How to Get Lean After 40: What Actually Works for Women

Nikkiey: Lean after 40 means a body composition that is characterized by relatively low body fat and relatively high lean muscle mass. It's not relative to a photo that you had 20 years ago. It's not relative to a woman that you see on Instagram who is 25 or 35 and doing these XYZ diets, and you're like, oh man, I should follow that same exact thing. No, it's relative to what you are experiencing right now and what is actually achievable and sustainable for the body that you are in right now. Lean after 40 is entirely achievable.

Hey, hey, hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show with your host, Nikkiey Stott. Today I want to talk about a word that almost every woman in this space uses. Women say they want this, but then they're doing the counterproductive actions to getting there. And it's not toned. You guys already know how I've talked about the word toned before. It's this word lean. I want to be lean. I want to look lean. I want to go back to the lean feeling I had when I was younger.

And here's the problem with that. The definition of lean that most women are working from is a definition built for a 25-year-old body. A pre-hormonal-shift body. A body that has totally different estrogen levels, different muscle mass, a different metabolic rate, and a completely different overall hormonal environment than the one that you are living in right now. The one that you're thinking about from those previous years, when you were 25 or even in your early 30s, is completely different from the hormonal shifts you've experienced, the body changes that you are experiencing and the environment that you're living in right now.

So when you chase that 25-year-old definition of lean with where you are now, with a 35, 40, 45 or 50-year-old body, using the same approaches, the same diet mentality, the same cardio or tons of workouts, you are going to get frustrated. Because the body that you have now does not respond to those types of signals or inputs in the way that the body you had back then did, right?

And you conclude that if this program that I'm doing isn't working in three weeks, you revert back to what you know works. And you think, maybe it's the program that's not working. Maybe it's the food that's not working. Maybe it's the workout that's not working. Or you think this is just what I need to accept now. But I need you to know that the definition of lean you have, and where it's coming from, is wrong.

I want to help you replace it with one that is actually more aligned with where you are now, and also empowering on this journey moving forward, because you're going to see it through a different lens. I just want to be honest about what most women mean when they say that they want to be lean. They mean that they want to look the way they looked at their leanest, or they want to have definition. They want to see lines in their abs. They want their shoulder caps to pop. They want to be defined, right? That's their definition of being lean.

And for most women, if they ever experienced that, it was probably in their younger years, right? A specific body fat percentage, a specific level of definition, a specific way that clothes fit. A reference point that lives in a memory that you have or a photo that you saw. And the approach that produced that result was usually some combination of eating less or doing more cardio. Those things worked for you back then.

But that's no longer true. At 25, you had estrogen doing a significant amount of work in the background that you were not aware of. Just as I talk about how you can't see muscle being built until you're about a year into your journey, you also can't see the hormonal shifts that you're experiencing. Back then, at 25, estrogen was doing a completely different job. It was literally protecting your muscle during calorie deficits. It was directing fat away from your midsection.

It was supporting your recovery. It was supporting your bone density, your insulin sensitivity, and your body's ability to respond to training with relatively efficient adaptation, right? And at 25, your muscle mass was likely at or near its peak. You were building through the types of movement and activity you were doing. And that muscle was running a metabolism that could handle more of the restriction you put it through, or more cardio, or more of the approaches that gave you quick-fix results, or quick visible results, right?

And I didn't dive deeper, but everything is different at this stage. Your cortisol tolerance was higher. Your recovery capacity was greater. You could get away with less sleep. You could get away with a caffeine drink or two in your day. You could get away with having more stress on your plate. You could get away with more training volume. You could get away with doing those same things without the same consequences to your hormones and your body composition that you are experiencing now. But none of those things are the same now.

And that is just a part of your biology and how your body changes over time. The body that you have at 45, 55, even 35 operates completely differently. It's not bad or worse or a terrible thing that's happening. It's just that your body adapts and evolves over time, and it's going to need different strategies than what you tried before. So the lean that you're chasing was built by a hormonal environment that supported it at that time but no longer exists.

And so chasing it with the same approaches of restriction, doing more cardio and working out harder is like trying to run software on a system it's not designed for. Think about an iPhone. iOS 13 is different than iOS 18 now. Those things evolve, right? Or when your phone battery is at 3%, what does it do? It goes into reserve mode, right? And that's what your body is somewhat adapting and changing into, because it doesn't want to be in restriction mode.

It wants to be fed properly by a good owner. So for the definition I want you to replace this with, I want to be very specific, because I don't believe in vague descriptions. They're going to produce vague results for you. Lean after 40 means a body composition that is characterized by relatively low body fat and relatively high lean muscle mass. That's for your age, for your hormonal stage and for your individual body composition. It's not relative to a photo that you had 20 years ago.

It's not relative to a woman that you see on Instagram who is 25 or 35 and doing these XYZ diets, and you're like, oh man, I should follow that same exact thing. No. It's relative to what you are experiencing right now and what is actually achievable and sustainable for the body that you are in right now, okay? So I'm going to break down what this actually looks like in practice. It looks different in the mirror than that 25-year-old lean did.

A lean body after 40 often carries a little bit more body fat than a lean body at 25, because the hormonal environment that allows for very low body fat in young women does not exist the same way post-menopause. But lean after 40, you can still grow and build more muscle, more shape, and change the overall structural body composition that you want to experience and how your body actually looks. Because muscle is intentionally built, right?

You are following a program that gives you the workouts to intentionally build specific muscle. That is the end goal for every single woman, right? Because when you focus on building muscle, that is what's going to create those visible lines, the definition and the leanness, rather than a number on the scale or a body fat percentage, right? That muscle is the one thing that's going to do that for you.

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Then also lean into the fact that as you get older, you cannot restrict the way you once restricted before, because muscle needs food. Lean at 25, no matter what you did, your body was still able to produce temporary results through temporary restriction, through cardio, right?

Lean after 40 cannot do that for you, at least not sustainably. And not without tanking your metabolism, disrupting your hormones, or producing a result that disappears the moment you stop restricting, right? When I say that, I think about the weight loss injections that are out there. They're a tool and a resource for people, they're used to produce X result, and they work. But that X result is mainly losing both weight and muscle mass. And you need that muscle as you get older.

If you're not giving your body a reason to keep that muscle, it's not going to keep it for you. If you're doing things that are not producing the result of gaining, building and preserving lean muscle, then whatever you're following, whether it's programming or injectables, the results are just going to stop the moment that you stop doing it, right? There are so many women I've heard from who are coming off of GLP-1s or these injections who have lost weight, yes, but they don't have the foundation of muscle, because muscle is also attacked in the process.

And when they stop, they gain the weight back. And there are even studies out there that have shown doubled weight gain in 12 months. So what I'm saying here is that lean after 40 is built on a muscle foundation. It requires you to have enough muscle to create the definition that you want, and also to run a metabolism that doesn't require 1,100 calories to maintain. What else this looks like in practice is that it's all measured completely differently. This is not measured on the scale.

It is measured in how your clothes fit, what your measurements are, what your strength looks like over time, and what your energy and your hormonal health feel like. The scale is just telling you one aspect of the story, and it's not showing you the one thing that's being built. You're using a tool that sits in your bathroom that weighs everything in your body, and that includes your body fat and your muscle as well. It can't show you that you're getting smaller but also more defined because you're building that muscle.

You're getting leaner because you're building that muscle. That scale isn't going to show you that. So take the pictures. Notice how differently you look in the clothes you're wearing. Take measurements. Look at the way you're getting stronger over the months of this journey rather than solely relying on the scale, because this all has to be measured differently.

Now, I want to be direct about some of the approaches that are not going to get you lean after 40, no matter how consistently you execute them and no matter how much effort and work you put into them, because most of them are exactly what women are doing when they tell me that nothing is working.

You cannot be in a significant calorie restriction without also having adequate protein, because eating very low calories tells your body, hey, food is scarce. It's going to respond by protecting fat, and it's going to start burning muscle, which is expensive tissue. If you're not giving it enough food, your body cannot afford to maintain it. And so you lose weight, but you also lose muscle. And then your metabolism does slow down, because your muscle is an active part of your metabolism. And the body that you end up with is lighter and smaller, but it's not leaner. It's less of what you had before, but you don't have a different body composition.

Next, doing high-volume cardio as your primary means of getting X result. I need you to understand that there's nothing wrong with cardio. It's good for your heart and good for your endurance. But cardio burns calories only while you're doing it, and it does not meaningfully increase your calorie burn after. It does not build the muscle that creates definition.

And high volumes when you're not giving your body enough food actively contribute to muscle loss. So it's just not the strategy for getting a lean body, right? Next, training without any type of progressive overload. If the weight on the bar is not increasing over time, and your training looks the same as it did a year ago, then your body has no reason to build muscle. And without a reason to build new muscle, the visible change that you are after is not going to come. Your training has to be progressive.

It has to be increasing. I have tons of podcasts on progressive overload, so I'd recommend that you go back and listen to them. Progressive overload has to ask more of your body and tell your body, hey, this person needs this muscle, so keep it on this body. And one more thing I'll pinpoint that you can't really focus on, and I alluded to it already, is chasing the same body fat percentage you once had before. Because for many women, the body fat percentage that felt lean at 25 is not optimal or achievable at 50 without approaches that are actively damaging to your hormonal health, your bone density, your metabolic function and your current muscle mass.

The leanest version of your body at 50 is not going to look exactly like the leanest version of you at 25. And pursuing it with that type of expectation will lead you to give up, and it's going to keep you from getting the results that you want. So that's more of a mindset strategy that I want you guys to think about. Even though you've had success before, yes, feel the feeling of that success, but know that the outcomes are going to be different in terms of what your body composition looks like. Okay?

So, practical things to take away. What works is building muscle and focusing on that. Some of you don't even need to go into a fat loss phase. Some of you don't have enough mechanisms internally to go into a fat loss phase. Some of you really need to just focus on building muscle first. Because that visible definition, that lean look, comes from muscle existing underneath your skin. You cannot create that definition by removing fat from a body that does not have adequate muscle underneath. So focus on building that muscle first. Or you can do it simultaneously. To do that, you have to be strength training and you have to be eating at or near maintenance.

Then you also have to eat enough to support the muscle that you're building. This is the part that goes against everything most women have been told. To build lean muscle after 40, you need to be eating enough protein, at least one gram per pound of your body weight every single day. And you need adequate total calories to fuel the training and recovery that building muscle requires.

A couple of other things: protect your hormonal environment. You need to make sure that you're managing your stress and getting good sleep. And it's so important to know that yes, while protein is important, fat is also important. These aren't just, oh, Nikkiey is giving me lifestyle suggestions. These are direct inputs into the hormonal environment that determines whether your body builds muscle, whether it burns fat, or whether it does neither. Chronic sleep deprivation and a high-stress lifestyle make lean after 40 nearly impossible to achieve and nearly impossible to maintain. So I would focus on the sleep component first. You can turn off the TV earlier, you can stop the TV show, you can pick up a book, you can go read in bed, you can get seven to eight hours of sleep.

I know you can do it. It's just changing your behavioral habits. That's it. And you've got to give it a real timeline. It is a six to 12 month period for this to be achievable for you, not a six-week challenge, not a 90-day program. Focus on it as a sustained, progressive, consistent effort over time. That's the way the muscle gets built, the body fat gets reduced, and your body composition fundamentally shifts. The women who get there are not the ones who found a faster approach.

They're the ones who were actually patient and stayed consistent in their journey. So if there's anything you take away from this conversation today: lean after 40 is entirely achievable. But it is not the same as the lean you at 25. It cannot be produced by the same approach you were trying back then. It is going to require a different strategy. It is built on muscle, not restriction. It's measured in composition, not scale weight. It's produced over months, sometimes even years.

It's not a daily or weekly mental framework. And it requires working with the body that you have right now. So you've got to let go of the old definition. That was built for an old you, a past you. Getting lean is totally achievable. The version of your body that is actually possible in this chapter is built differently. In many ways, honestly, it's more impressive, in my opinion, for the women I've seen in our WarriorBabe program who are 55 plus, 60 plus, who have built new lean muscle tissue and completely changed their body composition.

It is impressive what they've accomplished. And most importantly, it's not just that they have the right workout and the right nutrition strategy. It was built with intention. It was built with knowledge. It was built with a full understanding of what their body is actually capable of now and what they need. And this is so worth building.

And you guys, every Thursday at 7pm Eastern, I go live doing a live training that covers this more in depth than a 20 to 25 minute podcast can. I do two and a half hours of hanging out with you live, giving you education, giving you tips, giving you the reasons why this is really important, and also the key takeaways that you can implement into your life. You can register at the link below this podcast right now. Just be there, show up. It'll be the best two hours spent gaining so much knowledge that you can start implementing right now.

All right. With all that being said, I hope that you enjoyed this podcast. I hope that it was helpful for you. I hope that it gave you some light bulbs or just opened your mind up to being aware that this journey is going to look different for you. And that's okay. All right. I love y'all and I'll see you in the next one. Peace out.

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