.

If you're interested, there's an early podcast, which I'll probably bring back to top of mind with this podcast. It was one of the first 10 or 15 episodes, where I broke down the difference between weight loss and fat loss. That's a huge paradigm shift for those of you who just want to lose weight. But then you unpack it a little bit more and it's actually, oh no, I want to tone up, I want to be a little bit more lean, I want my skin to be tighter. That's a different approach, and the approach to getting that result involves strength training.

So again, end rant there. Everything I just said: building more muscle will significantly enhance your metabolism, but most importantly your overall health, in all the ways I talked about. Increasing your basal metabolic rate, your BMR. Improving insulin sensitivity. Enhancing your hormone balance. And increasing energy expenditure during and after your workouts.

Alright guys, I hope you found this helpful. Like I said in an earlier podcast, make carbs great again. It's like, make building muscle great. I don't know, that came off the top of my head. But if you can think of a better one, screenshot this, post it on social media, and give me something that makes sense. Appreciate you guys. Love you guys. And I'll see you in the next episode. Peace out.

Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you guys is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals, and feel insanely confident. And the only way we can do that is if you rate, review, and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask you to do is leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, and it will mean the absolute world to me and may change the world of someone else.