Why You're Doing Everything 'Right' and Still Gaining Weight After 40 | Ep. 47

In this episode, Soraya breaks down the gaps that keep women over 40 gaining weight despite eating healthy and staying active - and how to finally start seeing results during perimenopause and beyond.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

You eat pretty healthy food. You walk when you can, you try to get your water in, but it still seems like the scale is going up and you're gaining more fat, especially around your midsection. Today I'm going to talk about why you're doing everything right after 40, but still gaining weight, and most importantly, how to fix it. Welcome to the Fit and Fulfilled Show. If you're a busy professional woman who wants to finally prioritize your health and happiness, this is the place to be. I'm your host, Saraya Russell, certified macronutrition coach, mindset coach, and lifestyle transformation coach. And each week I share practical strategies to help you build sustainable habits, boost your energy, become obsessed with what you see when you look in the mirror, and feel confident and strong in your body. All without feeling stressed, burned out, or guilty. Let's dive in. So the majority of my clients are over 35, and our average client is around 51 years old. So many of our clients are in their late 40s, 50s, and early 60s. And the biggest thing I hear when clients first come to me is Soraya, I feel like I'm not eating that bad. I eat pretty healthy. I try to move when I can, but it seems like no matter what I do, the weight still goes up and I don't know what to do differently. And so everything I'm going to share with you is evidence-based based on me helping women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s lose weight without restricting themselves, without working out every single day, without killing themselves at the gym. You don't need to eat a lot less food. You don't need to work out a lot more. You just need the right approach, specifically for women over 40. So first let's explore why weight loss seems harder after 40. So your body is fundamentally changing as you get older, which is not a bad thing. But some things that are happening is estrogen is dropping, your cortisol levels tend to rise if you're not doing anything to keep them in check. You may be struggling with insulin resistance, and all these things impact how your body processes food and even how it processes certain types of physical activity. And I think what's most frustrating is you feel like you're generally healthy, you're doing all the right things, you're eating better than a lot of people you know, but it's not leading to results on the scale or results in how your clothes fit. So let's talk about how to change that. So the first gap that you might be missing is a lot of women believe eating healthy means eating for weight loss, which that is completely false. So for example, there's a lot of foods that are healthy: avocados, bananas, olive oil, all these are considered healthy foods. But if you're not managing portions, they can easily add up to you putting yourself over your calories. For example, if you cook with olive oil, which I know I do, and you're not managing how much you're putting in the pan, one tablespoon of olive oil, which is not a lot, is easily 120 calories. That's the amount of calories of a snack sometimes. So if you're not managing portions, you could be eating up to over 100 calories just from oil alone. We're not even talking about the actual food that you're putting in the pan. So let's take nuts, for example, as well, right? So say that you really enjoy trail mix. A lot of people that I know are not pre-portioning out their trail mix. They kind of just eat it as a snack. But if you look on the package, the portion you should be eating is probably about half, if not less, of what you are eating. So when I see a lot of women eating trail mix, what they're actually eating, the portion they're actually eating is up to 600, 700 calories. Nuts are healthy, but if you're consuming too much of them, you're easily going to be putting yourself over your calorie limit for the day. A lot of women that I've worked with over 40 have never really tracked calories, which you don't have to track every single day every single thing you're eating to lose weight. But they might have done things like, you know, Weight Watchers, Optivia, things where there's point systems. So they haven't really had to get familiar with how much calories are in certain foods. They just think, okay, well, this is a healthy food, I can eat a good amount of it. This is fast food, so I can't eat a lot of it. But when you actually understand what's in certain foods, even healthy foods, you recognize, okay, this is a healthy food with a lot of great benefits. However, if I also want to lose weight, I want to make sure I'm managing the right portion for my goals. And outside of just calories, for example, we talked about calories and things like nuts or olive oil, you also want to think about macros. So women over 40, you also want to make sure you're having the right portions of macros on your plate. So as estrogen is declining, you want to have a bit more protein and a bit more healthy fats included in your eating routine. And a lot of women don't realize that. So they might be eating the same way they were in their 20s and 30s, not gaining weight, doesn't matter. But as you get older, protein is going to be very, very important for you for maintaining and building muscle mass. And on top of that, you want to have healthy fats because healthy fats have even more benefits as you get older, stepping into perimetopause and menopause. So, for example, for our clients who are perimetopause or menopausal, we have them eat a little bit more healthy fats than someone who's not. So, say we have a client who's 35, for example, she's not in perimetopause yet. She might be eating a certain amount of fat, carbs, and protein. But if we have that same client and she was, say, 42 experiencing perimetopause, the fats might be a little higher and the carpets might be a little bit lower simply because she's experiencing perimetopause. The second gap is you're trying to move when you can, when it makes sense, when you have time, versus doing the right strategic movements for you to get results. So a lot of clients that come to me are like, hey Soraya, you know, I walk around, you know, when I can, I go for walks, I get in this many steps per day, but I'm still not losing weight. Maybe I do work out, I go to fitness classes. But when you're over 40, it's not just about working out more, it's about doing the right types of workouts to lose fat and build muscle, which will lead to the body composition that you want. So ideally, you want to focus on low impact cardio. A lot of our clients do walking and then strength training, aka lifting weights. So I have some clients who come to me and they're like, yeah, Soraya, I do um, say, CrossFit or I do uh workout classes like Zumba. That's great, but we want to focus on you building muscle and losing fat, which is gonna come from low impact cardio and lifting weights. So if we have clients who are walking a decent amount, we add in strength training. If we have clients who are very sedentary, we start adding in walking and then add in strength training later. And the reason I said low impact cardio is because when you do a lot of high impact cardio like HIIT, sometimes even CrossFit, that can raise your cortisol levels. And higher cortisol levels can make it much harder to lose stubborn belly fat. So I really recommend focusing on low impact cardio. That could be walking, swimming, biking, anything that doesn't raise your heart weight an extreme significant amount, you can consider more so low impact cardio. And as far as the weightlifting piece, what happens is when you get older, muscle tends to account for less of your body composition. And then fat accounts for more if you're not doing anything to retain the muscle mass. And so if you're just focusing on cardio, high impact cardio, no strength training, you're gonna be losing muscle and gaining fat. And that's probably why you have a lot of that skinny fat look where you feel like you have stubborn fat around your stomach, your arms, your legs, and things of that nature, even if you're not uh overweight on the scale by a significant amount. So, in order to fix this, you want to focus on lifting weights because lifting weights helps you build muscle. More muscle equals a faster metabolism. A faster metabolism makes weight loss and fat loss much easier. And when you have more muscle, it leads to less fat on your body, which helps you slim and trim your stomach area and the other areas on your body. The third gap I see happen a lot is inconsistency. So I have a lot of clients who come to me and say, hey, Soraya, I try to move, I try to eat healthy. And when we really dig into what's happening on a day-to-day basis, maybe Monday, Tuesday they eat pretty healthy. Then Wednesday, someone brings something into the office, they have it, and then the day just kind of continues that way. They have the pizza at lunch, then they have the stinkers bar for a snack, then they or takeout when they get home, then they snack on chips and cookies. So Wednesday is kind of a wash in their book. Maybe Thursday and Friday they're doing pretty well again, and then Saturday, Sunday they just overeat. So while it seems like this isn't bad, I eat pretty healthy most of the time. If we took an average of the calories from the days that you're eating, quote unquote, good and the days that you're kind of off track, it still ends up you eating in calorie maintenance, which means you're gonna maintain your weight, or you're eating in a calorie surplus where you're gaining weight. So this inconsistency is part of what's leading to you not seeing results. On top of that, what I see women doing is that they'll start something, they'll try to eat clean, they'll try to work out, but then they'll do their first weigh in, they're not seeing results as fast as they'd like to, so they just give up. And then they gain five more pounds and they're like, okay, I gotta do something again. So they try again, then they give up. So inconsistency I find is a result of number one, not seeing results as fast as you want to, which if you're over 40, you cannot expect super quick results. You want steady, sustainable results. Or number two, you're good at staying on track for a couple days. But if there is a family outing, a work event, something in the office, that gets you off track. And it's not even just that one slice of pizza or the cupcake. It's the mindset that if I had this one thing and I messed up, the whole day is ruined, the whole week is ruined. That mindset I find a lot of times leads to the starting and stopping that a lot of women struggle with. And kind of going off that, this wasn't one of my specific points, but this is a big deal, actually. If you're over 40, you have to start prioritizing sleep. Ideally, you want to get in seven to nine hours, but I understand for everyone that's very, very hard to do. You just want to start adding like an hour per week, right? So we have clients who come to us and they were barely getting, say, four hours of sleep. Just by changing their sleep hygiene, right? Having a more cool environment, having the right pillows to help them get to sleep, helping them get off their screens about an hour before bed, black out curtains, whatever it is, they slowly start getting more sleep. And just from that alone, they start seeing more results in their body. Because when you're not getting enough sleep, that's gonna raise your cortisol levels. When cortisol levels are higher, that's gonna lead to higher hunger hormones. You're gonna be more hungry, you're gonna be less satisfied from your food. And on top of that, that's gonna lead to you gaining more belly fat and specifically more visceral belly fat. So when you're getting enough sleep, your hunger hormones go down, you feel more satisfied from your meals, you're more rested, you have lower cortisol levels, which just makes weight loss easier. And it also makes you getting in your steps, your food, everything easier because you're not so stressed and sleep deprived. So one of the biggest things you need to do is build consistent habits with sleep, with nutrition, with exercise, even if the scale's not moving as much as you want to, if you stay consistent, you will reach your goal. But you starting and stopping and starting and stopping is you literally just wasting time going back and forth and staying at the same weight. And it's like a waste of your effort because you're doing all these things, going hard for one week, going off track the next week, and it's not leading to a long-term sustainable outcome. The fourth gap, which is really honestly the most important one, and I found where our clients changing this changes everything, is the mindset gap. A lot of women over 40 have this deep-seated belief, and sometimes it's so subconscious they don't even realize it, that they cannot lose weight anymore because of their age. If you believe that, even if it's very subconscious, you will always find a way to sabotage. You'll be losing weight, but you'll stop because you're like, oh, well, this is the best it's gonna get. I probably can't lose anymore because of my age. You will have one cookie at work and you'll just sabotage the whole day because subconsciously you're like, this isn't gonna work anyway. You emotionally eat whatever it is. I find when women have this limiting belief and mindset pattern, nothing sticks because deep down they don't believe anything will work long term. They don't believe they can feel as good in their body as they used to in their early 30s or 20s. But I'm telling you, I have most of our clients, like I said, are over 40 and they feel amazing. They look amazing. Many of them tell me they feel better now in their 40s and 50s than they did in their 30s because they're doing things sustainably. They're not crash dieting, they're not taking pills, they're not starving themselves. They're eating what they like in the right portions for their goals and they feel good and they have energy. For example, one of our clients came to us when she turned 54 and she was like, you know, this is the one thing in life I have not been able to figure out. I feel great about my career, I have a great family life, I love my home, I love my life, but I feel so crappy when I look in the mirror. I don't like the way my arms look. I don't like to wear shorts or sleeveless tops. I hate the way I look in pictures. And I just want to be able to feel as good in this area of my life as I feel in everything else. I want my body to reflect the life that I have, the amazing life that I have. And so what she had is this belief that because I am in my 50s, I can't look like these other women I see online. I can't look like I did in my 30s. But what we did is when she came to work with us, we're like, we're gonna help you with nutrition and fitness, right? We're gonna help you lose the weight, tone up, all that good stuff, feel good in your clothes, wear those shorts and love the way you look. They were like, most importantly, we're gonna help you fix your mindset. Because when you fix that, it's gonna stick. You'll lose the weight and you'll keep it off forever. So she worked with our therapist on emotional eating, self-sabotage, limiting beliefs, overcoming these thoughts that were keeping her stuck. Alongside of that, she was also doing the nutrition work and the fitness work to lose weight. She was still eating things that she liked, but in the right portions for her goals. More protein, healthy fats, more whole foods, but still having her pizza, still having her wine in moderation. She was exercising, she was going on walks every single day, sometimes with her kids, sometimes she would go on a walk and call a friend. She would work out three times a week at home, 30 minutes, that was it. And guess what? At 54, she lost 23 pounds in five months. And not only that, she was more toned and lean than she had ever been in her whole life. Because weight loss is one thing, but when you do it by lifting weights, building muscle, having more protein, having more whole foods, you're not just losing weight, you are building a lean, toned, fit body. She literally told me that she feels better in her body now than she did in her 30s. And she actually feels like she can actually sustain it for the rest of her life. She's tried keto, optivia, uh, Jenny Craig, all those things. And every time she did it, she was losing weight, but she didn't feel good. She was miserable, hungry, irritable, her hair was falling out. But she was like, Soraya, for the first time, I feel like I can actually sustain this for the rest of my life. She worked with us in September 2025 and has maintained these results ever since. So I say that to say when you change your mindset, everything else becomes easy. Everything else becomes a lifestyle. But you gotta start with the mental part. And I don't think I mentioned this, but a lot of her clients like keep in touch after they graduate from the program because they're like, yes, Ray, this new milestone I hit, I just wanted to share it with you. So she actually went on a family vacation in May this year, and her family went on a cruise and she sent a picture of her and her husband on the cruise, and she was like, hey, sir, I wanted to send this picture. I'm feeling amazing in my body. I'm finally wearing those shorts that we talked about. And in this photo, she was wearing shorts and a cute like tank top with her arms out, which is so unlike her. She's typically someone who covers up on vacation, but she was in that photo smiling, looking confident, looking beautiful, looking happy. And this was such a big moment because she realized I actually love the way I look. I want to take photos with my family. I want to take photos by myself. So it wasn't just the weight loss, it was that she finally felt good in her body. And that is what our program is about, helping women feel good, confident, beautiful in their body, in the mirror, in their clothes, wearing things they actually want to wear versus what they feel like hides their body the best. So I'm telling you, if you are perimenopausal, if you're menopausal, if you're postmenopausal, if you're over 40 and you're thinking that I can't lose weight anymore, I promise you you can if you change your mindset and get the personalized help you need to do it in a way that works for your age and your health conditions. So moral of the story is it's not just one gap, it's all these pieces working together, right? The mindset, eating the right amount for weight loss and fat loss, having the right movement routine to help you lower your cortisol levels. All these things go hand in hand. So if you focus on these key areas and have the kind of build you need to follow through so they become sustainable lifestyle changes, you can lose any amount of weight that you want in your 40s, 50s, and 60s. So thank you so much for tuning in to the Fit and Filled Show today. Hope you walked away with practical strategies you can start using to feel confident, fulfilled, and energized in your personal and professional life. And if you found this helpful in absolutely any way, I ask that you please subscribe and share it with a friend so they can benefit from this information as well. And if you're a busy professional woman who wants to lose 20 to 50 pounds in a sustainable way without cutting out your favorite foods, I would love to invite you to apply for our coaching program, the Fit and Fulfilled Academy. In the Academy, we help women like you by providing the personalized coaching and guidance to help you achieve lasting weight loss through nutrition, fitness, and mindset work. All the details are down below. Next week we're diving into a brand new topic that you're not going to want to miss. But until then, remember you deserve to feel as confident in your body as you do in your career. Take care.