What "Toned" Actually Means—And How to Get There

00:00Tone, it's not a training style, it's a result, and that result comes from two things. Your muscles need to be challenged at a level that creates enough stimulus to adapt and to grow over time. So these cute little pink five-pound dumbbells, for most women, past beginner stage, are not creating that stimulus. What's going on, everyone? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show. Or, if this is your first episode, welcome to the show with your host, Nikkie Stott.

00:35And 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. Today's episode is, you guys know that I've talked about this probably previously, and especially I've let y'all know my feelings towards this word. I'm not a big fan of how this word gets used, and I know that a lot of women identify this word with their fitness journey.

01:07Sometimes I feel like this word can keep women stuck, or it can steer them toward the wrong approach on their fitness journey, and also might make them weary or nervous or unsure on the right approach to take or the results that they're really after, that they want to get to with their body composition. So by all that, y'all know what the word is, right? The word is toned. And, like, I want to get toned.

01:38I don't want to get too bulky, is what women say. I just want to tone up. I want to lean and tone. I don't want big muscles. Like, I've heard it thousands and thousands, thousands of times. And every single time that I hear it, I just, I want to have maybe this, I've talked about it, but, like, I want to have just a direct, straight conversation about this. Because what women think toning requires and what toning actually requires are two completely different things. And the gap between those two things is exactly where results go to die.

02:13So today, I'm blowing this up. We're going to talk about this word, what it actually means, what it actually takes, and why most women are doing the complete opposite of what would get them there that they want to get to. So let's just dive into it. Let's start first what I feel like is, like, one of the most important things to address is the actual definition. Because toned is, it's not a fitness term. It's actually a scientific term, but it's a marketing term that the fitness and wellness industry invented to sell women on a version of training that feels safe and acceptable and not too intimidating.

02:57But biologically, what does a toned body actually look like? What is physically happening in the body that appears, that makes it appear to be toned? And to answer those questions is that there's two things, and there's only two things. Number one is muscle, period. There is muscle present under the skin. Developed, defined muscle that has shape and density. You can just, like, when people look at arms, you can see the curve of a shoulder.

03:29You can see the definition of the arm. You can see the line of your quad. The shape of a glute, right? That's visual definition that comes from muscle existing there. So number two is, or number one is muscle. Number two is having low enough body fat that the muscle is visible. It doesn't matter how much muscle you have. If there's a significant layer of fat sitting on top of it, you won't be able to see the muscle definition, right? Tone, though, is muscle plus the leanness for that muscle to show through.

04:07So one, it's having developed, defined muscle that has shape and density. And number two, it's a low enough body fat percentage that the muscle is being able to be seen, be visible, and having it show through, right? That's it. That's the entire equation. Muscle plus leanness. Nothing more, nothing less. Which means, and this is where it gets very, very important, is there's no such thing as toning a muscle as a separate activity from building it.

04:44You cannot tone a muscle that isn't there. You cannot firm up something that doesn't exist. A muscle either grows, it maintains, or it shrinks. Those are the only three options available to it. So when someone says that they want to tone their arms, what they're actually describing, whether they know it or not, is wanting to build the muscles in their arms and reduce the body fat covering them enough that those muscles become visible.

05:18That is body recomposition. That is changing your body composition. That's what toning is. And the approach required to actually achieve it is radically different from what most women are actually doing. So the approach that I see over and over and over and over again from women who want to tone up, I want to walk through it carefully. I don't want to make anybody feel guilty or shame anyone. But because I think understanding this exactly why it doesn't work is what finally makes the right approach just click.

05:54The typical quote unquote toning program looks something like lots of cardio, treadmill, elliptical, cycling, high volume, and doing that daily. The logic being that cardio burns calories. Burning calories reduces fat. And reducing fat will reveal tone. Lightweights with high reps. These five pound dumbbells. The resistance bands. Lots of repetitions of relatively easy exercises.

06:26The logic being that behind that is lightweights create long lean muscles without bulk. And heavyweights make you big. Or what else I see is the significant calorie restriction. I mean here I am again talking about this. Eating as little as possible to lose weight as fast as possible because smaller equals more toned, right? This is what the typical, what women think, and it's again I'm not like trying to guilt or shame you.

07:00It's just what's been out there in the industry. And for somebody that's not a professional and just trying to achieve a goal and wanting to seek information, this is what unfortunately women are getting roped up in believing that this is the way to get toned. Lots of cardio, lightweights and high reps, and significant calorie restriction. What I want to do is walk through why each of these pieces works against the actual goal. So the cardio problem? Cardio burns calories. Yes, that is true.

07:32But cardio does not build muscle. And we just established that muscle is half of the toning equation, right? No amount of cardio is going to create the shape, the definition, the curves that women describe that they want when they say they want to look toned. Now, cardio can help with fat loss, can help with the fat loss side of things, don't get me wrong. But fat loss without muscle building doesn't produce a toned body.

08:03It produces just a smaller version of the same body. Less of what you have before, not a different shape, right? The term skinny fat, you hear that often. This is where I was at the beginning of my journey, where I was doing marathon. I signed up for half marathon after half marathon after half marathon. Thinking that because I fell into the trap too, thinking that this is the way to get toned. This is the way to get my body that I've been wanting forever. Do cardio. And again, I don't want to down cardio.

08:34It is so important, especially for your heart muscle. And it can help on the fat loss side of things. But like you can't have, you can't have fat loss without building muscle. And cardio doesn't build muscle. Now, the light weights problem. This is one I feel like of the biggest myths in women in the fitness space. And also, I see a lot of women that kind of just go through the motions when they're in their gym.

09:04Light weights with high reps do not produce meaningful muscle development. Let me just say that point blank, period. Not because effort doesn't matter here, but because muscle growth requires progressive overload. Your muscles need to be challenged at a level that creates enough stimulus to adapt and to grow over time. So these cute little pink five-pound dumbbells, for most women, past beginner stage, are not creating that stimulus. Now, if you need it because you're just starting out, don't get me wrong. Yeah, use those. But past, you know, a couple months of using them, you're not creating that stimulus that the muscle needs to have that challenge in order to grow.

09:40Muscles are not being asked to do anything that they can't already do with that point. So they don't grow. So then the toning that you're working toward never materializes. It never turns into anything. You just stay where you are. Stuck, like I said at the beginning of the podcast. And then the heavy, the quote-unquote, what people say is heavy weights makes women bulky fear. Let me, I just wanted to just like, again, put this to rest. Building significant muscle mass as a woman is genuinely hard to do.

10:11It requires years of consistent, progressive, heavy training, plus eating in a calorie surplus. It doesn't just happen accidentally. And it doesn't just happen by picking up a pair of dumbbells or being underneath of a barbell or being on a machine. It doesn't happen, you know, just because you did those things. The women that you see in the fitness space who have significant amount of muscle mass have worked, like for me, it's just 11 years and counting, you guys.

10:48I worked extremely hard intentionally for years to build it. And I'm not even like, if you're like at the gym, yeah, because I got a pump and I'm taking a selfie and I'm putting it on social media, right? But if I'm like in my day-to-day, it's like I just have nice toned arms. They look fit, okay? You won't stumble into being bulky by accident. 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.

11:22Your 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. And then the severe calorie restriction problem. I mean, you guys know this, right? If you've been listening to this podcast now upwards of 350 plus episodes, I've harped on this. When you restrict calories aggressively without prioritizing protein and strength training, your body loses both muscle and fat. Right? We talked about that even in one of the most recent episodes, the metabolism repair episode.

11:55Your body doesn't selectively burn fat when you under-eat. It burns whatever is available, which is including muscle. So you're getting smaller, but you're losing the very thing, muscle, that would give your body the shape and the definition that you want. Again, this is, to piggyback off what I said a couple minutes ago, this exact pattern that produces a skinny fat outcome. The scale goes down. The body doesn't look the way that you hoped because there isn't enough muscle underneath to create definition to show through.

12:32And what muscle there was has been partially lost to the deficit, to the restrictive calories that you've been doing on a daily basis. So in other words, the standard toning approach actively works against building muscle. It actively accelerates muscle loss and it produces a body that is smaller and lighter, but not actually more toned. It is the opposite of what's required.

13:03And we just squash that. So obviously what actually works, like what actually gets you there? If toning equals muscle plus leanness, then the approach has to address both, right? As they're just growth or simultaneously or in phases, depending on where you're starting from. So side one of the equation is building muscle. This requires you to do strength training, period. Like real strength training with progressive overload, progressively increasing into heavier weights, doing compound movements like the squat, the deadlift, shoulder press, chest press.

13:39And with enough volume to create a genuine, genuine stimulus for growth, right? You can't just go through the motions when you are in the gym and you can't just go through 10 reps making it look like it's a breeze. So going back to the compound movements, those being like squats, deadlifts, hip hinges, rows, presses, lunges, those things, those movements, they recruit large muscle groups, and that creates the most significant training stimulus and build the kind of functional, visible muscle that actually changes the shape of the body.

14:17Then in conjunction with compound exercises, you do isolation exercises like curls, leg extensions, lateral raises, front raises, incline press. Those have a place, but they're, they're like, they're like, they're finishing the work. They're not the foundation. Compound movements are the foundation. So like you'll find me doing three, maybe if I'm feeling it four compound movements, if not definitely one or two in a, in a day. And I'm finishing off my workout with isolation exercises, or sometimes I'll flip up the training and I'll do isolation exercises at the beginning, fatigue the little muscles.

14:56So the big muscles come into play at the end. And they're underneath more stimulus, underneath more tension. And then progressive overload is just an absolute non-negotiable. Your muscles grow in response to being challenged beyond what they are, what they can currently do, which means the weight you lift needs to increase over time. Not every session, but consistently. I was actually just talking about this because I did a morning vlog a couple of weeks ago.

15:29And I, in the vlog, had to, you guys can find it on YouTube, I'm sure, if it's live at this point. But I was doing shoulder press and I had to decrease my weight because I couldn't finish the set with good form. Meaning like the last couple of reps were too sloppy that I was overcompensating with other muscle groups. So I said in the video, I was like, look, like, yes, you want to increase your weights. But sometimes the increase is just going to look like the same thing that it looks like when you're losing weight on the scale.

16:02It's not a linear path straight forward down. You're going to have the scale going, the line going down, going up, fluctuating a little bit. It's like this little small hill that, but overall consecutively is still going in a downward trend. That's the same with your strength on the flip side. With progressive overload, yes, you're still focusing on, you know, increasing your weights maybe every few weeks. And maybe there's going to be one session in that week where you have to revert back to where you were a week prior.

16:36And that's okay. It's like, look, you're going to be going uphill and then there's going to be little dips here and there. But overall consecutively, the trend is still going upward with your progressive overload. Your strength is still increasing, right? So it's the same thing. It's not perfect, but it's consistent. But if you're lifting the same weight you lifted six months ago, your muscles have no reason to grow. They've already adapted that stimulus. So you have to keep asking more of them. You have to keep challenging them.

17:07And then also you have to have adequate training frequency. Like for most women training, each muscle group two times per week produces the best results for muscle development. That typically means like a three to four day per week training program. You don't have to be in there six days a week, seven days a week. That's just too much. And at that point, it's also kind of productive to the results because you're overtraining. It doesn't have to be a two hour sessions. It can just be an hour long session. And then if you are doing your steps, get your steps in afterwards or throughout the day.

17:41Whatever your programmed cardio is supposed to be. But cardio is a tool to your fat loss. Strength training is what's going to get you there. And get you toned. Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, Warrior Babe is here for you.

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18:43That's warriorbabe.com forward slash apply. All right, let's get back to the show. And get you to the end result being toned. Now, side two of the equation is the reducing of the body fat, right? So this is where the nutrition comes into play, specifically a moderate, not a huge deficit supported by you having a high protein intake. So the deficit doesn't need to be aggressive. Aggressive deficits accelerate muscle loss.

19:16They tank your energy. They impair your training performance. They drive metabolic adaptation pretty quickly. If you just focus on like somewhere between a range of 300 to 500 calorie deficit below your maintenance, that will allow for fat loss while giving your body enough fuel to maintain and even build muscle. If your training stimulus is sufficient enough and your protein intake is high and protein has to be high. I mean, we talked about this before and I'll keep saying it. Protein is what protects your muscle during a deficit.

19:47It is what allows your body, allows body recomposition to actually happen. Most women, you know, should be eating, like I say, upwards of like either 0.8 and one gram of protein per pound of body weight every single day. And that protein target is not optional. It is the thing that literally determines whether you lose fat and maintain muscle or you lose fat and muscle together. So what this actually looks like and like say a week example, three, four, I would say four

20:25strength training sessions built around compound lifts with progressively increasing while you're progressively increasing your weights. This is where a log with weights comes into play is really good, but you'll notice your weight going up over a three week span. It doesn't go up on a one week or, you know, it doesn't go up week by week. It will go up maybe, maybe week by week, depending on what muscle group you're doing. But you'll notice it maybe two to three weeks that you're increasing your weight. You hit your protein target every day.

20:56You have a moderate deficit, not like a crash diet. And then, like I said, cardio is used as a tool for health and additional calorie burn, but not as a primary fat loss strategy. And consistently over weeks and months, because you changing your body composition is not a four week result. It is a long term game. So you doing what I just said consistently over weeks and months is where you will see the changes happen. It is not going to happen in the first month.

21:26So I just want you to know that and accept it and allow those expectations to be set. Okay, but you know, as we can, here's where I want to get real with you guys, because the strategy is one thing that we just talked about, but there's a mindset piece underneath all of this that I think is a real reason why women keep going back to the wrong approach, even when they know better. The toning approach, the cardio, the light weights, the restriction, it feels safer.

21:57It feels more controlled. It feels like less risk. Lifting heavy feels scary. What if I get too big? Eating more protein feels like, well, I'm eating more. And you can feel fuller. You're not always hungry when you're first starting to eat protein. Then the question is like, what if I gain weight? And people will notice some type of weight gain in the initial first months of their journey. This is why the atoning approach I talked about feels safer.

22:29Or eating in a moderate deficit instead of a crash diet that feels slower to people. What if it takes forever? I want results like yesterday. And underneath of all of these fears is a deeper one. The fear of a body that is stronger, bigger, more present, more known when you walk into the room. We've been conditioned as women for a very long time to want to be smaller, to shrink, to take up less room.

22:59And a training approach designed to build muscle asks you to do the exact opposite of that. So I want to just say this directly. Because I think ignoring it is why so many women intentionally understand what they need to do and still can't bring themselves to do it. Building muscle is not the same thing as getting big. A strong body is not a big body. The women I work to have committed to real strength training.

23:31Who have picked up heavier weights. Who have fueled their training with adequate food. Who have stopped running from the weight room. Who ditched the endless card. Who ditched the tone, the quote-unquote toning approach that's out there. They look more like what they've described when they said they wanted to be toned. Than they ever did on a cardio machine and five-pound dumbbell program. So the word you've been using, toned, actually describes a strong body.

24:02And a strong body requires you to train like you're building something. Not just like you're trying to get smaller and skinnier and disappear. So that mindset shift is the work. And let me tell you, that mindset shift is a work worth doing. So bottom line, on everything that we covered today, tone, it's not a training style. It's a result. And that result comes from two things. Muscle and leanness.

24:34Building that muscle requires progressive strength training with you challenging the weights. And the last two to three reps of every one of your sets should be challenging. It should be hard to push that weight up. It should be, you should be making not fun faces. Like you should be uncomfortable. And then achieving that leanness requires you being in a moderate calorie deficit with a high protein intake. And I get the question all the time. Well, isn't high protein intake just going to be stored and utilized or stored as fat if I'm eating too much?

25:09No. Not if you are training the way that is required for you to train to get the body you want them talking about in this. It's being utilized during your strength training sessions. Because what do you guys know? Protein is the building block macro for your muscles. So in training and post and recovery, protein is being used and utilized. You're not going to store it as fat.

25:39And that is what produces the body that women describe that they want when they say they want to be toned. The approach most women are actually using, the high carb, the low, the high, the lightweight, aggressive restriction, builds no new muscle. It often attacks existing muscle. And it just makes you a smaller, skinnier version of yourself. It's the opposite of what's required. So the shift is simple to understand and generally challenging to make. I get that because it requires letting go of a smaller is better framework and replacing it with no stronger is better.

26:15But I promise you every single woman who's made that shift and is committed to it has told me the same thing. She wishes she had done it sooner. So my challenge to you guys is pick up the heavier weight at your next workout. Focus on hitting your protein target. Add one or two compound lifts into your training each time. Just start there. And if you're already doing that, keep going. And if you want to be a part of Warrior Babe, if you're not yet in the VIP, our coaching program, where you can work with a one-on-one coach,

26:49get into our free community. It's free. It's full woman making this exact same shift. Showing up to each other. They're building something they're generally proud of. Doing it the right way, not in a toning approach way. But like what's actually required of you to get toned. All right? It's completely free. The link is in the show notes below. And if this episode resonates with you, I just ask that you share it with somebody else who has been in the cardio and lightweight cycle and doesn't see the results that they want.

27:19This might be exactly what they need to hear. All right? Love you guys. And I'll see you in the next episode. 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 just a moment to hit that review button. Your rating and review make all of the difference. Helping more women discover the tools they need to transform the 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.

27:51I appreciate you so much. Thank you.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.