HSOS #13: The Real Fat Loss Formula After 40

The scale doesn’t get to run the show anymore. This episode breaks down why fat loss in midlife plays by new rules—hello, hormones—and how to protect your muscle, boost your metabolism, and still enjoy your life. With humor, honesty, and a little sass, Kim shares how protein, fiber, strength training, sleep, and stress management can help you stop starting over every Monday.

Let’s talk.

Welcome to Her Season of Strength—where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy—registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman when it comes to aging like you mean it.

This show isn’t about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It’s about building real strength—physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I’ll share straight-talking nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies, and conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin once again.

Menopause is not an ending, it is only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

💪 What You’ll Hear in This Episode

• The morning the scale “had the audacity” to go up two pounds
• Why we need to stop treating the scale like a toxic ex-boyfriend
• Estrogen’s mic drop moment and how it changed the fat loss game
• The slow-and-steady secret to keeping muscle and sanity
• Protein first—your midlife superhero (and how to make double without living in the kitchen)
• Fiber: the quiet BFF saving your digestion and cravings
• Why lifting weights is the biggest body-confidence hack ever
• The hidden fat-burner called NEAT (and how to sneak more in)
• Sleep, stress, and why wine isn’t the nighttime friend you think it is
• How loving your body (not punishing it) creates results that actually last

Grab your free guide, 20 Tips to Crushing Menopause
—it’s packed with simple, doable upgrades that help you feel energized and strong.
And if you’re ready for the real transformation, hop on the Fit After 50+ interest list for winter/spring 2026.

Links & resources for this episode:

Fit After 50 Plus Program: 8-Week Nutrition Coaching & Fitness Program for women 50+. Next session starts winter of 2026. Join the interest list today for the best bonuses and discounts offered.

Free cheat sheet: "20 Tips to Crushing Menopause"

Join my free weekly newsletter list and get a new high protein recipe sent to your inbox every Thursday.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to her season of Strength, where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy, registered dietician, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman. When it comes to aging like you mean it, this show isn't about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles.

[00:00:20] It's about building real strength, physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I'll share straight talking, nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies. And conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin. Once again, menopause isn't an ending. It's only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

[00:00:39] Hello, and welcome back to her season of Strength. I am so happy you're here and I thank you for coming back to listen to another episode. So today, yet again, I went back and was trying to think of what would be a really good topic that. I hear you [00:01:00] know, that I get the most questions about, that I have the most women coming to me for, and it is a topic that I have a love-hate relationship for, but I think ultimately the grand majority of women come to me looking for, and that is fat loss.

[00:01:16] Ugh. I hate it because. We as women can become so obsessed with this, and more often than not, we're obsessed just in general with weight loss. We just want that scale to go down and we're willing to do anything to get it. And I think at. This point in our life, it is so important to change our way of thinking about fat loss and about weight loss in general.

[00:01:44] Okay, so I wanna start it off just by saying, this morning I got on the scale and it had the audacity, the nerve to actually go up two pounds. Two old me would have spiraled into, what did I do wrong? Oh my gosh. It must have been that. [00:02:00] Single piece of chocolate that I put in my mouth, or it must have been that, extra pasta I had at dinner time.

[00:02:08] I don't know. But now I do not let it control me. I just, rolled my eyes. I grabbed my coffee cup and reminded myself muscle weigh something too. And sodium is such a drama queen, right? It's exactly what I wanna talk about today is why fat loss. Looks different in midlife and how we can stop treating that scale like that toxic ex-boyfriend that we keep getting, giving power to.

[00:02:38] So first of all, you've probably noticed that things feel different now, right? Maybe you eat the same, you move the same, but suddenly your body is storing fat in new places. We've talked about this before in previous episodes, especially around that midsection, is where we tend to see it.

[00:02:53] I don't know about you, but I've always had that pear shaped body, right? So I used to, when I was younger, I, loved my waist [00:03:00] and I was smaller up top. But, I had a button some thighs, right? And of course, now apparently that's just all the rage. That's what you want.

[00:03:08] But. My body's definitely changed. I'm becoming a bit more straight up and down. I don't have the same curves that I had before. Definitely still have the, the but, and the thighs. But yeah, I do notice that we do put weight on a little bit easier around our midsection, but that is because.

[00:03:28] Our estrogen used to be like that overachieving best friend who kept everything in balance, right? So she helped us build and maintain muscle to manage our insulin, keep our fat cells in check. And then one day she just said, girl, I'm tired, and drop the mic. So it's not that your willpower disappeared, it's that your hormones change the rules of the game.

[00:03:48] So the problem is that no one told us those new rules, but that's okay. Because that's why we're here to rewrite them, right? Midlife is, it's not about fighting your body, it's about working with it. It's [00:04:00] saying, all right, hormones, I see you and I've got new tools. So here's a wild idea. What if fat loss didn't have to mean restriction, deprivation, and misery?

[00:04:12] What if the slower progress was actually smarter progress? The kind that builds muscle, balances our hormones and lets us enjoy our life without obsessing over every single calorie. We've been trained to think that faster is better, but here's the truth. Fast fat loss usually means fast muscle loss, and muscle is our best friend right now.

[00:04:33] She's the one that keeps our metabolism humm. Our body firm and toned our strength up and our bones strong. So instead of asking how fast can I lose the weight, I want you to start asking, how strong can I become while doing it? That's the shift, that's the power. That's what we're practicing right now in my fit after 50 plus program.

[00:04:55] We're working on, stepping away from that scale. 'cause it, that [00:05:00] scale is only telling us one story, one part. The real story. Is the more important things like our energy, our confidence, our strength that shows up everywhere and our posture in our workouts, and even how we feel walking into a room.

[00:05:17] So let's talk about food for just a sec, 'cause I know you're waiting for that. And ultimately, food is incredibly important when it comes to fat loss. This isn't where I'm gonna tell you eat less. It's where I'm gonna tell you to eat smarter. And wait, I hound on this. You're gonna hear this from me all the time, but protein first, think of protein as your midlife shield, right?

[00:05:41] It protects our muscle, it keeps our metabolism healthy, and it tells our brain, we're full, we're done, we're satisfied, and we can stop eating. And so if you want a quick visual, every meal should have something that used to move, swim, or grow high in the field chicken, salmon, [00:06:00] or other fish, eggs, beans and legumes like tofu, black beans, chickpeas, dairy products like Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, whatever fits your vibe and kind of what kind of foods you enjoy and what you eat.

[00:06:14] Those are all those high protein sources. And here's a little extra tip. When you're making these things, make double. If you're making chicken tonight, make extra lunch for lunch tomorrow. That's how you're gonna stay consistent with feeling like you, without feeling like you're, you're living in that kitchen.

[00:06:33] And then we're gonna add in that fiber. She's like that quiet friend who's doing all the emotional labor in your digestion. Fiber keeps our gut happy. It balances our blood sugars with protein and it helps us to feel full and satisfied. And it's lowering calories, so it's like we can eat. It's that bulk, it gives us that extra food to, to crunch and to chew and to tell our body, oh, we're eating [00:07:00] something.

[00:07:01] So small daily upgrades are gonna just work wonders. Things like adding chia seeds to your oatmeal, adding veggies to your lunch and dinner meals, or grabbing a, a whole raw, fresh piece of fruit instead of, a quick and easy like granola bar or more processed carb. Don't overthink it.

[00:07:19] Just upgrade one choice at a time. And if you want more of these little midlife aha tips, you can also grab my free guide. I have a guide called 20 Tips to Crushing Menopause. It's short, simple, totally change how you will look at this stage in life and includes just an overall picture of different areas that you can make small tweaks in your life.

[00:07:39] I'm gonna put the link in the show notes. So now let's address the elephant, or should I say the dumbbell in the room. If you wanna change your shape after 40, you have to lift. Otherwise known as strength training, resistance training, period. Muscle is our secret weapon. It burns our ca, it burns calories.

[00:07:58] It's gonna help to [00:08:00] regulate hormones, protect our joints, and really, it's gonna make us look more tone. I that word I know a lot of people, but I wanna tone my. Tummy, or I wanna tone the back of my arms. That's a different idea. But anyway, so strength training is gonna help us to look more sculpted even when the scale hasn't budged, because we know that muscle weighs more than fat.

[00:08:24] So it may not make any difference on the scale, but yet you've, you can see, you can tell you've gained strength, you've gained muscle, and you don't have to live in the gym. Two or three solid strength sessions per week. Even if it's 30, 40 minutes, if you do them right, if you're efficient with them, it's gonna do more for your metabolism than any cardio binge ever will.

[00:08:49] And no, you're not gonna get bulky. You're gonna get defined, you're gonna get strong and maybe even addicted to how powerful you feel. And this is another piece in the Fit After [00:09:00] 50 program that we focus on exactly that is just building strength with smart, progressive workouts, fueling properly, and restoring balance with recovery days.

[00:09:09] Because you know what? Our bodies aren't broken. It's just ready for a smarter plan. So let's zoom out for just a second. If you wanna lose fat and you wanna keep it off, the secret isn't eating less, it's living better. And that means making sure we're getting enough sleep. And that's, goal of at least seven to nine hours a night.

[00:09:30] And I know, you're waking up in the middle of night at two, 2:00 AM 3:00 AM wide awake because that's what menopause post menopause can do. But I'm just talking about, what time are you going to bed? Are you doing things to help to create a healthy sleep habits? Are you reading a book before bed rather than scrolling on your phone?

[00:09:51] Or are you turning off your work computer and having a nice warm bath or a cup of chamomile tea? How can you create a better [00:10:00] environment, which is gonna ensure a little bit better quality of sleep? Okay, so it's not just a ma a matter of quantity, it's a matter of, what can we do to help our bodies to be more tired?

[00:10:12] So we exercise, we can wear 'em out but then also to fall into a nice restful sleep. And last week we talked a bit about alcohol and how alcohol can affect our sleep. So if you're finding that, that glass of wine or that drink in the evenings is affecting your sleep, finding ways, we talked about ways to to decrease that.

[00:10:34] Other things that we can do, how to change those habits because that can definitely make a difference with sleep Next. Managing stress is a huge piece of, I, I know you're like fat loss. How is it managing stress affecting my fat loss? But we know that stress affects our bodies in so many different ways and can actually lead to some insulin resistance.

[00:10:56] It can increase cortisol levels in our body. Increasing [00:11:00] inflammation can increase our risk of chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, increasing blood pressure. So it's important for us to find ways to manage stress. What do you enjoy doing? What? What can you do to bring those cortisol levels down to bring those that stress down?

[00:11:16] Maybe it's just adding in a five minute meditation during the day. At lunchtime, maybe when you feel like the most stressed at work and you need to just take one second, five minutes to breathe and to relax your body and tell your body that you're not in fight or flight. Or maybe it's making sure that you're getting in your movement, getting in your nice walks, outside, feeling the sunshine on your face.

[00:11:41] Maybe it's doing things with your friends or your family. If that's things that you enjoy to help bring those stress levels down. If you are just a stressed out machine, even if you are getting in the workouts, even if you are eating a perfect diet, you are gonna struggle. It is gonna be harder to lose fat.[00:12:00] 

[00:12:00] Next is the exercise piece and just moving. So I'm not talking about just strength training that I told you about how that's important for building our muscle, for building our metabolism, but finding ways to move is so important too. We call that neat, or our non-exercise, exercise activity.

[00:12:20] Thermogenesis. I had to think about that just for a second. So it's basically how we're burning calories. Calories outside of actual exercise that we're doing. So it's those steps that we're taking during the day. It's, are we trying to go for a nice, a walk over our lunch hour or are we, when you get home, maybe after you have dinner to help digestion, how are you moving?

[00:12:41] 'Cause if we're sitting on our rear ends, sedentary all day long in this job. Getting a thousand steps in all day long. We need to find ways to move, whether that's a standing desk or maybe we have a walking pad on it. Maybe, like I said, we go for a walk over lunch. But just finding ways [00:13:00] to, to get in just a little bit more movement during the day.

[00:13:03] 'cause that is, is gonna make a big difference. Next one is eating enough protein and fiber. We already touched on that, how that's important for fat loss and most importantly, giving yourself time because here's the truth, you can't hate your body into change. We can't shame it and guilt it into, what we want, we need to learn how to love our bodies in the process. And when we approach fat loss with patients and with strength instead of shame and punishment, our results not only show up, they're gonna be much more likely to stay. Sir, if you're ready to stop starting over every Monday, and finally build that consistent habit and that body that works with you and not against you, start with those small things.

[00:13:54] Focus on the protein, get in your fiber. Lift something heavy, sleep and repeat. [00:14:00] And again, don't forget to grab your free GRA your Free Guide, 20 Tips to Crushing Menopause. The links in the show notes. It's full of simple ways to take back your energy, help gain more confidence, build your strength.

[00:14:12] You can grab it from the link below and if you're nodding along thinking, I need a plan and accountability, get on that interest. List for the next fit. After 50 plus, our next round is gonna kick off winter spring of 2026. And interest list members are always gonna get the best bonuses and discounts first because remember, this is about progress over perfection.

[00:14:33] We're in this for the long haul and this is your season of strength. Have a fantastic day. Take care.