#130: FAT LOSS: 3 Things Midlife Women Still Get Wrong

Trying to lose weight but not seeing the results you want?

In this episode, I’m breaking down three of the biggest mistakes that are still holding midlife women back when it comes to fat loss.

If you’ve been frustrated by your lack of progress, this will help you get clear on what actually matters.

Here’s what I cover:

• Why cardio alone won’t do it - because you can’t out-run your fork!
• Why simply losing weight won’t get you the results you’re after
• Why “eating clean” isn’t enough - and what to do instead

If you’ve been frustrated despite all your efforts, this show will clarify what you need to do to finally lose that fat. To move from frustration to making steady, realistic progress.

Resources mentioned:

• Learn more about Midlife Fat Loss Formula

Transcript

#130: FAT LOSS: 3 Things Midlife Women Still Get Wrong

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach. And today we are talking about fat loss. We haven't talked about it in a while, but I thought that this would be a good time, as a lot of women might be thinking about, Hey, for next summer. Or for some event coming up later this year, I would like to be a little bit more defined, have a little more muscle showing, look a little different than I do today.

So let's get into three of the common things that women get wrong when they are trying to lose weight.

Okay? So thing number one is. Really the idea that losing weight is going to get you the results that you're after. And I think I was reminded of [00:01:00] this as I met with one of my former colleagues a few weeks back and oh my God, you know, the moment I saw her, I was like, whoa, you have really.

Lost weight. And sure enough she had lost 17 kilos, which is a lot of weight. What is that, like, almost 40 pounds. And you could definitely see it in her face and, and her body. I mean, she was wearing a, a long sleeve shirt and whatever, but you could still tell she was a much smaller person than she was before.

And she said yes, I finally have lost the weight. And I, you know, and I'll talk a little bit later about what all she did to do that. But the thing that she said was, she was so excited that now in the summer she will be able to like wear a bikini and have her arms showing and everything. Except for [00:02:00] she realized that she forgot one thing when she was doing this weight loss.

She forgot about the muscle. And so the result that she's ended up with is not the nice toned lean look that she was actually after, but she just looks kind of skinny fat, and now she needs to get into the weight room or start lifting weights at home and build some muscle so that she can have that. End result that she really was after in the first place.

And I think that's such a good reminder to all of us, and especially to women who might be using weight loss drugs, you know, who wanna lose a little bit of fat. Remember any time that you are in a calorie deficit and that is what the weight loss drugs are putting you in. You know, they're just making it easier for you to eat less.

 You are gonna lose not just fat, but also muscle. And when you [00:03:00] lose fat and you're not building muscle, if you don't have any muscle under there, then what you're going to end up looking like is maybe not what you actually wanna look like. So remember to do the strength training at the same time.

It allows you to hold onto your muscle as you're losing. The fat tells your body that, Hey, don't take the weight off of my muscle. Take it from my fat stores instead, and even twice a week of proper strength training. So that is different from doing some group fitness class or some random online workouts.

Proper strength training where you are applying progressive overload and really challenging your body is what you need to signal to your body that, Hey, hold onto the muscle. Get rid of the fat, and if you don't have any muscle, it is the perfect time to get started, strength training so that the end result you have is what you want.

Okay? So that is the number one [00:04:00] mistake I would say, is that they think that just by losing weight, you're gonna end up looking the way you want to look. Okay. 

Number two is one that is so ingrained in us, and that is that if you wanna start losing weight, you just need to do more cardio, you need to burn more calories.

And I know I felt like that for so many years and I see it all around me. You know, it's like, Hey, I should lose a little weight. I should take up some jogging. You know, that kind of thing. I should go to fitness classes is a little bit more often. It should burn some more calories, but the fact is that it takes an enormous amount of effort to burn the calories.

I have a whole episode on how come that is not an effective way to actually lose weight. So listen to that one. It is. Episode number 51. Go check that one out to understand better why [00:05:00] exercise is not the answer, but it has something to do with the fact that a, the calories burned, that your watch or that treadmill or bike or whatever is telling you is not accurate, and the fact that your body compensates for those extra calories burned.

So in the end, it really is the case. I love this saying you can't outrun your fork, so if you want to lose weight, you actually need to focus on what you're eating and not on calories burned. Okay. 

Burning a lot of calories is not gonna be the answer for losing weight. Now, I guess there's one caveat to that, like, I was back when I was in college and I was a division one athlete and I was practicing two hours a day plus strength training three times a week, [00:06:00] plus running at least three times a week.

I mean, I was exercising a ton. Okay, then I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted because I was exercising so much and, and didn't put on the freshman 15. In fact, I lost weight freshman year because I was training so much. But I think that for us in midlife and certainly for me in midlife, there is no way I have the time to spend working out at least two hours a day.

And also my body could not recover from that amount of exercise that I used to do when I was plus minus 20 years old. So yeah, you need to be thinking about what you're eating. 

And then the third big mistake is. Believing that eating clean is gonna be enough. I see this all the time. Women say, I'm eating clean and I'm not losing weight.

And the thing [00:07:00] is that eating clean, eating healthy, eating protein, not eating chips, skipping the desserts, all those things, those are great, but you can consume a lot of calories. Eating clean, what it is really about is portion size and how many calories you're bringing in, 

you get a good sense of that when you start to track. Okay. I think tracking is an amazing tool. I feel like everybody should spend at least two weeks where they are tracking in a super, super strict way. Everything that they put in their mouth and weighing it, okay, weighing it, recording it, tracking it, looking at the results, because it will reveal to you amazing things.

 I have a fat loss course called Midlife Fat Loss Formula, and one of the big things there is the tracking. And I [00:08:00] teach you how to track really accurately and women say that, oh my goodness, you know, I thought I was eating at this calorie range and I realized that I was eating in this calorie range.

And the other thing that they realize there is that even if they're being really good, Monday through Thursday, the weekend calories are really killing their progress. And you start to really notice those things when you track really well. Okay. 

And. When you track the beauty of it is also that you may notice that there are just a few tweaks that you need to do that can make a huge difference.

For example, I had one client who realized that, oh yeah, I'm eating that chocolate bar and having that glass of red wine every day, and the combination of the two of them was like 400 calories. Okay, so just knock those out and watch the fat start to [00:09:00] disappear, honestly. Right. So, and another client realized that, oh, her habit of snacking on almonds when she was hungry was really bringing a lot of extra calories and fat.

Even though almonds are healthy, there's nothing wrong with them. But they bring a lot of calories. Or if you're of the habit of eating one avocado a day, healthy food. But maybe you don't need a whole one every day if you're worried about gaining fat. So, so it allows you to kind of tweak without having to go to extremes.

But you need the data first to see where are the calories really coming in. It's kind of like if you realize that, hey, I'm spending too much money every month and my bank account's drained to the bottom, then if you start tracking your spending and you're like, oh man, oh, I'm having that coffee every day from Starbucks, and whew, oh, and then I usually get a [00:10:00] muffin with it, and over the course of the month, that's a lot of money .

Or you notice that, hey, I go out a lot with my friends and I'm buying expensive drinks and, and that's draining my bank account, but you can't really notice it until you have the data, until you've been tracking and you look at what you've been doing, and it is super, super useful and this actually brings me to the other thing that really helps is with my colleague who lost the 17 kilos. I asked her, so what did you do? And she said, well, you know, number one was that she tracked and she realized that she was eating. A ton in the evening, right before bed. So her habit was that once I got the kids to bed, she would like flop down on the couch with a bowl of chips or candy and like munch on that.

Well, of course that's a ton of calories. But the other thing that she did was she really started [00:11:00] to structure her eating so that she. Set up how many meals a day that she wanted to eat, made sure she's hitting protein targets and calorie targets for those meals. And because she had this data from her tracking, she would leave out certain parts like she's feeding, growing kids, and of course they need more calories and fat and all that kind of thing.

And especially if they're at all like my kids who not so great at food volumes. So you gotta get a lot, a lot of things in, in a small amount of volume. So she would leave certain things out of her own eating, like maybe they would have. Pasta with chicken sauce, so maybe she wouldn't have the sauce or whatever.

So, but it took that kind of structured eating and planning. And by the way, that's another thing that I do teach in the Midlife Fat Loss Formula course. It's a mini course that I have. Fat [00:12:00] loss is something that is achievable and the best way to achieve it really is to look at what you're eating.

And once you have that data, you can likely make tweaks that will make it easier for you, where you don't necessarily need to go on some huge change my life diet, but maybe it's as simple as leaving out your chocolate bar plus red wine every evening.

All right, so I hope that helps. And if you're interested in the midlife fat loss formula, you can find it in on my website and there's a link to it in the show notes. But I hope these tips helped. If there are other things that you struggle with, with fat loss and weight loss, then send me your questions in Instagram.

Is probably the best way to reach me and I can do a whole episode on fat loss and weight loss questions in the future. [00:13:00] All right, and with that, I leave you and I wish you happy training