Why Can't I Lose the Last 10 Pounds After 40?

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

And balancing these macros correctly is the key. That's what we talk about at WarriorBabe. We teach women how to go from not understanding, like maybe you have no idea what macronutrients are. We meet the client where they're at. We take them on the journey of, okay, cool, you don't know what macronutrients are? Well, you're going to learn what macronutrients are. And we're going to take the time that you work with one of our coaches for you to grasp the understanding of macronutrients and how they effectively work into your plan. And this is where a coach's expertise is freaking invaluable.

Hey, everyone. What is going on? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show, or if this is one of your first episodes, welcome to the 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'm your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to today's episode, episode number 165, where I want to dive into a topic that I know so many of you can relate to. I can't tell you how many times I have heard this, from me personally coaching hundreds and thousands of clients, to our coaches coaching hundreds and thousands of clients, to our transformation team talking to women on a daily basis saying that they struggle with this specific concept.

Losing the last five to ten pounds. We've all been there. You've been there. I've been there. Even our coaches have been there. Our whole team has been there. You can totally resonate with this. You are making incredible progress along your journey, wherever you may be at. Maybe you're a couple months in, maybe you're a couple years in, but you're struggling to lose those last pounds. And you feel like you've been stuck in a plateau. You feel like you've been eating clean, you've been crushing your workouts, and yet the scale refuses to budge. It refuses to move, and it can be very frustrating.

But don't worry, guys. Before I even continue on, I want you to understand the scale does not tell you the full story. So even though you're struggling to lose the last five to ten pounds, the thing that's going to tell you the full story of your fitness journey is progress photos. You taking the before and the after. I've talked about this many times throughout episodes of the podcast, but the scale is just one portion of your story. It's not telling you the full-blown story of you ultimately changing your body composition, which is a lot to unpack.

But here on this episode, we're going to unpack why this happens and how working with a coach can be an absolute freaking game changer in helping you break through this plateau. I can't tell you how many times when I was first starting out in my fitness journey, before I hired a coach, I was trying these things over and over and over again, trying so many different things. Maybe you've done the same thing. Maybe you've been doing the same thing for so long. And I remember getting stuck at that five-pound mark or 10-pound mark, and it would just fluctuate. I wasn't really seeing much change in my body composition, and I wanted to bang my head up against the wall.

This was just me trying to figure it out, trying to guess, trying to do things that were online, like following Pinterest workouts or Pinterest nutrition protocols, or doing keto or all the other fad diets that are out there. It wasn't until I actually hired a professional that knew what they were doing, that had the insight, that had the knowledge, that had the education, that I was able to break through that whole five to 10-pound mark. And also not just look skinny fat, but look more toned, ripped, and build more muscle.

So let's start by talking about why those last few pounds are often the hardest to lose in your fitness journey. When you first start your fitness journey, your body responds so freaking quickly to the changes in your diet and to the changes in the exercise routine that you're doing. If you're 50 pounds overweight and you're just starting to eat right and starting to move your body, or vice versa, you're eating right and not moving your body, or you're moving your body and choosing to eat better, you are going to see your body change, and you're going to see it change pretty quickly.

But for those of you who have already passed that part of your journey, as you get leaner, your body becomes more efficient. I've talked about this, I forget what episode it was, but it was a really good episode. I talked about calories with cardio and calories with strength training. I don't remember what episode it is, but it's honestly so worth going through all the episodes and trying to find it. As you get leaner, as you lose more body fat, as you lose more weight, your body becomes more efficient, meaning it burns fewer calories for the same activities. And this is where the famous M word comes into play. Your metabolism comes into play.

If you don't know what metabolism is, it's essentially the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. And as you lose weight, as you lose body fat, as you're building more muscle, your metabolism slows down because your body requires less energy to sustain itself. That's a completely natural, completely biological response designed to prevent starvation during times of food scarcity.

So to say that in layman's terms, as you are losing weight, losing pounds, losing inches, your metabolism recognizes this and slows down because your body now requires less energy to sustain itself. It doesn't require the same energy that it did when you were 50 pounds overweight. It's a completely normal process. As you continue to lose more weight, you may feel like you're not as hungry. I'm trying to paint the picture of what you may be going through in your journey. You've already experienced the hunger. You've already experienced the cues kicking in. You've already lost the weight. So as you lose more of that weight, your metabolism starts to slow down, and it's designed to prevent you from being hungry all the time and going into starvation mode.

But there's so much more to it. I just tried to break that down for you to understand, and I want to break it down even further, but I want to keep it as high level as I can so that you can stay with me and understand what is happening in your body when this process is going on.

So when you're trying to shed those last few pounds, think about it like homeostasis. Your body has a homeostatic mechanism that kicks in. This is your body's way of maintaining its balance, which it gets incredibly efficient at. Your body perceives those last pounds as a threat to the balance, and it holds onto them as a reserve. So as you're losing the weight, this homeostatic mechanism kicks in and wants your body to maintain balance. It recognizes that your body's using less energy to sustain itself, and it prevents you from going into starvation mode. And it looks at those last few pounds like, oh, this is the reserve I have to hold on to, because I need to maintain the balance, to keep homeostasis within all of the systems and all of the cells. You get what I'm saying?

Think of it like this: your body is adapting to what you are doing. And that can be incredibly frustrating. You can feel it. You know that you're doing everything right. You're counting your macros. You're sticking to your workout plan. And yet nothing is changing. It's a common experience that so many people go through, and they get completely discouraged and revert back to all of their old habits because they're like, I just can't lose the last five to 10 pounds.

But here's the thing. Hitting a plateau, you guys, hitting this part of your journey, is not a sign that you need to give up. It's a sign that, like I just said, your body is adapting to what you are doing. And this adaptation is actually a really, really good freaking thing because it means your body is becoming more efficient. As I said earlier, when you get leaner, your body becomes more efficient, meaning it burns fewer calories for the same activities.

Have you ever gone into a strength training workout, and this is what I broke down in that podcast before, and you recognize that you are burning 250 calories on whatever Apple Watch you're wearing? You just did a strength training workout, but it's only showing what you burned in the moment. As you get leaner, your body becomes way more efficient at this, and it needs to burn fewer calories for the same strength training activities. However, don't just take that at face value, because you're burning calories even after that workout, all throughout the day, when you're sitting down, eating and sleeping, because muscle is active tissue. It doesn't stop burning. It's always active. It's always revving. But you'll recognize that you get more efficient at whatever protocols you're doing when it comes to working out.

So while that can be frustrating when you're trying to lose the last five to ten pounds, whenever somebody gets to this point, I'm always like, okay, we recognize that we're here. We recognize that we're in a plateau. We recognize it for what it is. We bring reality into the situation. This is what you're experiencing, and this is why it's happening. This is what's happening internally in your body. Your body is adapting to what we've been doing. It's a great thing because your body is becoming more efficient.

Now we either need to ride it out, because you're going to get over this wave. A lot of people call it a whoosh. We're going to get past it. You don't need to change anything. You're going to eventually break through the plateau. It could be two weeks. It could be four weeks. It could take time to break through the plateau doing the same things. Or the other avenue I would go is we need to turn up some type of intensity somewhere to challenge the body a little bit more.

But this is where I want to get into the conversation about a coach, and why it's so important at this stage, for so many reasons. First, a coach can provide an objective perspective. I talked about this in previous episodes on the benefits of working with a coach. When you're in the thick of it, it can be so hard to see the forest for the trees. A coach can look at your diet and exercise routine with fresh eyes and pinpoint areas that might need tweaking. That could be anything from adjusting your macronutrient ratios to changing up your workout routine.

Whenever I was working with clients who needed to lose the last 5 to 10 pounds, I was looking at what they were doing. I'd ask, how long have you been doing this? Have you changed anything? Why haven't you changed anything? How consistent are you with the routine? I would get down to the nitty gritty of it, and I was offering an objective perspective. I'd say, okay, we're at this particular point in your journey. Maybe we just need to play around with the energy coming from the fats and carbs and tweak that a little bit. Or we need to add five minutes to your cardio routine on a weekly basis. Or we need to increase the reps or the sets or do some other type of progressive overload.

And speaking of macronutrients, if anybody is new to this podcast and diving into one of these episodes for the first time and you have no idea what macros are, let me dive a little bit deeper into their role. Macronutrients, or what we call macros in this space, and this is called The WarriorBabe Show, so I always try to reference macronutrients as much as I can in every single episode because it's science. Until proven otherwise, macros are the way to go when you're trying to lose body fat and build more muscle. They're the nutrients that your body needs in large amounts, and that's protein, fats, and carbohydrates. Each one plays a crucial role in your body's functioning and in your fitness progress.

Carbs play a huge role in you building muscle if you want to be more toned. Protein plays a huge role in repairing and recovering those muscles. Fats play a huge role in the hormonal aspect, the hormones working for you instead of against you when you're trying to build more muscle.

I'll dive in a little bit deeper. Protein is extremely essential for muscle growth and repair. When you're strength training, you're creating tiny micro tears in your muscle fibers, and protein helps to repair those tears, leading to muscle growth. I always say this: you're not building muscle in the gym, you're breaking down the muscle in the gym, and you're building it with the protein, the fats, and the carbs that you eat for the next 24 to 48 hours.

The more muscle you have means a higher resting metabolic rate, which means you burn more calories even when you're not working out. This is what I mentioned earlier about not getting so attached to what your fitness gadget tells you about how many calories you've burned. Me specifically, I may only burn 200 to 250 calories on my Apple Watch during an upper body workout. But because I have more muscle mass on my body, I have a higher resting metabolic rate, meaning my BMR is way higher. My RMR is way higher. And that means I am burning more calories even when I'm not working out. As I'm sitting here, I'm burning calories. When I'm sleeping, I'm burning calories. So that was protein.

Carbohydrates are your body's primary source of energy. They fuel your workouts. They help you replenish glycogen stores in your muscles. I talked about this in one of the other episodes. Carbohydrates break down into glycogen, and that glycogen is stored in your muscles. The more glycogen you have in your muscles, the more powerful you're going to be in your workouts, and the more powerful you are in your workouts, the more muscle you're breaking down. And then you're building it up with what you eat afterwards.

I'm thinking about Super Mario Bros., when he goes from small Mario to big Mario when he hits a mushroom. Think about that same concept when you're eating carbohydrates. You eat carbohydrates, they get stored as glycogen in your muscles, and then when you're about to go do a workout, you power up and you have the energy to perform that workout.

Fats, on the other hand, are crucial, as I mentioned, for hormone production and overall cell health. And they help you feel satiated, just like protein does as well, and that can prevent you from overeating.

And balancing these macros correctly is the key. That's what we talk about at WarriorBabe. We teach women how to go from not understanding, like maybe you have no idea what macronutrients are. We meet the client where they're at. We take them on the journey of, okay, cool, you don't know what macronutrients are? Well, you're going to learn what macronutrients are. And we're going to take the time that you work with one of our coaches for you to grasp the understanding of macronutrients and how they effectively work into your plan. And this is where a coach's expertise is freaking invaluable.

When I first started my journey, I had no idea what macronutrients were. I was playing the guessing game, looking online, trying all these online calculators. One online calculator said something and the others were completely different. Then I'd try to apply that, not see results after three weeks, and then try to change it and adjust the macros. And then understanding that I needed enough grams of protein to meet my body weight per day, but then what do the ratios look like for carbs and fats? I cannot explain how this is where a coach's expertise is insanely invaluable. They can help you find the right balance, even if you are following macros right now.

Maybe macros got you the progress you're experiencing, and now you're trying to lose the last five to 10 pounds, and you're understanding that maybe all this is happening internally in your body. You may just need a coach to have eyes on where your macronutrients are. A coach also understands your lifestyle, which the calculators don't take into account, or your hormonal profile, or anything that may be working against you that we can take a deeper look at at WarriorBabe. And we can give you the right balance that works for you, your body, and your goals.

And it's not just about cutting calories. It's about eating the right amount of each macronutrient to fuel your body appropriately. There are so many women inside of WarriorBabe who have not cut calories, who are eating more food than they were when they came in, and are experiencing incredible results. Because coaches have eyes on it. They have an objective perspective. And you're so in the thick of it. You're in the day-to-day. You're doing the work. You're going to the gym. You're trying to eat right and make good decisions. And like I said, it can be so hard to see the forest for the trees. All you see is tree, tree, tree, tree, instead of the forest, looking down from a coach's perspective and being able to offer insight that maybe you weren't even thinking about. That could be changing up your workout routine or changing your macronutrient protocol.

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Anyway, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about strength training, because I think there's a huge misconception, and I've definitely talked about this on the podcast before, that losing weight is all about doing more cardio. That couldn't be further from the truth. Cardio definitely has a place. I don't want to knock it entirely, because your heart is a muscle and it definitely needs to be worked. But strength training is incredibly important, especially when it comes to losing those last few pounds.

Building muscle not only shapes your body, but it also boosts your metabolism. As I was talking about earlier, muscle tissue burns more calories at rest compared to fat tissue. This means the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn throughout the day, even when you're not working out. A coach can design a strength training program that maximizes muscle growth and keeps your metabolism revved up. And they can also help you adjust your workouts to prevent overtraining and burnout, which are common things people run into when trying to lose those stubborn pounds.

When I used to coach women, women would be in there seven days a week working out because they had to lose these last five to 10 pounds, and they couldn't recover well enough. They were constantly in healing mode and not in recovery mode, and not optimizing their body to be able to go in the next day and crush a workout, because they were tired, overtrained and burnt out. Or a lot of people feel like they have to do cardio and cardio and cardio to lose those last five to 10 pounds. That's what a lot of the women I coached were struggling with. They were doing more when they actually needed to do less. And a coach can eyeball that, have an objective perspective, and look at what you're doing that isn't working right now.

What's the Einstein quote? Oh my gosh, it's totally blanking from my brain. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, something along those lines. If you're doing the same thing, working out seven days a week or doing more and more cardio, and you're still not getting the results you want, clearly something needs to change. That's why working with a coach gives you an objective perspective.

When we talk about strength training, it's not just about lifting heavy weights. It's about lifting with proper form, using the right exercises, and most importantly, progressively challenging your muscles. Having a set workout plan for four to six weeks that you're following. And a lot of people are like, I don't feel like following the same workout plan for four to six weeks. Well, there's a method to the madness. There's science behind why we're scheduling these workouts as we are, or there are specific areas or exercises we want you working on. Or you're going from this set count to that set count, this rep count to that rep count, this rest period to that rest period.

This is where a coach can make a huge freaking difference. They can make sure you're performing exercises correctly to prevent injury and to maximize effectiveness, and introduce new exercises and new variations to keep your workouts interesting and challenging. But most importantly, like I said, so you don't just do more and get more of what you're already getting, which is being stuck at this five to 10 pounds, but maximize the effectiveness of doing less, doing the right protocol specifically for your body, your lifestyle and where you're at. Combining this with your nutrition is what's going to be the game changer in breaking through the plateau and getting to the next level you want to get to.

I did a podcast specifically on the last five to 10 pounds a while back, more about the mindset component of it. In that podcast, I said your goals require next level dedication. It requires you to really hone in on your workouts. It requires you to really hone in on your macros. It requires you to be consistent.

But I want to talk about the lifestyle component of this, because the biggest mistake people make is thinking they need to be 100% perfect all the time. This all-or-nothing mindset can lead to burnout and make the process feel unsustainable, make it suck, and make it not enjoyable. When you're working with a coach, a good coach will emphasize the importance of balance and consistency over perfection. I talked about this in other episodes as well. It's not about going all in and being 100% perfect all of the time, because you're not realistically going to be able to sustain that. When you work with somebody who understands this perspective and can help balance the mindset you have, they'll teach you how to be flexible yet consistent and keep showing up.

Consistency is just showing up as best as you can that day. Maybe one week you aren't lifting the same weight you were the previous week, but you still showed up to do that workout. Or one week you were drinking 100 ounces of water as opposed to 120 ounces of water. But at least you still showed up. You're being consistent. You're consistent with your workouts. You're consistent with macros. You're consistent with water, whatever it is.

They're going to teach you how to find that balance, so you can enjoy your favorite food, enjoy your favorite activities, and know when to rest without completely derailing your progress. This approach not only makes the journey more enjoyable, but it also helps you maintain your results long-term. It's not about going in 100% with an all-or-nothing mentality to follow a strict protocol. It's not about being perfect. It's about being consistent and incorporating balance into your routine. And when you're able to do that, it's a hell of a lot more realistic for your journey and for...

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...for being able to sustain long-term results. And science backs this up too, if I want to really get into it. Studies have shown that sustainable weight loss is more about creating healthy habits that you can maintain over time rather than following a strict short-term diet or exercise plan. A coach can help you develop those habits and integrate them into your life. That's something a lot of PDF programs, or strict do-this, don't-do-that exercise plans or diets, don't do. They don't help you understand why you are where you are in terms of the weight you need to lose, how you got there, the habits you have ingrained in your life, and how you can develop new habits and integrate them into your daily life that are going to support you losing the weight.

For example, instead of solely focusing on the number on the scale, a coach you work with might encourage you to track other metrics, and they should. How do your clothes fit? How are your energy levels? How are your strength gains? How many pull-ups did you do this week? How many push-ups did you do this week? What are your non-scale victories saying? Because that can be incredibly motivating and can provide a more holistic view of what your progress actually looks like, rather than just the scale.

Maybe you have five to ten pounds to lose and you're gung-ho about what that number says on the scale, but you're missing the big picture. Someone can take an objective perspective and help you look at the bigger picture by saying, wow, you may have five pounds to lose, and you may have been stuck there for the last four to six weeks, but look at this before picture and this after picture, because there's a complete difference.

So all in all, with this whole podcast today, there are so many different facets we can highlight. Why is this happening to you? What is going on with your body when you have the last few pounds to lose? The homeostasis your body is trying to hold on to, so those last pounds look like a reserve, and losing them looks like a threat, as I explained. That's where you can get stuck in a plateau. You can look at it like that. You can understand why this is happening and the science behind it. And then you can understand that your body is in an adaptation phase and adapting to what you've done so far.

But now this requires some next level insight, knowledge or education, which can come from a coach who can provide an objective perspective on your situation and say, okay, you've been following this macronutrient protocol, why don't we try making a tweak? The most important thing this comes down to when you're working with a coach is that they can look at the nutrition. They can look at the components of your workout protocol. They can look at your lifestyle habits and how busy you are. We also look at the hormonal profile of clients, so you can figure out what's going on there as well. We can't treat it, but we can give recommendations to make things better when it comes to nutrition and fitness protocols.

You can understand that the coach is going to offer a perspective that maybe you're just not aware of. I've gotten this far, and you should give yourself a pat on the back for getting that far. But now I need someone to hold me a little more accountable, tell me to do this, and I just follow it and allow time for that specific change to take place. And then we adjust as needed to continue on. Maybe you need to make tweaks to your strength training.

Or another way to look at it: maybe you're somebody who's going 110% on a daily basis and you actually need to do less, not more, but you need somebody to hold you accountable to doing that. I've coached so many people who say, Nikkiey, thank you so much, because I was working out seven days a week, and now I'm working out four days a week and I'm getting even better results than when I was working out seven days a week. Let's be real. If you're doing that and you love doing it, but it's not getting you where you want to be, that's a hard behavior to change without somebody who has an objective perspective on the situation and the knowledge and expertise to get you to make that change. You're not going to do it alone. You need somebody to help you do it.

And then there's the progress-tracking aspect. Are you someone who steps on the scale every single day but misses a big detail like progress photos? Maybe you see the scale fluctuating five to ten pounds, but you could actually be getting leaner and more defined. Muscle is more dense than fat. A pound of fat and a pound of muscle weigh the same, but the muscle takes up significantly less space. If you step on the scale, the scale isn't going to tell you that. So if you're obsessed with a fluctuating number of five to ten pounds, but you don't look at your actual physical body composition, which is telling you a bigger and better story, then you need somebody to hold you to taking progress photos so you can see the change happening.

There are so many different ways a coach can really help you if you're struggling to lose the last five to ten pounds. It depends on where you're at in your journey and what objective perspective needs to come into your life from a coach, whether it's all the points I made today, just one of them, or a few of them. Whatever it is, if you're struggling to lose those last few pounds, consider investing in a coach. And if you're considering investing in a coach, check out WarriorBabe, because we have 65-plus amazing coaches on our team with an array of different expertise who can help you along your journey. They're all nutrition certified, strength training certified, and have all the other certifications under their belt. I'm not going to list them all, but you can check them out at warriorbabe.com/VIP, which goes into all the bios of our coaches.

They can provide the expertise, support and accountability you need to break through any plateau you're experiencing and achieve your goals. And remember, it's not about being perfect. It's about making progress and finding a balance that works for you. Whatever facet I talked about, whether it's understanding why this is happening and that an adaptive process is taking place, and you just need accountability to get through your body adapting and maybe adjusting a few things. Or the mindset side of it, or consistency, or not going too hard and doing less. You know what I'm talking about. So if that's you, check out WarriorBabe in the description below.

What I always say on this podcast is that you won't experience any type of change until you take control and take the necessary actions to make a change. So if you're stuck at the 5 to 10 pound mark and you're not doing anything about it, I would consider making a change and figuring out how to do something about it. So many of you listen to this podcast, and some of you have gotten incredible results and shared success stories in recent episodes. But those people took action. They didn't listen to me until they were blue in the face. They actually did something about it. So go do something about it.

And until next time, guys, keep pushing, stay consistent, and remember that you have the power to transform your body and your life. It is in your control. I'll see you in the next podcast. Peace out.

Hey guys, real quick. If you're interested in taking your body to the next level, losing body fat, building more muscle and feeling more confident, do it alongside one of our 30-plus professional coaches. Work one-on-one with her to eliminate all of the guesswork you may have, and all you need to do is the work she tells you to do to reach those goals of yours. To learn more, click the link below this podcast and apply to our VIP program.