Why Your Old Diets Stopped Working After 40

If you’ve hit 40 and suddenly your old weight loss tricks stopped working, congratulations babe… you’re normal. In today’s episode, I’m breaking down exactly why your metabolism, hormones, belly fat, cravings, gut health, stress levels and emotional eating all decided to form a girl gang against you. You’ll learn why midlife weight loss needs a totally different blueprint and how to fix your slow metabolism without starving yourself, dieting like it’s 1999 or pretending you still have the energy of a 25-year-old. If you want real results with real strategies for women over 40, this episode is your new religion.

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BOMBSHELL BLUEPRINT WEIGHT LOSS FOR EMOTIONAL EATERS

Transcript

Listen, honey, you know me, I'm just gonna lay it out how it is. Women come to me all the time saying the same thing. What used to work for me doesn't work anymore.

I'm eating less, but I'm gaining more weight. So what the freak is wrong? I'm just here to tell you, sis, nothing is actually wrong with you. You are not broken.

Here's what did happen. You hit 40 and now your body has stopped accepting the bargain that you used to make with that when you were like 25 years old. So today I'm going to break down the real reasons why your old diets have stopped working after 40.

(0:35 - 4:08)

And don't worry, sis, don't panic. Don't run looking for a sharp object. I'm going to tell you what you can do instead, because the truth here is it's not necessarily about your metabolism or your hormones.

What it is, is your old strategies have expired. So let's get into it. What is up, you gorgeous, fabulous creatures? And welcome to another week here inside of the Losing It podcast.

You're here with Kylie Pax, Australia's emotional eating coach. And as you know, I'm going to say, if you're loving what you're hearing and you want to hear more, please be sure to hit that subscribe button, share this episode with the bestie, because that is how we're going to change the lives of all us women around the world. It's about time that we put on our pretty little high heels and just stomped all over the balls of those men that have held us down for too damn long.

Today we are talking about the 11 principles of midlife weight loss. I have broken it down into 11 steps. I don't know where the hell that stuff came from.

I've broken it down into 11 steps that once you implement, you will finally be able to lose that weight that has been haunting your booty ever since you turned 30, 35, definitely after 40. Because here's the truth that no one tells us women over 40. After 40, your body becomes an entirely different ecosystem.

I'm talking hormones, stress responses, muscle mass, even digestion and your energy needs. It's a completely different beast. But if you keep trying to give it the same outdated bullshit diet from the era of low-rise jeans and Diet Coke, then don't be surprised that nothing is changing in your body.

Baby, your body isn't fighting against you. It is literally trying to survive the outdated weight loss tactics that you keep jamming down its throat. Honey1989 called it once it's Susan Powder workout videos back.

So let's talk hormones, because as your estrogen drops and your cortisol rises, your cravings are going to go nuts. Now layer on top of that, some sleep deprivation, and you are sitting around wondering why you've got visceral belly fat. I mean, isn't it obvious? When we were younger, that estrogen is the hormone that used to help regulate our appetite.

And it would also, it was such a cute little diva back then. It would store our fat in all the cute little places. So I'm talking booty, boobs, all the places where you want it to be.

But after 40, that fat is leaving your boobs and your ass and it's heading straight to your belly. It's having a corroboree there with all its mates. Your old diet tactics were not built for the stage and the age that you're in now.

They were literally built for a body that you don't own anymore. Once we hit our mid thirties, we start losing about 8% of our muscle mass per decade. Now, unless you lift weights, it's going to be different.

But if you're like me, and we were brought up in the Kate Moss era of skinny is just fucking everything, then I haven't touched a weight in years. That muscle is your metabolic engine. So the less muscle you have, I'm talking fewer calories are going to get burned.

Your metabolism is going to slow right down like it's in a coma and you are going to be gaining weight, even though you're eating way less calories than you ever have before. Remember, the old diets that we used to use relied on us being young and having healthy muscle mass. This is why their sorry asses aren't working now, because you cannot starve your way into a smaller body.

You have to build your way into a stronger version of yourself. Now let's touch a little bit on stress and cortisol and sleep because listen, we all know these days very well. When you were 25, you could go out partying all night long, skip sleep entirely, trot off to work the next day and you were fine.

(4:08 - 6:11)

You want to try doing that after 40? You skip even an hour or two of sleep, you start looking like you're eight months pregnant and you got a whole Louis Vuitton luggage going on under your eyes. Cortisol runs your show now. It's the hormone that is increasing your cravings.

It's the hormone that is increasing your belly fat. It's the hormone that is increasing your inflammation. Do you get where we're going here? It's shutting down your metabolism like a fucking power outage.

So again, after 35, you will find that your stomach is a lot more sensitive than ever before. Metabolically, your digestion is slower, you're retaining water and that's why you feel puffy even though you feel like you're doing all the right things. It's also why your old diet plans of just eat less are going to backfire every time because your gut isn't digesting like it used to.

I know with the additives, the stress and the lifestyle that we're all carrying out these days, I have a lot of inflammation in my body. I think most of us do and the skull is going to reflect all of that. Now, here's the big one.

When you were in your early twenties, you were pretty much dieting with training wheels on. You could make anything work back then. Life wasn't stressful, you didn't have kids, you didn't have bosses screaming at you.

There was certainly no menopause and no mortgages. Your weight loss issues now are less an issue of consistency as much as they are an issue of being overloaded. Honey, there is no diet out there that is built for the woman who is juggling 15 emotional fires a day.

Your current diet tactics aren't failing because you're weak, they're failing because they haven't been built to address the emotional stress eating or the self-sabotage that we all encounter these days. If you look back over your life and think about the most stressful times, they're usually pretty sporadic. It's like I got married back in this era, which while that is a good thing, it's still stressful.

I got married back here, divorced over here, buying houses, losing houses, got a car, crashed the car. These stressful events are usually spaced pretty well apart in our lives, but now it feels like every day is a culmination of all those events smooshed in together. So let's talk about the 11 midlife weight loss principles.

(6:11 - 10:17)

Now, these are the things that actually do work after 35, definitely after 40. And we're going to start with my favorite one, my favorite little child, which is eat when you're hungry and don't eat when you're not. Now, this my loves is the opposite of dieting.

I'm talking about using the skill of interception and actually reconnecting with your body's internal cues after decades and decades of ignoring them, you're going to start paying attention to what you're actually feeling. Am I physically hungry or am I just pissed off with my partner? Am I physically hungry or have I just had a hard day at work and now I want to stuff my face? This is why it matters because once you hit 40, we often mistake emotional hunger for physical hunger, basically because stress and cortisol and fatigue drown out our natural signals. So what I want you to do is before you put anything in your mouth, and I'm talking about food ladies, wink wink, before you put anything in your mouth, ask yourself, what am I feeling? Am I physically hungry? One of the tools that I use with the girls who are inside of the blueprint is we have a hunger scale.

So if one is starving, hungry, like I could gnaw my own arm off and 10 is I feel like I just ate a Christmas meal and I can't feel my toes, then you want to be eating at about a two or a three. Don't let yourself get starving because now you're going to be hungry, but don't eat when you're already in a neutral place either. Now, secondly, when you do eat, this is your magic weight loss code.

Stop eating at 80% full, the holy grail of midlife weight loss. As I said earlier, baby, your digestion is slowed right down like a slug and your satiety signals are slack. So stopping at 80% full is going to prevent you overeating and ensure that you also don't feel deprived.

What it looks like is when you're eating your meal, you need to slow down a little. I know we all like to shovel it in because we've got our next task that we have to get onto. We're very busy.

I understand that. But when it comes to weight loss, if you actually give a shit, you're going to need to slow down with your eating. Here's what 80% feels like.

Remember that hunger scale I spoke about just before? Well, if one is starving hungry and 10 is I'm stuffed and I can't move off the couch, then five is I am no longer hungry, but I'm not full yet either. That's where I want you to stop eating. You shouldn't be hungry anymore, but there's no way that you should be feeling full either.

Leave the table when you still have room for a little bit more in your stomach. Another way you can do it is just leave one or two bites behind. A simple task like leaving one, two or three bites from your meal each time you eat, that alone is going to help your body drop one to two kilos a month for most of you.

Now, the next thing that we're all going to start doing, including me, is lifting weights two to three times a week. Am I talking signing up at the gym? Nah, you're not going to find me there. But what you will find me doing is buying the stretchy bands and investing in some hand weights here at home.

That's where I'm happy to start, but I will tell you it's not optional after 40. You're losing 8% of muscle mass per decade. Don't forget, that is why our metabolism is slowing down and it's also why our belly fat is increasing.

If you're an 80s girl like me, throw on some flash dance and then go your hardest with the hand weight. If you like going to the gym, do that. There's a thousand and one trainers on YouTube.

There's a million apps to choose from. There's no shortage of options is what I'm saying here. So basically, sis, you've got no damn excuses.

Now, the fourth thing that you're going to do is start walking every day. This one I did adopt as a non-negotiable this year and it was the trick that helped me shed now 15 kilos. I'm telling you, this is the easiest metabolic hack for women over 40.

And why? Because walking lowers your cholesterol, reduce that belly fat, improves your digestion, and it burns calories without stressing out your body. When I was in my twenties, I used to run marathons and I thought I was fabulous. And I was, except that my body was not built for long distance running.

So the fact that I enjoyed it, a big green tick. But the fact that I was carrying way too much weight for my joints to sustain it, a big ass cross emoji. So now that I'm in my fifties, that is not an option for me at all.

(10:18 - 12:11)

I'm guzzling fish oil by the liter, but it's okay because this is a different era for me. I want to adapt to a different style of training. So here's what I've started doing.

Minimum 7,000 steps a day. Of course, the gold standard is your eight to 10,000. But starting with adding a 10 minute walk after your meals is going to firstly help stabilize your blood sugar and just get those little walks in so that you don't have to find one huge ass chunk of time in your day.

Now, sis, the fifth thing that you're going to do is you're going to start sleeping like it's your job. Midlife weight loss is impossible if you are running on a poor sleep routine. Why? Because lower sleep is going to increase your cravings.

Increased cravings are going to increase overeating and overeating is going to lead to your weight gain. So now you might as well just rinse and repeat that for the rest of your life because that's what your story is going to be. Something that I read years ago and I've always remembered is that you only have to lose one or two hours of sleep per night and you will consume an extra three to 400 calories the next day.

Now, you want to keep that up. You're going to find yourself gaining a half to a full kilo per month, and then you wonder why you're 15 kilos heavier at the end of the year instead of 15 kilos lighter. Here's what you're going to do.

Seven and a half to nine hours sleep is now a non-negotiable. I'm talking no more screens 60 minutes before bed. Make sure you take your magnesium glycinate.

A little disclaimer ladies, check with your physicians. Make sure you stop eating two or three hours before you go to bed if you can. And what I have started doing, and it is just the most magical time of my evening, is having a closing ritual for my night time.

So for me, that looks like beautiful skincare, having some tea, chamomile green tea, whatever works for you. I put on the meditation music and I lie on called a prana mat. I'm sure some of you have got them.

You know those mats that you lie down on, it's got all the little spikes on it. It's basically an acupressure mat. I lie down on that thing and I'm listening to one of the guided meditations from inside of the blueprint, visualizing my future self and I drift off to sleep thinking about and planning for my highest, hottest, healthiest version of me.

(12:11 - 15:33)

Is there any wonder that I can't wait to get out of bed the next morning and start chasing after her? The sixth thing that you're going to do is start reducing your stress before you even start thinking about reducing calories, because this is where 90% of you are going wrong. You're trying to cut out calories, but you're ignoring the big ass cortisol spike that is making weight loss impossible for you right now. I'm talking little things like taking 10 deep breaths can reset your entire nervous system.

Doing the walking like we mentioned earlier, strength training, setting boundaries was a huge one that I encountered this year. You need to set some damn boundaries with the people that are hurting you, draining you, using you, abusing you, set your damn boundaries. And then once you've done all of that, get your cute little booty in bed on time.

And most importantly, pause before you react emotionally to every circumstance and person in your life. Now, the seventh thing you're going to do is start planning your meals. Plan, plan, plan.

Planning is the antidote to emotional eating. When you plan, you remove 90% of the mental gymnastics that leads to your overeating in the first place. So what I have the members do inside of the blueprint is every day, we write out what we intend to eat that day and we stick to it because it's a matter of integrity.

6, 7, 8 a.m. version of you, she gives a shit about your plans and your body goals and your life goals. 6, 7, 8 p.m. version of you, she doesn't care. She couldn't care less.

All she wants to do is order Uber Eats and eat chocolate all night to relax. So plan your meals in the morning and then you stick to them each day. That's how you build self-trust.

Now, does that mean that you can't include quote-unquote treats in your plan for that day? No, absolutely not. Whilst I do like to say treats are for dogs, food is just food, honey. If you want to include some Smarties or Kit-Kat or Snickers bars, some chips into your day, that's fine, include it.

But 6, 7, 8 a.m. version of you knows how much of that. We're certainly not eating a family-sized packet of chips, are we? No, we're going to include a small handful. That's totally fine because after that, number 8, you're going to follow your plan, not your mood.

Your mood will lie to you, but your plan will never lie. You're going to lose weight this coming year, not because you're so, so disciplined, but because you're going to stop negotiating with your damn emotions every day. The 1% woman, she knows who she's here to be, she knows who she's here to become, and she damn well knows she's not here to put up with bullshit, most importantly, from herself.

So write your plan out and keep it visible. Put it on your phone, slap it on your fridge, keep it in your bag, do whatever you need to do to remind yourself that your future you is worth fighting for, because the ninth thing you're going to do is eat more protein, please. Protein is the anchor to you having enough muscle in your body to keep your metabolic fire burning.

If you would just start eating enough protein, I promise you 50% of your overeating would disappear instantly. Protein is what's keeping you full, it's preserving muscle, it's regulating blood sugar, it's reducing your cravings, and it's boosting your metabolism. So start small with actionable targets, I'm talking 25 to 35 grams per meal.

I like to aim for about 100 to 120 grams per day, and the easiest sources to get it from are things like Greek yogurt, eggs, chicken breast, tuna, tofu, cottage cheese. Build every meal around protein first, and then treat carbs as accessories to that, not the main event. Number 10 is you're going to start focusing on keeping your blood sugar stable.

Women over 40 are really extremely sensitive to blood sugar swings. This is why the bowl of pasta that you used to sit down to is not a win for the home team anymore. So now you've got to start pairing your carbs with protein.

(15:33 - 17:33)

I've also found some of my clients find it helpful to eat in a certain order. So they'll do fiber first, then protein, then they'll do their fats, and then their carbs. This is what's going to take us to our final point, which is my favorite, favorite eating code of all, and you know where I'm going with this one, act like the person you want to become.

This is about identity based weight loss. Your habits follow your identity, and your results follow your habits. So if you want the body of the woman that you dream about, you've got to start making decisions as if you are her before you actually become her.

Now, if you don't have my Bombshell Journal yet, just scroll down and hit the link in the show notes, because that is the key to you becoming the woman you want to become. Ask yourself every morning, what would she do today? Stick her habits on your mirror and follow those. Stop breaking promises to yourself.

Do you know, if you look back over this year that's just closing and ask yourself how many times you promised yourself you would start tomorrow, on Monday, I'll do it later, but you never did, I'm embarrassed for you just thinking about it. Sis, breaking promises to yourself is the worst kind of offense you can make. Start speaking to yourself like you're already that 1% woman.

Dress a little more like her. Decide from your future self. Stop making decisions from the place you're in now, because when you put your head on the pillow at night, you need to be proud of the decisions you make that day, not promising to do better tomorrow.

My loves, your old diets didn't stop working because you lacked discipline. They stopped working because they were designed for a body and a brain and a life that you literally don't have anymore. The woman you are today, she needs a different blueprint, and that is what I do.

I teach women over 40 how to build that body and the mindset and the habits that help you stop emotional eating and lose weight so that you can have the life that you want without starving yourself. Thank you so much for joining me here today, and as always, if you've loved today's episode, please go ahead, share it on your stories, and remember to tag me. I am sending you all tremendous amounts of love.

I cannot wait to see you again next week. Until then, gorgeous ones, bye for now. Thank you so much for tuning in.

(17:33 - 17:50)

Remember to shimmy your butt over to KyliePax.com and join me inside of the Bombshell Blueprint so you can stop emotional eating and start losing your weight now. You'll also find helpful notes and resources inside my past podcast that will help you lose your weight without losing your sanity. I will see you next week.