Why Women Over 40 Need More Protein Than They Think

Nikkiey: Protein is non-negotiable as you get older. You can't do things like you once used to. Your body is different. Your hormones are different. Things are shifting. Things are changing. If you're not dialed in with certain aspects, especially when it comes to your health, when it comes to your fitness, when it comes to moving your body, when it comes to eating right, other things internally are going to be affected by that.

What's up, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show 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.

I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to another episode. Today is episode number 289.

I am interrupting this episode with an edit. I just said this was episode number 289. And later on in the episode, you will hear me have an absolute brain fart on how many episodes have been recorded. I am here to tell you, this is episode number 330. Anyways, carry on. Enjoy the episode.

Today is going to be an educational episode. It's been a minute since I've talked about this. I want to bring it back. It's still something that a lot of women are missing and or ignoring, and wondering why they feel like their body isn't responding the way that they want it to. It's a macronutrient. It's not carbs. It's not sugar. It's not fats. And outside of macronutrients, it's not needing more cardio or training harder or eating less or whatever. It's the macronutrient protein.

I'm not just going to talk about protein the way most people talk about it. I've talked about it so many times on the show. It's been a minute. I looked, actually, it's been since last May. But I want to dive in a little bit deeper with it. I don't want to just talk about eat more chicken or drink a shake, or protein helps to build muscle. I want to dive in deeper to talk about how it affects your hormones, how it affects your metabolism, how it helps with your cravings and your hunger, how it helps with your mood and your energy, how it helps with sleeping better, and how it helps with, obviously, your results, your body composition.

You guys have heard me say before, it is literally the macronutrient king, because in my opinion, it's not just a macro. It's the foundation for women who want to get that toned look. And let me just remind you, the toned look is you either exposing the muscle that you have or building more muscle and decreasing the body fat around it. And it's also a huge component of helping you to age well. So if you've been stuck wondering why you're not progressing forward as much as you want to, or you're feeling softer or puffy, or like your body won't change, then this episode is for you, because we're going to dive a little bit deeper than just surface level "you need more protein."

But first I want to start here. This is the thing with protein. It's not that women ignore it. It's not like you wake up in the morning and you're like, oh, I'm going to avoid protein today. I believe women miss this because they're taught to focus on calories, not consumption. Right? You go to a restaurant, you go to a cafe, you look at the menu, and all you see is calories. You see the calories next to the muffin.

You see calories next to a coffee shake. You see calories next to the entree that you want to order. You see calories next to avocado toast. I'm thinking of Sweetgreen. I'm thinking of Cava. I'm thinking of all of these places that have their calories on the menu when you walk in. So you order based on that number, not what that number is made of. And that's where women get tripped up, because you can eat low calorie all day long and you can still be underfed.

You can still be under-muscled. You can still be under-recovered. And you can still be constantly having these cravings and being like, what is going on? A lot of women are eating meals that mostly consist of carbs and fats. Carbs and fats. Carbs and fats. And then they wonder why they're hungry an hour or two hours later. Or they're thinking about snacks all day long. Or they're tired.

Or they have no strength progression. They're doing all this work. They think they're eating healthy, but they're not looking the way that they want to with their body composition, and they plateau. And the missing piece, amongst a lot of other things, and I'm broadly speaking here, could be your protein intake.

And I just want to say this. Protein is not just a fitness thing. It's not just a gym girl thing. It's not just a bodybuilding thing.

Protein is literally a women's health thing. I want protein to get that type of light. Because a lot of people think, if I eat too much protein, it's going to be bad for my kidneys. If I eat too much of this protein, am I just going to add more fat? If I eat too much of this protein, am I just going to get bulky with my weight training? There are so many myths around protein.

That said, protein is what supports your lean muscle mass. So for those of you that go into a fat loss phase or you're reducing your calories, if you don't have enough protein in your diet on a daily basis, your body is going to tap into lean muscle tissue. What protein does is it preserves lean muscle tissue as you decrease your calorie intake. It supports bone density. It supports metabolic function. It supports hormone production. It supports you feeling full after a meal and not feeling like you are starving in two hours. It helps you to age well: your skin, your hair, your nails. Especially, ladies, hear me, please.

Especially after 35, 40, 45, 50, protein should be a non-negotiable thing. Maybe I'm going to do an episode on a hierarchy of what needs to be focused on as you continue to age. But protein is up there. It is up there. Because your body isn't the same as it was at 20 or 25 or even 30. I think about me in this past year. I woke up one day and I'm like, holy cow.

Here's a little bit of a story for you before I dive into the five reasons protein changes everything. Last year, 2025, was a hard year for me. A really hard year for me, for so many reasons. Maybe one day I'll put it on social media and share it with you guys a little more in depth. But it was also a year that I wasn't as consistent with my workouts as I wanted to be. I wasn't as on with my nutrition as I wanted to be. And what I noticed is not only were my hormones off, and I also had to go through that chapter of my body changing and my hormones changing and entering into perimenopause and all that.

But because I wasn't training as consistently as I used to, and I wasn't eating as well as I used to, it's not that I was eating bad, I just don't think I was eating enough. So I'm falling into this category with you guys. I recognized that my sleep was being impacted, and my HRV, which is your heart rate variability at night, a measurement of how your body handles stress, was tanking.

If you guys have listened to episodes for almost 300, or over, almost what? Or are we almost... I don't remember what number I said. See, this is another thing I was dealing with: brain fog. If you've been listening to these episodes for however long we've been putting them out, since 2023, you guys know I've shared my HRV. I brag about it. I was in the 120s, 130s. I was up there, and I track it with the Oura Ring. Love this thing. And last year, it was starting to dip. I kid you not, you guys. I was talking to my functional doctor about this.

I was talking to my neurofeedback coach about this. I was talking to my therapist about this. I was like, this is something I was so proud of. What's happening? I know that if that's tanking, my body isn't doing well with handling the stressors of the day. And so New Year hit. I've been on track with my nutrition for the last 18 days, maybe even more, almost a month now. And I've been working out consistently, getting in my four times a week, plus my Pilates. And my HRV has skyrocketed back up to where I was.

And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I was kicking myself when I was filling in all the people that I work with. I was like, of all the years I've been doing this. I'm letting you guys know that it happens to the best of us, even the ones that are as dialed in as you would expect them to be. And with all the education, all the understanding I have of this, this was it. I just needed to get more consistent with my training, and I just needed to dial in my protein, fats, and carbs again. It was more of that intuitive eating side of things.

But I was even lacking on the intuitive eating, if I'm being honest with you guys. And then that's it. That's all it took. I was like, that's crazy. And that's just more of the story that protein is non-negotiable as you get older. You can't do things like you once used to. Your body is different. Your hormones are different. Things are shifting. Things are changing. And if you're not dialed in with certain aspects, especially when it comes to your health, when it comes to your fitness, when it comes to moving your body, when it comes to eating right, other things internally are going to be affected by that.

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 a 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.

Okay. So getting into the five reasons why protein, I believe, changes everything. The first thing is protein stabilizes your hunger and your cravings.

This is the first thing that most women notice when they finally increase their protein intake. They realize that they're not wanting more snacks throughout the day. They're not looking for a ton of food by the end of the day, because they gave their body what it needed during the day. When you eat enough protein, you can stop feeling like you're starving all day, because protein slows your digestion. It keeps you fuller longer. It balances your blood sugar. It lowers your cravings.

It has a thermic effect. When you are eating protein, you are burning calories at the same time. So that alone should be why you guys eat more protein, if you're still stuck on the calories thing. And at the end of the night, because I've heard women say this, I binge at the end of the night, I eat all this food at the end of the night, it's not because you lack any type of discipline or motivation. It's not that you lack any type of follow-through. It's just because you're under-eating protein during the day.

The majority of people go coffee, tiny breakfast, a salad for lunch, a snacky dinner, or maybe you have a solid dinner if you're cooking at home for your family, and then chaos after that. And then they blame themselves. But your body is just doing what it's designed to do. It's just trying to help you survive, telling you, hey, I want more food because I didn't get enough food in the day. And literally what protein does is it fixes that.

Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with 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.

So the first thing is it stabilizes your hunger and your cravings. The second thing is that it protects your metabolism. Your metabolism is not magic.

It's not luck. It's not that you're blessed with a good metabolism. It's not genetics. A huge part of your metabolism is driven by your lean body mass, meaning, aka, your muscle, the lean muscle mass you have on your body. And if you're not eating enough protein, you are far more likely to lose muscle, especially if you are a constant dieter. And when women lose muscle, they get this look that they hate. They get smaller, but they also get softer. That's the thing when it comes to chronic dieting.

With dieting and thinking that you need to go on another diet and cut your food, yes, you may lose weight, but you are going to lose a little bit of everything, including your muscle mass. So at the end of a quote-unquote diet or cutting back your calorie intake, you're just going to be a skinnier, smaller version of yourself. A softer, skinnier, smaller version of yourself. You're skinny fat. This was me when I first started, 11 years ago. So yes, again, you will lose weight, but you didn't get toned.

Because toned isn't about weight. It is about muscle and a low enough body fat percentage. And as I explained earlier, when you are focusing on decreasing body fat, protein helps to protect that muscle so you don't lose it. I hope that makes sense. That is number two. It protects your metabolism.

The third thing is it supports your hormones and it supports you aging. Women don't realize how much protein affects the internal stuff.

I've said this so many times, over and over and over again. We can't see what is happening inside of our body. Therefore, it's hard to believe anything is even working until time has passed, right? So hear me out, hear me loud and clear, because you're not going to feel this stuff. This is what protein is doing. Protein supports your tissue repair. It supports muscle recovery. It supports neurotransmitters, your mood and your focus. It supports the ability for your hormones to signal things throughout your body.

It supports your strength. It supports your resilience. I'm not here to claim that protein fixes hormones by itself, because that's not true and that's not the case. That said, I will tell you this. If you are under-eating protein, your body will feel stressed out. And when your body feels stressed out, hormones don't thrive the best that they can. Women trying to heal their metabolism or trying to support their hormones while eating 70 grams of protein per day is like building a house with no bricks.

You can't survive or function well eating 70 grams of protein per day. And that is what the majority of women do on a daily basis. You need protein to support all of these things, or else you're going to start to age backwards. Wait, aging backwards is a good thing, right? Yeah, I take that back. You're not going to age well, okay? If you eat more protein, you will age backwards. I can't make that claim either. But you get what I'm saying, all right?

Now, the fourth thing is that protein is a toned macro.

Now, I literally hate that word, toned. But the outcome is toned. Let me explain why I hate it. A lot of women want to be toned, but they don't want to do the things to get toned. And literally, in order for you to get toned, you have to build more muscle, and you have to eat more food, which a lot of women want to do the exact opposite of. They don't want to get too bulky, and they don't want to get too fat. I hear you and understand that that is a thought process. However, the narrative needs to change. If you're saying, I don't want to lose weight,

I just want to be toned, then protein is your best friend. Because toned means muscle development, fat loss, recovery, consistency. Protein is what gives you that aesthetic body composition that creates shape. It gives you that tight look, that skin-tight look. Not starving. Not cardio obsession. Not eating 1,200 calories in a day. That's not toned. That's just you being tired and stressed out and fatigued and exhausted and burnt out over time.

Okay? So if we can rewrite the narrative for you to think about protein this way: if you want to get toned, it is your toned macro.

And the fifth thing is that protein makes fat loss a lot easier, without white-knuckling or pushing your way through it. And I don't think a lot of people understand this. When you eat protein, fat loss becomes so much easier because you are satisfied. You will snack less. You will recover better. You won't be as sore. For those of you that maybe have already started to slack on your workouts because you

hit it hard the first week of the new year, I guarantee you weren't eating enough protein to recover and to repair your muscles. Because let me remind you, I haven't said this in a while: you do not build muscle when you work out. You build muscle in the 24 to 48 hours post-workout. You tear down and break down all the muscle fibers in the gym, and then you build them up by eating properly and recovering properly, getting enough sleep and staying hydrated. When you have enough protein, you maintain the muscle. Fat loss becomes a lot easier because you stay consistent.

You maintain muscle. You recover better. All the things. You snack less, like I said. And you don't have to fight yourself every single day, because it doesn't feel like you are having a battle with yourself, with your mind, thinking, oh, I need to push harder, or I need to be more disciplined, or X, Y, and Z. If you don't have enough protein, you won't stay consistent long enough to win. Protein helps you to stop fighting and battling yourself and thinking it's me, it's not the program, I must be messed up, I must be broken, my metabolism is messed up. It's none of that. It's just that you need more protein in your everyday.

Okay? Now, really quick, I want to get tactical with you guys. But first, let me run through the five things again. Protein makes fat loss easier, and it doesn't feel like you have to battle your way through things. Protein is a toned macro. Think of it like that. Protein supports your hormones and your aging. Protein supports your metabolism. And protein stabilizes your hunger and your cravings throughout the day.

Now, most women need way more than they think they do. A lot of you guys have heard me say this before. If you're wondering what a baseline is, because I'm just broadly speaking, and if you want more of a personalized one-on-one approach, that's what WarriorBabe VIP will be able to give you. Or you can check out our Macro Methods. You have all of our calculators accessible to you inside of that program, and they're going to give you what you specifically need in a personalized fashion. That said, just having a baseline of 0.7 or 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight per day is all you need. So if you're 150 pounds, then it's between about 110 and 150.

I would personally go with 1 gram per pound of body weight. Some things out there will say go by lean body mass. Extra protein doesn't hurt. So in my opinion, I'm just going to eat all the protein. Even when I travel, I'm like, hey, stock up the fridge with protein, because the carbs and fats will come with just eating out. Anyway, sidetrack. If you weigh 150 pounds, you should be eating 150 grams of protein per day. And I know some of you guys get scared hearing that number, especially if you start working with a coach and they're saying you need to increase your protein intake.

They're like, you're only eating 70, but we need to get you to 150 grams. And you're like, how am I supposed to eat that much? How am I even supposed to get that much protein in my day? The thing is, you build up to it. You don't go from 70 grams of protein to 150 grams of protein in one night. You start by hitting the 70 and then increasing it by maybe 5 grams of protein per meal. Or you increase it by about 20 grams per day. Three to four meals per day. Have a shake in there.

A protein shake will do wonders for you, just adding in 20 to 25 grams of protein. And for most women, what happens is we eat a tiny breakfast at the beginning of the day. And I shouldn't even say we, because I have 35 grams of protein to start my day. If you have protein at breakfast, that's going to change everything. It's going to do all the things I said. You're not going to have cravings within two hours. You're not going to be hungry within two hours. You're going to feel full and satiated. And you're going to feel the hunger cue of when you're hungry again.

And that's when you have another balanced meal. If you start your day with carbs and fats, you will chase hunger all day long. Let me just say that again. If you start your day with just carbs and fats, you will chase hunger all day long. Start with protein. That is the anchor to your day: starting off your day with protein.

Before we get to the end of this podcast, I want to call out some things. I've had these conversations with a lot of women who say, I eat protein.

And I'm like, okay, tell me about that. What do you mean by you eat protein? Because when I get to the bottom of it, it's only 20 grams of protein or 30 grams of protein. Two eggs is not high protein. That's about 12 grams of protein, 6 grams per egg. I'm just here giving you guys some tough love. If that's what you think is enough, that's not enough. And I'm just here to tell you that. Maybe some of you guys are like, I just eat protein at dinner. No, you need to spread it out.

You need to have it throughout your day, or again, you will be chasing hunger all day long. Some of you guys have said this before: I can't eat that much protein. Yes, you can. You're just not used to it yet. Protein makes me bulky. I've heard that over and over and over again. No, not eating protein makes you soft. What makes you bulky is eating an excess amount of calories in a day. And another thing I hear is, protein doesn't matter if I'm in a calorie deficit. That is so wrong. For those of you that just chase being on another diet that lowers your calories, protein is how you protect your body while losing fat.

Okay? So, as I said at the beginning of this episode, protein isn't just for muscle. It's not just a gym girl thing. Protein is for hunger control. It's for cravings. It's for hormones. It's for metabolism. It's for your energy. It's for aging well. It's for getting toned. And if you've been doing all of the right things and you're still feeling stuck, I want you to ask yourself, am I actually eating enough protein to support the body that I want? Because calories are going to help you lose weight. But honing in on eating your macros, especially protein,

that's going to help you build the look that you want. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with a friend, with somebody that needs a little more insight into the importance of protein, or someone you know that this information could be of value to. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please screenshot it. Let me know what stuck out to you the most. Tag me on Instagram. And I will see you guys in the next episode. Love you guys. Peace out.

Real quick. If this episode resonated with you or gave you the push that 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, so much for your support.