Scale Not Moving? Fat Loss vs Weight Loss for Women Over 40

Nikkiey: A lot of women are doing Pilates or boot camps or F45 or Orange Theory or the high cardio intensity aspects. And I'm not saying that it's wrong to do them, but you need to incorporate more strength training, because without strength training you will not reshape your body.

What's going on, you guys? Hey, everyone. 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 episode number 265.

Today, you guys, it's going to be short and sweet, like a friendly reminder to you all. You guys know that I'm taking the topics from the Instagram story that I put up a week or so ago, where you guys were dropping topic ideas, because I felt like I had hit a dry spell. And there was one in there about the scale. I know that I've done a couple of episodes on the scale, but I was like, hmm, they're actually probably way back, like back in the hundreds, or even before, in the double digits. So I was like, let me bring this one back.

I was also inspired today because I was talking on a WarriorBabe success interview, and that one is definitely going to be aired soon. She was mentioning the scale and how it was frustrating to her, and she didn't realize the difference between weight loss and fat loss. So that's what I want to chat about today, because I feel like so many of you guys are either confused by it, you're frustrated with it, or you're just flat out obsessing over what that damn scale says. And it either controls you, or it makes you feel a type of way, or it messes with your emotions or the way that you go about your day after you step on the scale in the morning. You could be weighing yourself every single day and not even realize that it could be controlling you in certain aspects.

So I want to get into it. I want to talk about the difference between weight loss and fat loss and why that number that you see on the scale does not tell you the full story.

So let's start here, because I've seen it a thousand times, and I have been there myself too. So you guys are not alone. Maybe you still feel like you're relying on the scale, you're controlled by the scale, you use it every single day, but you use it not so much as a tool, but just to feel good or feel bad after you look at it. I've been there. This is probably where you're at: you're working your ass off. You're starting training. You're eating according to your nutrition or according to your macros. Sometimes you're feeling stronger. You're maybe even noticing your clothes are fitting differently and they're fitting better, but that scale isn't moving.

And suddenly you feel like you're doing all those things, and then you start to question everything. Is this even working? I'm putting all my time and effort into this. I should just quit now, because nothing's even changing. The scale isn't moving at all. Should I just go back to eating less? Should I just go back to doing more cardio? Because at least the scale would fluctuate on a daily basis more than it does now. Nothing's moving.

And let me just tell you flat out, your answer should be no. You shouldn't. That scale that you are relying on, and it may be the only thing that you're using to track your progress, is just one metric. It is just one tool of many that you should be using in your journey. And honestly, it's one of the least useful ones if you are focusing on body recomposition, changing your body composition, being more lean, being more toned and having more muscle.

Weight loss. This topic gets me so fired up. Let me just take a deep breath. Weight loss is a very broad category. It literally includes everything. It includes the fat on your body. It includes the muscle on your body. It includes the water in your body. It includes the undigested food in your body. It includes your organs. It includes everything. But fat loss is about reducing body fat specifically, and that's where the real change happens. That's where your body composition shifts, where your physique starts to look more lean, more strong, more defined.

The way that I look at it is, you can jump on the next crash diet. You can go intermittent fasting. You can go keto. You can do all of those things, and you will drop weight. Yes. But you are dropping a little bit of everything. You're dropping fat. You're dropping muscle. And let me just pin that there, because if you want to be more lean, strong and defined, losing muscle, which is what every one of those programs does, is counterproductive to the end goal that you want to accomplish of being more lean, more strong, more defined.

When you are just focusing on weight loss, you are missing the bigger picture of what it looks like to change your body composition. What I'm trying to say is that it is completely different from changing your body composition. Because here's the truth: when you focus on just losing weight quickly, you're losing a combination of water, fat and muscle. And losing the muscle is completely the opposite of what you want to do.

Muscle. If I can just make this stick in your brain so hard: muscle is metabolically active. What I mean by that is that it supports your metabolism. It keeps your body strong and functional, and it gives you that toned look that everyone is chasing. Everybody wants better-looking arms. They want the lines on the stomach. That doesn't happen in the weight loss category. You will lose weight, but you are losing a little bit of everything.

When you shift your focus to fat loss, you're training smarter. You're eating enough to fuel your workouts, to build muscle, to support your metabolism. You're doing the strength training that actually reshapes your body. The programs out there that I'm kind of harping on, like keto or intermittent fasting... and a lot of women are doing Pilates or boot camps or F45 or Orange Theory or the high cardio intensity aspects. I'm not saying that it's wrong to do them, but you need to incorporate more strength training, because without strength training you will not reshape your body. When you're doing strength training, yeah, the scale might not move as fast, but your body is changing in ways that actually last.

I remember talking to this babe today, and you're going to hear her story in a couple of weeks. She was like, yeah, once I joined WarriorBabe, I just listened to everything my coach was telling me to do. And in the first six months, she's lost 5% body fat, but just five pounds in six months. But her body looks drastically different.

And going back to the weight loss aspect, let's not forget water retention and hormonal fluctuations, like your cycle on a monthly basis if you still get that. Those can all cause the scale to spike, or to stall, or to plateau, or not even move. But none of that reflects true progress. None of that reflects the work that you are putting in on a daily basis.

That's why I recommend, we recommend, the coaches at WarriorBabe recommend progress pictures, or how your clothes fit, or noticing how much stronger you're getting, and the non-scale victories. They are so much more important than the number that you are seeing on the scale. With the woman I talked to today, and all the other success stories that you guys have heard, I'm sure we've touched on how some people weighed the same on the scale but look drastically different in their photos. They weigh the same in their before, they weigh the same in their after, but there's a complete, total difference in the photos.

This is why I harp on taking the pictures, because the pictures are going to tell you the full story, not the scale. The scale is the least reliable measuring device on your fitness journey, in my opinion. I know that you don't want to take them. I'm sure you're like, Nikkiey, I hate seeing myself in the pictures. I don't want to see them. I hate the way that I look. That's the reason why you're starting, and that's going to tell your whole story from start to finish.

And then you can also paint the picture in between. Were you consistent or not? Maybe three months later, if you haven't seen change, it gives you the awareness to take some honesty and responsibility on your journey and be like, damn, I wasn't as consistent in those three months. That's probably why I didn't see that much change. And then if you take them at the three months, and for the next three months you actually apply it, I guarantee you you're going to see some type of change. You may not see it on the scale, but you're probably going to see it in the pictures, or again, in how your clothes fit. These women say that they weigh the same in their before and after pictures, and when I ask them how their clothes are fitting, they fit drastically differently. They've had to get different sizes, but they weigh the same.

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All right, let's get back to the show. Here's the kicker. The shift in understanding isn't just about these facts I'm talking about and spitting the science behind things. It's about the mindset that you go into this with. If you guys know me by now, 265 episodes in, I've talked a lot about the mindset aspect of your fitness journey. And that is something that we pride ourselves on in WarriorBabe. Because we're not just fitness. Yes, fitness is our foundation, but dude, where are we at with you? We're meeting you where you're at. Where's your mindset along the way with all of this? Are you coming in heavily focused on the scale, and it controls and dictates your every move? What's your relationship with it? We ask those types of questions to understand you and where we're starting with you, and to understand how we can better support you by acknowledging and validating those things, but shifting you to a better perspective on it that's going to support you long term.

Because if you're married to the scale, just hear me out, I'm saying this because I love you guys, you are going to sabotage yourself. And you're probably hearing me like, yeah, Nikkiey, I've already done that. I'm here in the weeds of going up and down and fluctuating between showing up to my workouts and not showing up to my workouts, and showing up to my nutrition and not showing up to my nutrition. I'm two months in. I'm trying to do this, and it's just not working because the scale isn't moving.

Babe, you're going to throw in the towel way too soon because you think it's not working, when in reality your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to. So you have to redefine progress. That means you have to celebrate hitting your nutrition consistently, hitting your protein consistently. That means acknowledging that you went up in weights last week. One of the babes, one of her milestones was that she tripled her weights in six months. That's a non-scale victory. That means realizing that your jeans fit looser, or your sleep is better, or your mood is more stable. That's all progress that gets so overlooked. That's ten different aspects of progress, compared to the one that you're relying on from the scale.

And I want to say this loud and clear, so the people in the back hear me: your body is not a math equation. It's a biological system that responds to consistency, that responds to patience, and that responds to nourishment. So if you're going back and forth and up and down for two months, consistent for three days, inconsistent for seven, because of the scale, and trying to calculate how much is going to go down or up, or I need to lose ten pounds by x amount of time, in thirty days, and then two pounds a day equals whatever... you're not a math equation, and you can't view yourself like that, because you're going to sabotage yourself.

You are a complex system internally, and you can't see it. Your biological system, when applied the right way, with the right strategies and the right protocol for you specifically, will respond to you following through with that plan or that program or that strategy consistently. And having patience: noticing that maybe a month in nothing's changing, but I'm still going to keep going. Or when you hit a plateau, when you've been doing the work and you've been seeing the progress but you plateau out, you have patience, and you don't change anything. You just keep going. That is so hard to do, but it's so normal. And then you feed your body the right way.

That's why I say in many podcasts, mentally grasping that and then applying it... if everybody would do that, we'd be back in the times where people were walking around with chiseled abs like Greek goddesses every day, because this would be consistently followed through on.

Okay. So if we're ditching the scale as our only source of validation, then what do you need to focus on instead?

You need to focus on taking progress photos. Not every day, not like how you'd step on the scale every day. You need to take progress photos maybe once a week. That's what we do with WarriorBabe. Or really, depending on your relationship with seeing the photos, and that's how we narrow it down at WarriorBabe, maybe it's not a once-a-week type of thing. Maybe it's a bi-weekly type of thing, or maybe a once-a-month type of thing. And you will be shocked by what you see when you consistently take them on a bi-weekly basis or a monthly basis.

Another thing you need to focus on is measuring your strength. You need to track your lifts. You need to pay attention to: okay, I'm doing the shoulder press and I'm using 25 pounds per hand. Next week, maybe the 25 pounds by rep 10 is easy. And I know Nikkiey and my coach have told me that the last three reps should be really challenging, because that's where the metabolic stress put on your body is going to create the stress needed in order for the muscle to break down and to grow. So I'm going to try and up my weight five pounds. Maybe the weight is way too easy and you up it by 10. I wouldn't recommend that. But maybe you just didn't apply the weight the right way the first week because you were just going through the motions.

But you've got to track your weights, because getting stronger means that you are building more muscle. That's why you get stronger. You don't get stronger just because you go to the gym consistently. You get stronger because, scientifically, your body is breaking down the muscle fibers as you're working out. And during your recovery after the workout, when you are fueling your body the right way and you're hydrating, you're getting enough sleep and you're recovering, you are building the muscle. So you are getting stronger. When you're getting stronger, you're building more muscle.

Monitor how your clothes fit. Monitor how you feel in your body. Pay attention to your energy levels. Because I guarantee you, when you're eating 2,000 calories a day, 2,100 calories a day, 1,600 calories a day, whatever it is, more than what you were doing before, you are going to notice a drastic change in your energy levels. You're going to be more elevated. You're going to be more awake. You're going to be more happy. You're going to be more energetic. All of the things. And then notice your digestion. Notice your sleep quality. Those are all signs of healthy metabolic health.

And most importantly, dude, what you should be focusing on is your mindset. Are you leading from a place of self-respect and long-term thinking, or are you still chasing the quick fix? There's one thing that I noticed with these WarriorBabe success stories. By the way, you can go check them out on our website on the success page. I probably have 40 of them by now, and they're so good. There are so many aspects of these women's journeys that are totally different that you may click into and resonate with.

But what I've noticed is what happened when they stopped relying on the scale. Before WarriorBabe, they were doing intermittent fasting, keto, all the things from back in the day. They were trying to recreate in their 50s the successes that they had when they were 20. And they shifted away from chasing that quick fix to putting the scale away, because they understand what I'm sharing with you guys here now. We lean heavy on it in the program, because we want your mindset to change quickly and we want you to grasp it quickly so you can have a successful journey.

And what I hear is, now I love myself more. I have more self-respect. I have more self-worth. I understand this long-term thinking, that this is a lifestyle. And that number isn't controlling them anymore. They're not being emotionally weighed down. Before, if the number on the scale went up, they were defeated, and then their actions spiraled into eating whatever they wanted that day. Or if the scale went down, the emotion was excitement, and that spiraled into how they showed up that day.

Can you imagine that roller coaster? Because the scale fluctuates on a daily basis, given all the things that I mentioned earlier. It can be from having too much sugar. It could be from having too much salt. You guys have heard me say these things before, so this is a quick reminder in this episode right now that the scale is not the end-all be-all of your fitness journey. There are so many other important aspects that you should be focusing on as a source of validation that you are exactly where you need to be and your body is doing exactly what it needs to do.

So this fitness journey that you guys are all pursuing is not about shrinking yourself to fit some outdated standard of, I need to be skinny, I need to look like the woman in the magazine from the 90s or the 80s. This outdated standard of being beautiful, that's where the scale was heavily focused on. Especially for the women who are 50 or 60 years old, that was very much a focus in the time that they were growing up.

This is why I do what I do. I don't want women to chase skinny or to chase small. It's about you guys building strength for longevity. Oh my gosh, right before I recorded this episode, I just saw this incredible video on Instagram of an 82-year-old mom. The daughter was filming her. She was having a really hard time walking and doing her normal daily activities, standing up and moving around. She couldn't go for long walks. And her husband and her started to strength train. And now she walked at a two-minute pace, faster than she's ever done before, unsupported, not having to use a walker, because she started to strength train. And she was walking more upright.

That's what it's about. It's about you adding years to your life, you having longevity, you having more strength, more energy, more confidence from the inside out. It's about fat loss, if I'm going to tie this all back around. It's not about weight loss, and you shouldn't be focusing on weight loss.

The way that I view fat loss is: okay, you're going to be eating right. You're going to be eating enough. You're going to be fueling your body. You're going to be hydrating. You're going to be sleeping. All the things. That takes into account you decreasing the body fat around the muscle that you are building when you're incorporating strength training. That's the way I think of it. That's how more toned comes about. More tone happens when you are focusing on fat loss, not on weight loss. It's about becoming that person who lifts heavier. It's about becoming that person who eats to fuel her body and doesn't just let a number define her when she steps on the scale.

So hear me out. If the scale hasn't moved in a while, but you're showing up, you're lifting heavier, you're feeling stronger, you're sleeping better, dude, you are winning. So please keep going. Don't trade these long-term results that you are actively participating in for the short-term validation of what the number on the scale is or isn't going to tell you. Just continue to trust the process that you are on. Continue to trust your body. Continue to stay focused. Be consistent. Be patient. Be all the things that are part of long-term thinking. And just ditch the scale mentality for good.

And trust me, I understand it's easier said than done. But one thing that you could do right now, if you know that you have a scale mentality, is, seriously, this is for your own good: go put the scale somewhere, like under the bed or in the closet, and just focus on the same things that you are doing on a daily basis for a period of time before you even touch that scale again. Okay? You got this. I believe in you. Just keep showing up on a daily basis. All right? It'll all compound in the end. Love you guys. Appreciate you guys. And I will see you in the next episode. Peace out.

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