Why Eating Less Isn't Helping You Lose Fat After 40

Nikkiey: If you want your body composition to look different, muscle is going to create that look. It's not about weighing less. It's not about chasing skinny. It's not about chasing smaller. It's not about chasing a number on the scale. If you're eating 1,200 calories, doing cardio, adding more cardio in, and then you're trying to strength train hard, what exactly are you expecting your body to perform on? You walk into the gym, you're already depleted. You try to lift weights that are heavy, but it's hard to do because you don't have the energy reserves to back up you lifting that heavy weight. You're losing reps. Your recovery sucks. You can't progress in your lifts. You're dragging yourself through the workout, but then your watch is like, well, I burned 400 calories. Guys, that's not the win I want you to focus on.

What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to another episode with your host, Nikkiey Stott. 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.

So, my friends, in today's episode, I want to talk to the woman who feels like she has one tool left in her toolbox. It is a very common tool among women who are trying to get to a goal with their body. And that tool is eat less. If the scale isn't moving, what this woman does is she eats less. If the measurements haven't changed, the answer seems to be eat less. There's a vacation or a wedding coming. Maybe this is you too. You eat less.

Maybe you feel like you hit a plateau or you feel like you're stuck in a stall, so you cut another 200 calories. And then you cut another 100 calories. And then maybe you cut out your carbs. And then maybe you stop eating breakfast. And then maybe you add in fasting. And then maybe you add in another cardio session, and another cardio session on top of that. And before you know it, you're eating an amount of food that you know isn't sustainable. You know it in your heart of hearts. We're in 2026, my friends. You know nowadays that it is not feasible to just have one meal a day.

And you're hungry. And your workouts suck. And you're thinking about food all of the time. Or maybe you're a grazer, a snacker, but you snack and you're still hungry. Or you're barely moving outside the gym. You're sedentary. But somehow you're still thinking, maybe I just need to eat less.

Girl, my friends, ladies, at some point there's got to be another, better strategy. If fat loss is your goal, yes, we need an energy deficit. It is science. It's just a matter of biology, the basics. I'm never going to tell you that calories don't matter. They absolutely do matter. But there is a huge difference between understanding that a calorie deficit is required for fat loss and believing that every time your progress slows down, the answer is automatically to cut more food. There is a massive difference between those.

So there's understanding the science, understanding how the body works, and understanding, okay, I need to be in a deficit, because that energy deficit is required. But then if you are stuck on the other side of that, where you believe that every time your progress slows or you're stuck in a plateau or you're not seeing the results you want, the answer is automatically cutting your food, that is more of a fear-based, reactive type of mindset.

What I want to explain to you today is what actually happens when you diet, and why calorie needs change throughout the process. Of the 21,000 women who have been coached privately in our VIP one-on-one experience inside of WarriorBabe, the babe who comes in starts at a calorie and macro goal. I am 95% positive that that person has not carried the same calorie or macro goal throughout her entire time inside of VIP or being coached by one of our coaches.

So I want you to know why your calorie needs change throughout the process, why your macro numbers change throughout the process, and how constantly eating less eventually, not can, but will, make it harder to execute the behaviors and the drive that help you lose body fat.

If you're genuinely not losing body fat over a meaningful period of time, you're probably not currently creating enough of a calorie deficit. That's just science, physics, how the body works. I want to say that because I don't want this episode to become something where it's like, my metabolism is broken and therefore calories don't matter, and yada, yada, yada. That's not what I want to do here with you guys.

I want you to understand that the number of calories that created a deficit for you six months ago isn't necessarily going to create the same size deficit today. And what I mean by that is you changed. Maybe you weigh less, or maybe you've added more muscle, or the stress in your lifestyle has changed, or maybe you're more sedentary than before, or maybe you're more active than before, or maybe you have lost weight. All of those things are taken into account. Maybe you've been dieting for months. Maybe your training has changed. Your recovery has gotten worse. So many things. My point is that there are multiple things happening.

That's why fat loss isn't, okay, let's calculate my macros or my calories once and I'm going to eat this forever. Your body responds, your behavior responds, and your energy expenditure responds. We have to account for all of those things. All of those things matter.

So let's say you start a fat loss phase and you're eating 2,000 calories, you're also getting 10,000 steps in, you're strength training four days a week, and you're losing weight and losing body fat. That's amazing. But fast forward a few months. Now you're 10 pounds lighter and your progress has slowed down. One reason is incredibly simple: there are now different energy expenditure demands. There's less of you. There could be more muscle. There are different things happening. Your body doesn't require exactly the same amount of energy that it did when you were 15 pounds heavier. When you lose weight and spend time in a calorie deficit, your total energy expenditure can decrease.

So part of that is expected, because now you are different. It doesn't mean you need to slash your calories. Some people will lose 10 pounds eating the same calories. But in order to create more of an energy deficit, you may need to cut maybe another 150 or 200 calories to keep the process moving. And this is one of the places I think many women underestimate.

You could see Karen having great success following the same macros for three months, and she's losing weight. That's why I want to put this into context for you. You could be following the same macros for six weeks and need a change, because your body is processing it differently than somebody else's. So this all may be coming into effect. That's why you can't stick with the same numbers and expect the same numbers to work all along the way. At some point, things are going to have to change. That's the point I'm trying to make here.

And not only are you losing weight and your body is changing, but there's everything you do outside of your workout. There's your workout, and then there's everything you do in the other 22 or 23 hours of the day. You're walking around the house, you're going up the stairs, you're standing while you're talking, you're walking around the grocery store, you're cleaning, you're taking your animals for a walk. All those movements require energy. I've talked about this before. That's called your NEAT, your non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

When calories get low and you've been dieting for a really long time, you may, at this point in your journey, subconsciously start moving less, because you're tired. I've been there, done this. I remember in my journey, when I was in a cut getting ready for stage, dude, taking the stairs? Uh-uh. I'm taking the elevator or the escalator. Instead of standing at my desk when I'm working, I'm sitting. Because your body is requiring you to hold on to as much energy as you possibly can.

So you come home from the gym and you're done, you're expended. Your body isn't sending you a notification that says, oh, hey, just so you know, I've reduced your spontaneous movement today. It's not sending you signals like, oh, hey, I'm sitting instead of standing. You just start moving less at this point in your journey.

Now think about what's happening. Your food came down, but your movement came down too, and your body weight came down also, and your energy needs and your training output may come down. So the deficit that you created at the beginning may now already be smaller, because your body starts doing less and there's less of you, because you're in this cut phase.

A lot of women's instinct when things start stalling like this, when nothing's really moving anymore and you hit this plateau, is to think, okay, now I need to cut more food. So you cut more food, but now you're even more tired. And now you move even less. And then you keep repeating this cycle over and over and over again. This is what I want you to understand.

There is a point where continuing to take food away creates diminishing returns from a behavioral and performance standpoint. Everything starts to suffer. Your training starts to suffer. This one matters a lot to me, because strength training is such an important aspect of changing your body composition. So many women come to WarriorBabe or come to me and they're like, well, I want more tone. I want my shoulders to pop. I want my legs to look more fit and athletic. And I want abs.

But you're cutting your calories and you're eating 1,200 calories a day. What you're explaining to me is you want muscle, but you're not feeding your body what's required of you to build muscle. If you're eating 1,200 calories, doing cardio, adding more cardio in, and then you're trying to strength train hard, what exactly are you expecting your body to perform on? You walk into the gym, you're already depleted. You try to lift weights that are heavy, but it's hard to do because you don't have the energy reserves to back up you lifting that heavy, heavy weight. You're losing reps. Your recovery sucks. You can't progress in your lifts. You're dragging yourself through the workout. But then your watch is like, well, I burned 400 calories.

Guys, that's not the win I want you to focus on. As your coach, coaching you through this episode right now, that's not the win I want. Because while you're in fat loss, one of your biggest priorities should be preserving muscle. Skinny is trending again. I talked about this recently on my Instagram, and so many women are chasing this number of being smaller when it comes to the scale. Please stop chasing the scale being smaller.

What you're trying to do is lose body fat while keeping as much lean muscle and lean tissue as possible. If you're eating less and trying to push yourself through strength training: what strength training does is provide an important signal to your body, like, we need this muscle. But if you're not eating enough, if you're not fueling your body enough, what your body is actually signaling is, wait, let me go into this expensive tissue and pull from it, because I'm not getting the energy from nutrition to give this person the energy she needs in this workout. So I need to pull from the energy, which is your muscle.

But you need enough of that to train productively. When your calories get too low and your macros get too low, the quality of your training is going to fall apart. That's something you need to pay attention to, especially if you're also not eating enough protein. I've talked about this in so many episodes prior. Now you're potentially creating an environment where you're not just losing fat, but you're also losing lean muscle mass that you want and need.

You don't just want to weigh less. You want to look different. If you want to look different, you need muscle. Muscle matters. If you want your body composition to look different, muscle is going to create that look. It's not about weighing less. It's not about chasing skinny. It's not about chasing smaller. It's not about chasing a number on the scale.

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And then there's this, and this might be the biggest one. We can create the most perfect fat loss plan on paper, but if you can't follow it, it doesn't matter. You guys hear me loud and clear: you need to be eating more and you need to be doing strength training. But if you can't follow what I'm telling you to do, it doesn't matter at all.

So let's say you're eating 1,800 calories and you're losing body fat. Then your progress stalls for a week. This is the point where I need you to hear me. You panic. So you drop 200 more calories, and now you're down to 1,600. And you're perfect Monday through Thursday. You're on point with your meal prep. But then Friday comes around and you're hungry. So you go out to dinner and you overeat. This is where a lot of the perfectionism around our progress comes into play. You don't have to be perfect, but you need to be consistent.

So the weekend falls apart. Sunday rolls around, and now you're picking at food all day long because you already feel like you blew it. Then Monday, you're back to 1,300 calories. And then you tell me, I don't understand. I'm eating 1,300 calories, but I'm not losing weight. Are you? Are you eating 1,300 calories? Or are you eating 1,300 calories four days a week and then eating significantly more on the others, because that 1,300 or 1,600 or 1,200 or 1,100, or whatever number it's at, is not sustainable for you?

I've had this conversation so many times with women. That is a very different conversation. I'm not saying that to beat you down or to shame you. I'm saying it because you following the program honestly and adhering to it matters more than what your macro targets say inside of an app. Your body doesn't just reset calories at midnight. Your weekly intake matters, and consistency matters. Somebody who says, well, I'm eating 1,200 calories, but is actually eating 2,000 on average across the week, is wondering why she's not losing weight. So then she thinks she has to cut calories even more, when it's because she's not following the plan honestly.

That's why lower isn't always better. My point here is: lower isn't always better. The best calorie deficit isn't always a large calorie deficit where you're asking, can I survive on this number? It's the deficit you can consistently execute while also preserving your lean muscle and performing in your workouts. That's the type of deficit you need, one you'll be able to execute and stay with sustainably.

And going back, because now I feel like I'm on a rant here, to the plateau. Some of you want things to change so quickly. You weigh yourself on Monday, and nothing happens. Tuesday, nothing happens. Then Wednesday, you're up two pounds. And by Thursday, you're texting your coach: this isn't working, I'm gaining weight. Girl, oh my goodness. You are four days into your week, four days into the plan. It's Thursday. Give your body a second.

Scale weight, guys, can be such a noisy aspect of your journey. Noisy. It can derail the greatest journey you could possibly be on right now. You could give up on that Thursday, four days into a program. Or, let's give you a little more grace: you could be four weeks into your journey and nothing's changing, and just about the second it's about to start shifting, you give up because the scale hasn't changed.

You guys, by now you know that scale is weighing everything. It could change because of your water intake. It could change because of your carbohydrate intake. It could change because of your menstrual cycle. It could change because of food volume. It could change because of your bowel movements. It could change from stress, from travel, from a harder leg day. One week without scale movement does not automatically mean your journey isn't working and that fat loss has stopped.

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This is why I want you to look at trends over time, not individual weigh-ins on a daily basis. I know I'm saying this to a woman and a light bulb is going off, and I need you to hear me loud and clear. Look at averages. Look at your measurements. Look at your photos. Look at how your clothes fit. Look at your performance. And give the plan enough time to actually tell you something. When I say enough time, I mean three months. Not four weeks. Not six weeks. Give your body time to respond and adapt.

Because if you're changing your numbers every four days or every four weeks, you don't have enough data yet. What you have is chaos. You have a lot of chaos in your mind, where you think things need to happen a lot faster. Let me just remind you: getting to where you are today, where you need to be on a fat loss journey, didn't take you four days. It took you five years. Maybe it took you a decade. Maybe it took you two decades. Maybe you've been on this yo-yo cycle for 20 years. And you're expecting change to happen in four days. Just give yourself a little bit more time.

So a common question I get: when should you actually lower your calories? When should you actually think about eating less? There are times when lowering your calories makes sense. I already alluded to it earlier in the podcast. When you are on a fat loss journey, you may lower your intake to continue progressing. Some people don't have to, and some people will.

If you've had a true plateau for multiple weeks, I'm talking like eight weeks, and nothing has changed, and, going back to adherence, your adherence is genuinely good. You are being honest about your food intake. You're not doing this Monday-through-Thursday thing where your weekends are derailed. You are being honest. You are being consistent. You are tracking, and your tracking is accurate. Your movement is consistent. Your recovery is reasonable. But you still have body fat to lose. Then yes, like I said earlier, we would make a small calorie or macro adjustment. That may be an absolutely appropriate time for it. Or maybe it's not just that. It could also be that your movement comes up slightly. That is normal fat loss programming. That's what we do inside of WarriorBabe.

But the adjustment has to be intentional, not emotional. There is a massive difference. For example: my data shows that the current intake is no longer producing the desired rate of progress, so as your coach, I'm going to make an adjustment. I am not making an adjustment because you come to me and say, the scale isn't moving this morning, so I'm cutting carbs. I will say, absolutely not. Do not do that, because we would just be repeating the same behavior and cycle you have been in for the last 20 years. You can see that one is coaching, which is logical. The other is panic, which is emotional. You get what I'm saying?

Also, some of you guys need to hear this. Sometimes the answer isn't another calorie cut. Maybe the answer is, dude, we're done dieting for now. Not forever. Maybe you just need to give your body a break. Maybe you've been dieting for six months. Maybe you're hungry, or you don't even have a hunger cue. Maybe you feel so weak in your training. Maybe things are just getting harder. Maybe you're thinking about food all the time. Maybe you're just exhausted.

At that point, if you've been dieting that long and you have all of those symptoms, I would say, dude, you do not need a fat loss phase. You need to sit around your maintenance intake. That type of adjustment could be incredibly valuable for you. I say the maintenance phase is where the magic happens, because I believe the maintenance phase is where there's a metabolic reset, where your body is saying thank you for giving me this food intake.

It also doesn't mean you bump up to 3,000 calories. You're intentional about the increase. You're bringing calories toward an amount that supports maintaining where you currently are. And then we focus on other things. We focus on your training, your workouts, your performance, your recovery, rebuilding consistency, getting more energy back. Because that is all a skill set as well. And then if another fat loss phase is in your future and it makes sense later, we absolutely dedicate time to that decision, but from a much better place, with your body healed through a maintenance phase.

So this is the mindset shift I want you guys to make. When women want to lose weight, a lot of them immediately ask, well, how much should I eat? That's the wrong question, because a lot of people are coming from the mindset of, I need to eat less. The question is, how much can I eat while still making appropriate progress toward my goal? And the goal is building muscle, not getting smaller. That's the game.

Because if you can lose body fat eating 1,800 calories, which I've seen happen with thousands of women, why would you immediately put yourself at 1,400 calories when there's no need? You're hungry, your training is going to suffer, your quality of life might suffer, and your adherence is going to become harder. And now we have less room to adjust if we go to 1,400. I want you to be at the highest intake that allows you to make actual, appropriate progress.

I need you to understand: food is not the enemy. Food is fuel. Food supports your training. Food provides you the protein you need, the carbohydrates you need, the fat you need, to achieve the goals that you want. Food supports the life you're trying to live while you're also trying to lose body fat. The goal isn't to prove how little you can survive on. The goal is to create results you can actually sustain and maintain.

So if there's anything I want you to take away from this episode, it's that your macros matter. Food matters. Yes, a calorie or macro deficit is required for fat loss. Sometimes calories need to come down as your body changes, and sometimes calories don't need to come down as your body changes. And there may be a point where you're actually eating more calories than you ever thought you could.

What I'm trying to say here is that eating less is a tool. It's not the only tool, though. Like I said at the beginning of the podcast, a lot of people's immediate thought is, oh, well, if I want my body to look different, if I need to lose weight, if I need to lose measurements, if I have a vacation coming up, I'll eat less. That's not the only tool. It's part of your toolbox, but it's not the only tool. And it shouldn't be your automatic response every single time your progress slows.

Because eventually, taking food away is going to affect your training. It's going to affect your movement. It's going to affect your hunger, your recovery, your ability to adhere to the program, and your ability to actually sustain the plan. So sometimes, yes, you make a small adjustment. Or sometimes you need more movement. If I could just sum it up and not overcomplicate things: you either make a small tweak to your numbers, or you add a little bit more to your training, maybe five more minutes, a change in rep scheme, or lower rest periods. Or sometimes you just need to track more accurately and be honest about where you're at.

But most importantly, I think women need to stop dieting and stop thinking that eating less is the goal. Your goal isn't to see how little food you can eat. Your goal is to build a body you love and a way of eating you can actually live with and sustain. In order to build muscle, you need to be able to eat more food, and look at the bigger picture.

So maybe you say, I want sculpted arms. I want abs. I want toned legs. That is muscle. In order to get there, you need to fuel your body appropriately. You need to stop eating less. And you need to learn how to let go of old narratives and beliefs that have been driving you to think you're going to gain weight or get bulky. That's only going to happen by you taking action, by you trusting me now and believing me later.

This is where I would recommend checking out WarriorBabe, because we've done this for over 21,000 clients one-on-one, and over 120,000 women have been inside of our programs. So if you need extra help with how to personalize this for you and what numbers you need, that's where I would recommend you go, and have somebody look at the bigger picture for you.

Because eventually, eating less has to stop being the answer. I pray and hope that message continues to spread throughout the fitness industry. Eating less is not the answer. It may be, intentionally and strategically, but in the broad scheme of how women are looking at it, it's not the answer. Think about the bigger picture of the goal you want to get to.

All right, guys. I hope this helped you. I hope some knowledge was obtained or some light bulbs went off. And if it did, share this with somebody or repost it to your Instagram and tag me, @nikkieystott. I would love to see some of the takeaways you guys had, whether from this episode or previous episodes. And I'll see you guys next episode.

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