Why Am I Not Seeing Results After 4 Weeks of Training?

Nikkiey: Marketing promises you something in six weeks. It promises you a 21-day fix. It promises you X, Y and Z in 30 days. You may not even see it until day 90. That's three months. But this is the window. If you have stayed consistent with your training and your nutrition, then the visible changes start to emerge. Now the scale starts moving more predictably. Your clothes start fitting differently. The strength gains that were happening neurologically start actually being backed, and you see some definition start to show up. This is when it starts to look like something is actually happening. And most women who quit never get to this point, because here's what I know from working with thousands of women: the ones who transform are not the ones who never hit the wall. Every single one of the women inside of WarriorBabe and VIP coaching (we've had 21,000 women work privately with our coaches) has hit a wall. They just have somebody in their corner telling them, 'Hey, yeah, you've hit the wall. It's okay, though. Keep going.' Do you know how much weight that takes off somebody trying to do this all on their own? A lot.

What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys, welcome back to another episode. I believe this one could hopefully improve the way that you continue to move about your fitness journey. If you guys are new to this podcast, my name is Nikkiey Stott. I am your host. Typically 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, I'm talking about this concept called the wall. The one where you start a program, you're consistent, you're super excited, you're motivated, you're doing everything right. And then somewhere, maybe around week three, week four, maybe week five or six, something in you feels like nothing seems to be happening. The scale is not moving the way that you expect it to. You don't look different. You do not feel that dramatic shift that you thought you would by now. And so this voice becomes so overpowering in your mind, louder and louder and louder, and it starts to say, 'This is not working.' Or, 'Maybe this program just isn't for me,' or, 'Maybe I should try something different.' And when those voices start to get really, really loud and overpowering, the majority of you guys feel like this is just a time where you stop.

What if I told you that the moment you quit is almost always the moment that your body was just about to respond? I have literally seen this happen in upwards of 10,000 women, maybe even more, that have come through WarriorBabe. They get to this point and then they start to think it's the program. And thank God the people in their corner are like, 'Look, this program works. I know you're working it right now. This program has helped so many women.' They have testimonials they can fall back on. It's like, 'All right, let's look at your day to day,' or, 'Let's just give it a little bit more time,' right? And then all of a sudden, they see this dramatic shift.

And that's what I'm going to talk about tonight. I want to show you exactly what is happening to your body during that window of time, why it may look like nothing is working when actually everything is internally starting to shift and starting to work. And if you are that woman who just pushes through, who just doesn't quit and keeps going, what you're going to get on the other side of it.

Okay, so let me walk you through what is actually happening in your body during these first four to six weeks. I've probably talked about this in previous episodes, but I don't think I've spent an entire episode on this specifically. And I hope this can help so many of you guys listening to this getting back into... You're probably going to hear in upcoming episodes where I'm talking about how this is a grounding season that you guys are in right now. September is a grounding season. Kids are back in school, you're getting back into certain types of routines. Maybe you're a teacher, you're getting back into that type of routine. And this is where you guys can really hunker down before the holidays hit. And you're going into January 1 with a different level of mindset, because you have been grounding and putting in the work for the last couple of months: routine, consistency, applying things. The holidays are where you take a good break, a necessary break, you learn that balance, and then you're ahead of so many people coming in on January 1.

So I say all of that to say that I hope this helps you if you're in this grounding season now. Or if you're somebody who does decide to wait until after the holidays, which I hope is only about 10% of you guys listening to this episode, you'll have an idea that maybe this is what your body will experience during that time as well. Maybe you've already been there and this is what I'm talking about, and you haven't allowed yourself to just keep going. Just allow the stall to happen, don't change anything and see it through. Okay, so either way, I hope I'm talking to one of those buckets, or maybe all of them in some regard.

But anyway, what is happening in this first four to six weeks of a new nutrition program or a new training program? I think once you guys see the full picture, the wall stops feeling like, 'Oh man, this is just another thing that I'm failing at,' and it starts feeling like exactly what it is.

Okay. So weeks one and two: this is where the neurological adaptation is happening. In the first weeks of a new training program, the majority of what is happening has nothing to do with your muscles. It has everything to do with your nervous system. Basically what I mean by that is your brain is learning. It is mapping out new movement patterns. It's establishing new neural pathways. It's recruiting muscle fibers more efficiently for the types of movements that you are doing in your program. So this is the movement patterns, the cues, even the way you map out your workout inside the gym, going from one piece of exercise equipment to the next. This is all called neurological adaptation, and it's happening before any meaningful muscle tissue changes occur.

This is why you may feel stronger almost immediately when you start a new program. Not because you've built new muscle in the first two weeks, but because your nervous system got better at using the muscle that you already have on your body. That strength gain is real, but it's not from you building muscle just yet. So I want you to keep that in the back of your mind when maybe you're six weeks in, or two or three weeks in, and you don't see any physical changes happening in your body, and you're thinking, 'But why don't I see it?' This is just your body getting better at using the muscle you already have. And just to piggyback off that, it doesn't show up in the mirror. It doesn't show up on the scale. To someone looking from the outside, and to you looking in the mirror, nothing appears to have changed, right? So that's what's happening week one, week two, maybe even going a little bit into week three.

Weeks, say, two or three to four or five-ish, this is the metabolic recalibration that's happening. What I mean by that is, while your nervous system is doing what I just said, adapting, your metabolism is also recalibrating. Especially for women who are coming from a period of under-eating, or having poor sleep, or learning how to manage chronic stress, the body in these early weeks is essentially waking back up. Hormones are beginning to regulate. You're learning how to have better habits with your sleep; maybe you're going to bed 30 minutes earlier and waking up 30 minutes later, or vice versa. Insulin sensitivity is improving. And none of this is visible. None of this shows up on the scale in a way that looks like you're making progress, but it is the most important foundation that everything visible will eventually be built on.

And here's what can happen on the scale during this window that women almost universally misread as being a failure, as failing the program, or as it not working: the scale can go up. And so women immediately think, 'This isn't working. I'm gaining weight.' All of these red flags are going off in women's brains because of the narratives they've been told to believe over decades of dieting. And it's universally misread. Here's what's happening. You're gaining water retention from that new training stimulus. Your glycogen is being stored in your muscles, which are being taxed and worked for the first time from those workouts. And there's true inflammation that happens. Think about a cut that you get on the outside of your skin and how it causes a little bit of inflammation around the cut. That's essentially what you are doing to the muscle fibers in your body, so inflammation starts to occur inside the body to help with that muscle repair. All of it adds weight temporarily.

But what I need you guys to understand is, those are the things happening, but that doesn't mean that you're actually gaining fat. That weight is going to resolve. It's going to go away, but only if you stay in this process long enough for it to resolve. Because women who quit at week three or four because the scale went up quit during the exact window that their body was storing water while simultaneously rebuilding at the cellular level. And they never got to see what comes next, because women just give up when things aren't happening fast enough, because this is a society...

Weeks four to six: this is that visible shift. And to tell somebody that it might take them that long to see it is not something sexy to say. I've said that before. Marketing promises you something in six weeks. It promises you a 21-day fix. It promises you X, Y and Z in 30 days. Weeks four through six, we're talking way past the 30-day window. And some people may not even see what I'm describing then. I'm giving a ballpark range. You may not even see it until day 90. That's three months. But this is the window. If you have stayed consistent with your training and your nutrition, then the visible changes start to emerge. The inflammation from that initial training stimulus has now reduced because your body's getting used to it. It's adapting. The water retention has normalized. The nervous system is fully adapted, and the muscles are beginning to genuinely develop in response to your training.

And now the scale starts moving more predictably. Your measurements, if you're taking measurements of your body, which I would highly recommend on top of also using the scale as a tool, start changing. Your clothes start fitting differently. The strength gains that were happening neurologically start actually being backed by actual muscle tissue change. You see some definition start to show up. This is when it starts to look like something is actually happening. And most women who quit never get to this point.

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So I want to talk about the psychology of the wall. The physiology of what I just explained to you is telling you what's happening at a cellular level internally. You can't see those things. But the psychology is what makes women quit anyway. So like I said earlier, this wall feels like, 'This isn't working. This program isn't for me. I'm failing at yet another thing.' Because we live in this culture of instant feedback. Every other area of our lives gives us immediate confirmation that something is working. You post something online, it uploads in seconds, you see it immediately. You need something from Amazon, you get it; sometimes you can even get it the same day now. You send an email, you see that reply. It's like this dopamine spike. You see it and you're hit. That's what we get. You make a decision, and sometimes you can see the consequence immediately.

But fitness, and changing your body, does not work that way. The body adapts slowly. For those of you guys who have gained 50 or 100 pounds, do you think that you gained that overnight? No. Your body slowly adapted to that increase over time. And so your body adapts slowly, internally, in ways that are invisible before they're actually visible. And in that gap between starting and actually seeing, in those early weeks where you are doing the work and you're not yet seeing the visible return, that silence feels so heavy. It feels deafening. It feels like a signal that something is wrong. But it's not. It's literally just the body working on a different timeline than the one your expectations were set to.

You cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, like you have been, going from program to program to program or diet to diet to diet, and expect the results to be different. That is the definition of insanity. That's where the majority of you guys have been for 20 years.

And this is what also makes that wall so cruel. It tends to hit right at the moment when the newness of the program has worn off and the results have not yet arrived to replace it. Let's say you did a training block for six weeks, and at the end of the training block, the results aren't there yet. Weeks one and two, you're energized by starting something new. You were so excited. Weeks three and four, the energy of that newness starts to fade. You're in this mundane routine, doing the same thing over and over again, and some of you guys can't do that. And the results are not there yet to carry you through, which physiologically they can't be; they're not going to be there yet. There is nothing holding you in place except you deciding and understanding. That's what this episode is trying to give you: the decision to keep going, and the understanding of what I'm explaining here, of holding out, because internally a lot of things are changing. And you've got to stop doing what you've been doing for so long.

Because here's what I know from working with thousands of women: the ones who transform are not the ones who never hit the wall. Every single one of the women inside of WarriorBabe and VIP coaching (we've had 21,000) has hit a wall. They just have somebody in their corner telling them, 'Hey, yeah, you've hit the wall. It's okay, though. Keep going.' Do you know how much weight that takes off somebody trying to do this all on their own? A lot. You hear that, and you're like, 'Okay, now I can just worry about the next email I've got to send at work, or the soccer practice I've got to get the kids to, or the dinner I've got to make tonight, and just keep going,' right? But if you're constantly trying to do this yourself, you're guessing, you know, 'This isn't working.'

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...until you fall off. That's the problem with doing this alone and by yourself. So if you're somebody who needs a one-on-one coach or to work in our VIP program, I would highly recommend checking out that process and applying to be inside of it. Or, what I'm doing every single Thursday is hosting a free training at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It's free. We hang out for 90 minutes. I talk to you more in depth about what I'm talking about here on this podcast. I'm going to link how you can register for that training in the description below.

But what I'm saying is, every single woman has hit that wall, but the ones who don't quit are the ones who have somebody in their corner who knows the wall is there, and they know they've hit it, and they're going to keep going anyway.

But I want to be direct about this, because I think women deserve to understand the real cost of quitting when it gets to that week four, week six. And I don't want to do this to create shame or guilt. I'm here to give you genuine understanding and clarity. When you quit at that wall and then you start a new program, what you're literally doing is resetting the clock. You go back to week one. You go through neurological adaptation again. You go through metabolic recalibration again. You go through the temporary inflammation and water retention again. You hit the wall again. And if you do not understand what the wall is, you quit again. This is the restart cycle, and it's a cycle that keeps women spending years and years and years in fitness without ever accumulating the compound progress that time and consistency can produce for you. Women are literally on this hamster wheel. I'm sure you've been on it. You haven't been able to see the payoff of your consistency and time.

So here's the math of it. Think about it like this. Let's say a woman completes a 12-week program, goes through the wall and gets to see the full adaptation process happen. But a woman who quits at week four, then starts something new, quits at week four again, and repeats the cycle three times in a year, has been to the gym for 12 weeks, but she has never gotten past that wall. She has done all the early hard work three times and collected none of the results. Two different people here: a person who's done the 12-week program and has seen the full adaptation process, and another woman who quits at week four and does this whole cycle over and over and over again but never got past that wall. Same time invested, completely different outcome, you guys. Because one woman stayed long enough to let the compound effect of consistency work. The other one just kept resetting before she could ever get to that progress.

The thing about fitness results that makes this even more significant is that progress is never linear. But what it is, is cumulative. The woman at week eight is not just slightly ahead of the woman at week four. She is in a completely different physiological state. The adaptation from weeks five through eight builds on the adaptation from weeks one through four in a way that produces exponentially more change than the sum of two separate four-week stints ever would. You don't just lose the last four weeks when you quit at the wall. You lose what those four weeks were about to unlock for you. Does this make sense? Is it clicking for you guys? You get what I'm saying? Just because something isn't working doesn't mean it's actually not working. So we need to override the narrative in our mind of wanting to quit, and just keep going.

So what do I mean by that? Because you guys know that I like to be practical when I come to these episodes with you: how you can actually get through it. Because knowing what the wall is does not automatically make it easier to push through it. Me saying to you guys, 'Just keep going,' will be very hard for the majority of you. So you need a strategy.

The first thing I would say is know that it's coming before it arrives. That's the most powerful thing I can tell you. Those of you who have gotten through the wall are almost always the ones who were told about it in advance. So this is me telling you in advance. When you know that weeks three through five are the hardest, that the scale might be weird, it might not move, that you might not see results yet, that the motivation from the new start is going to fade, you can hold the course, because, 'Hey, I expected this. I learned in this episode today that this is just a part of the process early on.' And it won't be a surprise. It's making it a scheduled part of the process for you. So if you're in WarriorBabe or VIP or in our programs, go in knowing that weeks three through five, if you've been consistent up until that point, are going to feel like nothing is happening, and that's normal. Keep going.

Then I would say measure the right things while you're at the wall. The scale is the worst metric to track during the wall. It literally distorts reality so badly, because you could totally be making progress, but then you step on the scale and it's gone up because of everything I said earlier in this episode: weight, inflammation, right? So instead, track your strength. Are you lifting more than you were two weeks ago? How's your energy? Are you sleeping better? Track your habits. Are you hitting your protein intake? Are you showing up for your workouts? Those are the most important leading indicators of what is building underneath the surface. The scale is just a lagging indicator that will eventually catch up, but only if you stay in it long enough for it to.

And then something else I would say is get accountable to something outside yourself. When your internal motivation is gone, and at the wall it usually is, because the motivation from being excited about the new start has faded completely, external accountability is what is going to carry you. What I mean by that is someone in your corner, whether it be your spouse, your kids, your why, why you started this, or your community of people. This is why getting a coach who is checking in on you, or a community of women doing the same thing, like what we have inside of WarriorBabe, or on Thursdays, or a friend who's going to ask you on Friday whether you trained: something that makes not showing up cost more than showing up. You get what I'm saying? Some of our WarriorBabes inside the program, the reason they keep going is because they know they have that accountability check-in on a weekly basis, and they know that not showing up to that is costing them more than showing up. They have someone to be held accountable to. They have someone who's so invested in their program with them, walking alongside them in this journey, that, something I've heard, if they feel like they don't check in or don't do the work, they're letting their coach down, and they're letting themselves down too. This is one of the biggest reasons why women who have coaching support get dramatically better results than women working alone. Not because the program is better, but because accountability bridges the gap when motivation cannot. And motivation is going to dip. It's going to flatline. You're probably going to be negative some days. And that's where you have somebody in your corner who's like, 'No, keep going. I got you. We got this. You're going to get a well-rested sleep, you're going to sleep better, and tomorrow you're going to show up stronger.' You know what I mean?

So what I want you to take away: those three things. Get accountability outside of this program you're in, something outside yourself. Measure the right things while you're at the wall. And have the expectation that the wall is going to show up. Be ready for it, so that you can be like, 'All right, cool, it's here. I'm going to keep going either way,' so that you don't quit.

The wall is not a sign that something is wrong. That's what I want you to take away from this episode. It is a sign that your body is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. It's adapting at the cellular level in ways that are invisible before they become visible. The women who transform are not the ones who never hit it. They are the ones who knew what it was and kept going anyway.

So maybe you're at the wall right now. If you're three or four weeks into something and it feels like it's not working, I just need you to hear this: it's working. You're not there yet, but you are closer than you were yesterday. And quitting now means starting all over again and doing the exact same thing, and it's going to be the hard part again. So just stay in it. Measure the right things. Know that what is being built right now, underneath the surface, in silence, is so real. You are laying such a strong foundation, and I wish every single woman understood that. Because if you can just lay that foundation down and get past it, and I hope you guys just soak up this knowledge, you experience this wall, and on the other side of it, it's like a whole other world. You're no longer stopping, quitting, stopping, quitting, stopping, quitting. You're actually allowing time and consistency to compound.

And if you want to go deeper on exactly how to build a nutrition foundation and make everything we talked about today actually work, then, as I've been saying throughout this episode, come to our free weekly WarriorBabe training. Every week I break down this strategy, why you've experienced what you've experienced in 20 years of doing all of these things over and over again, the one thing that it's costing you, and also how to help you through it. It's live, real time. You're hanging out with me. We do hot seat coaching: I pull women from inside the training, talk directly with them and give them some tips and tricks. It's women just like you. It's completely free. And it's one of the best 90 minutes, I'm sure, that you guys will spend. It's a wealth of knowledge. Women leave it saying, 'Wow, I've never had this education broken down.' I read this in the chat box inside the training: 'I've never had this information broken down for me in 20 years the way I have in these 90 minutes.' So register at that link. It's in the description. Grab your spot and register for it. I cannot wait to see you. Hopefully one of you guys is the one I get to talk to, and you're like, 'I listened to the episodes. I love The WarriorBabe Show,' which I'll talk more about in the next episode, 'and I love you, I love it, but this is where I'm at,' right? And hopefully I'm able to help you guys through it. I would love to see you there. I hope this episode helped you guys. 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 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.