Why Women Over 40 Feel Stuck in Fitness

Nikkiey: The biggest problem I was seeing was never weight loss. The real problem was that women are drowning in these quick fixes, in these extremes. "Let me cut out a macronutrient because this is what my friend Karen is doing." They're following conflicting information. And the one thing I noticed was that no one is teaching them how to own their own body and how it actually works. Everywhere women were turning, they were told to eat less. They were told to train harder. They were told to cut carbs. They were told that fat is going to make them fatter.

What happens at WarriorBabe is we don't teach women to override these things that their body is telling them. We teach them to understand it. We teach them to understand how stress impacts fat loss. If they're so stressed out, if they're so busy at work, if there are so many things going on in their life, yet they're trying to follow this workout and macro routine, why they may not be seeing the results is because stress could be a factor. We help them understand that.

What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show. Today we are diving into episode number 326. If you don't already know, 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. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott. The episode I have for you today is a little bit different than the episodes y'all are used to.

Honestly, two things. One, this was inspired by our team meeting last week, when I went in and just poured life into the humans that show up for us every single day on the back end of WarriorBabe, that make it what it is, that move the mission along. And two, I've been wanting to record this type of episode for you for a really, really long time. But the thing is, it's not about macros.

It's not about working out. It's not about motivation, discipline, all the things you probably want to hear with this new year. This episode is going to be about why WarriorBabe exists at all. Just stay with me for a second, because this is for you. This is for the woman who feels stuck even though she feels like she's doing everything right. The reason I sit behind this microphone and record a podcast is for you. The reason we do what we do in WarriorBabe every single day is for you.

The way I think through things creatively, the things we want to give you and the transformations we want you to experience, is because of you. I think from your shoes. I go from point A, where you're at starting your journey, or where you may be at. Whether you're a beginner, a couple of years into it, or a decade into it but still confused, I think about where you're at. And I think about how I want to take you on your journey to get to that transformation, which is point Z.

It's all because of you. Whether you've been a part of this community for years, whether you've listened to these episodes quietly from the sidelines and you're not yet inside the community, or maybe you're totally brand new here and this is one of your first episodes of the 300 that are out there, I just want you to know that this conversation is for you. It's going to come from the bottom of my heart, speaking directly to you on the other end of this.

So I want to take it back to day one, to where it all started. That part is going to be short, and then I'm going to get into where I see the industry needs some work, and where I feel a lot of women are being lied to. And I'm going to expand on what I believe wholeheartedly WarriorBabe is. But first, I just want to bring it back. I didn't start WarriorBabe to build a business. I didn't start it to build a team. I didn't start it to scale a company. And I definitely didn't start it because I felt like the fitness industry needed another fitness program.

I started it because I remember, in the car with one of the other partners on this team, having a conversation and saying, "I just want to help people." From there, this started in an apartment garage, literally. Back then it was called Alpha Female Fitness. We went through a whole rebrand in 2018, which was the best thing that ever happened, because WarriorBabe was born there. But back then, working with women one-on-one in this apartment garage, I was taking on women I worked with in the emergency room as my clients.

They were driven. They were trying so hard. They were committed and they were showing up. But I kept seeing that they were exhausted, and they kept thinking it was them. They were following these plans. They were eating less. They were training harder. I saw this happening in them. They started to question themselves. And I thought, there's something here. If this person is dealing with this, 50 people are dealing with this. 100 people are dealing with this. Then I expanded into a small studio in the local town where I live.

I took on more women and clients, and I was in charge of my own marketing. And in that studio I kept seeing and hearing the same big thing. That's where I thought, the 50 or the 100 I'm working with here could be 200, 300, 500, 1,000. Now the number of women who have come through our VIP and our products is well over 20,000, and 20,000 alone came in through a new program we put together last year.

All of this to say, I continued to see this one thing. The biggest problem I was seeing was never weight loss. The real problem was that women are drowning in these quick fixes, in these extremes. "Let me cut out a macronutrient because this is what my friend Karen is doing." They're following conflicting information. And no one is teaching them how to own their own body and how it actually works. Everywhere women were turning, they were told to eat less.

They were told to train harder. They were told to cut carbs. They were told that fat is going to make them fatter. Like I said, they were trying a new plan because Karen at work is trying it, so they want to try it too. But that plan was made for Karen. It wasn't necessarily made for them. Y'all heard that the new Karen's name is Jessica this year in 2026? I'm sorry to all the Jessicas out there. I heard it on the news the other day. But anyway, the plan is meant for Karen, and Jessica's trying to follow it.

You know what I mean? Nothing is explaining to women why something worked. Nothing is explaining why it stopped working. Nothing has explained why it never worked in the first place. So what I kept seeing was that when the quick fix failed, or when these challenges were over, and they always end and the quick fixes always fail, women didn't question that approach. They thought it was them. You think it's you. You think, "My metabolism's broken."

"I just don't have enough motivation. I'm not disciplined enough. I can't stick to anything. This is another program I can't follow through on because it's not working." That type of belief is devastating. Because once women stop trusting their own hunger cues, stop trusting rest, stop trusting consistency, stop trusting themselves or stop believing they can do something, all because this one program is going to an extreme and cutting out so many things that of course it's going to stop working, the woman thinks it's her and not the program.

There is a part of this where the woman has to take ownership and responsibility, and that's what we help you do inside of WarriorBabe, so that you can't default to it being the program's fault. But with these quick fixes, a lot of people give up instead of trying to understand what is happening. And that cycle is what the fitness industry truly profits from. That's why, when I saw this problem, this issue, and saw that there could be the opposite, a solution, I wanted to break what the industry was focusing on.

I wanted to create something that exists to break the mentality of quick fixes, and to break the mentality of women thinking it's their fault. Because what happens at WarriorBabe is we don't teach women to override the things their body is telling them. We teach them to understand it. We teach them to understand how stress impacts fat loss. If they're so stressed out, if they're so busy at work, if there are so many things going on in their life, yet they're trying to follow this workout and macro routine, why they may not be seeing the results is because stress could be a factor.

We help them understand that. There are programs out there that just tell you to eat 1200 calories and good luck, and they don't inform you that stress could be a factor in why you're not losing fat or not experiencing results. Things out there don't tell you that. Or why under-eating is backfiring for you. You could be eating 1200 calories because a program is telling you to, and you might not be losing the weight. It could be backfiring to where you're gaining weight instead. And then you think it's you and not the program that's telling you to eat 1200 calories.

We focus on helping you understand why under-eating backfires. The biggest thing I saw missing was the why and the education. There's so much conflicting information out there. There's so much overwhelming information. It's "do this, try this, this new thing is out there," especially with GLP-1s and all the things going on in 2025 that are new and shiny. But if the root cause of why we're trying to lose the weight isn't addressed and you don't understand it, you're going to be on the same hamster wheel over and over again.

Another thing is how your hormones, your age and your lifestyle matter. A lot of women think, "Oh, this is just what happens as I get older." It doesn't have to be that way. Or the challenges people dive into, and why consistency doesn't have to be perfect. People dive into these challenges and think they have to be perfect for 60 days or 80 days or 90 days. When they aren't consistent and fall off the program because they think they have to be perfect, well, it doesn't have to be that way. We educate you so you understand why it doesn't have to be perfect.

It just needs to look progressive over time. 1% better every single day. When women understand this, and more importantly, when they understand their body, they're going to stop chasing these fixes. At WarriorBabe, our client retention rate in 2025 skyrocketed, because this is a lifestyle we're promoting and sharing with you. This isn't just a 12-month program you're a part of. There are WarriorBabes signing up for two years, three years, even four years. There are WarriorBabes who have been in this program for five-plus years.

Because when you understand things, when you're educated by one coach who's working with you, you're going to stop chasing these quick fixes. You're going to stop chasing the next hot challenge that's out there in 2026. And when you stop chasing quick fixes, you're going to stop fighting against yourself. When you stop doing that and you understand, that's where the foundation of your self-belief, your self-confidence and your trust returns. And that's why you can finally stick to something consistently, because you understand it.

You get it. You know the why behind it.

Quick break. If you're finding this episode helpful so far, it would mean a lot if you could hit pause for just a second, leave a quick rating or review, or share it with someone who could benefit from it. Your support helps more women discover these tools to build muscle, lose fat and feel confident. Thank you so much for being a part of this journey with me.

You know, I leaned in heavy, and I will always say this: if I'm not evolving as a coach, as someone who is walking the talk and preaching this lifestyle, I'm doing all of you a disservice.

Back in the day, I said it's all about discipline. I still firmly believe discipline is a skill set that will help you be successful. But at the beginning of someone's journey, they don't want to hear, "I just need to be more disciplined and this will work." If you believe that and that's what you're focused on at the beginning, it could be detrimental. Or, "If I had more time, then this would work." You don't need to think like that. Here's the thing. Women are being told they need more restriction, more motivation, more control. And they're scrolling on social media seeing these perfect routines, these all-or-nothing plans.

They're trying to get in on that. They're trying to follow these perfect programs, these 80-day challenges or 60-day challenges. Part of me thinks about New Year's resolutions too. I would love to know a stat on how many people actually follow through on their New Year's resolution, because so many people try to fit 10 or 20 of them into their year. But I digress. When life doesn't match the perfect plan, you assume it's your fault.

That's why discipline can be detrimental at the beginning of a journey, because discipline isn't the missing piece. Again, it's understanding. It's understanding how to make this all work. We even do this with the coaches on the team. We have workshops where we talk about time management. Time management for the coaches' schedules, because they have a lot of one-on-ones with WarriorBabes. But also time management for yourself, whether you're a WarriorBabe, or someone who just works out, or you just listen to this episode and fitness is part of your lifestyle and you want to do better with it this year.

Understanding how to put the workout on your calendar and actually follow through with it. Understanding how to eat right, to feel better, to recover, how to adapt instead of quitting. Because that's what trips a lot of people up. Once the understanding clicks, everything starts to change, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

I want you to hear this, because I think this one matters too, especially heading into the new year. I know there are a lot of women saying, "I love everything WarriorBabe is about. I've seen the ads. I've seen Facebook. I've seen organic. I've seen YouTube. I've seen client testimonials. I've listened to them. But I'm just going to continue to wait." I want to say this especially for the new year. Waiting feels safe. I get it. It feels logical. It feels responsible. Women tell themselves they're going to deal with this later, when life slows down. Maybe January isn't their time. Maybe it's February, maybe March, or whenever things aren't so busy. But if you're waiting to get your fitness into a groove that works for you, waiting to understand it a little bit deeper, it just reinforces the belief that your confidence can stay on pause.

That how you're feeling right now can continue to stretch out. That the patterns you had in 2024 and 2025 can just continue into 2026. And that's when later doesn't stay later. Later turns into months. Later turns into the end of 2026, and you're still in the same boat as when you started 2025. Then it turns into years of continuing to avoid photos. Years of continuing to hide in your clothes. Years of putting yourself last. But what I don't think a lot of women realize is that it's not just confidence that starts to deteriorate, the confidence lost from hiding, from not being in photos, from not committing to a program.

What also starts to deteriorate in the waiting phase, before you start your fitness and commit to it and say, "I'm not doing these quick fixes anymore, I'm going to understand it at a deeper level," or before you become part of WarriorBabe, is more than confidence. If waiting is something you're doing, it doesn't only erode your confidence.

Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with the body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, WarriorBabe is here for you. At WarriorBabe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results, and results that last. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women.

Visit warriorbabe.com/apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com/apply.

All right, let's get back to the show. Waiting also starts to erode your health. I like to think about the story I told you from when I worked in the emergency room. I worked in the healthcare field for nine years before starting WarriorBabe. I worked in long-term care in a nursing home, and I worked in the ER.

I saw what it looks like at 80 years old, working with the elderly demographic. Every single day I saw hip fractures. I saw people getting sick. I saw that if I didn't take care of myself then, in my early 20s, this could be my potential future. That's another reason WarriorBabe exists. Not just to give you understanding and the right information, but more importantly, for your health. Fitness, eating right, eating enough of the right foods, it all boils down to how your body functions systematically and how it can function really, really well.

So if you continue to wait, you may not feel that your health is declining, but every single day your health is declining. As you get older, your health is declining. In five years, your health could look different. In 10 years, your health could look different. In 15 years, your health will look different. That's the waiting game. And when I say you can't feel these things, there's a silent metabolic decline happening. Most women are already dealing with some level of metabolic dysfunction and don't even know it. You can't feel blood sugar instability.

You can't feel hormone disruption unless you're very in tune with your body. People just think it's aging. People feel like, "Oh, I don't feel good after eating this meal," but why? You can't feel chronic fatigue. It just feels like you're tired all the time. But why? These things don't show up overnight. They show up years down the road. And when they do show up years down the road, you know what's really hard? At that point, reversing them is so much harder. So when women say, or maybe you say, "I'm just going to wait."

"I'll wait to start." What you're really saying is, "I'm hoping this doesn't get worse." I say this with love. You know I say things directly, but I'm saying all this because I care about you and I love you. It's like saying, "I'm okay with where I'm at, because this is where I'm at right now. I just don't have the time to make it happen." What I like to say is, if you're saying you don't have the time, what you should really say is that you're not making this a priority. Because waiting doesn't keep things neutral. It just allows these patterns to continue and allows things to show up down the road.

The only thing that's going to interrupt that is you having some aha moments. Maybe from listening to this episode, you're creating awareness, and then you create momentum. And then you create prevention by getting yourself into something that's going to help you have better health down the road. So whether you're a WarriorBabe or you're in a program, maybe it's, "I need to take the program more seriously." If you are, I'm high-fiving you through this episode. If you've been a listener for so long and you're not part of the community, maybe this is, "I feel this in my bones and I want to be in a good place in 10 to 15 years."

So think about those things. And I want to pause here, because this part matters very deeply to me. When I was talking about this with the WarriorBabe team internally, I actually got emotional and started crying. When I think about WarriorBabe, I personally don't think about individual transformations alone anymore. I used to, because I worked one-on-one with many of you babes, many of the clients, before coaches came on board. I don't think about scale weight.

I don't think about before and after photos anymore. I love seeing them, because our coaches are incredible and they're absolutely crushing their babes' transformations, leaning into them and creating that type of shift. But the legacy I want WarriorBabe to leave is much bigger than individual results. I want WarriorBabe to be a household name, not because it helps someone lose weight, not because it helps someone fit better in their clothes,

but more importantly, because it changed the trajectory of a family's health. I want WarriorBabe to be the reason someone says, "This program saved my mom's life," or "This program changed my grandmother's health," or "This is why our family does things differently now." Or there's a mom in WarriorBabe who had an incredible transformation and understands the importance of eating more food and why. And now, when she opens the refrigerator,

she's teaching her kids what protein, fats and carbs are. Because when a woman learns and understands how to truly care for her body, understands why eating more can get her past the fear of "I'm going to gain weight," understands why and what it does, and how training helps her be stronger so she can play with her grandkids, it doesn't stop with her. It impacts how her kids see food.

It impacts how her family views movement and working out and strength training. It impacts the standards that get passed down. It's generational health. I want WarriorBabe to be the reason that, two generations from now, a child is saying something she learned from her great-grandmother or her great-great-grandmother, however the generations work. You get what I'm saying, right? My legacy and my vision for WarriorBabe have evolved past individual results.

It's now family, women, impact across generations, and making a different story about food and working out and strength training and all of that jazz. I want WarriorBabe to be the reason women trust themselves again, the reason they truly believe in themselves again, and the reason they stop passing down this fear around food. How many of you grew up with moms who followed diet after diet after diet, and now you're doing the same thing,

and then you start to see it happening in your kids? I want to be the reason you stop passing down that fear. Your daughter could be the reason. Your stepdaughter, your daughter-in-law, your grandchildren. I want to stop the passing down of restriction, of confusion around food and their bodies. This isn't just about getting women healthier. It's about her kids watching her nourish herself instead of punishing herself. It's about a woman's family watching her prioritize strength and movement for longevity.

It's about breaking these cycles, and creating new standards for how a family and a woman look at fitness, at her body and at longevity. If one woman learns how to care for her body long term, it doesn't just change her life. It impacts the generations after her. That's the legacy. Not just transformation. The transformations are incredible, but it's so much bigger than that now. It's generational health. It's confidence. It's self-trust. It's teaching the generations below us

what our moms and grandparents didn't teach us. There's so much information out there, and people don't change because they learn more information. Most women already know a lot of it. People have read blogs. People go from program to program. They try plans. What's missing isn't the knowledge. It's the belief. You can go read a Reddit post, or you can go read about what macros are. You can go listen to all these episodes. But there's also the belief: can I actually do this?

People change when they believe something different is possible for them, and that's what I hope we do at WarriorBabe. We talk to you on the front end. There's a whole team. The first interaction is a call. It's not a sales call. We're seeing if you're a good fit for the program, because we don't let everybody in. I've seen the Karens, or I guess I should call them the Jessicas, on the other side of the community. They aren't good fits, and we've had to kick them out.

But the thing is, we want to create a stronger version of you, and help instill that. We know the belief, because we've helped transform so many women's lives. We want to give that belief to you. And I believe that's not pressure. That's leadership. That's guiding you, because right now you may be in a position where you don't fully trust yourself to start the program, because your track record with starting new programs doesn't look the greatest. But I hope that by the end of this episode

you have some belief that you can do what you put your mind to if you're given the right understanding. I shouldn't say information. You have all the information. One of the compasses of this episode is understanding, communicated in a way that will be understood, so you can take action because you understand the why behind it. And that's why WarriorBabe exists. Not to sell you more information, even though it may look like that.

We sell programs and products. But it's not to create dependence. It's to give you the education and the understanding and the why behind what you're doing, so you can carry that out not only for yourself, but for the people around you. Our mission statement is to help 100,000 women regain their personal power and feel confident in themselves. Get that personal power back. So really, that's what I wanted this episode to be about. Wow, 30 minutes long. It's just to let you know why.

I see you. I hear you. I know what you've gone through, and so do our amazing coaches at WarriorBabe. If you align with our legacy and our mission, and you feel like you need that support and accountability and help, then check out WarriorBabe. I get a lot of DMs lately about where to start, because there are a bunch of different products out there. The Macro Method is a great starting point

at $27, for getting down an understanding of macronutrients. Then we have our VIP coaching, which is more expensive, where you work with a one-on-one coach. And we have some other outlets as well. Even these episodes: I've heard transformation stories of women losing 70 to 80 pounds just from listening to these episodes. So all in all, as for why it started, it started for you,

for the babe listening to this on the other end, to help you break generational patterns and create generational health for the generations you're empowering around fitness, health and nutrition. I hope this resonates with you in one way or another. I love you guys, and I will see you in the next episode.

Real quick, if this episode resonated with you or gave you the push you needed, I'd love for you to pay it forward. Drop a quick rating and review, share the podcast with someone who might need it, and help me keep spreading the word. Your feedback not only helps the show grow, but it might just be the nudge someone else needs to kickstart their transformation. Thank you so, so much for your support.