163: My Body Recomposition Journey - Unexpected Results at Age 55

I got my body composition measured this week for the first time in way too long.

Honestly? I walked in bracing for bad news. The scale is up, I've been eating out way more than I should, and I haven't been sleeping great. I figured I knew what I was going to hear.

I was wrong.

In this episode, I share my full body recomposition journey, from where I started to where I am now, including my latest InBody results. 

I also walk you through the different ways you can track body recomposition at home, no expensive equipment needed.

Enjoy the show!

Resources mentioned:

Simple way to take progress pics 

Summer Shape-Up

Midlife Fat Loss Formula

My strength training membership

Transcript

163: My Body Recomposition Journey - Unexpected Results at Age 55

Lynn-Marie: [00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto 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. And this week. I went and got my body composition measurement done for the first time in way, way, way too long. And I had some really surprising results

so it's been a while since I've talked about my body recomposition journey, so I thought I would give a little bit of the history for all the new people that are listening, and then brief you on what has happened lately, and that got me so surprised with my results. But before we go into that, I just wanted to share because, oh, I know there are a lot of other empty nesters there.

I have three kids and I've already got, two of them have moved out, and the third, my [00:01:00] baby, it just seems so weird that he is officially an adult because he turned 18 and. Now, yesterday he got the big envelope, which here in Finland, if you are a finished citizen, you need to do mandatory military service. And I should add, if you're a guy, and so every single guy goes through this sometime, I think it's like age 18 to 24, so there is a range, but most of them will go and do their year. I think it's a little under a year of military service after they finish high school. And so it's like every single mom. He gets this envelope home when it's your boy's time to go.

And I remember getting it with my first son and, you know, it was the first time I've had to do that. And now my, my baby, my baby is going, so [00:02:00] he's starting his final exams in the fall. So after summer. Uh, they're kind of like a levels in the UK, I guess, or like AP exams, um, in the us except for those exams actually get you into university, or you can get into university based on your results from those exams. So his final year of high school is essentially doing those exams. Then when he finishes that, he'll be going off to the military for a year and then he'll be. Off to university. And here it's not like it is in the states where you come home for Christmas and summer vacation and all that. It's like you move out and then they're gone. So I'm just feeling like this little tug I. And then of course there's the other side of it, which is that he's going off to do his military service. At that point, I already have one son who, if Russia decided to attack us, we are their next door neighbor by a [00:03:00] very, very long, long stretch of land. Uh, my son would be of course called up and, uh. So would my ex-husband, and so yeah, I think my boyfriend is too old to be called up at this point, but I'm not sure. He's 64. So yeah, the wars here in Europe are very much daily, in my thoughts. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, which is building muscle and losing fat. In other words, body recomposition.

All right, so what is body recomposition? What that means is that you are trying to change the percentage of your body weight. That is muscle versus fat. And how do you know what percentage of your body is muscle and bone ? You measure it. There are a few different ways to measure it. Some more [00:04:00] accurate than others. DEXA scans are probably the best way to measure. So if you have access to a DEXA scanner, then I would use that and you can at the same time get your bone density checked, which would be a good thing to know because. If you have weak bones, the sooner you know, the sooner you can start rectifying that situation.

Unfortunately, where I live, I don't have DEXA scans, so I've been using an InBody scan, and these are devices where you stand on something that looks very much like a scale, then you hold onto two handles. Hold your arms out to the sides of you and it is this electrical impedance. So it sends an electrical pulse through your body and based on how quickly or slowly that, it goes through your body, it can measure whether you have fat or muscle or bone, there.

And it actually gives you a [00:05:00] pretty cool measurement. Because it'll show you your overall, of course, how much, , bone plus muscle you have versus how much fat you have. But then it also helps you to understand where your muscle is, so it measures right arm, left arm, left leg, right leg. And then your torso. So it gives you kind of five different places that, hey, where is your muscle? And so for me, , I am luckily very even right and left side. So that was really good news, especially on my legs because I have an old injury on my left hip and then I have arthritis on my right knee, and I really try to pay attention to training them both evenly. And I was really happy to see that I've been able to keep them very even. And the same thing with my arms. Even though, when you're right-handed, you might feel like your right arm is stronger or whatever. I've been able to keep those pretty, consistent too. Okay, so there are the machines that you can [00:06:00] use, and then there are other ways of kind of judging whether you are having body recomposition happening, which don't require machines.

So one that I definitely recommend is taking progress. Pictures, and I actually don't mean progress pictures. I mean taking little videos of yourself and then taking screenshots of the videos because it would be good to get pictures of you, like from all of your sides. So front, back, left side, right side, in a relaxed position where you're not flexing your muscles and in a position where you are flexing your muscles. Because then you'll see like, okay, do I have more biceps showing? Do I have more back muscles showing? Do I have more back muscles? You know, like, so you see all those things and I find it very challenging if you have to put on a little timer on your phone or your camera, your phone camera. And then run into position and be right there, you know, at the moment that it goes [00:07:00] click so that you could get that picture. So I actually teach a method where, you use a video to do it, and I'll actually share that video with you in the show notes.

Another way that you can measure is by using a tape measure and measuring like around your arms, around your waist, hips, chest, thighs, those kinds of things. And I mean, I haven't personally used that method because I'm a little too lazy too, but that is one that works very well too. Then you can see how the inches change over time.

You can also look at how your clothes fit. I think a lot of us have our favorite pair of jeans, and when we slip 'em on, we know like, oh, this is feeling tighter around the waist, which is something that is very familiar, I think, for a lot of us in midlife. Or you notice that, hey, these are feeling looser and, and that gives you a gauge of like, are you a little heavier right [00:08:00] now? Are you a little bit lighter right now? For me, one of the big things that's changed over time is the way my jeans fit, because I have gotten a lot more muscle on my glutes, so I fill out the back of my jeans in a way that I have never done before in my life, so that's been very interesting too.

And then finally there is the scale that you can use. The scale is not great for body composition you know, because muscle weighs more than fat but the scale can be a useful tool in the sense of if you notice that your scale weight is staying consistent. But your strength training and you notice that, hey, I'm lifting more, or you're seeing in your progress pictures that, Ooh, my, my muscles are showing more. I clearly have more muscle, and your weight is staying the same than, you know. [00:09:00] Because you have more muscle and muscle weighs more than fat, that something had to have disappeared, right? Therefore, your weight to stay the same. So that would be a really good indicator that you are undergoing body recomposition, that you're putting muscle in your body and you are losing fat at the same time.

Okay. So now that we've got those basics in hand, I wanted to share where I started. So when I very first time started, the body recomposition, my, my main goal was just to get that muscular look back, so I would look athletic. So for me it was all about strength training. I didn't even think about dieting.

I was like, I wanna build muscle. And so I got started with that. And Okay. My journey took a little bit longer than it should have because. I didn't have me at that point to kind of give me a program that would be really efficient and effective. So I [00:10:00] figured it out along the way. As I studied to be a personal trainer and a midlife fitness coach, I learned better ways of strength training.

So anyway, but my main focus was to build muscle. So for the first year, my weight stayed the same and. I did build muscle. I got stronger. I started to see the muscle tone in my arms again, and that was so exciting and I was taking the progress pictures on a regular basis. Plus I was videoing myself doing my exercises, so. I mean, I've been sharing some of these early exercise videos and oh my gosh, I really did not look like I was in very good shape, and I certainly wasn't very strong. But anyway, so I, I could see progress happen over the course of the year.

And I actually took my first InBody measurement only after [00:11:00] I had been lifting for about a year. So that was, that's kind of my starting point, which actually wasn't my starting point. And so I started having these measurements done.

So then a few months after that, I decided that, hey. This body recomposition. It's happening, but it's happening too slowly for my taste. I wanna show off this amazing muscle that I've been able to build. I wanna get rid of some more of this fat. And that is when I went into the calorie deficit. And there I have some really great data I did an eight week calorie deficit. I took an InBody scan before I started and then I took it at the end, and then I actually took it a couple months after I finished my calorie deficit, and that was kind of interesting too. So lemme go over what I had there.

So in my fat loss phase, I lost 4.3 kg in 8 weeks, so that's [00:12:00] 9.5lbs. then after my fat loss phase ended, those of you who have been with me since then know that I. Broke up with the guy that I'd been dating for the past four years, and that led to my spending a longer time in my diet because my reaction to the breakup was that I had no appetite whatsoever, so I actually ended up losing. More weight than I wanted to and started not feeling so great and all that. So I did do a little bit more of a dip, but then that evened out as life got back to normal. But anyway, and then for the next year and a half-ish, my weight stayed. Really stable till the next time that I did the reading which was a year and a half ago.

And, and that is something that I've talked about often on the podcast that, having more muscle on your body, makes it a lot easier to [00:13:00] maintain a more stable weight than even if you kind of go a little bit crazy at Christmas you don't suffer for it quite as much

and, and then also the other part of it is that when I was in that fat loss phase, all the things that I learned there. I have been able to apply and continue to use after that in order to maintain my weight. I, I am eating a lot of protein, which helps keep you satiated. I have a regular eating schedule. I prep my meals , and make batches in advance and that kind of thing, so I don't have to stress about, oh my God, I'm hungry. What am I gonna eat today? I have meals that I eat on repeat that I know are healthy and good so that has enabled me to really maintain that weight.

Plus, I've continued to strength train. That's my primary form of exercise. I've added in cardio, especially sprint interval training in the past year, but I haven't honestly had [00:14:00] time for a lot else. Uh, building this business has taken a lot of time. Okay, but so now if we think about what I did yesterday, so I went back and had my body composition measured.

So what's happened in the past year and a half now, the, impetus for me going yesterday, lemme say this first, is that I've been feeling a little bit like. I don't know. Fuzzy, right? I feel like, oh, I would want my muscle definition to show a little bit more. I have been eating so much. Okay. I mean, I've been eating out regularly more than once a week.

And coupled with. Just being stressed out and not sleeping so well. So a lot of this kind of snacking and sugar cravings and I mean, really I feel like I've gone off the rails to some degree, and so [00:15:00] as I am doing this Summer Shape-Up Group program, I'm actually gonna be shaping up my own eating habits and getting back on track because I have been. I've been overeating, so anyway, I went yesterday so that I would get my baseline so that I could then compare, where am I in a month, where am I in two months and sure enough, my weight is up. It's up 3.1 kg, which is 6.8 lbs. But here is what surprised me guys.

I have to say, I was really shocked at this, that out of that 3.1 kilos that I have gained, two kilos four point four pounds of that is muscle, two kilos of muscle, over 18 months. That is pretty impressive. I was like, whoa, Lynn, like [00:16:00] pat yourself on the back.

You are doing something right. Here I am in year five of my strength training journey, and to be able to be putting on muscle at that kind of a rate. Is quite amazing. And, and when they looked at, where I've been putting on the muscle the most are in my torso, which means my glutes, my back, right? Because that's all part of the torso. And then my arms have also gotten more muscle on them. My legs not so much, and that is not surprising to me because I am not really pushing to grow my legs . I'm somebody who. Doesn't have stick legs to begin with, and I think I want my legs to definitely be strong enough, but I want it to be the combination of my glutes and my quads and my hamstrings, like working together. Not that I just wanna train, train, train my legs. So anyway, so, but four point four pounds, I was like, yes, Lynn, at age 55, [00:17:00] you can still do it.

If you think about in the context of. At this age post menopause one should naturally lose , up to 2% of your muscle mass per year if you're not strength training. And here I am, putting it on. So, yay. And by the way, I am not some sort of. Unicorn in this respect. I am somebody who does not put on muscle very easily. So you can do this too. You just need the right system, the right program, the right amount of nutrition and recovery, and you can definitely do this too. 

So I had gained about one pound of fat, but so this is really funny. My body fat percentage had actually gone down. I have put more [00:18:00] muscle on my body and I've put a little bit more fat, but I put twice as much muscle as fat and therefore, my body fat percentage is actually lower, so my scale weight is higher than it was a year and a half ago. My body fat percentage is lower. I have more muscle on my body. I have a teeny bit more fat on my body. So yeah, so that was kind of surprising to me. I don't know how, how you like think about that, but I really walked in there thinking, oh, my muscles probably stayed about the same maybe a little bit higher. And then I've. Put on some body fat. That's really what I was expecting to hear and to have not heard that was just amazing. So anyway, so that is where I am right now in my body Recomposition journey. And now my next step is because summer is coming and I wanna show off this [00:19:00] muscle that I've been building. I am going to be doing this summer shape up with the ladies that are joining the program, and it's not too late for you to join, so hop in and let's do this together. 

And if you wanna do it on your own, I also have my midlife fat loss formula. It is the exact formula that I use to lose that 10 pounds or nine and a half pounds in eight weeks. And the things that I learned when I learned that system, that way of thinking about food, that way of planning meals, that way of prepping is what has enabled me to maintain good eating habits. I mean, my restaurant habit aside. 

And then the other thing I wanna say is if you are not noticing that you're building muscle and you are working out with weights, please consider. Checking your program, and I'm [00:20:00] happy to have you on board If you are an experienced lifter so you know what sets and reps are, you're, you feel comfortable working with weights, then join my membership. Try it out. You can join and cancel in a month if it's not for you, but. You can build muscle, you can lose fat in midlife, and I really encourage you to do it in a healthy way because having a better body composition is amazing, and the way to do it is to build muscle and lose fat don't just go on a diet, you gotta hold onto that muscle because it's not so easy to build back.

Okay? And with that, I hope that you are inspired to get in shape for summer start strength training, and it's never too late and it doesn't have to be complicated. All right? And with that, until next week, happy [00:21:00] training.