What Does Getting Toned Really Mean for Women Over 40?

Nikkiey: Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals and feel insanely confident. 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, it will mean the absolute world to me, and it may change the world of someone else.

You can't be toned without both of these concepts I'm talking about. They literally go hand in hand. Muscle growth and fat loss work together when it comes to achieving that toned look you want and understanding what toned really even means. Muscle gives your body shape. Without it, you could lose weight, but you just end up looking like a skinnier, fatter version of yourself. That's why strength training and resistance training are so freaking important, even when your goal is fat loss.

What's going on, you guys? 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 the first episode of season three. I am so excited. This is episode number 201.

Today I want to tackle one of the most common goals I hear from women. Other than just losing weight, a lot of the time I hear, "I just want to be toned." I can totally resonate with that, because at the beginning of my journey I was like, I just want to be toned. I want to be leaner. I want to be more defined. What I used to say was, I want my inner personality to match my outer personality. I wanted the strength I feel on the inside to show on the outside with my physical body. I wanted to be more fit. I wanted to be toned. And a lot of women say this: I want to be toned.

But what does toned actually mean? That's what I want to break down with you today. I talk about a lot of these concepts all the time: the science behind muscle definition, the science behind fat loss, the science behind body composition. But I want you to fully understand what it actually takes to get that lean, defined, toned physique. I feel like a lot of women ultimately want to get there. But do you understand what it actually takes to get there?

Honestly, this whole topic was inspired by being with my team this morning. A lot of women come into the WarriorBabe ecosystem already knowing our message. They understand what we stand for. They understand our methodologies: to build more muscle, to be more lean, to be more defined, to lose body fat, to be toned. So it was inspired by a conversation with the team, and I circled back with them later to give them some pointers.

What came of it is this. A lot of women come into our ecosystem and mention that they don't want to lose any weight, or that they only have maybe 5 or 10 pounds to lose. They don't have much weight to lose, and they're happy with the weight they're at. If this woman is already interested and has found our ecosystem, she already knows our messaging around more muscular definition: more toned, more lean, more defined.

So she has this general concept of, if I get into WarriorBabe and follow what the program says, I will get to that goal of being more defined. She has this assumption coming into our ecosystem and talking to our team, and she's aiming for a specific physique or body composition. So in a follow-up message after I chatted and hung out with my team, I told them: the ultimate goal with the women who don't want to lose much weight is to help them understand the difference between losing weight and becoming toned.

Because if they don't understand that there is a difference, they'll continue on their path of, "Oh, I don't have much weight to lose." They'll keep trying things that won't necessarily be in alignment with getting toned. They'll keep trying things that are more in line with the goal of losing weight. You know I've talked about this in podcasts before. There's a difference between losing weight and losing fat. Losing fat is what gets you toned, because it decreases the body fat around the muscle you have. Or you're building more muscle to get more toned and then decreasing the body fat around it. So there's a difference between the two.

So what I told the team is, let's gather their understanding. When women come into our ecosystem saying, "I don't want to lose weight," ask: do you understand the difference between losing weight and becoming more toned? Because they have this goal of becoming more toned. Do they understand the difference? And have they considered what needs to happen to make their muscles or their physique more toned?

That opens up their understanding and their thoughts around this concept, and it opens them up to receiving new information they don't yet have. If they're willing to consider it and open to focusing on a lean body, a toned body, losing body fat, rather than just focusing on, "I want to lose weight, I want to lose a number on the scale, this is all I'm concerned about," then boom. That welcomes them into hearing the difference between the thoughts, beliefs, narratives and stories they have around losing weight.

And it opens them up to, "Oh, so this is how I become more toned. I don't necessarily want to lose more weight." I felt the same way at the beginning of my journey. I was 140 pounds and skinny fat, but I had this idea in my mind that I wanted to be more toned and more defined. I didn't necessarily want to lose more weight. I didn't need to lose much weight. But when I dove into bodybuilding and the competition world, that gave me the understanding, education, insight and knowledge on what it actually means to do the things necessary to reach that type of goal.

For the longest time, I was searching for concepts and following plans that just focused on weight. I tried all the things I've shared with you that focus on slashing calories and eliminating food groups. It was all about reaching a different number on the scale. I didn't fully grasp that there was a different concept, a different strategy, a different protocol to follow in order to be more toned.

So that's what I want to talk about. For those of you who don't want to lose weight but have the goal of being more toned, the strategy you'll follow to get more toned is drastically different from just focusing on losing weight.

So let's first talk about what toned really means. When people say they want to get toned, most use the word to describe a lean body, being fit, being defined. They want to see muscle definition, but they don't necessarily want to look bulky. It's that lean, sculpted, I'm-fit-and-I-have-muscle look that so many women are after.

That was exactly me at the beginning of my journey. I even said it to my coach: I don't want to look like a man. I don't want to become too bulky. I want to be fit. I want an aesthetic figure. I want to look sexy. I wanted that defined, Rosie the Riveter, strong type of feeling, you know what I mean?

So when people say they want to get defined or toned, they think lean, fit, defined. That's the word they're using to describe a body that is lean, fit and defined. But here's the truth. Getting toned is a combination of two things: building muscle and losing body fat. You can't have a toned physique without muscle. When you lose body fat, you're revealing the muscle underneath.

So if you're focused on losing weight without building muscle, you might end up looking like a skinnier, fatter, softer version of yourself rather than a lean and defined version of yourself. That's why the term toned can be so misleading. It's not about shrinking down, doing endless reps with light weights, doing tons of cardio, or what people think of as losing weight. The term toned does not mean "I'm losing weight." It means you're achieving the right balance of muscle growth and fat loss.

So when people come into our ecosystem saying, "Well, I don't want to lose weight," okay, hold up. What does that mean to you? And what does toned mean to you? Because toned can mean a variety of things to somebody. It can mean losing weight, but that's not the reality. When you're getting toned, you're not necessarily losing weight. You're losing body fat. You're building muscle up and decreasing the body fat around it.

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Nikkiey: I just want you to think about this a little differently, especially if you're the person who's like, "I don't want to lose weight. I'm happy at 130 pounds and 5'6", but I want to be defined. I want muscle and I want to be toned." Okay, cool. We're not going to go down the normal strategy of you losing weight, or what you think losing weight means, or what other programs have told you to do to lose weight. That's not the protocol we're going to take, because if you just focus on losing weight, you'll end up looking like a skinnier, fatter version of yourself. That's exactly the trap I was caught in.

For a year and a half, I followed all of those things that said I would lose weight, but I just looked like a skinnier, fatter version of myself. I got to the point where, okay, cool, I was happy with the way my physique looked and I was losing the weight, but I wasn't the toned version of what I wanted to be and what I thought I could accomplish. I didn't know there was a totally different protocol and strategy I was supposed to implement, which was this: you can't have a toned physique without having muscle.

So if you're losing weight without building muscle, you're just going to end up looking like a skinnier, fatter version of yourself. I'm trying to drill this home in a couple of different ways. I find myself explaining this in different ways so that you fully grasp it. The programs out there that focus on just losing weight have you losing muscle at the same time. That's what I'm trying to say.

When you lose weight, you lose muscle. When you lose body fat, you preserve lean muscle and decrease the body fat around that muscle. That's what toned really means. Getting toned is a combination of two things: building muscle and losing body fat. When you say the word toned, what you mean is you want to look lean, defined and strong, with that sculpted body composition many women are after. But you can't have a toned physique without muscle.

When you focus on losing weight without building muscle, you end up a skinnier, fatter version of yourself. A lot of the protocols out there that focus on losing weight aren't focused on you building muscle. They're focused on you losing weight. If you follow protocols like what we offer at WarriorBabe and our methodologies... I'm trying to bring this to a head so we can move on to the science of things. Maybe you're already there and I'm totally beating a dead horse.

Maybe I'm just regurgitating my point and it's already gotten across. But point blank: you have to be building muscle to be toned. And you won't get bulky. I already debunked that in an episode a while ago; you can find it and listen to it. Being toned, being strong, having muscle is such a beautiful aspect of our ability as women to shape our body composition. So that's all I wanted to say.

Focus on building muscle and decreasing body fat. That's what's going to get you toned. Don't focus on the concepts of losing weight. Those aren't the strategies you need to be following. If you don't want to lose weight but you want to be toned, you've got to focus on building muscle and on fat loss. That's what I want to talk about right now.

So let's dive a little deeper into the science behind what's happening when you work toward that toned body. To truly understand what it takes to achieve a toned, defined, lean look, you need to understand the fundamentals of muscle growth and the fundamentals of fat loss, because both of these processes together are how you'll get a toned physique.

At the core of getting toned is building muscle. This is what gives your body the shape and definition you want to see. Muscle growth happens when your muscles are exposed to stress or tension, and that's typically done through strength training.

Your muscles adapt to that stimulus by growing stronger and bigger. When you put your body under stress or tension for extended periods of time, for days, weeks, months on end, even years, and you're doing that through strength training, your body adapts by growing bigger and stronger, and you get the type of muscle you want on your body.

How that happens at a deeper level, I've talked about many times in previous episodes. And y'all, I got a comment in a review. My friend, thank you for leaving this feedback, because it really shaped how I planned out season three. I welcome and appreciate all the feedback you leave in those reviews, and I read them all the time. The comment was, "Good, not great," because I'm repetitive in my episodes.

I'm repetitive for a reason. As a coach for eight years, what I've found to be one of the key aspects of a transformation process is constantly repeating myself over and over again. When I share information, you listening, or the women I've coached, may be hearing me but not fully hearing me, because they're somewhere along their journey where they're not ready yet to receive the information.

So I've always repeated myself, or twisted it like I did a couple of minutes ago to make sure you understood what toned really means. I frame it in different ways so that you'll listen, hear and, most importantly, understand. I know it's been received and understood when you can leave this podcast, or leave a coaching experience with me, and repeat it in your own words and your own understanding.

When somebody can repeat something back, that means they understand it and they know it. That's why I repeat myself a lot in these episodes. But thank you, I appreciate that feedback.

So, back to how muscle growth happens. Your muscles are exposed to tension and stress, and that helps them adapt to grow bigger and stronger, which is part of you becoming more toned. Those are the fundamentals: muscle growth and fat loss. At a deeper level, when you lift weights and do resistance training, you're creating what I've called many times micro tears in your muscle fibers. That damage, and the stress you're putting on those fibers, is so important for your growth, because your body responds by repairing those tears during the recovery period. That's where you start to build more muscle and become more toned.

The way I break it down for you is this: when you work out in the gym, you're breaking down your muscles. You're not necessarily building them; you're breaking them down. You build and repair them in the 24 to 48 to 72 hours after you work out. After your body goes through protein synthesis, through this damage and repair, that leads to bigger, stronger muscles over time.

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Nikkiey: All right, let's get back to the show. So that's how muscle growth happens at a deeper level. Going even deeper, which I've talked about many times on these episodes, there's progressive overload, the role of protein, and hormones and growth. I'm not going to get too into the weeds with those, because I've covered them so many times, and I just want to drill home what toned actually means.

At a deeper level, it also means you have to put your body into these environments. You have to strength train. You can't get toned, build more muscle and change your body composition by going to boot camp classes, dance cardio classes or SolidCore. You can do those things, don't get me wrong. I don't want that to be taken the wrong way. At 45, you can do those things and incorporate them into your plan if you love them.

But the majority of your time needs to be focused on routine strength training workouts. That means push, pull and leg days, split-body workouts, full-body workouts. You need to put your body under the stress and tension that strength training offers in order to build muscle. You need to focus on progressive overload. You need to play around with your reps and your sets. These are all the things we put into place in WarriorBabe.

These are the foundations of our methodologies: okay, you want to be toned? You come into our ecosystem, this is your goal. Cool, then this is the strategy we're going to take. We're going to put you into strength training, and the majority of your programming with us is devoted to strength training. If you want to do those other classes, have at it. But 80% of your workout protocol should be strength training, and 20% can be what you love. It can be dancing, Pilates, running, whatever you want. But the ultimate way to build muscle is strength training. Okay?

On the other side of the equation is revealing the muscle you've already worked so hard to build. I've talked about this in previous podcasts: in order to start a fat loss phase, whether you're putting yourself into a little bit of a cut or you're at maintenance, you should already have a solid foundation of muscle, because that's how you'll get the toned look you want.

If you don't yet have a solid foundation of muscle, you need to really put the effort and time into building that muscle. And you can do that now. You can do that at 40, at 45, at 50, at 55. I've seen women do it. I actually saw one this morning, and I think I'm going to have her on the podcast, so I'll save the name. One of our coaches shared her transformation, and she's 75 years old. The team already knows who I'm talking about.

She has pipes. She has biceps. In her before picture, you can't see that. So either she built it up within our program, or she had the muscle underneath her fat, and with our protocol, methodologies and strategies, we decreased the body fat around it and preserved her lean muscle. Now she's the most ripped 75-year-old. She probably even beats Train With Joan. I'd put her in a close, close competition with her. She looks incredible, and I'm going to try to get her on the podcast, so hopefully she'll be a guest in the future.

Essentially, the other side of the equation is fat loss. You need to reduce the layer of fat covering the muscles. You could be 100 pounds overweight and still have muscle mass underneath. This is where fat loss comes into play, and it hinges on one simple principle.

Shout out to Jordan Syatt, because he drills this home on his Instagram. Women ask, how do I get rid of arm fat, the tricep fat, the bat wings? How do I get rid of the menopause belly? Creating a calorie deficit. Okay, I went off on a little tangent there, but that's where fat loss comes into play.

When you want to decrease the body fat covering your muscles, again, if you have 100 pounds to lose, you probably have some muscle mass underneath it. It's about holding on to that muscle mass and decreasing the body fat around it. What comes into play there, and I've talked about it multiple times on the podcast, is a calorie deficit, meaning you consume fewer calories and macros than you need to maintain your current weight. And that's broadly speaking.

Because somebody who may not need to lose weight but wants to be more toned, like the person I talked about at the beginning of the podcast, may not need to go into a calorie deficit entirely. Maybe a little bit. She more so needs to clean up her nutrition and balance out her macronutrients to give her body more of what it actually needs to function and fuel properly, so her body gets into the state of, "Oh, we're eating this way, so I'm going to start to lose body fat."

Your body taps into stored fat to make up for the energy shortfall, which you could get from a calorie deficit, but also from the energy expenditure you're putting out during your strength training workouts. So you could be at maintenance. I don't want this to get confusing, because I've talked about maintenance, fat loss and calorie deficits here. Broadly speaking, that's how you'd implement it, but the majority of you can be about 10% below your maintenance calories and still allow the fat loss process to happen while preserving as much lean muscle as possible.

You don't want to go too far into a deficit. You don't want to go too far away from your maintenance calories, and it's so individual for everybody. So don't get off this podcast thinking, "Nikkiey said I need to go into a calorie deficit," and slash all your calories. It's the littlest step away from your maintenance calories to facilitate a small shift, where your body goes, "Oh, she's not giving me as much food as before," and it's not that big a percentage difference. Does that make sense?

You're just taking a little bit of food away, and your body recognizes, "We're not getting this energy anymore, so I need to tap into other places I can get energy from," which is fat. As long as you're giving your body enough of the right macronutrients, it will hold on to the muscle and use stored body fat, dropping the body fat to make you more defined.

Nikkiey: 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 and leave a quick rating or 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 part of this journey with me.

Nikkiey: I hope this is all making sense. So it's not just about what phase you're in for fat loss to happen. There are also hormone factors that come into play for fat loss. I think it's important to understand that cortisol plays a factor and insulin plays a factor. Those things also need to be in a good state internally for the fat loss process to take place as effectively as it possibly can. If one of those two things is a little bit off, it could be a little harder for you to navigate that journey.

But regardless, toned is what we're going for. If you want to be more toned and reduce the layer of fat covering your muscles, you need to be at the appropriate calorie level, and I'm going to take out the word deficit here, that will have your body tap into stored body fat to make up for the energy shortfall you may be giving it. That's going to lead to fat loss over time.

Then I think it's really important to understand the difference between fat loss and weight loss, which I've already covered. The number on the scale doesn't tell you the full story. So if you're the person from the beginning of the podcast who's like, "That's me, I don't need to lose weight, but I'm so focused on the scale," the scale doesn't tell you the full story.

You could be losing water weight. You could be losing muscle mass. Your organs could get smaller. All of that is reflected as weight loss, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're losing fat. The goal is to lose body fat while maintaining as much lean muscle as possible, which is why proper nutrition and strength training are so freaking important. You can't say you want to be more toned, eat 1,100 calories a day, and then six months later say, "Well, I'm not toned."

This is somewhat hard for people to grasp, because for this process to truly happen, the methods you're following now, or the things you thought you had to do to reach your goal, which are mainly about losing weight, aren't what you're going to do to get toned. Some of you heard me say you may be eating around maintenance calories. So you could be eating 1,100 calories, and six months later you're not toned.

So what we do inside our process is this: we know that for you to get toned and build more muscle, we need to have you closer to your maintenance macros, like I was talking about, or a small percentage beneath that to create a bit of a calorie deficit, which facilitates this process.

Because getting toned consists of two components: building muscle and losing body fat. You're going to build muscle through strength training, and you're going to decrease body fat by eating the right balance of macronutrients, with your calories where they should be to facilitate that process.

To wrap this all up and drive my point home: you can't be toned without both of these concepts. They literally go hand in hand. Muscle growth and fat loss work together when it comes to achieving the toned look you want and understanding what toned really means. Muscle gives your body shape. Without it, you could lose weight, but you'll just end up looking like a skinnier, fatter version of yourself.

That's why strength training and resistance training are so freaking important even when your goal is fat loss. Fat loss reveals the muscle you've built. You might have strong, developed muscles, like the 75-year-old I mentioned. You might have them underneath your fat, but if there's too much fat covering those muscles, you won't see that lean, defined look. So you can lose weight, but you'll end up soft or flat if you don't focus on building more muscle.

That's why strength training is so important when your goal is fat loss. Even if you're like, "I just want to lose fat," okay, cool, but you have to incorporate strength training with that goal, because fat loss is going to reveal the muscle you've built. If you have 100 pounds to lose but you have muscle underneath, cool, fat loss will help uncover those muscles.

If you want to focus on fat loss but you don't have much muscle to reveal, then you really wouldn't be focusing on fat loss. You'd be focusing on building more muscle. That gets into all the different phases I could dive into, maintenance, surplus, whatever, so that when you do go into fat loss, you show all of the hard work you've put in by decreasing the body fat around those muscles.

So they work hand in hand, and that's why getting toned requires you to build muscle and to reduce your body fat. You could be in the stage where you just focus on building muscle, so that you can then move into a phase of decreasing body fat while still strength training, to reveal the hard work you've put in. I used to say that once you're done with a surplus or a bulk and you move into maintenance or fat loss, it's like Christmas morning, because you're revealing all of your hard work. It's like unwrapping a present. That's essentially the gist of it.

You can't have one without the other. You have to incorporate strength training. And fat loss could also mean maintenance calories, but on the lower end of your maintenance threshold. I find myself getting a little jumbled saying fat loss and maintenance, because it totally depends on the person we're working with.

So I don't want your brain to go, "Oh, I have to be in fat loss and building muscle at the same time." While they work together, your macros could be at maintenance calories. Those terms really differ from individual to individual. The ultimate play is that you're decreasing the body fat around your muscle. That's why I'm talking about fat loss. It doesn't mean I'm putting you into a phase of cutting or maintenance. Those are different concepts.

I'm trying to navigate my wording around calorie deficit and fat loss, because those are somewhat two different things. The goal, the overall thing you're accomplishing, is fat loss. A calorie deficit is bringing your calories down just a little bit, like a cut, or being about 10% below maintenance. Just to clean that up. Maybe you already understood what I was talking about, but I needed to clear up my wording because it kept popping back into my brain while talking about all this with you.

Anyway, that's what toned really means, the science of being toned, and the strategy and protocols it takes to have that toned look. For many of you, that toned look is just being more defined, more fit, more lean, seeing more muscle definition. That's typically the body people are describing when they use that word.

But what I've said tons of times, and shared on social media, is that this word gets thrown around a lot, and toned is just you having and revealing more muscle so that you look more fit, defined and lean. That's it. So if you want to be toned, focus on building more muscle, focus on strength training, and focus on eating the right caloric needs for you individually. That will help you achieve the goal of being toned.

All right, that's it for this episode. I appreciate you guys, 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 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.