#68: 8 Mistakes Stopping You from Getting 'Toned'

One of the most common fitness goals for women over 40 is to 'tone up'. But often achieving that goal eludes them. 

Getting 'toned' requires two things: building muscle and losing fat. In episode #68, I share 8 of the most common mistakes I see women making that prevent them from achieving that 'toned' look they desire. 

Enjoy the show!

Transcript

#68: 8 Mistakes Stopping You from Getting 'Toned'

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host. And I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in.

So one of the struggles that I see with women in perimenopause and menopause. Is the same one that I had, which was that after years of working out and keeping myself in shape, I suddenly lost my muscle tone and it seemed to happen almost overnight and gained belly fat. And no matter how much I continue to do the things that I've been doing, it just wasn't budging, right?

My body was not looking like I was working out anymore. And I wanted that to change. I wanted to look what people call toned, and I want to talk today about what is toned and the eight most common mistakes [00:01:00] that I see people, women making, which are stopping them from achieving that result. And this is something that's particularly, uh, frustrating.

Because actually the recipe is not terribly difficult for getting back on track. But I think either the messaging has not gotten to everybody's ears, or women are so not wanting to hear it that they're like, Hey, I'm going to bang my head against the wall a little harder and maybe it'll start working after all.

So anyway, let's get into it.

So I want to start by reminding you of what is it? What is that toned look? So what toned is, is that you have muscle and so it's two things. The first being that you have muscle and the second is that you have little enough body fat that you can [00:02:00] see that muscle. Cause how is your body constructed?

You've got like your bones, you have muscles. You have fat layer under your skin and then you have your skin and if your muscles, are there, but they're hidden by a thick layer of fat, you're not really going to see them very well. You're not going to look toned as you want to look.

So you have two things that you need to accomplish.

The first is that you need to build muscle, and the second is that you need to lose fat. And those two things happen by very different mechanisms. You build muscle by weight training, you lose fat by going into a calorie deficit. All right. And the calorie deficit has to do with what you eat, what you're putting in your mouth.

And a couple of misconceptions. One is that there's somehow like different ways of [00:03:00] exercising. where you can like make somehow create longer, leaner muscles by exercising in different ways. Nope. You have muscles or you don't have muscles.

There's like, no do this for leaner muscles. Do this for longer muscles. Your muscles And their shape that they become, how, how like kind of bumpy they are. Like if you flex your biceps, how much that muscle like rises to make that nice little bump that depends on your individual muscle biology.

And of course, how big, how much muscle you have, right? It'll get bigger over time, but whether yours really jumps up or stays more flat that will depend on your personal biology. So, and not based on whether you do this kind of exercise versus that kind of exercise. [00:04:00] Okay. So Pilates will give you.

Less muscle. So the bump will be smaller. And if you weight train, you will get more muscles. So the bump will be bigger, right? So there that's the kind of difference that you're going to see. All right. So just, just had to get that out there because I think that's something that just is so pervasive that people think like different kinds of exercises for different looking muscles.

And Nope. Nope. That that's. Not a thing, not a thing. All right, but let's go into the eight mistakes that I see. 

The first one is Yo-Yo dieting. So Yo-Yo dieting is just about the worst thing you can do for your body composition. Body composition is how much fat versus muscle you have on your body.

So a little while ago, I talked about how you've got your bone, you've got muscle, you've got a layer of fat and then your skin, right? If you have more muscle [00:05:00] and less fat, then you're going to look more toned. You're going to look more athletic. A good body composition is one where you have relatively more muscle than fat.

What happens when you Yo-Yo diet is you make your body composition worse. And the way you do that is that when you lose weight by dieting, you lose not only fat, you'll also lose muscle. So 25 to 30 percent of the weight that you lose is actually going to come from your muscle. So your body is not just saying, Hey, she's in a diet.

So let's just get rid of the fat. Nope. That doesn't happen. And by the way, this applies also if you are using one of the weight loss drugs, right? That, curbs your appetite. So you eat less. So you are in a calorie deficit. Your body is thinking, [00:06:00] man, I need some energy. So that I can make the heart beat so I can make her arm move so she can blink, you know, all these things that need to happen.

And when it doesn't get the energy from outside, i. e in the form of food, it is going to take that energy from your body and it is going to take it from your muscles and from your fat stores. Okay, so your Yo-Yo dieting, what ends up happening is you lose weight, i. e. the number gets smaller on the scale, but you are losing not just fat, also muscle.

And then when you come out of your diet and you start eating normally, or maybe you even eat more, then what happens is that your body puts on predominantly fat. Okay, so when you were dieting, you got rid of fat and muscle, [00:07:00] and when you gained back the weight, you gained predominantly fat. So you end up, maybe the scale is telling you the same number, but you have made your body composition worse. You have become more fatty than what you were before. And that is super much the danger in this kind of lifestyle of let's get slim for summer. Then let's, you know, just go back to our old eating habits for the winter. And then again, let's get slim for summer. Okay. Because you are wrecking your body composition over time.

What is a better solution? A better solution is to learn new eating habits, not to go on a diet and have all of a sudden all these things that you don't normally eat, restricting yourself extremely knowing that, Hey, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I can do this, you know, eating [00:08:00] cucumbers and drinking lemon water.

for a few weeks because I'll lose weight and soon I'll be able to get back to my normal eating habits. No, that's not the way to have sustainable weight loss. The way you do sustainable weight loss is you change your habits. You stop being the person who I don't know, eats a jar of peanut butter every day or whatever it is that you're doing that is not helping you to, to maintain your weight as a reasonable level.

And I'll tell you, changing your habits is a huge, Oh, it's like a lifesaver. It is not easy to do. Habits are hard to change. I will not tell you it's easy to do, but once you learn those new habits, then you just live that way, right? Instead of having eating habits that you know, make you gain weight over time.

You have eating habits that, you know, emphasize protein that are staying [00:09:00] within a reasonable calorie level. And you're able to maintain your weight without having to worry about it so much. I have managed to achieve this. I did a calorie deficit last spring, lost the weight I wanted to lose and I have been able to keep it off and I am not living in a diet, for sure not.

I am really not living in a diet. I mean, I'm not eating ice cream every day either, but I've just learned much better eating habits and I do eat. I do go out and party. I do go to Paris and eat tarts and you know, that kind of yummy stuff and, and my weight stays. at the same level. All right. So that was a long one about Yo-Yo dieting, but please, if there's one habit that you can break, break the Yo-Yo dieting habit and learn how to eat better.

And if you need help with that, I am available for one on one [00:10:00] coaching. We can teach you new eating habits and get that turned around for you. So reach out to me.

All right. Second habit. That is. been ingrained into us women for so long. I mean, I'm 53. Yeah. I had to think about that for a second. I'm 53 and I feel like my whole life it's been about, you know, just do it, do it harder.

You got to sweat. It's got to burn, burn the calories, you know, all this. And it's been the fitness industry marketing to us. They want us to have those sports tracking watches, you know, watching the calorie burn. Our gyms want us to go to the fitness classes, but in midlife, if you are just cardio queening it, that is stopping you from getting to the results that you want to be in.

in. I was a [00:11:00] cardio queen. I was a cardio queen well into post menopause. Then my muscles disappeared and I realized that hell, I need to do something different. Even pump classes were not saving me or circuit classes or anything like that. So, and the thing about cardio, and now we're talking about this more steady state cardio, the kind you can do for an hour.

Yes, you may go into the red zone every now and again, but you know, the kind of hard cardio where you're sweating and your heart rates up and it's, you know, but it's still doable that raises your cortisol levels. So your stress levels and your stress levels and perimenopause are higher to begin with. So that combination actually puts your body in a state where you're breaking down muscle.

Remember you want that beautiful muscle in order to look toned. You want to hold onto it and not lose it. So cardio is important for your heart health, [00:12:00] but shift some of those cardio sessions to doing weight training sessions. I know this is This is a really tough one to believe that less is more in midlife.

But I tell you, I was just talking to one of my clients about this and you know, she used to do hard cardio sessions and she's feeling so much better now, has so much more energy for her day, for her work now that she has changed how she trains and she's feeling stronger and better in her body. So. It takes a little bit of a leap of faith, but yeah, maybe test it out.

All right. And related to this very much related to this is mistake number three, which is tracking the calories burned. All right. I had a whole episode about this, episode number 51 [00:13:00] about how you cannot trust what your treadmill or sports watch or whatever your, your heart rate monitor is telling you about the calories burned.

It's a lie. It's overestimating and the better shape you're in. So if you're a cardio queen, the worst that overestimation is going to be because as you get more fit, your body is more efficient at doing that workout while using less calories. So then you end up in this like system of you've got to worry out more and more and more and more and more to burn the same amount of calories, and that is not a recipe for success.

And if you are in a calorie deficit and you are inputting your workouts into, for example, MyFitnessPal, then it is giving you like an allowance to eat a little bit more because you worked out. No. [00:14:00] No, turn off that feature and this is really good device.

Turn off that feature. You exercise and that is like a separate thing from your calorie deficit that you're trying to be in. Your exercise has nothing to do with the calorie deficit. So turn it off in MyFitnessPal. That is it. Good advice. All right. So those are the first three, which was stop them with the Yo-Yo dieting, stop overdoing the cardio and stop tracking how many calories you're burning because you don't want to eat according to how many calories you're burning because the number of calories you're burning is incorrect.

So if you eat according to that, you are going to overeat and you are not going to reduce your body fat that way. All right. 

Now, so those were a little bit about like losing the fat, [00:15:00] right? Those three mistakes that people are making when they're trying to lose the fat. Now if we talk about three mistakes that have to do with mistakes you're making when you're trying to build muscle, which is the second part of becoming toned looking.

So the first is that You're doing combo exercises, right? And I talk about this in episode number 57, I go through in depth, you know, why it is that combo exercises are not building your muscle. I know they look fun. They are fun. They look hard. They are hard. It's variety every day. You can pick a little bit different one and yes, they have weights in them and you might Think and your muscles feel the burn, but it is not an effective way of building muscle.

Building muscle is a science [00:16:00] and doing those combo exercises, random workouts every day or every week or whatever. is just not going to build the muscle for you. So if you really want to get toned, you need muscle on your body. That's what is going to make you look toned. And for that, you really want to get proper progressive weight training.

Program. And coupled with this is that women are not lifting heavy enough. And part of that is that women are in the group fitness classes, waving around those pink dumbbells and feeling the burn or using rubber bands and these kinds of things. You need to be lifting heavy to really challenge your body, your muscles.

When you challenge your muscles, when you push your body kind of to the limits of how much that muscle can [00:17:00] lift, you are signaling to your body that, Hey, you don't have enough muscle, you need to build it. build more muscle. And that's how you put on more muscle tissue. And I'll point out, you know, referring back to the Yo-Yo dieting thing, that putting on muscle is not an easy thing.

People spend months and years training consistently, Being very systematic about it, eating protein, being quite obsessive about it in order to build muscle. It doesn't happen overnight. Yes, there are a few people out there, and if you're one of them, lucky, lucky, lucky you that can basically pick up a pencil and there's a muscle there, but for the most of us mortals, uh, it actually takes a lot of work.

And most of the people that you see on. on social media. You see them, they're looking muscular and they're looking [00:18:00] fit. And then they're waving around those little pink dumbbells. That ain't how they build those muscles or else they are one of those genetic anomalies where they just are, you know, they, they can literally lift a pencil and show muscle.

I've met a few of those people. They're super annoying because I'm not one of them. Yeah. All right.

Okay. And then for those of you who have started getting into the weight room, bravo. Yes. Excellent. But don't do it after your cardio class. I see that way too often. Uh, women at my gym will come in and they'll do their really tough cardio class.

You know, they're all sweaty and then they're like, Oh yeah, I'll go to the weight room now for a little bit. Well, your body is tired. Your muscle recruitment at that point is going to be kind of crappy. And so that is really ineffective. Rather do [00:19:00] it the other way around. If you're going to do your cardio class and you can't weight train on a different day, then do the weight training first.

You will get way better results because your body will be fresh. It'll be able to recruit those muscles better You'll be able to push those muscles better and plus those of us in the weight room We'll be appreciative that you don't come in there kind of sweaty and stinky The women aren't so bad, but some of the guys, Oh my God, you just want to carry air freshener around and, and kind of spray them with it.

And then the other thing that they're doing when they come in after the, their session in their cardio class is they're just kind of going from machine to machine. And I have to say they're using good machines. I mean, I'm not following, you know, are they going on 20 of them or whatever? but One of the keys, I mean, building muscle, like I've said before, probably [00:20:00] even in this episode, I can't now remember building muscle is a science.

So it is better to follow a structured program and make sure that you're applying progressive overload as you go. And in order for you to do that, I mean, honestly, just at least get out a sheet of paper, write down the six exercises you're going to do that day and make sure you're hitting different muscle groups over the course of the week, twice each muscle group.

And then you write down the weight that you're lifting and how many reps you achieved. And next time, Push yourself to do an extra rep or two, uh, of that exercise. And then when you get to the top of your rep range, let's say you're working in an eight to 12 rep range. Then when you get to the 12 in all your sets, then increase the weight.

And that's how you are going to be able to [00:21:00] stimulate your body and make sure that you're continuously asking your body to do more as it gets stronger. Right? Your body can't be just asked to do the same thing week after week. And okay, if you're a super experienced lifter, like where you're at the point where you're lifting the same weight and you're eeking up, like I'm thinking of my boyfriend here, , he is been lifting for so long that it's not like, I mean, he knows if I go to do.

Chest presses, this is the weight that I'm training at and he'll be training at that weight for months, right? And then slowly eke up reps But the rest of the world can including me I write down all of my sets and then when I'm going into the weight room the next time I like paper and pen. I write down what exercises I'm doing that day and what weights I [00:22:00] did last time and what reps I'm aiming for.

And that way I know what I'm going to do. And the thing that that also helps you with is that. If you're feeling kind of tired that day and you're like, Oh, right. I was doing 30 kilos last week and I got 12. Oh, okay. I got to do that this week. So it helps to kind of psych you up mentally when you're writing it down.

And by the way, I do have a free training tracker on my website. So if you want to download that and check the, uh, link in the show notes.

All right. And now if we talk about two of the biggest mistakes I see outside of what you're doing training, the first one is not taking rest days.

 You need to remember your recovery days. You don't need to be in the gym or doing [00:23:00] something sweaty or hard every day. In fact, it's better if you take a couple of days to rest, to recover. Now, on the recovery days, yes, you can go for a walk. You can go to an easy yoga class, stretching, something like that, that you enjoy, but pushing your body every single day can really be counterproductive.

And especially if you're doing things that involve weights. Don't weight train every day. Give your body a rest, a couple of days of rest. Even if you're weight training so that you do only one muscle group each time, give your body a day, you know, a couple of days of rest each week. And I think honestly, in perimenopause and menopause, like we don't need to beat ourselves up all the time.

I take two or three days a week [00:24:00] of rest and I feel like I'm in better shape than I've been in, well, probably since college or in college, I was probably in better shape, but I was also training like two, three hours a day and I was 20, right? So my body could take it back then, not anymore. Okay. 

And then the last one that I want to remind you all of, I even have it in all of my programs as the last thing on your training agenda is eating enough protein.

And the protein is going to help in your ability to be toned in two ways. Okay. The first is that having enough protein in your diet is going to allow your body to hold on to the muscle you have better. And it's going to enable your body to create more muscle because protein you eat it, it's got amino acids in it, and those are the building blocks of muscle.

And the thing about our bodies is that we [00:25:00] do not. you know, store amino acids. It's not like fat that we store. We don't, we store energy, but we don't store amino acids. So you need to eat them every day. You can't be like, okay, Monday I'll eat protein. And then again on Thursday, because Tuesday and Wednesday, you're, you're not going to have enough protein.

So you need to eat protein consistently every day throughout the week. That should be one of those habits that I was talking about at the start of the podcast that you just get into. The protein will help you to stay toned, hold onto your muscles, build muscles. And the other thing that it does is that it makes you feel more satisfied after your meal.

You will feel more satiated. Like you've eaten more than you've actually eaten, and that helps you to control the amount that you eat. All right. And I noticed for myself, I used to have these kinds of situations where I just eaten [00:26:00] and I'm feeling like, Oh, I need a little something, you know? And. Well, when I started really focusing on making my meals around my protein source, I don't have that feeling anymore.

I'm not like, Oh, I'm missing something. I guess I've been missing protein for much, much of my, my adult life. And now that I have started eating it, I, um, aim at the one gram per pound of body weight per day. So actually mine is a little bit over that. I think 140 grams a day is what I aim for. But I have clients mentioned that once they started focusing on eating the protein, then they lost weight because They were just more full, so they were eating less overall.

So it was easier for them to manage their eating that way.

All right. So hopefully at least one of these was something that was helpful to you, but these are [00:27:00] ones that have come up a lot as I watch what women do and listen to what women talk about and what they think, is the answer and the problem.

And so to summarize them so the eight things that are stopping you from getting toned, in other words, from building muscle and losing fat, because that's how you get toned, are Yo-Yo dieting, overdoing the cardio, tracking how many calories you've burned and feeding that into your meal tracker, especially forget that, toss that out, turn off that feature in Myfitnesspal, you're doing combo exercises and random workouts that you find on the internet that are hard, but are not actually challenging your muscles.

You're not lifting heavy enough to challenge your body and [00:28:00] stimulate it to build more muscle. You're doing your weight training when you're already tired after a cardio class. Do it before or on a separate day. You're not taking rest days. Your muscles are stimulated in your training session, and then they actually grow in the time between your sessions.

So take those rest and recovery days. And finally, eat your protein. It will help you on both fronts because your muscles need the protein and it'll keep you feeling full for longer.

Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye. If you think of another one that I've missed, that you see some kind of error happening out there, let me know.

I love to hear from my listeners. So contact me, you can email me, DM me on Instagram, message me in Messenger, however you prefer [00:29:00] to communicate. I'm happy to hear from you and we'll talk again next week. Until then, happy training.