Not Seeing Results Yet? Why Women Over 40 Quit Too Soon

Nikkiey: Every time that you hit your protein, every time that you show up for your workout, every time that you drink that water, every time that you choose to go to bed the same hour every single night, every time that you choose, you are strengthening a neural pathway in your brain. You are literally building a new version of yourself at a neurological level. Your brain is rewiring by every choice that you make on a daily basis.

What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show with your host, Nikkiey Stott. On these episodes, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

So in today's episode, we're going to talk about the mindset piece. We're going to talk about the internal work. Because, as I've always said on these episodes, I believe this truly makes or breaks a woman's fitness journey more than the nutritional aspect or the training aspect.

So specifically, I want to talk about trusting the pace of your progress. I want to talk about understanding what actually is happening in your body when it feels like nothing is happening and you're wondering why you're not seeing results. And then the third piece I really want to lean into is talking about that person that you are working towards becoming. And that can be really uncomfortable. So I just want to encourage you guys and lean into that aspect a little bit with y'all, because you're always actively in the process of becoming. And I want you guys to understand why that person that you are growing into deserves your full attention and your full commitment right now.

All right, so I'll start with something that I think can be, and has been, damaging for a lot of women in the fitness space. It's this idea that if something is working, then you should be able to feel it quickly. You should be able to feel it fast. You should be able to see it quickly. That result should be visible and measurable and motivating on a week-by-week basis. That's what the industry promotes: you eat this and in seven days you're going to feel this way. Or you do this workout program in four months, or in four weeks, and you're going to see these types of results, right?

And when they're not, when the scale doesn't move the way that you expect it to, when your clothes feel the same, when you look in the mirror and you can't see any change yet, you think that something must be wrong. And I just want to dismantle that idea entirely and completely, because it's not true. If that's you and you're in that position, that perspective could be costing you your transformation. And I know that it's costing women out there their own transformation.

Can I just talk to you guys about the reality of what actually is happening in the body, how the body actually changes? Especially when you're starting something out, or if you've been dieting for 10 years, for the first several weeks of a real nutrition and workout program, the results are almost entirely invisible. Your body is doing an enormous amount of work. It's adapting to a new training stimulus. It's recalibrating your hormones. It's restoring metabolic function. It's building the cellular infrastructure for muscle growth. You're getting better sleep, right? And almost none of that shows up in the mirror.

The thing that I want you guys to understand is that work is happening in your cells. It's happening in your nervous system. It's happening in your metabolism. It's happening in places that you cannot see.

And I've always said this to women inside the WarriorBabe community: this window is the hardest window for women, and it's where most women quit. Not because the program isn't working, but because it doesn't look like it's working yet. But what I need you to understand is internally things are shifting. Your body internally is doing a lot of work. And you're going to feel internally different first. Usually the physical change is going to come second. So you're going to feel it internally, and then when things are internally aligning, that's when the physical change will appear on the outside.

And the women who make it through this window, through this time period, they're the ones who transform. The women who quit in this window are the ones who spend years starting over and over and over again, losing the same 10 to 15 pounds over and over and over again.

So I just want you to remember that progress doesn't need to feel fast. It's a lie that progress should feel fast. It is going to take time. It's going to be slow out of the gate. That's why the people that fail in the window are the ones that try a program for four to six to eight weeks or three months, and they're wondering why they're not seeing any changes, because they expected it to happen faster. Because it's what they've been conditioned to believe will happen.

But when you're doing it the right way, when you're following a real nutrition and training program, the results are almost entirely invisible for potentially four weeks to eight weeks to three months. It's not sexy to say it, but I want you to understand. I want you guys to develop that patience. I want you to understand that your body has to recalibrate first internally, because of the years of damage that's been done to it, in order for it to give you any type of physical change on the outside. Okay, so slow is strategy. Slow is you doing it right.

Now I really want to pull back the curtain on what is actually happening in your body during those weeks and months when you feel like nothing is changing. I hope this will encourage you guys a little bit more, because something is always changing. Always changing, even when you cannot see it.

So internally, what is changing is your metabolism is recalibrating. For many women, especially those with a history of chronic dieting, the metabolism was suppressed going into this. It had already adapted downward to the multiple diets they had tried, and it adapted downward to protect the body. I mean, think about it. It's like a staircase going downstairs. Diet one you tried: okay, cut calories. With diet two, now your body's adapted to that, and now you're cutting more calories, and then you're on the third diet. And that just continues on for something like 61 diets that women have tried by their midlife. 61 different diets. So think about how much your metabolism has been suppressed.

How many people get down to eating just one meal a day? That's about 500 calories. That is barely enough to survive. Your body is pulling energy. Or you're over-consuming, right? There are those two worlds that people live in. So if your body has adapted downward, which is the majority of people, they're not eating enough. Now, with the right nutrition strategy in place, it is slowly waking back up. And that process takes time. It is not linear. And it does not show up on a scale in week one, week two, week three. But the recalibration is happening internally. So your metabolism is recalibrating.

Also, your muscles are being built from the inside out. Muscle growth begins at a cellular level long before you can ever see any type of definition in the mirror. Your muscle fibers are developing. Your body is increasing its capacity for strength. Your connective tissue and your joints are all adapting to the new demands of you being in this new training program. So you're going to feel stronger, which a lot of women say they feel, and I've heard this. You're going to feel so much stronger before you look stronger. And you will look stronger before most people around you even notice. That's the sequence. And it's not broken. It's just the way that your body works. Okay?

Another thing that's happening is your hormones are shifting. This is a big one that people can almost entirely overlook. You having consistent nutrition, adequate protein, doing progressive training, and improving your sleep all have insane, amazing effects on the hormonal environment inside of your body. Your cortisol comes down. Your insulin sensitivity improves. Your estrogen and progesterone begin to regulate. These shifts then change how your body stores fat, how it builds muscle, how it responds to food. And there's a trend you guys are noticing right now: these things are invisible on the outside, but they are transformational on the inside.

And another thing that's happening is your brain is rewiring. Every day that you make a choice that aligns with the person that you are becoming, and I'm going to talk about this towards the end of the podcast. Every time that you hit your protein. Every time that you show up for your workout. Every time that you drink that water. Every time that you choose to go to bed at the same hour every single night. Every time that you choose the plan that you're following over an impulse reaction. Oh, let's just go out to dinner. Oh, I want to eat this candy. Oh, I'm going to have this ice cream. You are strengthening a neural pathway in your brain. You are literally building a new version of yourself at a neurological level. Do you guys understand that? Your brain is rewiring by every choice that you make on a daily basis.

So the work is happening. It's just happening in places that you cannot see yet. And the most important thing that you can do is keep going. Stay consistent long enough that your results start to become visible. And this could happen in three months for some people. This could happen in six months for some people. This could take a year for some people. There are women inside of WarriorBabe, because of the years that their metabolism has been suppressed and the diets they've done, for whom it's taking a year to wake their metabolism back up. And that is normal. I want that to be the new normal. That is normal.

Now, we were just in Dallas. We had a meet and greet in Dallas. And if you guys don't know what WarriorBabe is because you just found The WarriorBabe Show, I own a company called WarriorBabe. We are an online fitness coaching company. We're health and wellness. And we have a team of 90 coaches that each have their own roster of women. It's not an app. It's one-on-one accountability and support, having somebody in your corner who is developing the plan for you but also making sure that you follow through on it. You guys can go to warriorbabe.com to see what we're all about.

Quick break. If you're finding this episode helpful so far, it would mean a lot if you could hit pause for just a second, leave a quick rating or a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from it. Your support helps more women discover these tools to build muscle, lose fat, and feel confident. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey with me.

So in Dallas, we had a meetup, and this is our second meetup that we've had. There were about 30 babes there. We call them babes. If you're a WarriorBabe, you've bought into our programs, you're a babe. And I was talking to some of them at the meet and greet who are part of our community. And I want to encourage anybody that may be feeling this way, because there were some people I talked to who said, oh, I want to be a little further along. And I was reminding them of the things I'm talking about here on this episode.

But I know that there are some women who may be just starting, coming into WarriorBabe, coming into our community, and they're like, oh, wow, I wish that I could be X, Y, and Z, where she is, or look like her, or whatever. The main point of this is that you are comparing your chapter three to someone else's chapter 20. You are looking at women in the fitness community, or on Instagram, or in your life, who are further along than you are, who look the way that you want to look, who seem to have the consistency that you're building. And something in you starts to wonder if she has something that you don't. If she figured out something that you're missing. If your journey is somehow just slower and harder, and it's just my body, and I'm broken, and yada yada yada.

I've got to say this directly, and I say this lovingly to you guys: that comparison is stealing from you. It is stealing your presence in your own journey. It is stealing your ability to see your own progress. It is stealing energy that belongs to you, to your own process, to your own transformation. It is stealing your ability to enjoy this journey for yourself.

Because every single woman at that meet and greet, every single woman inside of our WarriorBabe community, has a completely different starting point. A completely different metabolic history. A completely different relationship with food and her body. A completely different life outside of her fitness journey. You are only seeing one bucket of her life. Your plan, your timeline, your transformation reflect your specific body and your specific history. Nobody else's. Your specific life. Nobody else's.

You don't even know this, but the woman that you're comparing yourself to probably has her own invisible struggles that you know nothing about. She had chapters that were hard. She had days when she wanted to quit. That doesn't mean that she figured something out more than you did. It just means that her journey is different than yours. And maybe you're just seeing her on the other side. You weren't around for her chapters that were hard. You weren't there when she wanted to quit. You weren't there if she was on a community call inside the WarriorBabe community talking about how much she was struggling. Right?

So don't compare your chapter three to someone else's chapter 20. The only comparison that serves you is the one between who you are today and who you were when you started. That is the only gap that matters. That is the only progress that is yours and the only progress that you need to measure.

Now, I also know that transformation, people's transformation, my transformation, anybody's transformation, Maggie's transformation, Andrew's transformation, a WarriorBabe transformation, the process of transformation is uncomfortable. Not just physically. As you change, you're going to notice you're showing up differently, and that part of your identity is changing. Your habits change. Your body changes. Your relationship with food changes. Your strength changes. How you communicate changes. The narrative with yourself changes. You start to become someone different.

And becoming someone different means that you're leaving the old you behind. The old version of you that had patterns, had coping mechanisms, had ways of moving through her day-to-day. And some of them were not serving you. That's why you started this journey. But they are familiar. They were yours.

And I want to honor that. When I said that the only progress you should be paying attention to is who you are now and where you started, along that way it's going to be uncomfortable. And along that way, there's going to be a point where you may be grieving, letting go of that old you. And nobody really warned you about going through that part. And it can feel lonely. It can feel like it's just you and the day-to-day. It can sometimes be boring. It can sometimes be like nothing's on fire, you know what I mean? It can feel alone, I'll go back to that.

And it's okay that you are grieving, letting that old person go. But that's a part of the growth process that you're going to have to endure in order to truthfully have an overall transformation happen, physically and mentally, when you're in a fitness journey.

And you might see people around you responding differently to the new you. Some relationships feel different. Some social situations feel different. Maybe you're not going out as often with the people that drink every weekend, because it's just not a part of you. You're letting the old you kind of wither away, in a good way. You feel different in your own skin. And that difference can sometimes feel unsettling before it can feel good.

But this is not a sign that something is wrong. This is not a sign that you need to go back to the old you. This is one of the most incredible signs that everything you're doing is very, very right. Because transformation is not just a physical event. It's not just something where you see your body transformation happen. It is a complete reorganization of how you see yourself. How you move. What you believe you're capable of. What you will and won't accept for yourself going forward.

And that reorganization can sometimes feel, like I said, alone. It can feel destabilizing. It can feel unsettling. Even though it is exactly what you asked for. And for some of my babes who are on their walk in faith, it is exactly what you prayed for.

So with all that said, I want to give you guys full permission to feel all of that. The excitement. The new. And the grief. The strength that you are building. And also the vulnerability of, dang, this is really hard. Or, I've lost a couple of friends because some people just don't really understand my journey. And that's okay. You don't have to perform confidence that you don't fully feel yet. You don't have to be further along emotionally than you actually are right now. You just have to keep going. In the season that you are in, just keep going even if you don't understand it. You're there for a reason. You're here for a reason. You're in this transformation for a reason. And it's not just physical. It's a whole reorganization of how you see yourself.

And I want to speak directly to someone that may be listening to this right now. I don't know exactly who you are, but I do know that you're listening and that you're out there, because there are always a few of you. And I want you to hear this. You are in a hard week. Maybe you're in a hard month. Maybe you've been looking at your progress and you're feeling like you've been letting yourself down. Maybe the scale hasn't moved the way that you expected it to. Maybe you're somebody that keeps starting over every single Monday, and you start to tell yourself a story about what that means about you. Maybe you've gone quiet. Maybe you're not showing up the way that you want to. Maybe you feel like you don't have anything good to report anymore to your family, to your friends, maybe to your coach if you're working inside WarriorBabe VIP.

I need you to hear this. Your journey does not require you to have a perfect week to deserve support. It just requires you to have an honest one. And more importantly, to be honest with yourself. Because that's what actually moves you forward.

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Okay, if you're in a hard season, you haven't lost your progress by having a hard season. If you haven't gotten your results yet because you're struggling, it doesn't mean that it's over. You've not failed the process by being human. And sometimes that human finds things difficult. What you have done is you're here, you're listening to this episode. You pressed play while you're struggling or having a hard time. And you're still here. You're still in it. You're still figuring it out. You're still looking for answers. And that matters more than you know.

So what I would encourage you to do after you listen to this episode is reach out to whoever is in your corner. If you are inside of WarriorBabe, reach out to your coach. If you aren't inside of WarriorBabe yet and you're like, this sounds like the program that I need to be a part of because I need the accountability and support, then go to warriorbabe.com, click apply, fill out the application, and talk to our team member. It takes five minutes. Or reach out to an accountability partner, your community, a trusted friend who knows you and your goals. And you don't have to have some perfectly worded update for them. You just need to be real, raw, and honest, even if it's messy. Because that support around you is the most valuable thing that you could possibly have exactly when things are hard.

It's not a time to go quiet. It's time for you to lean in. Okay? If you're having a hard time, if you're in a hard season, you're just in the middle of it. And the middle can feel hard. And you don't have to do it alone. So make sure you reach out to somebody.

And then for those that are struggling with this, or those that understand the identity piece but don't fully understand the full picture of what it actually means, I want you guys to stay with me here for a second. There is a woman on the other side of this process. She exists. She is not a fantasy. She is you in a different season with a different body. But more than that, also with a totally different relationship with herself, with a different level of confidence, believing in what she's capable of, a different way of moving through the world on a day-to-day basis. She is not waiting for you to become her. She is being built by every decision that you make every single day right now.

Every time that you hit your protein goal, every time that you show up for your workout, even if you don't feel like it, she gets closer to you. You get closer to her. Every time that you choose honesty and have that vulnerable conversation instead of avoiding it, she gets closer to you. Every time that you trust the process instead of quitting in that hard window, she gets closer. Every time that you allow patience when you're starting something out and you give it at least a full three months with consistency, she's getting a lot closer. Because patience is probably the hardest thing. Everyone thinks things will be fast, right?

But that is what an identity shift actually means. It's not a sudden overnight transformation where you wake up one day feeling like a completely different person. It is the accumulation of thousands of small decisions that slowly, quietly refine and redefine who you are.

Something I want you to understand about identity is that your brain will resist the new one before it accepts it. Because your brain is a pattern-matching machine. It is deeply familiar with the old version of you. Her habits, her responses, her limitations. And it will keep trying to pull you back to what it knows. That is just how our brains work. That is your brain doing exactly what brains do.

Now, the way that you override it is not through force. It's through repetition. Daily. Every time that you act like the woman that you're becoming, or the woman that you're praying about. Every time. Even if it feels unnatural. Even when the old patterns are calling and you start wavering. Every time you act like her, you create new evidence. You're casting a vote for that future self. And now there's a new story your brain can start to believe.

And over time, this new identity stops feeling like you're performing, and it just starts feeling like you. It will feel like a bit of a performance for a little while because it's new. You're trying to override how you show up, your habits, your responses. It's hard to do, you guys. But it's possible. And when you start feeling like this new you, you stop wanting to go back. Because who you're becoming is so much more than who you were that going back doesn't make any sense.

And that's an overall full transformation. You change your body composition, but along the way your brain is rewiring in these ways. The people that you see with really muscular physiques don't really eat the same way that they used to. They don't put themselves in social situations like they used to. Their conversations are different. Their reactions are different. Right? And you're in the middle of that. And I just want you guys to give yourselves grace if you are struggling, and to know that you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

So if there's anything I want you to take away from this episode, give the process more time than feels comfortable. Whatever timeline you came in with when you started a program, double it or release it. Your results don't arrive on a schedule, like, in three months I'm going to be here. They arrive when your body is ready. And the body gets ready through you being consistent. Not through you being forceful or having an urgency to be somewhere and have this result.

And if you're in a season where you need accountability, or need to be vulnerable, tell someone the real thing. The struggle, the frustration, the thing that you haven't said because you don't want to seem like you're not trying. Say it. That person, whoever it is, is in your corner. They're going to help you navigate something that you don't even know you're navigating. Right? Just say something out loud. They're going to help you.

And start talking to yourself like the woman that you're becoming, not the woman that you're leaving behind. Pay attention to the way that you speak about yourself. The narratives you have in your head. The way that you act. Your habits. The language matters. Your brain is listening. Okay? Act like the person that you already are. You already are her. Act like it.

And I know this episode can be very thought-provoking. But it can also be exciting. And it can be heavy. It depends. But I'm proud of every single woman who's listening to this today. Not because of the results that you've seen. Not because of the weeks where you've been perfect. But because by clicking on this episode, or being a WarriorBabe, or being on your fitness journey, you're choosing in some way to invest in yourself. You showed up. And that's all that matters. And you keep doing that even when it's hard. Even when it feels slow. Even when things aren't visible yet. That takes a kind of courage that most people never really find. And you have it. Especially if you're in the middle of it, you have it. You have the courage. And you have the strength. It's all inside of you.

So please, guys, share this episode with someone, a woman in your life who needs to hear it today. I know you know someone. So share this with them. I hope this episode helped y'all. I love you guys, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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.