Why Eating More Helps You Lose Fat After 40

Nikkiey: This is the honest truth of how it is to get the body that you want. Eating more to lose more. Stop these cycles of 1,100 calories and eating less and moving more and driving your body into the ground.

What's going on, you guys? Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

I'm your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome, my friends, to another episode, episode number 272. Before we even dive into this episode, guys, I am still speechless that we have hit 1 million downloads. 1 million downloads. I'm still so honestly blown away. Each of you individually, each day, has taken time out of your life to listen to these episodes, to learn from these episodes.

But most importantly, to show up for yourself. By you clicking on the episodes every day, whenever the new ones come out, you show up for yourself in some way or another. And that truly matters so deeply to me. So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. This podcast is truly built on your trust and on you guys taking the information and running with it and applying it to your life.

All I ask is that you do that, and what I pray for is that some big transformations happen for you guys. All right. So today's episode, we're diving into something real, as with every episode. But most importantly, I want to dive into some science-backed stuff. Honestly, I hope this episode is life-saving for you guys, for both your body and your mindset. So with that being said, I want to talk a little bit about the truth behind undereating.

You guys know that I say and preach that you need to eat more to lose more. But I know that y'all have heard growing up that you need to eat less, you need to cut calories, and then you need to just be consistent. And yes, you can start your journey by eating less, but it's not the end-all, be-all. You can't continue to do that on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis. And especially if you're stuck, if your energy is flat, if your workouts feel heavy, if your body isn't budging, then it's time to totally flip that script.

So if you're experiencing that right now, maybe you've been living in the world of "I need to eat less, eat less, eat less," because that's what you've been raised to think and believe, and "I just need to cut calories if I want to lose weight." But you're experiencing all of these emotions and feelings in your body, being tired, energy's flat. Like I said, listen up, listen up. Because the brutal truth, overall, what I want you guys to understand, is that your metabolism adapts.

When you are underfed and you're underfeeding yourself consistently, your body goes back to the caveman days. Maybe not the Wild Wild West, but it thinks you're in a famine. And it shifts into conservation mode. It will reduce your metabolic rate to preserve energy for you, to keep you alive.

It basically puts you into survival mode. It will slow your hormones down, especially your thyroid. So if anybody has thyroid issues, side note, rant. I was talking to my creative director and our creative team the other day, and thyroid just made me think about this. I was talking about 10 years ago when I was in the nursing field, and one of the biggest reasons why I left the nursing field. I know this may disrupt some thoughts, but I'm just here to share my own personal opinion.

Here it is. I saw so many things on a daily basis. Medications being handed out to treat symptoms, mask symptoms, and never looking at the root cause of things. So thyroid makes me think. A lot of women have thyroid problems. And what wasn't being taught where I worked, in the ER, or long-term health or the nursing home, that's another story for another day.

But mainly in the hospital setting, it was teaching people about nutrition. And when I did get to sit in on a nutrition consult, it was still information on eating 1,100 calories a day and no emphasis on protein. Anyway, to end this rant, if women have thyroid problems, instead of being tossed medications to mask symptoms, I firmly believe that nutrition needs to be looked at. And I guarantee that a lot of these things can be fixed with a better nutritional diet on a daily basis.

Okay. I rest my case. What happens when you do not eat enough is your metabolism adapts to this and goes into survival mode. It reduces your metabolic rate. It slows your hormones. It slows your thyroid down. It slows your hunger hormone down, leptin. It increases your cortisol, which promotes fat storage, especially around your belly. It breaks down muscle for fuel. Let me say that one again. It breaks down your muscle for fuel.

How counterproductive is that for those of you who want to be more toned, look more toned, have that beautiful feminine muscular body, with a little bit of muscle in your arms and a little bit of muscle in your legs and those glutes popping and those abs showing? If you're not eating enough, your body goes to the first fuel source, which is your muscle, because it's active tissue. It does not stop revving. It needs constant fuel. It's going to go there.

It's going to use that muscle for energy and it's going to break it down. It's counterproductive. And all of those things you just heard me say are why you feel tired. It's why you hit a plateau, or even worse, you feel worse even while you're eating less. And before I continue on, I want you guys to know: one, it's not your fault. It's a system trying to protect you. Okay. And it's the marketing and the things that you've been brought up on and believed in and have heard and said and read about.

It's not your fault. But this is one of the reasons why I believe I've been put on this earth to share my God-given skill set with you guys. I understand where you're at. I've coached thousands of women through what you may be experiencing right now. And this is where I want to flip the script with you guys if you still find yourself in this position. I know it's scary. It's scary to think, if I eat more, I'm going to... It sounds counterintuitive. I get it.

But that's because of the stories and narratives you've been taught to believe. I want to break those narratives because I want you to feel like your absolute freaking best. Okay. So I want to flip the script. Why eating more is exactly what your body needs: it needs more food to rebuild the engine. Think of your metabolism like a fire. Undereating starves the flames. Then eating strategically, either at your maintenance or a little bit of a surplus to get your metabolism to rev back up, which I call the retraining process...

Then think of that fire being rekindled. That is your metabolism. So when you start eating more food... And so many women listening to this have been in the WarriorBabe retrain process with our coaching team, and they're probably like, yeah, that actually works. But let me ask you women: did you think that beforehand, when you first signed up? I bet you had all the emotions. You were scared. You were afraid. You didn't understand. It sounded counterintuitive. But you still put your foot forward and you trusted us. And I always say, trust us.

You'll believe it later. And now your metabolism is on fire because you're eating more food. And your body's like, thank you for finally giving me more food. You guys remember me talking about my hero of a client...

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All right, let's get back to the show. I coached her for four or five years. She ended the program around 60 years old. I think she came in around her later 50s. Dude, she was eating 3,300 calories a day to build muscle. Initially, she came in in a build. She understood. For those of you who don't know what a build is...

It's eating a little bit more, a surplus, like what I'm talking about. This is why I so heavily try to rewrite the narrative of "I'm too old to build muscle" or "it's too late for me to build muscle." I say age is just a number. And then I use stories like Cheryl's. She gained muscle mass. And then we cut back her calories and put her into a fat-loss phase.

And she dropped fat. She kept her strength. And dude, her body looked completely different. She completely transformed her body. Also, eating more is exactly what your body needs because you're going to have better energy. You're going to have better workouts. You're going to have better recovery. When you give your body the right nutrition for its demands, your workouts feel way easier. You lift heavier. You sleep better. And your recovery happens so fast. And what y'all want is those sexy muscles.

You get that toned look to your body because you're eating more food. And at the same time, bringing back the thyroid thought process, your hormones start to balance. I have seen this. I've got to say at least over 2,000 women have brought to the table how they have naturally rebalanced their hormones just by eating a better balanced nutritional diet and moving their body. Eating enough carbs, eating enough protein, and eating healthy fats will balance your cortisol levels.

It will support your thyroid function, it will stabilize your blood sugar, and it will help regulate all of the processes in your body that may be off. AKA, it's going to rebalance your hormones. And when you stop this cycle of basically starvation, 1,100 calories, 1,000 calories, 700 calories, 800 calories, eating one meal a day, dude, when you stop that and you refeed your body consistently, your metabolism talks back to you.

It will reward you. It will allow fat loss to actually start happening without you suffering. That is a solid foundation for long-term success, long-term results and long-term change. So instead of "I'm going to do this for six weeks and basically go into suffering mode," if you can get rid of the starvation aspect of these quick fixes and rewire your mind to play the long game, you're going to have long-term results.

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And I just want you to take a deep breath and let this all sink in. You may be wondering, okay, I hear you, I understand what you're saying, it's definitely sinking in, that's where I'm at, but I don't even know where to start. Protein is your best friend. Protein is non-negotiable. You've heard me say protein in so many episodes by now.

You need to aim on a daily basis for one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So if you weigh 150 pounds, you should be eating 150 grams of protein in a day. Protein will protect your muscle. Protein fuels repair, and it stabilizes your appetite and your blood sugar throughout the day. So there are no more of these crashes. There are no more of these cravings when you have enough protein on a regular basis. You also need to focus on implementing carbs.

I do care if it scares you. But I want you to look at that story you're telling yourself that carbs make you fat. Is it actually a fact or is it just a story? I need you to get real with yourself. When you tried to go low carb or you cut out carbs, were you actually consistent with it? And also keep in mind, when you cut carbs out, regardless, carbs hold on to water. So what you're seeing when you step on the scale is not fat loss.

It's water loss. So you need to feed your body carbs. Specifically whole-food carbs, like oats, rice, potatoes, fruits. Some veggies have fiber and carbs in them. Basically, what carbs do is feed your workouts. They support your hormonal balance, especially around your workouts. You should be having carbs pre- and post-workout. And if you're a morning workout person, it doesn't need to be a whole full meal at the beginning of the day.

You can just have some Greek yogurt in one of those little pouches and throw in some fruit. That's what I've been doing lately when I'm rolling out of bed at 5 a.m. I know that I need to put some food in my body. I have Oikos yogurt in the fridge and I have raspberries that I pour into it. That's all you need to start the day before your workout. So basically, you're hearing me talk about macronutrient tracking. You need a balanced plan that focuses on all three of these.

Fats, like avocado, olive oil, seeds, nuts, fish. They help to keep you satisfied. They help keep hormonal function going. Each of these macronutrients helps in some way to manage and balance your hormones. And most importantly, they all work together. They perform best when you have all three of them, because they feed off of each other. So when you start to implement these things, because you're like, I want to start doing better...

First, just start with protein. Then use a journal, use a tracker, use MyFitnessPal, use something just for insight, not for micromanaging, just so you have some awareness of the data. And you're going to adjust based on your progress and your energy. The goal is to eat enough of the right stuff consistently on a daily basis. And some light bulbs may have been going off for some of you when I was talking about Cheryl, about a fat loss and a build. So what I want to bring to the table right now is a high-level look at those things.

Fat loss and muscle growth are better achieved through strategic cycling phases, not you being in a six-week quick-fix program and then coming out of it without having built the mindset or established a solid foundation for the habits you may have implemented during those six weeks, because six weeks is way too short for a habit to be entirely formed and fleshed out.

Instead of you going through that over and over and over again, what we do at WarriorBabe is, first of all, meet you where you're at. We understand what you need the most, and we go through cyclical phases of fat loss, maintenance, or build, whatever you need to facilitate the results you want with your body composition. And that's so individual for everybody. So I can't speak to exactly what you, one of the listeners, should be doing.

It's very different for everyone, once we get to know and understand exactly who you are, your lifestyle and the type of body we're working with. But at a high level, a build is just you eating about 5 to 15 percent above maintenance. You're training heavy, you're tracking your macros, and what you're doing here is rebuilding your metabolic capacity. Because say you've been in starvation mode for so long and, just for example, you sign up for WarriorBabe and you're like, I need to lose weight.

But you've been eating 1,100 calories every single day for the past five years. It would be so dumb of us as professional coaches to put you at that same number and expect any type of result. So just hear me out. What we need to do is wake up your metabolism, like I've been talking about in this episode. So we will slowly increase your calories above the 1,100. We'll go 1,200 one week, then 1,300.

Maybe we can push to 1,450. Then we can push to 1,550. Then maybe we can push to 1,700. But all the while, we're paying attention to how your body is handling those increases. Cheryl worked her way up to 3,300 calories while we were in this type of phase. For her, it went, I would say, nine months. I don't remember exactly. Everybody's is totally different. But from there, okay, we woke up her metabolism. We worked on rebuilding that metabolic capacity.

She's eating more. She's not gaining any type of weight that's alarming. She's building some muscle. We're coasting. When we feel like the body is holding it well, and this is what our coaches do, then we're like, okay, let's pull it back. So for example, you could be eating 1,100 calories, you could be increasing your calories and macros, and you may not even gain any weight. But what's happening is your metabolism internally is like, hey, thank you so much.

Then from there, say we're in the build phase and we're done. We've reached the goal we wanted to reach. Now we want to work on chipping away at the body fat, because your metabolic capacity is healthy. So we can shift into a slight deficit while you're maintaining your protein number and working out. And this is where we start to reveal muscle without shutting down your metabolism.

Because the protein is holding on to the muscle mass you've worked so hard to build, while the body fat around it decreases, which makes you look more toned. Because if you come into the program eating 1,100 calories and you don't have any muscle mass on your body, again, as an example, and we try to cut, you're going to look like a skinnier, fatter version of yourself. But if you want muscle so you're more toned... And when people think about that, they think, oh my gosh, I'm going to get really bulky. Ladies, that's not going to happen.

You can build sexy, small, toned arms. But everything I'm saying here has to be applied to do that. And then you can cycle in and out of this. Cheryl went into a build and a cut and a build, maybe even maintenance at some points. Maintenance is basically you hanging out at the same calorie and macro numbers for a little bit of time, balancing out your metabolism again, if, say, the cut went on a little long. You can't stay in a cut for too long, because that's when your metabolism can adapt to that lower intake.

And if you get too low, there's nothing more we can do with your body at that point. So all in all, this may not make sense for a lot of you, because maybe you've never heard this before. That's why I'm here to share this type of knowledge with you guys and make those light bulbs go off. But this type of cycle is your secret sauce to long-term, life-friendly, sustainable results.

Over two to three years, Cheryl did, like I said, a build, then a cut, then a build, then a cut. Dude, she ended leaner, she ended stronger, she ended more hormonally intact. And she's now 60 years old, dude. She looks like she's 45, like she took 15 years off her life, and she's so healthy and so strong. She doesn't even look like her before picture. She's gained so much muscle. So, why this works and why it matters.

You're retraining your metabolism, you're building muscle, and your body is now getting the nutritional balance it needs. So it's less sensitive to cravings, less sensitive to stress, less sensitive to not getting good sleep. The most important thing is you fall in love with your body's strength and resilience. Dude, you guys, you get so much mental clarity when you move your body and work out on a consistent basis. And then you stop the diet stress. Once you nail this down, and I'm not saying this is going to happen overnight...

But when you do nail this down, and I'm sure WarriorBabes are like, yes, they're living this right now, you stop this diet stress on a yearly basis, where every March or April comes around and you're like, oh my gosh, I need to lose 10 pounds by summertime, I need to lose 20 pounds, I need to lose 30 pounds. And you actually start thriving, because you have this knowledge to act on. You're eating healthy and living healthy and moving healthy.

So you guys deserve this kind of plan, this kind of consistency, this kind of scientifically sound approach. This is the honest truth of how it is to get the body that you want. Eating more to lose more. Stop these cycles of 1,100 calories and eating less and moving more and driving your body freaking into the ground.

And my brain just goes back to people ending up in the hospital in 5 to 10 years with some type of disease or diagnosis, because they didn't move their body or fuel their body appropriately. I hope this resonates with you guys. I hope you're ready to show your commitment to trying what I'm saying in all of these episodes. There are 272 of them. If you're new, welcome. If you've been listening to every one, thank you. If you listen to a few here and there and you've been implementing things, thank you.

All I ask is that you implement these things I'm teaching you. So many women have had huge transformations just by listening to this podcast. And that's it. This podcast is free. All right. I love you guys. Screenshot this. Tag me on Instagram. Tag me with whatever mind-blowing moment or thing you took away from this episode. I want to celebrate you guys. I want to share you guys. I want to DM you and chat with y'all. So start showing up for yourself. Start building. Start feeling. Start living. Start doing all these things that we're talking about here.

I love you guys, and I'll see you in the next episode. Peace out.

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